Notes on the movie Frozen, which I dislike, and Suzume, which is excellent

Article Table of Contents

• Introduction
• notes upon watching Frozen
  • More on Frozen, from a subsequent re-watch
• A few thoughts about a delightful, wonderful, beautiful movie called Suzume
  • more Suzume notes
• Complaints about other hard-to-avoid-here/now shows
  • Paw Patrol
  • Another page of notes
  • about the first of TWO MOVIES
• bluey
  • season 3, episode 38 “cubby”.
  • Bluey episode, 43, ‘dragon’
  • another episode
• In conclusion

Introduction #

part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to someone currently best defined as ‘a young child’. I once wrote a lot about my experiences of things, then took a break, and drafted this blog post on a few pages of yellow legal pad, by hand, brought/edited/extended for the internet here. Write It Now and such.

This will end up maybe being a series of recommendations and anti-recommendations Please skim, or make judicious use of the anchor links to skip around.

I am happy to watch movies/shows with my kid. Because of that, and that I follow their interests, generally, I’ve watched a few movies/shows lately that I wouldn’t normally watch. This blog post started as a single page of handwritten notes about the movie Frozen.

Why did you draft a blog post by hand, in this particular format?

Often-enough I watch a movie with eden, if it’s a painful-to-me movie, a way I process my feelings/disappointment/anger is by creating something out of it. I also don’t begrudge Eden her taste for the interestingness of things. I get why Frozen is so appealing to kids, that is precisely why, or part of why, I am so frustrated by it. Some of the reasons it’s appealing is perfectly valid, of course. Interesting music, interesting visuals, crunchy-enough story line. Eden has normal-for-young-person taste, and I think sophisticated taste.

I love to watch movies with Eden. We’ve watched and enjoyed the movies of Studio Ghibli, over and over. There’s also been a whole bunch of days where the temperature has been extremely cold, like a weekend of a high of four degrees farenheight. On most of the days we’ve gone out side at least a little, but my gosh we’ve been inside a lot lately. I’ll probably find more to say about it at some point.

For instance, we’ve seen Ponyo (2009) many times ¹, and enjoyed it’s beautiful depictions of all sorts of sea life, dignifying view of the ocean, people who are young, people who are old, the world, the ocean, water, hills, trees, sky, weather, food, independence, and more. We’ve seen many more Ghibli films than just Ponyo, but Ponyo is a good example of a movie that perfectly attracts the interest of a child, and is not demeaning to an adult, and is full of beautiful themes, beautiful depictions of the world, and interesting and exciting movement of the plot through the movie. You might be able to watch it on Amazon Prime right now: Ponyo with English dubs on Amazon Prime

Studio Ghibli films are so dignifying and beautiful that to watch them is, to me, like taking a vitamin or going on a walk. It’s so dignifying in so many ways, I’m pleased for anyone to soak in any aspects of those movies.

More recently, Eden has begun to get socialized into American media, because (unfortunately) we happen to live in America, and kids references to Paw Patrol and movies like Frozen and Disney and a number of other bits of media intended of kids are ubiquitous. There’s of course a giant commercial industry around making tons and derivative media around Frozen, Paw Patrol, etc. 🤮

Those shows unfairly weaponize kids’ interests and attention spans into something that honestly feels like grooming, and it’s despicable, and anyone involved ought to feel shame for their role in the creation of the piece of media. Truly. I think I’d never watched the movie Frozen until watching it with Eden, and my jaw hit the floor many times. When someone else saw just a few minutes of the movie with us, they also routinely expressed shock at what was in the movie.

Strong words Josh, can you back that up?

Oh yes. Keep up.

I’ve got a media review of Paw Patrol coming up appended to the bottom of this post.

Regarding Frozen, I wrote this blog post via paper, as I watched the movie with Eden. She likes to ‘process’ media, usually some of the interestingness she experiences is around knowing what’s coming next, so she gets a lot of enjoyment from re-watching movies. Without further adeui, here’s the notes, with light editing, as I captured them across multiple re-watches of Frozen.

I’ll sometimes quote dialogue or a song, and add my reactions to it. I don’t think Eden is unfit to make her own assessments of anything, by the way. She often has astute observations.

When we watch a movie, if it’s the first time we’ve seen it or especially later times, I sometimes (SOMETIMES! NOT OFTEN) ask a question like: - what do you think of that person’s tone? can you tell they have anger? can you hear that tension? are they being kind? do you think they are happy? sad? what do you think they are feeling? did that seem safe? what do you think of that music?

notes upon watching Frozen #

Oof, re-reading the notes as I transcribe them here is a trip. Skim, treat the formatting loosely.

• I don’t dislike only patriarchal themes, I also believe that political authority is a myth, and dislike mononormativity, and moto-normativity.
• I don’t like jokes in a kids movie that are callbacks to american car culture.
• Anna, at the beginning, showing that her entire existence revolves around getting chosen by a person to become that persons… property?

🎶 Maybe I’ll be noticed, maybe I’ll find romance? 🎶

• Both the children in this show, elsa and anna, experienced a few gnarly things in sequence. emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents, then the parents died, and the kids were raised by… no one? for a few years? Then Anna and Elsa just reunite in advance of a coronation ball? Is a nation really choosing a traumatized child to become their symbolic head?

The beauty norms, so painful. sexualizes children, explicitely, as the movie starts with the depiction of these two female protagonists as children, maybe 5, and ends with them supposedly ‘adult’, where someone at disney finds it appropriate to see these people as sexualizable objects. Many parts of the the look is the same, and there is little distinction between how a five year old is being depicted, and an adult. And certainly something appreciable about that distinction might be lost to the viewer of this piece, who is often-enough a child.

the ‘big, innocent doe eyes’ gives helpless, shows matching the idealized male gaze of femininity. The skinny arms, impossible waists, over-exaggerated breasts, the belt that profiles hips, butt, and pubic region. Please read Fearing The Black Body. It’s all gross, and has been said by a thousand other people.

Frozen normalizes emotional neglect and abuse.

The dad (before his death) repeats over and over “suppress your emotions, conceal yourself, don’t show things” to Elsa, and then _coercively destroys her and anna’s memories to hide their own past from themselves”.

Identical to how supremacists ‘cleanse’ the history of their victims, to hide from the victims the extent of their own abuse.

In literally every single interaction between Elsa and Anna, for much of the movie, Elsa ends a conversation with violence. Anna keeps saying “She wont’ hurt me, we’re family”, normalizing the idea that not only is it acceptable to overlook clear harms and mistreatment from someone because they are family, that it’s in fact good to end up dying as a result of their misdeeds.

later, Elsa attempts to murder Anna via proxy by creating a vicious snow monster that, among other things, throws Anna off of a cliff. As soon as the snow monster lept into frame, the first time we saw it, Eden’s whole body stiffened up and she said “i don’t like that”, and we skipped the scene. In all the watchings and re-watchings of this movie, we’ve skipped that scene every time.

The “we are family” admonishment is particularly painful to see, because much of the harm that people experience is at the hands of their family members. Parents abusing children, spouses abusing spouses, neglect all around. ²

Jesus, I’m three entries into this, and I’m so angry at supremacists, evangelicals, the family system in which I and others was raised, and the long, long legacy of chattel slavery + the ethnic cleansing of the natives/nations, all by european americans.

Frozen normalizes centering the lives of aristocracy, for no reason. It’s dedignifying to children and young adults.

This entire movie could be about two people who are, in fact, not members of the nobility or aristocracy. I tell eden “belief in kings and queens and this ‘ruler’ stuff is a mental affliction experienced by some people who live in this country right now”. It’s extremely annoying when Anna bullies others because she is assuming a magical authority by right of ‘royalty’.

[…]

The ‘simple’ townsfolk are depicted as experiencing a naive giddy joy about the castle ‘opening its gates’ and a party. I am not interested in watching the self-aggrandizing fantasies of the ruling class. 🤢

The townsfolk: “It’s corination day!” or “The castle gates are open!!!”

Studio Ghibli, every single one of it’s movies, are infinitely more dignifying, and comprehendable to children.

I feel ANGRY that the seemingly nice person Anna meets after her first song (who also commits an act of traffic violence, running her over with his horse) actually is a con man who goes on to almost kill Anna at the end of the movie!!!!! OUT OF SPITE! I get to explain to my three year old what ‘willfull betrayal’ is, and why this person who seemed good is in fact now being ‘bad’.

[…]

More family BS:

Frozen pushes a message:

Family would never hurt you, family is more important than everything, thus accept mistreatment’

Frozen reinforces a colonizers mindset: No one indicates awareness of the subject class, or a displaced/enslaved people. (Compare this to Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke)

Anna displays helplessness, self-abandonment, needs saving because of something inherent in her femininity, not because her key support structures hurt her and abandoned her when she was a young child, including her parents, which is what actually happened.

Cristof is written to be obsessed with who posseses her. “You got engaged???” or “She’s engaged!” as the only distinctive things he can note about her. Her status vis-a-vis another male. It’s painful to behold the dehumanization.

In Frozen, nearly every interaction between two people who presumably have penises is an interaction mediated by dominance. It is inherent to being a man, to try to dominate someone else, and if you don’t dominate them, you’re getting dominated. Yes, this is a movie intended for children. But it’s also being watched by their parents. Every message this movie purports to send about the experience of being human makes the world a worse place.

[…]

Anna, upon meeting a new and novel, sentient, non-threatning being pretends to surprise to justify kicking off its head, anna and cristof written to be disgusted by Olaf’s injured state, saying things like “eeeewwwww its head” or “eeeewwwwww it’s body”. When Anna puts Olaf’s head back on Olaf’s body, it first goes on wrong, then she flips it over, and Olaf thanks her.

Talk about supremacist fantasy. That’s what a supremacist would love - devestate an indigenous people, then, when slightly repairing the harm caused by that supremacist, they want to be earnestly thanked by the victim.

supremacists expect to be thanked by their victims for the abuse they meted out. ³

Frozen plays ethnic tropes regularly, as supporters of colonialsm. Non-state people as backwards, un-understandable, fractal variations of the ‘magical negro’ trope.

[…]

Cristof is depicted as being seen by the trolls as an obviously superior being. #supremacy

The whol movie is obsessed with romance take away romance between the protagonist and ‘love interests’ and there is hardly a plot move remaining. Obviously fails the bechdel test.

The entire movie is settler colonialist propaganda. erasing the existance of anyone/thing existing before they showed up. Frozen II is vastly worse.

Normalizes women as property, belonging exclusively to someone else, never to themselves.

Troll song about Cristof is :vomit:, ‘shipping’ him and anna, without anyone’s consent. When he says “BUT SHE IS SOMEONE ELSES PROPERTY, THATS WHY SHE CANNOT BE MY PROPERTY” the trolls say “Eh, that claim of property is weak, you can totally own her.”. Agriculturalist, state-supporting. ‘true love’ :vomit:

side-note, as I’m writing this blog post a while after writing the original paper notes. got bored of the movie quickly. We would rewatch it, skipping more and more of the movie, and now when we put on Frozen we may only watch the two main songs. the opening song sung by Anna, and _Let It Go, of course._

Frozen makes white people look like royalty, or makes royalty look like white people.

Frozen depicts impalement as a joke. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUUUUUUUUCK. Someone wrote a scene with Olaf getting impaled, indirectly, by Elsa, and it’s supposed to be read as a joke, not a reference to a horrific act of violence.

I talk with eden through these movies. Sometimes extensively. She’ll initiate conversation or I will. She appreciates my help skipping the scenes she doesn’t like (vicious wolves, violent snow creatures attacking others, soldiers fighting and trying to kill each other with blades and arrows)

We discuss themes of adults controlling kids, neglecting kids, coercion, support of the state, the myth of ‘true love’.

Settler colonialists suppress the sexuality they ‘allow’ themselves to express, and obviously suppress/exploit the sexuality of the ‘other’, and then do strenuous mental gymnastics to justify the whole thing. Please see The Origins of Pro-Slavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Antebellum Virginia

The troll song about Cristof says “He’s a bit of a fixer upper”. This normalizes ‘weaponized incompetence’ and enmeshment and self-abandonment. I wonder which of the creators of Frozen are being horrific partners to their partners, and expecting the other partner to just keep accepting bad behavior.

Cristof says ‘but shes engaged to someone else’, normalizing marriage, monogamy, ‘possessive’ love’, ‘true love’

Frozen has incredible violence, casual malevolence, and betrayal.

Anna is so unwise, high conflict, needlessly provocative. (Throws a snowball at the snow creature created by Elsa, after being violently thrown out of Elsa’s ice palace, and the snow creature throws her off a cliff! instead, what if she read the room, said ‘ew, i hate how my sister is treating me, i am out of here’ and ran away/escaped)

… I will write something dedicated about Suzume, the movie, soon. It’s the perfect drop-in replacement for Frozen. Just watch Suzeme, never watch frozen. I watched parts of it with Eden, while she was in her Frozen era, and wept with it’s beauty. I’d love to do a bunch of screenshots, or snippets of scenes, to help illustrate a point. There’s obviously things challenging to convey about a musical through the written word, especially if you’ve not seen the movie(s) in question, or recently. My notes contain ‘call outs’ to parallel/comparing/contrasting themes between Frozen that really shows the intellectual/emotional un-self-conscious poverty of the people involved with Frozen.

The city-scape differences of Frozen and Paw Patrol and the cities/towns/landscapes of Ghibli. You, and I, would be right to anger about the built environment in the world today, and it’s parallels in the landscapes of Frozen. Enough people in the USA have forgotten there ever was a good streetcar network in every town, so they forgot the kinds of trips and adventures and places enabled by those infrastructures.

Multiple acts of traffic violence, and car propaganda.

Phrases like “Oh noooo, I just paid it off” (a sled, upon witnessing it’s explosive, fire-ball-containing destruction after falling off a cliff after being CHASED BY WOLVES!), comments about treating it in a certain stereotypical way that mimics propaganda about cars, the fact that a sled explodes after falling off a cliff after being chased by wolves, all because this random helpless white woman threw political weight and threats of violence at someone, demanding that they head into the dangerous, cold night, causing catastrophe after catastrophe, because she felt obligated to other people’s obedience.

The movie ends with Anna buying Cristof’s forgiveness by buying him a car. It’s a sled, in the movie, but obviously in the minds of the writers, it’s a car.

[…]

“you should wait out here”, she’s so pushy to Olaf and Cristof and Sven, who have supported her well through difficult times, as she heads into the demonstrably dangerous territory of interacting with her sister. Abandon your friends who show support of you, to receive more hurt from a family member?

elsa is dangerous, over and over, to anna. So dangerous. To rely on family binds makes all this worse.

the sexualization of children. Cristof says something, she makes a breathy “I like it fast!”, seeming to make a nod to aggressive sex? Again, this is horrifying. Big breasts, the eyes, eyebrows, lips.

Cristof, looking at elsa’s ice palace, he is an ice professional, says “its so beautiful I could cry” and Anna says, derisively, “Go ahead… i won’t judge”. Which directly gives judgement for the sentiment, how did this make it into the script. That was basically the single most dignifying, humane line in the entire movie, and the female lead brushed it off, encouraged emotional suppression, and issued more demands.

Stuiod Ghibli films/Suzume is full of reasonable moments of people displaying nice rapt attention to mundane, beautiful nature, of course to WITNESS AN ICE PALACE WOULD MOVE ONE TO TEARS and Disney literally attacks someone who displayed an emotional response to beauty. I wish the entire concept had been cut, OR she had given a non-abusive response to his exclamation.

Elsa’s power was plainly mishandled by her caretakers. She obviously has tons of creative potential, it’s a powerful tool, she just was shamed and attacked and tortured from a young age to think she had no power.

She could have done useful things for her community, or made things of beauty, and ease, like parks, sculptures, slides, maybe some sort of perpetual motion machine to unburden the townspeople of some labor. If one can fabricate heavy things effortlessly anywhere in space, the potential is unbelievable and it’s dedignifying to kids and adults to act like demanding that she hide her power is at all a reasonable response.

She also didn’t need to be doing work or a slave of capitalism bc she has a rare/valuable skill-set. What if she cared for children, because they found her entertaining? Put on free, funny outdoor shows using animated characters for the entertainment of all? to believe that erasing someone’s memories of their own power is reasonable enough to model in a movie is disrespectful to children.

I’d like to add that Eden has me skip large parts of Frozen, because it’s scary. We no longer skip the part with the wolves, but did early on.

Elsa creates a sentient snow monster that tries, plausibly, to kill the other party. The whole movie could be her doing cool stuff for the entire town, as an inventor/creator/artist/advocate/engineer. Eden has me skip the snow monstor part. Also there’s a part where soldiers attack Elsa in her tower, we skip that part. Wild to make a kids movie and inject war into it.

the entire troll meme is offensive, based on a bunch of supremacist stereotypes about non-domesticated people groups.

Olof, about cristof: “He is crazy”, jokes about taking off clothes, then being written to push agricultural marriage norms. to anna: “why are you holding back from such a man” (!!!???!!!)

More on Frozen, from a subsequent re-watch #

i’ve got a few pages of notes from multiple re-watches of Frozen

• Are Producer/writers trying to hide their own misdeeds? Are we seeing deep into their subconcious? The normalization of emotional mistreatment makes me concerned for the personal lives of all who were involved with crafting this movie.

🎼 people do bad things when scared or tired or stressed… but throw a little love their way… [and you can maybe influence them to not harm you, themselves, or others JFC!!!]

I’ll link to that song. here it is, ‘fixer upper This is the normalization of abuse. It could have been:

“People get stressed and tired and scared, but if they use that to justify violence or intimidation of you, you can call them at least in your own mind on the bullshit”

I skip all the overt violence for Eden, as she requests me to do, and its still so violent. prison-based motifs, arrows, implied impalement death, violent and intimate at the same time. In one scene anna is lying her entire body down on the person who she just met and later betrays her, and this moment of uncomfortable closeness she experiences becomes a joke and justification for later pushy behavior.

“true love” meme makes me hurt each time it’s mentioned. so de-dignifying.

To eden, I ask “Did that surprise you?” often enough. She will say yes or no, and sometimes why, often enough. I firmly believe she enjoys being able to anticipate what is coming in a story line, and how reasonable of a thing to enjoy, eh? In a world one has inhabited for only a few years, one can anticipate/predict what is happening next, in certain situations? How interesting. [^questions-for-kids] [^questions-for-kids]: I have a draft of ‘words I do and do not use with eden’. ‘was that surprising’ and ‘did you anticipate that happening before it happened?’ are rich, rich phrases. I do not use words that convey an expectation for things like obedience, compliance, obligation, authority. I don’t say ‘good job’ or ‘good work’, I say ‘that looked interesting’, or ‘that looked tricky’, or ‘i could see you thinking about that’ or ‘that was so smooth’ or ‘was that interesting to you?’ or ‘what did you like about that?’ or ‘I appreciate how you did {thing}’.

It’s a very rich and active experience, to watch movies with her. It’s not turning a show on and tuning out of the experience. We often-enough have it going in the background, too, as other things happen, the normal movements of life. I don’t put a special magical power around “watching TV”, and I help her have a good, curated, enjoyable experience of the media. My own childhood was filled with this strange magical gatekeeping around screens, plus shame, plus never actually being interested in the stuff I found interesting.

Once she’s digested a movie, it quickly becomes vastly less interesting to her, and if there is anything else interesting going on, she’ll attend to it. Sometimes she creates the more interesting thing (painting, playing, climbing on things) sometimes I create it (she’s happy to participate in anything like cooking, loves it when friends visit, loves to accompany me to a climbing gym or a park or a playground, she enjoys throwing and catching games, etc.)

I take children seriously. Sometimes people witness it, and are obviously stunned by the kinds of cool interactions they witness. I’ll ask Eden very specific, detailed questions, they obviously think she’s incapable of hearing it or giving a thoughtful response, or of offering her own spontaneous thoughts, and they’re shocked sometimes. It’s always entertaining. I can hear her a little more clearly than someone who’s unfamiliar with her mannerisms and cadence and specific words for things, but when she tells me something, when I relay it with a small dose of translation, they’ll sometimes show with surprise how clear and reasonable they find the statement.

During a movie (like Frozen) I’ll sometimes say something like ‘hmm, I don’t like how that person is speaking to that person. seems mean.’ or something like that. She also will clock, sometimes, when one person is speaking meanly to another. I really, really approve of her being sensitive in these ways. I don’t want her to think she needs to endure someone speaking meanly to her, or if she cannot escape the situation (common, when an adult is speaking meanly to one or many children) she at least will clock it as the adult’s misbehavior, rather than something brought on by her fundamental wrongness, for instance.

A few thoughts about a delightful, wonderful, beautiful movie called Suzume #

THIS movie is the one that I’m thrilled for Eden to have in her mind. It’s not a little kids movie, so while we’ve seen most of it, together, we had to skip lots of it and some parts of it are (understandbly) not interesting to her, so it’s not in the rotation with the same level of ‘play it again’ as some other movies currently are._

It wouldn’t surprise me if someday this movie gets seen many, many times around here.

Here’s the synopsis: 17-year-old Suzume’s journey begins in a quiet town in Kyushu when she encounters a young man who tells her, “I’m looking for a door.” What Suzume finds is a single weathered door standing upright in the midst of ruins as though it was shielded from whatever catastrophe struck. Seemingly drawn by its power, Suzume reaches for the knob…. Doors begin to open one after another all across Japan, unleashing destruction upon any who are near. Suzume must close these portals to prevent further disaster. The stars. The sunset. The morning sky. Within that realm, it was as though all time had melted together in the sky–guided by these mysterious doors, Suzume’s journey to close doors is about to begin.

Suzume, made in 2023. here’s a trailer

I’ve now seen it a few times, and found it deeply moving. I remember weeping through the end of it the first time, and again the second time. I’ve only seen portions of it with Eden since then and have not been moved to tears subsequently, but I doubt that I’ve shed all the tears I’ll ever shed watching it.

In Suzume, a young female protagonist travels around japan in an attempt to achieve certain goals (just like elsa/anna) and has normal interactions with the people she encounters along the way. There are so many parallels between suzume and frozen, and in every single point of comparison, suzume shows itself to be able to be serious, dignified, and frozen shows lack of seriousness.

more Suzume notes #

OK, these are all written out on yellow legal pad, I’m gonna draft the suzume stuff here, it might get its own post later, I wrote all these notes over the last…. at least a few weeks, I really want to get it written and done

[…]

I’m so pleased to watch this movie compared to Frozen.

• so much healthier interpersonal stuff. Mom/daughter, aunt/niece, friend/friend, adult/kid, kid/kid interactions. No one gets insanely betrayed by someone who is first presented as kind and safe. (Talking about Frozen.)

Features the real devestation of the loss of a parent.

Also says ‘the world is made safer by feeling fully what you are feeling’, instead of frozen’s ‘let it go, the past is in the past’, ‘suppress your emotions’ motif.

here’s a trailer, and here’s the delightful theme song. I’ve listened to this so many times.

• features a strong (like, actually strong) female lead, as a non-sexualized child. her childness is far more often a factor than her feminine-ness. (unlike frozen)

• it’s a coming of age trip, with strong built tension. there are even scenes comparable to ‘violence’ and ‘aggression’ but are not the absolute idiotic, fabricated drivel that is frozen. There’s intense expressions of power, force, resistance.

• Helps if you’ve seen/are able to appreciate Studio Ghibli films.
• creators love and understand cities. In one scene, a downstairs shop owner helps provide access for Suzume to Souta’s apartment. Jane jacobs, talks about this phenomina directly. this is what american-style ethnic cleansing stole from us. American-style ethnic cleansing literally wants/wanted to eliminate the ‘upstairs residence downstairs shop’ pattern, from all cities. American movies usually depict the americanized urban spatial form of suburbs/single family housing mixed with ‘downtown’ city cores and massive, car-choked streets connecting everything. There’s certainly not people walking around on streets. This is all handled correctly in Suzume

Eden is sometimes activated with fear. Scrambles into my lap, shamelessly, and keeps watching. I check in if scared, or she wants to skip this part, she says ‘no’ fully credibly, so we continue. (sometimes she says yes, of course, and I skip the scene). She crawls back out of my lap when the scene ends, back and forth, this goes away as she gets familiar with a movie.

I find it charming, cute, and useful for her to experience (without being shamed) fear, the safety that comes from responding to it, experiencing an adult as attentive and helpful, and then the ebbing away of that fear. I have a single memory of a scary scene I saw as a kid, it shook me and my dreams for weeks and months, and as I was watching this movie with my dad, I don’t think it crossed his mind that anything had happened. I was young, it was an Indiana Jones movie, a skeleton erupted from a wall with an arrow embedded in an eye socket. I still remember the scene. 🤮

I don’t like the english dubs a lot, vs. original audio + subtitles, this is the first time I’ve seen it with the english dubs, of course it’s far more accessible to Eden when it’s in English, though she watched a lot of the movie in the japanese, when the original audio is all I had.

beautiful, beautiful depictions of indoors and outdoors places.

I think Eden ‘processes’ a movie across re-watches, and easily departs the movie or skips it, once it’s no longer interesting or novel to her, in a reasonable way.

I value these kinds of times, even though other people criticize it. I’m not a ‘quality time’ person, though I do care about it. I simply also happen to prize the mundane time, too. I protect us from unwanted pressure, trips, rushing, restraining, limiting. I want to see her practice feeling seen as fundamentally good and trustworthy, and her instincts for what she wants as being taken as reasonable things.

She will confidently and enjoyably watch something, then, when done, herself close the laptop and move on to the next thing. Sometimes we have real grieving that happens over what happens when we cannot watch something right now, and again, I take that grief (and the opportunity to witness it and hold emotional space for her in it) seriously.

She enjoys naming when some part is coming. it’s a form of readying herself for scary parts, sometimes. I see it through a lense of helping her build inner resources to deal with the tricks that adults will sometimes play in moves to get a certain response from you, with or without your permission. (jump scares, certain bits of dialogue).

Complaints about other hard-to-avoid-here/now shows #

I don’t begrudge Eden for anything that she finds interesting. She knows I’m down for everything that’s interesting to her, and will help maximize her enjoyment of it. (Skipping the scary parts, if any, starting/re-starting the desired bits of media)

I’ll pus

Paw Patrol #

eden happens to really like paw patrol. Again, understandable, from a toddler’s point of view. I feel nothing but contempt and derision for every adult involved in the production of this show. It’s canadian, paid for by the canadian state, and ruthlessly reinforces authority, authoritarianism, political control, single family housing, and a very machanistic/industrialized view of nature. Extremely car-centric, celebrates all things involving engines, and vastly supportive of police, policing. (slave patrollers, slave patrolling)

[deep breath]

I’ve written a little/lot about zoning, and how I perceive zoning to be precicely enough how america did/does things that round to ethnic cleansing.

I wrote the above upon discovering a certain document that is what got enshrined/encoded in Ambler vs. Euclid, in 2926. Virtually every zoning ordinance that exists in America is rooted in some way in that document, in a way that seems clear to me from a few different frames.

So, it’s not exclusively american, but it’s some distillation of something representing the ideas of european-american-passing decendents of immigrants, and their idealized sense of social control, or whatever.

It’s unfair how disney/ppl like this grab the attention in an unfair, gross way, then fills the story with colonialism, authoritarianism, pro-deputized slave patrol propaganda!.

Eden likes it, and knows that I really don’t like it, so often we’ll reach great compromises. She’ll simply choose a different show she wants to watch. (E, to me: “put on {other show}. I choose it for you, because it doesn’t have police or cars”. me: “wow, gladly, i appreciate your thoughtfulness about what is easy or not so easy for me to watch.”)

And paw patrol still sometimes is played. No sweat either way.

specific complaints #

• the ‘patrol’ obviously references police, policing, the concept of ‘going on patrol’, and always a ‘patrol’ is virtually synonymous with a supremacist occupying force controlling with violence and intimidation the ‘native’ peoples. In america, many police interactions are the slave-patrolling action of policing jaywalking. In killed by a traffic engineer, the author mentioned that at one point in time, something like 40,000 people were arrested for ‘jaywalking’ in chicago????? my jaw dropped. I still hope I am wrong. phew, I checked myself, I am wrong. It was Detroit, not chicago, and it was 20,000 people, not 40,000. Here’s a link to all my highlights for this book.

Thanks to goodreads, amazon, kindle versions, and the delusion of ‘american police’, we have the proper quote from the book:

In the same 1958 report, AAA says that “it is time that we become concerned with pedestrian violations and unwise walking practices” and then highlights all the progress on this issue in cities like Detroit, which arrested 19,765 pedestrians for crossing against the signal but only 8,662 drivers for violating the pedestrian’s right-of-way. The report noted that San Francisco arrested 165 pedestrians for crossing between intersections as compared to 7,304 drivers arrested for violating the pedestrian’s right-of-way. But don’t let the numbers fool you; San Francisco also arrested 32,968 pedestrians for public intoxication.

Thus, i leave it as an exercise to the reader to infer my opinions for what is sometimes called ‘police’, in the greater united states. Here’s my thoughts on ‘jaywalking’

Therefore, because in the USA, where this show is being consumed (even though it’s created by a canadian group, and because of the internet, and colonialism, undoubtedly this show is being requested/demanded beyond the united states, so i bet people in countries victimized by american armies get to watch their kids want to watch this show), the origins of ‘police departments’ was to deputize the existing slave patrols. The very concept of deputization is sorta religeous (“here, random person, have a stamped piece of metal. Affix to your shirt, you now have magical powers”), and simply conceeds so much that doesn’t justify that concession. (“the state”, “authority”, “retributive justice”, AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE of people on both sides of that police power, like the story told in Killers of the Flower Moon)

not only ought one to appreciate police as slave patrolling, but that this role of slave patroller/deputized slave patroller filled a desperately needed position in society. what was that position, that role? maintaining the suppression of ‘slave rebellions’, also known as ‘people of the global majority taking minimum steps to slightly reduce the daily oppression of themselves and their loved ones’.

So, ‘slave patrol’ energy is strong in American policing.

not only are police slave patrollers. not only were they needed/wanted by american society.

other energies got rolled into American policing, too. Slave patrolling dealt with only one of the two primary fears of european americans.

Displacing native populations was also critical to the formation/survival of that group of european-american white-passing immigrants!

Killers of the Flower Moon, mentioned above, is a good-enough sample of the experience of the people who lived in the greater united states before the immigrants arrived with political authority. For someone else’s experience of the same people group, I invite a read of I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction. here’s my kindle highlights

One of the roles a slave patrol would fill is simply reminding people that violence could happen at any time, and no tactic (rebellion, passive resistance, fawning) could make any individual safe from harassment. This is why I don’t like to see or hear police (or sirens in general). Every time, it’s a proclamation, piercing the air and walls and consciousnesses of everyone around, that the local ‘slave patrol’ is on the move, willing to mete some coercion, if it feels right.

I have a related contempt for fire departments, by the way. Their sirens are ear-splittingly loud, actually damaging to hear from any proximity, disruptive, pierce the city for hundreds and hundreds of meters in all directions from their vehicle, they drive in dangerous and entitled ways, and RAM their way through a city with their vehicles, and like children hold to strange tropes about their own profession, and continue to resist efforts at narrower, safer streets, because some part of the system acts afraid it might not be able to fit their giant vehicles into a small space.

God forbid they demonstrate skilled driving or drive around with the kinds of vehicles used _in any other place.

So, this show, “Paw Patrol”, constantly venerating the institutions of slave patrollers and people who do not actually contribute good things to society. I say defund fire departments, fund ambulance riders & libraries/librarians. The vast majority of trips fire departments make in their huge ladder trucks are adequately served by an ambulance, and are inspired by american highway supremacy, so like three orders of magnitude of improvement would be trivially gleaned.

Not only does paw patrol hold on a giant, childish pedestal the vaunted role of ‘first responder’, it paints a unbelievable depiction of how the world works. Because kids like animals, and kids shows that depicted (for example) the police brutalizing and assaulting an ethnic group might not do so well. So instead, the police, in Paw Patrol, are involved in things like “rescuing a narwhale that got its horn stuck” or “helping guide a sleepy/hibernating bear back to its den”.

Paw Patrol features a bumbling mayor and some other sinister wanna-be mayor who plays a trope throughout the show that sparks conflict, when the show needs conflict. Eden is generally unable to appreciate that adults would pour their entire lives into hurting others and controlling them, so some of the tropes in the show goes over her head, or lands with confusion. She has no idea what a mayor is, or why someone with that title would behave in the ways depicted in this show.

Another page of notes #

more nnotes as taken by hand, across various episodes, and days

statist, arrogant, high-modernist drivel. “police are helpful”. the world and nature desperately need A WHITE MAN TO TELL EVERYONE WHAT TO DO!!!!! It’s an honor to be given a command and to do it joyfully, and if you do it well enough, a white man might tell you ‘good job’ and scratch you behind the ear as your payment.

Ryder passes out TREATS when they do what he says. This show doesn’t even understand real dog training, or indicates that the adults see children as no more sophisticated as dogs, and equally responsive to treats/threats. (Operant conditioning. 😬). (If one gives treats as rewards, one will also give threats as anti-rewards. This is Not Good). Isn’t it funny how ‘treat’ and ‘threat’ are so similar in spelling?

Vastly supportive of the 15 tenants/characteristics of european american supremacy culture

each pup has a magic backpack that has a machine, claw, gun, shovel, whatever, that because it’s a machine, solves a problem. high modernist, every problem just needs a technology applied to it. Force and mass and movement are magical, no basis in reality.

Ryder, a domineering white male, in nearly every line of dialogue, is issuing a command. he is never given orders or direction, even by the pups, never shares/models sharing power or control (remember, that’s one of the 15 characteristics of supremacy culture).

Basically fills the authoritative role of ‘god’, or ‘the state’, or ‘benevolent patriarch’. Exercises complete, unquestioning control of the city.

constant reinforcement of the concept of role confomity. every aspect of every person’s existance, except for the role they play, is expunged from existance.

The role of the patriarch is ironclad. Gives instructions, endlessly, in fake cheerfulness voice.

the entire mayor motif i think goes over eden’s head right now, because she is not yet traumatized/inculcated into political authority, where the mayor/political authority motif makes sense to her in the way it ‘makes sense’ to me.

childlike love of military vehicles portrayed throughout, by the shows creators. Vehicles modeled on v22 osprey, some ocean lander/transport thing, tanks. TANKS!!!!

eden and I talk a lot throughout the show, often enough. Talk about things happening in the show.

about the first of TWO MOVIES #

about Paw Patrol: The Movie which is AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH_

Movie opens with act of traffic violence, same as Frozen.

It normalizes people doing things (white-passing men giving orders) to solve nature’s problems with technology.

normalizes: ‘bad things’ come from obviously bad people working to nefarous purposes.

tons of offensive sterotypes.

people/animals need saving by emergency services constantly.

they have a hero’s lair, like a marvel movie universe. It’s despicable, I am loath to see it.

Iron-man esq suits for all pups, glorifying the power and authority of the state and Authority.

Their HQ vehicle launching thing is so fucked. Every pup isn’t just a specialized pup, but gets a specialized vehicle, that they rev the engine on and drive dangerously. A pup says ‘I could get used to this’ about a car before launching the police car through the downtown city, totally devoid of awareness or concern for the people in the roads.

that launched police car launches into a traffic jam, and then gets help from a ‘local’, native guide, codes as black, who leads them thru shortcuts. wow wow wow.

An iraqi-style MRAV type vehicle gets featured/driven around! By the police!

water cannon bombs a territory for their own benefit. (“bombing people is good!”).

Normalizes a sense that cops risk themselves to help others. (see Warren v DC, 1981, to see how they really feel about that).

Bombs a different agent of the state with water to put out flames. See? Shooting people is good!

white sky daddy receives scared police force member. Literal domestic abuse. (performative violence when the mayor is angry at the pups).

bluey #

Australian, funded by the australian government, has lots of similar vibes to a different state-funded show I’ve seen lately. (Paw Patrol).

Ruthlessly normalizes suburban, single-family-home, nuclear family concept. monogomous marriage. Fumbling, emotionally disconnected dad, mom ‘momming’ the entire family, including dad. I dislike Bluey less than paw patrol, and plenty of moments in the show are fine/appreciable, but for me the whole thing is hamstrung by the context, the expectation of another terrible thing being normalized.

season 3, episode 38 “cubby”. #

I’m trying to articulate why I don’t actually like bluey, even though so many people say it’s touching. I say it normalizes patriarchy, belief in authority, abuse.

dad: “The TV is too small, it’s only 50 inches wide” OMFG, he’s ‘watching the game’ and dissociating from the family.

agriculturalism, settled/domestication, marriage = the state, patriarchy = entitlement/obligation. ‘i’ll play this role, you MUST play this other role’

they’re building a play/space/fort out of blankets, a cubby.

Dad shows exasperation, annoyance with them. dad plays obvious trope of bumbling, clueless male-figure

the fort they built is SO COOL!!!! he didn’t say this once. how did he dissociate from their whole life/project?

Bluey episode, 43, ‘dragon’ #

dad diminishes mom and her skills at drawing BECAUSE SHE’S BETTER THAN HIM AT DRAWING!!!

he could have said “mom’s so good at drawing, I love to see the things she draws.”

Jesus **. it’s literally abuse to hack away at someone’s skills, it undermines them/their confidence/independence. this is horrifying to see.

that does it, my notes. might get this published finally!

another episode #

the mom/kids get pulled over by cops, treated as a friend. the cop is wrong about the law and instead of doing something realistic, like shooting the family or at least a dog, the cop says to the mom “you’re right, I shoulda known that”. They say “thanks officer”, joyeously, and ride off in the car.

Zero evidence of ppl of the global majority. The normalization of european-american/nobility/suburbanization-of-everything. Cars take us from our house to everywhere else, all activity is at grocery stories, restaurants, arcades, bowling alleys, back yards.

In conclusion #

Mmm, this thing has been months in the making, perhaps that is clear. Based on when I first started editing this file, it was five months ago that I first started copying down notes, but I think that was after more than one page of notes had been created.

I really like all things by Studio Ghibli, the movie Suzume, all episodes of Sagwa (available for free on Youtube here).

For Studio Ghiblie, start with Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle. I hadn’t seen or heard of these movies until very recently in my life, I’m so pleased to have encountered them, and the other films made by Studio Ghibli. You’re probably not gonna feel the same about Grave of the Fireflies as you do Totoro. Be careful, and be warned.

I dislike Paw Patrol, Bluey, Frozen, in particular, and all Disney in general. Luca is less-bad than most. Finding Nemo is atrotious.

Settler colonial culture is hurtful to exist inside of, and more hurtful if it exists inside oneself unrecognized. These disliked shows push a message of normalization of the supremacy culture inside of which the shows were made.