Over the weekend, I read a curious article in the Washington Post STYLE section about "bronies", young men age 18-40 who are somewhat obsessed with My Little Pony. I thought this was a joke but it is true. The self-proclamied "bronies" gather in groups and watch episodes of a newish TV show based on the popular Hasbro toy which was first introduced back in the 1980s.
The new show MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC sounds like the Teletubbies of it's day, with bright colors and goofy characters with names like Twilight Sparkle. Yes, it's perfect stoner television. There was no mention of this in the POST article, that's my secret suspicion of what is driving this whole thing. Also, no word on whether any of these dudes are gay, though with interest in characters with Sparkles and Rainbow in their names you gotta wonder, right? Anyway, this new trend is yet another incident of the continuing infantilization of our culture, where adults never quite grow up to become...well, adults.
I may not agree with CS Lewis on everything... but I think he was spot on when he said:
ReplyDelete“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
You, sir, have clearly judged a book by its cover. You make broad generalizations about a fanbase of a show that you know next to nothing about. You, sir, are the mental infant in the room. Please go back to nursery school to learn the basic lessons you clearly never understood.
Fuck you
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