I have been a lifelong feminist, and as an artist working in the animation industry for more than 16 years I have striven to do right by women and girls in the animated projects I have been part of. I try to bring sincerity and depth to the female characters I’ve animated and have fought in development and story meetings to make female characters more than just the typical girlfriend, Mom or sex symbol. I’ve even fought to see that there was more than just one girl character in whatever project I was working on. Sometimes I swayed my coworkers (often it was easy, to their credit) and sometimes I lost. My goal, as an artist and as a storyteller, was to one day have a show of my own for and about girls.
After years and years of pitching original animation for girls to studios and networks and always hearing “This is great, but animated shows for girls don’t get ratings,” or “Girls don’t watch cartoons,” I finally got the opportunity to have my own show. It’s called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
I was extremely skeptical at first about taking the job. Shows based on girls’ toys always left a bad taste in my mouth, even when I was a child. They did not reflect the way I played with my toys. I assigned my ponies and my Strawberry Shortcake dolls distinctive personalities and sent them on epic adventures to save the world. On TV, though, I couldn’t tell one girl character from another and they just had endless tea parties, giggled over nothing and defeated villains by either sharing with them or crying–which miraculously inspired the villain to turn nice. Even to my 7-year-old self, these shows made no sense and couldn’t keep my interest. No wonder the boys at school laughed at my Rainbow Unicorn Trapper Keeper.
From what I’ve seen since I’ve grown up, little has changed. To look at the quality of most girls’ cartoons, it would seem that not one artist really cared about them. Not one designer, not one background painter, not one animator. Some of the more well-meaning, more expensive animated productions for girl audiences may look better, but the female characters have been so homogenized with old-fashioned “niceness” that they have no flaws and are unrelatable. They are so pretty, polite and perfect; there is no legitimate conflict and nothing exciting ever happens. In short, animated shows for little girls come across as boring. Stupid. Lame.
This perception, more than anything, is what I am trying to change with My Little Pony.
And that’s why I was so dismayed to find Kathleen Richter’s post on the Ms. Blog, accusing the show of homophobia, racism and smart-shaming. There she stated:
So overall, these are the lessons My Little Pony teaches girls:
- Magical white ponies are suited for leadership; black ponies are suited to be servants.
- Stop learning! You will overcome any obstacle by resorting to strength in numbers (of friends).
- Girls that wear rainbows are butch.
- You need the government (ideally a monarch invested with supreme ultimate power and a phallic symbol strapped to her forehead) to tell you what to do with your life.
A surprising amount of commenters rose in defense of the show, and for that I am extremely grateful. Without repeating their retorts too extensively, here is my defense against the accusations.
- Color has never, ever been depicted as a race indicator for the ponies. When your characters are purple, blue, orange, yellow, black, white, red, green and pink, who’s to say which is supposed to signify a white person, a black person, an Asian person? The only races in My Little Pony are Earth Pony, Pegasus and Unicorn, and they are all treated equally, ruled by a leader who embodies the traits of all three This leader is white only to signify day, and she co-rules with her sister, who is purple to signify night. Additionally, I’d just like to assure anyone who might still question the guards at the foot of the Princess’s throne that their colors were picked arbitrarily–and they are paid for their service.
- In the first episode, the lead character, Twilight, is depicted as a pony so wrapped up in her studies that she has no interest in socializing. But since socializing and making friends is an important, healthy aspect of anyone’s life, her mentor encouraged her to, essentially, go out and play. In the end, the character goes on to lead a more balanced life, maintaining both relationships and her studies. In subsequent episodes she is frequently seen reading, referencing books to help solve problems and even living in a library.
- Rainbow Dash has rainbow-striped hair because of her name and because she is very interested in sports, specifically flying. She is a tomboy, but nowhere in the show is her sexual orientation ever referenced. As we all know, there are plenty of straight tomboys in the world, and assuming they are lesbians is extremely unfair to both straight and lesbian tomboys.
- The Princess is depicted as the main character’s mentor, her teacher. She’s an authority figure and even a bit of a surrogate parent. The Princess gave Twilight her instructions as someone who knows her and is personally involved in her upbringing. And though there is historical speculation that unicorn horns were indeed phallic symbols, I doubt that is making its way into anyone’s subconscious.
The messages I’m really trying to get across with the show are these:
- There are lots of different ways to be a girl. You can be sweet and shy, or bold and physical. You can be silly and friendly, or reserved and studious. You can be strong and hard working, or artistic and beautiful. This show is wonderfully free of “token girl” syndrome, so there is no pressure to shove all the ideals of what we want our daughters to be into one package. There is a diversity of personalities, ambitions, talents, strengths and even flaws in our characters–it’s not an army of cookie-cutter nice-girls or cookie-cutter beauty queens like you see in most shows for girls.
- Find out what makes you you. Follow your passions and ambitions, not what others expect of you. For instance, if you like sports don’t let someone’s suggestion that that is unfeminine stop you from doing what you love. Be considerate of others’ feelings, but not at the expense of your own goals and dreams.
- You can be friends with people who are vastly different from you. And even though all friendships have their share of disagreements and moments when you don’t get along, that does not mean that your friendship has to end.
- Cartoons for girls don’t have to be a puddle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness. Girls like stories with real conflict; girls are smart enough to understand complex plots; girls aren’t as easily frightened as everyone seems to think. Girls are complex human beings, and they can be brave, strong, kind and independent–but they can also be uncertain, awkward, silly, arrogant or stubborn. They shouldn’t have to succumb to pressure to be perfect.
Yes, My Little Pony is riddled with pink, the leader is a Princess instead of a Queen and there probably aren’t enough boys around to portray a realistic society. These decisions were not entirely up to me. It has been a challenge to balance my personal ideals with my bosses’ needs for toy sales and good ratings. I do my best to incorporate their needs in an acceptable way, so when we are asked to portray a certain toy or playset, my team and I work to put it in a place that makes sense within the story. There is also a need to incorporate fashion play into the show, but only one character is interested in it and she is not a trend follower but a designer who sells her own creations from her own store. We portray her not as a shopaholic but as an artist.
I never expected to work on a show based on a toy line, but I accepted the project based on my sincere childhood love of the toy and Hasbro’s desire to create an entertaining show that is not just a long toy commercial. When I took the job, I braced myself for criticism, expecting many people–without even watching the show–to instantly label it girly, stupid, cheap, for babies or an evil corporate commercial. I encourage skeptics like this to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with an open mind. If I’m doing my job right, I think you’ll be surprised.
Lauren Faust is creative steward/executive producer of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Top: Original drawings of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic characters by Lauren Faust.
I know I’m late to this party, but I really just want to thank you for helping create this wonderful show. I will admit that I cringed a bit last year when my then three year old was introduced to MLP by an older cousin, but now I am so very glad that she was! It is pretty much the only cartoon that our whole family can enjoy watching together. We have easily seen every episode at least three or four times, and they really are so great. It is so interesting to see how my girls relate to the different ponies at different times, and I really appreciate how ‘real’ their friendships are presented as – it’s not always just sunshine and rainbows. Honestly, I was a bit worried about my daughter being too girly in some ways, and I love that Rainbow Dash and Apple Jack have helped her be more interested in sportsy type things.
Thanks for making this show, this article too. I’m a 13 year old girl, and I always feel awkward, because I’m no doubt the smartest or at least in the top ten in my school. I also don’t bother talking to people, carry a pen and pencil around and take notes on my day, walking down hallways quoting my favorite books, read/write during class, walk down the hallway with my face in a book or my tablet under my arm, and often just sit around and block out the world in deep thought in things like time travel. So when I saw Twilight Sparkle, I had a mental “asdfghjkl” moment where I was like “This show was made for me!” I’ve loved the show since the first episode I saw. I relate to each character in different ways, also. So, I thank you for making the show, it made me feel a lot more normal!
<3
Its interesting how many people who defend the show talk on about how good it makes them feel.
One would suppose feeling good is all that matters, regardless of how the feeling may not resonate with reality and responsibly. Defending the drug is all that matters.
In S2, Ep.25 Princess Cadence’s special power was to be able to spread ‘love’ wherever she went, for example, transforming two ponies arguing over a ‘hooficure’ into goo-gooing lovers. That’s nothing but spreading infatuation; any deeper-seated issues were unresolved and tanked over by a hit of ‘feel good’. Is this all young children are to understand about love?
So is this why S1, Ep 21 gets a free pass? The show is so touchy-feely one either forgives the creators of MLP for lying about the Conquest of North America and crudely dissing caring and sharing, or one fully agrees with the sentiment that the Aboriginals never had valid claim upon their own land and caring and sharing is mockable. Either way, a regressive position is allowed to stand and the problem goes unresolved and tolerated only by ignorance or chronic addiction to painkillers.
The danger of MLP:FIM is not that it tells viewers what to think, but how to feel, while warmly inviting viewers not to think in the first place. Its as if no-one ever had to deconstruct a sweet-talker looking for what he’s really after.
Dafuq did i just read?
Referring of course to the ignorance above. You seem just as ‘read-to-much -into-it’ as the fine lady who posted the original, and equally misinformed, complaint.
1) As previously stated. This is a T.V. show. Stop reading so deep.
2) In answer to your question, yes. All most children understand about love is infatuation. Do you want to be the one to explain that ponies X and Y are having serious relationship issues and their marriage is on the rocks? Or do you just wanna watch the show?
3) If I recall correctly, and I know I do, the land issue in that particular episode were handled significantly better than we humans handled them here in real life. They compromised. We killed.
4) Your constant reference to the abuse of drugs is rather telling. I do believe you should get that checked before it becomes a true problem for you. I’d hate to lose such a font of wisdom. People like you really truth from the heart.
Lastly, take your liberal arts major paper writing elsewhere. I’m sure your professor is very pleased that you used so many big words. We are simple and we speak simply, after all, we are dealing with children.
This is a Ms Mag blog; anti-intellectualism and invitations not to think serve no purpose. Any children here in age or of heart are probably very bright. There is no need to speak ‘simply’, and every need to talk honestly. MLP:FIM is subject to criticism like any other work of art, all the more relevant for being popular art.
1. MLP:FIM takes pride in its sophisticated wit. Why not think carefully about a child’s show intricately crafted to be an example of discursive whiteness, spun to be hip and now and feminist, and appeal beyond the official audience age?
What is sold is more than plastic ponies; every few episodes, a cultural attitude problem of privilege and entitlement is crafted in. Using every trick of emotional reassurance to appeal to an alienated society, to reconnect with values in ways that alienate in the first place.
Notice that ponies come in a spectrum of colours, which would seem to defy charges of racism. Yet, when identifiably human-inspired Equestrian races come into play, they are like Zecora the Zebra (black African), or Little Strongheart the Bison (American Aboriginal) – separate species. The fantastic cool species like dragons and griffins, of course, have no distinguishable non-white affectations. Separate species were a promising convention, except it didn’t work because ponies soon became proxies for whiteness.
The core tenet of racism is that different races ARE as separate species, or at least subspecies or breeds. One race sets itself as the standard beneath which all others must fall and be seen to fall as less attractive and accomplished. Mixed-races are undesirable and it so happens the mule – a horse-donkey hybrid – appears in no less than six episodes as an object of ridicule. Mules and donkeys are drawn well below the high standard of pony cuteness. Real-life mules are as beautiful and intelligent as any equine. There was no reason to draw entire groups of animals to look bad and be ridiculed in a cartoon about friendship. Or, was there a pathological need for someone to be pickonable? How does this affect a child’s developing sense of universal love and fairness?
Whiteness isn’t characteristic of all white people, but its a stereotype becoming as distinct as any other racial stereotype.
2. Young children can be frightened by parental arguments. Obviously, the arguing ponies were no kids parents, but Princess’ Cadence’s love spell (from S.2, Ep.25) need only calm the ponies enough to apologize and begin sincere and constructive resolution, role-modeling a positive example not only to children, but any parents watching. A child can and should learn the difference between a crush and genuine love.
Children can have common moral sense that should be encouraged. Yet, in S.3, Ep. 10, ‘Keep Calm and Flutter On’, Princess Celestia asks Fluttershy to make a villain “… use magic obediently of his own free will.” That’s almost oxymoronic. The more appropriate and expected word would have been ‘responsibly’, over ‘obediently’. Why did Princess Celestia/MLP writers choose that word? For that matter, is controlling and manipulating someone a sincere reason to be their ‘friend’? Is that even friendship? Fluttershy, is supposed to be an exemplar of sincere kindness, not special agent False Friend. Did Discord learn universal respect and empathy towards others, or peer pressure from ‘friends’? What kind of conscience-building is that?
S.2, Ep. 21 ‘Dragon Quest’ is a somewhat better example of moral rationality when Spike refuses to smash a phoenix egg to go-along, get-along with newfound dragon friends. Having helped smash the nest and scared off the parent birds, he is presumably remorseful and assumes responsibility for the egg. The ‘reformed’ Discord would have likely smashed the egg if keeping mean friends appealed to him more than kind friends.
3. The land use issue in S.1, Ep. 21 was handled horribly, cleverly restating the racist line that aboriginals were just squatters who didn’t truly own or need their land for anything important compared to the settlers. It was hammered repeatedly by Braeburn and Applejack that ponies needed the orchard’s food to live, while the bison only needed a traditional trail to run wild on; there’s simply no moral equivalence. That denial of moral equivalence, that dehumanization, is the essence of racism, all the more postmodern for its subtlety. Saying no bison got killed on a MLP cartoon is meaningless.
MLP:FIM at its worst was like a kind of backlash and rebellion against so-called political correctness by the genuinely, antisocially, politically incorrect . S.1 Ep. 21, ‘Over a Barrel’, qualifies as the perfect negative example for any university or even junior high school course on aboriginal studies and postmodern racism.
4. Personal attacks are hardly a rebuttal, however harsh the withdrawal symptoms from MLP:FIM’s trickster spell. MLP:FIM has become part of the moral experience of children of all ages, reducing important human values to emotional sentimental buttons to push via personified ponies and musical numbers. Buttons that when pushed sometimes didn’t square with either real reality or the fantasy reality.
By S.3, Ep. 13, ‘Magical Mystery Cure’, MLP:FIM was exemplifying Bernard Shaw’s paraphrase of Pierre de Beaumarchais, “What is too stupid to be said is sung”, which applies to most of the episode. From its theme of royal elitism and cutie-mark determinism, to the racist imagery recalled by savage animals dancing around Rainbow Dash in a cauldron, there is little to redeem from this episode save perhaps the chorus of the second main song:
A true, true friend helps a friend in need
A friend will be there to help them see
A true, true friend helps a friend in need
To see the light that shines from a true, true friend
Any true friend to My Little Pony’s character archetypes should be critical of their misuse and those that misused them. Charity, compassion, devotion, integrity, optimism, and leadership are real values of the conscience, not make-believe like the characters made to personify them or buttons to push in a trusting audience.
Hasbro owns patents to plastic ponies, not humanitarian values. By being built around the manipulative presentation of those values, the MLP:FIM invites being strongly judged accordingly.
Please do provide an example of an alternative IP that contrasts MLP:FiM that also strives to do what Lauren Faust envisioned. Using “intellectual vocabulary” in an attempt to brow beat where regular speech will suffice and is much more efficient, and irrelevant pieces to parallel with the show does nothing to move the community over to your own views. I urge you to take some time to review your own statements, and attempt to see without first clouding your own lens. If in the end you still feel the same way, that MLP has threatened or undermined these values you have presented, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion. We the community who love this show and what it stands for will still be here to love and tolerate the hooves off of you.
Hmmm. My initial response was apparently too angry and moderated out of existence. Fair call. I apologize to Ms. Mag. Take 2:
MLP:FIM is well able to stand on its own, so why pursue a comparison fallacy? What other cartoons say is irrelevant except that if they’re worse, then there’s obviously a problem. They’ve never inspired guys to make dubious claims about being pro-feminist and label a show as such to MLP’s extent.
There is no reason to smart-shame so-called ‘intellectual vocabulary’. Perfectly understandable concepts like discursive whiteness are easily accessible. There is no reason to talk down to readers on an Ms. blog and pretend they don’t know all about it or can’t can’t look it up.
Whiteness is a system of privileged elitism for its own sake. Every dominant group in history has been guilty of abuse of power and finding ways to justify the dehumanization of its exploited victims, and call that ‘ normal. The WASP tradition was the most recent, pervasive and most connected to a racial appearance. Whiteness is the standard of ‘normal’ and ‘elite’ in culture.
There is a reason why WASP whiteness imploded like a serpent eating its own tail; it was predicated on privileging itself at the expense of non-whites. However, being white was not enough to be white.
Witness the attacks on white liberals for trying to do right by others regardless of colour and not privileging whiteness. Or the difference between say, being white (lower class) Irish versus (normal-to-elite) white Anglo-saxon a hundred years ago. Or the simple difference in social power between white women and white men. Especially in the military, which is one major bug about the MLP’s militarism cues.
The sense of entitlement to be above prosocial behavior, and to demonstrate being above prosocial behavior as the mark of secure social status, is the entropy of elitism, but also bait for the trap. Elitism is not elite; elite is earned; its honestly built. Elitism is privileged; its false and easily dissipated.
Whiteness left many decent people who happened to be white twisting in the wind with the most basic connection to their humanity, their physical appearance, turned against all but the most sociopathically aggressive of them. Non-whites certainly couldn’t sort good from bad if whites couldn’t do the same amongst themselves, so dehumanized and demonized whites generally from below as they were from above, while still striving for the advantages of whiteness.
Proxy pony whiteness games exacerbate this wound to society. Television shows tune the moral compass as an outlet for social interaction. By adopting racist, sexist myths as it did in ‘Over a Barrel’, instead of defying them, MLP promotes them as a baseline for acceptable behavior.
There was some despicable racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior that went on at the Seattle Northwest Brony Con a year back, that was all but condoned and far from corrected. A very textbook example of retro whiteness. Demanding ‘love and tolerance’ for that is morally oxymoronic and devalues Brony ‘love and tolerance’ below empty sloganism .
Over a Barrel demonstrated that whiteness is a complete package. Non-white aboriginals were not respected, not-white-enough whites were not respected, women were not respected.
In S.1, Ep. 5, “Griffin the Brush off”, Pinkie Pie had the perfect pair of in-universe clown glasses. They were a takeoff on the traditional Groucho Marx glasses, with brightly coloured lenses, red clown’s nose, and moustache. She even replaced the cigar with a party blowout. All that was missing was using brightly coloured hair for the moustache, or maybe ditching facial hair altogether.
Pinkie pie glasses were never seen again, replaced instead with Groucho Marx glasses, a symbol of male dominant humour. Very out of place in a show with no humans. Its an artistic statement of alliance, a demonstrative technique, a ‘show, don’t tell’, trope.
MLP:FIM drops witty real-life gag references all the time. The creative team knows pop culture. They know how to make a statement. Accidents even as Freudian slips are few and far between.
My lens are perfectly clear. My ‘opinions’ are based on documentable evidence, facts, theories and ideals. Bronies have not been able to rebut any of them, but make emotional appeals to love and tolerance and anti-intellectualism to essentially do nothing and go along, get along. Love of the show is used the way evangelical creationists use ‘love and forgiveness’ and anti-intellectualism to overcome secular reasoned criticism.
MLP:FIM is a perfect expression of the art and science of anthropomorphism and the narrative, and often a vehicle for patriarchal propaganda.
Racist, patriarchal, classist, sexist and militarist ways of thinking reject the freedom to embrace basic human respect. It doesn’t turn off for the ‘in’ group and shouldn’t be reinforced in children’s edutainment.
Bronies love a tv show for how good it makes them feel. I respect the stated spirit of what Faust tried to accomplish enough to try and listen to what was really said, not blinded by manufactured charismatic visual and audio cues, but informed by them as well.
How are my observations incorrect, Brony? That has never been answered, just dismissed as ‘opinion’. What interpretation of the show and what it stands for do you ‘ love’, and what does it say about your capacity for agape, as opposed to ‘feel good’ aggrandizement?
I’m not going to pretend to have over-analyzed a piece of entertainment to the level that you have. I’m not going to pretend to have taken college courses that encourage that practice. What I am going to do, however, is poke a hole or two into your statements using hard won common sense won through years of dealing with real life and real problems and not a college classroom, since I wasn’t ‘privileged’ enough to attend and not the right color to get in for a discount or for free.
Detecting bitterness yet? Good. Because people get bitter and aggressive when the first thing you do is compare them to worthless drug addicts and then you turn around and give either/or statements that say that either one agrees with you or they are racist, sexist, bigoted homophobes with a drug addiction. Now that we got that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, here is something that I did not see mentioned in any way, shape or form in your overly long diatribe against “whiteness”.
You repeatedly cite ‘Over a Barrel’, but leave out and seemingly ignore a few key portions of the storyline. Representatives from both parties expressed a desire to understand the others requirement for the same swath of land. Because of raging tempers, and a subsequent poor performance attempting to chastise them into co-operation, the essential communication never occurred. Due to that lack of communication, the conflict escalates into violence. Now, the fact that the conflict is ultimately resolved by compromise is trying to teach a better way, to seek common ground with those you don’t agree with and try to work something out from there.
Instead, you seem to think that there is some sort of racism and sexism going on. So a disagreement spawned by a lack of communication is racism? And I’m still trying to figure out where the sexism is. Is it because one of the ponies in Appaloosa, who happened to be boarding up his home in preparation for the impending conflict, growled at the main character trying to get them back to the conference table? Last I checked, that is little more than impatience with a dash of ignorance.
Now, you are free to disagree with me and I won’t imply anything against you that you haven’t already directly stated and I would appreciate it if you would do the same.
You shifted focus from key details marking racism and sexism and avoided addressing them, then resorted to more smart shaming. Its not the fault of the education system or affirmative action programs that you reject learning and can’t or won’t type “whiteness” or “patriarchy” into a search engine to learn about them.
“Over a Barrel” used sexism to contrive the main ‘lack of communication’; the pony nags getting in the way of Little Strongheart and Braeburn, to start. Racism was in not recognizing the Bison/Aboriginal need for land to feed their families like the settlers, not recognizing Bison/Aboriginal ownership of that land as legally binding to avoid making the settlers look like squatters and thieves, and oversimplifying Bison/Aboriginal culture to feathers and stampeding while playing up the amenities of Appleloosa. Those actions made fraudulent any positive message that could be drawn.
Context is everything.
Suppose you threw a technically perfect punch; who or what you hit and why, would determine if the action was good or bad. Suppose you had the formula for a math problem but were given a couple of wrong numbers to plug in; the wrong calculation would result no matter how correct the formula.
Lies are a deliberate ‘lack of communication’.
Don’t see the sexist gag in a group of female ponies (nags) nagging and generally not being very bright every time they open their mouths when they are usually the problem solvers? Either the art of satire and meaning of sexism are lost upon you, or that’s an example of the ‘blind eye’. What is the fair not-either-or call on that? Is not seeing it fair?
Why was a real fact of the Conquest – Aboriginal need for their own land to feed their families – explicitly denied and the settler need played up? Seems a little biased and racist on part of the writers. What is the fair not-either-or call on someone defending such a gross inaccuracy? Is not seeing it fair?
Racism and sexism are promoted by deliberate misrepresentations of the people attacked and the context of their conflict. Whiteness theory explains and exposes many of the off-signals of MLP, its creators, owners, and fans.
Are drug addicts truly useless people, or in need of protection from themselves and those who maliciously profit from their illness as greedily as land speculators, bankers, and politicians exploited Aboriginals and sometimes-too-willing early American settlers?
A whole other storyline could be built upon how Braeburn and his fellow ponies were led to build Appleloosa overnight on borrowed bits they have zero chance of paying back and so get foreclosed upon.
If you disagree, then refute – not circumvent – the core points upon which my argument was based.
Just try building an illegal settlement in a public park and see if the legitimate authorities don’t react badly to the occupation and tear it down no matter how cute the defense. Any amount of schooling is useless if its only memorization and elitist myths in place of informed reason, whether from the ivory tower or the mean streets.
AT:
Seriously, this is just senseless whining. It seems you have bought into a lot of cultural mythology about the colonization of the Americas.
Here’s what really happened: The people of the Americas were somewhere between three and five thousand years behind the Europeans from a technological and cultural standpoint. When the Europeans rolled in, they brought with them a bunch of diseases to which they were highly resistant which had flourished in their densely populated centers for millenia, but which the Native Americans had not evolved immunity to. Thousands of years of disease evolution versus zero years of resistance was not pretty.
Added to that, the Americas had few major civilizations. North America had nothing; central and South America had the Aztecs and the various other mesoamerican city-states, and the Inca. The Aztecs were hated by everyone else because they literally cut out and ate the hearts of their enemies, and the Inca were pretty much annihilated by smallpox (though the Spanish had some help there too from other natives).
The Europeans regularly did terrible things to each other, but when they came to the Americas, the natives had zero chance against them. Worse still, when the reservations came about, many of them decided to cling to their cultural idenity and not end up becoming a part of the greater society around them, which is why reservations to this day almost invariably suck.
The Native Americans were not saints. They were not the “good guys”. Nor were the Europeans. This is just a cultural myth. Everyone was out to win, and the Europeans were far better at it than the Native Americans were. When they had been facing each other, it was fair. When the Europeans came, it wasn’t anymore. And let’s face reality here: The Europeans were actually NICER than the Native Americans. In tribal societies, upwards of 25% of deaths are attributable to violence. The Europeans, for all their “evil”, were really not terribly inclined towards violence.
But no one is going to put THAT in a children’s television show, because it is depressing and, no matter HOW you potray Native Americans, people will get angry over it. So its better just not to care at all.
The episode was silly. It was not meant to be a valid representation of what happened in the real world, any more than Bridle Gossip was meant to be an accurate representation of how racism works in the real world. And ironically, the episode probably was a more accurate representation about how a lot of the colonization of the Americas went than is often seen on TV, because the “native people” actually benefitted from the presence of their new industrialized neighbors, even if the neighbors did have a tendency to take a bunch of land.
Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with MLP:FIM. It (mostly) teaches kids good lessons. A couple episodes have rather missed the mark (the most obvious being Feeling Pinkie Keen, which was a fun episode, but failed to really deliver the correct moral) but mostly it is good and the show has a lot of heart to it.
Over a Barrel is not meant to show how the conflict between the natives and the Europeans went. They had a PIE FIGHT at the end of the episode. The point isn’t really that, the point was “Seek common ground with people”. Just like the Zecora episode was about not judging people by their looks but by their actions (and literally “Don’t judge a book by its cover”), not JUST racism (and certainly didn’t portray racism “realistically” – but it never meant to).
I wouldn’t say that the show tells you to feel rather than to think – it tells you to do both. Empathy and intelligence are how they solve the problems on the show, by and large, though sometimes hard work and physical action are how it gets done. Whatever, it all works out.
Being warm is a good thing. The show does indeed portray sweet talking – how to do it, how it works, and how to see it.
As for other completely ridiculous accusations:
1) Anyone who talks about “entitlement” is invariably the most entitled person in the room. They’re always the jerks. There are no exceptions. Period. Do inequities exist? Sure. Are most of them race-based? No, at least not in the US/Canada.
2) The “white people” on the show include, but are not limited to: ponies, gryphons (the only two we’ve seen were american and French respectively), dragons (though their culture resembles no human culture, Spike fits into Equestrian society just fine), and the totally fabulous sea serpent from season 1. Zecora is a zebra but has cutie marks like the ponies. The buffalo are not ponies. Claiming ponies are “a proxy for” whiteness is silly. They’re a proxy for a non real-world culture. Does it resemble American/Canadian culture? Sure. But calling that “white” culture is to basically say “We suck too much to be a part of the culture of the country we are part of.” Guess what? Being culturally American has nothing to do with your race. Black, white, asian, native American, whatever, what defines you as American is how you behave and how you speak. Equestrians could easily be people of any race. If you try to cling to some sort of race-based culture, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution, because guess what? You’re a racist.
TANGENT TIME: “But the white people are destroying our culture!” Yes. Welcome to reality. All cultures, over time, change. If your culture does not change, it is dying. When people cling to, and try to keep, their culture static, they are saying “our society needs to die”. Over time, the constant is change. Culture changes over time. All advanced civilizations work this way. This is why “western culture” wins – it is constantly evolving. But ALL real world cultures do this. All prospering cultures continue to change over time, and the cultures which change the fastest tend to survive the longest – the reason that Americans are winning the global “cultural battle” is because we seamlessly incorporate new things into our culture constantly.
Every time you resist allowing new things into your culture, you push it closer to dying, as rather than adapting, you will simply drive people to adopt the superior culture. The Japanese have a thriving culture not at all based on worshipping the West. There are tons of European cultures, though they are becoming increasingly homogenized and Americanized precisely because of resistant elements. The eventual evolution is towards a single global culture, I think, with minor regional variations, and that’s not a bad thing and not something to fight. If you want anything from your culture to matter, you need to adapt with the times and allow your culture to change and grow and incorporate itself into the greater culture.
3) Princess Cadence’s spell isn’t meant to be a love spell, it is meant to “fix the rifts between people”. And I will note that the fandom has presented it rather negatively. It is a rather questionable power. However, she is not a major character in the show.
4) They were trying to reform Discord and make him behave nicely. He had a great deal of talent but liked to use it destructively. Was it phrased perfectly? No. Are you crazy for caring? Yes. And the reason that Fluttershy befriended Discord was NOT to manipulate him. She befriended Discord because she wanted to make HIM realize what it meant to be friends with someone and care about something other than himself and his idle desires. She actually wanted to help him, because as things were, he was alone and his only way to interact with other people was destructively. The reason that Discord “reformed” was not because of peer pressure, it was because he realized that someone else really DID matter to him and hurting them was hurting himself. Is that peer pressure? No. It is compassion.
5) Whining about Magical Mystery Cure just means you’re crazy. Sorry. It is a cute episode which uses music to help compress actions. It is funny and it has a solid story. The only bad part of it was that it was the thing that pushed Twilight over the edge into being a princess, but as I have explained elsewhere, Twilight becoming a princess was never, ever, ever going to really “feel right” in a 22 minute episode.
6) Cutie mark determinism is something that complete morons talk about. The truth is that is NOT how cutie marks are portrayed in the show. Cutie marks don’t determine your destiny; YOU do. The cutie mark is a recognition, BY YOU, of what you want to do. And they aren’t simple things, and they’re nonbinding. Consider:
Rarity’s special talent is finding gems. She is a seamstress, not a miner. However, she is capable of hoof-to-hoof combat and has fine control over her native unicorn telekinetic powers.
Applejack’s special talent is running farms (or possibly even more general than that). She is good at EVERYTHING having to do with it – she plants seeds, harvests fruits, tends the fields, makes finished goods, sells goods, manages workloads, and repairs the farm, and on the side she is good at a variety of sports and is athletic.
Rainbow Dash’s special talent is the weather. What does she aspire to do? Be the best racer in the world. She is the fastest pony in all of Equestria, capable of breaking the sound barrier and creating a massive explosion in the process. She is also extremely adept at weather control, capable of creating whirlwinds by herself. She is a solid team leader, very good at manipulating clouds, and on top of all that she is also unrelatedly atheltic and very strong.
Twilight Sparkle’s special talent is magic. She is the best magician in all of Equestria, but despite her massive raw magical talent, she has to WORK to be good at magic – she studies extensively, creates her own spells, and does a lot of experimentation. On top of her magic, she is also a good leader, an astronomer, a historian, she writes reports, does original scientific research, and has a ton of casual hobbies and loves to try out new things, even if she sucks at them.
It is not entirely clear what Pinkie Pie’s special talent is. “Parties” is the obvious answer there, but in addition to her ability to throw random parties, she is also an inventor, a cook, a clown, a musician, an entertainer, a comedian, and several other things besides. She may seem zany, but she is capbale of being responsible and deep down inside there is more to her than partying all the time, even if she hides it. She likes to make people happy. But even BEYOND that she has totally unrelated talents – the Pinkie Sense is limited precognition, and she has the ability to exploit toon physics for the rule of funny, even if it isn’t directly related to making people smile. She also has several other ambigious talents which may or may not be magical in nature. She certainly does not allow herself to be confined by her cutie mark.
Fluttershy’s special talent is empathy and kindness. She can speak to animals, and also has THE STARE, which can apparently cow anything without very strong will. But it isn’t just that; she also has a great deal of empathy and kindness to her, and is good at dealing with people who are hurt. She is also a veteranarian of sorts, in addition to a pet groomer. She is a naturalist. She has all of the attendant pegasus powers, even if she is bad at them. She also has a more than passing interest in fashion, and likely has numerous other hobbies as well.
7) The idea that the show has any sort of patriarchical leanings at all is only in the mind of someone with absolutely no grasp on reality whatsoever. The kingdom is run by women. We have seen exactly FOUR men – Braeburn, the sheriff of Appaloosa whose name escapes me at the moment, Fancy Pants, and Hoity Toity – who had real power of any sort, and of those, only braeburn and Fancy Pants were very positively portrayed. The leaders of the country are female. The main cast has ONE male character – Spike – in it, and he is a kid. Amongst the anxillary cast, there have been two powerful male villains, and two powerful female villains, and of those, only one of the male villains had any character at all and he is not very empathetic. There is one supporting cast member who is male, Big Mac, and he barely has a personality at all – Braeburn got more personality in ONE EPISODE than he got in the entire show. The world is a much kinder, gentler world than the real one, partially because of the magic of friendship – empathy is a vital trait in Equestria, and the show is feminine – what people describe as culturally “feminine” ways of approaching life are very prevalent in the show.
The show has virtually no male characters, the leadership of the team, city, and entire country are female, and only ONE male in the entire show has a real character and shows up often – Spike, a 10 year old boy who is infatuated with an older girl. It probably takes until season three for the show to pass the reverse Becdhel test as a result of the fact that there are virtually no male characters on the show.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. As a guy, I have zero problem empathizing with the characters. It does not upset me at all that there are virtually no male characters, because I don’t -care-. I don’t feel that the show is anti-masculine or disempowering towards men, and honestly I’m GLAD for the presence of a strong female cast. I think in reality, men are quite capable of empathizing with an all-female cast, just as women can with an all-male cast, and I think if more people recognized that, a lot of the problems with women being unrerepresented in entertainment would go away.
“Over a Barrel” was set in the American Old West, not the Spanish portion of the Conquest, although maybe MLP will get around to whitewashing the Conquistadors as well.
In classic elitist/whiteness style, you completely evaded the core issue while addressing it, namely, why weren’t the Bison/ Aboriginals portrayed as needing their land to feed their families, and as the legitimate owners and authorities of that land, seen as legitimately empowered to determine land use over the settler ponies? Why not recognize this in a hip cartoon instead of repeating the moldy myth of the Conquest that those Aboriginals weren’t doing anything important and didn’t really own their land?
Good example of elitist doublespeak as well; neither side was the good guy… buuut the Europeans were nicer and more culturally advanced and less violent… despite that the West’s history of warfare would impress Genghis Khan, and the positive contributions surviving native American cultures fought to keep alive make to American, Western, and world culture. Is it normal and wise for a culture discovering the ability to kill off others without significant consequences to themselves, to laud going totally psycho?
There will always be critics- and ways to judge the soundness of a critique. Bullies for whiteness today like other violent elitists before them look at malicious genocide as natural and acceptable in the big picture and long run. Their meme of action, like how accusing dictators of killing their own people somehow irrationally equates a legit invitation for us to kill those people too.
MLP would fit nicely with Goebbels propaganda system in an American police state, what with the clever use of truth to cover for lies. As cheerleaders of whiteness the ponies do quite well, and Hasbro/DHS needs to be called on it. After all, how better to manipulate thoughts than through feelings? If people feel good while acting badly, repeating the mistakes of whiteness, all the better from a standpoint that history is about tossing the other into the dustbin.
As for my other “accusations”:
1) Your entire post is one long defense of the psychopathic elitism of whiteness that did not address the core point; why not be fair to the proxy aboriginals in a cartoon about friendship even though it was not in real life? Suggesting the survivors of genocide should be grateful to their attackers, or that a fratricidal culture based on domination and exploitation is the inevitable end of history if every naysayer need be conquered or killed to prove it, is an interesting point of view but doesn’t explain why “Over a Barrel” isn’t racist and sexist, only that it would be OK if it was – an angle of rebuttal admittedly not considered till now.
2) Your accusation of racism is a nice fallacy of the inverse, but blaming the victim to shoot the messenger won’t wash.
Whiteness is an attitude of elitism and entitlement associated with a racial appearance. There are whites who will never measure up to the descriminating standards of whiteness, and people of colour who can be accused of whiteness. Those who can identify and reject whiteness without mistakenly rejecting their best selves with ‘white guilt’ are as glad to be done of it as Fluttershy was of Iron Will’s training (S.2 Ep.9 “Putting Your Hoof Down) that made her into an angry bully.
Whiteness’ pretense to being the invisible yet universal standard of humanity is over, because its internal contradictions and outright humanitarian hypocrisy are intolerably apparent. Few people “of colour” have ever not been reminded they are not white whatever their place in predominantly white Western societies. Its at least as common as any woman in a ‘man’s job’ being reminded at some point she is a woman in a ‘man’s job’. Many white people no longer identify with a standard that denies their humanity and circumscribes their ability to express it as white people, not agents of whiteness whose sincerity is forever suspect.
That we would live in a post-racist, post sexist bigotry-blind world (nudge-wink blind to bigotry) just falls flat through the floor.
The hardcore racist belief is that races are or should be as separate species, and Zecora the Zebra and Thunderhooves the Bison are separate species from ponies. If not for MLP whiteness, there would have been no problem with this character construction device, but S.1, Ep. 21 “Over a Barrel” changed everything.
3) Princess Cadence was rejected by portions of the fandom for being a sappy Mary Sue, because a too-perfect heroine is somehow bad, or for breaking the popularly understood “only two alicorns” rule. The fandom did not pick up that there’s nothing wrong with a pony able to inspire genuine compassion as long as its an accurate portrayal of compassion within the limits of the show.
4) Discord did not experience compassion, he experienced self-pity brought on by peer rejection. I’ll get back to this, and Tangent Time.
5) Back to whiteness theory.
Being a unicorn wasn’t enough; Twilight had to change to an entirely different race. Up till then, alicorns were presented as a separate breed, not what appears to be an optional stage in the MLP pony life cycle.
Twilight just wasn’t white enough as a unicorn.
6) I’ve argued cutie mark determinism is wrong, you seem to agree, yet an entire episode based on cutie mark determinism is somehow ‘solid’? The episode was a denial of free will, meritocracy, and individuality.
It turns out Twilight was spoon-fed opportunities to succeed. Then, breaking what must surely be a basic rule of casting magic – don’t cast it blindly or somepony might get hurt – qualified her to be a Princess with even more power and immunity from censure because… what, she’s faithful to Princess Celestia? Why accept so many deep internal contradictions? MLP isn’t real, its based on caricatures of ideals that can inspire reality as an art form.
Fluttershy with Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark would probably be a writer, poet, or similar artist that allows a shy personality overlayed with imaginative and flighty talent to flourish. Not trying to run Pinkie’s party service.
RD’s original mark indicated her need for speed; as a Pegasi, weather control was her traditional vocation, and her assertiveness and courage are innate. A butterfly cutie mark would probably have her augmenting weather teams with critters.
Rarity doing the weather makes no sense at all. With RD’s cutie mark, she would be an extreme racing unicorn with a flair for cool racing outfits.
Applejack with a gemstones cutie mark would probably end up at Pinkie Pie’s family rock farm, or a wandering prospector as her family roots were in seed-gathering.
Pinkie Pies’ balloon cutie mark appears to symbolize flighty air-headedness and imagination, as well as a gift for gab (think cartoon quote balloons). She was raised on a rock farm. Had she talent in working the Apple farm, she would have been plenty strong enough, had two experienced farmers to guide her, and farming is a traditional earth pony vocation.
There was no reason for each pony not to make the best of each other’s cutie mark except as desperate writing to cover a poor decision by Hasbro to make Twilight an alicorn. Maybe it was trying to tap into that hip new age 2012 transcendence hype, but interpreted through whiteness theory, Twilights alicorn upgrade is very disturbing.
Even without whiteness, body acceptance is a big issue with women and girls, driven by a need to express control over themselves while gaining the acceptance of others. What does Twilights major bod mod say when taken alongside the constant stream of media messages that tell women and girls they don’t look good enough?
The only good thing is Twilight didn’t have to die to get her wings.
7) Matriarchy is a proxy for patriarchy the way ponies are proxies for whiteness. MLP asocial subtexts legitimize the sense of entitlement to elitism common to both. Feminism would challenge and contrast elitisms against true merit, not repeat the dumb things patriarchal males do and say, which is what Western matriarchy amounts to.
Women are underrepresented in entertainment because that’s the way the patriarchy wants it. No other reason. The audience was always there, but the willingness to answer it square was not. Whiteness theory is all about calling the fiction of race-blindness and by extension, there’s no such thing as being gender-blind. Saying everything would be better if women ‘get over it’ is patronizingly irrational. Nothing really has changed except that women may toe the line alongside guys more openly.
Women who are presented in entertainment are almost always filtered through the lens of guys – even in MLP. Read the direction and story editing credits. From a pro-feminst standpoint, there is no problem with guys doing jobs they are well-qualified to do. If set to the task, guys can be a lot more discerning about the games guys play against girls, having an inside track – if they want to be. Most times guys will play the ‘wingman’ and cover for patriarchy, and this can be gleaned from the finished product.
While entering a fantasy world of cute emotionally reassuring women may be great for women and girls, somehow I don’t see this as being any kind of problem for most guys as long as the environment flatters them and they instinctively feel in control. MLP:FIM delivers, and even matriarchy’s little digs via dorky or emasculation prone male ponies can be indulged.
First, was Faust’s vision to provide characters for proxy whiteness and renew stale patriarchal messages? Whiteness being the retro WASP male middle-class experience of entitlement to privilege, security, opportunity, the default for ‘normal’ stuck up behavior and condescending expectations for everyone else. Feelings of social alienation for many young people may stem from no longer living in that kind of world. They then become perfect receptors for the messages of reassurance in MLP:FIM as it has come to be.
Previous posts reviewed episodes to explain the in-your-face expression of antisocial elitism based on race, gender, and class and pervasive militarism creeping into a show about pony friends. The ‘Mane 6′ are just honorary ‘one of the guys’. S.1, Ep. 21 particularly stands out as retro whiteness. That wholehearted support for antisocial whiteness exists is no surprise. Smarmy ‘love and tolerance’ condescension towards aware and critical heathens is also real-life formulaic.
Second, concepts of whiteness, discrimination and hierarchy are simple. So is the science of anthropomorphism and proxy moralizing using cutesy animals. Accusations of being ‘intellectual’ are just trying to smart-shame these ideas out of the conversation. Hazing is a big part of retro whiteness, particularly for internal control of free thinkers. Its subtle when it has to duck the radar. But the mask drops when its safe to demonstrate dominance and announce the score.
There was nasty real-life hazing of people of race, women and transgenders at the Brony Everfree Northwest convention, and others. It seems the Brony code of ‘love and tolerance’ is used to browbeat compliance to abuse. ‘Love and tolerance’ is less an aspired-to behavior, and more a weapon, a demand for indulgence and no consequences for dehumanizing others. Not unlike a perfect mother, girlfriend or servant perhaps? Love and tolerance alone are a lobotomy trap, without an informed sense of responsibility to deter scammers.
Third, feminism has clearly lost control of its own narrative. Not only in prime-time popular culture. Not only on main street. Feminists can’t even define themselves and their message on a Saturday morning cartoon.
Feminism became another marketing gimmick to appeal to guys, and no-one noticed. One wonders how many feminists are familiar with the history of Japanese animae and the magical girl genre; ever even heard of ‘Sailor Moon’ and its impact on Western culture? For certain, many hardcore male MLP:FIM fans would have. The creative minds of Western artists and their producers can’t help but have noticed and dissected the art and the audience.
MLP:FIM is one of the best psyops using the science of anthropomorphism and narrative out there. Deliberately crafted from more spontaneous predecessors to be a hit, and misused for propaganda. Again, is it really cute and fun for the Mane 6 to parody a real-life intel hearts and minds mission in a conquered country as in S.3, Ep. 1,2, ‘The Crystal Empire’? There were surely far less obviously mil-intel complex worshipping ways of storytelling. Especially when the real-life versions are such a fail. Or, Rainbow Dash’s ambition to join the Wonderbolts – modeled on the USAF/USN demo jet teams, not a civilian group. How realistic is it for women to join the air force as a fighter pilot? Its not like feminists are going to be welcome contenders at TopGun in real life. Its not about how good they are as people and the real job, but apparently tolerance, collusion and perpetuation of a culture of abuse and corruption.
The show-and-tell tropes are all there. Want more? In S.1, Ep. 5, ‘Griffon the Brush Off’, when MLP:FIM was more genuine, Pinkie Pie had the perfect, in-universe pair of Pinkie Pie clown glasses, with coloured lenses and red clown’s nose, and mustache. She even replaced the traditional cigar with a party blowout.
That ensemble just blew away Groucho Marx glasses, which are gross especially on a show without humans. If Pinkie Pie glasses developed further, with different coloured hair, and different blowouts, they would become real-world party toy hits, a new iconic standard for humour. However, Pinkie Pie glasses were never seen again. A male icon of dominant humour, Groucho Marx glasses, took their place.
There is a big picture war for hearts and minds going on. If feminists don’t stand up and defend the movement from wherever they can make a stand with an informed perspective, there won’t be real feminism to empower the next generation. The learned ability to deconstruct with critical and informed thought, the weapons designed against women’s minds at every stage of their development as human beings. And to a lesser degree, their men as well. Instead of one step behind good ol’ boy girl power, feminists will be two or more back, stumbling over matriarchal and racial division in a dance called by patriarchy.
A feminist’s first duty nowadays might be, learn not to be fooled. Hold the honest line on truth and conscience and demand it of your entertainment products.
I grew up playing with and watching MLP I still remember my first one I got back in 1984 …Blossom. I usually hate when people ” update” things from the 80s – it just seems they rip the shows original apeal out for me (can you imagine them doing that to Jem?! Or She-ra ?! The 80s fashion are what made those show great!) and dont let me let me go on with them CGI ing the Smurfs and Chipmunks… Though the Chipmnk movie had a great story. Anyway MLPFIM is AWESOME! After watching that the original was so bland. The animation is much more fun, the charcters much more interesting. My favorite pony is Fluttershy followed by Twilight Sparkle because they are the most like me. Thank you some much for protraying Introverts in a positive light. So many shows teach children its not okay to be an introvert … That they can somehow make themselves “better” by being an extrovert , not just adopting some extrovert habits which is the healthy way. Shy introverts especially … Not only do we have to put up with people trying to push us around because they think we’ re easy targets , but we get told we arent ‘ confident’ because we arent ‘assertive’ Fluttershy is a great role model for shy sensitive introvert girls… She shows you CAN have extrovert friends, stick up for yourself, and still be the ‘nice girl’ without leting people push you around. I loved the episode where Fluttershy goes to that Minotaur dude to learn how to be assertive … It was like watching an episode from MY life. And you know what?! She didnt change … Only learned some new skills… Im glad the message taught the difference.
It was one of the better episodes, although Angel Bunny spoiled rotten was a mixed bag.
However, Fluttershy owed the Minotaur an explanation of why she wasn’t 100% satisfied. Technically, she did benefit from some of his teaching and of her own accord, pushed it too far using its harshest lessons against her friends. While Iron Will did walk away with the valuable lesson that no means no, he did not learn what Fluttershy learned so he could improve his program for other clients.
While it was clever to make a minotaur a bully, Iron Will was not really a bully. Iron Will tried to be reasonable and cut a deal. Unlike the ponies that bullied Fluttershy for no reason at all, he was willing to back down, listen to Fluttershy’s quiet voice, and do the right thing and let it go. Iron Will’s bluster was motivated by the initial suspicion of being stiffed of his fee, a contract Fluttershy freely entered without coercion, that he had every reason to believe had been fulfilled.
Yet, the MLP writers decided to call Iron Will a monster for being assertive but loud, wimpy for being decent enough to tone down his attitude when wrong, and greedy for trying to make a living helping others when even doctors enforce fees for service.
@Titanium Dragon
Re: TANGENT TIME: Do you normally live in a state of psychopathic paranoia or just come off a marathon session of the 4-X video game Civilization? You just said it was OK to run around trying to destroy other cultures as a white American male because that’s your game and you’re good at it, then tacked on the lame excuse that everyone else does it.
Then you say its important for other cultures to allow new things from self-appointed ‘superior’ cultures to be adopted so they can change – or else die? What of a culture that does not want to kill yours off (regardless of capability)? Too bad, because no matter what there’s a crazy armed nation of psychos coming to redefine their normal for the worse any way it can?
Objective standards of right and wrong are eternal; the only differences lie in the application of the ‘notwithstanding clause’.
Will the world be united by good or evil? By ways of prosocial empathy and compassion, or sociopathy and psychopathy? We live in the era of the bankster and eternal wars ‘of choice’ (whose choice?). Healthy empathy and genuine compassion do not appear to be winning. In the balance, its elitist westerners killing or planning to kill everyone else at home and abroad, utterly failing to produce a sustainable peaceful society anywhere and baiting domestic collapse.
Women’s rights in the west were founded on the peacetime economy, where women could exert influence as workers with good jobs and entrepreneurs with successful businesses, and informed consumers making wise choices caring for themselves and their families.
Getting back to point (4); Discord never learned compassion, only self-pity. Obedience out of fear of withdrawal of affection is only a first step to developing an independent conscience that understands affection and recognizes and accepts genuinely being sorry for misdeed enough not to repeat it.
Discord didn’t get near that far. Don’t say its just a cartoon and compassion is a complex idea; he only had to say “I’m sorry”. Not “Friendship is magic” (!?)
Compassion is a universal value about caring for those who otherwise ‘don’t really matter’, because they do matter. Apathy is not feeling for someone, sympathy is feeling for someone, and empathy is feeling with someone. Compassion is nuanced, disciplined empathy that respects the baseline dignity of another being regardless of in-group or out-group status.
Empathy is the two-edged sword; it can burnout back to apathy or warp into narcissism and shadenfreude, if it does not mature into compassion.
Compassion feels and understands without pity or other pettiness. It buffers the intensity of empathy, but not a retreat to the emotional safety of apathy or dissipation into empathic gratification. Compassion remains steadfastly warm and prosocial. Tribalizing it to the in-group makes it incomplete, less compassionate, a mere social tool circumscribed by the needs of the tribe arbitrarily set against the universal. Regression to immature empathy is inevitable.
Discord didn’t care at all for the beavers whose minds were overwritten, wasn’t at all sorry for the Apple family, or share Fluttershy’s sense of hurt for her other friends. He only felt that his own feelings were persistently hurt by Fluttershy’s rejection. He remained a sociopath caring only for himself and wasn’t at all sorry for anyone but himself. The talent of the voice actor and Discord’s animators might imply otherwise, but they can’t fill in such big gaps in the dialogue.
Given that the show’s writers deliberately equated good with obedience rather than enlightened free will, and displayed no understanding of the wrongness of manipulating others via so-called friendship, it is not crazy to be concerned.
Witty moral ambiguity is a big problem in MLP; the lack of moral clarity that leaves negative interpretations valid even in the face of the ‘official’ moral of the story. Many episodes speak with a forked tongue, backed by impeccable technical polish. Its not always as serious as “Over a Barrel”, but it does raise questions.
For example, in S.2, Ep. 9, “Sweet and Elite”, was one funny episode, but did Rarity really learn it was wrong to lie to her friends, suck up to snobs, and nearly drown her cat? Or that none of those things mattered?
Did Rarity instead realize that as one of Twilight’s friends, a heroine of the Elements of Harmony, and personal guest of Princess Celestia, she had always outranked the Canterlot Elite? Something that Fancy Pants picked up on right off? Viewers were encouraged to cheer her every close call with comeuppance like a comedic heroine dodging just desserts.
This episode had great potential for teaching viewers to recognize genuine self-worth, but there is a fork-tongued, dishonest twist in hiding the second interpretation in plain view that does not resonate well. There’s a lot wrong with MLP, mostly stemming from its departure from its official roots as a feminist inspired take on the MLP franchise into the handmaiden for patriarchy it was probably always meant to be.
Lauren, thank you for this. I am an 12 year old tomboy, who is like a mix of Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. When I read Kathleen’s blog, I completely flipped out screaming about how rude that was. She only saw the theme song. There is Zecora, the zebra, and she hasn’t seen Princess Luna. Besides, the Unicorn, Pegasus, and Earth Pony, are the races and an Alicorn has Earth Pony, Pegasus, and Unicorn inside them. Also, how does Rainbow Dash look mad? She is adorable! She is NOT lesbian, and Rainbow Dash’s rainbow mane is from past generations. She is sporty and athletic. Twilight is always reading and never really makes friends, so Celestia has Twilight make friends so she can save Equestria. If she told her that it would save them, she wouldn’t truly experience it. If she actually watched the show she would see that, but NO. She just goes watches the theme song, and said “Oh, I should pick out stupid things that aren’t true and twist it so they sound like they are!” I totally agree with you Lauren Faust. I hope you come back to the show!