Pee-Wee's Misadventure

By Paul Gray

His hyperkinetic nerdiness was irresistible to millions of children. Pee-wee Herman was a grownup version of little brother: winsome, goofy, capable of saying dumb things and beatifically happy with the panorama of this world. When Pee-wee talked to inanimate objects, like chairs, they talked back, which, as everyone under 10 knows, is just what they are supposed to do. This man-boy with the tight suit, googly eyes and lipsticked mouth was not every parent's cup of tea: add a leer and the little guy could pass for the emcee of a Berlin nightclub, circa 1935. But few had any qualms about their offspring spending time in his company: at the movies (Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Big Top Pee-wee) or watching Pee-wee's Playhouse, the Emmy Award-winning Saturday- morning TV show that has run on CBS since 1986.

The network canceled his series in April -- the summer slot was to have been filled out with reruns -- and last week Pee-wee was effectively slaughtered by bad publicity. The news got out that Paul Reubens, 39, the actor who created and played the Pee-wee character for more than 10 years, had been arrested in a Sarasota, Fla., porn-movie theater and charged with "exposure of sexual organs," which translates as masturbating.

Through his publicist, Reubens denied the accusation, but that little detail hardly registered among the seismic aftershocks of the original arrest. Reubens' mug shots made the front pages; heavy psychological hitters like Dr. Lee Salk and Dr. Joyce Brothers were enlisted to advise parents on what to tell the kids. The radio and TV airwaves were suddenly alive with Pee-wee jokes (His favorite baseball team? The Montreal Expos. His next television project? A remake of Diff'rent Strokes). CBS yanked the five remaining repeat episodes of Pee-wee's Playhouse, and the Disney-MGM Studios pulled a two- minute clip including Pee-wee that was being shown during backstage tours of its theme park in Orlando.

Courageous moves by these entertainment giants, no doubt protecting an unsuspecting public from . . . what exactly? The contumely heaped upon Pee-wee -- while George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Moscow to reduce nuclear arsenals, and while severed human heads and scattered skeletal remains were being traced to a mass murderer in Milwaukee -- can be seen as a trifle excessive. If Reubens is guilty of anything, it is of making a very bad career move. Solitary sexual acts performed in public, even in a darkened movie theater showing fare expressly designed to stimulate sexual acts, are a legal no-no. For people whose livelihood depends on public image, committing such deeds where those individuals are likely to be recognized carries a heavier penalty, which, in Reubens' case, seems to be a kangaroo court, public hanging and quick burial on TV boot hill.

Not everyone is happy about his execution. Peggy Charren, founder and president of Action for Children's Television in Cambridge, Mass., says the issue has been overblown in the press and criticizes CBS's rush to judgment: "It begins to smack of McCarthyism, where people were being pulled off the air before they were convicted of anything." Perhaps the real crime, the one , for which Reubens has been so relentlessly pilloried, was the successful pretense of childishness. The kids always knew he was playing, but, evidently, not many adults did. Ordinary show-business thugs and malefactors can get away with a lot, but God help the one who pretends to be innocent.