If anyone is embarrassing the fandom right now, it's certainly not the critics or the creator. If I'm laughing at anyone right now, it's certainly not people willing to take MLP as seriously as critics have taken YA novels for years.
I mean, seriously, the issue of race in books and movies aimed at MLP's target demographic fills up any number of professional journals. Wait, but a cartoon isn't good enough to be discussed the same way because... it's a cartoon?
That's double-standard bullshit. **** that. MLP is brilliant, it stands up to any form of critical discussion.
Oh, on the contrary, Lynx. I actually stand on the extreme side of your argument. I feel the show is
above this kind of kneejerk Internet nonsense I'm seeing. BECAUSE it's so damn brilliant. Is it flawless? No. But brilliant nonetheless.
Consider: the show's been called "sexist" because of the lowered presence of male ponies in most episodes. It's been called racist, it's been called... what was that other term? "smart-shaming" cause the geeky unicorn sometimes gets showed what for? It's been called out for advancing corrupt politics. Really, I'm just waiting for it to be called homophobic and the circle will be complete.
The reaction of 90% of the viewers who look at the show and then look at those criticizers tend to
laugh at them. Not by internet fans or "bronies" or whatever you want to call them (through they're certainly included). We're talking laughed and balked at by girls, by women, by
mothers and daughters. Why? It "just being a kids' cartoon" isn't a reason, because there've been shows of much worse or better quality that are animated that suffer from some kind of stigma, however silent. A lot of them also aimed at a girl audience.
Why does
Friendship is Magic hold up through all of this? Because (at least IMO) it's just
that well done. It sidesteps so much just by avoiding the use of humans and color consistency in the first place. The rest is handled by
leaning into well-worn stereotypes that would normally be hot buttons, and painting them in the most positive light imaginable.
We should have a whole lot of offended Southerners by now thanks to Applejack. How about Zecora, the CLEARLY African witch doctor who lives in the jungle? The buffalo look like Dances With Wolves characters! Truly this show has gone off the rails! Except nope! Applejack is lovable Southern Belle to a T. Zecora is painted as possibly the wisest pony within 50 miles of Ponyville, shaming Ponyville itself with how dumb their paranoia looks by the end of the episode. The Buffalo's case for their land is presented such that they come off far more sympathetic than our heroines! And in the end, it's the Buffalos themselves that resolve the situation. This show takes so many risks whenever it ventures outside of itself.
Meanwhile, we have the above criticizers of the last episode referring to any non-pony species as "non-white," and by association, all of the pony species as automatically some kind of white. I am scared for
these people. I have to ask these people if they even listen to the words coming out of their own mouths. That kind of thinking, those kind of assumptions, are worse than the accusations they're spewing by so many margins it's not even funny.
I don't think FiM is
untouchable. Feeling Pinkie Keen, by the same guy who wrote this week's ep, is proof of that. But outside of that fumble,
nobody has come
close to convincing me in any way that the show isn't kicking ass just doing what it's doing, even with Polsky on staff.
I'll criticize the show when I feel it truly screws up, and you've already seen me do so here! (If you want, ask me how I feel about most of the episodes before Winter Wrap-up!) But... it just doesn't screw up all that much. And even when it does, it's hardly cause for hyperbolic hysterics.
