Swarm of the Century, the city of Dublin and the Sound of Soul · 2:39pm May 17th, 2015
Here's a MLP trivia question: What is the connection between the season 1 episode Swarm of the Century, the Irish capital, and soul music?
This was an interesting footnote I discovered when researching All in the Presentation. According to MA Larson the “Welcome Princess Celest” banner was a reference to a similar scene in the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments (based on a novel by Roddy Doyle) about a Dublin soul band.
That's not how you spell heroin.
This intrigued me. It's not every day you learn of a connection between Irish cinema and MLP. And as references go, it's not that obvious, and not such a memorable scene. If MA Larson had not confirmed it, no one would believe it was intentional. Children have been mis-spelling things with comic effect since the invention of standardized spelling. There must be plenty of similar scenes in many films.
And The Commitments is not quite the sort of family-friendly entertainment that would be an expected influence on a show like Friendship is Magic. Although given the reference to The Shining in yesterday's episode, maybe it's not so unusual. Why did Larson choose to flag this? Is there some subtle deeper connection? After all, Dublin is well-known as a city where you will find the magic of friendship, a legendary sense of humour, and quite a few little ponies. Plenty of potential for overanalysis here...
After watching the film and episode again, I can imagine Larson writing the script of Twilight and friends adventures with the parasprites with the sound of Mustang Sally and Take Me to the River and images of the Dublin Northside in his head. But it seems that the reality is that this is just one of his all-time favourite films. It is indeed one of the best—mixing drama, comedy, realist depiction of inner city Dublin of the period (including teenagers keeping ponies on dilapidated housing estates), and some catchy tunes.
I was also sufficiently inspired to read the book. I wasn’t surprized by the quality as Roddy Doyle is one of the big names in contemporary Irish literature, but I also found it rather more fun than his other stuff which I've read. He writes in a very distinctive style, almost entirely dialogue—and in dialect—with minimal description. I quickly ruled out the idea of trying to copy his style in my story (although the idea of Berry Punch talking with a Dublin accent was tempting), but certain elements did find their way into my prose.
