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The ''Critical'' Spectacle: Marxism, Ponies

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    The "Critical" Spectacle: Marxism, Ponies D. B. Stout

            In December, 2010, a piece published on the website of Ms. Magazine declared the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to be "homophobic, racist and smart-shaming." For a great number of readers, this will have come as a surprise: our main heroine is a librarian, sexuality is never addressed, the "races" of My Little Pony are not represented by color as the article asserts and so on. If we pierce the veil of ignorance which appears to surround this phenomenon, what message do we actually find? What lessons are our children or slightly-odd late teens/university age friends and family absorbing? It is a sign of the times that the answer, quite ironically, is Marxism. What follows is a much shortened and updated version of an earlier paper; for those familiar with the original, the discussion of capital and currency has been unceremoniously excised, and the argument has been rearranged into three parts.
            For those unfamiliar with the original piece, a short explanation of the three sections should clear up much confusion: labor, a necessary consideration in Marxist thought, is addressed first. Sex and sexuality, in both Marxist and post-Marxist terms, are considered as a counter to the argument made by Richter in the Ms. article mentioned above. Finally, the delivery of the Marxist content of My Little Pony is considered, in the context of the role of the state in a transitional period between capitalism and communism. The combination of Hobbes and Marx considered in the final section is unorthodox, but the full evaluation of this argument is outside the scope of the overall shortened version presented here.

  
Labor
            The nature of productive or creative labor serves as a beginning point for a number of reasons: labor, in Marxism, is essentially the center of human existence. From the arrangement of labor power in society, Marxism can draw a large number of conclusions; to wit: if one observes a society in which men are in every position of social and economic power, in which women are specifically paid less, in which all labor is subject to alienation and specialization, etc., then it is immediately clear that such a society is not equal, even if its political institutions claim to distribute rights without prejudice. The relationship of worker to work is, in the unfree society, one of metaphysical slavery; for the commodified worker:

"life begins... where [labor] activity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed. The Twelve hours' labor, on the other hand, has no meaning for him [as labor]... but as earnings, which bring him to the table [etc.]" – Wage Labour and Capital

            Labor, or work, has a significant meaning in human life: the ability to produce creatively is viewed in Marxism as a defining characteristic of humanity as a species, and thus work and life are inseparable experiences. But when the worker's labor is traded for a wage, it loses its meaning to her, and she experiences life and work as separate things. By turning her labor itself into the commodity, the worker becomes alienated from its final product; in the end, the ability by which her humanity is defined – creative labor – has been stolen from her.
            What, then, is presented in My Little Pony? To replace a term in Marx, the nature of "pony being" is determined less by productive labor than by unique ownness. Individual ponies undergo a puberty-like experience in which they discover their unique talent, something which is presented as being desirable and highly rewarding, although not always straightforward. The unique individuality a pony discovers, their "cutie mark," appears to give them the direction they seek in their creative endeavors. A pony whose talent –  magic – gives her a particular love of books becomes a librarian; another, whose "talent" marks her as an animal lover, appears to be a veterinarian. And so on.
            Labor in the world of My Little Pony is ultimately not capitalist: workers in Equestria are expected to complete their work, but know their limits and ask for help when necessary. They are taught to take pride in their accomplishments, and to use their abilities for the collective good, but they must not give in to pride or bragging. Artisanal labor is prized over mechanized labor, and capital is not used to increase productivity as a means of profit seeking. These last two properties of the economy in My Little Pony are what truly make it Marxist in nature: even when Applejack, a farmer, workers herself half to death during a harvest ("Applebuck Season"), she does not appear to be doing so with the goal of profit.
            It could be argued that Applejack is a petite bourgeoisie small-businesswoman, that her goals are inevitably about profit but she values her own labor (which she owns) differently due to a strong social ideology of hard work, etc.. To be fair, then, the analysis must turn to the most clearly bourgeois-aspirant of the characters: the dressmaker Rarity. Similarly a small-businesswoman, Rarity subscribes to a particular feminine mystique which appears no where else in the show. Beyond her role as "a proper lady," her fantasizing about a fairytale prince and her tendency to overwork herself, Rarity has a singular obsession: entering the social elite.
            What is marvelous, of course, is that she does this several times without significant difficulty. She makes her serious fashion industry debut in "Suited For Success," easily enters the upper-crust in "Sweet and Elite," and is able to reject her failed "prince charming" due to his boorish behavior. But what, ultimately, are the lessons which these episodes teach her? That you can achieve your goals on your own grounds, that none of the social elite care about social distance, and that she shouldn't wait around for a fantasy prince to sweep her off her feet. Rarity's lessons, in short, are a rejection of the bourgeois feminine mystique which she represents.
            Labor and class are inexorably linked in Marx, where:

"the development of the industrial proletariat is, in general, conditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. […] The struggle against capital... [is the] struggle of the industrial wage-worker against the industrial bourgeois." – Class Struggles in France

            Rarity's attempts to enter the social elite, the bourgeois class, are met with very little resistance in "Sweet and Elite;" moreover, while she worries that her proletarian friends will cause her exile from the elite, the bourgeois socialites themselves don't appear to care at all. Unlike a capitalist, class-based society, in which social distance is an insurmountable gap, Equestrian society makes little to no distinction based on class. We can conclude, from the non-alienated nature of labor and from the nonexistence of class society, that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is presenting a basically communist state; whether this phenomenon extends further than the mode of production shall require addressing.


Sex
            As far as this analysis is concerned, there are two essential components of the Marxist message: labor and society in the form of class distinction, and society taken separately as a system of oppressive normalizing power structures. Just as class relations can be examined through the lens of the worker-work relationship above, so can society itself be examined through the lens of sex. This is not an unprecedented step outward from strictly "orthodox" Marxist thought: Marx himself wrote as follows:

"From [the relationship of men to women] one can therefore judge man's whole level of development. It follows from the character of this relationship how much man as a species being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being." – Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

            This is, of course, not exactly the same line of thought which post-Marxists follow when considering sex and society. To understand the Marxist message presented in My Little Pony, we should consider also the following position, in the thought of Foucault:

"Sex is not that part of the body which the bourgeoisie was forced to disqualify or nullify in order to put those whom it dominated to work. It is that aspect of itself which troubled and preoccupied it more than any other..." – History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

            That is, the bourgeois class is preoccupied with sex as sexuality, and this bourgeois obsession results in social inequality between the sexes, in medicalization of sexuality, in the enunciation and examination of taboo sexualities, etc.. For Marx, it is the relationship between the sexes as humans which reflects the relationship between all people as humans; for Foucault, sex as sexuality is used by the bourgeoisie to control themselves and to control the lower classes, which results in particular power relationships in society that make the sexes unequal.
            Consider, first, the "orthodox" Marxist approach: what is the portrayal of the individual competencies of the main cast? Although we are presented at various points with the sort of sexist gender stereotyping one might expect (babysitting, sewing, modeling), most plots indicate no social divide between the sexes. Instead, characters fight or confront dragons ("Dragonshy," "Dragon Quest," "Feeling Pinkie Keen"), deal with schizophrenia ("Party of One"), prevent the apocalypse at the hands of two different ancient evils ("Friendship is Magic," "The Return of Harmony"), fight monsters who feed vampire-like on positive emotions ("A Canterlot Wedding") and fight against industrial production in the making of apple cider ("The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000").
            And as the aforementioned adventures do not form an exhaustive list, one thing should be utterly clear: there are no power structures in Equestria which make the sexes unequal. So far as the relationship between men and women shows us the progress of society towards communism, My Little Pony certainly presents a society very far along in its transition.
            We must then turn to the latter track: what of sex as sexuality? The bourgeois anxiety over sex expresses itself in a constant stream of sex-laden imagery in our society. We must never cease talking about sex, lest someone accidentally talk about sex. The bourgeois class is so obsessed with its own sexuality that it writes endlessly about it, talks about it, makes it into television spectacle, makes it into art, commercializes it, and so on. We are constantly bombarded with reminders that we are being sexually repressed, to the extent that it seems impossible to tell who is actually "liberating" us and who is "repressing" us. Indeed, they may be the very same people.
            If we do away with the bourgeoisie and its preoccupation with sex, what are we left with? Not a society in which sexuality is repressed, or "liberated," but one in which it just doesn't matter. It should not be a shocking proposition that the moment we stop talking about something, it doesn't actually cease to exist. Not slathering every media surface with sexuality (liberated or oppressed) does not make us into sexless automatons: it just means that we've moved past the class based anxieties about sexuality and that we're no longer enforcing the power structures which such anxieties create.
            The world that My Little Pony presents is not entirely devoid of sexuality: Rarity pines for her "prince charming," Spike (a "baby dragon") pines for Rarity and a two-part finale involves a wedding (the previously mentioned "A Canterlot Wedding"). But these instances of sexuality are basically insignificant: if we were to "queer" the show (that is, assume that every character not explicitly stated as cis/heterosexual is a gender/sexual minority), we would wind up "queering" basically all but four characters presented over two seasons.
            The only other portrayal of sexuality in the show worth mentioning is in the episode "Hearts and Hooves Day," the requisite Valentine's Day story, in which a trio of mischievous children pairs up one's brother with their school teacher using a love potion. The lesson we can take away from this is more than "don't poison your friends and family," it's also that sexuality simply isn't something we need to spend a great deal of time worrying about. We don't need to worry if the sporty Rainbow Dash is breaking our particular notions of gender roles because she may be gay, or if fan-noted pairs of background characters are in relationships. Neither of these anxieties exists in the world of My Little Pony, because the bourgeois power structures which created them in our experience don't exist.


Sovereign
            The delivery of the Marxist message in My Little Pony is intimately wrapped up with the state's political system, as well as the progress of the state towards communism, and so all three shall be dealt with at once. In the Manifesto, Marx gives us a "clear" picture of the transition to communism in a numbered list of steps taken by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he prefaces as follows:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest... all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State... and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads..." – Manifesto of the Communist Party

            Property does exist in Equestria, although there appears to be no true bourgeoisie to hold a monopoly on capital or the instruments of production. The total of productive forces has also apparently reached a point at which it is of no great concern, as we are not presented with any great shortages of goods or services, and labor saving devices are discarded in favor of "honest" work. In fact, none of the ten points which Marx enumerates for the dictatorship of the proletariat appears to be effected in Equestria at all, save for free education, by virtue of the fact that the problems they are supposed to address do not exist.
            For reasons unknown to us, the transition to communism has perhaps stalled; from the apparently frequent disaster which befalls our heroines, we may suppose that protection of the people has prevented the dissolution of the state. Or perhaps the transition is much more recent than we are aware, or property is much more insidious an enemy than Marxists like to think, and so on. Nevertheless, the power of the state rests in the hooves of two princess-goddesses, Celestia and Luna, who appear to rule unquestioned. It is this political arrangement which sets us up, in the first season, to learn about the Marxist state through the eyes of Celestia's naïve protege, Twilight Sparkle.
            The ability of the princess to command her pupil to leave the capital and study "friendship" should not be taken as a mark of tyranny. Instead, it is at this point which My Little Pony appears to take a novel approach to the problem of political leadership in a communist transition, and it does so with reference to Hobbes. In Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, the Sovereign is an unquestionable leader whose existence is created by a body of subjects who agree to give up every right to him, in return for being brought out of the chaotic and bloody state of nature. Hobbes supposes that the Sovereign would not actually be such a bad fellow: he wields ultimate power and is answerable to no one, but it's all for the greater good.
            This serves as a powerful rationale for the existence of Celestia and Luna as well. They appear to have taken power after ending a time of terrible chaos ("Return of Harmony"), and although unquestionable, their rule is clearly benevolent. Celestia's order to her pupil is basically a hook for the entire show: Twilight's learning about "friendship" is akin to learning about the world in which she lives, and through her we learn valuable "friendship lessons" which all imply various rules of a functioning Marxist society. Twilight's lessons are teaching by example, and by the end of the first season she has become a model of the communist intelligentsia. When she moves on to teaching her friends, she sets the example by which we should all hope to become good Marxists.
    Dixi et salvavi animam meam.





A/n:
Concerning special thanks (or perhaps blame): you know who you are. If you think I wrote this, it's because I did; ask (elsewhere, obviously), and I'll admit it. Criticism welcome and encouraged: constructive, nonconstructive, fictional, etc.
ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT ST... no, that's not right at all. Never mind.

Tell me how pretty I am.
Comments13
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Sergios117's avatar
Sorry comrade, but as far as I am concerned, the show is romanticized feudalism where things only appear good because in corporate America's heads' "the old system is good and benevolent, no exploitation in the show should exist so therefore communism won't exist."

I'll be more than happy to have Pony Lenin line up the Princesses and Mane 6 against a wall.

I am still a fan of the show though. I don't mind being mocked by corporate America.