Disclaimer: PONIES.
Uh... this post is about My Little Pony.
As I'm sure everyone knows by now, there's this new My Little Pony cartoon series, called Friendship is Magic, and apparently it's pretty good and stuff. I kept hearing about it in any case, so obviously someone was watching it, which in itself isn't very surprising. My Little Pony is a well known name, even to people like me who never watched previous cartoons about the ponies or even bought the toys. All quality of previous incarnations aside, it's an established name, so of course someone's going to check out the new series, if only to relive nostalgia or to make fun of the people reliving nostalgia.
No it's not that people were talking about the show that's surprising. It's that when people talk about it, they sound like they've actually watched it, and like it. This was a new concept. I tend to think that I have a fairly high tolerance for girly media, but I'm well aware that this media often sucks. Back when I still watched TV, I've watched bits from those Barbie movies, as in, voluntarily, and yes, it was ridiculous and stupid, but that's what you expect from those kinds of movies, to the point that it's almost part of the appeal. And if people talked about Barbie movies, they'd all be talking about how bad it is. And from what I heard of the old My Little Pony cartoons, it was the same way. All the ponies were virtually indistinguishable from one another, because obviously it was a ploy from Hasbro to produce as many variations of ponies as possible for the gotta collect them all factor for the toys, so who has time to add actual characterization and personality to a few main characters for the show? The point is, I'm under the impression that most people not blinded by their nostalgia goggles would agree that television incarnations of My Little Pony in the past were not very good. Cartoons aimed at girls in general seem to be plagued by a similar curse and are summarily shunned by most people not in the target demographic.
So back to Friendship is Magic, I was confused to find people from my age group talking about it as if it wasn't a show targeted at the girliest of girls at least ten years younger than us; as if there were actual distinct characters with unique identities; as if it was interesting to them. Because, apparently, even guys watch this. Apparently a lot of guys watch this. Dudes watching this show has because this weird sort of phenomenon, and they're all admitting it and calling themselves bronies. Clearly, something about this show has defied the stereotypes and standards of other shows about pretty horsies and unicorns spreading love and friendship and all things pink. Somehow, a show of that description has become safe to like, even for grown men.
Now, when I say something is safe to like, I'm talking about something from a type of media that's typically popular to hate, where liking any other example of its kind would get you ridiculed. So, I'm always surprised when something surfaces that seems to be immune to this hate, and instead it's just accepted as something that everyone should like. It's the same reaction I had when I realized that people weren't actually making fun of Lady Gaga; people really like her music, even though the typical reaction to most modern pop music is various levels of scorn. It's just not "cool" to say you like Kesha or Justin Beiber, or any singer that originated on the Disney channel, but somehow liking Gaga is "safe." More recently I've seen a little more backlash against her popularity, but I think that's to be expected, because I have this theory that the more popular something is, the more backlash it's bound to garner. And that's another thing. Maybe it's still too new, but so far I haven't seen any backlash against Friendship is Magic, which is surprising because this is the internet, and if there's one thing the internet is good at, it's hating everything. In fact I sometimes see more of the backlash than actual fandom for some things. Avatar (that is, Camerontar) may have become the highest grossing movie ever, but on the internet I saw nothing but backlash, and God help you if you actually liked it. I could go on, but I think I've made the point.
With all this in mind, I was eventually driven to see what all this was about, and after spending the past few days watching all of season one, if nothing else, I feel confidence in saying:
This show is crack.
If nothing else, I can relate to all of those widespread, mildly confused, crisis-inducing confessions from people saying, "I'm (something wildly outside the target demographic). Why am I still watching this?" If nothing else, I "get" that much. Even if I couldn't figure out why, even if the first few episodes weren't enough for me to explicitly say I liked it, I couldn't stop watching. This show is crack at its finest.
And, for the longest time, I couldn't even say why. I had reservations; I was cynical; I had expectations that weren't going to be dispelled by a few fans' opinions, because I'm naturally suspicious of bandwagons. I'm not going to like something because a bunch of other people do. I especially couldn't figure out why so many guys apparently liked it. Sure the characters may have personalities and identifiable conflicts, but they're still a bunch of female ponies, and I wouldn't expect many males to ever get past this very feminine reality. I mean, sure, as a girl I'm not fundamentally opposed to most media aimed at boys, and I'm sure if I was more open minded as a kid I would have watched a lot more super hero cartoons back in the day (apparently some of the Batman cartoons were pretty good), which is fine and good, but we have our double standards to think of! It's okay for girls to break the gender barrier and wear pants and play sports and be assertive, but it's not okay for boys to wear a dress or like dolls or watch a TV show about flippin' ponies. At least in the American society, I think most men really buy into these beliefs that they're not allowed to do anything that's stereotypically "female," so while it was a bit of a mystery that I couldn't stop watching the pretty ponies, it was even more of a mystery for this alleged male fan base. But enough about them.
Recalling the pilot, I immediately groaned a little at what's presented as the mythological back story of this world, because this day/night cycle balance and jealous younger sibling and darkness is evil concepts are so cliched, and of course only something as vague and cutesy-magic sounding as "Elements of Harmony" is going to stop eternal evil and darkness, and by your powers combined I am Captain Friendship*, et cetera. And let's talk about the main characters. There's six of them, each representing a different stereotype, and I'm not just talking about their embodiment of the cutesy-magic elements of whatever in the pilot that's thus far never brought up again. You have your bookworm, your tomboy, the quiet one, the loud one, the one obsessed with looks, and the country girl. There's something for everyone to relate to in there somewhere, so I get why it's done. Take some other franchise for girls, like the Baby-Sitters Club, and it's the same situation: a whole slew of main characters with different characteristics, so that even though you may doubt sometimes how they're all BFFs to begin with, you'll have at least one character you have something in common with. Yeah, I don't know about you, but most of my friends tend to be extremely similar in personality to me, so I see this "diverse group of characters are best friends despite wild personality and background differences" concept more as an idealized model to ensure more widespread appeal than a reflection of reality.
But I'm being unfair, of course. I did say one of the complaints of the older MLP series is that apparently none of the characters really had distinguishable characteristics, plus it's easy for anyone to write off what personalities there are as stereotyped caricatures, before the show has had enough time to develop them, and it turns out that's exactly what happened. A few more episodes in, and the characters start showing other facets of personality beyond their initial defining "shtick." And that's definitely a good thing. Too often, especially in older cartoons but I'm assuming is still around today, there is a tendency of female cartoon characters to be defined by their being female. Who cares about Minnie Mouse outside of the fact she's just a clone of Mickey wearing a dress? Even in instances where they aren't just clones of more important and more popular male characters, we've all heard of the term "token chick," or maybe even "Smurfette principle": they exist to be female. They are defined not by a personality or what they do, but by how they're wearing pink bows or get captured all the time so the real heroes can look better. And there's usually only one of them because the role of "female" really is that narrow. And yes, you'd expect this to apply to pretty much everything except shows aimed at girls, i.e., not My Little Pony, but even in shows where there are more than one female character, there's the same tendency to define them by their femaleness, by female stereotypes, and because we've established that being female is a pretty narrow role, having a cast of nothing but that is extremely dull, and that's my theory of why shows aimed at girls often fail. We don't know how to view female characters as characters instead of as females, and that's exactly what Friendship is Magic avoids.
Similarly, the same could be said for how the show as a whole is treated, not just its characters. The creator, Lauren Faust, doesn't seem to want to treat it strictly as a girl's cartoon, but as a cartoon with a wider appeal that happens to aimed mainly at girls. And whatever she's doing to accomplish that, something's working. I mentioned earlier how critical I was in the first few episodes, but I was still drawn to keep watching more episodes, long after I originally intended, because have I mentioned this show is crack? And later on when I was more used to things, I'd watch a story unfold and think that that's a pretty good premise for an episode. This too is evidence of the creator not treating it as a girl's cartoon, because I could often see the same plot being used in a gender neutral show without it seeming out of place. Here it just happens to take place in a land of mostly female ponies.
That's not to say I didn't still have complaints by the end, like how nothing from the plot of the pilot ever shows up again, or how the continuity between the rest of the episodes seems to be fuzzy at times, or just blatantly out of order. Sure, I don't expect American cartoons to have anime levels of continuous story lines across many episodes, but that didn't stop a number of western cartoons from having occasional overarching plots without making things too confusing to people not obsessively watching everything in order. And yes, I've heard that Faust wanted to go this direction, which is cool, but was put down by executive meddling. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about having the moral of the week spelled out at the end of every episode, but at least it's worked into the story, kind of. But, nothing's perfect, of course, but overall the cartoon is certainly doing something right, and probably deserves a medal just for having musical numbers that aren't completely annoying. Heck, I'd approve of this show just for breaking through some of those gender stereotypes and making it okay for guys to like something a little bit girly.
*joke stolen from a YouTube comment.
Also, can you tell I did most of my research on TV Tropes? >_>
As I'm sure everyone knows by now, there's this new My Little Pony cartoon series, called Friendship is Magic, and apparently it's pretty good and stuff. I kept hearing about it in any case, so obviously someone was watching it, which in itself isn't very surprising. My Little Pony is a well known name, even to people like me who never watched previous cartoons about the ponies or even bought the toys. All quality of previous incarnations aside, it's an established name, so of course someone's going to check out the new series, if only to relive nostalgia or to make fun of the people reliving nostalgia.
No it's not that people were talking about the show that's surprising. It's that when people talk about it, they sound like they've actually watched it, and like it. This was a new concept. I tend to think that I have a fairly high tolerance for girly media, but I'm well aware that this media often sucks. Back when I still watched TV, I've watched bits from those Barbie movies, as in, voluntarily, and yes, it was ridiculous and stupid, but that's what you expect from those kinds of movies, to the point that it's almost part of the appeal. And if people talked about Barbie movies, they'd all be talking about how bad it is. And from what I heard of the old My Little Pony cartoons, it was the same way. All the ponies were virtually indistinguishable from one another, because obviously it was a ploy from Hasbro to produce as many variations of ponies as possible for the gotta collect them all factor for the toys, so who has time to add actual characterization and personality to a few main characters for the show? The point is, I'm under the impression that most people not blinded by their nostalgia goggles would agree that television incarnations of My Little Pony in the past were not very good. Cartoons aimed at girls in general seem to be plagued by a similar curse and are summarily shunned by most people not in the target demographic.
So back to Friendship is Magic, I was confused to find people from my age group talking about it as if it wasn't a show targeted at the girliest of girls at least ten years younger than us; as if there were actual distinct characters with unique identities; as if it was interesting to them. Because, apparently, even guys watch this. Apparently a lot of guys watch this. Dudes watching this show has because this weird sort of phenomenon, and they're all admitting it and calling themselves bronies. Clearly, something about this show has defied the stereotypes and standards of other shows about pretty horsies and unicorns spreading love and friendship and all things pink. Somehow, a show of that description has become safe to like, even for grown men.
Now, when I say something is safe to like, I'm talking about something from a type of media that's typically popular to hate, where liking any other example of its kind would get you ridiculed. So, I'm always surprised when something surfaces that seems to be immune to this hate, and instead it's just accepted as something that everyone should like. It's the same reaction I had when I realized that people weren't actually making fun of Lady Gaga; people really like her music, even though the typical reaction to most modern pop music is various levels of scorn. It's just not "cool" to say you like Kesha or Justin Beiber, or any singer that originated on the Disney channel, but somehow liking Gaga is "safe." More recently I've seen a little more backlash against her popularity, but I think that's to be expected, because I have this theory that the more popular something is, the more backlash it's bound to garner. And that's another thing. Maybe it's still too new, but so far I haven't seen any backlash against Friendship is Magic, which is surprising because this is the internet, and if there's one thing the internet is good at, it's hating everything. In fact I sometimes see more of the backlash than actual fandom for some things. Avatar (that is, Camerontar) may have become the highest grossing movie ever, but on the internet I saw nothing but backlash, and God help you if you actually liked it. I could go on, but I think I've made the point.
With all this in mind, I was eventually driven to see what all this was about, and after spending the past few days watching all of season one, if nothing else, I feel confidence in saying:
This show is crack.
If nothing else, I can relate to all of those widespread, mildly confused, crisis-inducing confessions from people saying, "I'm (something wildly outside the target demographic). Why am I still watching this?" If nothing else, I "get" that much. Even if I couldn't figure out why, even if the first few episodes weren't enough for me to explicitly say I liked it, I couldn't stop watching. This show is crack at its finest.
And, for the longest time, I couldn't even say why. I had reservations; I was cynical; I had expectations that weren't going to be dispelled by a few fans' opinions, because I'm naturally suspicious of bandwagons. I'm not going to like something because a bunch of other people do. I especially couldn't figure out why so many guys apparently liked it. Sure the characters may have personalities and identifiable conflicts, but they're still a bunch of female ponies, and I wouldn't expect many males to ever get past this very feminine reality. I mean, sure, as a girl I'm not fundamentally opposed to most media aimed at boys, and I'm sure if I was more open minded as a kid I would have watched a lot more super hero cartoons back in the day (apparently some of the Batman cartoons were pretty good), which is fine and good, but we have our double standards to think of! It's okay for girls to break the gender barrier and wear pants and play sports and be assertive, but it's not okay for boys to wear a dress or like dolls or watch a TV show about flippin' ponies. At least in the American society, I think most men really buy into these beliefs that they're not allowed to do anything that's stereotypically "female," so while it was a bit of a mystery that I couldn't stop watching the pretty ponies, it was even more of a mystery for this alleged male fan base. But enough about them.
Recalling the pilot, I immediately groaned a little at what's presented as the mythological back story of this world, because this day/night cycle balance and jealous younger sibling and darkness is evil concepts are so cliched, and of course only something as vague and cutesy-magic sounding as "Elements of Harmony" is going to stop eternal evil and darkness, and by your powers combined I am Captain Friendship*, et cetera. And let's talk about the main characters. There's six of them, each representing a different stereotype, and I'm not just talking about their embodiment of the cutesy-magic elements of whatever in the pilot that's thus far never brought up again. You have your bookworm, your tomboy, the quiet one, the loud one, the one obsessed with looks, and the country girl. There's something for everyone to relate to in there somewhere, so I get why it's done. Take some other franchise for girls, like the Baby-Sitters Club, and it's the same situation: a whole slew of main characters with different characteristics, so that even though you may doubt sometimes how they're all BFFs to begin with, you'll have at least one character you have something in common with. Yeah, I don't know about you, but most of my friends tend to be extremely similar in personality to me, so I see this "diverse group of characters are best friends despite wild personality and background differences" concept more as an idealized model to ensure more widespread appeal than a reflection of reality.
But I'm being unfair, of course. I did say one of the complaints of the older MLP series is that apparently none of the characters really had distinguishable characteristics, plus it's easy for anyone to write off what personalities there are as stereotyped caricatures, before the show has had enough time to develop them, and it turns out that's exactly what happened. A few more episodes in, and the characters start showing other facets of personality beyond their initial defining "shtick." And that's definitely a good thing. Too often, especially in older cartoons but I'm assuming is still around today, there is a tendency of female cartoon characters to be defined by their being female. Who cares about Minnie Mouse outside of the fact she's just a clone of Mickey wearing a dress? Even in instances where they aren't just clones of more important and more popular male characters, we've all heard of the term "token chick," or maybe even "Smurfette principle": they exist to be female. They are defined not by a personality or what they do, but by how they're wearing pink bows or get captured all the time so the real heroes can look better. And there's usually only one of them because the role of "female" really is that narrow. And yes, you'd expect this to apply to pretty much everything except shows aimed at girls, i.e., not My Little Pony, but even in shows where there are more than one female character, there's the same tendency to define them by their femaleness, by female stereotypes, and because we've established that being female is a pretty narrow role, having a cast of nothing but that is extremely dull, and that's my theory of why shows aimed at girls often fail. We don't know how to view female characters as characters instead of as females, and that's exactly what Friendship is Magic avoids.
Similarly, the same could be said for how the show as a whole is treated, not just its characters. The creator, Lauren Faust, doesn't seem to want to treat it strictly as a girl's cartoon, but as a cartoon with a wider appeal that happens to aimed mainly at girls. And whatever she's doing to accomplish that, something's working. I mentioned earlier how critical I was in the first few episodes, but I was still drawn to keep watching more episodes, long after I originally intended, because have I mentioned this show is crack? And later on when I was more used to things, I'd watch a story unfold and think that that's a pretty good premise for an episode. This too is evidence of the creator not treating it as a girl's cartoon, because I could often see the same plot being used in a gender neutral show without it seeming out of place. Here it just happens to take place in a land of mostly female ponies.
That's not to say I didn't still have complaints by the end, like how nothing from the plot of the pilot ever shows up again, or how the continuity between the rest of the episodes seems to be fuzzy at times, or just blatantly out of order. Sure, I don't expect American cartoons to have anime levels of continuous story lines across many episodes, but that didn't stop a number of western cartoons from having occasional overarching plots without making things too confusing to people not obsessively watching everything in order. And yes, I've heard that Faust wanted to go this direction, which is cool, but was put down by executive meddling. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about having the moral of the week spelled out at the end of every episode, but at least it's worked into the story, kind of. But, nothing's perfect, of course, but overall the cartoon is certainly doing something right, and probably deserves a medal just for having musical numbers that aren't completely annoying. Heck, I'd approve of this show just for breaking through some of those gender stereotypes and making it okay for guys to like something a little bit girly.
*joke stolen from a YouTube comment.
Also, can you tell I did most of my research on TV Tropes? >_>