#straw + cammals

[basketballandtextbooks]

Brief continuation on my earlier post.

I saw the episode The Hobbit used as an example of Wendy being ‘always right’ within the confines of canon because she was ‘morally right’ within the confines of that episode.

I am going to have to disagree strongly there.

The episode focuses primarily on the issue “should women edit their appearance on the internet” which in itself is actually a morally ambiguous issue. There are strong feminist leaning standpoints for both sides (although the side Wendy was fighting was largely straw-manned). Women, as well as men, should have every right to post and edit pictures of themselves however they like. It can actually help to improve a person’s emotional health significantly to see a version of themselves that they are able to consider ‘pretty’. That said, there is also the case of creating negative role models and creating non-existent standards that can lead to crushing a person’s emotional health as well.  It is, ultimately, an entirely morally ambiguous issue because whether you’re ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on that episode is largely dependent on your motivations behind it, rather than your stance either way.

That established, Wendy’s motivations in the episode aren’t entirely clear. It appears to be a mixture of jealousy (which would be a morally ‘wrong’ motivation for her stance) and an actual belief in creating strong and achievable role-models for young girls to follow (a morally ‘right’ position for her stance). Which in itself sheds another level of ambiguity as to whether or not you can consider her to be morally right.

However for the sake of argument, the episodes narrative does frame her as morally correct in her stance and therefore we will work from the standpoint that this is in actuality a black and white issue rather than the tones of gray it really is.

If in fact she is morally correct in her stance, than the end of the episode shows her explicitly being morally wrong. She caves to peer pressure and becomes a morally bankrupt individual in the process, as well as breaking down her self esteem and ego in the process.

It’s an ambiguous issue so it’s difficult to see why her breaking under peer pressure if she is indeed morally right showcases her as being ultimately wrong, so I will use the example of an issue there can be no debate on:

If you take the morally correct stance to oppose nazi’s and protect those oppressed by their genocidal tyranny, but then change your mind because of peer pressure you have become morally corrupt.

Even if you flip the debate and insist that her original stance was wrong, this still works. She was wrong and then she came to the light. One way or another, Wendy was wrong on a moral scale and suffered in this episode. Unless you prescribe to my insistence that it’s a morally ambiguous episode, in which case it still doesn’t fit into the narrative of her being ‘always right’. If someone takes a strong stance of oranges being better than apples, this does not make them morally right. In fact, I would argue it makes them an intriguing character because they feel so passionately about an issue that can have a multitude of understandings.

In conclusion, if I see one more person in this goddamn fandom claim that ‘Wendy is always right therefore she’s boring’, I am going to write a full goddamn expose explaining every fucking episode she appears since the beginning to explain how they are explicitly wrong. I’m very tired of this argument because it’s just objectively not true within the canon of the show.