Children’s Television

‘The Legend of Korra’ Caps Off Its Feminist Redemption in (Very Queer) Series Finale

Once everything winds down, Korra has her final meaningful conversations with those closest to her. I bit my lip nervously as expressed her gratitude towards Mako for assisting her in the fight. After a reunion so late in the game, I fully expected everything to wrap up with a humdrum obligatory affirmation of heterosexuality.

Korra’s making a comeback.

Written by Erin Tatum.

If there’s one thing I will never get tired of doing, it’s calling out lazy sexism in writing. Few shows have disappointed me more (at least initially) than The Legend of Korra (LOK), simply because of all the wasted potential. For a long time, I perceived LOK as a clumsy Y7 dilution of a horny teen melodrama that tainted the legacy of its golden predecessor, Avatar: The Last Airbender (A: TLA). There was far too much reliance on love triangles and romantic angst and on top of everything, the allegedly radical strong female protagonist was a hot mess. Korra (Janet Varney) was an impulsive hothead with an undying need to resist authority for the sake of it, caring more about the attention and approval of crush-turned-boyfriend Mako (David Faustino) than, well, just about anything else. She was whiny, entitled, and dabbled in internalized misogyny to boot, focusing most of her energy in the first season on undermining Asami (Seychelle Gabriel), Mako’s first girlfriend, in the rivalry for his heart. But it’s apparently justified at the time because Asami is girly and comes from money and therefore it’s automatically assumed she’s shallow or undeserving I guess?

Avatar Aang’s reincarnation may have been a lady, but she was a bit of a dick.

My reaction to Korra at the beginning.

(The kids were also saddled with a miserable cast of piss-baby adults who redefined emotional dysfunction and clogged up screen time with their Maury-style family drama shitshow. I’ll have to stop here or you’re going to get six paragraphs about how much the adults ruin everything.)

Anyway, I digress. From weak characterization to network issues, LOK had a bumpy ride until the end. During the third season, Nickelodeon decided to pull the series off the air due to overly dark themes (although A:TLA tiptoed around such subjects, LOK never shied away from showcasing progressively less ambiguous scenes of death/suicide/murder). Rather than outright cancellation, executives took the unusual step of relegating the rest of the episodes exclusively to online streaming. The show thereby cemented its subversive reputation, with creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko seemingly taking advantage of the medium to push the envelope as much as they could.

Asami offers her support to Korra after Korra is injured at the end of Book 3.

The second season was an echo of the first in terms of rehashing pointless romantic fodder, but things finally hit their stride in the third season, ironically right when it was pulled from television viewership. Thankfully, following a tumultuous relationship and a messy breakup in Book 2, Korra and Mako stayed apart with shockingly little ship tease the rest of the series. I’m still in disbelief about that one. I can’t believe the breakup actually stuck and that the writers were able to resist the temptation to constantly throw them back into will-they-won’t-they territory. That’s a good message though–not all relationships work out, and you don’t have to feel pressure to stay with someone forever just because you have history. People can learn things from each other and move on. More significantly, the breakup paves the way for Korra to develop a friendship with Asami, who fast becomes Korra’s primary ally and confidant the rest of the series. They’re able to work past their former rivalry to build a relationship independent of shared history with Mako. The connection is heartfelt and genuine and doesn’t just feel like a belated attempt to hastily past the Bechdel test like I originally feared.

There’s also a few phenomenal standalone episodes that shed light on general Avatar history. They brought tears to my eyes not only because they were so good, but because they reminded me that DiMartino and Konietzko do still have the ability to tell beautiful stories when they aren’t mired down in cheesy interpersonal dynamics.

Older Korra has seen better days.

The fourth and final season (Balance) finds Korra struggling to recover from her latest near death experience, suffering from implied PTSD as repeated, terrifying flashbacks prevent her from fully regaining use of her Avatar powers. Three years have passed since the previous season, putting Korra and her friends into their early 20s. This was one of the best creative decisions of the series in my opinion. It feels a little weird to arbitrarily set the final chapter three years in the future when the first three books have taken place in a relatively slow-moving linear timeline, but the last-minute time skip enables the kids to do something that shoddy writing has always held them back from: growing up. Team Avatar are all young adults now. They don’t have time to worry about who they’re dating because they’re all trying to hold down jobs and working for different corporations and navigating different politics and world views. Even the airbending kids (Aang’s grandchildren) take on much more significant roles as we return to find them entering their early teen years. The show finally takes a break from stirring the bubbling cauldron of pheromones to at last rediscover what should have been at the heart of any A:TLA franchise–teamwork and friendship.

Korra must face down Kuvira.

With her confidence and fragile psychological state badly shaken, Korra has been in isolation since her last enemy tried to poison her to death, choosing to remain in contact with only Asami (suck it Mako). This new older version of Korra is the polar opposite of the headstrong teenager we first met. She’s quiet with a sobering jaded outlook on life, with everything down to her weary body language indicating that her spirit remains just as broken as the physical injuries that brought her to such a darkened mental place. Alas, there is once again trouble brewing on the horizon and Korra must return to face her responsibilities in spite of all of her fears of inadequacy. Harsh dictator Kuvira (Zelda Williams) is conquering villages left and right, becoming increasingly drunk with power under the guise of creating an idealized utopia, a mission for domination that threatens to throw the world out of balance. See what I did there? I have to admit that I’ve never been a fan of the whole “new radical extremist appears to hand Korra’s ass to her every few months” formula of each season because I feel like it disconnects the books from one another as opposed to the steady buildup to the ultimate conflict in A:TLA, but I will say that the execution of this season plot wise is the most compelling. The threat of Kuvira is definitely more intense than the other villains, so the stakes are appropriately higher.

Jinora (in front) travels with her siblings to help Korra.

I’d also like to take a minute to discuss the importance of Jinora, Aang’s oldest granddaughter, because I don’t feel like she ever gets enough credit for being awesome. (Also, she’s voiced by Kiernan Shipka, aka sass queen Sally Draper, which blew my mind because I’ve watched her on Mad Men since she was like 6 and holy hell I’m getting old.) Jinora has been the feminist heartbeat of LOK long before Korra ever got her shit together. Whereas Korra had to be physically annihilated 932 times to actually learn any kind of lesson, Jinora always possessed calm, precocious wisdom and a deep sense of spirituality. She could connect to the spirit world without breaking a sweat. She’s probably around 14 or 15 in the last season. Getting to see her mature and grow into her talents was a real treat. Throughout Book 4, she protects the city, communicates with spirits, and teleports via spirit like a boss. Korra is very protective of her and they have a big sister/little sister type of bond, but Korra should also take notes. Forget Korra’s mopey ass, Jinora is everything that I want to be when I grow up. I don’t care that she’s eight or nine years younger than me. As a bonus, she also has one of the only healthy (not to mention adorable) romantic relationships on the show, even if that could be written off as a function of youth.

I couldn’t even find a picture of Korra and Mako together this season, so here’s older!Mako.

Korra’s gravitation away from brute strength fighting and toward peaceful negotiation tactics was a massive testament to her personal growth in itself, but the most significant crescendo of her character arc came in the form of the final scene of the series. I’ll try not to spoil most of the finale. A lot of people pass out midair and other people catch them. I think you can guess who won the battle of good versus evil. Once everything winds down, Korra has her final meaningful conversations with those closest to her. I bit my lip nervously as expressed her gratitude towards Mako for assisting her in the fight. After a reunion so late in the game, I fully expected everything to wrap up with a humdrum obligatory affirmation of heterosexuality. No matter how I feel about Korra and Mako together, we did have to suffer through two entire seasons of being beaten over the head with the idea that they were the ultimate fated alpha couple. It’s a kids show, so closure is expected and almost mandatory. But the writers miraculously stuck to their guns. A simple “I’ll always have your back” and meaningful glance and that was that. Not even a kiss! Keep that in mind, because we’re about to get analytical.

CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SINGGG?? (source).

Suddenly–could it be?–the heavens opened up and the powers that be smiled upon us all. Korra spends her last moments of screen time with…Asami? Is this real, or am I dreaming about fanfiction? Asami tells Korra she couldn’t bear to lose her and Korra suggests they take a vacation together. Asami says she’d love to visit the spirit world. She and Korra then walk alone, hand-in-hand, into the spirit portal. The final shot of the series is the two of them clasping hands and gazing into each other’s eyes while being enveloped in the golden light of the portal.

It’s time to girl the hell up (source).

To me, that’s about as queer of an ending as a kids show can get.

A few articles and legions of rejoicing Tumblr fans have chosen to interpret the ending as implying that Korra and Asami are together romantically. It makes sense. The two of them have been building a relationship for years. I also think it’s significant that the scene with Asami occurred after the scene with Mako. Korra had the opportunity to go off into the sunset with Mako, but she chose Asami instead. Asami is the most important person in Korra’s life. It’s no coincidence that that scene almost directly mirrored A:TLA‘s final shot of Aang and Katara kissing in the sunset. Minus the kissing. Sigh, minus the kissing. How awesome is it that two girls who started out resenting each other over a boy end up choosing each other over everyone else? Talk about every queer shipper’s wet dream.

Predictably, this interpretation has drawn an irritated outcry from fans who insist that the subtext simply isn’t there and Korrasami shippers are delusional. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read something along the lines of “but no, they’re like sisters!” in response to even the most vague allusion to romantic ties between Korra and Asami following the finale. Women are already oversexualized or desexualized constantly in media. The second that anyone dare suggest romantic overtones in girl/girl friendships, in comes the sister argument. Sisters are wholesome and loving within appropriate boundaries! Oh my sweet summer children, have you ever read Frozen fanfiction? Many, many people want Anna/Elsa to get it on, and they’re actual sisters.

The Korra/Mako scene was equally open-ended, but no one’s going to complain about fans who want to interpret that moment as suggesting a romantic future between the two. No one’s going to say “but they’re like brother and sister now!” Granted, they already dated. You get my point. Compulsory assumed universal heterosexuality is the bane of my fandom existence.

I wanted to put something else witty here, but I can’t because this actually makes me really fucking angry and it’s important to talk about why. Most people love to talk about how they support gay people (and I say gay because the straight community has far less understanding and patience for bi/pansexuality), but as soon as the possibility of queerness encroaches into the children’s genre, it becomes dirty and perverse. You do realize that gay people were all once gay kids, right? Kids need to see that kind of representation, regardless of their orientation. For one thing, it’s important to show that a girl can love a girl, but another message of equal importance is that just because love looks different doesn’t make it less than any other kind of love. As a disabled kid, I never exactly saw anyone swooning over people in wheelchairs, but every time I saw anything that broke with your run of the mill romance, it gave me a spark of hope. The emphasis shouldn’t be on moaning about ruining childhoods or turning kids gay, but rather on illustrating that everyone deserves fulfilling relationships with people who love you, whomever they may be.

Ultimately, Korra evolved from an insecure teenager eager to define herself around a boy to a confident heroine who found strength in another woman who believed in her. She may have made me want to tear my hair out in the beginning, but with Asami’s help and the help of her entire support system, she proved herself deserving of the Avatar title as well as finally living up to all the strong female protagonist hype. Once rivals, Korra and Asami became lifelong allies who may or may not kiss occasionally in the future.

In Asami, Korra finally found her balance.

UPDATE: Bryan Konietzko has confirmed via his Tumblr that Korra and Asami ended the series as a couple.

Children’s Television: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Children’s Television Theme Week here.

The Feminism of Sailor Moon by Myrna Waldron

This has been a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I’m an absolutely die-hard fan of Sailor Moon, and part of that is because it served as my childhood introduction to feminism. That might be a little bit hard to believe, considering the superheroines of the show are known for outfits not much more revealing than Wonder Woman’s. Silly outfits aside (you get used to them), this show was absolutely groundbreaking. Its protagonists are 10 realistically flawed, individual and talented teenage girls (and women) who, oh, you know. Save the world.

Why Jessie is the Worst Show on Disney Channel by Katherine Filaseta

For those who don’t know, this is a Disney Channel series about a girl from Texas who moves to New York City and becomes nanny for a Brangelina couple with four adopted children from around the world. If done well, it could allow for very educational programming for children about diversity and identity. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t been done well. It’s been done terribly.

Was Jem and the Holograms a Good Show for Little Girls? by Amanda Rodriguez

Though the show’s focus on romantic love, fashion, and female rivalry are of dubious value, there are definitely a lot of good things going on with Jem & the Holograms: the notion that fame and fortune should be used for philanthropic means, that female friendships can be strong and form an important network of support, and that a sense of community is crucial.

She-Ra: Kinda, Sorta Accidentally Feministy by Amanda Rodriguez

She-Ra: Princess of Power represents a network of powerful women who not only like each other, but they support each other, organize a rebellion against an oppressive patriarchal regime, and get shit done. The example this powerful group of women set for impressionable girls like myself is tremendous.

Why I Love Adventure Time by Myrna Waldron

Adventure Time is a Cartoon Network animated series that combines surrealistic comedy, fantasy and science-fiction. Based on a 2008 short by Pendleton Ward that went viral, it parodies the tropes, archetypes and cliches of fairy tales, video games and childhood action figure battles. The basic premise is about Finn, the last remaining human, and his best friend/adoptive brother Jake (a shape-shifting dog), going on your typical slay-the-monster-save-the-princess adventures. Now in its fourth season, it’s an enormous hit with all genders and age groups and shows no signs of slowing down. And let me tell you, as a feminist, why I am absolutely celebrating this show.

Anne of Green Gables: 20th Century Girl by Ren Jender

What makes good television programming “for children” is elusive. No demographic is unanimous in its tastes, but children differ from one another more than other groups: what fascinates a 4-year-old can bore an 11-year-old and vice versa. Add to this problem that most critics and programming creators are not children themselves, and we can see why most children’s programming is so terrible: because it, even more than other types of art, is based on, to quote Jane Wagner “a collective hunch.” Still, like a Supreme Court justice famously said about pornography, most of us, even those of us who don’t have children, can recognize excellent children’s programming when we see it, like the 80s made-for-television Anne of Green Gables, based on the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Hey Arnold! A Bold Children’s Show by Nia McRae

Hey Arnold! taught life lessons without the viewer realizing it. An episode called “Stoop Kid” taught kids about the benefits of getting out of their comfort zone. The episode “Chocolate Boy” humorously analogized drug addiction. Arnold’s closeness with Gerald alongside Helga’s rapport with Phoebe highlighted the importance of friendship. The wrongness of first impressions was a reoccurring lesson; a dumb character would have moments of wisdom or a snobby character would have moments of vulnerability or a seemingly lucky rich kid would be shown as unhappy and/or overstressed. My favorite example of this message is in the episode “Ms. Perfect”, which introduced the character of Lila. Her popularity caused female students to envy her at first. But once they learned about Lila’s troubled life, the girls apologized and accepted her.

Gravity Falls: Manliness, Silliness, and a Whole Lot of Awesome by Max Thornton

Figuring out who you are in the face of societal pressures that buffet you every which way is the trial of growing up, and helping people to do that is one of feminism’s goals. It’s also at the heart of Gravity Falls, which helps cement this for me as an exciting show.

Celebrating Sesame Street by Leigh Kolb

Adventure Time – Why Lumpy Space Princess is Important by Gaayathri Nair

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on Adventure Time such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and make up.

Steven Universe: A Superhero Team We Can Believe In by Megan Wright

Steven Universe embraces non-traditional families. Steven is a perfectly happy kid, who is raised by three women who love him. The Gems are wonderful guardians for Steven, acting as mothers, sisters, and leaders to him. Even though the Gems and Steven don’t always see eye to eye, they always try to step beyond their comfort zones for one another. The Gems may not understand the concept of video games, but if Steven wants to go to an arcade, then they’ll go. If Steven wants to throw them several birthdays for the thousands of ones they haven’t celebrated, they’ll let him dress like a clown and play party games with them, because even though they don’t understand it, it clearly means a lot to Steven.

Friendship Is More Than Magic: Feminism and Relationships in Puella Magi Madoka Magica by Kathryn Diaz

Imagine a world where young girls are trapped in a system that sees them as commodities. Imagine that any girl could be tricked into giving herself up to a life that is by all appearances filled with magic, beauty, excitement, and good, but exists to feed off the energy of their spirit. The girls are purposely pushed to their limits. When they have become too cynical or burdened, the system condemns them and sends in younger counterparts to pick them off. Imagine that these girls are pitted against each other, that once they have been lured in with heroic, fairy tale trappings, they are encouraged to turn around and use the power that they should be grateful for to use and destroy each other. At the top of this system sits a small white creature. He just can’t understand why girls get so upset when they learn the facts of life they signed up for.

…..That wasn’t very hard to imagine after all, was it?

The Magic Garden: Female Leaders In Children’s Television by Hayley Krischer

With their soft voices and pigtails Paula and Carole had a purpose: they created a serene little oasis while sitting on swings and singing, calling kids to “come and see our garden grow.” In The Magic Garden, there was a garden of make-believe where the “magic tree grows lollypop sticks.” Paula picked on her guitar and Carole encouraged you to stamp your feet or clap your hands on the “pop” during “Pop Goes the Weasel” without sounding like a droning fire alarm. Watching an episode of The Magic Garden was like going to a music class—the women pushed kids to sing faster and faster with the speed of the music, harmonizing and smiling, their easy melody a break of sorts to all of the outside noise.

Better Than Two: Female Power Trios in Children’s TV by Emanuela Betti

Power Trios in children’s TV, like duos, are still composed of oversimplified types and characters, yet they also suggest that femininity is not so black and white. Three character ensembles introduce characters types than are on a greyer scale than the polar-extremes of the Light/Dark Feminine trope. In the case of female Power Trios, the formula consists of three characters that respectively represent beauty, brains, and strength. Characters representing beauty are usually ditzy and childish, but they are also sensitive and the mediators (so if they happen to be “dumb” they’re at least depicted with a good heart); characters representing brains are sometimes the group leaders, but also rational without being distant or cold; finally, characters representing strength are usually impulsive and hot-headed, but their rash tendencies are balanced out with a loyal nature.

The Imaginary World of Mona the Vampire by Elizabeth Kiy

The series chronicled the adventures of Mona Parker, a young girl who enjoys dressing up like a vampire and sees saving her town from monsters as her mission in life. The stories are Buffy-lite: a giant bug substitute teacher, a robot babysitter, doppelgängers, a computer virus with mind-control powers, and new cafeteria cooks who aim to poison the school with salmonella. Though the show often pulls out from Mona’s fantasies to reveal the reality of the situation, Mona’s fights against the forces of darkness, usually end up somehow solving the crime or prank, exposing a conspiracy or locating the lost item anyway.

Exploring Imagination and Feminine Effacement in Cartoon Network’s Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends by Jenny Lapekas

Why examine this offbeat show through a feminist or ethical lens? Because Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (Craig McCracken, 2004-2009) is wildly inventive and subversive. Its plot, which explains that children’s imaginary friends must eventually go live at Madame Foster’s zany orphanage after he or she has outgrown their friend, insists that a child’s imagination has the power to make something real, whether adults believe it or not. At this home, young children are welcome to come and “adopt” one of the friends who is housed there. In this way, the friends are concepts that are “recycled” in order to accommodate children as they grow up.

Adventure Time vs Regular Show by Amanda Lyons

There is one thing that, for me, gives Adventure Time a bit of an edge over Regular Show, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, Regular Show is pretty much a bro-zone while Adventure Time has a bit more room for the ladies.

Pepper Ann: Pepper Ann Much Too Cool Not To Be On DVD: A Letter to Disney by Janyce Denise Glasper

Behind black rounded glasses is Pepper Ann–a puffy red haired chick wearing eccentric style complete with black and white sneakers. An overall normal girl living in a normal world. In the town of Hazelnut, this humorous hip nerd lit up our shared television screen over vast bowls of high sugared cereal bowls. Like my sister, tomboy Pepper Ann played video games, adored roller blades, and sports while Pepper Ann’s precocious best friend Nicky loved books and had an indie spirit vibe like me. Wide range of diverse characters included Pepper Ann and Nicky’s other bff Hawaiian Milo, a rotund Swiss boy, typical popular blond chicks, and African American twins. There seemed to be a treat for everyone.

Pokemon: Escapist Fantasy for the Budding Feminist Child by Nia McRae

Should a writer depict a world that mirrors reality and show the problems within it or should s/he depict the ideal world we want to live in? Pokemon leans more to the latter. Pokemon, just like Star Trek, depicts a world that’s egalitarian or at the very least, very close to it. It’s a world where gender, race, and sexual orientation appear to be irrelevant. As a kid, I couldn’t articulate very well why I loved Pokemon so much but now I can. My joy was due to many things in the show; the adventures which encouraged my love of travel, the fun and catchy songs and most notably, the strong presence of dynamic, ambitious, and fun female characters.

The Imaginary World of ‘Mona The Vampire’

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

As a kid, I had a boundless imagination.

I put on plays in my backyard (notably a bowdlerized Romeo and Juliet) and my friends and I spent our recesses pretending we were princesses, fairies, cowgirls, mermaids and Hogwarts students. I convinced my little sister we were always traveling the world- any clock tower was Big Ben, a local bridge was the Golden Gate and power line towers were always the Eiffel Tower.

In short, I was a lot like Mona the Vampire. Or at least, I see a lot of myself in her.

I’m unsure if the show is at all familiar outside Canada. Here, it ran for four seasons (1999-2003) on YTV (basically our equivalent to Nickelodeon) and I binge-watched it on weekends and as treat whenever I stayed home from school sick.

Though the show often pulls out of Mona’s fantasies to reveal the reality of the situation, Mona’s fights against the forces of darkness, usually end up somehow solving the crime or prank, exposing a conspiracy or locating the lost item anyway.

And Mona is never deterred by rationality, in her mind, everything out of the ordinary has a supernatural explanation and nothing can convince her otherwise.

A typical day in Mona’s world may involve fighting space invaders.

As a lead character on a children’s show, Mona is refreshingly atypical. When deciding on alter ego, she eschews the traditional superhero or princess dress and chooses to be a vampire. As a female character, Mona is also unique in her love of scary stories and late night horror movies, comic books and gruesome creepy crawlies. With her usual costume, which she chose herself and slips on at every opportunity, she tries to make herself as frightening as possible with a wig of wild, gravity-defying braids, plastic fangs and exaggerated purple circles drawn under her eyes.

However, the general effect is more adorable than intimidating and with her high pitched voice, it’s clear she’s still a child, unsure of her place in the world, underneath it all.

In fact, like Batman, she considers her true self to be her caped crusaded identity. Mona Parker, not Mona the Vampire, is the disguise. Though Mona sees herself as a vampire, she never troubled with questions of morality, in her view, she’s a good vampire and that’s that. She doesn’t need to bite people or drink blood, but instead has vampire senses that tell her when trouble is near.

While Mona is a good vampire, Von Kreepsula is a evil one, who must be contained within the pages of a comic book

Unlike the brooding vamps we’re used to, Mona also has a child’s sense of morality. She believes that she and her friends are good while the monsters they fight are all bad. For example, Von Kreepsula is Mona’s nemesis, an evil vampire to match her good.

But like the children watching the program, Mona learns that morality is not so black and white

In several episodes, Mona learns the monster she’s been fighting is merely misunderstood, lost it’s home or separated from it’s family. Even her sense of self is challenged when Mona meets a vampire hunter and has to convince her of her essential goodness.

Though Mona is neither binary extreme of masculinity or femininity, the two options usually available to children’s heroes and heroines, her friends and sidekicks Charley (AKA Zappman) and Lily (AKA Princess Giant) certainly are.

Princess Giant, Zappman and Mona the Vampire — Princess Giant, Zappman, and Mona the Vampire

Like Mona, Charley and Lily are imaginative kids who love to play her games, though it’s a little unclear to what extent they believe in actually believe in the monsters and vampires infesting their town. While both are timid and scared on their own, Mona’s bravery and self-confidence buoys them are draws them into her world.

What I found so refreshing was Mona’s personality as a leader, the Really Rosie type, the Queen of the neighborhood. As a leader, Mona also helps her less confident friends discover their skills and strengths by making them vital parts of her fantasy narrative. She can only defeat the monsters with the help for Charley’s Zapp-A-Rama Gun, his aptitude for science and Lily’s ability to grow.

She introduces them to the highly covetable idea of developing a superpower that makes your weaknesses into strength. Sure Charley is easily scared and often bullied, but with Mona’s encouragement to be the superhero she sees in him and encourages him to see for himself, he’s just like his hero, the Man with Nine Lives. Likewise, without Mona, shy Lily hides behind her hair and lets others push her around and feel her small. When they meet, Mona tells Lily she can have any type of alter ego she wants and chose her own powers. Lily chose to become the braver version of herself that she hopes to grow into, and takes on the power to make herself as big as she wants, so no one can intimidate her and make her feel unimportant.

In their daily lives, Mona and her friends are ordinary elementary school students

Closing out the pack is Mona’s trusty cat and confidant Fang is always there as back-up and a (silent) voice of reason anyway. Fang may have more sense than either kids or adults and his expressions often silently suggests the problems in Mona’s logic that no one else can see.

Mona’s parents are supportive but weary. They believe they are raising a highly intelligent, imaginative child, one who gets in her fair share of trouble but is loyal to her friends and always able to find a way out of a jam. They’re the kind of parents every wildly imaginative kid should have, people who always know there are many reasons to be proud of their daughter and nurture her creativity.

Moreover, Mona’s friends are also posed as underdogs throughout the series. Mona’s nemesis is Angela, the cruel and vain daughter of lottery winners who believes she can win friends by showing off her enormous wealth. George, often Angela’s henchmen, is a crude bully who mainly picks on Charley, but is the Principal’s nephew, so he rarely gets in trouble. In comparison, each episode, Mona shows she can save the day with just her wits and imagination, teaching young viewers their value above all.

As with many children’s shows, the kids on Mona the Vampire are smart and resourceful, solving crimes even the police can’t and speaking and working with adults like colleagues, the ultimate fantasy for most real-life kids. In many episodes, Mona deals with the local chief of police, Officer Halcroft who offers rational explanations to each incident. Each time, she dismisses them as ridiculous and unbelievable.

I also love how improvised the character’s costumes seem, like real things the kids could have gathered from around the house. Mona’s floral cape is an old curtain, while Princess Giant’s long blonde hair is a mop. This small aspect of the series adds realism to their imaginings and suggests that the show’s creators consider or remember the actual mechanics of children’s fantasy games.

The typical effect used to transition between “fantasy” and “reality”

In addition, the show refuses to underestimate children as an audience, the stories are never definitively attributed to natural or supernatural causes and the show never overtly indulges or refutes her world. The transition effect between “reality” and Mona’s fantasy gives viewers room to judge how much of the fantasy is real. Many episodes even end on an uncertain note, with even the adults unable to explain every detail rationally, suggesting there may be some truth to Mona’s imagination.

Mostly I liked the show because it clearly respected and celebrated the dreamworld so essential to childhood and creative, curious children. With imagination like Mona’s, even the ordinary world can be magical.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Pokemon’: Escapist Fantasy for the Budding Feminist Child

So, should a writer depict a world that mirrors reality and show the problems within it or should s/he depict the ideal world we want to live in? ‘Pokemon’ leans more to the latter. ‘Pokemon,’ just like ‘Star Trek,’ depicts a world that’s egalitarian or at the very least, very close to it. It’s a world where gender, race, and sexual orientation appear to be irrelevant. As a kid, I couldn’t articulate very well why I loved ‘Pokemon’ so much but now I can. My joy was due to many things in the show; the adventures which encouraged my love of travel, the fun and catchy songs and most notably, the strong presence of dynamic, ambitious, and fun female characters.

This guest post by Nia McRae appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Everyone from Bill Cosby to the creators of South Park seemed baffled and amused by the Pokemon craze of the 90s. It still holds a place in the hearts of many millennials because although its obvious aim was to sell products, it didn’t change that the show had a lot of wit and heart. It’s easy to tell a lot of effort went into the episode ideas, world-building, character building, and dialogue. However, most of the people who were adults when the television show first appeared were, and still are, mystified by its appeal. So, I’ll try to explain the show to people who aren’t enthusiasts. Pokemon is an Anime-otherwise known as a Japanese cartoon-that was translated into English by the production company, 4Kids Entertainment. The word Pokemon is short for Pocket Monsters.

Pokemon is still an ongoing series but my focus will be on the first season. The protagonist is Ash Ketchum, a 10-year old whose traveling companions are Brock and Misty. He wants to be a Pokemon Master, a goal which involves using the pokemon you catch to defeat numerous Gym Leaders and collect badges.

The show itself featured a world where people catch and train super-powered animal-like beings called pokemon. Humans used Pokeballs to catch pokemon. There are many pokemon-related options that exist such as becoming a Pokemon Breeder or a Pokemon Master.

So, should a writer depict a world that mirrors reality and show the problems within it or should s/he depict the ideal world we want to live in? Pokemon leans more to the latter. Pokemon, just like Star Trek, depicts a world that’s egalitarian or at the very least, very close to it. It’s a world where gender, race, and sexual orientation appear to be irrelevant. As a kid, I couldn’t articulate very well why I loved Pokemon so much but now I can. My joy was due to many things in the show; the adventures which encouraged my love of travel, the fun and catchy songs and most notably, the strong presence of dynamic, ambitious, and fun female characters.

Whenever I watched Pokemon as a kid, I remember finding it refreshing that whenever a female character appeared as a challenger, there was never any shock or amusement on a male character’s face. Female characters being in positions of power were simply an unexceptional fact of life in the pokemon universe. Another thing that wasn’t a big deal in the pokemon world (but of course would be in real life) is the fact that 10-year kids were allowed to roam the earth without parental supervision. But Pokemon wasn’t meant to reflect real life in terms of the dangers and limitations of reality. It was an escapist fantasy which encouraged kids to learn new things and meet new people. It certainly made me look forward to being an adult and having the freedom of Ash and friends.

It had really funny moments and witty lines that still make me laugh when I revisit an episode or two. All of the characters-whether male or female, minor or major, pokemon or human-had distinct personalities and styles.

An example of one of many diverse female characters: Stella, Ringmaster of a Pokemon Circus

Boys were shown as Gym Leaders and so were girls in many instances. In fact, one of Ash’s most formidable opponents was a psychic Gym Leader named Sabrina. She was creepy because she had telekinetic powers and she had psychological issues. Luckily, her mental problems weren’t caused by man troubles. Ash’s struggle to defeat her took a whole three episodes.

One of my favorite characters was Duplica (yes, that was her actual name) who was working to be an Impressionist along with her shape-shifting pokemon, Ditto. She was a fun and feisty tomboy who could dress up and imitate anyone whether boy or girl. And just like Sabrina, she challenged Ash to see his weaknesses and become a better pokemon trainer.

Duplica dressed as Ash and Duplica dressed as herself

In addition to being Gym Leaders, female characters are found in other occupations: nurse, scientist, professor, rancher, police officer, etc. The show helped to normalize women in any position of power, whether it was common in real life or not. Similar to kid shows like The Magic School Bus or Captain Planet, its goal was to capture a kid’s imagination. Because the pokemon world is so egalitarian, there isn’t a need for any didactic speeches. Girls, just like boys, go out and do whatever they want to do without interference-and there’s a lot of power in normalizing that image.

There two most prominent female characters are Misty and Jessie. Misty is a water pokemon trainer. Her three sisters run the Cerulean Gym where trainers can win a Cascade badge. Her passion for water pokemon is showcased in an episode called “Tentecool and Tentacruel.” That same episode involves this scene:

Boss-lady and man-servants. Yes, Pokemon is a weird show — Boss-lady and man-servants. Yes, *Pokemon* is a weird show.

Jessie is part of the main trio of villains including James and a talking cat pokemon named Meowth. Jessie and James cross-dress a lot. Whenever they’re in disguise, sometimes they’re both wearing girl’s clothing or they’re both wearing guy clothes. Many times, Jessie wears the typical guy attire and James is enthusiastically in a girl’s outfit. There’s a lot of gay coding for James. His voice and mannerisms are foppish. This is part of an ongoing issue of coded gay characters being villains in movies and TV. The only silver lining is that James and Jessie aren’t depicted as people who should be feared or despised. At best, they’re just annoying. Many times, they serve as comic relief and there are even some moments where they’ve helped the heroes of the story.

But Pokemon was progressive in many other ways. It had people of ambiguous ethnic background. Ash, for example, had an olive skin tone and Brock was even tanner. Fans still wonder if Brock is Latino, Black or Southeast Asian. Another subversion of gender roles is that the male supporting character, Brock enjoyed making meals for his friends. He wore aprons and he carried cookware wherever he went. No one questioned his masculinity because of his domestic enjoyments. Ash seemed to come from a working class home and he was raised by a single mom. It was good for kids to see a positive depiction of a single mother. Seeing that the hero of the story came from a happy home with a single mother also helped kids from single-headed households to unconsciously know there’s no shame in it.

But even if there are progressive inclinations here and there, some gender stereotypes still appear. There’s an ongoing gag of Misty’s fear of bugs, propensity for romantic daydreams, and love of cute things. In the episode, “The Water Flowers of Cerulean City,” we meet Misty’s valley girl-sounding sisters. In that same episode, Ash battles Misty and she calls forth a jewel-like water pokemon which prompts Ash to mumble, “Leave it to a girl to show off her jewelry.” But Misty isn’t solely a girly-girl (though there would be nothing wrong if she were). There are many sides to her; she has traits associated with males such as being adventurous, rowdy, and temperamental. Her temper is shown to be her main flaw just as occasional dimwittedness is Ash’s central imperfection. She isn’t just one thing but a combination of traits-which is pretty complex for a kid’s show.

In later seasons, there were controversies around a female character named May because she was viewed as having stereotypical girlie aspirations such as competing in Pokemon Contests. It was seen as a step down because instead of vying for badges, the challenger battled for ribbons. Critics viewed it as an inferior dream because Pokemon Contests placed more emphasis on shallow things like beauty. But I never minded it because 1. It was treated as a legit and respected thing and 2. Boys were shown participating in it too. The beautiful thing about Pokemon is I never noticed any gender segregation. There was no pink ghetto.

However, there was a questionable episode called “Princess vs. Princess,” which involved a holiday (possibly satirizing Valentine’s Day?) that celebrated women. The holiday required guys to serve girls as they shop, participate in beauty contests and do many other girlie things (I can hear the accusations of “Feminazi” already). When the women are fighting over clothing, James comments, “I don’t think I’m tough enough to be a woman.” Again, I don’t mind the show featuring female characters doing stereotypical “girl” things because Pokemon was always good at showing the full range of girls. Not every girl in Pokemon embodied the girly-girl stereotype and even the ones that did had complexities to them (as much complexity as you get in a Pokemon cartoon, of course)

Sadly, as is true for many beloved side characters, Misty was rarely in the spotlight and the same was true for Brock. Ash’s personal journey is what garnered the most attention. But fans loved Brock and Misty-some people liked them even more than Ash. That’s why when Misty’s character was replaced by May, there was a huge outcry, particularly from preteens who wanted to see Ash and Misty as a couple. But the powers that be didn’t want romance to be a distraction. After all, it was still a kid’s show. Even if the executives wanted to squash any chance of romance, it still could be argued that getting rid of Misty was unnecessary. But in the long run, it helped to keep the show fresh. And she wasn’t gone for good; she returned for later episodes.

For those who still want more Misty, there’s a spin-off series called Pokemon Chronicles which include episodes that follow characters in the pokemon world other than Ash. Brock gets an episode and Misty features in several episodes. It was a pleasant surprise to see Misty being a main character in her own life which is beneficial for girls to see. In addition to her jewel-type and cute pokemon, she also gets to have a scary, badass pokemon; the serpentine dragon-like type called Gyarados. Pokemon Chronicles reveals a more mature side of Misty as she handles all the responsibilities of being a Gym Leader while her sisters are away. Though she is the youngest sister, she is shown to be the smartest and best-fit as leader. Just like any good leader, she is assertive when the time calls for it and nurturing when the time calls for it.

Of course, we can’t forget the merchandising. Even today, you can’t talk about any children’s show without discussing the main motivation of selling products. Because the stars of the show were obviously the pokemon more so than the human characters, it was easy to sell pokemon. But the human characters were still necessary in order to be relatable. Pokemon was the King of Advertising. The show’s tag line was “Gotta Catch ’Em All,” which was repeated ad nauseam to hypnotize kids into buying as many trading cards, toys, and games as possible. And it worked, especially in its heyday in the late 1990s. I recall a lot of girls buying the merchandise too. That’s why I think Pokemon serves as a lesson to executives that not only is it socially good but it’s a smart business idea to market to both boys AND girls. Pokemon still resonates with a lot of young people because it created a world that made everyone feel welcomed.

Nia McRae graduated summa cum laude from Medgar Evers College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in history. She has a strong passion for critiquing racial and gender politics in the media and putting it in historical context.

‘Pepper Ann’: Pepper Ann Much Too Cool Not To Be On DVD: A Letter to Disney

This guest post by Janyce Denise Glasper appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Dear Disney,

Sue Rose saved my life.

Seriously.

Instead of taking another princess film out of the precious vault, consider bringing out something more genuine and heartfelt. Release every single Pepper Ann episode on DVD. Now.

Why?

Well, it began long ago. I just started freshman year of high school and still adored the Fox Kids lineup of X-Men, Spiderman, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had Storm, Rogue, Jubilee, Mary Jane, and April O’Neil for breakfast.

Then on an opposing channel, Rose came about.

This female animator penciled in a unique, oddball heroine to ABC’s Disney-dominated One Saturday Morning.

And that character’s name was Pepper Ann Pearson- much too cool for seventh grade.

She didn’t wear a cape or have superhuman abilities, but happened to have one of the best theme songs ever!

The series revolved around teenage problems like zits, first kisses, awkwardness, fitting in, and questioning identity. Pepper Ann doesn’t want to be considered a freak, but it’s freakiness, it’s weirdness that gives her charm, gives her strength. She’s someone that definitely needs to be around today. This female character could give girls that one shining example that it doesn’t matter how others see them– it’s how they see themselves. When Pepper Ann hung out with eighth grade girls and then confessed that she wasn’t one of them, they still saw her as “cool.” It’s wonderful validation that she didn’t need.

Pepper Ann also showed that boys and girls could be the best of friends- a solid dynamic worthy of applause. It sets a positive example that there’s nothing wrong with adolescent male and female companionship. Pepper Ann, Nicky, and Milo are a unit. They’re inseparable. Although at times, this closeness appeared to be a problem especially with that of Milo questioning his “manliness” and Pepper Ann wanting to focus on her crush- Craig the eighth grader. Of course, they have other fights, but they come together like glue in the end.

Pepper Ann lives with her single mom and skateboard loving younger sister, Moose.

I love that Pepper Ann’s moral conscious talks to her almost every episode. The essence is Pepper Ann, but it’s far more than mirrored image. Crossword puzzle squares and even a plate of cafeteria beans and wieners warps into Pepper Ann’s visage! It’s creative storytelling genius! The wiser mental part of Pepper Ann always reveals right moral ground.

In watching it now, one cannot help noticing feminist hints weaved into whimsical, offbeat animation. There were episodes focused on equal rights for men and women and even ageism.

For example, in “Single, Unemployed,” Pepper Ann’s mom quits her job at a mall fashion boutique. Her boss needed her. Female customers had formed a bond that couldn’t be forged with the male shop owner. She struggled to find another. It illustrated real life situation of being under qualified or overqualified, but being also being a persistent mother who wouldn’t give up. Her boss gave her the job back, allowed her to sell sarongs, and made her partner!

In “Dances With Ignorance,” Pepper Ann is exited to learn about her Native background. Instead of being respectful and considerate, she acts out in complete stereotypes including making inappropriate sounds, wearing her hair like “Pocahontas” (tossing deliberate shade at an offensive depiction) offending the visiting family. She ultimately apologizes for ignorant behavior. It provided an effective way of teaching kids that messages seen in popular media aren’t necessarily true and can be hurtful to a culture. We as a society must hold differing histories in high regard and realize that this issue is still such a sensitive issue.

The vocal stars are a dream, too. Clea Lewis, Jenna Oy, Bebe Neuwirth, King of the Hill alums Pamela Adlon, Kathy Najimi, and the late Brittany Murphy, Inspector Gadget‘s late Don Adams and Cree Summer and the late James Avery.

So please consider finally releasing Pepper Ann on DVD. It’s like quirky, awesome, “one in a million” television. A cartoon, yes, but Pepper Ann’s crazy antics never gets old! It would be a dream come true to see a new generation being influenced by this special, humorous girl.

Or at least stop blocking people from putting up episodes on Youtube.

Thanks,

Janyce

Janyce Denise Glasper is a nerdy afrocentric vegan artist, writer, and film/TV buff from Dayton, Ohio. Currently residing in Philly, she holds a BFA in drawing from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Post Baccalaureate certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She will continue MFA studies at PAFA whilst running http://afroveganchick.blogspot.com/ and http://femfilmrogues.blogspot.com/, eating cherry chocolate bars, drinking Starbucks, attending film festivals, and slaying vampires Buffy style!

‘Adventure Time’ vs. ‘Regular Show’

There is one thing that, for me, gives ‘Adventure Time’ a bit of an edge over ‘Regular Show’, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, ‘Regular Show’ is pretty much a bro-zone while ‘Adventure Time’ has a bit more room for the ladies.

This cross-post by Amanda Lyons appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

I probably wouldn’t know anything about either Adventure Time or Regular Show, both awesome cartoons, if I didn’t have a young niece and nephew. Happily, I do, and they have brought these shows into my life. That’s one of the things that’s so great about having children around; they keep you young.

And I don’t think there has to be a winner and a loser – there’s room for more than one at the top, y’know? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Besides, both of these shows are awesome. They’re funny, hip, contemporary, relevant; great for kids but stuffed with adult references and jokes as well, and the animation is really great.

(Also, as an aside, Mr. Meows and young nephew Meows both insisted, before I had seen Regular Show, that I am just like Pops. This troubled me; was this a good thing or a bad thing? Were they making fun of me? When I finally saw it, I still wasn’t sure, but I can tell you one thing: they are right! BTW Pops on sugar is analogous to me on coffee)

BUT. There is one thing that, for me, gives Adventure Time a bit of an edge over Regular Show, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, RS is pretty much a bro-zone while AT has a bit more room for the ladies.

Don’t get me wrong – RS is great, and I do love it. It’s apparently PG-rated and is often required by the Cartoon Network to be toned down. As far as cartoons go, it’s edgy for sure, definitely the hipster older brother of cartoon shows. It’s packed with knowing references to the 80’s and popular culture that may fly over the heads of my niece and nephew (while still making them laugh) but hit my sense of humor square on the target.

But over an hour of watching RS, though I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, I also felt more and more left out. RS is hip, magical and weird, but all of this comes from men only. Women are marginal and disappointingly, exist only as glorifed T&A with typical cartoon long lashes. Bros get all the funny lines and all the adventures. Women are passive, side-line decoration.

This is thrown into stark relief when you look at the cast of characters. There’s only one (kind of) significant female, Margaret the red-breasted (huh, huh) robin. She’s a secondary character, and pretty much solely exists as a babe that Mordecai has a crush on. They take this pretty far sometimes – check out this clip – fairly hot and heavy for what is, at the end of the day, a kid’s show. (Update: in the newer episodes, Margaret features more and gets to do more stuff so she seems more rounded. They have also added in her utterly adorable friend Eileen and Muscle Man’s girlfriend Starla who’s pretty bitchin’, although she conforms to that weird cartoon law that boyfriend/girlfriend characters have to look more like brother/sister. At the end of the day though, these females are all secondary and important more for how they relate to the main male characters as girlfriends/love objects rather than characters in their own right.)

I’ve addressed this kind of thing before, in my post about The Hunger Games. Maybe some of you will think I’m being whiny and nit-picky. But I find it really disappointing because I want young girls today to have a different experience from the one I had – in which the world reflected back to me was for men only; where they had all the main roles, made all the jokes, solved all the problems, went on all the adventures, while women/girls just looked on adoringly and batted their eyelashes. And it’s not only girls who are affected by this – think of all the debates recently over whether women can be funny, whether they can possibly be authentic participators in geek culture, whether they can be effective leaders in the business world, blah blah blah ad infinitum. Why is this (still) happening? Because both men and women are affected by a severe lack of positive female role models in our culture – or should I say, exposure of said role models, because they’re there, they just don’t get the air time. As documentary Miss Representation states, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” These cartoon representations may be fictional, but they affect us in our real lives, how we act and how we perceive other people – both boys and girls.

Watching RS I’m taken back to my childhood, to pretend play, and how I would always have to ‘be’ the male characters because they were the ones who were active and funny, they were the ones I admired. RS is the same – I mean, who would want to ‘be’ Margaret?? Sure, she’s cool and all, but she doesn’t do anything except get her norks out!! It worries me the kind of takeaway that kids are going to get from that, and it worries me that kids may already be encouraged to view females as sexualized bodies – it’s all around them already, do we have to put it in cartoons as well?

Oh yeah, there’s also this little gem, from an episode in which Mordecai goes on a series of bad dates. It’s your typical montage of bad date situations, but buried in there is a humorless-looking, unsmiling woman who aggressively asserts, “Oh, so you agree that women are misrepresented in most forms of popular media?” I get that the joke is about people who press their political views on you at inappropriate times, but I feel it’s telling that the writers chose to use a feminist viewpoint, and one that I would consider fairly uncontroversial at that. (Especially as this is a complaint I feel RS could do with taking under consideration – is someone feeling a little defensive? Or worse, do they consider this question annoying or irrelevant?) I also felt like it was a “joke” which had been discarded as passe by 1988, and it was perplexing and disappointing to see it come up in a kid’s cartoon. Do we want to train a new generation of kids to laugh off legitimate feminist concerns as a joke? One wonders how this would come across if they were to replace this “uptight” woman with like, a humorless civil rights activist. Not gonna lie, that did really annoy me (just call me a feminist killjoy) and RS definitely loses a few points for that one.

Princesses: Gotta Catch 'Em All — Princesses: Gotta catch ’em all

Conversely, Adventure Time is much more female-inclusive. The main two characters are still guys, but at least in their land there are a whole lot of females that get to be a significant part of the story – there are heeeeaps and heeeeaps of Princesses with a range of looks and voices. They are rulers and they have far more characteristics than their physical appearance. There’s also a parallel-universe episode where the main characters swap genders – only a one-shot (well, several-shot) but a fascinating idea, and not just done in the name of cheap gender-jokes, but executed in a way that makes it clear the opposite-gender versions of the characters are every bit the equal of the originals – althoooough the Fionna and Cake stories I’ve seen so far have tended to have a bias towards more romantic story lines, but then Finn isn’t without this either – it’s just that because he’s the main man, he gets more variation, as well.

AT is perhaps not as hip as RS, but it is just as magical – perhaps slightly more so. It’s definitely just as weird, existing in a deliciously surreal and at times kind of disturbing universe.

So, at the end of the day, while I raucously enjoy Regular Show (and identify to a worrying degree with Pops) it’s Adventure Time that really has my heart. Keep representing and taking us on your quests, Adventure Time! I love you for it.

Better Than Two: Female Power Trios in Children’s TV

This guest post by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

One of the oldest tropes in children’s TV is the use of characters that fight or solve crimes as an ensemble. Most notably, the Power Trio, or the three character group, is a popular formula in numerous cartoons and TV shows, from Sailor Moon to the Powerpuff Girls. There are very distinct differences in the depiction of female characters between the two-girl tag-along formula, which you can see in The Archie Show or Scooby-Doo, and the three girl ensemble formula in shows such as The Powerpuff Girls.

One of the most recognizable female duos in children’s entertainment are the iconic frenemies from the Archie comic books and The Archie Show, Betty and Veronica. Despite their mutual adoration of Archie, the two girls are almost polar opposites: Betty is the tomboyish, girl-next-door blonde, while Veronica is the sultry, high-maintenance brunette; Betty is sensitive and caring, while Veronica is often depicted as cold-hearted and manipulative. Female duos in cartoons and children’s TV, such as the Betty and Veronica duality, play on the Light Feminine and Dark Feminine trope: the idea behind the Betty and Veronica duality implies that a woman is a tomboy or a bitch, a sweetheart or a vixen—but never both. The Betty and Veronica duality could be interpreted as safe female vs. dangerous female: the stereotype that the “safe female” (laid-back, tomboy, funny) is un-dateable, while the “dangerous female” is a guy-magnet but incredibly uptight. Another popular female duo in children’s TV can be seen in Scooby-Doo: Velma is the unattractive but intelligent female, while Daphne is the dumb beauty queen. The stereotype is obvious: smart girls are unattractive, and pretty girls will never be smart. When it comes to children’s TV and cartoons, the oversimplification of characters and character traits is usually excusable, but a simplified character doesn’t necessarily have to be a (mostly negative) stereotype.

The problem with dualities—for the sake of contrast—leads to broad generalizations. Mad Men’s “Maidenform” episode, in which the men point out women in the office and classify them as either a Jackie or a Marilyn, is a great example of how women can be easily placed in distinct categories; but generalizations are not accurate, and they imply that the Jackies can’t share any traits with the Marilyns, and vice versa—but Jackie Onassis was a fashion icon, and Marilyn Monroe used to write poetry, so categorizing women is not always that simple. This either-or depiction of femininity is, to say the least, very limiting. Female duos imply that a girl or a woman cannot favor both beauty and brains, but must choose between one of the two. In a sense, the “duo” (as the word implies) is a two-dimensional representation of the feminine: a woman is either intelligent/safe, or dumb/sexy. What is missing is a gray area.

There are countless TV shows and cartoons that feature three girl ensembles, not to mention five girl ensembles, which are an almost different story. Although the trope is typically reserved for children’s entertainment, it has leaked into teen and adult movies and TV shows as well, such as Charlie’s Angels and Charmed. Female Power Trios are extremely prominent in anime, with Sailor Moon paving the way for color-coded magical warriors or witches, and Western animation following suit with shows such as Powerpuff Girls and Totally Spies.

Anime has countless examples of power group/ensemble series. The Power Trio in female-oriented anime was widely popular with the Magical Warriors anime subcategory, most notably with Sailor Moon. While the completed Sailor Senshi group is composed of five girls, the majority of the first season focuses on the trio composed of Usaki/Moon, Amy/Mercury, and Rei/Mars—respectively, they represent beauty, brains, and strength. The last two girls to join the group, Makoto/Jupiter and Minako/Venus, represent a blend of two of the three traits: Sailor Jupiter is a tough fighter, but at the same time also sensitive and easily infatuated; while Minako is similar in appearance to Usagi, but is more level-headed and rational. Several other anime series, some inspired by the Sailor Moon craze, feature color-coded female Power Trios (some turn into five character ensembles): Futari wa Pretty Cure, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Ojamajo Doremi, to name a few. Western animation has its own good share of female Power Trios. Josie & the Pussycats, Totally Spies! and The Powerpuff Girls all follow the same structure: sassy redhead as group leader, tough no-nonsense brunette, and childish but sensitive blondes. Even Australian TV with H2O: Just Add Water features a milder version of the Power Trio with three teenage mermaids who each represent one of the three traits.

The Power Trio females typically feature characters with abilities that are valued in their own distinct forms, rather than basing their personal advantage (beauty/brains) through comparison with their opposite (dumb/ugly). In that sense, Power Trio are better than the two-girl formulas, since trios rely on teamwork and collaboration, rather than rivalry. Unlike the female duos, Power Trios suggest that female characters can possess a larger spectrum of abilities than simply the generalized smart/dumb notion.

Emanuela Betti is a part-time writer, occasional astrologer, neurotic pessimist by day and ball-breaking feminist by night. She miraculously graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and writes about music and movies on her blog.

‘The Magic Garden’: Female Leaders In Children’s Television

With their soft voices and pigtails Paula and Carole had a purpose: they created a serene little oasis while sitting on swings and singing, calling kids to “come and see our garden grow.” In ‘The Magic Garden,’ there was a garden of make-believe where the “magic tree grows lollypop sticks.” Paula picked on her guitar and Carole encouraged you to stamp your feet or clap your hands on the “pop” during “Pop Goes the Weasel” without sounding like a droning fire alarm. Watching an episode of ‘The Magic Garden’ was like going to a music class—the women pushed kids to sing faster and faster with the speed of the music, harmonizing and smiling, their easy melody a break of sorts to all of the outside noise.

This guest post by Hayley Krischer appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Kids of the 1970s weren’t exactly background noise as they were in the 1950s or worse, used as child labor as they were in the early 1900s, but if you were under 10 between 1971-1978, you probably knew the feeling of getting tossed around in the back seat of a car with no seatbelts. We rolled around in dirty piles of leaves left out on the street. Girls across the US regularly burned their knuckles on the incandescent light bulb used to “cook” brownies in the iconic Easy-Bake Oven. Movies for kids revolved around drunk baseball coaches who cursed you out if you didn’t hit a home run. (Though that movie, with a female pitcher of an all boys baseball team, happened to be my favorite.) We drank potentially lethal doses of Coke and Pop Rocks to see if our stomach would explode. (Urban legend warned the kid from the “Hey Mikey, he likes it,” Life cereal commercial died from the combination.)

The one safe place it seemed for kids of the 1970s was, believe it or not, planted in front of the television. There in the comfort of your den (which morphed into the “family room” by the 1980s), the 70s were at its most educational with Sesame Street, the most influential with Fat Albert, the most feminist with Free to Be You and Me, and the most creative with The Muppet Show. Schoolhouse Rock taught us about interjections. Sesame Street taught us that it was OK to have an imaginary friend (Snuffleupagus used to be Big Birds’s pretend buddy before they allowed everyone to see him).

And squeezed in between all of this creative genius was a sweet little interlude broadcasted on a local New York station headed by Carole Demas and Paula Janis called The Magic Garden. With their soft voices and pigtails Paula and Carole had a purpose: they created a serene little oasis while sitting on swings and singing, calling kids to “come and see our garden grow.” In The Magic Garden, there was a garden of make-believe where the “magic tree grows lollypop sticks.” Paula picked on her guitar and Carole encouraged you to stamp your feet or clap your hands on the “pop” during “Pop Goes the Weasel” without sounding like a droning fire alarm. Watching an episode of The Magic Garden was like going to a music class—the women pushed kids to sing faster and faster with the speed of the music, harmonizing and smiling, their easy melody a break of sorts to all of the outside noise.

And like a lot of children’s television shows in the 70s—Romper Room, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, The New Zoo Revue and the king of make-believe, Fred Rogers —The Magic Garden was live-action. Carole and Paula had skits—my favorite being the Story Box: it was a beat up trunk box, really. But when it was opened, a world of imagination appeared, giving me the tools and encouragement to allow my mind to dream. Carole and Paula would pull out props and costumes. Other special regulars included a patch of daisies called the Chuckle Patch where the ladies would pull out jokes on little cards. The flowers would giggle after each joke.

Now it’s hard to watch any children’s television without comparing it to The Magic Garden—though Yo Gabba Gabba, with its sweet songs and not-so-pushy life lessons (“Nice and easy, nice and slow. But sometimes I like to move around and dance, dance, dance!”) feels like a good successor to those shows of the 70s. There’s an element of kitsch delivered with some emotional acknowledgement about how children deal with real life situations.

Watching it as an adult, I see how limited a production The Magic Garden was, but that was part of its appeal, I think. The tree was fake. The Chuckle Patch wasn’t made of real flowers. But as a child, set production isn’t important. The Magic Garden’s focus was all about Carole and Paula—they drove the show forward with their sunny momentum. Other shows during that time had fuzzy and cuddly adult leaders, sure, but they were mostly men. There was Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street, Fred Rogers, Gordon (who is still played by Roscoe Orman) on Sesame Street and Captain Kangaroo. Yes, there was the female host on Romper Room, but she was as rotating host.

Paula and Carole might as well have been my mother’s friends, or neighbors who happened to play guitar and have super cool ideas who smiled all the time and sang in lovely harmony. They came into my house daily with their tales from their Magic Garden. And I adored them.

Hayley Krischer is a regular writer for Salon about the intersection of feminism and pop culture. She co-writes the feminist parenting blog Femamom and you can also find her on Twitter or on her Tumblr where she’s currently obsessing over Orange Is The New Black.

Friendship Is More Than Magic: Feminism and Relationships in ‘Puella Magi Madoka Magica’

…..That wasn’t very hard to imagine after all, was it?

Kicking ass and taking names is more fun with your friends

This guest post by Kathryn Diaz appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

…..That wasn’t very hard to imagine after all, was it?

The world of Gen Urobuchi and Alex Von David’s 12-episode anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM from here on out) is a bleak one, and the frills of magic and a futuristic backdrop don’t make it any less recognizable. Girls of a certain age are propositioned by manipulative bastard Kyubey to make a contract with him. One wish, one miracle, and they can become beautiful guardians of justice. It’s the kind of rhetoric that sits next door to “any girl can be a princess” and “you can make your dreams come true if you just believe.” And yes, it’s a trap.

Kyubey is so cute you almost forget he’s evil.

The Magical Girls can’t use up too much of their magic, or else their soul gem becomes dirty. To keep the gem “pure,” the girls must earn grief seeds by annihilating witches. Sometimes this means letting a Witch get away with murder until it’s nice and big. Sometimes this means killing another girl for ownership of the seed. That’s just how it is. Don’t whine about hurting other girls, don’t you know they’re after you too? Don’t you want to do the smart thing? In Kyubey’s Magical Girl system–you perish as a girl or suffer long enough to turn into a Witch. That’s right. The Witches are the Magical Girls that couldn’t keep their gems pure enough and lost hope. But don’t expect Kyubey to say that before he orders you to defeat them.

What keeps PMMM from being more than just a grim tableau of systemized manipulation and elevates it into bona-fide feminist fairy tale territory is the girls that populate the landscape and the lengths they go to help each other. Meet Mami, Sayaka, Kyoko, Homura, and Madoka.

Mami Tomoe is the team mom. She comes onto the scene to the tune of her own theme song and invites Madoka and Sayaka over for tea and snacks after rescuing them from a Witch. Mami is the advice giver, the protector, the good example big sister. “It’s a really hard decision, isn’t it?” She says about Kyubey’s contract. “There’s no reason to rush into it.” Ever assertive, Kyubey interrupts, “Though for me, the sooner you decide, the better.” Mami dismisses him with a laugh, “Nobody likes a boy who pressures girls to do things.”

Sayaka Miki is the black-and-white idealist. She shuffles events, facts, and people into good or bad categories as quickly as she cracks jokes or shrugs off her angst. Sayaka is the one who realizes that she and Madoka can’t think of any good wishes because they’ve lived such sheltered lives and wonders why it’s so unfair. When being a Magical Girl doesn’t turn out the way she wanted, Sayaka resolves to keep fighting. “I’m going to be a different kind of Magical Girl from all of you,” she says. “I’ll be the only Magical Girl who won’t use her magic for herself.”

Kyoko Sakura plays a tough game. She’s a loner, and doesn’t have too many qualms with eliminating other girls or letting go of small prey. “The weak have to give way to the strong,” she says. But underneath her talk, Kyoko has a heart as sensitive as Sayaka’s, and her outlook on life has been earned just as bitterly as any other experienced girl’s. In the end, Kyoko can’t abandon a Magical Girl she identifies with, and proves that she’s as loyal as she is fierce.

Homura Akemi is a woman on a mission, and nothing and no one can stop her. Although we learn that Homura was once a timid girl, the young woman who races against time to stop Kyubey and save Madoka is anything but. Her aloof demeanor is her armor, and her determination is her greatest weapon. The core of Homura’s motive is love. Since she first became a magical girl, Homura has carried a devoted, undying love in her heart. “It’s the only thing I have left to guide me,” she confesses quietly.

Madoka Kaname spends most of the series as “the best friend” of the Magical Girls. She follows her friends on their hunts so they won’t be alone, crying, “This just can’t be right!” from the sidelines. She is a true comforter and supporter of the girls. It’s her hope from the time she’s rescued by Mami to the very end that Magical Girls stand with each other in spite of their differences and support one another.

As mentioned earlier, all these girls, in one way or another, eventually try to help each other in massive ways. These actions in all the forms they take are based in communicating experiences and developing empathy. Not only do these actions form the crux of the Magical Girls’ character arcs, but they serve as the major plot points of the larger PMMM plot. Let’s say that again: the most important events in this story are girls looking out for girls in a system where they are explicitly not supposed to.

Mami begins the story as Ms. Helpful, but her self-imposed responsibility for Madoka and Sayaka extends beyond showing them the ropes. Mami wants to give them what she never had: the right to an informed, carefully weighed choice. Mami tells Madoka and Sayaka about the lore of Magical Girls to make sure they’ll fully understand the tradition they’ll be becoming a part of. “You have the rare chance to have any wish granted, but remember that wish lies side-by-side with death.” She doesn’t bother with subtlety or ominous words. Life is too short for that, and her junior Magical Girls deserve better. Mami’s most meaningful reveal to the girls, however, is not in lore or an anecdote, but in her very personal feelings. “I only push myself and pretend to be cool,” she tells Madoka. “When I’m scared or hurting, there’s no one I can talk to. All I can do is cry on my own.” Madoka understands, or at least she does her best. She asks to be the person Mami needs and be her Magical Girl partner in justice. Madoka and Mami’s friendship is cemented through sharing and empathy. This has such a profound impact on Mami that she races and twirls through her next fight, overjoyed. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore,” she says. “Because I’m not alone anymore!”

Nothing raises the spirit like true friendship

The other profound heart-to-heart in PMMM is between Kyoko and Sayaka. When Sayaka takes the truth about Kyubey’s Magical Girl system particularly hard, Kyoko’s remedy is to take her out for some air and show Sayaka why her self-serving approach to life isn’t so bad after all. “If you only live for yourself, you only have your own mistakes to pay for,” Kyoko says. She didn’t always think that way, but when her selfless wish lead to the deaths of her whole family, she reconsidered. Kyoko’s tragic history doesn’t change Sayaka’s mind about being a selfless Magical Girl, but it does wash away the violent animosity between them and establish a deep understanding based on empathy. From this moment on, the two girls are bonded. Sayaka speaks candidly with Kyoko about her mounting disenchantment and grief. Kyoko comes to care for Sayaka enough to stay beside her even after she turns into a Witch. Because of how they’ve connected, Kyoko understands the kind of pain festering in Sayaka’s Witch. Since she cannot change her back, Kyoko decides to sacrifice her life to end Sayaka’s Witch, staying beside her to the very end and saving the rest of the Magical Girls.

Sass-offs make great groundwork for love and sacrifice

Homura, as it turns out, has been using her time manipulation powers to try and save Madoka from Kyubey. Over. And over. And Over. The more she tries, the more ruthless her determination becomes. Homura gives up all other hopes and aspirations for one impossible task. “It’s the only thing I have left to guide me,” she admits quietly. Why? Because Madoka was kind to her. She showed her friendship and love, and Homura can’t bear the thought of the world losing her forever. The story embraces this devotion when the reason behind Madoka’s exceptional magic potential is revealed. Every timeline Homura negated to save Madoka is stacked inside of her. Every time Homura decided not to give up, every time Homura let a piece of herself go so she could keep trying is nested in Madoka’s soul, and it has only made her stronger.

To repay Homura and save everyone she has ever loved, Madoka gets out from the sidelines and puts the strength Homura’s love has given her to good use. It turns out there is something in the world worth becoming a magical girl for: “I wish to erase all Witches before they are born. All the witches in all the universes, both past and future, with my own hands! All those who fought against Witches, who believed in hope as Magical Girls–I don’t want to see them cry. If any rule or law stands in the way of that…I will destroy it. I will rewrite it.”

Madoka rewrites Kyubey-archy and creates a new universe

That’s right. Madoka uses her wish to undo Kyubey’s system and ease the suffering of every Magical Girl there ever was and will be. No more systemized destruction between girls for Kyubey’s benefit. No more exploitation of girls’ hope. No more fighting Witches. Madoka takes the idea of ‘wish fulfillment fantasy’ to a spectacular new level, but I did say this story was a fairy tale, remember? As Madoka’s wish comes true, we see her visit girls in ancient civilizations, in war-ravaged countries, girls of color, girls with different languages, with different cultures and beliefs. She touches their soul gem to take the despair away and shares a moment of understanding with them. When they close their eyes they die, smiling.

This montage matters not just so we can cry into our laptops at the impossible beauty of a little girl willing a kinder world into existence, but so that we know Madoka has not invented world peace. The world still has curses. Life is still imperfect and girls still suffer and die young. Madoka isn’t even Madoka anymore. Standing with every Magical Girl at once means becoming primordial force in the universe, unseen and unknown to those that aren’t Magical Girls. What is achieved is fundamental comfort, peace, and hope. “You aren’t just giving us hope,” Mami says. “You’re becoming hope itself. The hope for us all.” Because Madoka has been a source of comfort and empathy from the beginning, this means that “the hope for us all” starts with reaching out to fellow girls and women across barriers. This means that standing with girls against forces that would have you tear each other apart can help change the world. Not too fantastical after all, huh?

Like all good fairy tales, PMMM sweetens all the tragedy that came before and wraps its rich symbolism in a neat bow. At the end, tucks you in bed with a moral to give sweet dreams:

“Don’t forget, always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone.”

And, you know, there’s always room to be that kind of Magical Girl too.

Kathryn Diaz is a writer living in Houston, Texas. You can follow her at The Telescope for more of her work.

‘Steven Universe’: A Superhero Team We Can Believe In

‘Steven Universe’ embraces non-traditional families. Steven is a perfectly happy kid, who is raised by three women who love him. The Gems are wonderful guardians for Steven, acting as mothers, sisters, and leaders to him. Even though the Gems and Steven don’t always see eye to eye, they always try to step beyond their comfort zones for one another. The Gems may not understand the concept of video games, but if Steven wants to go to an arcade, then they’ll go. If Steven wants to throw them several birthdays for the thousands of ones they haven’t celebrated, they’ll let him dress like a clown and play party games with them, because even though they don’t understand it, it clearly means a lot to Steven.

This guest post by Megan Wright appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

In the past years, with all the superhero movies coming out, it’s no surprise that children’s shows would become especially interested in making TV shows to capitalize on the trend. Granted, Saturday morning cartoons have always featured some superheroes, but there have been a great deal of superhero shows coming out lately: Avengers Assemble, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.!, are just a few examples. But Steven Universe, a show that revolves around a young superhero in the making, is one of the best – and most progressive – examples on television.

Steven is a young boy who gets his superpowers from his powerful gem passed on to him from his mother, who died after giving up her gem. Since his birth, Steven has lived with his mother’s former teammates, the Crystal Gems, who raise Steven and help train him to become a Crystal Gem.

Steven also has a good relationship with his father, who doesn’t live with the Gems, but rather in his van. Greg Universe may not always understand the Gems and vice versa, but they get along for Steven’s sake. And even though Steven’s superpowers make Greg nervous, he’ll try to understand and help his son with them. The series makes it clear that one of the reasons Steven is such a carefree and sweet child is that he was raised in a positive environment, with four adult figures who clearly care and love him. His ideas, even if they don’t always work, are praised; his enthusiasm for everything encouraged. Even when his superpowers don’t work, the Gems always try to help him get better as a hero.

Family Portrait: The Gems (and their weapons) and Steven

Most superhero shows have mainly male superheroes as either the focus of the show, or the majority of the team. It’s interesting to see a show that revolves mainly around women with superpowers. Due to his young age, Steven’s powers are inconsistent, so most of the monsters that the Gems battle are defeated by his teammates: Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. These characters each come equipped with their own special gems, weapons, and superpowers, making them the strength behind the superhero show.

One of the best things about the Gems is how different they are from one another, both in personality and body type. Everything about these characters differs physically: hair, weight, height, superoutfits, etc. Young girls watching this show can probably identify with Amethyst’s outfit of jeans and a shirt, Pearl’s skirt and tights, or Garnet’s shades than they can with Black Widow’s catsuit. It also passes on the message that you don’t have to look a certain way to be a superhero. For girls who constantly have to see huge breasts, skin-tight costumes, and somehow impeccably styled hair if they want to see a female superhero, this show has to be a relief.

Even better is the fact that the Gems all have their own personalities, which go much deeper than most kid shows’ characters. Pearl is orderly and the most cautious of the Gems, but it’s mainly the result of trying to protect Steven on missions. It also doesn’t take away from her abilities as a superhero – she doesn’t shy away from violence and is a master swordswoman.

Meanwhile, Amethyst is much more disorderly and has a lax personality about most things, which leads her to clash with the other Gems. This is explored in “Tiger Millionaire,” an episode where it’s discovered that Amethyst has been participating in underground wrestling in order to get out all her energy and frustration with the other Gems. By the end of the episode, Pearl and Garnet understand Amethyst’s frustration, and support her wrestling.

Garnet is the team leader, a quiet and stoic personality who commands the Gems and keeps them in line. She’s frequently seen going off on missions of her own, and she is the most powerful of the Gems. Her cool head helps keep Steven safe, and keeps Pearl and Amethyst from bickering all the time.

The Gems (from left to right): Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet — The Gems (from left to right): Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet

The series empathizes teamwork between women rather than fighting. While Amethyst and Pearl might not always get along, the show makes it clear that they are still close teammates. In “Giant Woman,” it’s revealed that Pearl and Amethyst can form together to make Opal, a single being who is a powerful combination of their personalities, weapons, and skills. Unfortunately, because their attitudes clash most of the time, they have a hard time forming her. It’s only when they put their bickering aside that they can become Opal, which gives them an advantage in battle. Opal allows them to crush enemies that they would have been stumped by otherwise. The show empathizes that when women work together, they are more powerful.

I’m a feminist and a superhero fan, and sometimes those two loves conflict. I adore superhero comics, movies, and television shows, but I still have to acknowledge they have their problems. Most women are dressed in skin-tight outfits or barely any clothes at all, women are still in the minority numbers on teams, and there still hasn’t been a movie released yet that has a female as the main superhero.

What Steven Universe gives me is a show that offers a distinctively different take on female superheroes – they’re the most powerful beings on the show, they wear outfits that actually look useful for fighting crime in, and the show allows them to show their inner personalities as well as kick ass. I’m so excited that there’s a show out there like this for young girls: one that reinforces positive cooperation between women, that allows their female characters to have each have their own body types and personalities, and lets them see strong females that don’t apologize for their power.

Megan Wright is a TV reviewer for Gotta Watch It. This is her second time as a guest writer for Bitch Flicks.

‘Adventure Time’: Why Lumpy Space Princess is Important

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on ‘Adventure Time’ such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and make up.

Written by Gaayathri Nair as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Thanks to my friend Kaz whose thoughts added much to this post.

Adventure Time has long been admired by feminists and for good reason. On its face, the show is just another buddy comedy type cartoon with its lead protagonists–Jake the dog and Finn the human–two dudes who go on adventures together that are often bizarre and hilarious. However, that description denies the complexity of the show, which deals with themes as diverse as depression, trauma, temporary disability, bullying, dating, relationships, and so much more. The show has many interesting and diverse female characters. One of the most interesting characters on the show is Lumpy Space Princess, commonly known as LSP.

One of her defining characteristics is that LSP is completely unapologetic, often rude, and sometimes vulgar. LSP seems to personify all the negative things we are supposed to believe about women in that she is shallow, vain, not interested in serious things like actually ruling her kingdom, and boy crazy. On top of all that she does this without having any of the things we are supposed to think of as “womanly virtues” like being kind, or gentle, or compassionate. In a traditional fairy tale or even in more contemporary narratives, LSP would automatically be coded as a villain. She ticks all the boxes – she is confident, obsessed with her appearance, and not very nice.

However in Adventure Time, LSP is not a villain, she is a friend of Finn and Jake. Sometimes they don’t really get her but that’s cool, people can be different from each other and still be friends. She sometimes manages to help them out but often screws things up because she is really selfish and also not very self-aware. For this reason, LSP is a pretty polarizing character in the fandom. People seem to either love her or hate her and to be fair her self-centeredness does lead her to do some awful things. For example in a recent episode Finn decided he wanted to try and cope with his depression over losing his arm by trying to “make out” with lots of people. One of these people is LSP but she is unsatisfied with Finn’s definition of “making out,” which is a chaste kiss on the lips and she forcibly pulls Finn into a deeper kiss when he explicitly told her he didn’t want to. The show doesn’t really process this; it seems to further cement Finn’s depression and make him question whether “making out” is the best way for Finn to cope with not really being able to feel things. It would have been better had the show found a way for Finn to communicate to LSP that her behavior was not acceptable even though they are friends, but it makes sense for that not to happen because Finn was conflicted about his own behavior and just generally numb about what is going on in his life.

I find interesting, however, that LSP often attracts so much vitriol as the male version of her character, a male person who is self- absorbed, confident, brash and horrible to the people around him is often a very celebrated trope. Think about characters like House or Sherlock—of course these characters have an additional quality as they are imbued with the traditionally masculine virtue of being brilliant or incredibly talented/gifted.

LSP gets no such pass because she is not brilliant, she is just vain and annoying and a lot of the hate she gets boils down to “she thinks she’s so awesome but she’s not.” Even if she was brilliant at something in the way that Princess Bubblegum is, I don’t think she would be embraced in the same way a male character with her disposition would. Look at Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada; despite being imbued with pretty much all of the same qualities as the male characters I discussed earlier she is automatically coded as villainous. While we begin to understand more about her as the movie progresses, she never really loses that shadow of villainy.

I think the existence of LSP is an great thing. To have an unlikeable female character who is not immediately cast as a villain is so rare but I sometimes worry that the joke is meant to be exactly what a lot of people think about LSP, that she thinks she’s so great when it is clear to us as the viewers that she is not actually. I want the joke to be LSP is as exactly as awesome as she thinks she is, but she needs to learn how to learn how to be a better friend and respect other people’s boundaries. That is something that I find much more compelling–everyone needs to learn things as we grow up and LSP is no exception. This doesn’t mean her personality needs to change completely; she just needs to learn how to be more considerate. I hope the writers choose to go in this direction rather making LSP a two-dimensional joke.

Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

Celebrating ‘Sesame Street’

So what does idealistic, feminist children’s television look like? It looks like ‘Sesame Street,’ which over the course of its 45-year run has won more than 120 Emmy Awards. ‘Sesame Street’s frank and honest treatment of race, women’s rights, adoption, breastfeeding, death, childbirth, incarceration, divorce, HIV, health, bilingualism, and poverty throughout the years has added a dimension of social understanding to a show that also deals with teaching children their ABC’s and 123’s.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Until I was in kindergarten, the only channel I ever saw was PBS. For all I knew, it was the only channel that existed. I was an only child on a small farm, and in addition to the woods and barns, Sesame Street was my playground.

The diversity and multiculturalism that the show has prioritized since it debuted in 1969–45 years ago this year–not only exposed me to a world outside of my rural homogeneous upbringing, but it also certainly shaped who I would become.

Sesame Street‘s roots–as progressive, authentic, research-based, educational television for children–transformed the way generations saw television, education, and themselves.

With a background in education and journalism, Joan Ganz Cooney set out in 1967 to study how television could be used to educate children. Seeing a need for education–academic and social–she penned “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education” after traveling the US and interviewing teachers, child psychologists, child development experts, and children’s TV producers. From the study, she created the Children’s Television Workshop to produce a “new kind of children’s program” (one whose format would be influenced by Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and commercials). She wanted to create a show that “would hold children’s interests, its characters would become their friends, and it would teach.”

Ganz Cooney’s resume and influence have made her an incredible force–she’s a woman whose name we should know. A self-described feminist and idealist, she was one of the first female television executives in America. She was CEO and chair of the Children’s Television Workshop until 1990, and continuously has served on nonprofit boards and worked toward literacy and education advancement for children.

So what does idealistic, feminist children’s television look like? It looks like Sesame Street, which over the course of its 45-year run has won more than 120 Emmy Awards. Sesame Street‘s frank and honest treatment of race, women’s rights, adoption, breastfeeding, death, childbirth, incarceration, divorce, HIV, health, bilingualism, and poverty throughout the years has added a dimension of social understanding to a show that also deals with teaching children their ABC’s and 123’s. A recent study showed that children who watched Sesame Street have GPA’s that are 16 percent higher than those who don’t; perform better in math, English, and science; read books for pleasure more often (and read better in kindergarten); and express “less aggressive attitudes.” Jim Henson’s Muppets and a cavalcade of guest stars over the years have helped make Sesame Street a popular, groundbreaking children’s television show.

Idealistic, feminist children’s television looks pretty good.

In its first year on air, Sesame Street landed three Emmys, a Peabody, and a TIME cover. — In its first year on air, *Sesame Street* landed three Emmys, a Peabody, and a *TIME* cover.

Of course, as a child of the 80s, I’m most familiar with the “classic” Sesame Street format and episodes. Recent years have shown growth with the times–a larger web presence, apps, streaming services, online games, and online activities have given Sesame Street a much larger network to educate and influence young minds. Over the last 45 years, Sesame Street has built an empire with the goal of not just entertaining children, but giving them a broader perspective on life and education.

Here are some highlights:

“Women Can Be”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpjmeyI2pfI”]

Buffy Sainte-Marie (who was a series regular in the late 70s and early 80s) Breastfeeding

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2RwZW2j3-U”]

Roosevelt Franklin’s “The Skin I’m In”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax2mf9IDvno”]

Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-f3PYJT5mU”]

“Goodbye, Mr. Hooper”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlj4Tk83xQ”]

“I Love My Hair”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A-BHkoWV0g”]

Maya Angelou’s “My Name”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTK0LM39ZU”]

Gordon’s “If I Had a Kid Like You” (Gordon and Susan would later adopt)

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFzPXurun5M”]

“Change the World”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHOgHPBt8oQ”]

“Feeling Good/Feeling Bad”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgYiJWVf1EY”]

“I Love Every Part of You”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as0rHfgeuvg”]

Sonia Sotomayor: “Princess is Not a Career”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHICz5MYxNQ&feature=player_embedded”]

“We All Sing the Same Song”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYXJlfcfFKU”]

I still am moved by the touching and transformative Sesame Street segments that powerfully show that we are both unique and not alone in this world. We need more of this kind of media for children (and for adults).

___________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.