Rarity is an artist, driven by the creative process and a wish to spread beauty and joy rather than any desire for profit. At no point in the episode is she shown to be concerned with monetary gain, even though she has invested heavily in the establishment of the new boutique. Conversely, she expresses her adoration for two distinct aspects of dressmaking: the initial inspirations and the reactions of customers to her work. The first reemphasizes that, to Rarity, dressmaking is an art form, a means of complex self-expression intended to convey the sublime beauty she sees in both her own thoughts and the world around her. Her emphasis on being inspired by various locations in Canterlot casts her longstanding love of the city in a new light, revealing that she idolizes it not simply for being the nation’s seat of high culture, but for being beautiful and meaningful to her in its own right. The second illustrates Rarity’s passion for sharing the beauty she cultivates through her work, for using her talents to bring joy to others and inspire them just as she herself has been inspired. The greatest reward for her hard work, she notes, is not financial compensation or even the satisfaction of a job well done, but the simple expressions of happiness that arise when a dress is first seen. More than anything else, it is this that defines Rarity as a paragon of generosity.
Rarity takes pride in her work, doing her utmost to ensure that each dress is not only personally made, but the recipient of a great deal of time and thought. Only then can it satisfy the Rules of Rarity, a set of strict personal standards that she cares about deeply, even when others do not.
By stark contrast, Sassy Saddles is a businesswoman who cares nothing for the artistic process, instead seeing only numbers. In order to maximize profit, she relies heavily on rigid business plans and focus testing. To her, dressmaking should not be based on beauty and inspiration, but on determining what will sell and then capitalizing on it. Varied designs are useful only in verifying what will prove successful; if a single design has mass appeal, it will be focused on exclusively, at the expense of everything else. She cultivates not beauty, but shallow fads centered around celebrity appeal, encouraging people to buy dresses not for their own sake, but in order to conform to social trends and therefore achieve a sense of belonging. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated by an irate customer, who berates Rarity for deviating from the mass produced design and providing a dress that isn’t exactly the same as those worn by her neighbors and the celebrity being used to market it. Sassy even perverts Rarity’s work on an artistic level for the sake of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Upon seeing that Rarity has given a dress a complex name based on clever wordplay that evokes its original source of inspiration, a stained glass window, she streamlines the name into something simple and shallow that has nothing to do with the window and instead appeals to petty power fantasies and wish fulfillment. This suggests that she has no respect for customers, treating them as brainless masses that cannot be appealed to on an intellectual or artistic level.
As long as products sell, quality is of no concern to Sassy. Though she never deliberately releases substandard work in the manner that the Flim Flam Brothers do in a thematically similar episode, she has no interest in the benefits of handcrafted work, wanting to enter automated mass production as soon as possible, eliminating Rarity’s role entirely.
Not surprisingly, these wildly differing ideologies quickly come into conflict when juxtaposed with one another. Sassy’s aggressive marketing results in a constant influx of repetitive, identical orders that Rarity feels honor-bound to fulfill. Notably, she refuses to accept help from her friends in this undertaking, suggesting that the events of Rarity Takes Manehattan have left her loth to employ such methods, even in strenuous circumstances. Moreover, the decision was likely influenced by professional pride, a sense that the dresses had to receive her own personal attention in order to meet the Rules of Rarity. This metaphorically evokes artists who insist on a personal, hands-on approach and are unwilling to allow aspects of their work to be outsourced to less skilled laborers for the sake of easier and cheaper production.
Rarity quickly becomes a slave to production, her role little more than that of a mindless automaton as she performs the same rote tasks again and again. Her creative spirit is stifled and entrapped, her work depriving her of means to channel inspiration. She no longer creates art, but simply performs manual labor, despising the copies she churns out of something she was once proud of. Tellingly, the loss of passion for her work deprives her even of any satisfaction in seeing customer reactions. Her struggles here appear to symbolize those of enthusiastic artists who fall prey to industry, their work dictated by consumer demands and controlling executives rather than their own passions as they had originally envisioned. The metaphorical impact is even more pronounced when one considers the context of the episode as a real-world artifact, as it was created by a team of artists in accordance with strict guidelines for a client that saw it as nothing more than a means of advertising cheaply manufactured goods. As with Suited for Success, the fact that this episode manages to provide a scathing critique of the very system it was created in without compromising its narrative is a stroke of brilliant irony.
This critical subtext becomes even cleverer when one considers that the mass produced dress is based on Twilight, a character that Hasbro has heavily marketed and even radically altered for the purpose of selling more merchandise, while the dresses eschewed by Sassy include those based off of Celestia and Luna, characters that were beloved by series creator Lauren Faust but received little enthusiasm or support from Hasbro.
Perhaps the most moving moment of the episode arises out of Rarity’s initial response to this frustration and despondency. Desperate to actually create once more, she finds inspiration and revises one of the mass produced dresses. The alterations are relatively minor, but to Rarity they are water in the middle of the desert, a source of renewed passion and vigor. She is overjoyed at the result and rushes off to show it to a customer, eager to see her delighted reaction. Yet, heartbreakingly, her efforts are thrown back in her face. Marketing and social influence have warped her consumers, leaving them not interested in artistry or innovation, but conformity and celebrity emulation. The soulless mass production that Rarity has grown to despise is favored not only by Sassy, but also the very people she has worked so hard to bring joy to.
It should be noted that the episode is not wholly critical of consumers, placing much of the blame on Sassy and her exploitive marketing. Consumers are perhaps best symbolized in the episode by Fashion Plate and the nameless mare who rejects Rarity’s altered dress. If the latter represents the corrupting results of harmful marketing and societal pressure, Fashion Plate represents the consumer in a more natural state, free of such influences. He is enthusiastic toward all of Rarity’s work and even shown to appreciate its artistic nuances, symbolized by the more complex original dress name. Yet ultimately he is led astray by Sassy’s methods, representing the start of a downward spiral for consumers that culminates in shallow pettiness and a lack of respect toward artists and their intent.
This revelation throws Rarity into despair, leaving her to bitterly note that she has accomplished all she ever dreamed of, only to be miserable. While the concept of the price of fame and success is not uncommon in media, it is unusual here in that Rarity has essentially done nothing wrong. Her principles have remained as important to her as ever; she is simply in circumstances that do not allow them to be properly followed, despite her best efforts. Unlike in most episodes of the series, the protagonist’s pain is not a result of a character flaw that can be overcome, but of being victim to manipulation and external forces.
The solution, then, the episode seems to postulate, is to not be a victim, to assert oneself and struggle against the binding circumstances of the status quo rather than giving into despair and accepting them, no matter the cost. Rarity ultimately stands up to Sassy, deciding to close the boutique and sacrifice her ambitions rather than allow her work to continue to be a mockery of all that she stands for. Unbound by fear of having to maintain business, she completely discards the mass produced dresses, instead bringing out those that Sassy had shunned for a final sale.
To her surprise and delight, these other dresses are met with excitement, despite some initial hesitation from customers seeking the mass produced one. The key difference between this case and the rejected modified dress is that here Rarity refuses to compromise. The modified dress was improved through her innovation and inspiration, but it was ultimately a work inextricable from corrupt marketing and business practices. These other dresses, however, were built from different foundations entirely and have not been tainted by Sassy’s influence, leaving consumers without warped preconceptions and allowing them to properly appreciate them as art, just as Fashion Plate initially did. This appreciation renews Rarity’s spirit, filling her once more with passion and love for her craft, and she decides to leave the boutique open, giving it a fresh start on her own terms.
Surprisingly, Sassy repents at this, claiming to have seen the error of her ways and importance of Rarity’s artistic integrity. While this change of heart initially seems sudden, it is preceded by a key detail: her panicked remark about not wanting to be part of yet another failed business. This twist completely shifts understanding of her character, as she had previously seemed very successful, suggesting that beneath her outward composure was a great deal of desperation. Sassy’s business strategies, it seems, had repeatedly failed in the past; rather than reevaluating the ideology they were founded on, she likely kept pushing herself harder, increasingly resorting to unethical tactics in the hopes of making her methods successful. It was only after seeing Rarity reject that worldview and succeed on her own terms that Sassy realized the failing was in her ideology.
If this is the case, Sassy’s redemption becomes plausible, if somewhat rushed due to time constraints. Though the antagonist of the episode, she was never a villain, merely someone who wanted to do her job well and made unethical decisions out of fear and ignorance. Even her plan to have Rarity replaced by an assembly line was meant in part to help the seamstress, and she could not fathom why Rarity found it appalling.
Although the episode’s support of artistic integrity in the face of corrupt business practices is a theme likely agreed upon by most in theory, its optimistic conclusion is a bold one that flies against common cynical thought. Should an actual artist attempt to emulate Rarity’s behavior, he or she would likely wind up with a lost job, whether due to being fired or unable to maintain business. Yet the episode does not deny such possibilities; Rarity was fully expecting to have to sacrifice a great deal when she finally stood up to Sassy. Rather, the conclusion is meant to encourage those in such positions to have hope for more than just an empty moral victory, to believe that, if enough people stand up for their convictions and refuse to compromise their principles, society can indeed change for the better.
- Read more...
- 3 comments
- 660 views