I’m still watching As Told By Ginger and I think children’s media needs to embrace the idea that sometimes friendships come with an expiration date. Dodie’s kind of a lousy friend and the same can be said for Penny’s friends on The Proud Family.
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Paint
Originally drawn forJuneteenth. I now post it in celebration of Black History Month. Even in times of crisis, let's take the time to celebrate freedom. Paint the world whatever you want!
Penny Proud (The Proud Family: Louder And Prouder)
Clyde McBride (The Loud House)
Craig Williams (Craig Of The Creek)
Wolf (Kipo And The Age Of Wonderbeasts)
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The Proud Family, Colorism, and Autism - The Bebe Episode was not it
A review from a Black autistic person of "Bebe" the Proud Family: Louder and Prouder episode that focuses on autism.
My word is still only one perspective and shouldn't be taken as an authoritative view. I didn't like this episode but other Black autistic people have every right to their perspectives as well. At the end of the day I'm just some guy, y'know?
The Proud Family is still colorist af though.
Some Excerpts:
I try not to be too hard on the original Proud Family from the early 2000s. It was one of the few and earliest Black cartoons that existed at the time. There weren't a ton of shows that featured a Black girl as a protagonist. So while it had issues of colorism and not sticking the landing with a lot of its executions, that doesn't invalidate the times it made genuinely positive moments and gave something of comfort and love for Black viewers, especially Black girls. I never got into it myself, but I recognize that it does hold a good place in the hearts of a lot of Black viewers.
Colorism is in a lot of Black media. Living Single, The Boondocks, Coming to America, My Wife and Kids, Black-Ish, literally anything coming from Chris Rock, you name it.
So in talking about the framing for Bebe's autism, we have to reckon with how the show utilizes colorism in how it frames what it deems the right or wrong opinions. It's arguably even done with Bebe himself and Cece. Oscar, Maya, and Dijonay are all frequently awful people throughout the show, but we shouldn't leave it at that. We should remember how the show uses that to direct the viewer on how they frame the conflicts.
So there are moments where Maya is an awful friend and one who needlessly condescends to the people around her, but it's important to think about the framing and not the depiction in how we're meant to think of her as a person in intentionally portraying her that way.
She contributes to another in the line of characters who ultimately stand for some kind of revolution, activism or change who are then revealed to be fake, elitist, and angry.
Light-skinned women can be portrayed as awful but still will use dark-skinned women presented as "unladylike, often compare them to beasts, portray their fatness, their textured hair as undesirable and gross in a white gaze. It's used to impart the idea that the traits I just listed are revolting and a reason to deride these characters.
This isn't really an episode about Bebe, and like many things autism related, we have to center everything entirely around the family members of the autistic person. Penny having all of the labor in childcare thrown onto her is obviously bad, but it takes a different context in how that's used alongside Bebe's autism diagnosis in how it's framed around relieving Penny of a burden and how the narrative sets Penny up to be as sympathetic as possible in that regard. Penny's parentification is a major issue throughout the series, but it's also very intentional that one of the few times the show ever challenges the idea that it's okay is also in the episode where her brother is diagnosed with autism.
Because they chose an infant to be the autistic character, Bebe isn't able to communicate his feelings or perspective to the audience. It allows everyone else, most notably Holly Peete's character to shape Bebe's narrative and center themselves in it.
The episode ends on a shot of the children all playing. As the door shuts, they're revealed to all be flying and have super powers, alluding to the phrase "autism is a superpower" which it is not. Autism is a disability, and it's okay to call it that. Disability is not a dirty word.
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