Aug 6, 2021

"Chip n Dale: Park Life": Is the Gay Subtext Embraced or Erased?

 Chip and Dale were an iconic gay-subtext couple who appeared in 24 Disney cartoons (1943-56).  They mostly spoke in chipmunk-gibberish, with maybe a word or two of English per cartoon, which was appropriate for the simple, simple, slapstick-prone plotlines: generally they bedeviled Donald Duck (and occasionally Mickey Mouse or Pluto) in their attempts to get food or protect their tree-home.   They were not often  differentiated, but sometimes they were divided into intellectual/sensible Chip (with a black nose) and foolhardy/dopey Dale (with a red nose). 


Comedy partners were often displayed living together and sleeping in the same bed in those days, so doubtless no one noticed the gay subtext apparent in the domesticity and permanence.  The two even compete over a girl named Clarice in the 1952 short "Two Chips and a Miss."

In the comic books that appeared under the Dell and Gold Key imprints during the 1950s and 1960s, the two were more obviously a couple.  Their hole-in-a-tree is drawn as a modern home, with chipmunk-sized furniture, even a television set.  They speak,  Chip in grammatically correct, complex sentences, Dale in baby-talk. 



This allows for more complex plots than "trying to find nuts."  They embark on Western, secret-agent, and science-fiction adventures. Here they are interacting with Gilbert, Goofy's genius nephew.


This time someone noticed, or maybe it was just part of the 1980s rush to heterosexualize everyone, but the tv series Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers (1989-1990)  adds a girl-chipmunk named Gadget to the team for them to crush on and compete over. (They also get Magnum P.I. and Indiana Jones outfits befitting their new roles as adventure heroes).


In July 2021, the Disney Channel began airing a French-American co-production, Chip n Dale: Park Life (Les aventures au parc de Tic et Tac).  No way will major Disney characters ever be a canonical gay couple, but maybe the writers would embrace the gay subtext.  Or maybe they would erase it altogether.  I watched the two episodes that have appeared to date (six cartoons):


The boys have reverted to nonverbal chatterers, although they have voice artists listed, Kaycie Chase and Matthew Géczy, and they can communicate with other animals.  They live in a bare hole in a tree in a walled city park.  The only "humans" who have appeared to date are a pack of babies, but Donald Duck and the Beagle Boys are in the character lists of future episodes.

The gay subtext clues, in the order that they aired:

1. When Chip rides a baby like a horse, looking masculine and "tall in the saddle," Dale swoons with romantic ecstasy.  

2. Their romantic affection, riding in a boat together, licking the same acorn (like an ice cream cone), and hugging, makes three male-female animal pairs (frogs, dogs, and rabbits) say "aww."   When they break up, everyone is heartbroken; when they reconcile, everyone cheers.  Here they are portrayed as the exact equivalent of male-female couples.

3. They don't actually kiss, but they press noses.

4.  They don't compete for the affection of any lady chipmunks (although I see the name "Clarice" in a future episode).

5. They have a romantic candlelit dinner.

6. When everyone thinks that Chip has murdered their god, a giant peacock, he is banished from the park.  Dale goes with him.   

7.  They sleep in the same bed.

8. When Chip becomes possessed by a magical, glowing acorn, Dale sacrifices himself to save him.  

My verdict: The gay subtext is about as obvious as it can get, and maintain deniability.  If anyone inquires, the producers can still say  "We had no intention of portraying Chip n Dale as gay."


14 comments:

  1. Chip and Dale are funny gay or not- I'm surprise there hasn't been a series about those two gay mice in Cinderella

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  2. Dale had a red nose. (You wrote black.)

    Also, Gadget is a mouse. Not a huge deal, but she is a mouse.

    I remember Fox used to have Disney shows after school before Disney bought ABC. Here are the shows:

    Ducktales: All-male family, where is Donald anyway? Subtext is possible but I never thought about it too much other than the dearth of female characters.

    Rescue Rangers: It's Chip n Dale. Just, it's Chip n Dale.

    Talespin: Baloo is a pilot. There really isn't any gay subtext here; Kit, his sidekick, is a child, which means I generally default to their relationship being more familial. His boss is a woman, which was a common 80s trope. Louie, Disney's OC DO NOT STEAL! in the Jungle Book, is a bartender.

    Darkwing Duck: Okay, let me be the first to say I never got the idea of Batman and Robin as a couple. World's Finest suggests Batman and Superman. Regardless, the gay implications handicapped Robin for years. Silver Age Robin had no fewer than three women thrown at him, one of whom was old enough that if they did anything she would be considered a child molester today. (So naturally modern batwriters retcon them as having done things.) By contrast, Jason Todd was hetero horny, and Tim Drake actually had two concurrent girlfriends; naturally he's dating a boy now, and his more bourgeois background means the audience demands he do so in contrast to his big bro, who was ostracized for decades for even a hint of the gay. But Robin, or Nightwing, has better development in Marv Wolfman's Teen Titans series, with themes of everything from sexual repression to a gay-vague best friend with obvious subtext (killed off, of course) to even debunking the heterosexist myth that men always want it. Naturally the batwriters wanted the character they'd been phasing out since the 60s back. (Look up chutzpah in the dictionary...) They eventually got their wish, and the batwriters have evolved him into a hetero player ever since.

    For a Batman parody, Darkwing Duck has no gay subtext except maybe DW and Launchpad. More unforgivable is the absence of a Robin character. Gosling is DW's daughter. (Amazingly it hits a LOT of the DC mythos. There's even an Earth-3 and a group of villains called the Fearsome Five.) But I say we skip ahead to Tim here. The kid's name already is a duck pun.

    Goof Troop: Finally some fucking food! So, this is a slice of life show with Goofy and Black Pete as suburban dads. The gay subtext is, of course, Max and PJ. Not as pronounced as some teenage best friends, but it exists.

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    1. I think they got rid of Donald for "Ducktales" so the kids could live permanently with Uncle Scrooge and go on more adventures. Of course, they went on plenty of adventures in the comics with both Uncle Scrooge and Donald along. Maybe Donald's distinctive voice would be too hard to understand through long passages of dialogue, especially in an adventure series.

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    2. I love the idea of Batman/Superman bromance

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    3. It's really quite wholesome and you have all these father-son moments with Robin; even the name Nightwing is a Superman reference. There's also Kingdom Come, a future based on Alan Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes. So, basically Game of Thrones with your underwear on the outside. At the end, Batman marries Superman and Wonder Woman.

      And Dick has his own possible boyfriends, more on the titans side of things. There REALLY aren't a lot of options on the bat side of things.

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  3. A couple tiny corrections/notes (based on release order on Disney+): (1) One of the Beagle Boys appears in the first short (of three) of the first episode, Thou Shalt Nut Steal; (2) Clarice appears in the first short (of three) of the second episode, The Whole Package (and seem quite butch herself).

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    1. Ok, I saw the Beagle Boy playing the harmonica in prison in the closign shot of "Thou Shall Nut Steal," but in "The Whole Package," is that Clarice? I thought it was a teenage boy with a punk haircut.

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    2. I keep captions on, and so that’s how I knew it was Clarice. 😁

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    3. Also, the Beagle Boy appeared earlier when it stole the starving, sad puppies’ tire swing AND the harmonica he’s playing in the prison shot. 🙂

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  4. I think the peacock is their queen, not a god, and Dale, who is the only one who seems to think Chip is a murderer for most of the short, doesn’t go willingly with him but is also ejected after appearing to be attacking the queen, who is so very clumsy. This “attack” is also when Dale realizes that Chip was also trying to help the (clumsy) queen earlier. I accept the subtext, which is very clear in many instances, but this one in particular isn’t really one of them.

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  5. The episode where they get their tails knitted together is THE telltale episode that they are in fact in gay for each other and that it goes beyond friendship. These two chipmonks just love each other so much! There was also another episode where two obviously gay bikers have a picknick in the park, giving each other presents and hugging. For example, at one point one of them comes up and embraces the other from behind. The gay innuendos and themes are obvious, but not so enough for kids to catch on.

    Hardly surprising since Xilam, lead by Mark Du Ponavice has been very liberal with these types of themes for 2 decades. Oggy & the Cockroaches had some really obvious gay themes as well, and even quite a bit of sexual innuendo here and there. (Until of course they rebooted the show and made it more vanilla.) You can smell Oggy on CnD-Park Life from a mile away, in the types of slapstick and body comedy that is ... not quite Disney. And that's a very good thing. After all, Xilam larly made Oggy in homage to old fashion non-dialog cartoons with only music and sound FX to narrate the story. Chip N Dale have found their way back to their roots, in this modern take comedy.

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  6. The real Clarice never acts like that everyone knows that she's a girly girly Lounge singer at the Acorn Club.

    Performing, singing, spending time with Chip and Dale. And she wear clothes shopping, looking good helping others and always use good manners in public !

    Not a punk rocker , messy, almost barbaric, person tomboyish Floozy. Your Clarice you created in Chip n dale park life is seriously uncouth inside and out no matter how you dissed her look!

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    Replies
    1. I don't think you understand that this is a review of the series. I'm not the creator of the series; I had nothing to do with it.

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