There's a television show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's a reworking of an older television show that was around during my childhood. It has attracted a following of both adults and children. There's now an upcoming movie called Equestria Girls which comes out on June 15th.
Here's a snapshot of what a significant part of the audience is going to look like:
Bronies.
Those dudes are Bronies. Adult men who like a show originally intended for very young girls. And they're going to be showing up at this movie in droves.
I was only vaguely aware of the my little pony stuff when I was a child, because frankly I liked real horses. (I did have a few Breyer horses decorating the shelves in my room.) I've always liked horses. We love horses so much in our house that on our honeymoon, my wife and I took a 10-hour day trip on horseback.
Horses weren't colorful pastel friends to my tiny mind, they were huge, dangerous animals that could accidentally kill me. They were this mystical, strong, intelligent force of nature to me. One that I had to be careful around. One that evoked more in me the vague feeling of dealings with old gods, gods which required appeasement, than a relationship with a pet. And they could accidentally kill me. I can't tell you how many times I got the "These Animals could Accidentally Kill you. They don't want to hurt you, but they might do it by accident." speech from my mother. Taking animals that were already beautiful and making plastic images of them in pastel colors seemed... well, undignified to me as a child. They took something full of life and power and made it full of bubblegum and saccharine. I didn't like it.
I didn't have any trouble with girls toys/girl games vs. boys toys/boy games. I remember playing house with the girls because I thought endlessly kicking at a red rubber ball was boring. And I brought fun and adventure to the games of house. Instead of standing around being domestic, we all went on adventures through time and fought ghosts. We all had fun playing pretend. Which we still called "House" for some reason even though we never really played any games involving houses anymore.
I wanted to say all of this up front, and state unequivocally that I don't particularly care for segregated childrens' television. I don't care if girls watch "Boy's shows" or if boys watch "Girls' shows" or whether we keep making girls shows and boys shows as separate shows. Furthermore, I trust parents to make the right decisions about the media their children consume. Although I will state that if I ever have a daughter, I'm going to make damn sure that she's not going to be inundated with media messages geared towards teaching her to be domestic, servile, and weak. (If she wants to learn to cook, we're not getting her an easy bake oven, I'm going to personally teach her to cook using a real oven.)
But this whole My Little Pony thing is about to get weird now that there's a movie. I know that most of you are pretty well hooked up to the internet, but I'm not sure how well Bronies are known. Especially since I only happen to know of them because my wife watches the show with our niece.
So there are three groups that are fanatical about My Little Pony. Two of these groups are harmless: Little girls for whom the show has been designed, and adults who enjoy it because... well... I don't actually understand why they like it, but I think it's harmless. The third group are... weird. We'll get to them later.
I totally understand why my wife likes my little pony. She's liked it since childhood. She's crafty, and has been involved in this community that makes their own ponies. Makes, sells, makes ponies that look like people they know and give them as gifts, this is something that adult women have been doing since before the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic tv show came out.
And while I don't particularly like the fact that no matter where I am in our studio apartment there's creepy little plastic horse-dolls always watching me, I got over it. It's abusive to tell your partner "Hey, I detest this thing you love and you can't do it anymore." I would never do something like that. Instead, we compromised about where the ponies can be. She's agreed that they shouldn't be displayed around the television. I didn't like watching them watch us watch Netflix.
And I watched a few episodes of the show. It's great for children, I have no problem with it. And I have no problem with adults watching television geared towards children. Hasn't Pixar proved that there can be something in "Children's" entertainment for everyone? Having done child care and youth work for a good portion of my life, I've watched plenty of kids TV. Sometimes there are shows that stand out on their own, and the story lines are very deep. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a unique example of good storytelling in a kid's show. I hear the movie is terrible, but if you've got kids, and they've never seen Avatar, the TV show is a great program for them. And for you, too.
But when it comes to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I just don't see anything there for me. Avatar had conflict, and story, and more character development than TV shows made for adults. It was childish, yes, but the story was wonderful. And there are some episodes, like "Tales of Ba Sing Se" which have moments specifically made for adults.
In My Little Pony, the characters are static, the story-lines don't develop at all (you could watch the entire series out of order and it would make no difference) there's no depth to the stories, it's for much younger children who can't follow complex story lines like the ones in Avatar, and frankly, it's vacillates between boring and grating.
There's no meat there. There's nothing for my adult brain to latch on to and enjoy. It's like watching Barney the Dinosaur or something. It's not like sesame street where there's something there for parents, it's just... it's just ponies hopping around and giggling about friendship while overcoming the same frigging obstacles over and over and over again in a saccharine world so full of pastels that it makes me feel slightly nauseated.
So I'll never understand what other adults see in My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic, at least the ones who didn't grow up with the show or the dolls.
I don't get it. I just don't.
And I don't need to. If people want to watch a saccharine show for little children, that's their business. And if they want to dress up in pony costumes and go to pony festivals, and talk about it on their pony facebook pages with their pony facebook friends about the pony thing they just found on their pony websites while using phrases like "Everypony," that's still their right. And that's bronies. Some of them are weird, but I like Trek, and we've got a handful of weirdos who like Trek, have poor hygiene, and spend their time making the rest of us look bad. So I get that some of the weirder individuals are exceptions within what I'm pretty sure is just a group of normal young people.
And what the Bronies are doing is completely harmless. The costumes, the Conventions, the T-Shirts, the Fan-Made Animated Youtube Videos... It's weird, but it's harmless.
But there's another group which isn't quite so harmless, and which might cause some problems at the upcoming MLP movie premier.
And that would be the people for whom MLP:FIM is a sexual fetish. They are a distinct group from the harmless Bronies. They're folks who use phrases like "Clopping" to describe masturbating. They make "Clop art" which is MLP characters having sex. They make sex themed browser games, like "Banned from Equestria Daily" which at first glance is simply a MLP:FIM video game. Without any warning that it is for adults, the game spirals out into a terrifying series of sexual encounters which include sexual assault and rape. Unless you have some brain bleach handy, don't do a google search for any of that. Once you see this stuff, you can never un-see it.
These folks have cybersex, publicly, on twitter. These folks aren't weird, they are so terrifying as to almost be lovecraftian. And while they're distinct from bronies, they all buy the same swag. The parent who walks into a theater with her daughter to find a mixture of both of these groups isn't going to be able to tell them apart just by looking at them. I have no problem with people doing whatever they want to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but when children can accidentally stumble on the oceans of my little pony pornography just by using google image search, the fetish in question becomes a potential minefield.
Like "Banned from Equestria Daily" which carries no warning, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to protect children from accidentally finding media born out of a childrens' show, but specifically for the consumption of adults.
I wonder if they'll show the same disregard in person that they do electronically. I wonder how prepared the Brony community is for dealing with the fetishists that look exactly like bronies. I wonder what's going to happen when this mess fills theaters on June 15th.
Little girls and their families, raucous 20-something geeks with MLP t-shirts, and some very disturbing sexual fetishists are all going to mixed together in dark rooms.
I don't really know what's going to happen. I don't know if this is going to be something which nobody notices, or if the media is going to blow up about the Bronies and just how weird they are. I doubt the media will be able to tell the Bronies apart from the fetishists. I don't know if there's going to be incidents. I just don't know. It could simply be, as the comedy site Cracked called it, the most awkward moment in cinema history.
Whatever happens, I'm stocking up on popcorn, because this is going to be interesting.