20. University third-year. I identify as a human, a feminist, an artistic individual, a Latina, and a music lover. I'm also a huge Disney fan. XD Mostly reblogs and fandoms, and some social issues. :P // Dauntless. Ravenclaw. District 5.
Season 1, Episode 1: A Moon Star is Born
[Serena finds out that she is the sailor scout of the moon] Goodness, what is up with those transitions? Serena came off as being a bit vapid and absent minded toward the beginning of the episode, which is something that will continue throughout the…
You know what, I can’t fault someone for trying to view children’s TV through a social justice scope. I really can’t. It’s necessary for us to be critical of the media, especially of children’s media. I’m an English teacher with a lot of focus on media studies. I consider this kind of criticism vital.
However, I find the OP’s methods sloppy (if you’re going to only watch 10 episodes, then maybe limit yourself to one season, because those three seasons are wildly different and were dubbed by two different companies). And while I feel that some of her points are valid, I overwhelmingly disagree with her conclusions.
If you understand nothing else about Sailor Moon, you need to understand this: for many, many of its fans, this was our Feminism 101. This was our Queer Theory 101. Heck, it was even our gateway to Trans Issues 101.
It was 1995. The magical era of cartoons for girls and boys was long over. Jem had been off the air since 1988. Female portrayal seemed to hit a low. Cartoons seemed to be largely male-oriented or “gender neutral” (i.e. mostly male protagonists with a few token females thrown in).
Then suddenly there was this show, where all the characters were girls. And the girls, they did stuff! They fought evil! But not like the rare lady super heroes in American comics did. They didn’t just fly around and punch things or shoot guns. There wasn’t really even a lot of violence at all. In fact, it seemed to dwell on a lot of other things that girls like to think about. It talked about their relationships—not only with boys, but with each other. And those relationships weren’t about rivalry and drama, the way that teen fiction likes to portray young female relationships, but about cooperation and love and appreciation for each other.
In fact, the show was so concerned about these things that it progressed from one episode to the next. Imagine that—it had action, yes, but the action was not so important that it could be easily resolved in a single episode. In 1995, a cartoon almost had to be episodic, and Sailor Moon, one of the first anime to find a wide North American audience, challenged the idea of simple, action-focused or comedy-focused series. The characters grew and changed—their emotions and thoughts and growth were complex and progressive and important. Their relationships developed and changed over time.
And those girls, even though they did stuff—which, remember, girls in the media don’t often do—they didn’t seem to hide who they were at all. Femininity is a loaded term that I don’t like to use casually, but these girls did not suffer for their femininity.
Their pretty skirts and magically applied makeup and sparkly jewelry were their tools. Sailor Moon threw her tiara at enemies. A tiara. The most powerful weapon in the entire galaxy was a crystal. She kept it in a locket.
Their emotions were sources of power. Think of how casually emotion is portrayed as weakness in the media. Strong characters are supposed to be stoic. If they show any emotion at all, it should be anger. Of course, women, the silly creatures, are hysterical, hormonal things that fly off the handle and weep at the drop of a hat—further proof that they are weak and inferior (even though if they don’t show enough emotion we’ll call them frigid, but that’s a whole other rant). In her very first fight, Sailor Moon defeated the youma by crying. And though she becomes a stronger person (see, development!), always it is her emotions that drive her power: love, joy, sadness, faith. Always she’s about healing and helping and cooperation instead of about domination.
And while none of the above is inherently masculine or feminine, our society has deemed some of the above to be feminine and therefore less important, or at least less interesting to watch on TV. Which means that it is actually radical to embrace those things that are feminine while still demonstrating that it does not make someone any less important, or brave, or powerful, or strong.
And then there were the queer characters. Explicitly queer characters. In a children’s show, in 1995. Because, OP, you say that children do not know about the source of the shows that they watch, but how many of us were still children when our parents purchased the first family computer, and we learned how to fire up the dial up and type “Sailor Moon” into Ask Jeeves? How many of us were only nine, or twelve, or sixteen, when we learned that Zoycite was originally male, and realized what that meant? How many of us learned about Haruka and Michiru years before Cloverway took up dubbing the third season? How many of us learned about the Sailor Starlights, and their fluid genders?
Because I have spoken to so many queer women (and men!) of my generation who came to terms with their sexuality at a young age through Sailor Moon. The very best peer support that many of us found was the Sailor Moon fandom.
I really don’t have much else to say other than that while Sailor Moon did suffer under the slant of its male animators, and while it is a product of its time and culture, not always for the better, to clumsily throw feminist theory at it without looking at the whole picture is a poor use of feminist theory and a rather limited interpretation of what is a much fuller, richer show than 10 random episodes and Wikipedia will provide.
*slow clap*
(via relativity-pudding)
