Cartoons and Queer Failure
In The Queer Art of Failure 2011, Duke University Press, Jack Halberstam offers a queer reading of popular cartoons and films, including Spongebob, Dude Where’s my Car and Finding Nemo. The basic premise is that the concept of failing can be used as a device to upend conventional and established modes of society that exclude people who are non-conforming to the mainstream heteronormative narrative. Essentially, to fail at the game of life, as it has been set in place by the dominant and oppressive hegemony, is a queer version of success. In this way, failing opens new and valuable potentialities for everybody that lives under varying systems of oppression. These systems include the educational system, traditional family units, heterosexuality, and conventional conceptions of femininity and masculinity. The first half of this book is a series of close readings of recent CGI animated children’s films (Finding Nemo), a narrated documentary about penguins (March of the Penguins), and a comedic film of the “buddy pic” genre (Dude Where’s my Car). Halberstam claims that these works of popular media have been made conscientiously with a queer substructure and meanings that deal with failure.
Regarding their reasoning in writing this book, in the author’s own words: ”Success in a heteronormative capitalistic society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation.” Also, “[failure] provides the opportunity to use these negative effects [of failure] to poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life.” Also, “we should at least have a healthy critique of the static models of success and failure.” Described by the author as a “stroll out of the confines of conventional knowledge and into the unregulated territories of failure, loss, and unbecoming” The Queer Art of Failure is an in-depth look into the veritable queer treasure that is hetero-man’s trash.
Two notable examples from the text are the breakdowns of Dude Where’s my Car and Finding Nemo. In Dude, the author highlights the unstoppable success of the stupid white male. Despite being devoid of any common sense or intelligence, the two main characters, succeed at everything they do with minimal effort. However, to Halberstam, it would seem as though the producers of Dude were entirely aware that they were making a queer critique of white male privilege. Such that, they included scenes with trans characters and overt homosexuality in a movie whose demographic target was 17–35-year-old straight male audiences. In Nemo, one of the main characters (Dory) is read by Halberstam as a queer hero that ties together the bonds of a broken family. For Halberstam, this was the intention of the producers of these films, to show that a family that does not fit the standard hetero-nuclear format can be functionally cooperative and heartwarmingly successful.
Formative media such as cartoons, folk tales, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and comic books, have a decidedly powerful impact on the minds of young people. Coded themes hidden within the format of a simple fable have been used throughout history to imbue children with a sense of narrative regarding the society of the time. Aesop’s fables, the parables of Jesus, Kipling’s Just So Stories, and countless other such titles have a distinct way of offering wisdom hidden within a simple story. Short in length, and often humorous and fantastic, these literary works take into consideration the attentive sensibilities of the minds of both the young and the unsophisticated. Aware of the effectiveness of this literary device, authors who have a mind to change hearts, seek to produce material destined for such young audiences. It goes without saying that dominant regimes utilize such formats to maintain social control over the minds of the young.
An examination of popular children’s television shows of the last 30 years will reveal a reflection of the most common forms of institutional propaganda. A favorite cartoon in the 1980s, G. I. Joe the Great American Hero, was obvious U.S. military propaganda. Also from the 1980s, He-Man Master of the Universe is an overtly white-worshiping cartoon that even has the word “Master” in its title. In the 1990s a new genre of animated children’s show appeared on the cable network Nickelodeon. Ren and Stimpy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Rugrats all had character styles that had a distinctly different look than the cartoons from the previous decade. The artwork from these cartoons is unconventional and often grotesque. The storylines from this generation of shows were often abstract and nonsensical. These shows offered a break from convention in kid’s programming and appealed to children whose own lives were something outside of the norm. Shows such as these created an entry point for subsequent animations like the ones discussed in The Queer Art of Failure. Without a definitively clear line of understanding into the minds of the creators of these shows, one can deduce that cartoons from the 1990s are a counter-narrative to the highly propagandistic shows of the 1980s.
The Queer Art of Failure uses examples of media intended for young audiences to make highly academic and sophisticated argument. One such argument is that an examination of the loser/failure dynamic serves as a framework to critique social norms, one assumes the producers of these movies equally concur. Ironically, the systems of capitalism and commercialization which have historically established these oppressive social norms are the very means by which these queer creations reach what has become yet another sector of the consumer market. However, this generally does not detract from Halberstam’s argument. How else would these alternative models of family, sexuality, and ideological ways of knowing and being, reach their intended audiences?
The strength of Halberstam’s argument lies in the same wisdom that’s exemplified in the value of failing forward. The positive result of showing queer and alternative narratives of failure to children and their parents is that it makes it safe for them to fail in their way. A significant point in the text, used now as a point of departure for describing a phenomenon in visual culture, is that the possibility for “a difference in form that lies dormant in queer collectivity,” and alternative familial models, is the premise for the upending of “Oedipal modes of development.” In this way, Halberstam highlights the character Dory in Finding Nemo, a forgetful clownfish with no family (voiced by the very queer Ellen Degeneres). Dory happily offers herself as an queer co-parent to help Marlin, Nemos’ dad, to help find the lost child. This queer and alternative family narrative presents itself in the Cartoon Network animated series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Flapjack is an orphaned young cabin boy (historically the queerest member of the crew of a ship) that unfailingly follows with utmost admiration, Captain K’nuckles. Captain K’nuckles is a candy-addicted crook and failure of sea captain that offers Flapjack strategic advice (which are mostly lies) and serves as a stand-in for Flapjack’s father. They both live in the mouth of a whale named Bubby, who has the voice of a kind black lady and is a stand-in for Flapjack’s mother. This show has so many queer references that are meant to be read-between-the-lines, that Jack Halberstam would certainly want to include it in the sequel to The Queer Art of Failure.
