Something new’s brewing on Netflix.
The upcoming season of kids show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is all tied up in a bow, and the contents of the glittery box are razz-matazz wokeness.
The program’s new batch of toons for tykes will feature “the first nonbinary actor to voice a nonbinary animated character in a recurring series role.”
.@jacobtobia will be the first #nonbinary actor to voice a nonbinary animated character in a recurring series role for @DreamWorksSheRa season 4! https://t.co/gk8LE566cT
— It Gets Better (@ItGetsBetter) October 21, 2019
Netflix’s LGBTQ Instagram account, Prism, spotlighted the deal with a video of Jacob Tobia, the neither-man-nor-woman performer giving breath to the character of Double Trouble:
Mx. Tobia explains:
“I play a character called Double Trouble, who is a non-binary, shape-shifting mercenary. So, functionally, I’m playing myself.”
Entertainment website Collider is psyched:
The children are indeed our future, and it’s downright inspiring to hear Tobia and the rest of the She-Ra team’s focus on making their future — and frankly their present — as bright and encompassing as possible.
As per Deadline, the addition of the gender-bending emblem is “a move to authentic representation and inclusion.”
Jacob noted the importance of the show’s maneuver, for the sake of the children.
***Putting the topic wholly aside, if I may pause to say so, here are two things I find as irritating as chicken pox: mayonnaise, and when anyone — talking about anything at all — makes statements which exist in a realm of debate, followed by “right?”
Example: So Pepsi is better than Coke, right?
Wanna make Pepsi worse? Add mayonnaise. Wanna make that sentence better? Remove the question mark and take out “right.”
It’s an improvement, right?***
Anyway, here’s Jacob:
“Having non-binary representation in animated shows for young folks is just so vital, because young people today are already understanding that gender is diverse and a broad spectrum from a super early age, right? So, it’s about time that the shows that we’re making for young people reflect the world as they understand it.”
But the inclusion of Double Trouble isn’t completely revolutionary. See for yourself (clips courtesy of MRCTV):
If the title of the program sounds familiar, you’re probably remembering 1985-86’s She-Ra: Princess of Power. It was created by masterminds behind the epically-triggeringly-named He-Man, to give young girls something to dig.
Now kids have a ton more She-Ra to shovel. And when it comes to trouble of the double variety, Jacob says they’re ready.
As f***:
“The Double Trouble fandom is already badass af [as f***].”
And so, he’s “celebrating the f*** out of what is already such a powerful shapeshifting fandom.”
It’s all about fantasy, and that’s important to Jacob:
“Fantasy has always been so, like, vital to me because as a non-binary person, it’s a way of escaping the confines of the world we live in, right? It’s the way of building other realities and imagining the world as it could be, not as it is.”
Catch Season 4, debuting November 5th.
-ALEX
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