My cats have this meow that means “please come with me to fix this” after which they’ll lead me to the problem in question, usually a empty (or ‘empty’) food bowl or a closed door they want open. They look at the 'problem’, they look back at me, clear message.
What fascinates me is how this illustrates what they percieve as being in the realm of my 'power.’ I control the food, I control the door, sure, but my cats love to sit on the balcony in the sun, and it has happened plenty of times that on a rainy day they come get me, go to the balcony and show me… the rain. “Please fix this” they say. “Please get rid of the wet”
“Silly kitty,” I say, “I can’t control the rain.” I then walk into the shower and turn on the rain.
There are hardly any female werewolves because they break all the classic rules of femininity. They force you to confront female violence, strength, size, grotesqueness and uncontrollability. Historically female shapeshifters always shift into something dangerous (snake) or sleek (cat) or dainty (bird) but female werewolves ignore the masculine gaze completely. They’re distorted beasts that have no ulterior motive except to destroy. Nothing about them is nurturing or modest. They’re the opposite of what a woman “should be.” Their omission from pop culture is not an accident.
And talking about how the new frizz her is her niece, allow me to do a direct side by side instead
These are STILL not the same woman. Where is the icon fashion, the earrings (the chameleon, which might be in the new show idk I haven’t watched it), the prominent hooked nose, the broader shoulders, the volume to her hair, the LIFE IN HER EYES
This frizzle looks like she’s been called into the school board for inappropriate behavior and dress one too many times and has been broken.
Also others have said it before me but I couldn’t find it in the scroll backs but they whitewashed all the kids too. They same face syndromed everyone to either be easier to draw or be more ambiguous so as not to offend or both or something, and it just makes me sad
Fuck it I did the digging cause I’m still mad
And that’s not even to mention what they did to the bus itself.
The old bus had a personality and life and fun and now it’s just… a bus.
HOW DO Y’ALL WHITEWASH A BUS?!
It’s gives “anti abortion Jehova’s Witness cartoon” now
This, I find, is an excellent example of how “aesthetic cleanliness” usually just means making something less interesting. Taking the bus and Frizz’s dresses as a relatively unproblematic, but very stupid, example first. What the showrunners have done here is seen the visuals of the original show and tried to declutter them for the tastes of modern audiences. The issue is that the taste they’re catering to is that of parents because they are generally choosing what children watch, and those parents don’t like clutter, and they see all of those fun shapes and colors as visual noise. YouTuber Tantacrul has a great video on how this effects children in music education. In short it’s why no children’s music toys have the capabilities for experimentation that normal instruments do, parents can’t stand “inharmonious sounds”
The much bigger problem here comes when this design philosophy bleeds into the character designs. What they’ve tried to do is make the show easier to look at by smoothing everything out making it all look a little more “cohesive.” Problem is that when you homogenize everything you, well… homogenize everything. Skin tones are lightened, curls are straightened, Noses are smoothed, fat kids are made skinny, it all becomes less diverse and less interesting. It paints a picture of an executive who thinks that people of color and other marginalized people won’t sell, their version of the magic school bus will be much neater, much more fitting to show our kids.
TL;DR:
Problem a) they tried to declutter the visuals to cater to modern parents who like “clean aesthetics,” without considering what will be fun for kids to watch
Problem b) in doing so they whitewashed the character designs and send the deeply insidious message that certain people don’t fit the desired aesthetic and are thus, not fit to be represented in kids tv
Brutally I suspect it’s also because the ‘cleaner’ visuals are less detailed and therefore take less time to animate and are therefore cheaper to produce
Why pay an already overworked animator for ten hours of actually good content when you can pay them for five hours of 'modernised’ (read: shittier) content?
ALT
