Tag Archives: Tumblr

My Little Pony Hates Men!”: A Short Look at Gender, Representation, and Cartoons

I’ve never seen an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I hear good things, though, and understand if people do like it [and they do] because Lauren Faust is the mind behind the show, and she was largely responsible for The Powerpuff Girls which I still think is one of the best things Cartoon Network has ever done. But again, I’ve never seen any MLP.

Anyway, bronies, right? My favourite go-to source for words you won’t find in Webster’s, Urban Dictionary defines the term as:

“A name typically given to the male viewers/fans (whether they are straight, gay, bisexual, etc.) of the My Little Pony show or franchise. They typically do not give in to the hype that males aren’t allowed to enjoy things that may be intended for females.”

Which, given that very broad description, sounds fine. A person viewing something that is ostensibly for male viewers only, something like . . . I don’t know . . . Lego Ninjago, is not something I think anyone would have a problem with. Anyway. just keep this reasonably sizable fanbase in mind as we move forward-

My Little Pony: Misandry is Magic

That’s the title of a post on tumblr a friend of mine linked me to two days ago. Two short bits of context, misandry is the flipside of misogyny, being the hatred of men instead, and this was originally posted by someone who went by nomisandryplease. I say “went by” because heading over to his site reveals what is seen below and absolutely nothing more:

nomisandryplease
To get to what exactly this guy was bullied for, and I actually don’t doubt that he was, to some extent, the main point to his post was that MLP is a show that, while enjoyable, ultimately treats males very poorly.  Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S3E7 “And the Girlfriend Experience”: A TV Review

girlfriendexperience

First thing’s first, I had every expectation that this episode was going to be super duper racist. It was not, but I’ll get to that in a bit because of how much of a big deal my second point is: Dang, this one lady could not get a enough of the jokes this week. She had one of those high-pitched shrieky laughs, too; it was nearly impossible to block her out and concentrate on the actual episode itself.

Now, if you type “2 broke girls racist” into Google you get 4,310,000 results. That speaks for itself, really. My review of the third episode of this season even received a few comments from an honest-to-goodness Polish person who wanted to assert that they do not believe that cats are the reincarnated souls of people who die outside. To be perfectly fair things were far worse in the first season concerning Han in particular. That being said, racist jokes on this show used to be a problem. They still are, but they used to be, too. Continue reading

Fame Day: The Mako Mori Test

The Bechdel Test, a pass/fail method of determining how female-friendly a film is. Gordon and I discussed it a while back for our first E&GT ever, but to sum it up a movie can only pass the test if:

  1. it has at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man

During our discussion we arrived at the conclusion that this is by no means a perfect test. There are instances of films that pass that still do a deplorable job of depicting women. On the other hand, take The Avengers, which features both Black Widow and Maria Hill, the former of whom is arguably one of the strongest, capable heroes in the entire thing. The two never interact, but that by no means reflects on their roles as female characters.

Really great at staring intensely, really bad at talking to one another.

Really great at staring intensely, really bad at talking to one another.

Continue reading

Offensiveness and Oversensitivity

It should be no mystery to you that the writers here at Culture War Reporters are not afraid to call out people, industries, or even activities when they’re clearly in the wrong. Heck, we have an entire Shame Day feature dedicated to that very idea.

They typically feature this little guy yelling at people.

In this age of internet anonymity I believe that it is especially important to call attention to people who are being sexist, racist, and just generally bigoted. Too often we forget that what we say online [or anywhere, really] is able to be recorded, and that we can be held accountable to those words. It’s part of the reason I dedicated a Fame Day post to a tumblr called Public Shaming, run by a man who screenshots particularly egregious tweets to showcase how truly reprehensible some people can be. Just one example:

I was going to embed the least offensive one, but seriously, they’re all pretty much equally offensive.

Continue reading

A Few More Thoughts on Fan Fiction

Gordon and I only just talked about fan fiction two days ago, but in debating its merits managed to avoid much conversation about its place in our world today. To begin with, the topic was first brought up by Marilyn in her comment on our reactions to easy-money shows, and she specifically mentioned Anne Rice.

For those of you who don’t know, Anne Rice became famous for writing vampire novels decades before the Twilight books came out [and a few centuries after Bram Stoker’s most well-known work]. She also had a very particular stance on fan fiction, which I have pulled from an old archived version of her site:

“I do not allow fan fiction.

The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters.

It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.” Continue reading

Evan and Gordon Talk: Fan Fiction

GORDON: A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, it was suggested that Evan and I discuss fan fiction and its merits (or lack thereof).

Now I’m going to jump right into things by saying that not only do I not believe fan fiction is good, I do not feel it has the capacity to ever be so.

EVAN: Okay. Why? Continue reading