Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Subtext of Jonny Quest


I got the first years episode of the cartoon series Jonny Quest, which I just watched this weekend and holy crap! Is this stuff gay or what? Adult Swim did a neat satire of Johnny Quest with it's Birdman Attorney at law series which I thought it was a little harsh until I revisited my memories with the actual videos.

Jonny Quest was a cartoon show where blond and very pretty ten year old Jonny travels the world with his single scientist father, Dr. Benton Quest, and Dr. Quest's large blond muscluar companion, Race Bannon. Bannon serves as Dr. Quest's man Friday doing everything including flying jets, teaching Jonny self-defense, rescuing them from cannibals ... you name it.

The three of them travel the globe having adventures until a few episodes into it they find a pretty brown boy named Hajji whom they invite along. Then it's a threesome having adventures while rarely being troubled by the presence of girls. It's never explicitly stated that Dr. Quest and Race Bannon are gay lovers, just as it's never explicitly stated that Hajji has been taken along as a catamite to sate their twisted desires. But what else could it be?

There is a female character named Jade who shows up in Hong Kong and has some connection to Race. But it's real clear that he wants nothing to do with her. The same goes for Jonny and Hajji because - ewww girls are icky. Perhaps the lack of meaningfully developed female characters on the show could also be due to old-fashioned patriarchal mysogeny. It's a toss-up, but either way - no chicks are allowed in this club.

I never really got exactly what kind of Doctor Dr. Quest really is. He is a medical doctor, because he does medical things, but he's also a scientific researcher. His scientific research involves pretty much anything. Like, he's an anthropologist but he's also a physicist, but it turns out that he's also a chemical engineer, and he's a linguist, and a biologist. All this in addition to practicing medicine. He's probably a chiropractor, too. So, I guess they must have thought that Doctor means you can do every type of job that might mean doctor.

These guys travel the world doing their best to extend the American empire and take on their white man's burden. Constantly they are running into 'primitive' cultures who are beating their drums while saying 'Ooogah-Boobah' more or less. Don't worry. These types can be easily tricked into worshiping our heros as Gods by means of cigarette lighters or handily placed loudspeakers. Or Race painted purple to imitate a Water God. And they worship airplanes and all sorts of other silly stuff. No one is at all afraid to deal with stereotypes and believe me, if you have a german accent or a Chinese accent you can tell which side of the Good/Evil equation you're on. (Hint: Evil)

Anyways, I do wonder why Race wasn't fired from his job. In two seperate episodes he has to land their wonderful special jet someplace remote because he has forgotten to do some sort of maintenance. For instance, because Race neglected to put fuel in the jet the whole crew has to land at a landing strip in the Andes where a fugitive Nazi has his castle. What is wrong with Race Bannon? He almost kills everybody because he's too lazy to fuel up the jet. How did he not think about this? Or another time he crashes the jet in a jungle somewhere while remarking that he thought her heard some noises in the engine. So why did he take off instead of trying to fix the problem?

I'll tell you why: Dr. Quest didn't want to fire his boyfriend.

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