POWERPUFF GIRLS (Craig McCracken, various episodes)

“What are you three doing in there?”; Guard to the three cons dressed up in PPG outfits and masks

The black con asks Miss Bellum, “What’s your sign?” She says, “Stop.”

Miss Bellum is the only one who believes in the PPGs' innocence.

Mayor-as-Lacanian Phallus: “You three will still have to go back to prison.” PPGs laugh. Mayor says, “I’m serious.”

Buttercup and Redheaded con get confused during the showdown. Buttercup’s solution: “Let’s just fight our counterparts.”

3 villainous types: 1) Fuzzy Lumpkins: hillbillie; taking a bath, playing his banjo, in his “birthday suit”; 2) Mojo Jojo: refined, cosmopolitan; of the arrest says, “we’re evil citizens, but citizens nonetheless”; 3) Him: effeminate, queer, self-conscious; performing aerobics

When the PPGs attack Fuzzy Lumpkins in the bath he says, “Fuzzy Lumpkins is clean.”

The PPGs battle the vicious eye with a wrecking ball and chain and a spired water tower.

We only see Miss Bellum’s face as the femme fatale “Sedusa.”

Inside a smashed-out, jagged-edged window pane, we see Miss Bellum and the PPGs cutting Sedusa’s locks. Sedusa on her knees. Camera cuts away.

In several episodes of The Powerpuff Girls, Craig McCracken uses Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup’s cuteness in a parodic fashion. In other words, he employs cuteness, a style defined as "sweet, adorable, infantile, vulnerable, kitsch, innocent, loveable, and small" (Kinsella) to comment ironically on cuteness. Linda Hutcheon argues that postmodern parody entails “reappropriating existing representations that are effective precisely because they are loaded with pre-existing meaning and putting them into new and ironic contexts” (The Politics of Postmodernism 44). While “exploiting the power of familiar images … [parody] also de-naturalizes them, makes visible the concealed mechanisms which work to make them seem transparent” (44).

The convicts’ impersonation of the Powerpuff Girls is parodic because it copies the appearance of the girls to ironize it. The exaggerated look of the bulky prisoners with hairy legs parodies the representation of cuteness.

People’s responses to the prisoners’ imitation of the Powerpuff Girls’ voices and behavior in the bank, jewelry store, and mayor’s house also parody cuteness. As long as the structure of cuteness is repeated (the costume, the voice, and the childish behavior), the inhabitants of Townsville do not differentiate between cuteness and parodic cuteness. Ironically, not even the Girls are aware of this difference when they fight the escaped prisoners.

One of the Powerpuff Girls breaks the gift from the mayor – the cute little poodle – a detail that undermines the cuteness phenomena.

When cute little Bubbles wants to become “hardcore,” her sisters tell her: “That’s not the Powerpuff way.” Since the Powerpuff way translates into niceness and altruism, Bubbles’ exacerbation of niceness and willingness to help transform into a farcical version of cuteness.

Whenever the voiceover concludes at the end of an episode that the situation was solved by other characters except the Powepuff Girls, characters such as Mojo, Him, or Fuzzy, who imitate the Powerpuff way, the Girls’ efficiency is called into question.

The whole subject of prank calls in “Telephonies” is parodic because the Gangrene Gang imitates the child-like voices of the Powerpuff Girls to make fun of them.

Now that Blossom lost her beautiful locks, everybody around her laughs at her butchered cuteness. After Blossom burns the hair of her sisters as well, the Powerpuff Girls embody a grotesque version of cuteness.

The shots on the Girls’ enormous eyes that sometimes take over the whole screen symbolize a hyperbolic and parodic depiction of cuteness.

A seductive Medusa, Sedusa masquerades as Miss Bellum and appeals to the Girls because she reiterates their sweet talk, yet undermines their power.

The pink glue with which Sedusa immobilized the Girls on the window is parodied by the notion that Miss Bellum is the brain and glue that sticks the administration of Townsville together.

In the first episode, the three male bank robbers dress in “drag” as the Powerpuff Girls, and nearly everyone buys the obvious fake costumes as real.

One of the three bank robbers, the seemingly most “butch,” enjoys dressing up in drag as a Powerpuff girl, even more so than being a criminal. His dreams reveal him desiring to be effeminate.

The devil villain known as “Him” clearly is depicted in effeminate, “drag” clothing. It is frilly and red. In addition, he obviously wears makeup and speaks with an effeminate voice.

“Him” is also depicted, at one point, as “jazzercising”—it is the way he “stays fit.” This further links his character with a stereotypical gay sensibility (exercise and fitness as important for the gay male).

The evil eyeball villain. He has nothing to hide. He is, in a sense, “open,” or “out.”

The villain Mojo Jojo: though his name implies masculinity, he also dresses in drag, pretending to be a young girl to infiltrate the Powerpuff Girls' slumber party. Drag is clearly a weapon of the villains

In his commentary, Mojo Jojo also comments on the color of the episode. He says they used a “great colorist” and he should know since “he took an art appreciation class,” which again speaks to a gay or queer sensibility

When Buttercup turns “bad” and too violent, desiring to be seen as a threat, she repeatedly is referred to as “hardcore.” She even uses masculine, phallic weaponry to defeat the monsters she faces by ripping off the spike from one monster and using it to impale (penetrate) another monster.

As “Bubbleviscious,” this “bad” Buttercup’s outfit also changes color. It shifts from light blue to lavender, “a color associated with gay men since Ancient Greece, where the Greek word for lavender also meant a gay man” according to “A Brief Dictionary of Queer Slang and Culture” (http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Stonewall/4219/)

Theoretical Point: The Powerpuff Girls can be seen as post-feminist cartoon characters through their appearance, their interactions with other characters, and their position in the plotlines of the cartoons.

List of Details:

The characters function as animated proof that girls can be cute and kick ass at the same time. Their hyperfemininity and cuteness (large eyes, pastel colors, high voices, etc.) are the most noticeable visual elements on the screen. But their “girl-ness” is almost beside the point. It doesn’t detract from (or add to) their power.

Professor Utonium, the girls’ creator and caretaker, is a departure from the usual male character who occupies this role in female action flicks (think Bosley of Charlie’s Angels.) He behaves more like a worried mother than a macho boss, gently guiding the girls to do the right thing. The professor doesn’t field calls from the mayor to save the town; he worries instead about their bed time being interrupted. His job is not to save the world or to protect the girls, but to worry about mundane details of their existence.

The narrator (whose naïve commentary and plastic voice position him as a throwback to 1960s narrators) is an important element in the show’s deconstruction of gender stereotypes with his pop cultural references. His wisecracks and asides make fun of the rigid gender distinctions that were used to in that time. He cheers the Powerpuff Girls on as they save the day without seeming to realize the absurdity of what he is doing.

The boss of Townsville is not who we’d expect; it is the boss’s secretary (Ms. Sarah Bellum), who is exaggerated femininity personified. She is a non-person (we never see her face), consisting of curves, high heels, big hair, and a breathy voice that whispers what to do into the ear of patriarchy (the mayor).

The girls are effective only as a community. They need the leadership of Blossom, the sweetness of Bubbles, and the feistiness of Buttercup to accomplish their missions. The girls have to decide as a group whether or not to help out and then enact those decisions together. This is especially clear in the episode “Bubbleviscious” when Bubbles tries to break out on her own and is ineffective without her sisters.

The women use their feminine wiles, either cuteness or sexiness, to enhance, not diminish, their personal power. The Powerpuff Girls trick the bad guys with their seeming innocence and Ms. Bellum runs the town by beguiling the mayor.

The unnaturalness of the conventions of femininity is emphasized in the episode called “Telephonies”. One member of the Gangrene Gang, attempting to bamboozle the Powerpuff Girls in order to wreak havoc on the town, disguises his voice as Ms. Sarah Bellum’s. This shows that even geeky adolescent punks can “put on” the trappings of femininity and reinforces the notion that the breathy, sexy voice is not a natural part of characters such as Ms. Bellum, but is something “put on” to influence another.

We learn in the opening sequence of each episode that the Powerpuff Girls’ power comes from the elements of their creation – sugar, spice, and everything nice – the elements we all know about, and “chemical X” – an accidental addition that unleashed their power. This can be seen as a commentary that girls already have toughness built in (after all, girls have two X chromosomes and boys only have one); it’s just that they are socialized into denying that part of their personalities in favor of qualities such as sweetness, gentleness, and attractiveness.

This episode “Telephonies” shows that our understandings of gender are much less complicated than they should be. The three most conventionally masculine characters here, the criminals, are into “feminine” activities in their off time. Mojo, who wants to rule the world and fights against the Powerpuff Girls every chance he gets, is shown in fuzzy pink slippers listening to classical music in his home. The second criminal, Fuzzy Lumpkins, takes a bubble bath on his day off. And the third one – “Him” – the most evil of all, does aerobics.

In “The Mane Event” everyone – bad guys, good guys, male and female people of the town, Ms.Bellum, the mayor, the professor, and Buttercup and Bubbles join in making fun of Blossom’s bad hair cut. Perhaps this is a commentary that no one, no matter how “liberated”, escapes from cultural expectations of gender conventions?

Cute is seen as a form of individuality in comparison to the progression of characters behind the Powerpuff Girls, from uncomplicated drawings to the orange mush of the mob.

In nearly all cases, there exists in the criminal/nemesis homosexual tendencies, or at least one overtly homosexual member of a group.

When the Powerpuff Girls are handcuffed, we see the absurdity of traditional law in their case—handcuffs make no sense for girls w/o hands, law has no function for honest and cute critters.

The Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Plus formula at beginning adds the post-feminist trick to the PP girls. The ingredient “X” is added, from a broken egg-like beaker. Also points to the nastiness of little boys—what with the puppy-dog tails.

Prank Calls, as a structure via their anonymity, challenge the symbolic order for both the do-gooders and the not so do-gooders. Anyone who relies on structure may be affected (even bad guys, who end up fighting for that structure).

Powerpuff Girls often at war with a phallic enemy—such as the eyeball that sees all and penetrates even tall buildings. In order to beat such a villain, traditional tactics don’t work, but subjective (perhaps feminine) types of humor ultimately can topple it.

In "Something’s a Ms."—Sedusa throws what I think are breast pads (though they could be shoulder pads)—thus through metaphor suggesting that the post-feminist might rely on artifice and traditional feminine characteristics for kick-ass purposes.

Ms. Sarah Bellum—enough said?

The talking dog that can’t drive points out that even in the world of cartoons and talking dogs there must exist, at some level, a symbolic order, where certain things are possible and others impossible.

The narrator, tired of his monotonous opener, exhibits postmodern play by trying to bring the old to the viewers in a new fashion. I could argue he does this as much for his own sanity as for the viewer’s entertainment.

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Last update: 8/27/2004