60 Years Of 'The Pink Panther:' Positive Queercoding And Psychedelia, A Retrospective Look At The Series

By Lola Sasturain via El Planteo. 

There are many children's and juvenile products that have been even more successful and anchored abroad than in their countries of origin. "The Simpsons," "Alf..." and "The Pink Panther" can be added to the list.

Ignoring talking adaptations of the '80s and '90s that do it little justice, the original "The Pink Panther" cartoon, with silent episodes of around 6 minutes, is a creation of Fritz Freleng, cartoonist and animator.

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The first appearance of the main character, the famous panther, was in the 1963 film, "The Pink Panther," by Blake Edwards. In that film, a comedy with Peter Sellers, no colorful bipedal feline appeared except in the introduction. According to reports, the director called on Freleng to create an animated cartoon under the sole premise that it should be funny, mute and pink. At that time, cartoonists found refuge for their artistic flow in the credits of films.

Freelang was also the creator of Tweety and Silvestre at Warner WBD.

Thus, the animated series was born from the success of the movie and the sympathy for the enigmatic character of its intro, the animated series was born. Raúl Manrupe, cartoon scholar, researcher, teacher and author of the book "Breve Historia del Dibujo Animado en Argentina," states: "It was the last cartoon made to be shown at the cinema, in short film theaters".

A cartoon that will be 60 years old this year, but which, in its approach to certain issues and in its formal construction, seems much more recent. Recent because of its psychedelic aesthetics (and themes) and recent, also, because of the sexual ambiguity of its main character.

It Is A Product Of Its Time

"It's a product of its time," Manrupe continues. "During (John F.) Kennedy's presidency and after (Lyndon B.) Johnson, there was a liberation in the series to show certain problems. Problems like drugs, alcohol, and racism. They were not deep series but there was a tendency to show that they were not inside a Tupperware". Those years, he says, were also a boom for sleeping pills and psychotropic drugs, which offered encapsulated solutions almost like magic.

For Tomás Eliaschev, a journalist specializing in animation, it is interesting to frame the Pink Panther as a transitional character between different eras. And he explains what he is referring to: in the golden age of American animation, between the 40s and 50s, cartoons began to leave the cinema space and to be oriented to children, in the context of the baby boom.

It is very important to mention the Hayes Code, which was only repealed in 1968 and went through the whole golden age of cinema and the explosion of the American media.
"This meant that many of the jokes that these geniuses at Warner were doing were winks and little things that happened fast to get around the censorship. And they're going to have a lot of violence because, being cartoons, there was a little more tolerance than with live-action movies," he says.

It is said that the Panther is a transitional character: "All Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon cartoons are tributaries in some way to the psychedelia of the Pink Panther: I think of SpongeBob, I think of the color palette of Adventure Time", reflects Eliaschev.

And about its dubious genre, he thinks: "I don't know if it's something deliberate, I think the ambiguity is typical of how the characters were created at that time, but I do think it's interesting to see how it was taken".

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And he mentions the Pink Panthers, a self-defense group that emerged within the New York gay community against homophobic attacks, who took their name from a cross-reference between the cartoon and the Black Panthers. According to Eliaschev, this led MGM, the owner of the rights, to ask them to stop using the name.

And the Pink Panther was, back in the 70s, an absolute success in the country. Its influence in Argentina transcended the narrative of any episode; it is already a motif, a matrix. "He is one of the most popular characters. The other day I was at the carnival parade and there were many embroideries of the Pink Panther. The Pink Panther is also the Pink Panther in children's trains, it is part of the popular imaginary and as such has been re-signified infinite times."

It extended so much that, in an unhappy anecdote, the Argentine de facto president (Jorge Rafael) Videla was called "Pink Panther" because of an alleged physical resemblance.

Performative Pink

"It's a disruptive character," Manrupe assures,

In the famous presentation of the film, a panther with rather feminine but androgynous features appears. It is coded in a similar way to many pop representations of the devil: mannered, of feminine softness, smoking a cigarette, with a look between flirtatious and mischievous.

A coding that can be related, to cite a much more current example, to Him from "The Powerpuff Girls." There is already much written about queercoding in Disney villains and how it functions as a conservative tool, but in this case the link with the diabolical (and therefore with the effeminate) has more to do with the mischievous, with the transgressive, than with evil.

Its gender (or gender identity) is not clear, but not in the manner of the completely asexual children's cartoons. The Pink Panther has a slight sex appeal, a certain flirtatiousness that is more feminized and more masculinized depending on the episode, the situation and the context. Therefore, the questions have been everywhere in the last few years.

In "Pink at first sight", the Valentine's Day special thanks to which many of us who were kids in the 90s got to know the original version of the cartoon (thanks to a circulating video with several episodes, including this one), our panther falls in love with a girl and the character seems to embody classic masculinity. But, for example, in the first episode, "The Pink Phink", the panther celebrates by giving a kiss on the mouth to his opponent, "the little man". 

In the '60s, a man (or worse, a person of indeterminate gender) giving another man a kiss was neither a regular nor a light matter. But in The Pink Panther and its particular construction of verisimilitude, it hardly attracts attention.

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The absence of genitalia, the gender-neutral English, and the color pink helped to sustain this ambiguity.

This defining the sexuality of characters of fluid sexual identity with the addition of a female companion is not unique to the Pink Panther but is an epochal gesture. 

Eliaschev believes that it is crystallized in the male gender after inventing female companions of high sexual charge: "There is a long tradition of characters who play with queer without saying so, starting with Bugs Bunny, perhaps the character who dresses most often in women's clothes and kisses in the mouth to outwit his enemies. In fact, there are theorists who wonder why we assume him as masculine, his hetero-normalization being experienced in the '90s with the appearance of Lola Bunny." 

The scholar believes that, rather than being non-binary, transgender or gender fluid, the Pink Panther is a male that is a precursor of the new masculinities, which problematizes the "macho" of the time: "You see a lot in the chapters that he mocks the beefy guys, he is a man whose strong point is the wit and surrealism of his movements. This whole aspect of playing around all the time".

"It is a character who doesn't speak, is very playful, always transgressing, he goes around and is not on the hunt for anything like the coyote with the roadrunner can be. He goes through life walking with that particular way of walking, looking for adventures, some of them very strange: like the one with the asterisk", Manrupe mentions.

This is one of the most lysergic episodes of the whole saga. And in it, its motivation, repeated in so many chapters, is so abstract and absurd that it is hard not to see it as a coded queer message: it wants to paint everything pink, against other colors that are trying to gain ground.

The Pink Panther: Psychedelia From The Outside

"Undoubtedly, psychedelia is impregnated from the beginning and it goes in crescendo", thinks Eliaschev. 

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Returning to the asterisk episode, called "Pink Punch", there is also a reference to narcotics, although not specifically to altered states. The panther serves what he calls "the perfect drink", but a green asterisk ruins his perfectly pink sign. In all cases, the panther reformulates this brew to try to neutralize the asterisk, which paints everything green in its path. And the panther must precisely drink this potion to regain normalcy. That is, pink in all its functions. 

Eliaschev assures that Blake Edwards, the producer, spoke many times about his addictions and consumptions. And he lists that in Freleng's previous filmography there are numerous references. For example in Speedy Gonzalez, of his creation: "Lento Rodriguez appears, who is the cousin, clearly linked to marijuana, obviously associated with the stigmatization of Mexicans by associating them with marijuana, a construction that was made in the United States during the 30s, with the disciplining and persecution of Mexican labor".

He also mentions a chapter of Sylvester where he goes to a self-help group of anonymous bird eaters, in a clear reference to groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, and fails to rehabilitate himself.

"Psychedelic Pink" is possibly the most overtly psychedelic chapter of an already psychedelic cartoon, in which the panther enters a bookstore that doubles as Alice's rabbit hole, with all the nods to the trippy aesthetic of the moment.

As if asking itself the same questions as us, the panther picks up a book that reads "The Love Life of Panthers" but never gets to read it. At one point, its letters fall out, and form the word SEX on the floor. "When he opens the book he wants to see something sinful. The drawing is asexual but his character is not," Manrupe continues.

"In that chapter, the little character who invites him in is like a caricature of the beatniks," he stresses. "But cartoons, as well as cinema, pick up on things once they've passed. Sure it was a time when they tried substances, and there was a lot of creativity, and while there is a quest to go 'to the hang' from the aesthetic, it is an external and conservative vision. When the Pink Panther can decide whether or not to go in the door, he says no. If he goes in, they will pass him. If it gets in, terrible and unmanageable things will happen to it".

The Pink Panther goes through this duality, in which it is not exempt from the normative and disciplinary power of cartoons, where thanks to its device everything is possible: from the craziest scenarios to the cruelest punishments. At the same time, it is the child of the first historical moment in which psychedelia emerged into the mainstream: psychedelia viewed with some fear. Still, it is an inherent part of its narrative, which inevitably pushes the limits of what has been said so far.

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With its ambiguous character design and narcotic-inspired narrative, The Pink Panther may not have changed the world, but at least it didn't settle for the one we were already being told. And that is a valuable legacy.

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