Preface: Yeah, this is pretty blatant hipster-douchery on my part. Oooh I'll make a shocking title, then subvert expectations with a thoughtful analysis of the history of our modern culture! I'm so clever! I still think the actual points are valid, though admittedly, I didn't give the internet in general nearly enough dues.
Original Post: June '12
I shall e’splain…
Okay, so I’m not sure if I would consider myself a full on ‘brony’, but I most certainly am a fan of the show and I definitely ‘get’ its popularity. I remember summing it up in a forum thusly: They come for the irony, they stay for the quality. Often times people tend to get the terms quality mixed up with content and while MLP’s content is firmly planted in the toddler bracket, good writing and production is something all ages can enjoy. You want an entertaining and more in-depth examination of why the show’s so good, check out Chad Rocco’s Familiar Face episode on the topic. I’m here to brazenly tie Homosexuality and one of the worst tragedies in American history to a show about cartoon equines by explaining how it got popular.
So in order for this to work, we need to establish some history. While we are neck deep in 80’s nostalgia right now, we’re only just starting to hit up with some 90’s kitsch and that’s…well I don’t think that’s going to end well. See, the 90’s was all about self-awareness and irony. It was no longer cool to like anything, but you could cheat by saying you were being ironic. You didn’t actually like Transformers, you were just pretending to be like the dumb little kids who are into it to make a statement…man. Looking back, I can see why Moviebob has such a beef with the era. Point being, this was the prevailing form of viewing our nostalgia right up to the turn of the century.
Then everything changed when the Al Qaeda attacked.
Did he seriously just say that?
Wow…that is so tasteless and I’m an Avatar fan to boot! But really is that not what happened? The most powerful country in the world was successfully assaulted on multiple fronts resulting in thousands of deaths by an organization whose military budget compared to ours was probably in the .0000 percentage and tied to no country we could retaliate against. The most powerful military in the world was rendered completely inert by an enemy we couldn’t fight and who prioritized our deaths over their own lives. Make no mistakes, the terrorists did win, because America was fucking terrified and as result, we got really stupid.
I’m not referring to military/political decisions mind - though…well…yeah - but culturally, America took a good hard turn away from intellectualism. We literally became too scared to think. We needed simplicity and comfort in our entertainment, and what could be more comforting and simplistic than the 80’s? It was the era my generation grew up in, while the ‘us vs. them’ cold war narratives and underlying fears of thermonuclear annihilation so clearly reflected our current state of mind. We didn’t care that it was all so much cotton candy, we just wanted to feel safe again.
Now for the sake of…brevity I think is the word…whatever the word for ‘make things simpler to save time’ is…anyway, we do that with history, so that when I talk about the 80’s and the 90’s, there’s this unspoken bias that they’re separate entities that never overlapped even though we consciously understand - as reasoning human beings - that that’s not the case. We understand that there’s overlap and that not everything we associate with say the 70’s occurred exclusively between ‘70 and ‘79. I point this out because my explanation as it stands right now kinda boils down to “9/11 made us stupid, which is how MLP got popular”, which is obviously not the case. Well, here’s where ‘the gays’ come in.
Fun Fact: I'm the last person on earth who still thinks he isn't gay.
While we were clamoring as a whole for a simpler form of entertainment, we were also abandoning the disaffected and self-aware post modernism (or whatever it’s called) that largely defined the pop culture landscape prior to the attacks. While this can be partly attributed to the anti-intellectual movement (irony can get pretty taxing intellectually speaking), really it was largely due to the internet basically coming into its own as the primary driving force of our modern pop culture. Aside from the ability to sustain our indulgence with our own nostalgia, it also allowed communication with others free of any social restrictions, creating a world where everyone realized that, well…they weren’t alone after all and the need for an irony shield was no longer relevant. It’s perfectly exemplified in rule 34: If it exists there’s porn of it. Yes, it’s a humorous condemnation of the complete lack of restraint on the internet, but it reinforces how open and accepting the internet is. It’s not hard to see how the LGBTQ community would be drawn to it and become such a strong and public cultural force as a result.
Bear in mind that - again - I’m not referring to political issues, we’re still talking popular culture here. This means that the connection pop culture took with gays started with old stereotypes. Jack from Will ‘n Grace being the go to guy for this kind of example. While simplistic sure, the early stereotype of homosexual behavior was markedly…gay. ‘nother words: HAPPY! Gays were stereotyped as exuberant, joyous and sincere. Considering the fearful climate of the time, getting gay up in this pop culture bitch was just what the fairy doctor ordered! Know what I’m sayin?
Garlfraaaand!
The point is the openness of the internet and the popularity of the so-called gay culture fed off each other to create a new movement of genuine approval. Again, I don’t know what the official name of it is. Neo-sincerity or something like that. The point is that it was now culturally okay to like things outside of social norms established before this new era of digital communication. Yes irony was still being employed, but as a tool for humor, not protection. The enthusiasm for something you weren’t originally supposed to like was no longer the butt of a joke, but could be openly embraced. So it was in this climate that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic entered the world and took it by storm and we all have gay people and Osama Bin Laden to thank for it.
Wow, this was soooo much longer than I anticipated, but then again, it kinda had to be didn’t it? I couldn’t just pop up a tongue-in-cheek title like that and leave it there. I had to justify that shit son!
So…how’d I do?
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