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I grew up watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse as a kid. I would love to wear bow ties because of him. I enjoyed the character and show, even watching Tim Burton’s “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”.
I was watching the intro for pure nostalgia as Paul Reubens, the man behind the character, has recently passed away. He got busted in 1991 for exposing himself at an adult movie theater while the show was in reruns (it had ended mutually prior to this incident in 1990-1991). CBS stopped running the reruns of the show upon learning of his arrest and the show was shelved after that. Pee Wee came and went like the wind.
I had recently learned that he, Paul Reubens, was busted in 2001 and charged with child p*********y. The trial was settled out of court. I have not looked into this court case and leave it up to you to delve into it.
Paul Reubens was known to be easy to work with and very polite and friendly as he believed in reciprocity, the “Golden Rule”. Unfortunately Mr. Ruebens had his dark side and who knows if he ever victimized children.
As I was watching the intro of the kids show on youtube, I noticed subtle and not so subtle symbols and others that are quite suspicious. For those well versed in ancient symbolism, maybe they can shed more light on the others that I do not recognize like the center circle that looks ritualistic.
Then there is the spiral eye …
Hypnotic stare …
Inverted pentagram …
One-eye symbolism on the egyptian sphinx …
Evil one eye helmet on Pee Wee as he ended the show …
Mickey mouse reference …
This map clock is really creepy … bloody barbed wire?
Can anyone identify the painting to the left? At first sight I thought it was the notorious violent pedophile Gilles de Rais but on closer inspection, not so much.
Communist sickel?
If someone would analyze this frame by frame I’m sure juicier symbolism may be had but that spiral one-eye takes the cake for sure.
The show originally was a play with a lot of adult humor and Paul Reuebens toned it down for the kids show but there are still subtle sexual innuendos to be had especially with the character Miss Yvonne. The character was obviously meant to awaken a childs sexual curiosity of the “hot mom” on the block and it shows with the running sex jokes surrounding her.
Here is an explanation on the set design, from wikipedia:
What do you guys think?
Source: wikipedia.com, youtube.com
The painting is the Blue Boy of Thomas Gainsborough, at the Huntington Gallery in Southern California. No occult meaning that I know of. It was big in the pop culture of the 1950s for some reason, there were a lot of prints of it in people’s houses along with a similar portrait of a girl in a pink dress nicknamed Pinky. Pee Wee had a lot of 50’s imagery, I guess that reflects Reubens’ childhood influences. And I remember reading years ago that Paul Reubens had a vast collection of all kinds of p*********y. That might be why the case was settled, he could have claimed he bought something and wasn’t aware it included children, or something like that. The Tiki statue inside the front door might mean something. The Tiki is the first man in Maori mythology, so it might refer to fallen Adam. This is all pretty unsettling, thank you for posting.
Per Wikipedia:
In addition to viewing Gainsborough’s Blue Boy in public venues, the painting also appeared in publications and as individual black and white and color prints. It became a popular ceramic figure and showed up in advertisements. The boy in blue also came alive as men, women, boys, and girls dressed up in similar costumes and pretended to be Gainsborough’s youth at fancy-dress balls and marriage ceremonies, in pantomimes and plays, and eventually in movies and television programs.[10]
When girls and women masqueraded as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy on stage and screen, they brought about a gradual feminization of the youth. By the early 20th century Marlene Dietrich was photographed in a Blue Boy costume and Shirley Temple appeared as Gainsborough’s youth in the movie Curly Top in 1935. Shortly after the painting showed up in the main entrance of the Cleaver family residence during the third season of the Leave it to Beaver show in 1959, viewers increasingly associated feminine traits with the boy in blue leading to his connection to an emergent gay culture.
In September 1970 The Blue Boy was “outed” in the pages of Mad Magazine in a strip called “Prissy Percy.” In the four-panel strip, artist Jack Rickard and writer Frank Jacobs used contemporary stereotypes of homosexuality to contrast Gainsborough’s boy in blue with a group of football players. Stereotypes linking The Blue Boy and homosexuality were well established when Hank Ketcham, the creator of “Dennis the Menace,” cast Gainsborough’s boy in blue as a “sissy” in a multi-panel strip that included a line by Dennis confusing the painter Gainsborough and the Beat poet and gay peacenik Allen Ginsberg.[11]
In 1974, former TV Guide advertising manager Don N. Embinder (a.k.a. Don Westbrook) published the first issue of Blueboy Magazine, an upscale, gay bi-monthly magazine with nude photography, slick advertisements, and articles by writers such as Christopher Isherwood and Randy Shilts. Rescuing Gainsborough’s Blue Boy from sissiness, Embrinder introduced him as the embodiment of the recently liberated gay man. The premier issue featured a bright blue cover with a photograph of a young man dressed up as Gainsborough’s boy in blue from the waist up. Embinder re-appropriated Gainsborough’s Blue Boy from the funny pages and transformed a derogatory stereotype into an emblem of pride.[12]
Among the gay artists who have embraced The Blue Boy as a symbol of gay emancipation are Robert Lambert (a member of Les Petites Bon-Bons), Howard Kottler, and Léopold Foulem.[13]
Thank you for elaborating on the history of the paintings interpretation and significance.
Funny you mention that because I was reading the synopsis for Paul Reubens final film of Pee Wee called “Pee Wee’s Big Holiday” and I gotta say, quite the gay message. It seems everyone, including the gay community has embraced it for being an “ode to gayness”.
Makes me think Paul Reubens not only revealed Pee Wee’s sexuality, but also his own. Paul had stated that Pee Wee was very well molded out of his childhood.
If Paul Reubens was gay, he never confirmed nor spoke about his sexuality, makes sense how p*********y played such a part in his sexual frustration from being gay and not being able to express it publicly.
I guess I’m stretching it a bit but the painting, “Blue Boy”, makes sense (incorporating it in the show) when you take his sexuality into account.
This explains why are so many brands of juice that have flavors named “Tiki splash” or something “goofy” with the name Tiki to describe a mango/pineapple/coconut/juice
Thank you for the info!
Well what had happened was, Paul Reubens was told on by a boy who was SA by Jeffrey Jones. Jones gromed the boy into taking photos. So why did the boy tell the police on Paul Reubens? Reubens was a nice man, but clearly secretly gay. His claim was that his CP collection was vintage and old, and that, he didn’t know what was in his collection. But I think he knew, because of the Jeffrey Jones link. Reubens wasn’t married, and all the women he dated looked like men and he was a loner. When you Google this story, Google hide it, and put up his his other arrest. Nobody has said a single bad thing about him, in comparison to say someone like Micheal Jackson. People like Paul Reubens like to collect, he was actually caught. After his arrest, he lived the rest of his life quietly and just died of cancer.
God only know of the skeletons in that mans closet.
Interesting, thanks! But he had a Pee Wee movie on Netflix in 2016 called “Pee Wee’s Big Holiday” – admitedly not the same as being in a movie theater or on network TV.
You should expand this into a full VC article, because it was THE show that every kid watched back at this time. And it was so goofy that parents probably didn’t bother to watch it closely, if at all. Our life was pretty simple then: We collected Transformers & Garbage Pail Kids (both symbolically creepy in their own rights), and watched Pee Wee’s Playhouse.
Check out the chillingly candid top comment on the opening sequence vid you used, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIb2oRbCaU – “I just found this 2 hours ago and I’ve watched it 17 times now, this is like visual crack that doesn’t have side affects.” Mission accomplished. If it does that to adults now, imagine what it did to kids back in the day.
When Mr. Wee sits on the blue-green chair, he makes sure his head blocks one of its eyes.
The “puppet band” performs in front of a brick wall, a Freemasonic symbol.
A phallic bowling pin sits atop the mantle.
There’s a person with horns transforming into a chicken at about the 1:15 mark.
The surname of Phil Trumbo jumps out; certainly a relative of Dalton Trumbo. Read about that star Hollywood screenwriter, an open Communist Party member who whined that the U.S. was a ”menace” to Russia. Evil Marxist Bryan Cranston starred as DT in the 2015 biopic Dalton. Elle Fanning was also in it, a year before starring in the ultra-Satanic The Neon Demon, but I digress.
“ The “puppet band” performs in front of a brick wall, a Freemasonic symbol.”
Which is the symbol the band or the wall?
He’s pointing out that a brick wall is symbolic and it may signal a hidden subliminal or ode to mansonry.
The band was suppose to be a “beatnik band” so the brick wall fits in so beautifully masked. The spiral eye though, that is a keeper.
I am certain if VC analyzes entire collection, not just the intro, many juicier things maybe had. It is worth it. I am interested to see if any more subliminals are there.
Is Pee wee making the as above so below sign in the Mickey Mouse photo? I think he posed like that alot while spazzing out on the show
He was jumping up and down swinging his arms. But who knows man … who knows.