In which Applejack is a stubborn mare. More importantly, "Not baked goods, baked bads!"
Wow, this episode man.
Actually, I'm going to admit, this isn't my favorite episode, indeed far from it, but I guess I'll review it anyway.
Right, to work!
First, we'll take a quick aside to examine how this show uses the time-honored (and time-mocked) style of the Spaghetti Western in some of its scenes, recalling the days of Wild Indians and Evil Bandits riding across a Black-and-White Wild West. Next, we'll consider a few of the more interesting details of the world the story takes place in, including the communities expectations, and how it is reminescent of an idealized American Dream. Also, we should tackle the issue of Earth Ponies, and what makes them so special compared to Pegasi and Unicorns, who have obvious edges on the other varieties of ponies. Moving on to various literary devices used in the show, we see the great and surprisingly expressive and useful yet overlooked (that's a lot of adjectives...i mean pronouns...verbs...apples? Well, you get the point) art of background music. We also unfortunately have to discuss the less-than-subtle art of retconning, which fortunately the show's creators manage to pull off really well. In the actual symbolic interpretation section, possibly the coolest section, we will begin a discussion of why Applejack isn't the Element of Loyalty and Rainbow Dash the Element of Honesty, when Applejack might seem like the more Loyal of the two. Next, we'll examine Twilight's increasing control of magic, and what the thematic implications of such an increase mean. Also, we must take this time to discuss the Aesopian style of story telling. Lastly, we'll examine the letter to the princess that was written at the end of this episode.
The Spaghetti Western is one of the most memoriable styles of television, and also one of the few uniquely American-influenced styles. The Spaghetti Western evolved from a mix of the previously isolatedly American Western style and the Italian culture, as a number of Italian directors began to take the American Western style and idealize it. This unique blend of cultures finds disaproval from many "serious" critics, who believe that the style cheapened the previously serious style of Westerns and created an innaccurate, idealized version of the American West devoid of any real humanity. Then again, these are the same critics who wasted their life getting an English major and actually read and enjoy books like Catcher in the Rye, so...take that as you will.
If you like Catcher in the Rye, I recommend that you get over yourself and read some good literature. Either that, or just watch more My Little Pony. Either way, stop reading crappy literature. Now, enough insulting my readers, I've got to get back to reviewing this episode.
The most obvious influence of the Spaghetti Western style is the Cow Stampede Scene, in which Applejack exhibits a number of the traits of the archetypal cowboy, a character archetype handed down from the first frontier legends. Her mannerisms and appearance harkens back to the cowboy heroes, and stopping a stampede from overrunning a town full of innocent people screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off: pretty Spaghetti Western. Even the way she stands in front of the sponatenously generated sunset that dissapears in the next scene, returning to midday, is influenced by the Spaghetti Western.
Skipping ahead, we see the Spaghetti Western style later in the series a couple of other times. The entirity of Over a Barrel is done in the Spaghetti Western style, from the town and its populace to the War Preparation Sequence and the War Sequence itself. In addition, one could argue Spike in that one owl episode is reminescent of the bandit archetype of Spaghetti Westerns, but personally I got more of a V for Vendetta feel. Personally, I've never seen V for Vendetta, so I could be totally off. I'll probably watch that movie as part of my research for that episode, which could for all I know be a direct reference (one could say, an extended allegory...you know, if one were an asshole like that).
Uh, right, I'm reviewing episode 4.
Let us examine the world, more specifically a set of scenes from this episode, and the level of community involvement, as well as community expectations as a whole. First, we see the first Stampede Episode, in which we see Rainbow Dash seeing the stampede and acting as an early warning system for the town. When Applejack sees the stampede, she puts herself at personal risk to save the town, even though her farm was in no danger what-so-ever. Now, both of these instances can be interpreted as required community involvement, but they could also be interpreted as fulfilling personal desire. Rainbow Dash could easily have yelled out her warning in order to protect those she cares about, or even just out of terror. Applejack could have taken action out of a altruistic desire to save those closest to her from personal harm, or she could have acted selfishly, trying to protect the largest buyers of her crops and her primary source of supplies.
The next scene I want to examine is the awarding ceremony. We see how a number of the town's citizens aid in setting up the celebration, and even more would be needed to gather materials and spread the word to seemingly everpony in the entire town and probably the surrounding area too. While we could just assume that the mayor paid for all of this, one look of how happy the ponies seem to be to help shows how clearly this is beyond any amount of money. Twilight Sparkle represents an interesting case, being on a government payroll. Even though she came to Ponyville to research the magic of friendship, she clearly not only is asked to, but is gladly willing to spend her time preparing a speech and the hundreds of note cards she needs to go along with this speech.
A few last things I would examine, less of a scene and more just a fact, is that Fluttershy is doing an Official Bunny Census. That's right, this shy, withdrawn pony who lives in harmony with nature gladly, even excitedly, taking an official government census. Another example of community involvement in the show is how Twilight Sparkle offers to help in the urgent care, something that would simply not be allowed in the real world.
So why have I just spent three paragraphs detailing such high levels of community involvement? Well, as with all literary analysis, I'm going to use this information to derive a statement about humanity. Let's start with how happy all of the ponies seem to be to help their community. This clearly shows a sense of fulfillment derived from community involvement. We also see how happy the ponies seem to be pretty much whenever there isn't some variety of horrible disaster going on, which points to a utopian society. From all that I've just stated, I can easily show how the shows creators are stating this truth about the human experience: Community involvement creates happiness, both directly and by creating a nearly perfect society.
Bam!
On a totally different topic, something I've often been asked is, "What makes earth ponies so special?" To explain, the people who I try to explain the show to fail to see what makes earth ponies equal to pegasi, who can fly, and the unicorns, who have fucking magic. Actually, so do a lot of the fans of the show. As a reviewer of the show, I take on the great burden of explaining community questions with simple, totally valid answers.
The first answer I give is that the earth ponies control the food system, as the only farmers, but this answer never seems to be satisfactory to others.
Our actual proof for what makes earth ponies special lies in the pony-pult scene. When Applejack jumps from the platform, she starts at a height of about 25 feet and reaches a maximum height of about 30 feet. The catapult is a lever in which the force pushing down is on one end, the fulcrum lies almost exactly in the middle, and the exit vector for the force is on the far side of the lever. Such a design should create an almost exactly transfer of force, meaning that Applejack's velocity times weight should equal Rainbow Dash's velocity times weight. However, we see Rainbow Dash fly thousands of feet into the air, arcing across the town.
I would like to thank the pony physics presentation for most of this info, as can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVfidujxRg.
Let's just assume that Applejack and Rainbow Dash would both have well-developed muscular systems, based on both of their lifestyles being full of physical activity. I know it's a stretch, but let's just assume. (I'm having a lot of fun italicizing things!) However, we see that Applejack's velocity is far smaller than Rainbow Dash's, which if we plug into the formula above means that Applejack's weight must be far larger. So, what we can prove is that earth ponies are special because they are really, really big.
For those who would point out that I should be saying mass and not weight in all of my physics talk, instead of going back and making really easy edits, I'll prove that it's totally okay for me to use weight. First, under approximately one atmosphere of pressure (in other words, the amount of pressure felt underneath the atmosphere), which is about what the ponies would be experiencing being on the ground, weight equals mass. Second, you can stuff your high school physics class graduation certificate and shove it up--
Er, I mean, take it and come down from your high shelf. Assholes.
Now that I've sufficiently wasted your time with unnessecary details, let's discuss the literary methods used in this episode, and in a number of other episodes. First, I feel like this would a great episode to discuss the importance of background music. Background music is actually an incorrectly used term, the actual term for this being incidental music. Background music includes incidental music, but also includes any music not designed to be the primary focus of attention, such as music being played by musician's at a fancy dinner.
Incidental music is often overlooked, purposely designed to fade into the background and create emotional overtones. Although some critics have said that background music creates an unrealistic effect by adding a source of emotional charge to a piece, I personally think that they're wrong. Like Background music plays a crucial role by replacing a lost feeling that one would feel if they were part of the real world. Background music attached to a location or activity replaces the natural feel created by senses that we simply cannot feel sitting all alone in our parent's basements, but would in the pony world. The same goes for people, although the senses are not as obvious when we talk to someone. In our lives, we meet all kinds of people who give us a weird, unexplicable vibe, either positive or negative. However, these feelings are dulled when we watch a character on screen, because no matter how realistic a person may seem on screen, the human mind is really effective at distinguishing between the real and the fake.
I could spend pages and pages talking about the awesome background music use in this episode, and the show as a whole (hell, I could create myself a whole blog about it...hm...nah, I'm too busy), but I've decided to limit myself to five examples. Definitely five, I counted them myself. Of course, I've never been wrong or lied to you before, have I? Those five are: Rainbow Dash's incidental music, Pinkie Pie's incidental music, Fluttershy's incidental music, the incidental music during the hospital scene, the incidental music during the Bunny Stampede, and the incidental music whenever Twilight writes a letter to Princess Celestia.
Definitely just 5.
Let's scroll over to the speech scene and watch as we see the incidental music changes from character to character. It's hard to draw much from Twilight's music, because it's difficult to tell the difference between her music and event incidental music, but we can easily draw characterization from the other songs. Rainbow Dash is both first and easiest to evaluate, because her presence always has an effect on music. In this scene, the music is a fast-paced, beat-heavy piece, showing primarily excitement. However, this also creates an almost undetectable aura of desire to look awesome, masked as just awesomeness. This detail, seemingly minor, actually has massive implications on her character. Rainbow Dash is obsessive about achieving the greatest heights of awesomeness, which in her mind would be joining the Wonder Bolts. However, as I've discussed earlier, we've been given very subtle foreshadowing that this will never happen. Rainbow Dash's emotions, therefore, are becoming ever more fragile, and we'll see her break later in the season.
Pinkie Pie's incidental music is, admittedly, just as happy and random sounding as you would expect, and I don't really know how much information I can pull from that. However, I can use this to prove that incidental music can be carefully crafted to assure that the music increases the character's personality and not merely her existance. When Pinkie Pie takes a few moments to consider the question Twilight Sparkle presents her, we hear the music stop. When her personality returns and she answers the question, so too does the music return.
Fluttershy's music in this episode, and a number of episodes to follow, her incidental music simply shows how shy she is. However, as she becomes less shy and the show progresses, her incidental music changes from this episode to this. I don't know, maybe this is because incidental music is an extremely effective tool for showing character change. Maybe incidental music is such an effective tool for showing character change because it allows expression of mood in one scene separate from previous moods, but can also be used to show a continuity by doing things like using the same instruments and style, like they use here. I don't know, I'll let you decide.
But the answer's yes.
The next scene I want to discuss, and therefore am going to discuss, is the hospital scene. Here, we see the ponies in a state of horrible illness, in horrible pain and with heavy vomiting, among other symptoms. While the show cannot create all of the terror of an actual hospital during an epidemic, it can reclaim enough of it to get across the horror without having so much that children get terrified and run screaming to their rich parents who then try to sue Hasbro. Or something like that. Anyway, hospital scene's horror is aided by the music, which due to it's uncomforting key and style and the high-pitched strings, creates a sense of horror and disgust without showing anything horrible or disgusting. Pretty amazing, I know.
The next scene I have to review is the bunny stampede. The music in this scene also creates a sense of terror, but for a slightly different purpose. This scene allows use to connect to the ponies on a deeply emotional level, allowing us to feel what they feel. A bunch of humans wouldn't be that terrified of a bunny stampede, which we could easily irradicate like the pestulance that they are. In contrast, ponies are terrified of a bunny stampede. Besides creating the needed emotions for us to evaluate the scene in a strictly literal sense, it also causes us to throw our values into question. The ponies are scared because they know the damage that bunnies can do, but they can't easily get rid of bunnies like humans can. This leads us to question the morality of the way we deal with animals we don't like, often by scaring, harming, or even killing them. We see how while the ponies have a respect for all kinds of life, we don't even have a respect for human life, as we kill those who break onto our property, even sometimes without making sure that it is incidental.
Near the end of this episode, Twilight dictates a letter to the princess, while everypony is bucking apples. This music plays a number of key roles in the show, which is why I chose this episode to discuss incidental music. The first and most obvious role it plays is to connect each of the letters to each other, showing that they are written when Twilight has successfully dealt with her problems and achieved a calm, elated state of being. This connects to show how the music creates a positive feel to wrap up the piece and show just how much learning from, and enjoying, friendship can create a positive feeling in all of us.
However, the most important purpose of this music is that it is recognizable. By creating recognizable patterns that repeat each week, the show's creators can keep up excitement about a show over a week and even over months between seasons. This is extremely important because the show is so episodic in nature, unlike many shows cliffhangers can't be created to keep people coming back each week. The use of episodic style allows the shows creators to completely wrap up an idea each episode and allow the episodes to be universally understood without an understanding of the episodes that came before or after. One could say that friendship is very similar in this regard. Could that be why they used an episodic format?
Yes. Yes it is.
I've talked a lot about musical numbers before, and I will again whenever they show up in the series. However, I want to take this more unique opportunity to show the connection between incidental music and full-blown musical numbers. I've already discussed how both represent the emotional state of characters in a show, but they're clearly used in different manners. Musical numbers are more full-blown, and therefore must represent something more than incidental music, and they do indeed. A musical number represents and overflowing of emotion, when a pony is extremely excited or happy or angry or sad or scared or any other emotion, while incidental music represents constant emotion. In addition, a musical number tends to remove a feeling of seriousness from a scene, while incidental music adds to the tension and seriousness of a scene.
Something that we must unfortunately discuss with this episode is the less-than-subtle art of the retcon. Perhaps you missed it, because the people who design the show actually know what they're doing. Can you find it? Oh god, where was it? Fine, I'll tell you. Applejack, in the very first episode, presents her family to Twilight Sparkle and the show derives humor from how large her family is. However, this removes too much tension from the family, where if they had a small family of, say...I don't know, four ponies or so, then even a single injury could create enough tension to allow for the creation of an episode about the farm, which is pretty hard to do, the farm being so out of the way. So the show's creators do it, they retcon and have Applejack explain that her "family" are just a whole bunch of people there for a family reunion. Why wouldn't Twilight have learned that after eating a massive meal with these people in the very first episode. We know that she's not anti-social enough to not talk to ponies, because she talks to the ponies who tell her about Moon Dancer's get together in the west courtyard. Unfortunately, the show's creators wrote themselves into a corner, and had to retcon to escape.
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Just comment if you see what I'm missing.
Finally, we get to the fun part of evaluating the thematic implications of this episode. One extremely integral thematic detail that we have to consider is the Elements of Harmony. A big debate that appeared early in the series was that Rainbow Dash didn't deserve to be the Element of Loyalty, and should have been swapped with Applejack and her Element of Honesty. This episode shows how loyal Applejack is, but this is only the most obvious conclusion, which unfortunately does not line up with the rest of the series. Applejack tells everypony that she'll help them with things and stuff (really CopperToken, really? things and stuff?), and she keeps her word. One could certainly say that she wasn't lying.
In contrast, Rainbow Dash does lie in the series. We'll evaluate and highlight those when we get to those, but we can already prove how loyal she is. All one has to do is look at her obsession with the Wonder Bolts, and how she works so hard to impress them. Every episode so far, she has mentioned them in some way or another. In the first episode, she's simply taking a break from training, and allows her work to slide for her practice. In the second episode, she asks the Shadow Bolts to mention their complements about her to the Wonder Bolts. In the third episode, she reveals that joining the Wonder Bolts has been a life-long dream. In this episode, she's doing new tricks "that are sure to impress the Wonder Bolts". Clearly, she is extremely loyal.
Now I don't want to say that somehow Applejack isn't loyal, when she clearly shows that she is. She attempts to provide for her family and aid her friends, but her form of loyalty is far more unhealthy than Rainbow Dash's. She doesn't believe in receiving aid when she needs it, only in giving it. Already in this series, this causes her emotional and physical harm.
In this episode, we see that Twilight is gaining more control of her magic. Where before she could only use her teleportation in fear, now she can use it at will and with far greater control. We also see her coming out of her emotional weakness and offering help to her friends instead of receiving help for once. Now, if we accept that friendship is synonymous to magic, as stated in the title of the show, could we say that her increasing control of magic and her increasing control of friendship are related, and possibly even that her magic in becoming better because she is harnessing the power of friendship? We could, if you know, we felt like being correct.
This episode is a great example of Aesop-ian story telling. This style is an ancient art first truly mastered by Aesop, although it certainly goes far back before that. We see how a bunch of talking animals have a rather normal adventure and learn a valuable life lesson. In this regard, we can see how the whole show uses this style. Why? Stop asking stupid questions, I'm about to tell you. This show, officially written for children, needs to be full of easily understandable characters and styles, and the Aesop stories are some of the most universally understandable characters. Also, using a certain style like this provides a useful chassis for each episode in an episodic show, like police dramas in which the cops find out about a crime, look into solving it, and then find and bust the murderer.
We're almost done here. First though, we have to evaluate the letter to the princess. I quote:
"Dear Princess Celestia,
My friend Applejack is the best friend a pony could have, and she's always there to help any pony. The only trouble is, when she needs help, she finds it hard to accept it. So while friendship is about giving of ourselves to friends, it's also about accepting what our friends have to offer.
Your favorite student,
Twilight Sparkle."
We'll see lessons related to this throughout the season, and this sets up an understanding of giving throughout the series. For example, in the best episode (well, Suited for Success anyhow), we see Rarity give away expensive, hand-stitched outfits, but eventually her friends drive her ragged. Clearly, it is important to set up this idea of give and take early in the show, creating plenty of area to explore in the field of friendship.
Or something like that.
At the end of the bunny stampede, we see a reference to the Lion King when the bunnies run around the unconscious body of that one background character. Even the music matches up.
Copper Token. We're done here.
