Hermaneutics:
A Seminar Examining the Playhouse...
and the 
Big Adventure.

 

by Stephanie X. Pulford 
and Alice C. Teeple

 
 
Stef:
Why does PeeWee Herman allow fame to go to his head?  And why does he keep hanging out with women other than Dotti?  Dotti was the coolest female sidekick, followed by Miss Yvonne.  Wait, does Large Marge count?
 		 Alice:
I must differ with you on the Dotti Affair. Large Marge was cool, but Miss Yvonne was by far the coolest Pee Wee Chick. She, or Magic Screen.  Was Magic Screen even a girl?  I know Chairry was, because she had eyelashes. Or the beatnik puppet, Chicky-Baby...only, she talked in verse, and that tends to annoy after a while.  There was always the Cowntess, but her Freudian slip kept showing.
Stef:
But Dotti was quite down-to-earth. The women in Big Top Pee Wee were VERY unsatisfactory. That is what I am rebelling against: a repudiation of the Zeitgeist. Yuck.
The problem with Pee Wee's Playhouse and Pee Wee's Big Adventure is that they are completely different worlds.  I think that ending up with Miss Yvonne in the "real world" wouldn't work, and would undermine his coolness. Pee Wee would become like the Addams Family; unable to function in the real world and becoming a bastion of weird out there in the wilderness. Whereas, if he had a woman like Dotti to be sensible for him, he would be free to pummel his visual comedic genius off of her straight-man schtick, and live in relative domestic harmony.  He needs a real-world person to appreciate him.

In the Playhouse,au contraire, the lovely and zaftig Miss Yvonne is perfect.  Her beauty is the stuff of make-believe, co-ordinating perfectly with the matter-of-fact surrealism which makes the programme so appealing.  It's okay, acceptable, even necessary that the lovely Miss Yvonne appear slightly older than PeeWee, because she is the fantasy woman of our bouffant figures.  I can go with all that.  I simply cannot deal with the insipid women of Big Top Pee Wee.  It was a stab at marrying the Playhouse Weltanschauung with the skewed real-world ideals of Big Adventure, and it just failed totally.  Hmmm. If there was Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and then Big Top Pee Wee, 

will the next movie becalled Pee Wee's Big Head?Because, apparently, it has to involve the word, "big."		 Alice:

You are correct about the well-endowed Miss Yvonne not working in reality, but I am confused by the real and the fantasy Pee-Wee, and the dichotomy this engenders. First off, there is the helmet carryover. In Pee Wee's Big Adventure, he has that helmet and the Amazing Bike, a true deus ex machina. But the helmet carried through to the Playhouse mise-en-scene,where the Amazing Bike has been demoted to a magic scooter and shot out of the Hellmouth, hearking back to the Roman Era.

There is also the Danny Elfman carryover; Elfman composed music for both movies and for Playhouse...but, granted, the music is different with each Pee Wee undertaking.  This, too, adds to the confusion. Indeed, in the real world, Pee Wee would be a pariah with NO friends, not even the Macchiavellan Francis, 
who was never a suitable friend.  Dotti's commedia del arte would get old fast, tiring quickly of the lunacy which Pee Wee radiates.

Pee Wee in real life would probably be on constant neighbourhood watch becauseof Megan's Law.  This is not impossible to envision, because, if you think about it, would it not be rather shady if all of a sudden a new neighbour showed up in a too-tight plaid suit, wanting to play with your children? (Speaking of being insipid, you ommitted mention of the entire Big Adventure sequence starring Morgan Fairchild as Dotti.)

But in fantasy, Pee Wee is perfectly normal; nothing creepy about him.  Sure, he possesses the Giant Underwear, which he then proceeds to wear upon his head. He has the Magic Glasses, with pictures of silent-movie belly-dancers inside. This show, however, is all about illogical logic.  It makes perfect sense.  It won Emmys.  An entire generation of kids grew up with this.  And I omitted mention of the whole Zen mantra, mekkalekkahimekkaHINEYho,which we, as third graders, recited as often as the Pledge of Allegiance.  Jambi introduced us to Eastern philosophies at such a tender age. I much prefer the fantasy Pee Wee.  Your argument is rather like taking a Magritte painting and saying, "Now, come on.  A train can't REALLY pop out of the fireplace."  It simply demotes the mirth into mere farce.  So I think that the proposed Pee Wee movie in the works should be pure fantasy, with no sardonic undertones. UNLESS! Unless, in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, that WAS Pee Wee's real house, and the show dealt, indeed, with simply his playhouse.
I  know you are, but what am I?  Eh - go back to the main page on Silver Shadow (227 trivia from Stef)