Miraculous Ladybug Is Kind Of Sexist

so is miraculous kind of sexist to anybody else like yeah just a general question and my goodness I know this is already a bit of a spicy question to ask and probably a spicy opinion to hold I kind of think it is or at least I think it sort of is in some regards now obviously the intention behind the show itself is largely uplifting and an inspiring girl power type of story where Marinette ladybug is the main hero of the tale don't let the title fool you this is not the tales of cat Noir it's the tales of ladybug nobody's shortening the title to miraculous cat Noir are they they shorten it to miraculous ladybug she's the main character and that's all you need to know really it's simply how the show's framed and on the surface I think it actually does send quite an empowering message right that the hero doesn't always need to be a man that girls can be independent and strong and can lead and they get the job done for themselves and through the vessel of Marinette we do see this play out on screen when we first meet her she's rather Meek and scared and just not a very heroic or exciting character at least that that's what she's like at the start of the timeline when you put those episodes in chronological order but after she's chosen by masterfood to become the next winner of the miraculous all because of her selfless kindness she begins to develop far more as a character she becomes self-confident a self-assured hero she leads the duo to Victory many times she's not the Damsel in Distress she's not some weakling that can't do anything right she's the one that in the overwhelming majority of episodes comes up with the winning strategy that defeats the villain and gets the Akuma and also in the majority of the episode she's also just straight up the person that does the most work within the winning strategy whilst cat Noir kind of awkwardly shuffles off to the side or gets defeated you know as is tradition on top of that over the course of the show it's Marinette that's chosen to be trained by Foo and set up to be the future Guardian to replace him at the end of season three and it's her that leads the team of Heroes she's in charge she's trusted to know all of the identities except for cat noirs and hand out the miraculous to whom she will and really she's just the main leader in the effort to defeat hawkmoth or Shadow moth or Monarch whatever you want to call him old smooth brain Gabe himself and so yeah in that regard I do think the show was a bit of a breath of fresh air a new era so to speak a bit more Progressive than some shows have been in the past but that's just the obvious thing right oh yes the girl is the main hero it's a step in the right direction but at the same time the show for me at least still comes across as really sus when you compare it to a bunch of other shows of this era and indeed past eras and there are a few ways in which I've noticed this but for starters we can start with the hyper fixation on romance or rather the hyper fixation of the story to have all the main lead girls just thirst over this one dude driving most of the drama and the story development and this is pretty much the exclusion of all else and so yes I'm talking about the thirst for Adrian because when you think about Marinette what is the main goal in her life that comes to mind that you see across all of the seasons of the show and if you've not said managed to win in Adrian's heart then I'm sorry you are the weakest link goodbye pretty much every episode you'll ever see you'll have this Force its way into the story in some regard and it never really changes even when she dates Luca it's very brief and then she's just back at it again her whole identity changes she goes from the self-assured leader of her friend group to a complete creepazoid and with a flip of a coin pretty much her whole identity revolves around this one dude and if you strip it away she no longer has any real story Beyond fighting Gabe which is not enough if you ask me for a well-rounded character let alone you protagonist even her interactions with her friends over time largely become colored by this Obsession all of their schemes and their discussions to try and get her in with Adrian it's fine for a sometimes storyline as I know real friendships do have these sort of discussions but like it's such a dominant force in the story that I do think it actually actively harms Marinette as a character or at least it did in early Seasons especially it makes her whole Arc dependent on this one guy which doesn't feel very Progressive to me I mean I'm not against romance and I do think it has a place in the story but the way it's framed is just very odd to me I mean it even spills over into a number of the other main characters and their relationships with Marinette our main hero take Lila for example she's pretty much being set up as the main villain of the show's next big Saga she's replacing Gabe and she's getting her hands on the miraculous of the butterfly and so clearly she needed a reason to go up against Marinette it just makes sense to have them at odds right to build up this rivalry whilst you can before Lila goes off through Hawk moth and kind of has to be in the shadows by necessity and how is it do you think they built up this Grand rivalry how do you think they did it that's right they had Marinette get massively and irrationally jealous at Lila trying to crack onto Adrian that's how that is the entire story of why they hate each other what will turn out to be a multi-season clash between these two characters boils down into an attempted tug of war over Adrian's affections which oh I don't know it kind of worked at First until it basically just consumed their whole storyline even beyond the point of reason because after Adrian has given Lila the proverbial middle finger she's still trying to manipulate her way in to getting with this dude she pretty much swears a blood Feud against Marinette for all time because she was blocked that one time like she straight up tries to ruin this girl's life same with Chloe yeah there's the pre-built history with Chloe and Marinette but the reality that in practice many of their conflicts simply boil down to jealousy and competition About a Boy even late into the game where once again Adrian has told Chloe where to shove it she's still trying to get in she's still trying to manipulate him to get him away from Marinette and I don't know I do think it makes him seem like weaker characters it feels lazy and contrived in falling into a lot of those old tropes that we probably want to get away from I mean I don't think they're overtly trying to be sexist or misogynistic or anything like that but it certainly seems quite regressive live to have so many of the prominent female cast members your main protagonist two of your major antagonists Al kagami's whole vibe was about Adrian and then she switches to Felix who conveniently looks exactly like Adrian but yeah they become rabid dogs when they're confronted with this handsome boy they lose all sense of character and they fight it out a bunch of animals trying to get the last link of sausages it's especially hard to take Marinette your main protagonist seriously as a result of all this her thirsty Shenanigans go way too far and it becomes weird and the problem is it's not a reciprocal thing take a look at Adrian in his storyline yes obviously there's still the obsession with ladybug and all of that but it's not in the same way it's much reduced and it doesn't Define his relationships with pretty much every other character because there are major facets to historian personality and interpersonal relationships that develop independently of ladybug like his friendships with the various Side characters kagami Luca Nino his bond with plague Natalie being a surrogate mother foreign his stormy and abusive relationship with Gabe and all that entails hell even the development of his relationship with Marinette because like I said that's a new thing he doesn't know that marinette's ladybug so it's a different relationship and that for him from his point of view develops naturally and healthily and only after that does that all twist together his story develops into it it's not the only facet of his personality that is so much depth he's a character that does not live solely to play out his obsession with his romantic interest and instead he has much more of a life and personality outside of that it's just the difference in the way that the story deals with both their arcs that I do find really astounding and really regressive oh and on top of that can I remind anybody how they frame the rejection of cat Noir by ladybug over and over again how that's treated by the story is treated as a massive negative plague yells at ladybug about it saying that she should be grateful for having someone love her so much the sad music playing over and over again every time he's rejected and gets sad Captain wants gets angsty ladybug apologizes for hurting his feelings imagine that the rejected man who can't accept a no is treated by The Narrative by the story by the writers as the victim whilst the woman who does the right thing and tells him no and won't accept his romantic affection and all the while makes it very clear to him that she's not trying to lead him on before exercising her right to feel safe and avoid his overly creepy ways is considered to be a shrew to be cruel a heartbreaker that's straight out of the Nice Guy's subreddit but that's not all and I would argue that this next one is probably the worst of it it's how the show frames the arcs of his villains and the different way it wants you to view villainous male characters versus villainous female characters look Gabe's a massive piece of and you can't possibly try to deny that fact it's just how it is he abuses his son and random other children and really anyone and is willing to sacrifice everybody in the world and anything in the world in pursuit of his selfish desire of bringing him his wife back to life even though on real talk let's be honest she played with who I actually got burned that was the price she paid to have a kid too bad and it was one that she actually seemed to have long since accepted so he goes against her dying wishes and he does heinous to her only child but at the last second he changes his mind and decides to be a good person like he gets a literal last second Redemption and then he's remembered as a tragic hero what he's a piece of trash but the show is framing him as a hero at the end what next up look at Andre he's also up there for worst father in the franchise he bows down to the every whim of his abusive and narcissistic wife allowing his daughter to become just as twisted and indeed he engages in a ton of shady and corrupt dealings himself and at the end of all of that he ditches his daughter whom he mostly raised himself and considers her a lost cause with the show suddenly painting this dude as a victim and a hero for letting Chloe have it for tearing her apart verbally and abandoning her to be raised by his wife his truly terrible horrible abusive wife sure yeah I guess he's a hero then isn't he so now we have two undeserved I'd argue Redemption asks for the major male antagonists well just another comparison Felix in his intro does he not assault Marinette or at least harass her quite badly that ain't good and he Slaughters the entire planet because he has daddy issues and existential issues but at no point beyond that brief intro do I think this story ever really frames him as a villain no he's an anti-hero a bit of a badass who yeah he makes some mistakes but it's all good because he's a soft boy at heart and he gets done come on now but what about the ladies what do they get any redemption in sight well we have Natalie and she does get a pretty good Redemption Arc this one that actually feels the most earned because she doesn't just suddenly get the Redemption Arc out of nowhere she gets sick trying to help Gabe because I think on one hand she loves him two on one hand she was very close to Emily and three she loves Adrian so much and wants him to have his mother back but then she gets sick she see Gabe's going crazy and then he's abusing Adrian way too hard and so she tries to change things decent enough well written I think but then who are our other female villains three truly terrible characters who show No Remorse at all no goodness and by the end there's no real positive qualities we're talking Chloe we're talking Lila we're talking Audrey Audrey especially is blamed for everything that Andre has ever done obviously she must have lured the poor innocent man in with her terrible womanly wiles and corrupted him making him give up on his filmmaking dreams to become a businessman and a politician it really is like some made up red pill Reddit storyline on top of that she has an affair baby whom Saint Andre adopts at the end out of nowhere yikes so she's just the worst piece of shitty trash a terrible woman the worst one imaginable No Redemption No Remorse no positive qualities at all just rage and hate and cruelty and he is our little cream puff sweetheart who was led astray by the power of Snooze new cringe and then there's Lila who's being set up to be the next big villain to replace Gabe and I would be very shocked based on the trajectory of her character if she ever gets the same treatment Escape where the writers try to make you understand the point of view that she has and then give a bit of a positive spin on them from time to time like Gabe and his pancakes Arc and the fact that he really does love his wife and does love his son to some extent and then we move on to the Arc of Chloe Who develops over the early Seasons into a sort of hero only to regress and regress really hard and become even worse than she ever was before and then on top of that they add new new flashback episodes that paint her as even worse than she was in season one through three so she goes from entitled bully to raging Audrey Jr in every single way her sympathetic relationship with her abusive mum it's washed away because now she's simply always been an awful person and then she gets that extreme Cosmic punishment from on high as she loses everything her only friends her home her father's love all of it feels like the writers are getting some sort of sick gratification out of writing the breakdown of a teenage girl it's a yikes from me dog but no I very much doubt they're going to give her the last second Redemption where she apologizes and realize she was wrong she's gonna go down with no regrets the only reason she might be remorseful is that she didn't manage to destroy marinette's life and that's not to mention kagami's mum who seems good for now right oh she's had a Redemption but she's doing all this good stuff no she came across as really terrible in the show and it's very obvious she's being set up to do some more terrible once the story continues her out of the blue change of heart very much feels like and I doubt there's going to be the same level of sympathy that's applied to her story as games either I'm happy to be wrong but I'm not convinced I mean yeah it's not necessarily bad riding right it's pretty generic in 2D at times but it wouldn't bother me if it was consistent if Gabe and Andre and Felix they were all treated as badly as these ladies are but they aren't they get to change they get people to trust them they get people to believe in them whereas the opposite is not true for the female characters and to me it just plays into so many bad tropes that I do not think have a place in a show that aims to empower young girls EG that abusive men which all three of these guys are to some extent can be fixed or misunderstood and need guidance and can earn Redemption because under it all they're just soft boys who need love yikes no thanks and meanwhile bad women they're the source of all evil we need to burn them at the stake we need to see their lives fall apart in great detail we need the karmic Justice to slap these in the face no mercy no forgiveness yikes yikes yikes red flags everywhere no thank you and so yeah that's all I've got for you today so with all that being said I think I'll leave things here and say these have been my opinions and now I'd like to hear yours what do you think about all this do you agree with me disagree am I reading too much into things I'm really curious for your thoughts so make sure to like comment subscribe and let me know

Channel: Smarty Pants

Views: 291,043

Keywords: miraculous ladybug, miraculous, ladybug, cat noir, sexism, misogyny, gabriel agreste, marinette dupain cheng, chloe bourgeois, adrien agreste, felix fathom

Id: dy8OTpfOyuw

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023