Thoughts on My Little Pony "analysis."
Carefully does NOT contain spoilers for Season Four. I posted some of this on a response on Equestria Daily, but I wanted to elaborate on it here.
If you hang around the Pony fan community, as I do sometimes, you may have noticed a proliferation of "analysis videos." These sometimes include meta-analysis of the series (what age are the Mane Six? what is the nature of alicorns? how do the comics interrelate with the main series?) and sometimes analysis of the fan community as a whole. The analyses of each episode tend to take the form of reviews, culminating in why the analyst did or did not like the episode.
[When analysis destroys itself.]Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy these sometimes. I enjoy some of them quite a lot. I usually have more time for the female reviewers, especially for Rookiewompus, who when she started was practically the only female reviewer, and I think the first to discuss "feminism" in relation to MLP as a positive thing. But I just watched one by a very high profile reviewer who put his finger on a major problem with these.
He did not like the most recent episode, and as he goes through the things he likes, and then the things he hates (which is technically not "analysis," per se), he notes that most of his friendships and his community and also his job as analyst revolve around a kid's cartoon, and therefore he has a lot invested in it. I don't know exactly how the monetary aspect feeds in, but maybe Equestria Daily or YouTube monetizes what he puts up by the view? I'm not sure.
And there you have it: he says it himself. He has a lot invested in MLP and MLP analysis, maybe too much. Friendships, hobby, career--and therefore every single episode will be subjected to minute scrutiny. If there are plot holes or logic drops or anything, it won't pass the test, because it won't be deep enough to analyze. In fact, it might turn out to be . . . . a cartoon for little girls. And I think this applies to much of the analysis community as a whole. Yes, there is an actual MLP analysis community.
There is a difference between analysis and a review. When I have my students analyze Shakespeare adaptations into film, I specifically tell them not to do the "thumbs up/thumbs down/recommendation" thing. It isn't about like or dislike. It's about breaking down the details and how they relate to the text. They have a hard time steering away from like/dislike, though, because the genre of "review" is something we're used to. An "analysis" wouldn't be a further review of why the reviewer feels the way he feels about an episode of MLP. It would be a breakdown of motif, character, setting, genre, ways in which the episode fits into larger cultural contexts, historical overview, the ways in which it resembles and subverts similar material. It would be hard to get away from gender and commercialization, too, something few reviewers interrogate.
Now you can do that with really tiny and minor stuff. I once, no kidding, sat through a 45 minute lecture by a Shakespeare scholar analyzing Go, Dog, Go, and it was freaking brilliant. On the other hand, he had the chops to do that kind of thing. He used his skills breaking down sonnets and broke down a Beginner Book. It was like listening to Wynton Marsalis playing "Happy Birthday." You can analyze something and just enjoy it, too, but not usually at the same time.
Real analysis would require taking a step back, and perhaps in the process considering that to the extent that the episodes would succeed according to the MLP analysis community (transcending being a child's cartoon), they would slowly but surely stop being what they are (a child's cartoon.) It would destroy its own raison d'etre. Some of the analysis community might consider looking at Barthes and the dichotomy of plaisir/jouissance.
Or they could do what I'm doing--just enjoying the hell out of a child's cartoon. I enjoy all the details and its characters and the fun dialogue and the pop culture references, but I also enjoy it as a child's cartoon, perhaps unnecessarily good for what it is, but still, fundamentally, a child's cartoon.
And with that, I really will go back to my real work.
If you hang around the Pony fan community, as I do sometimes, you may have noticed a proliferation of "analysis videos." These sometimes include meta-analysis of the series (what age are the Mane Six? what is the nature of alicorns? how do the comics interrelate with the main series?) and sometimes analysis of the fan community as a whole. The analyses of each episode tend to take the form of reviews, culminating in why the analyst did or did not like the episode.
[When analysis destroys itself.]Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy these sometimes. I enjoy some of them quite a lot. I usually have more time for the female reviewers, especially for Rookiewompus, who when she started was practically the only female reviewer, and I think the first to discuss "feminism" in relation to MLP as a positive thing. But I just watched one by a very high profile reviewer who put his finger on a major problem with these.
He did not like the most recent episode, and as he goes through the things he likes, and then the things he hates (which is technically not "analysis," per se), he notes that most of his friendships and his community and also his job as analyst revolve around a kid's cartoon, and therefore he has a lot invested in it. I don't know exactly how the monetary aspect feeds in, but maybe Equestria Daily or YouTube monetizes what he puts up by the view? I'm not sure.
And there you have it: he says it himself. He has a lot invested in MLP and MLP analysis, maybe too much. Friendships, hobby, career--and therefore every single episode will be subjected to minute scrutiny. If there are plot holes or logic drops or anything, it won't pass the test, because it won't be deep enough to analyze. In fact, it might turn out to be . . . . a cartoon for little girls. And I think this applies to much of the analysis community as a whole. Yes, there is an actual MLP analysis community.
There is a difference between analysis and a review. When I have my students analyze Shakespeare adaptations into film, I specifically tell them not to do the "thumbs up/thumbs down/recommendation" thing. It isn't about like or dislike. It's about breaking down the details and how they relate to the text. They have a hard time steering away from like/dislike, though, because the genre of "review" is something we're used to. An "analysis" wouldn't be a further review of why the reviewer feels the way he feels about an episode of MLP. It would be a breakdown of motif, character, setting, genre, ways in which the episode fits into larger cultural contexts, historical overview, the ways in which it resembles and subverts similar material. It would be hard to get away from gender and commercialization, too, something few reviewers interrogate.
Now you can do that with really tiny and minor stuff. I once, no kidding, sat through a 45 minute lecture by a Shakespeare scholar analyzing Go, Dog, Go, and it was freaking brilliant. On the other hand, he had the chops to do that kind of thing. He used his skills breaking down sonnets and broke down a Beginner Book. It was like listening to Wynton Marsalis playing "Happy Birthday." You can analyze something and just enjoy it, too, but not usually at the same time.
Real analysis would require taking a step back, and perhaps in the process considering that to the extent that the episodes would succeed according to the MLP analysis community (transcending being a child's cartoon), they would slowly but surely stop being what they are (a child's cartoon.) It would destroy its own raison d'etre. Some of the analysis community might consider looking at Barthes and the dichotomy of plaisir/jouissance.
Or they could do what I'm doing--just enjoying the hell out of a child's cartoon. I enjoy all the details and its characters and the fun dialogue and the pop culture references, but I also enjoy it as a child's cartoon, perhaps unnecessarily good for what it is, but still, fundamentally, a child's cartoon.
And with that, I really will go back to my real work.