On Hyperactive, Pink Ponies · 9:33pm Dec 13th, 2013
Warning: Rant
The paint-watching scene in “Feeling Pinkie Keen” has always bothered me a bit, but not for the reason you might expect.
Much debate has raged over Twilight’s method of dispatching Pinkie’s duplicates. Even more controversial is the method of determining the real Pinkie. This, to me, is not the biggest issue with the episode. Yes, there may have been more logical methods of weeding out the clones; for example, it was shown that the clones have none of Pinkie’s memories, so a simple quiz would have done most of the work in finding the real Pinkie. The reason it was a test of determination is because it makes for a better story. The entire theme of the episode was that Pinkie cares about her friends above all else, so to force her to sit through something like a paint-watching fits in much better than another, perhaps more logical method. Could it have been handled in a way with less disturbing implications? It’s possible.
No, my biggest issue is of a more personal nature. As I have mentioned previously, I suffer from fairly severe ADHD-PI. It is a constant struggle for me to be productive, and I have to infuse my body with potent chemicals just to put myself on a similar footing to everyone else [1]. Pinkie Pie fits every major diagnostic criterion for ADHD-PH, the better-known sibling of my condition. She talks constantly, touches and plays with any object in sight, and has difficulty sitting still or performing quiet tasks. Thus, to show her sitting still, completely focused on a single, menial task to the point of being oblivious to events happening around her, feels just a bit insulting.
Even though I have inattentive ADHD, rather than Pinkie’s hyperactive ADHD, they share many traits, so I will be speaking from experience. Were I placed in that test, I would fail. I have no doubt that, no matter the stakes, I could not sit in one place, staring at a wall, for more than ninety seconds. Add in the distractions, both deliberate and otherwise, and I wouldn’t last ten. This is what ADHD does; those with the condition are neurologically incapable of focusing on tasks that do not interest them.
Now, if I may be allowed to boast slightly, I am devastatingly intelligent. When I was twelve years old, I was ranked second in the state of Pennsylvania on a talent search among similarly-aged students. I scored a 2260 on the SAT (800 Math, 720 Reading, 740 Writing) when I was fourteen [2][3]. I entered my first year of college with multiple academic scholarships at the age of sixteen. Multiple intelligence and aptitude tests have placed me in the ninety-ninth percentile for things like spatial reasoning and logical problem solving. It is no exaggeration to say that, when I enter a room, the average IQ score jumps a few points [4]. Despite this, my grades in most classes have consistently hovered around the low-eighties or high-seventies, because I am simply unable to focus when I’m not keenly interested in the material. I simply could not do my homework unless one of my parents was literally sitting behind me, watching to make sure I wasn’t slacking off. Before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was more than once reduced to tears because I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I’d been called lazy, unmotivated, shortsighted (in the figurative sense; coincidentally, I would later be diagnosed with literal nearsightedness), and stupid, and it didn’t take long for me to start believing it myself.
My point here is that ADHD, like any mental disorder, is a very real thing with very real consequences. Despite this, there is a common perception that anyone can overcome these consequences through determination or sheer force of will. It appears all the time in fiction. Here’s a fun game: flick through a bunch of “inspirational” movies, especially those that have won awards. Count how many of them end with a character throwing away his or her medication (bonus points for an inhaler or epipen). If a character is depressed, all he really needs is a friend to tell him that he needs to think positively [5]. People with paralyzing phobias can overcome them when they need to rescue a friend or loved one, and they’ll even come out of the experience having overcome that fear completely. Even physical disability can be beaten by the power of positive thinking.
We all love to see this happen. It’s comforting to believe that any problem we might face can be overcome with enough effort, and done well, it can be a powerful message about the importance of hope in the face of adversity. Done poorly, however, these triumphs of will carry a much more harmful message. Namely, when a character beats his or her physical or mental restrictions through sheer determination, it means that everyone else still facing that limitation is simply not trying hard enough. It changes mental illness from a physiological and neurological condition into a character flaw, and implies that people who struggle every day with depression or ADHD do so because they don’t want to change.
No-one tells a gunshot victim to simply will the wound closed. You wouldn’t prescribe a positive outlook to a cancer patient [6]. A vaccine isn’t made of distilled wishful thinking. Why do we treat mental disorders differently? I’ve heard people claim that mental illness is just a form of oppression (look up “medicalizing nonconformity” if you need a good laugh), or that sufferers are making it up to win sympathy. I won’t deny that this happens; homosexuality has long been claimed to be a mental illness [8], thus enabling bigots to attempt to “cure” the gay out of people. Likewise, some people do try to fake mental sickness to get access to mind-altering substances, though the same happens with physical injuries as well. These concerns don’t change the fact that mental disorders are real, and the characteristics and symptoms are well-known [9].
I realize this has become a rant, so I’ll bring things back to the episode itself. Yes, the paint-watching test left a bad taste in my mouth. I do not imagine it was conceived out of malicious intent; the phrase that comes to mind goes something like, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” [10], though ignorance might be more apt in this case. In fact, did I not suffer from ADHD myself, I would have found nothing wrong with the episode’s (implicit) depiction. Even despite my gripes, I also enjoyed the episode as a whole. It’s funny and silly in the way that only Pinkie Pie can be, and it does a wonderful job of portraying her as a sympathetic character.
Writing about illness or disability is always a challenge. Feeling Pinkie Keen didn’t attempt to address ADHD; that was an interpretation I came to based on my own experiences. Had mental illness been the focus of the episode, I have no doubt that it would have been handled differently. It is for this reason that tomorrow’s episode, “Flight to the Finish”, has been my most-anticipated episode of Season 4 since its announcement. There are so many ways for it to go wrong; I’ve seen most of them [11]. Done well, though, I think its message could be one of the most powerful and inspirational of the show to date.
I’m optimistic.
1: There is a bit of controversy surrounding the use of stimulant drugs to treat ADHD. In fact, there’s a bit of controversy around any mental illness. I submit, however, that most people who disagree with either the diagnosis or treatment of mental disorders are not, themselves, sufferers. I’d like to make a few things clear: I take extended-release methylphenidate in the morning on any day in which I anticipate the need for focus or concentration. The medication takes effect around half an hour after I have taken the pills, and lasts for nine to ten hours after that. As with any drug used to treat ADHD, its purpose is not to make me more docile, nor does it fundamentally change my mood or personality. What it does is allow me to operate with a substantially improved ability to focus and to avoid distraction. To that extent, it is much like coffee, which is a stimulant that most adults take regularly when they need a bit of help concentrating. The difference is that my medication is necessary if I want to operate at anything like the level of a non-sufferer.
2: That same year, I also took the ACT. I got a score of 34 overall, taken as the average of four sections with a maximum score of 36 each. I later took the AP exams for US Government and Politics, US History, Calculus AB, and Physics C: Mechanics; I scored 4 on each, except for Calculus, on which I scored 5. On each of the SAT II subject tests in Mathematics and Physics, I scored the maximum of 800. Here's a fun fact: after I was accepted into college, these scores immediately lost all relevance. That doesn't mean I can't still be proud of them; heaven knows I have precious little else to celebrate.
3: I actually dislike the use of standardized test scores to measure intelligence. To my mind, they are more accurately a measure of the test-taker’s ability to take a standardized test. IQ scores are similarly suspect, as each test has its own criteria (here’s a tip: whenever someone states an IQ score without qualifying the test taken, it’s useless to compare it to anything and you should just dismiss it as irrelevant). Still, it’s sometimes useful to have a simple, qualitative measurement, as long as you remember not to reduce someone to a series of statistics.
4: Empty rooms are the exception. A room with no-one in it does not have an average IQ score of zero; it does not have an average IQ score at all. It would be a bit like asking the average length of the twenty-ninth of February across the past hundred years, or the how many slices to cut no pies into to feed no people. You cannot divide anything by zero, not even (perhaps especially not) zero.
5: There is an exception, and it’s an important one to make. People about to attempt suicide are frequently shown being convinced to change their minds by something as simple as someone asking them not to. This really happens, and it happens far more often than you might expect. While most suicides are not spur-of-the-moment (nor are they often preceded by a marked increase in depressive speech or actions; the stereotypical response to a suicide is “I had no idea anything was wrong”, and this is because a person who has decided on suicide will often be relieved that the end is near), they do tend to happen in a temporary low point in a person’s life, where that person feels at his or her most alone. Often, it’s simply the presence of someone else willing to listen that will cause the person to reconsider.
6: Homeopathy, faith healing, qi, and intercessory prayer notwithstanding. I could write pages upon pages about pseudoscience in medicine, particularly homeopathy, but I have enough faith in my readership to understand that claims that cannot be backed up by evidence have no place in any branch of science, least of all when lives are on the line. Just for fun, though, I must point out that an organization has long offered a million-dollar reward for anyone who can demonstrate clear evidence of supernatural abilities or events (and make no mistake, the mechanism by which homeopathy is purported to work is nothing short of magic). While many small-time homeopathic proponents have attempted (and failed) to claim this prize, it’s even more telling that no major distributor of homeopathic remedies [7] has ever even attempted to meet this challenge. Attempting it and succeeding would earn instant fame and recognition, not just for the company, but for homeopathy as a field of study. Why, then, would they not want to put their remedies to the test?
7: It seems I cannot let the subject of homeopathy rest easily after all. The very concept of a major manufacturer of homeopathic remedies is paradoxical. One of the fundamental tenets of homeopathic practice is that of one-on-one interaction between the patient and the practitioner. According to the original guidelines, each homeopathic remedy must be individually prepared to meet the unique requirements of each patient and illness. While this makes homeopathy a fairly effective placebo (and nothing more), it also means that, were there any actual merit to homeopathic remedies in the first place, they would still be utterly impossible to actually mass-produce.
8: This is another subject I could rant about for days. What’s interesting is that, though we like to think of modern Western civilization as more progressive and tolerant than we were in the past, we’re a culture like any other, and we have our own taboos and virtues that are unique to us. For example, teacher-student relationships, even (or especially) those of a sexual nature, were encouraged in many ancient cultures, though we consider them abusive or inappropriate today. Effeminate or emotional men were not so long ago thought of as the epitome of manhood; just look at how much crying there is in The Odyssey. A look at historical artwork will tell you a lot about the changing perceptions of beauty, especially when it comes to the female form. Things fall in and out of favor, and homosexuality is no different. That doesn't mean it's right to treat people differently because of it.
9: There is a caveat here. The study of mental health is a relatively new field, and our understanding of the human brain is far from complete. For ADHD in particular, there is actually a fair amount of debate over the diagnostic criteria. While few medical experts will deny that ADHD exists, the consensus on its prevalence or diagnosis is tenuous at best. Brain imagery suggests that there are structural and operational differences between the brains of those with ADHD and those without, but as ever, there is much more research to be done.
10: The quote is attributed to Robert J. Hanlon, and forms the adage known as “Hanlon’s Razor” (the parallel to Occam’s Razor is intentional).
11: Because it’s a bit outside the scope of this discussion, and also because it’s so fundamentally unimportant in the grand scheme of things that devoting any attention to it will cause the medication coursing through my veins to immediately declare war on my norepinephrine receptors, I will not include my speculation on the upcoming episode in the main article. For the sake of completeness, however, I will detail a few ways I can see the episode going down in this footnote, as well as how I would react to each.
The first possibility is that Scootaloo is found to be permanently disabled or impaired in flying. Despite this, she learns not to allow her inability to define her, and resolves to live her life to the fullest anyway. This, I think, is the best-case scenario. Actually, that sounds really horrible, come to think of it. Let me rephrase; this would provide the best message. It would show the most daring and integrity on the part of the writers. I would not wish disability on Scootaloo, nor on anyone else, because wow I shouldn’t have to explain why not. Let’s move on, before I accidentally wish that Santa were dead or something.
Alternatively, Scootaloo really just hasn’t figured out how to fly yet. Maybe she even figures it out over the course of the episode, which would open up some really neat possibilities in the future. Honestly, I would probably be disappointed. Based on the animatic shown of this episode, it really seemed that this episode would cover a sensitive topic like disability, and to not follow through on that would represent either a cop-out on the writing side or a diabolically clever marketing decision by whoever picked the clips to show ahead of time. That’s a preposterously good way to stir up some anticipation.
The episode might not resolve Scootaloo’s flight at all. My mind is having to jump through some pretty strange hoops to figure out how this might work, but I’m not willing to dismiss it outright. Maybe the episode is just about Scootaloo’s self-confidence, or about how bullies will always find something to use against you [12]. This is a bit of a mixed bag, and I’d have to wait until the actual resolution of the issue to make a full verdict. Ending on an optimistic note, only to later determine that no, she can’t fly after all, would be cruel. Doing the opposite would feel like an inability to follow through. Completely avoiding the issue would feel manipulative, though I’d again have to credit the marketing team for sheer irreverence. That's courage on a Santa-killing level, and I would have to admire them for it.
There are worse ways it could go, but I trust the writing team to do a good job of it. I wouldn’t have stuck with the show thus far otherwise, right? (“Sunk cost fallacy”? What’s that?)
12: Regarding bullies, I think “One Bad Apple” might just be one of the best episodes of the show so far. It isn’t my favorite, not by a long shot, nor was it perfect. Holy crap, though, did it resonate with me. As is probably not surprising, I was bullied throughout most of my school days. To this day, I suffer from self-esteem issues and emotional and interpersonal difficulties because of it. “One Bad Apple” has without a doubt the most poignant depiction of the consequences of bullying, and its message that adults can and will help if you just talk to them is so hugely important that I cannot adequately express it. To watch the Crusaders being bullied like that, especially knowing that they could have resolved it so easily had they just talked to Applejack, was personally moving in a way that I don’t think any other episode (barring "Hurricane Fluttershy", which I actually could not watch in one sitting because I had to recover from it emotionally halfway through) has been before or since.
I really think “Flight to the Finish” could do that again. On some level, I think I need it to be. Maybe it’s unfair to compare ADHD to physical disability, but I have been struggling with the former all my life and I need some reassurance that it doesn’t have to define me.
Maybe I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: This show is amazing.
Two things. First while ADHD seems to fit Pinkie well enough it's not a absolute certainty.
Second, all ponies are magic, so it might be possible that if you wish hard enough, bam, magical effect that simulates being properly medicated. Or for that matter the proper medication just appears in your blood. Obviously that would not help with the message at all, but it is something to think about. In Equestria the power of positive thinking might really be enough to shake off almost anything. Which in turn means Pinkie probably hasn't been sick since she left the rock farm.