The Legend of She-Ra: Another Trip Back to the '80s

I'm well aware of the (rather stupid) controversy that surrounded He-Man and She-Ra during the 1980's in the conservative Christian community, and I have to admit that much of the Christian reaction to those 2 shows, while well-intentioned, had such a weird tone of alarmism to it that it drove a lot of kids my age to want to watch those shows even more. Let's get one thing straight here, ladies and gentlemen: Neither of these 2 television shows' title characters are guilty of much more than bare naked commercialism (and I choose the words "bare naked" carefully--remember how much skin both characters showed on screen?), although I will say that She-Ra's magical powers of healing and animal telepathy bespeak of a loving animator's romantization of women (Yes, they can be physically strong, but they still must be kind to animals and healing to everyone else.).

However, what struck me as I watched the 5 part miniseries that brought He-Man's twin sister into the world was that the cute, fuzzy celebration of paganism that most Christian alarmist writers were MISSING during the '80s lay in the supporting characters--specially the little purple witch and her talking broom from the She-Ra series and Orko the floating wannabe magician from the He-Man series. It's especially overt in She-Ra because the little purple witch and her talking broom (both of whose names escape me at the moment) are forest creatures, and the paganism they so cheerfully represent is a paganism of forests, glades, and nature. (Really, I had the sense throughout the television mini-series that I was watching a really long episode of the Smurfs--except with ray guns and a villain who could change into a rocket.)

You see, it's never been EASTERN mysticism that has posed any real opposition to Christianity within America. After all, while many of us "dig" Yoga, Buddhism, and meditation, we look at these things as foreign concepts, alien to the colonial roots that spawned the first 13 American states. However, WESTERN mysticism feels downright homey to us. All of those wonderful creatures--elves, wizards, and little blue people who live in mushrooms--living in the forest, worshiping the trees, the grass, the sky, and all of the wonderful creations of our God . . . all of those images go right down into the deepest recesses of who we Westerners are and used to be before Christianity became the official religion of Rome. This is the kind of religion we feel most at home with--a religion that we, in our twenty-first century angst over the ways we are destroying our world with technology, feel stirring more earnestly inside our collective bones every day.

It is this "innocent" celebration of paganism, through characters that serve as comic relief, that should be a concern to Christians. I don't think that we are being subjected to some sort of mass Hollywood New Age conspiracy, as some Christian writers would have you believe (come on, we all know everyone's god in Hollywood is MONEY, right?). However, I do think that it's important for Christians to recognize when they are watching (or letting their children watch) things that may run counter to their beliefs. And the best way to respond, when they do find their beliefs at odds with what they're watching, is the same response that Christian leaders should have been advocating in the '80s: a silent turn of the knob, a simple willingness to say, "My family doesn't watch certain things on television because that's not what we believe," rather than loudly proclaiming the evils of the latest popular form of entertainment to anyone within earshot of our shrill voices.

There are a lot of good things about both of these 2 shows. Both title characters teach children what it is to be a hero and to sacrifice for others. However, if I had known the history of some of the comic relief images that went into those shows when I was watching them (in other words, if I had know then as a little kid what I know now), I would take the spells, the sorcery, and the "sources of power" with a MAJOR grain of salt. However, the fact that I DO know what I know now enables me to help my children see what their culture is feeding them. Without that knowledge, they will ultimately be left where I was when I was little--spiritually unarmed.