Deconstruction is Magic: A My Little Pony Retrospective (S1E15)

Grrrrrrrrrrrrreetings everypony, and welcome back to Deconstruction is Magic, my Retrospective/Review/Analysis of every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is magic ever. Today, I have an episode I've been looking forward to re-analysing for some time. It's the ever-controversial Feeling Pinkie Keen! Without wasting any more time, let's get on with the analysis! I am the Mage of Mind, reminding you, as always, that even a cheeseburger can be deconstructed to its source.

This episode has a bit of an infamous for its supposed religious subtext. While it easy to take some lines as suggesting that (I.E: "A leap of faith"), Dave Polski himself has noted that this was unintentional, even if he didn't feel comfortable discussing it in public (as demonstrated by his Q&A Panel at BUCKcon 2014.) So, I think we should use this opportunity to talk about the literary concept of "death of the author". This is a concept extensively discussed on many a youtube essay, but for brevity's sake, we will define "death of the author" as meaning that the author's intent should not be the final way on interpretation of a text.

In other words, the author's intent does not exclude a work from accidentally having subtext within their work. As many a meme has stated, we live in a society, and so it's impossible to entirely separate our cultural and personal biases from our work. Therefore, it isn't unreasonable to read a religious meaning into the subtext of this episode, as critics like Josh Scorcher have readily embraced. This is neither inherently good or bad, but greatly dependent on the details to assess the impact of the message.

(Twilight's ego is about as subtle as a pan-galactic gargle blaster.)

Next, I feel we need to establish what is skepticism is in the first place, because there are still a lot of common misconceptions around such a belief system. To be a skeptic does not mean you must instantly deny anything supernatural as fake, like Twilight does. Rather, skepticism is about looking closely at the evidence, reaching the conclusion best fitting what we have. In this case, there is clear, repeatable evidence that Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" does have some minor powers of precognition. It's just that Twilight cannot explain it by conventional scientific means. As I stated in a previous blog, magic in Equestria is testible, repeatable and falsifiable. Therefore, it is as much a science as anything we might see in our world.

Twilight is so focused on proving that the Pinkie Sense doesn't exist, she doesn't form a working theory or a null hypothesis, which is another frequently misunderstood aspect of science. When we form a hypothesis, we are testing a specific claim. In this case, our hypothesis would be "Pinkie Pie's twitching has some relation to the events that follow". So, the null hypothesis would be "Pinkie Pie's twitching holds no relation to events that follow". Thus, Twilight completely fails at science, trying to get some form of vital organs readings from Pinkie instead of setting up a controlled experiment. In other words, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

("...I will finally explain what the hay this green liquid is supposed to be!")

Twilight could set up a controlled test scenario. Unbeknown to Pinkie Pie, she could have asked Spike to perform some of the previously predicted predicaments, such as opening the door or have something drop from the ceiling. Twilight could have randomized these events, then looked at the statistical average for accuracy. Even if we don't have the knowledge of how something works, if we can test it and illustrate that it does, sometimes that can be enough! Admittedly, all this is a little too complicated for the scope of a kids show. However, there have been many children's programs that can educate kids about science, so it isn't impossible!

That is the central flaw of this episode. The dialogue over emphasises words like "faith" or "believe", frequently drawing a connection between explaining how something works, versus if something works to begin with. Establishing if something exists at all is the first step, with explaining the mechanism later. This could be illustrated simply through birds: for centuries we knew that birds could fly, but we didn't fully understand how. It wasn't until we gained an understanding of aerodynamics that we figured it out! So, Twilight could easily have been shown to be missing this key difference, thus still working with the ending message that it's okay to not understand something!

(What do you mean "the piano drop isn't in the script"?)

Saying "I don't know" to an unexplained phenomenon isn't an admission of defeat, nor does it mean you have failed. This is a particular value that I think should be emphasised more; that we could be wrong. Sometimes, being wrong about something means we have the opportunity to learn! This is why I love Dinosaur science. We are so often making discoveries that completely re-write what we thought we knew about some of the most recognisable species. Science, if you'll pardon the pun, evolves, it changes the more information we get. Twilight's attempts to dismiss the Pinkie Sense is based on her own, narrow perspective of what science can be, in a similar manner to climate denialism or anti-social science.

But really, when all is said and done, where this episode shines the most is the slapstick comedy. At first, it's easy to feel like Twilight is being actively punished for trying to understand the Pinkie Sense, but a closer analysis reveals this to not be the case. Twilight is the butt of the slapstick jokes because she refuses to accept Pinkie Sense's legitimacy. As such, the comedic timing gives me big Wile E. Coyote vibes. It's just perfect for Twilight to tempt fate, then have yet more unexpected events to pop up. Few other episodes have made me laugh this hard! The animators outdid themselves here, giving the perfect balance between squash and stretch, and physical weight, showing the full utility of flash animation.

(Typical Twilight. Transforms into a Ponyta yet forgets how to teleport.)

Conclusion

Feeling Pinkie Keen is a severely under-rated episode. While the dialogue can be a little heavy with the blind faith implications, this is counteracted by some of the best comedy in all of season one. Twilight's actions are a perfect example of how not to do science, and while it would've been nice for the episode to illustrate this, it still displays clearly that her hubris is the problem, not science. As such, I give this episode a final rating of 7.5/10.

What did you think of this episode? Did you read much into potential religious allegory? Feel free to let me know in the comments of this blog! Until the next time, take care all~.