The loudest and most self-possessed pony, Rainbow Dash, displays characteristics of Hypomania, while Apple Jack’s tireless work ethic subtly nods to Masochistic Personality Disorder. Fluttershy also tends to avoid other ponies out of fear, a classic symptom of Social Anxiety Disorder. The central princess alicorn Twilight’s bookish reserve hints at Avoidant Personality Disorder, and, less subtly, OCD. In this vein, the latest incarnation of My Little Pony preaches that Friendship is Magic via its ‘mane six’, whose diverse personality types (and disorders) work together to create balance. Quite a different portrayal to that in Disney’s recent Inside Out, which showed how all anthropomorphic emotional states are good and necessary in the correct balance.
In these pre-Prozac times (the popular antidepressant was approved in the US in 1988), children’s cartoons addressed the taboo of mental illness by giving it a monstrous face that needed to be battled into submission. This slimey depression analogy reflected the villainous zeitgeist of the period – Milo’s dull life and lazy procrastination in the Phantom Tollbooth’s doldrums, the colour and fun-sapping Murky and Lurky from Rainbow Brite, not to mention fellow equine Artax, who met his sticky end in The Neverending Story’s Swamp of Sadness. Aside from turning beautiful fields into barren wastelands, it could also throw chunks of itself which, when attached to living beings, turned them into grumpy, mean creatures unable to care about each other, causing apathy and despair in themselves and others. While the gargantuan slime-beast was only a secondary antagonist with a catchy song, its ability to destroy anything in its path, living or not, was genuinely terrifying.
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