Robert T. McGowan | Baby Clothes / 1926

battling age and gender dysphoria in our gang

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hal Roach (screenplay), Robert F. McGowan (director) Baby Clothes / 1926

 

In the 1926 Our Gang series episode titled Baby Clothes nearly all the male gang members are asked to switch gender, age, and personalities as William Weedle (William Gillespie) and his wife (Charlotte Mineau) buy children through the building bellboy (Ed Brandenburg) as a pretense to acquiesce with the demands of William’s rich uncle (William Orlamond).

      For several years now the uncle has been paying the Weedles $50 a month because they have reportedly produced two offspring, male and female. Now the uncle has announced he’s arriving to enjoy the pleasures of an uncle who has long been supporting his nephew and niece for succeeding in their familial duties. Full of that love for children that only a clueless bachelor could possess, he arrives to coo and babble to the youngest of his own flesh and blood.

       Of course, the bellboy, paid a princely sum of $25 for his efforts, gathers not only two but three members of the Gang: the mean-spirited Joe (Joe Cobb) who’s been fighting with all the neighbor kids so consistently that his mother, tired of his incendiary behavior, has dressed him up in baby clothes to teach him the error of his childish ways, and Mickey (Mickey Daniels) has been forced to dress up like a girl, while the local cigar-smoking little man (Harry Earles) also dresses up in baby clothes to join the gathering just out of meanness. The Bellboy has also brought along Mary Kornman perhaps simply to further confuse the situation, while the dog Pal also tags along to join in the human fun.

      The uncle arrives hugging, cooing, reading, and talking down to these tough Our Gang figures, while Harry steals quick puffs on a cigar, accidentally swallowing it when he almost is caught in the act. Mickey does his best at being a girl, although he can’t help flirting with Mary, who finds it most strange to be attracted to another girl; nonetheless Mary attempts to keep some semblance of order as other kids such as Jackie Condon and Farina (Allen Hoskins) also don baby clothes to get in on the adventure and share in the promised cash.

        When the Weedles discover themselves blessed with even more offspring than they had expected or could possibly have produced in the brief years of their marriage, they announce each new child as a “surprise” they have been saving to tell their uncle in person. But when black child Farina joins the group and Mickey’s pants fall down from under his dress the uncle finally gets the message, awarding a surprise to his nephew and niece as well by cutting off the payments upon which they have come to depend.

        Surely we are disgusted with the Weedles’ greed, buying up children and changing their gender and dispositions willy-nilly as if children had utterly no rights of their own. And clearly Joe’s mother is also to blame for insisting her young battler go back to babyhood. The little person Harry is just obviously fed up for being treated as a little boy. We must finally admit that the Little Rascals were forced by writer and director Roach and McGowan to personally suffer age and gender dysphoria, the poor wee folk.

        In this instance, we celebrate the Rascals for getting once more into deep trouble, which this time puts all the patriarchal and domineering adults to shame.

 

Los Angeles, January 21, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).