adventuretimeanalyzed

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Hello! Lately this blog has gotten some new followers even though I've been slacking on making posts. The class I originally constructed this for has long been over but I still think this is a valid means of analyzing Adventure Time and plan on keeping it around for some time. Luckily Adventure Time is still an ongoing series and thus continues to generate new material for critical analysis. There are certain episodes I have listed in the back of my mind that I would love to address, I just have to find the time and motivation to do so. So welcome, if you have any comments or (dis)agreements or suggestions feel free to shoot me a message!

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This is a great quick post that recaps some of the lessons Adventure Time consistently slips into its episodes. Both number six (always get consent) and number eight (don't be a misogynist), although short and to the point, especially support a feminist message and theme.

18 Ways “Adventure Time” Is Making You a Better Person

Adventure Time. Making you a better person since 2007.

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Hi Heather! My reason for messaging you is that I'm currently starting to make a similar study for my final paper for a theory class. :) I'm going to apply gender theories to some episodes of Adventure Time and probably focus on the stereotypes that are portrayed in the series. I hope you don't mind if I use your blog to help me with my research? You're building a pretty comprehensive bibliography!

Of course you can use this blog to help with your paper, you’ll have to tell me how it goes! If you have any suggestions or comments about something I need to add or alter please feel free to let me know. I’ve had a great experience putting this blog together and I wish you similar luck on your final paper!

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I think this does an excellent job in contributing to the discussion of gender and feminism and how BMO from Adventure Time plays into this topic. It is definitely worth the couple of minutes it takes to watch.

I had made a similar stab in an earlier post: http://adventuretimeanalyzed.tumblr.com/post/49731342619/bmo-gender-and-sexuality

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I saw you were doing the Bechdel test on Adventure time episodes. Both "genderbent" episodes pass. "Bad Little Boy" has Fionna & Cake talk about food & swords, then Marcie tells the next story to the princesses. I believe Fionna & Cake passes regularly, but if not, remember that Gumball is actually Ice Queen... :) Love your blog!

That’s a really good point! For some reason I didn’t really think about those episodes when I was doing the Bechdel Test. I think we can ignore the fact that they aren’t necessarily “real” characters. It would be great if they do more of these episodes as Fionna is such a strong female character. Thanks for contributing and I’m glad you like the blog!

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Jake isn't afraid to show strong emotions and his love for the puppies. He is often portrayed as emotional and overprotective when it comes to them while Lady Rainicorn lets the puppies grow up more independently. I think it's great that the parenting styles aren't traditionally portrayed in terms of the parent's gender dictating it.

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Even though Lumpy Space Princess seems extremely proud and confident about her lumps, how often she comments on them makes it seem as if she might be overcompensating. It's possible that maybe LSP is insecure about her body, like a lot of people are, and is trying to make up for her self-doubt by putting on a front. Then again, there is that saying about faking it until you make it.

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Finn becomes obsessed in "All the Little People " with controlling the miniature versions of all of the characters in the Land of Ooo. He often pairs characters together romantically and makes a mess of the relationships and emotions of them.

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Jake and Finn stick believe that they will find magic by sticking their thumbs in things and will become "good boys" in the Adventure Time episode "Five More Short Graybles."

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Sexual Innuendo in Adventure Time

There is a chapter in Roland Barthes’ Mythologies entitled “Children and Novels.” Throughout the short chapter I at times found it hard to decipher whether he was being sarcastic or serious in his view of females, especially once I factored in that this had originally been published in 1957. What I found that really struck a chord with me though was a passage about women’s place in the world. “…Elle says to women: you are worth just as much as men; and to men: your women will never be anything but women.” Despite how long ago this was written, this still seems to reflect an accurate portrayal of how women are viewed and treated today.

But how does this relate to Adventure Time you may ask. Adventure Time is a reflection of our society, as it is created in it and made for the viewing pleasure of the members of society. I think a reflection of the quote is best shown in the insertion of sexual innuendos into the story lines and dialogue and through the treatment of the female characters.

I found two articles online that made this same connection. On indiewire.com there is an article by Eric Kohn that asks the question “Is 'Adventure Time' One Big Allegory For Discovering Sex?” He goes through the episode “Five More Short Graybles” to show evidence. Analyzing the five clips in order, he starts with Finn and Jake who stick their thumbs “in pie and declare "What a good boy am I!" Assuming the act will result in magic, Jake and Finn decide to jut their thumbs in every crevice they can find, and happily bound about the Land of Ooo for the duration of the episode doing just that: Sticking their erect thumbs in holes and waiting for something magical to happen.” Looking at the following four stories there are clear allusions to sex. It could be argued that we are seeing evidence because we are looking for it, that you could do this with just about anything. This is true, but when there is a large group of people independently finding the same undertones, it becomes more likely that there is some truth in the analysis.

The other article I looked to was “Overthinking Adventure Time: Creation, Frustration, and Masturbation” by Shana Mlawski on overthinkingit.com. He describes how the episode “All the Little People” has five levels of textual depth. He lists them as a simple fantasy story featuring a magician, a Matrix-type story about different levels of reality, a meta-type story about Adventure Time’s writers, a meta-type story about Adventure Time’s fans, and a coming-of-age story about love, porn, and masturbation. It is in his summarization of these different depths that we more clearly see a common thread of sex. “In all these examples, creation is masturbatory – the creation is meant to make the creator feel better, not to help the creator connect with other real people – and in each example creation is harmful. In all four cases the creators harm their characters by forcing them to do their bidding. Jay T. Doggzone doesn’t ask the women of the world if they like being imagined as mere “bu-bumps” in his books. The Ice King doesn’t ask Finn if he minds being made into a female fan-fiction character who announces that she’d love to date the Ice King. Finn doesn’t ask the Little People if they’d like to be forced into bizarre romantic pairings. Princess Bubblegum never asks her scientific subjects if they’d like to be cut into pieces or put in a centrifuge so she can make a sandwich. All four authors force characters to do things they wouldn’t normally do so their creators can have the climax they think they want. In these bad creations, everything is solipsistic and planned. There is no collaboration, and nothing ever arises spontaneously.”

Clearly there are a lot of sexual undertones, but how does this reflect a view by society of females? We see characters like Princess Bubblegum, who are intelligent and independent, who are turned into mere objects of love and lust by the male characters. In turn we end up seeing them as nothing more than that, forming opinions on relationships despite how the participants in that relation might feel. We also see females being reduced to objects. As Kohn sums up his article, “The show has contained glimmers of innuendo ever since its earliest iterations, digging beneath the implications of excited feelings that the characters experience and exploring the urges behind them.”

Is 'Adventure Time' One Big Allegory For Discovering Sex? http://www.overthinkingit.com/2013/01/29/adventure-time/

Overthinking Adventure Time: Creation, Frustration, and Masturbation http://www.indiewire.com/article/is-adventure-time-an-allegory-for-discovering-sex

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Jake relaying advice to Finn in the Adventure Time episode "All the Little People."

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As many fans have noted, Ice King does not just assume Marceline's sexuality in the episode "I Remember You."

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Adventure Time: A Feminist Series

From what I’ve previously discussed and looked at in the Adventure Time series, I think it is safe to say that overall Adventure Time fits a feminist lens. We have seen that they are not afraid to exhibit different portrayals of gender and sexuality. A big example is BMO, who I discussed in my post “BMO: Gender and Sexuality.” BMO is genderless and has had romantic relationships with both a male and a female. We could easily view BMO as either bisexual or pansexual. There are also heterosexual relationships within the story, as we see Finn often having crushes on females. There is even a lesbian relationship hinted at, something that has the fans divided about whether the subtext exists in the plot, between Princes Bubblegum and Marceline which I explored in my post “Marceline and Princess Bubblegum: Fact or Fiction?” Adventure Time has managed to cover a broad spectrum, exploring what gender means and sending the message that it is okay to cross over these imaginary lines. In “Princess Cookie” they have what appears to be a transgender cookie and they don’t utilize reinscription. They show us a story that challenges binary guidelines, but then they don’t turn around and show us why the binary is better than this alternative they have illustrated.

Another reason Adventure Time fits a feminist view overall is because of its diversity in its female population. An *article by Myrna Waldron does a great job of touching on this diversity and breaking of stereotypes, “Almost every female character is a princess, but the typical cliché Damsel In Distress and/or romance-obsessed girly-girl are parodied and subverted for all they’re worth. In several instances, the princess characters (Bubblegum especially) show little interest in romance, and far more interest in their own personal hobbies. Even more encouraging is that often the female characters are completely able to rescue themselves, and don’t need Finn & Jake’s help.” It is a positive and different take on princesses to have them be able to fend for themselves, not needing male characters to rescue them, especially in a time when “white knights” are glorified. They can stand on their own even though characters like Finn and Jake are more than willing to aid. Myrna Waldron uses Marceline as an example of this. “In the “Memory of a Memory” episode, Marceline’s (ex) boyfriend tries to bully her into traditional gender roles. He even pulls the “Go back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich" bit. She finds out he tried to trick her, and kicks his ass.”

In my opinion, I see Adventure Time as a part of constructionist feminism. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan describe the divide in feminism as such, “…Two perspectives began to form, one “constructionist” or accepting of the idea that gender is made by culture in history, the other “essentialist,” more inclined to the idea that gender reflects a natural difference between men and women that is as much psychological, even linguistic, as it is biological.” Using this definition, we see that Adventure Time is constructionist because of its portrayal of gender and female characters. They are diverse, and there is no “biological link” that makes them all female in the way they act and behave. The perception of gender is constructed by culture. The existence of genderless and androgynous characters within the show is a testimony to this.

Even though Adventure Time at moments lacks, as shown by my post about applying the Bechdel test to individual episodes, it is a positive show that is teaching it’s viewers that women are both equals and widely diverse.

* http://www.btchflcks.com/2012/10/why-i-love-adventure-time.html

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Princess Bubblegum carrying Lady Rainicorn during their mission to rescue Finn and Jake in the episode "Lady & Peebles."

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Not the best quality and it doesn't show the translations in context, but this video lets us see what Lady Rainicorn is saying during the episode "Lady & Peebles." We thus see that Princess Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn discuss other topics besides just Finn and Jake and that in turn this episode passes the Bechdel test.

Lady Rainicorn Translations to English Adventure Time (by DivineKrystal)

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Adventure Time: Passing or Failing the Bechdel Test?

I thought it would be interesting to apply the Bechdel test to a couple episodes of Adventure Time and see how it fares. The Bechdel test was originally applied to films and is used to identify gender bias in works of fiction. A work passes if it features at least two females who talk to each other about something other than a man. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly really, a lot of works fail to fulfill this requirement. I am anticipating most episodes of Adventure Time to pass this test, but am wondering how many would fail this, especially since the main characters in most episodes are Finn and Jake, two males.

"Slumber Party Panic”: I thought I would go back and look at the very first episode of Adventure Time. The basic premise of the episode is that rather than bringing dead candy people back to life, they are turned into sugar eating zombies. While Princess Bubblegum tries to fix her formula Finn must keep all of the living candy people preoccupied and safe while keeping the whole situation secret. At first I thought this episode would easily pass the test, but then as I kept watching I realized even though Princess Bubblegum was a main character the only person she was talking to was Finn. I started to realize that it may be harder for these episodes to pass than I had originally thought. I got to the end of the episode and realized it had failed. It wasn’t so much that all the female characters talked about with each other were males, but that there was not a single instance of two females conversing with one another.

“What Was Missing”: I thought I would look at this episode, the tenth in the third season, next because I know both Princess Bubblegum and Marceline are main characters. Soon after both characters are introduced they talk to each other about the Door Lords, Marceline wanted them killed but Princess Bubblegum merely locked them away. The Door Lord is male, but I think this would technically satisfy the requirements of the Bechdel test because they aren’t talking about them in a romantic light. Throughout the rest of the episode they continue to make little comments to each other which have nothing to do with males but rather reference their past relationship and they also talk about the shirt Marceline gave Princess Bubblegum. Thus “What Was Missing” manages to pass the Bechdel test with no question.

“Lady & Peebles”: This was another episode where I knew two females were main characters and interacted a lot. Princess Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn must rescue Finn and Jake as they have been missing for three weeks. Why they waited three weeks to try and find them is another question altogether. It’s hard to determine what exactly they are discussing as Lady Rainicorn speaks Korean. I did however find a video where everything she says was translated to English. Whether all of the translations are completely correct is questionable, but it did show me that even though Finn and Jake are a main focus they are not the only thing they discuss. It seems as if Lady Rainicorn describes a dream she has been having about being attacked by zombies to Princess Bubblegum. The Adventure Time Wiki actually has this quote translated on their page for Lady Rainicorn, “That's right. I'm little bit too worrying sometimes. I always get haunted by this nightmare where half-dead corpses are attacking my house! My uncle, aunt-in-law, and cousins are all present; I even hear the crying coming from the upstairs. I just wished that I could protect my family. I become too stressful during that dream; I even grind my own teeth! (Grinds teeth) When I wake up in the morning, all my teeth are cracked up! I usually try to forget about it, thinking that it's just a dream or I'm being paranoid, but I was actually attacked by these half-dead corpses twice!” This shows how “Lady & Peebles” manages to pass the Bechdel test as well.

Overall I came to the shocking conclusion that a lot of episodes of Adventure Time probably wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test. It’s not so much that they have female characters talking a lot about males, but that they don’t very often have two female characters conversing. It would be interesting to look at every single episode of Adventure Time and see just how many of them pass and just how many of them fail the requirements. From what I’ve seen, there would be a higher percentage of failing episodes.

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