Derek Johnson’s article, “Participation
is Magic: Collaboration, Authorial Legitimacy, and the Audience Function”, uses
aspects of the Brony subculture to illustrate what he calls audience function.
He considers this a complement to Foucault’s author function, which considers
the discourse of authorship in production of texts. He also uses a Foucauldian foundation to
analyze collaboration as a relationship that is full of power dynamics and
inequalities. One way that Johnson does this is by looking at those that Brony
culture is constructed for, and who is inherently delegitimized as a fan by
Brony culture. He says, “Imaged in the often destabilized, but always
exclusive, terms of adult, heterosexual men, however, that collaborative
engagement with the series is constructed in opposition to female, non-adult,
or queer users excluded by this discourse” (144). He goes on to say how Brony
culture limits participatory culture (creation of music, memes, videos, etc.)
to adult men, while also affirming that young girls are the proper
non-participatory consumers of the show.
I was glad that Johnson dealt with
this aspect of Brony culture, because the documentary Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony did
not. Personally, I don’t think Bronies are extremely weird or even worthy of
the attention that they have gotten as a kind of freak show. That we care so
much about what adult male contributing members of society do with their free
time is more evidence to me of the absurdity of our culture’s view of proper
gender norms. However, I do disagree with the way in which the existence of
Bronies simultaneously delegitimizes fans that are not (white, middle/upper
class) heterosexual adult men and reinforces society’s views towards children,
women, and queer people. In Bronies,
several interviewees speak about the difficulties they have experienced because
of their perceived gay identity due to their love of a show that is presumably
for young girls. However, their responses to these difficulties actually served
to reinforce homophobia. Rather than saying that they should not be bullied
because gay people should not be bullied,
they responded only that people should realize that liking ponies does not mean
someone is gay. While this is true, and
possibly speaks to the way in which gender and sexuality often get conflated in
problematic ways, it also inherently admits that if they were gay, the bullying
would be justified. The bullies are not wrong in their intents, only in their
gaydar. Similarly, the fact that Bronies conceive of their bullying as one of
the harder things they have ever experienced is testament to the privilege that
they have. As hard as it may be to sometimes be perceived as gay, it is much
harder to actually be gay. Their lack of compassion for people who may be
bullied for being gay is further evidence that the Bronies are unaware of their
privilege.
Johnson recognizes a similar
paradox in the way that Friendship is
Magic creator Lauren Faust uses the presence of Bronies to “mark animation
for girls as not ‘lame’ “ (152). By using the presence of adult heterosexual
male fans to show that the show is worthy of attention, isn’t Fault agreeing
with the cultural view that shows that are not watched by the privileged group
are lame? This viewing actually furthers the cultural idea of whom we should
cater to, and who has the power to say what is good and what is lame. According
to Faust, Friendship is Magic is not
a good show because girls love it, but because adult men have taken a keen
interest.
Given his careful analyses of the
power relations within the Brony subculture, I mostly agreed with his
conclusions. However, I suspect that there may have been parts of the culture
that he looked over or that he unfairly homogenized. For example, he did not
consider the fact that some Bronies are, in fact, female. I would be interested
to hear more about their presence, and how this may complicate Johnson’s
arguments. Similarly, I would presume that at least some Bronies are not straight.
Neither the documentary nor Johnson’s piece dealt with the possible presence of
a queer Brony sub-subculture. Would the presence of one weaken Johnson’s claim? A quick websearch shows that this queer Brony presence is both large and vocal; there is a HuffPost article on a queer reading of Friendship is Magic, a Facebook community of LGBT Bronies that is 4700 members strong, and lot of Tumblr results for a search of "gay bronies". Does Johnson's failure to recognize female and queer Bronies make his argument fall into the same traps that he claims Brony culture is full of? Or does the strong majority of heterosexual men in the Brony culture justify Johnson's simplification of the population?
Kayleen raises the question of whether the majority of Bronies being heterosexual men justifies discussing Bronies as simply heterosexual men. To start, I do think there has been an oversimplification of the Brony population. Bronies, as we saw briefly in the documentary, also include queer and female fans, among other types of individuals, certainly. They aren’t just straight white men, though they are portrayed in the media as such. In part, this media conception of Bronies seems to be shaped by the documentary. Take, for example, this Wired story which feels the need to discuss at length the sexuality of Bronies. It came out this year, after the documentary. This earlier Wired story, which came out the year before the film, makes no mention of straight, heterosexual, gay, etc. It just profiles the people without assuming a sexuality.
ReplyDeleteIn oversimplifying, you leave out the voices of the minorities in a situation. On the most basic level of journalism, it’s important to have a variety of sources. These stories can and should be quoting women, queer and other marginalized fans. This all being said, I would argue that the media couldn’t possibly cover every type of individual affected by a certain story equally. I don’t know that its necessarily a “failure to recognize female and queer Bronies” on the part of Johnson or the media, as Kayleen puts it, but rather a choice to omit. There will always be a lead character, or a more heavily-focused on group of individuals in a story. The failure here is in not providing fair acknowledgement of the other groups involved.
The first article that Megan mentioned included an interesting quotation about the hardships more vocal Bronies face in their daily lives from this essay by Molly Lambert: "It emphasizes how narrow the definition of true masculinity can be that anyone who deviates from tradition in any way risks being labeled as feminine or homosexual. And Bronies, like all of the women and queer people before them, start wondering What’s so bad about that?" Lambert then goes on to say that "Brony culture feels downright progressive." I think it is incredibly problematic to make the assumption that Bronies are magically able to identify with women, queer people, and others who do not conform to "the definition of true masculinity." This goes back to the privilege that Kayleen discussed in her post. the majority of Bronies are white, heterosexual, middle-upper class males. Bronies are a rather recent and small deviant group, and the struggles they may encounter due to their Brony identity do not even compare to the centuries of struggles that women and queer people have faced in society. Furthermore, the Wired articles note that many Bronies only display their Brony identities online or at conventions; they are free to go about their privileged daily lives while maintaining their Brony identity in private. Additionally, there is no indication that Bronies are using their supposed newfound empathy with other disadvantaged groups to promote the fair treatment of all people; I only see Bronies promoting the fair treatment of all Bronies (which mostly means that they don't want to be identified as gay). The media attention that Bronies have received inflates their overall cultural significance and ability or even willingness to combat traditional gender norms on a large scale.
ReplyDeleteKayleen makes a good point about how the documentary's constant reaffirmation of heterosexuality is a product of homophobia. In order to legitimize the Brony fandom as both an audience and as "normal" men, brony representation has to be consistently shown as white cis men. For bronies to have non- hetero- and cis-normative genders and sexualities, it would undermine the subculture's claim as a wholesome fanbase. By silencing (or ignoring) the voices of MOGAI My Little Pony fans, it leaves out a significant portion of the brony fandom.
ReplyDeleteNot only do the Johnson and documentary leave out these other perspectives in the brony audiences, it also removes queer readings of the show. I feel like with all this discussion about the bronies, I would have liked to delve a bit into the actual My Little Pony show. Rainbow Dash, a tom-boy Pegasus who hopes to one day join the Wonderbolts, an athletic flight team in the Equestria world. Rainbow Dash is blue, has a cloud and lighting Cutie Mark, and has a rainbow colored mane. She represents the Element of Loyalty and often tries to help the other ponies.
All of these combined character traits made many audience members read Rainbow Dash as a lesbian. Searching "Rainbow Dash Gay" comes up with over 23,600 results on YouTube and "Is Rainbow Dash Gay" on Google has over 1,130,000 results. As a person who watched MLP soon after the first season began airing and had several self-proclaimed and active "brony" friends, Rainbow Dash was consistently touted and discussed as a potential gay icon. None of the texts discussed the immediate significance of the show itself and how MLP can be read (whether or not it was intended by Lauren Faust or the producers). Johnson claims to talk about authorship between the show and bronies, yet this instance of fan head canons or fan theory went undiscussed.
I also mentioned in class how none of the texts (except maybe the Bob's Burgers episode) talked about the sexual side of brony culture, such as "clopping" or sexually theme fan works. By ignoring sexual readings of MLP by bronies, it ignores a significant portion of that culture. The documentary is quick to claim that interest MLP is not sexual, but what about those bronies who are interested in the show sexually? Are they legitimate fans as well, or does the "perversity" of their interest in young female ponies delegitimize themselves as fans or as bronies?
Zoe, I think your point regarding “clopping” or other sexual readings of My Little Pony is especially accurate. Just as I feel the documentary erases persons of color and queer subjects, perhaps it glosses over sexual readings for similar reasons. This is not to claim that being a person of color/queer is in any way directly linked to masturbating to animated horse pornography, but they do all fall outside of the norm of white patriarchal society. The documentary on Brony culture made a concentrated effort to normalize the fandom and as a result, erased any aspects that may deter those who can only handle difference in small doses.
DeleteIt’s also fascinating to read your expansion on the show itself, Zoe; as someone wholly unfamiliar I find the reading of Rainbow Dash as a gay character enlightening; it certainly puts a spin on the readings of Brony culture as entirely heterosexual, regardless of the character’s “true” sexual orientation (as much as a cartoon horse CAN be cognizant of their orientation). I too agree that I wished more of the literature for this week addressed the show itself; I found myself constantly wondering what about the subject material attracted this demographic of fans? There were repeated references to the quality of the animation and positive values, but no real substantive evidence regarding the show’s content.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with the existing points made by Kayleen, Megan and Caroline speaking to the erasure of gender and sexual minorities within Brony fandom and the homophobic language and arguments that constitute the normalizing assertions of Bronies' heterosexuality that have appeared in most mainstream press about this fandom. I would argue that despite the documentary's insinuations to the contrary, the highly privileged Brony fandom is in fact doing very little to support or ally with more marginalized groups or create positive social change. In texts ranging from Bronies (the documentary) to the Bob's Burgers episode to news articles about the fandom, Brony culture is generally celebrated as one brought together by shared values of kindness, empathy and love. However, apart from the community-affirming creation of fan texts to express love for the show, the readings have shown little evidence of any true philanthropy launched in the name of Equestria. I would have liked to see more emphasis on actual Bronies' actions in the readings in addition to the focus on the cultural construction of them as a group in order to be able to draw more concrete conclusions about the associations between feminism and Brony culture.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do agree with Kayleen that the pathologizing discourse surrounding Bronies in the mainstream press is unwarranted. At the same time, I appreciate texts like Johnson's and "The Equestranauts" for bringing the uneven coverage of Friendship is Magic fans to light. Focusing exclusively on a predominantly male community, ostensibly in the name of celebrating the feminism of MLP itself, is explicitly unfeminist in its exclusion of non-male, non-white and non-straight fans. Bronies should not be condemned for enjoying this show, but it is unacceptable that they be seen as the one and only benchmark of its "cool factor" or success.
Caroline, I particularly liked what you wrote about how “the media attention that Bronies have received inflates their overall cultural significance and ability or even willingness to combat traditional gender norms on a large scale.” Johnson touches on this concept briefly when he discusses Julie Levin Russo’s Marxist analysis of Brony culture. I initially thought analyzing Bronies through a Marxist lens seemed odd, but I was interested in how Levin Russo apparently recognizes that much of the labor performed by Bronies (memes, discussion, the creation of “Derpy Hooves”) is, in fact, performed by female and queer participants. Johnson analyzes Levin Russo’s argument, highlighting this idea that this female or queer labor is “being attributed to an audience discursively envisioned in more normative terms as male, heterosexual, and adult” (144).
ReplyDeleteAnd I completely agree with all of you about how the mainstream press “pathologizes” Bronies, and this was one of my favorite parts of Johnson’s argument. It’s interesting that Bronies can, on one hand, be held up as a progressive group, challenging the gender hierarchy by embracing something feminine while maintaining their masculinity. On the other hand (and often in the same article), analyses of Bronies always emphasize their strangeness.
I was glad that Zoe brought up the narrowness (and very strong bias) of the Bronies documentary, particularly in the way that it briefly brought up some of the more distasteful elements of brony culture, particularly the non-consideration of women in the brony fandom and some of the more sexual elements of the culture. (The exclusion of queer fans, as many others have brought up, was not even considered.) I find it interesting that while sexual practices in the fandom tend to be infamous and something that comes to mind for me almost every time I think about bronies, they were restricted to one mention in the documentary. I was disappointed that Bronies didn’t provide a more pro-con view of this culture, but it’s interesting to look at the strange animated portions of the film that mentioned “clopping” and female bronies. Why even include that, if there wasn’t going to be any elaboration?
ReplyDeleteI think that simply because those sections were animated they can automatically be treated as “silly” or “less serious” than the live-action portions. Simultaneously, the filmmakers can get away with saying they mentioned some more undesirable parts of the culture without actually having to elaborate on them, because these points only exist in an “othered” fantasy world. No real facts have to be reported, and everything can be taken in good fun.
As a bit of trivia (and because I was curious), a study I found indicated that nearly 1/5th of bronies, who responded in an internal survey, participated in “clopping” – masturbating to sexualized images of the show’s characters. This perhaps indicates that the practice is not as uncommon as the media and Bronies portrays it to be.
I agree with everyone saying that brony culture tends to leave out gay and female participants. I felt while watching the documentary that the leaving out of queer and female participants was very deliberate. It felt like they were trying to make bronies appear “normal” by the very narrow standards of society. Trying to make bronies and brony culture seem heteronormative serves to keep bronies from being mocked by other cis-gender heterosexual males who don’t understand the culture and community of bronies. I thought the Bob’s Burgers episode that we watched was a great method of satirizing the brony community without being outwardly derogatory. It only made fun of the fact that some people get almost too into The Equestranauts (their version of My Little Pony). They didn’t really mock the fact that grown men were into it explicitly. I thought the documentary to be very exclusionary. They included a woman brony only within the context of her relationship with a “real” brony. I also thought their repeated and pointed emphasis on heterosexuality, while achieving the goal of “normalizing” bronies, also served to exclude a large percentage of bronies. As Kayleen pointed out, there is a large community of LGBT bronies, and excluding them just to make bronies seem more socially acceptable seems to be counter-productive.
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