Which Television Shows Are You Watching #5? If it's ...Star Trek... wrong Thread

[Takhisis]

Are you uneasily in your 40s, Arakhor?

 

[Zardnaar]

Watching a UK panel show named Taskmaster. All my favorite comedians from QI, 8 out of 10 Cats and Would I Lie To You.

Hilarious.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I finished watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (i.e. the 2018 She-Ra series) last night. Yes, I know it's ostensibly a children's cartoon, but it has proper serialised storytelling, character arcs and spoilers ahoy. From what I've read, it's also rather more adult in tone than the 80s' cartoon, but then seeing as I was a young boy back then, of course I wouldn't have been caught dead watching a girl's cartoon. Still, I had great fun watching it over the course of a couple of weeks.

Spoiler :

The LGBT subtext is not exactly subtle throughout the show, what with Bow's dads, his crush on Seahawk or Scorpia's on Catra, but then season five just ramps up the gayness.

I noticed the She-Ra reboot and checked it out. I found it to be pretty solid and enjoyable. It's a little problematic for me to introduce to my own daughter because its too blonde-centric and she has had self esteem issues in the past around this, which led me to stop her watching Barbie cartoons. For me, I can watch the cartoon and enjoy it, even being aware of the issues, but I think my daughter is too young to be able to do that.

As a kid, I was a He-Man man, but I had cousins... gurls, who liked She-Ra and I was younger than them, so I had to watch She-Ra when they wanted to watch it. So I became very familiar with Swift Wind, Light Hope, and the rest of the gang. So it was cool to see a reboot.

I watched some "girls" cartoons in the 80's. We had cartoons on around 3pm-5pm but only on one channel. I liked the 80's She Ra on VHS, Gem and the Hollygrams. Rainbow Bright was bleah.

I also enjoyed Gem (Truly Outrageous) as a kid. I was introduced to it by my then babysitter's daughter, who was my age and loved the show, so we would watch it together whenever her mother was babysitting me.

At that age (the mid-80s), I was watching He-Man, Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31, later followed by Defenders of the Earth, Prince Valiant and Brave Starr. I didn't have time for "girls'" cartoons.

There's always time for "girls cartoons". Another show the above referenced young lady introduced me to (under duress, at the expense of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon)... was The Beverly Hills Teens cartoon, which was IMNSHO, a precursor/prototype to the 90210 show. My favorite character was the "villain", Bianca.

 

[Zardnaar]

I noticed the She-Ra reboot and checked it out. I found it to be pretty solid and enjoyable. It's a little problematic for me to introduce to my own daughter because its too blonde-centric and she has had self esteem issues in the past around this, which led me to stop her watching Barbie cartoons. For me, I can watch the cartoon and enjoy it, even being aware of the issues, but I think my daughter is too young to be able to do that.

As a kid, I was a He-Man man, but I had cousins... gurls, who liked She-Ra and I was younger than them, so I had to watch She-Ra when they wanted to watch it. So I became very familiar with Swift Wind, Light Hope, and the rest of the gang. So it was cool to see a reboot. I also enjoyed Gem (Truly Outrageous) as a kid. I was introduced to it by my then babysitter's daughter, who was my age and loved the show, so we would watch it together whenever her mother was babysitting me.
There's always time for "girls cartoons". Another show the above referenced young lady introduced me to (under duress, at the expense of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon)... was The Beverly Hills Teens cartoon, which was IMNSHO, a precursor/prototype to the 90210 show. My favorite character was the "villain", Bianca.

My wife rewatched Gen lately. It's better now than a lot of 80's cartoons.

I kinda liked the "nice" misfit.

 

[Arakhor]

I noticed the She-Ra reboot and checked it out. I found it to be pretty solid and enjoyable. It's a little problematic for me to introduce to my own daughter because its too blonde-centric and she has had self esteem issues in the past around this, which led me to stop her watching Barbie cartoons. For me, I can watch the cartoon and enjoy it, even being aware of the issues, but I think my daughter is too young to be able to do that.

Really? Adora, Scorpia and Kyle are the only significant blond people in the entire show, which is otherwise bursting with diverse characters of all sorts.

(I do recall reading about Barbie being a bad role-model for several reasons, but they were more focused on body issues.)

There's always time for "girls cartoons". Another show the above referenced young lady introduced me to (under duress, at the expense of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon)... was The Beverly Hills Teens cartoon, which was IMNSHO, a precursor/prototype to the 90210 show. My favorite character was the "villain", Bianca.

As an adult, I can safely say that I have definitely moved past the "Girls? Ew!" section, even if I'm unlikely to be alone in a bedroom with one.

Are you uneasily in your 40s, Arakhor?

My age has a 4 at the beginning and I don't feel like it should, but hey.

Watching a UK panel show named Taskmaster. All my favorite comedians from QI, 8 out of 10 Cats and Would I Lie To You.

Hilarious.

Taskmaster is quite something, yes.

 

[Takhisis]

Arakhor-Synsensa-Egon Spengler, in that order, should start the new series (or season) of this thread.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Really? Adora, Scorpia and Kyle are the only significant blond people in the entire show, which is otherwise bursting with diverse characters of all sorts.

(I do recall reading about Barbie being a bad role-model for several reasons, but they were more focused on body issues.)

She-Ra is blonde and she's the star. "Bursting" with diverse characters is going to be subjective based on the feelings of the individual viewer. I mean, putting aside the non-human(ish) characters, I wouldn't use that term to describe the amount of diverse characters. A show like Altered Carbon, I'd say qualifies as "bursting" with diverse characters, some others I'd put in that category are Marco Polo, The Expanse, How to Get Away with Murder, Orange is the New Black, Luke Cage. Shows like Bridgerton, or The Falcon and The Winter Soldier certainly have much higher than traditional amounts of diversity, especially given the time and setting of the former, but I don't know if I'd call them "bursting" with diverse characters. She-Ra certainly isn't more diverse than Bridgerton or TFATWS.

For my daughter, she was developing self esteem issues related to all of her fellow dance school classmates being blonde, and her not being blonde. She was also watching the Barbie ballet dancing cartoon a lot. She was starting to ask why she wasn't blonde and that she was sad that she wasn't blonde and she wanted to be blonde like all her classmates. So we cut out the Barbie cartoon and found her a different dance school that was more diverse, and poof, the "I want to be blonde" stuff stopped.

This isn't the hill I'm going to die on with you in particular, because I know you're being genuine, but when I watch Aurora turn into She-Ra in that cartoon... so much focus on her flowing blonde hair... they focus a ton on that in the transformation sequence. I get it... all the flowing sprouting blonde hair is supposed to be a symbol of her becoming more powerful and beautiful, but given that experience with my daughter, I want to be careful with her self-esteem. She's very young and she gets bombarded with enough incidental negativity associated with being black, particularly since we live in a predominantly white town. I want my daughter to feel secure and beautiful and watching a bunch of shows where the main featured, most powerful, beautiful character is always blonde wasn't helping achieve that. "But she has some brown sidekicks! (rivals, villains, etc.)" I certainly understand that perspective, and why that might seem good enough, but I assure you, its not. Like I said, there is already enough incidental negative association she is grappling with in regards to her appearance, I don't need to pile on.

Again, I'm fine with watching She-Ra myself, as I'm fine with not being a blonde girl , but I've had 40+ years experience with that. Also, I have the nostalgia factor going on. Plus I grew up with TV, movies etc., where the main characters/heroes were always white and there really weren't many other choices. I survived. But, it's better for my kids to be able to see some stories featuring some heroes/main characters sometimes that are different races, ethnicities, cultures, etc.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, obviously I wouldn't presume to tell you how to do your job, so thank you for being so frank.

The new thread is here.