- by Owen Morton
For some reason, yesterday's article came under heavy fire from everybody on my corridor. They accused it of being like Marxism in that it descended into fantasy and didn't actually do as advertised i.e. talk about how similar He-Man and Lenin were. Well, I should like to point out a) that it did talk about how similar He-Man and Lenin were (kind of), b) that Marxism does not descend into fantasy, it is a right and good and perfectly well-visualised system, and c) that everybody on my corridor are all Tories anyway, so it doesn't matter.
However, I felt piqued enough to write a conclusion to yesterday's article that points out the similarities between He-Man and Lenin in a much more clear and concise way than evidently yesterday's article did. Unfortunately, again, as I believe I may have pointed out yesterday, I can't think of any such similarities, so I'll have to make them up. Although I suspect that if I think hard enough about it, I could probably come up with a decent enough case that He-Man was indeed an allegory for communism. Except, of course, that it was an early 1980s American children's cartoon, and thus rather unlikely to be anything of the kind.
The first point I would like to raise is that they both had multiple identities. He-Man was, as everybody with half a brain knows, Prince Adam in his spare time. Lenin also had multiple identities, if you count his many attempts to disguise himself to evade Tsarist and provisional government authorities who wished to put him in jail, completely against the principles of morality. Okay, so Lenin's reasons for having more than one identity were very different from He-Man's - i.e. he was a criminal (wrongly accused, of course) whereas He-Man, as we all know, wasn't. But that doesn't matter. The fact remains that they both had more than one identity, and if we continue our parallel of Skeletor and the petty bourgeoisie (as posited yesterday) then they both had multiple identities to disguise themselves from the petty bourgeoisie. You see, oh you detractors who so insulted me yesterday, this case does work.
Another point that I feel must be mentioned in defence of my theory of He-Man and Lenin being very similar is the rather important point that they both had cats. Admittedly, I don't think Lenin's was called Cringer (or indeed Battle Cat, depending on which of his identities he was using), but this is irrelevant. The fact that they both had cats proves that they had more similar mindsets than most Americans (and most of my corridor) would like to think about.
And it is here that I begin to run out of useful parallels between He-Man and Lenin. However, if I think about it for a few more minutes, I'm sure to come up with something. My next point is perhaps a bit dodgy, on account of my not having any solid proof of it, but I'm almost positive (and were I to check up on the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Website I could find out for sure) that it's true. It is almost a dead certainty that one of the infamous morals at the end of He-Man emphasised the rather important ideals of sharing. And what is one of the defining principles of communism? That's right … sharing! Thus the writer of the episode with that particular moral was obviously a communist sympathiser, and were we to watch the actual episode, we would probably see all sorts of parallels with the Russian Revolution in it, almost certainly casting He-Man in the role of Lenin. But here I am straying into the kind of speculation I came under so much criticism for yesterday, so I'm going to stick to the facts. But it's almost (and note I say 'almost') worth logging on to the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Website to check that I'm right on this point.
And my next point is that He-Man had a sister. So did Lenin. I think. And if he did, it's certain that she bore an uncanny resemblance to She-Ra, and did the same kind of things. In fact, on thinking about it, She-Ra: Princess of Power was a much more communist programme than He-Man was. I don't have so much knowledge on the subject, because I didn't really watch it, but from what I can gather from the website whose name has already been mentioned more than enough times in this article, then the main theme of that programme was that She-Ra and her band (which was called the Rebellion) were uprising against the oppressive ruling classes (i.e. Hordak and his minions) of her planet, which I believe was called Etheria. What, pray tell, is more communist than this? Hordak and his group were very evil indeed (though not as evil as Skeletor, I seem to recall) and they repressed the ordinary people of Etheria. She-Ra and the Rebellion heroically fought against them and were presumably pressing for a Revolution. Unfortunately, since this Revolution never materialised (as far as I know, though of course I didn't watch it), we can only assume that the time was not yet ripe and it would take a couple more years before the working classes were oppressed enough to throw off their chains. There you go! An incredibly accurate and indisputable Marxist interpretation of She-Ra. This, I will admit, is a slight digression from the actual subject of the article, but I think it is pretty much relevant. And if it isn't, well, it's me writing it and not you, so you're stuck with it really.
Being a liberal sort of fellow, I will admit that there were differences as well as similarities between Lenin and He-Man. Let us consider, for example, the distribution of hair on their heads. Lenin had a beard. He-Man didn't. He-Man, however, had quite long hair, whereas Lenin didn't. This is a good illustration of the fact that they were quite different as well as being the same. However, the amount of hair they had doesn't have any effect on their ideological beliefs, which were indisputably the same: even if it isn't overtly obvious all the time in He-Man's case, we must remember that he supported his sister in everything she did, and it is perfectly clear that she was a communist revolutionary, thus making He-Man a communist revolutionary by familial association.
And I hope that satisfies those of you on my corridor who are too blinkered by Tory fascism to notice the incredible similarities between Lenin and He-Man. This article and the last one should have pointed them out to you beyond the point where you can argue anymore. And now I'm going to go off to a discussion group which unfortunately will be about Lenin, and so I'm going to try to put all this stuff out of my head before I get there.