Talking About Ponies

Hi, my name is Jason, I’m 37, I’m male and I’m a passionate fan of a show targeted at pre-teen girls. About two years ago, friends of mine, told me that I really needed to watch the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I was, skeptical at first, but they were insistent and I decided I should at least give it a try. Within a month I had joined the growing tribe of the Bronies (a portmanteau of bro and pony).

To give background, My Little Pony is a range of toy ponies made by Hasbro Toys. They first appeared in the 1980s and have since gone through four major incarnations (known as “generations” by the fans.) The cartoons which accompanied the third generation ponies have been widely derided as essentially just extended infomercials for the toys with boring stories and nothing resembling character development (the one gen three episode I could bring myself to watch certainly supported this conclusion.) When, in 2010, Hasbro released the fourth generation of ponies, they took the radical step of hiring people, most notably Lauren Faust, of Power Puff Girls fame, with actual experience making quality children’s television. The result has been a show which not only charmed its target audience but won for its self a wide number of fans of all ages and given rise to talk to “the Brony Phenomenon.”

Season Three Spoiler Warning. All of this is background to this article by blogger Amanda Duncil. Ms. Duncil criticizes the conclusion to season three as well as the soon to be released Equestria Girls spin-off movie and related toy line.

Concerning the conclusion to season three, in which mane (misspelling intentional per fan convention) character Twilight Sparkles becomes a Princess, Ms. Duncil writes:

I didn't know that the ultimate end goal of learning was to suddenly become royalty. I'm still somewhat concerned that it sends mixed messages to little girls. Implying that all girls want to grow up to become princesses is destructive… I was under the impression that My Little Pony wanted to shake gender barriers, not reinforce them.

I can see where she is coming from, but I think her concern here is a bit misplaced. Twilight doesn’t become a Princess through the standard means of marrying a Prince (actually, that trope is reversed; her brother becomes a Prince by marrying a princess who earned her royal title.) nor by the other fairytale means of discovering that she is a king’s long lost daughter. Twilight’s royal title is bestowed up on, not by any pony laws but by reality itself. Actually, for someone unfamiliar with the show, the term “princess” is misleading. In Equestria, royalty is apparently not a matter of blood or even of purely political authority. When a Pony reaches a sufficient level of virtue and magical ability she transformed into an alicorn, a pony with pegasus wings, a unicorn horn and enhanced mystical control over reality. The Princesses of Equestria are not merely political rulers; they are responsible for such tasks as ensuring the sun and moon rise and set. What happened to Twilight, while it is called “becoming a princess” would more accurately be described as a sort of quasi-deification. (So, Jason, how do you, as a Catholic, feel about such obviously pagan themes in children’s entertainment? I’m fine with them, but that’s another post.)

I feel much more sympathy with the concerns which Ms. Duncil raises over the upcoming Equestria Girls movie. I’m looking forward to the movie and expect it to be fun, but I think it’s reasonable to feel uneasy about the images of the mane characters which we have seen thus far. I’m particularly unhappy about the look of Rainbow Dash. For those unfamiliar with the show, Rainbow is a tom-boy, indeed, the ultimate tomboy. Take a look at the Equestria Girls picture linked on Ms. Duncil’s page, I’m not seeing anything remotely suggestive of the personality I’ve come to know and love.

I’m still hopeful the movie will be worth watching, but I agree this raises cause for concern.

Movie Review: Epic (which actually is)

This past Saturday, I saw Epic, the new movie from Blue Sky Studios. First off, in case there is any confusion, this is a movie marketed at kids. I am a firm believer in C.S. Lewis' dictum that a children's story which can't be enjoyed by adults is a bad children's movie. Second, everyone should read this review, by Stephen Greydanus; I don't agree with everything he says, but he says a number of things rather well.

I have to say, on the whole, I loved this movie. On the other hand, there were a few things I hated, including one which bordered on unforgivable.

Mild Spoilers from here on: The basic story: a forest is the seen of an on-going epic struggle between the heroic leaf-men (a bit like a cross between the Jedi and Tolkien's rangers) who seek to preserve the life of the forest, and the boggans, who seek to lay the forest to waste. Humans are unaware of this partly because sides take care to conceal themselves from “stompers” as they call us and also because both sides are only inches tall.

Near the forest lives an eccentric professor who has destroyed his career and his marriage with his monomaniacal determination to prove these creatures exist. His ex-wife has just died, and his teenage daughter Mary Katherine (she prefers MK) is coming to live with him. On the relationship between the two, I have nothing to say, read Mr. Greydanus, he says it all.

The leaf-men are servants of a Queen Tara, the source of life in the forest, without the Queen, the leaf-men can't do there jobs and the forest is doomed. Tara is beautifully animated and drawn and there are a number of scenes which show her the centre of a wonderful pageantry. She is the perfect embodiment of what the queen of a mystic realm should be... until she opens her mouth, at which point I begin to wonder if anything could be more seriously deficient in gravitas. There is one scene when the (oddly named) leaf-man general Ronin kneels before her, every inch the archetype of the valiant, yet humble warrior, the queens response is to make fun of him. Modern Hollywood, it seems, can not to hierarchy or gravitas.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, there is an ambush, involving boggans, M.K. Who happens to be passing by, is mystically shrunk to the size of a leaf-man and, next thing we know, M.K., Ronin, a young leaf-man name Nob and two comic-relief gastropods are on an epic quest to save the life of the forest.

Mr. Greydanus, and a number of other critics, have criticised what they see as the lack of individuality in the main characters. I feel I must disagree. It's true, these are not the deepest or most well-rounded characters I've seen, Mr. Greydanus' phrase is “generic archetypes”, but, here;s the thing. I think they are such good, solid, realisations of their archetypes. Ronin (aside from his name) is the embodiment of what a brave, loyal warrior ought to be, Nob captures both a wonderful free-spirit and the journey of a boy reluctantly embracing the duties of man-hood. M.K. Is harder to describe in archetypal terms, but her banter with Nob frequently reminded of similar banter between Han and Leia.

Slightly less mild spoilers. I said earlier that, when Tara spoke, I wondered if anything could be more deficient in gravitas; unfortunately, the movie answered my question. About midway through the film, we come to the house of Nim Gallu. Nim is,the librarian who keeps the scrolls of knowledge which record, in full, the history and wisdom of the forest. I was prepared for such a character to be eccentric, even for him to be played for a certain amount of comedy. What we got, however, was just awful; a jazz singing glow-worm played by Stephen Tyler. Seriously; memo to the script-writers, the keeper of wisdom is an archetypal figure deserving of way more respect than this.

Heavy Spoilers: The film climaxes in an appropriately epic battler in which M.K., with some help from her dad, manages to save the day. I have to say, however, I was annoyed by one thing. Ronin, who had earlier sacrificed himself to enable the others to get away, and was left fighting for his life against impossible odds, suddenly turns up at the last minute to battle the head boggan. This was vaguely reminiscent of Gandalf in Moria, but there Gandlaf's sacrifice and return had a fundamentally transforming effect on him, as well on those around him, here it just seemed mindlessly deus ex machina. I was especially annoyed because, when Ronin seemed dead, I thought it a bold move for such a central and likeable character to be killed that way. I know, I know, this is a kid's film, but I think a battle of this magnitude needed causalities on the good side as well as the bad.

The movie had some real faults, typical really of the culture in which it was made, but I still liked it. If the story-telling doesn't exactly break new ground it was, for me, a reaffirmation of the value of traditional themes in storytelling.