Dennis doesn’t think Ren and Stimpy are gay, but rather they parody heterosexual relationships. Creator John Kricfalusi, however, outed the characters. The Ren & Stimpy Show © Viacom International, Inc. All rights reserved; Kricfalusi photo courtesy of Spumco.

As Dennis goes on to delineate the “Heterosexual Wasteland” of cartoons into the decade of the 1980s he notes that “most cartoon characters had become aggressively heterosexual.” He offers He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Strawberry Shortcake, Lady Lovelylocks and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero as examples of “gender-polarized, girl-or-boy crazy” cartoon fare (Actually, it would be hard to think of examples in which cartoons had less heterosexual content: romance was almost always jettisoned in the service of bang-em-up action or cutesy cooperation). He then offers Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures and Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs as examples of aggressively heterosexual cartoons rife with preoccupation about dating and sex, with occasional outbursts of outright lust.

Why did the Betty Boop revival in the ‘80s fail in the “aggressively heterosexual” cartoon landscape?

Again, a history lesson is in order: Every single example Dennis mentions in the first unlovely group originated as a toy, doll or merchandised figure prior to airing as a cartoon. What really happened here was resultant of Ronald Reagan’s deregulation policies and subsequent relaxation of Federal Communication Commission rules and guidelines. FCC chairman Mark Fowler gladly allowed extended toy commercials to rule the airwaves both on networks and through the syndication market.

Pushing an “aggressively heterosexual,” or even implicitly anti-gay agenda was likely the last thing on the minds of executives at Mattel or American Greeting Cards. As for the fare produced by Spielberg, that long-time fan of classic cartoons simply recreated the manic, hypersexual shorts of Clampett and Avery using a talented production team and a well-worn template. If cartoons had indeed become “aggressively heterosexual” in response to increased awareness of gays, why then did attempts to revive Betty Boop during the 1980s fail? Was she not iconic enough as symbol of heterosexuality? Incidentally, might there be an agenda behind calling this era a “heterosexual wasteland”?

It is particularly bothersome that these alternate explanations are not considered, apparently in the faith that amorphous codes and signifiers operating at subconscious (or even conscious) levels hold greater validity in terms of cultural meaning. When beliefs become dogmatic, the most scholarly research tends to suffer. Reconceptualizing the history of television animation from 1957 through the present as a constant shifting of homoerotic and homophobic tides may be an intriguing thesis, but in the final analysis, the flaws in such a postulation prove fatal.

This is not an argument denying the merits or even existence of gay cartoons; J.J. Sedelmaier and Xeth Feinberg have already proven that blatantly gay cartoons can be as funny and entertaining as any produced by straight auteurs. My difficulty lies in the fact that if anything can be subjectively coded by anyone, then Yogi Bear cartoons can also be interpreted as fascist, imperialist, hegemonic, antifeminist, pro-ecology — whatever any ideologue wishes to construct out of them. That is, if the “right” signifiers are available and it is claimed that the context is “ambiguous” enough to allow free play. There may be the assumption that since animation is basically fantasy; the genre is ripe for projection, symbolic and iconic attachment, or hermeneutic acrobatics, but what happens when immutable facts puncture the ideology?