Pokemon is the most disorienting version of this. Pokemon are like animals, but somehow more than animals, but not people, except when they are basically at human levels of intelligence (Mewtwo) -- but wait! There are also just regular animals in the Pokemon universe (if you watched the anime).
As a kid I got confused because back in the original season, they were bigger on saying that the powers they had were for hunting or defense from predators. I was like, “so they do eat each other?”. I haven't watched the series since like season three or whatever but I feel I remember them not really using the terms “predator” and “prey” much after the show blew the fuck up
Oh this is my favorite topic ever. I talk about this often, one of the reasons being that I gave up on writing an "animal-people" story as a child just because of these struggles.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned it in the comments but the biggest perpetrator of this nonsense is Maurice Sendak's Little Bear series (books and cartoon). Little Bear is naked but his parents (Mother and Father Bear) are fully clothed and have jobs. HOWEVER Little Bear's friends are all ADULT animals who are nevertheless naked, like himself, a baby bear. None of them have jobs besides being cats or ducks or owls. And there is one human child character included in his friends. Then there is a pet robin featured in an episode, but despite being a bird, does not speak or have sentience in the way friend Owl or Duck have. There is no consistency whatsoever. It's mind-boggling.
The movie Madagascar struggled with this issue, where it was actually central to the plot. The lion is a carnivore, but he's run away with animals he is inherently supposed to eat and is slowly starving. In the end the animals figure out that they can feed him fish, which are apparently not anthropomorphic . . . except that early in the movie a bug shows evidence of sentience. It was a total copout.
On the other end of the spectrum, David Sedaris' "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" contains some fairly bleak content because of the ramifications of sentient beings eating each other. Sedaris gets it, and should produce all children's entertainment.
Even more baffling, sometimes the two animal character types are mixed within one fictional world. Take Disney: Goofy is a doglike humanoid character. Pluto, in the same world is a non-verbal pet dog.
I am 100% on board with your Peppa Pig "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" hate.
I'm fairly certain in the TV show there were also non-verbal kangaroos in the zoo - which does align with your point about them being more "primitive" animals - marsupials being an ancient clade of mammal, and roos being renowned for being stupid as all hell.
That aside, the real sins of Peppa Pig are the continual fat-shaming of Daddy Pig, it's disgusting, and, even more egregiously, the "Haha, Daddy Pig is incompetent and we should ridicule him, silly Daddy Pig, thank goodness for Mummy Pig, at least there's one adult in the relationship" motif.
Bluey's Dad Bandit is one of the few good animal representations of fatherhood on screen.
And yep, I'm a grown arse man who has Very Strong Opinions about children's television, and yes, I've massively overthought the emotional abuse Daddy Pig endures. I acknowledge that.
But I object to it because I think it perpetuates harmful and outdated gender stereotypes around parenting.
The 80s called, they want their Incompetent Sitcom Dad trope back.
And the fat-shaming can piss right off, don't be teaching kids to ridicule people/animals because they're overweight.
I mean, we're equally inconsistent when it comes to *real* animals. Why are dogs and cats quasi-anthropomorphized companions while equally-smart pigs get crammed into factory farms and slaughtered? A little more consistency could prevent a lot of suffering.
It's pretty simple; Both are predators that are not very efficient to breed for meat anyway and who could do useful services for us. Insofar as we had a positive relationship with pre-dog wolf ancestors, it was a cooperative "we hunt together, you get a share of the food". And later we literally bred them to specifically be good at being our companions.
Pigs, on the other hand, have always been primarily hunted for meat in their wild, and at some point we realized we can catch them now and just eat them later (especially in winter or other difficult times). Which allowed us to realize further that we can actually keep a bunch of them and breed them to be even more efficient meat-generators.
Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer a world where we just generate meat directly for consumption and forego all possible ethical concerns entirely, but treating them *differently* seems perfectly sensible to me.
Descriptively, I think you're spot-on. But normatively, I still think it's wrong to lavish attention on a dog but then buy pork chops from a factory-farmed pig who's just as smart and emotionally-rich as a dog. I appreciate your thoughtful take, though.
Yes, it's illegal to slaughter horses for meat in many US states. I have no problem with people rescuing horses from slaughter, but I don't think this should be a law.
I think it's best to understand these as being dystopian futures in which furryism has become the dominant cultural form. They aren't really animals, just humans that constantly dress like them, and real animals still exist alongside them. Also solves the disturbing aspects of interspecies romance.
This has been a serious issue ever since Pluto and Goofy, who are ostensibly the same species.
Also, I love the Mo Willems Pigeon books, but there’s one where the Pigeon and the Duckling casually debate whether hot dogs taste like chicken, and it’s one of the darkest things I’ve ever come across in a kids’ book.
Hello Kitty might be a clue. Sanrio says she is not a cat, she is a school-age girl.
A lot of anthropomorphic animals are probably caricatures of humans or symbolize humans, or otherwise non-animals. If the characters are stated to be animals, the inconsistencies are just whose point of view is important to the story. This would be similar to how most people except the ones we interact with feel like drone NPCs.
It’s all abstraction and the fact we still understand it even though it doesn’t make logical sense means that it actually does make sense psychologically.
Peppa pig in general is just lazy There's an episode where they play draughts / checkers on a 6x5 board and I've taken an irrational dislike of it since then (although like most parents I didn't really like it before then).
SpongeBob isn't even a sea sponge, he's a kitchen sponge 😂
If they had the anthro duck visit the feral ducks at the lake it would have been fine imo. No different from humans going to see monkeys at the zoo. The anthro duck is clearly a different species altogether that shares a common ancestor with the feral ducks.
To be fair to Peppa Pig, the show often references its own inconsistencies as a sort of meta joke for the grown up viewer. The crocodile at the zoo is one example of this (the kids initially think she's part of the exhibit, then is revealed to be a zookeeper). Other notable examples: a pet competition that is judged by Mrs Hamster, and a scene in which Grandpa Pig puts his chickens to bed, explaining "some animals come out at night, like... Mr Fox" (their fox neighbor appears at that moment).
Pokemon is the most disorienting version of this. Pokemon are like animals, but somehow more than animals, but not people, except when they are basically at human levels of intelligence (Mewtwo) -- but wait! There are also just regular animals in the Pokemon universe (if you watched the anime).
Pokemon really upset me bc how is it not basically dogfighting but with more intelligent and emotional dogs
But they really, really like the fighting! That makes it completely different, you know.
As a kid I got confused because back in the original season, they were bigger on saying that the powers they had were for hunting or defense from predators. I was like, “so they do eat each other?”. I haven't watched the series since like season three or whatever but I feel I remember them not really using the terms “predator” and “prey” much after the show blew the fuck up
Plus, if you run out of pokemon while travelling you... fall unconscious. For reasons.
Oh this is my favorite topic ever. I talk about this often, one of the reasons being that I gave up on writing an "animal-people" story as a child just because of these struggles.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned it in the comments but the biggest perpetrator of this nonsense is Maurice Sendak's Little Bear series (books and cartoon). Little Bear is naked but his parents (Mother and Father Bear) are fully clothed and have jobs. HOWEVER Little Bear's friends are all ADULT animals who are nevertheless naked, like himself, a baby bear. None of them have jobs besides being cats or ducks or owls. And there is one human child character included in his friends. Then there is a pet robin featured in an episode, but despite being a bird, does not speak or have sentience in the way friend Owl or Duck have. There is no consistency whatsoever. It's mind-boggling.
The movie Madagascar struggled with this issue, where it was actually central to the plot. The lion is a carnivore, but he's run away with animals he is inherently supposed to eat and is slowly starving. In the end the animals figure out that they can feed him fish, which are apparently not anthropomorphic . . . except that early in the movie a bug shows evidence of sentience. It was a total copout.
On the other end of the spectrum, David Sedaris' "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" contains some fairly bleak content because of the ramifications of sentient beings eating each other. Sedaris gets it, and should produce all children's entertainment.
Even more baffling, sometimes the two animal character types are mixed within one fictional world. Take Disney: Goofy is a doglike humanoid character. Pluto, in the same world is a non-verbal pet dog.
Yes! Mickey Mouse is the most egregious example of this phenomenon
I am 100% on board with your Peppa Pig "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" hate.
I'm fairly certain in the TV show there were also non-verbal kangaroos in the zoo - which does align with your point about them being more "primitive" animals - marsupials being an ancient clade of mammal, and roos being renowned for being stupid as all hell.
That aside, the real sins of Peppa Pig are the continual fat-shaming of Daddy Pig, it's disgusting, and, even more egregiously, the "Haha, Daddy Pig is incompetent and we should ridicule him, silly Daddy Pig, thank goodness for Mummy Pig, at least there's one adult in the relationship" motif.
Bluey's Dad Bandit is one of the few good animal representations of fatherhood on screen.
And yep, I'm a grown arse man who has Very Strong Opinions about children's television, and yes, I've massively overthought the emotional abuse Daddy Pig endures. I acknowledge that.
But I object to it because I think it perpetuates harmful and outdated gender stereotypes around parenting.
The 80s called, they want their Incompetent Sitcom Dad trope back.
And the fat-shaming can piss right off, don't be teaching kids to ridicule people/animals because they're overweight.
Now these are the takes I come here for.
I mean, we're equally inconsistent when it comes to *real* animals. Why are dogs and cats quasi-anthropomorphized companions while equally-smart pigs get crammed into factory farms and slaughtered? A little more consistency could prevent a lot of suffering.
Generally we tend not to eat predators. Probably because of the risks of parasites? I'm unsure as to why.
But there's plenty of people who don't eat pigs for similar reasons.
It's pretty simple; Both are predators that are not very efficient to breed for meat anyway and who could do useful services for us. Insofar as we had a positive relationship with pre-dog wolf ancestors, it was a cooperative "we hunt together, you get a share of the food". And later we literally bred them to specifically be good at being our companions.
Pigs, on the other hand, have always been primarily hunted for meat in their wild, and at some point we realized we can catch them now and just eat them later (especially in winter or other difficult times). Which allowed us to realize further that we can actually keep a bunch of them and breed them to be even more efficient meat-generators.
Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer a world where we just generate meat directly for consumption and forego all possible ethical concerns entirely, but treating them *differently* seems perfectly sensible to me.
Descriptively, I think you're spot-on. But normatively, I still think it's wrong to lavish attention on a dog but then buy pork chops from a factory-farmed pig who's just as smart and emotionally-rich as a dog. I appreciate your thoughtful take, though.
Yes, it's illegal to slaughter horses for meat in many US states. I have no problem with people rescuing horses from slaughter, but I don't think this should be a law.
I think it's best to understand these as being dystopian futures in which furryism has become the dominant cultural form. They aren't really animals, just humans that constantly dress like them, and real animals still exist alongside them. Also solves the disturbing aspects of interspecies romance.
This has been a serious issue ever since Pluto and Goofy, who are ostensibly the same species.
Also, I love the Mo Willems Pigeon books, but there’s one where the Pigeon and the Duckling casually debate whether hot dogs taste like chicken, and it’s one of the darkest things I’ve ever come across in a kids’ book.
Hello Kitty might be a clue. Sanrio says she is not a cat, she is a school-age girl.
A lot of anthropomorphic animals are probably caricatures of humans or symbolize humans, or otherwise non-animals. If the characters are stated to be animals, the inconsistencies are just whose point of view is important to the story. This would be similar to how most people except the ones we interact with feel like drone NPCs.
It’s all abstraction and the fact we still understand it even though it doesn’t make logical sense means that it actually does make sense psychologically.
TVTropes has you covered!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FurryConfusion
SpongeBobs are my favourite species of fish.
The correct pluralization is “SpongesBob”, though?
CHH really needs to watch Bojack Horseman, especially that one episode where the anthropomorphic chicken runs a poultry farm.
Peppa pig in general is just lazy There's an episode where they play draughts / checkers on a 6x5 board and I've taken an irrational dislike of it since then (although like most parents I didn't really like it before then).
SpongeBob isn't even a sea sponge, he's a kitchen sponge 😂
If they had the anthro duck visit the feral ducks at the lake it would have been fine imo. No different from humans going to see monkeys at the zoo. The anthro duck is clearly a different species altogether that shares a common ancestor with the feral ducks.
The 2017 "Ducktales" cartoon does have a scene where an anthro duck feeds some regular ducks at a pond.
To be fair to Peppa Pig, the show often references its own inconsistencies as a sort of meta joke for the grown up viewer. The crocodile at the zoo is one example of this (the kids initially think she's part of the exhibit, then is revealed to be a zookeeper). Other notable examples: a pet competition that is judged by Mrs Hamster, and a scene in which Grandpa Pig puts his chickens to bed, explaining "some animals come out at night, like... Mr Fox" (their fox neighbor appears at that moment).