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If you'll let me, I want to, unprompted and for no real reason, talk about Season 1 Episode 23 of Totally Spies. It'll be fun? I promise?Permalink On twitter.com
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First of all the whole show is on YouTube so you can watch it if you want youtu.be/6FkYC7Q4lCsPermalink On twitter.com
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Totally Spies is like a fever dream to me. Because I never watched that much of it as a kid, but the show is so fucking weird that it's left a distinct mark in my memory. I watched the show in French, which adds to the feeling that Totally Spies is a hallucination come truePermalink On twitter.com
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But the reason I want to talk about Season 1 Episode 23 so bad is because it has an aggressive, anti-communist, pro-colonialist agenda for no real reason other than it can? What's *more* interesting to me is that it's definitely NOT on purpose.Permalink On twitter.com
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So our protagonists Sam, Alex, and Clover are all valley girl stereotypes going to a stereotypical mid-2000s American high school. I don't think any of the shows from this era that ran this stereotype into the ground were under the impression that they were accurately...Permalink On twitter.com
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...portraying what it's like to be the "average teen in America". Rather, the stereotypes themselves were so familiar that they tapped into the nostalgic idea of what people "think" high school is like.Permalink On twitter.com
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Or *was* like, since all these stereotypes are really 80s stereotypes with cell-phones added in. That's a whole other conversation.Permalink On twitter.com
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What's important for us here is that one key aspect of the valley girl stereotype is that they are rich and disconnected from the working class. They are addicted to shopping malls (these stereotypes started in the 80s) as part of their identities.Permalink On twitter.com
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Totally Spies plays this 100% straight, not just in this episode but in all of them. Our protagonists love shopping and the show treats this as a good, natural thing.Permalink On twitter.com
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But there's a hidden assumption here. If shopping is a good thing, the system that allows for shopping, capitalism, must also be good. If shopping is a core part of these girls' identities, capitalism must also be a part of their identities.Permalink On twitter.com
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Say we wanted to create a villain that struck at the heart of this identity. An ideological opponent for these shopping-obsessed valley girls. We'd have to pick the ideology that opposes capitalism. We'd have to pick communism. And pick communism the episode does!On twitter.com
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After running a small business that got driven out into bankruptcy by a massive, multinational corporation, our antagonist for the episode decides it's time to bring an end to the capitalist system once and for all.Permalink On twitter.com
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And thus, in an impressively short amount of time, the show trots out every anti communist trope in existence. The communists are all brainwashed (literally, it's a kids show). They all dress the same. They talk of revolution but there is no revolution, just envy.Permalink On twitter.com
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I don't have the space to talk about how NOT OKAY it is to insist that the opponents of capital and civilization are all backwards Australian aboriginal people. But that's not okay.Permalink On twitter.com
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I think it's funny that at one point the antagonist says he's anti-materialist, when the ideology the show is criticizing, communism, is materialist by definition. No I don't think the show knows what utopian socialism is. Or, like, cares tbhPermalink On twitter.com
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Criticizing capitalism or consumerism is depicted as mad and evil. Destroying property to meet that end is even more so. Anyone who criticizes the system is either: - jealous that they can't make it under capitalism - a backwards native brown - brainwashed and easily swayedPermalink On twitter.com
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Again, none of this is purposeful I don't think! It's a rather natural conclusion given the tropes the show started with. It does bring us to one of the most absurd yet, weirdly honest defenses of the capitalist system I've ever seen in media:Permalink On twitter.com
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"We must defend capitalism, by force if necessary, so that people richer than you can spend money on things they don't need and that you will never afford. The conspicuous consumption of a few is outweighs the suffering of the many."Permalink On twitter.com
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If you found this thread funny or interesting, I'm not opposed to making this into a video essay. But you gotta tell me. I'm finalizing all the projects I want to work on before the end of the year today. I know I'm not exactly "consistent" but I have a lot on my platePermalink On twitter.com