Apr 27, 2019

An Angst-Ridden, Gay Hanna-Barbara Cartoon

Picture from Deviantart.com
In 1958, former MGM animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera  (probably not a gay couple) teamed up to explore the uncharted world of television cartoons.

Their first creation was Huckleberry Hound, a laconic blue dog named after Huckleberry Finn, who got into countless jams trying to fit into the human world.

Many other characters followed, in a bewildering variety of tv shows airing in prime time and on Saturday morning, until by the 1960s Hanna-Barbara was synonymous with television animation. 


Although they experimented with many genres, including sitcom (The Flintstones), superhero (Space Ghost), and mystery, their most recognizable brand was anthropomorphic animals, alone (Wally Gator, Magilla Gorilla, Snagglepuss) or in domestic partnerships (Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Louie, Pixie and Dixie), in an exclusively human world, fighting against the constraints of their human caretakers.

Kids could relate.  We were constantly trying to be more, experience more, and constantly running against adult constrictions: "No, you're too young to do that."

Gay kids could especially relate.  The heterosexual longing that we see in the Warner Brothers cartoons was nearly entirely absent.  There are no wives (Doggie Daddy is a single parent), few girlfriends, few female characters of any sort.  Instead, two males live together, an early glimpse of the gay subtexts that would eventually allow us to realize that "it's not raining upstairs."

I actually couldn't recount the plot of any particular cartoon. I just remember the distinctive Hanna-Barbera running style:  legs spinning like airplane propellers, arms straight out in front of you, passing the same background scene over and over.

But it wasn't about the cartoons, it was about the characters.  They appeared in mountains of toys, games, clothing, furniture, foodstuffs, and who knows what else?  They became iconic images of childhood, familiar faces that guided us into the future, and now inform our memories of the past.

Yogi Bear seems to be balancing a box of his cereal on his bicep.  Not really suggesting that he is particularly strong.










Many pastiches, fan creations, and tv shows have revisted the characters.  But the DC Comics miniseries Exit, Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan, is by far the most complex.

Snagglepuss was a pink mountain lion with a flair for the theatrical, modeled after Bert Lahr. with three catchphrases: "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", "Exit, stage left!", and the intensifier "even.":  "It's raining.  Pouring, even."

In The Snagglepuss Chronicles, he's a Southern gentleman, a playwright reminiscent of Tennessee Williams, a Broadway celebrity who hob-nobs with Lilian Hellman.  Don't believe the cover, which shows him rakishly peering over sunglasses while cuddling against a lady's shoulder, like a hetero-horny lady's man.  He's gay.

He has a wife, but only as a beard, since he must keep his gay identity hidden in the harshly repressive world of the 1950s.

Early episodes involve his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and friendship with an aspiring writer named Augie Doggie, while he supervises a play about his early life.  Then Huckleberry Hound drops in for a permanent visit.


Huck has just lost his wife, children, and career after a private detective revealed that he is gay.

Snagglepuss takes him to the Stonewall Inn, where Gay Liberation will be born in a few years.  "It's the only place like it in New York,  Maybe the world."

That's ridiculous.  There were many gay bars in New York, and in most big cities.

Quick Draw McGraw, the police officer assigned to keep Stonewall under surveillance, gets a kickback for reporting that there are no "deviants." He turns out to be gay himself, and begins dating Huck.  But when the bar is raided anyway, he betrays his boyfriend to save his career.  Huck soon commits suicide.

A few years later, Huck's son, Huckleberry Hound Junior, comes to town in search of the truth about his famous father.  Snagglepuss invites him, along with Quick Draw and other familiar Hanna-Barbara faces, to join the cast of a new animated tv series.

That's right.  They become the cast of The Huckleberry Hound Show.

The storytelling is competent, if a bit contrived, and I like the world where animals and humans co-exist.

But it's way too angst-ridden and depressing for my tastes.  I like my comics funny.

And what, precisely, is the point of usinng Hanna-Barbera characters to tell this story?  It would work just as well without them.

See also: Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo

5 comments:

  1. It's Deviantart, of course it's going to have some fan art elements.

    But, you know, the Grindr generation isn't going to grok the history of gay bars, anyway. And 50s gay culture was even radically different from 70s gay culture, which is where history's eye usually opens.

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    Replies
    1. So the audience is the younger generation, not oldsters who remember the original characters. That explains why there's a glossary in the back.

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    2. If you're over 25, you remember the original characters, at least vaguely. (Cartoon Network filled a lot of time with old Hanna-Barbera shows.)

      The under 40 set is apparently more likely to sexualize cartoon characters too. It's basically neurotic Boomer parents (and not just about sex, Boomers wouldn't even let their kids go outside because of fear of, take your pick: Drive-by shootings, child abduction, drug dealers...) meets the return of full animation. No other outlet for those feelings means being a furry, or John Duggar, or...

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  2. By the way, speaking of old things, one you might find funny is the original Batgirl. (Now known as Flamebird. There's a reason, but it also requires reading Bronze Age Teen Titans, and Silver Age Superman. Oh comics.) After Wertham's delightful fan fiction declaring Batman and Robin to be gay, DC gave them female counterparts.

    Robin's female counterpart was always trying to trick him into kissing her, and once manipulated him into believing they were a couple. Like, seriously, I can't see a better statement about heterosexism in this era than that. It's telling that when the show gave him a college girl to fruitlessly lust after, the Bat family changed accordingly.

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  3. I remember the re-invention of Batgirl in the 1960s tv series, an attempt to bring in girl viewers ("Batman" was followed on Thursday nights by an evening of girl-empowerment favorites like "Bewitched" and "That Girl"). She was too old for Robin, a new college graduate, so they didn't do any sparking.

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