Monday, May 12, 2008
Even as a child I suspected I had something special in common with Stuart Little.
Dec 21, 1999 | Had E.B. White written his children's classic "Stuart Little" today, he would have a hard time portraying Stuart, the second child of Mrs. Frederick C. Little of New York City -- a child who was "not much bigger than a mouse" and who also "looked very much like a mouse in every way" -- as anything other than some freakish monster. That's precisely why the current film adaptation shows Stuart being adopted, rather than being born. In this post-"Alien" age, examining too closely how a boy like Stuart might be made by human parents immediately brings to mind images of a tiny, hairless rodent slithering horribly from his mother's loins with a viscous plop.
But White wrote "Stuart Little" in 1945, when the biological process was shrouded in anaesthetized mystery. For those who were neither obstetricians nor women, childbirth must have seemed little more than checking into the hospital and, after three weeks of bed rest, emerging with offspring.
And Stuart is certainly no monster in White's vision. He is very much the Littles' flesh and blood -- ultimately a human child, albeit one with "the pleasant shy manner of a mouse." But, phenotype will out, and we are told that "before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too -- wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane."
At age 7, having the book read to me in second grade by the sainted Mrs. Brailey, it was this initial confluence of traits -- Stuart's unquestioned membership in a family despite one glaring material difference from them and his tinyness only accentuating his courtly manners and dandy tendencies -- that made me realize that I was somewhat like Stuart and that Stuart seemed, somewhat like myself, pretty gay.
This is not to say that Stuart Little necessarily sought the embraces of other boy mice. But had White, even in 1945, placed Stuart in his worsted blue suit with patch pockets anywhere near a schoolyard (there is an episode where he actually teaches school, but more on that later), Stuart would have learned conclusively from his human peers that he was, at the very least, a big fag, a sissy, a 'mo and a poof.
Nor do I mean to claim the fine feeling and higher sentiment embodied by Stuart's rarefaction as the exclusive province of the gays. Heaven knows that we inverts contain within our ranks many who have no manners to speak of, either shy or pleasant. And certainly a gray felt hat and cane are not necessarily gay props.
But props in and of themselves are an integral part of a gay childhood, with its vigilance against exposure, its years of passing. As a gay child, your life essentially consists of writing checks your ass can't cover. The two remedies to this problem are either stepping back and remaining more an observer than a full-on, good faith participant, or going in for more performative behavior (during more judgmental times, we used to call this second option "living a lie") until such time as one can move to New York.
Stuart's very mouse-ness -- indeed, at just over 2 inches tall, his intrinsic lack when push comes to shove -- means that he must rely on props and costume throughout the book, if only to face the exigencies of negotiating a human-sized (and human-faced) world. His use of visual aids hardly makes him a closet-mouse. Quite the contrary.
As part of Stuart's quest for human straight-boy realness, White unwittingly has him repeatedly embodying gay stereotypes. And Stuart does so with the exactitude and heightened attention to detail of the drag artist, right down to the cinematic lexicon of each new scenario. Stuart has the patois down pat.
Donning his sailor suit one fine morning, Stuart sets out for Central Park. Boarding the Fifth Avenue bus, he tries to pay with one of the small tin foil coins made for him by his father. The conductor is understandably patronizing.
"Well, I'd have a fine time explaining that to the bus company. Why, you're no bigger than a dime yourself.""Yes I am," replied Stuart angrily. "I'm more than twice as big as a dime ... Furthermore ... I didn't come on this bus to be insulted."
"You'll have to forgive me, for I had no idea that in all the world there was such a small sailor."
"Live and learn," muttered Stuart tartly, putting his change purse back in his pocket.
A thoroughly modern Stuart might just as easily have appended a withering "Mary" to the end of that riposte.
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