![]() Tags: children/youth, discourse/language, gender, media, critical theory, media literacy, feminism, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2011 Length: 17:28 Access: Vimeo Summary: At least in the genre of children’s animated series, it appears that narrow representations of women and femininity are being seriously challenged. It is no longer wholly uncommon to learn of a show that depicts girls as heroic and powerful, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls, which ran from 1995 to 2006. While the series generally challenges dominant representations of femininity, one of the episodes, titled "Equal Fights," functions more as a morality tale meant to caution young women against a radical feminism and against pursuing any fundamental challenges to patriarchy. The episode can be used by instructors who seek to promote media literacy, and in this case, arm their students with the ability to spot content that works to uphold the patriarchal status quo (even when that content is otherwise lauded as socially progressive). In the episode, the young superheroes capture the villain, Femme Fatale, but they immediately free her after she convinces them that women are underrepresented as superheroes and villains. Femme Fatale's observation makes a lasting impression on the girls, and as the story develops, they are shown overreacting and misapplying their knowledge of patriarchal injustice. In the final act, the mayor's assistant and the girls' teacher intervene, and effectively condemn the girls' behavior. In her paper on the series, "Saving the World before Bedtime," Lisa Hager similarly takes issue with the "Equal Fights" episode and points out that it never confronts the question raised by Femme Fatale—who, besides Wonder Woman, is a heroine in her own right? It is my view that "Equal Fights" also adds fuel to a discourse, which attempts to equate feminism with male bashing. It is a discourse which seeks to supplant a moral outrage against patriarchy with an outrage against the "injustices" visited on men when women go too far. The moral of this story seems to be that the girls need to be more cautious about their activism; when women are too feminist—when they want too much equality—everyone loses. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
16 Comments
9/23/2011 04:54:10 pm
Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency takes up "Equal Fights" episode in a recent post too. She notes that the episode draws on the "Straw Feminist" trope http://youtu.be/tnJxqRLg9x0
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To answer the question of why the girls never discussed any other female super-heroes, this may be a bit of an issue of copyright rather than the writers being unable to answer the question.
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cub
9/11/2012 07:46:01 am
the unfortunate implication here is that any form of feminism or womanism *needs* a takedown at all. here's why that's a problem:
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Jeremy
12/23/2012 10:22:13 am
As a PoC (who is also gay just to throw that in), I think a plot like that could have worked just fine. There are plenty of minorities who abuse the system to try and advantage themselves. Civil rights isn't some hallowed issue that noone can talk about. If a villain were committing crimes and then pulling the race card to get out of it then that's something that could relate very well to a modern day America.
cub
1/8/2013 03:09:47 pm
@jeremy (the comments don't give a reply button this far down):
Dante
11/18/2012 12:58:53 am
I find this analysis to be quite biased, as the episode did not promote the idea that "patriarchy" doesn't need to be challenged, OR that girls can want too much equality. It was a lesson against self victimisation. and using victim status to push forward agendas, something which sadly occurs in current discussions, and not many people are bold enough to discuss out of fear of being demonised (such as women only help programs and shelters, the imaginary gender pay gap (which used to be a problem, and isn't anymore, now it's a strawman). What powerpuff girls did push with this episode was the idea that feminists should aim for real equality, not a reversal of roles where men are bashed and belittled while women are put on a pedestal that makes them unable to do harm or commit sexism and so on. If i need to point out a case that's very similar to what's exposed in this episode, it would be a relatively recent case where an 11 year old boy was stripped by a couple of girls and was humilliated when the girls posted it on youtube. The police charged them for this as a misdemeanor. If the roles were reversed, the boys would have been tried as sex offenders, and sent to disciplinary school/prison.
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cub
11/18/2012 05:00:54 am
these claims of "imaginary gender pay gap (which used to be a problem, and isn't anymore, now it's a strawman)" are unsupported.
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Dante
11/18/2012 05:21:51 pm
It's actually supported if you read any economical study done by government officials. This "pay gap" is on a nation scale, and not men and women working the same job at the same place. The factors are that women stay away from dangerous jobs that pay more, a higher percentage of women don't work rather than men, women also have maternity leave of about 1 year or more to take care of their children, which lets men in the same position advance faster, and most women have more than 1 child. Also, what also makes point is that women would rather invest more in job benefits while men want the cash instead, and men are also more likely to do overtime.
cub
11/18/2012 11:50:33 pm
i provided urls to support my argument. it's okay that you didn't, but it reduces your post to one person's opinion.
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Dante
1/12/2013 09:06:59 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html 11/25/2012 02:23:23 am
Dante - While the pay gap varies by industry and occupation, it doesn't go away. The workforce is segregated by gender, but even when women work in jobs dominated by men, they are paid less than their male counterparts. Here is yet another link that will allow you further investigate the issue: http://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/1/post/2012/07/do-men-really-earn-more-than-women.html
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Dante
1/12/2013 09:12:52 pm
Considering the fact that this disparity has been show to come from women and men's career choices, and not some illegal discimination, (link above), i cannot help but call bullshit.
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1/15/2013 10:27:46 pm
The article you cite from Market Watch is commentary, so before I respond, let's just agree not to get bogged down in a debate about the rigor and accuracy of the information reported there. First, this article and ones like it mention that that wage gap varies when you change the definition of "full time." The wage gap also varies by industry. Note that this doesn't mean there is no gap; It only means that--not surprisingly--the gap varies when you change the terms of the comparison. However, even if the gap completely disappeared after comparing women and men working identical hours, we can still wonder why women don't work as many hours as men. For example, could it be that women are disproportionately burdened with unpaid labor expectations at home?
cub
1/20/2013 06:29:34 pm
additionally, once a certain occupation becomes "feminized" the pay tends to stagnate = teaching, and once an industry that began as a low-paying job for women gets masculinized, the growth is legitimized by the business patriarchy = women directors in hollywood used to be commonplace in the early silent era.
Julius Caesar
4/1/2019 01:42:46 pm
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