Also, I’d like it to say it now (though I will be saying it again later): I do not hate fans of the female Zoisite. I don't wish anything nasty upon them, nor do I believe their characters to be of the sort that should accrue nastiness. But I do think they have overlooked certain moral consequences of their preference. This is what I shall be discussing.

Comments are welcome at electric_booger@hotmail.com

Perhaps the brain is entitled, every so often, to roll over in its casement, turning one's convictions upside down. I suppose that's called changing one's mind. And I suppose it happens fairly often. So worry I shall not. Nevertheless, my position in the ever-enduring dub/original rancour has… rotated itself slightly. Gone is the DiCK notice that once welcomed visitors to this page (it has been replaced by a jaunty little verse by the late great Spike Milligan), and gone too are my poisonous evocations of the DiC execs as the red-necked goons who spilled the pot of vermilion ink over my favourite cartoon character. Why, do you ask, have I grown so acquiescent on the subject? Well, I must first reply by saying I have not settled down; I’ve merely redirected the focus of my…. I hate to use the word “persecution”, but sadly, it fits rather well. (And besides, there must be a focus of persecution; I just wouldn’t be Soylent Green if there wasn’t.)

But before I answer that ever-popular question, “who is under Green’s gun now?”, I must first explain why I have stopped kicking dirt on DiC. (Now bear with me while I wax cheesy metaphorical….) Entertainment companies are tumors: they swell, they merge, they diffuse their essence constantly, inexorably. And in time with delighting in it, we resent them for it. We resent their power, their wealth, their ability to - among far grander exploits - trade cartoon testicles for cartoon ovaries. And so, the name-calling begins. The villainization. As a prof of mine so glibly put it, “You gotta attack the man.” We create a monster. And, in this case, an illegitimate one.

I’ll tell you why. And no, it’s none of that “they brought Sailor Moon to us, after all” sentimentalist bullshit. Because let’s not forget, DiC brought Sailor Moon over for profit, not for the good of society. So let’s leave that non sequitur in kindergarten, where it belongs. No, the first defense I propose for DiC is likely one you’ve heard before, yet I think we fail to appreciate the sheer heftiness of it. They couldn’t, want to or not, release an undeniably fruity character into the rumpus rooms of infant America. It’s not because DiC themselves are a gang of slobbering homophobes, but certainly they would attract some rather militant members of that species were they to let Zoisite go unmolested. Let’s face it: America just ain’t Japan. (Of course, I'm not hoping that things will remain as such, but it is important to recognize the problem as it's going to be popping up later on….) Anyway, here’s the defense of which, as I said before, you are likely already aware: DiC had to change Zoisite’s sex, or face the whiny letters of a thousand angry parents. Right. I’d say, quite frankly, that’s a very good reason. When was the last time you saw a reputable family entertainment industry risk said reputation because they were feeling righteous? It doesn’t happen, not when money is dangling on their decisions. The show had to go on, and this was something DiC had to cede so that it could do so.

But now, let’s look at another reason. This one, I don’t think, has been proposed at all in the sphere of this issue. Yet now, inspired by a little e-mail brooding done on this subject, it seems difficult to ignore. Let’s imagine, then, that DiC did let Zoisite go uncastrated. And let’s imagine, too, that the queer-shy population of North America left him, and DiC, alone. However, may we, for a little refreshment, look at Zoisite from an American perspective? (And it should be noted here that by “American”, I’m referring to the entire continent, including all 153 of us up here in Canada.) We all love him; that’s for certain (excepting, perhaps, the few individuals who wandered in from Lord Malachite and Lady Zoisite: A Negaverse Romance). We love his subtle mania, his weaknesses, his adorable voice, his fuck-me eyes. However, if he were introduced as a stranger into the daytime TV slot of America, I’ll tell you what people would see. An effeminate man who prances, poses, attacks with flower-petals, cross-dresses, does his nails, and, in all likelihood, would have been given a pronounced lisp on the part of the dub actor. An insult! A joke! A disgusting slur! But wait, we’re forgetting the big one: Zoisite is a villain. So, what you have is a creation that is not only gay to the point of absurdity, but you have him playing the part of a bad guy. An evil guy. What do you think Americans, who believe cartoons to be little more than moralistic allegories, will think of what Sailor Moon is trying to say about homosexuality? Well, I should think the PC groups breaking down DiC’s door should be answer enough.

So, there you have it. DiC was damned either way in the case of poor Zoisite. Yet, as I said before, contract called. They had to release Sailor Moon, and this is was a little nuance they had to give up in order to do so. (Well, that and some showtime to make room for Sailor Says- but hey! That’s another essay.)

Ohohoho… but don’t you even think, in a situation that lays bare the subterfuge of that indelible American Grand Narrative, that everyone is getting away squeaky-clean. Someone’s getting whipped in this essay, and this time it’s not DiC-- it’s the fans. The supporters, the admirers, of the female Zoisite. Now, before I tear their beloved heroine apart, I want to make this clear: I don’t hate these fans. I don’t wish they would fall off a cliff or get eaten by crocodiles. But I do want them to realize (all three who are reading this) that by liking the female Zoisite, they are perpetuating a principle which, for want of a less connotative word, is loathsome.

Now, many of you are likely saying, "Oh, brother, here we go again. Look, Soylent, it's obvious that the female version sucks, but some people are going to carry on liking it. So drop the issue and draw some more fanart, okay?" Too true, this is an antique subject as far as DK conversations go, but I think there's a certain facet of the dub/original Zoi issue that... well, warrants a little attention.

This is not a discussion of homophobia. Nor am I out to engage in arguments over which version is “cooler”, which one has the better lines or a better voice. I am not about to get tangled up in those ridiculous quasi-mathematical speculations as to how big a bosom one can flatten under a Dark Kingdom uniform jacket. I am not about to argue the point of Zoisite’s aesthetic plausibility as a man. I am not going to get hung up on this Malthusian obsession fem-Zoi fans have with Zoisite getting pregnant. This is not the point of my essay. What I will attack, though, are the intrinsic social moralities one adopts automatically, often unwittingly, when one becomes a fan of the female Zoisite. These, I think, are far scarier than any piece of fanart depicting Zoi with a pair of jiggling boobs.

Here comes the first protest from the opposing party, and it sounds like this: “Leave me alone! I think Zoisite is better as a woman, okay? It’s my opinion. Aren’t I entitled to my opinion?” Oh, certainly you are. However, something the waffling nineties have often neglected is that opinions, in and of themselves, are not invulnerable to attack. And attack I shall. This is my opinion.

Besides, we’re not talking about preferring spaghetti over lasagna, we’re talking about a choice made in alliance with - not ignorance, for every SM fan over the age of eight knows the story behind that green-eyed, flat-chested enchantress - but ignorance’s ugly cousin, denial. I don’t say this for rhetorical or spectacular reasons. But I do mean it. And in order to illustrate just how I mean it, I’ve devised a little hypothetical situation:

Most action-movie connoisseurs will have, at one point or another, seen a 1993 Western entitled Tombstone. Now, Tombstone, as you will be aware if you’ve seen it, features a character (based on a real-life historical figure) named “Doc” Holliday. Moreover, if you’ve seen Tombstone, you’ll likely be one of the almost universal fan-base who believes Doc Holliday (played by Val Kilmer) to be, undeniably, the coolest character in the film. His smooth lines and his lazy, erudite drawl put him echelons ahead of the Earp brothers in substance. Am I right, or am I right? Now, imagine something happens, some bizarre scandal involving Val Kilmer and this particular character he plays. Imagine that this scandal - so shocking - causes a certain group of audience to fly into a terrific rage at the sound of his voice going through the lines of that particular film. Just his voice, though, for the sake of the analogy. (Though I can’t fathom what kind of scandal this would be….) Anyway, rather than toss every known copy of Tombstone into an incinerator, the producers devise a rather clever solution. They decide to take all of Doc Holliday’s lines, rescript them, and dub them over with another actor’s voice. Say… Clint Eastwood. Now, I use Clint Eastwood in order to avoid the whole “who provides a better voice” debate; people do like Clint Eastwood, after all. So, what we have in the end is a massive re-release of Tombstone; only now, Val’s voice has been replaced with Clint’s, and instead of Doc’s anticipated catch phrases (“I’m your huckleberry”, “You’re no daisy” etc.) you have… oh, something along the lines of, “Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” Now, even if you adored Clint Eastwood, even if you liked him more than Val Kilmer, would you prefer the new version to the old? The answer, given by anyone with an ounce of sense, would be no. Messing with the definitive, metonymic elements of a finished work, particularly for political (not artistic) reasons, does not exactly produce favourable reactions among fans. I use this hypothetical analogy to illustrate what is difficult to see in the case of Sailor Moon (because it was never released, in its original form, in North America): that such an alteration as Zoisite’s is an absurd thing to endorse. In fact, I even eased off a bit in this example; had I really wanted to let loose, I'd have used Reba MacIntyre instead of Clint Eastwood. This isn't a case of a mere alteration in voice style, as in the instances of the other characters in DiC's Sailor Moon; this is shifting the paradigm altogether, effectively destroying what previously defined a character. So, right off, you can see the sort of blinkered view a fem-Zoi fan must adopt in order to enjoy their heroine. Still, if you're having troubling grasping my point, rent yourself a copy of Tombstone, and, for every scene featuring Doc Holliday, try to imagine Clint's husky voice talking talking over his lines. Hell, even if you did get my point, do it anyway; it's great for a laugh.

Back on topic, a testy rebuttal can be seen coming a mile off. To the point made by my analogy, the female Zoi fans would reply that DiC’s change was not a blot, not a desperate glossing over of a truth too shocking to bear, but a legitimate change. An alteration, deliberate and well thought out. Another stage in the evolution of Sailor Moon. Getting incensed over it is about as meaningful and rewarding as getting incensed over the changes made to SM when it was converted from manga to anime. We do not embrace denial, they say. We merely embrace the change.

Ahhh… so you do. Yet once again I ask you to review the possible motives for DiC’s deliberate, well thought out change. They begin as political, but round out to the all-powerful financial. Bad PR can hurt a company, after all. And bad PR is exactly what they would get, should they fling something so markedly queer as Zoisite into the faces of children across the continent. I wouldn’t call fear of reputation a righteous or artistic motive for Zoi’s sex-change. Their intent in Zoi’s alteration wasn’t to improve the show, but to avoid the flak of some rather excitable viewers. What kind of a change is that to embrace? And, more to the point, what does that say about your own social philosophy when you accept such a change?

Here we arrive at the sin itself. The stuff before was fairly middling; this is the one that keeps me up at night and gives me the dry heaves whenever I visit a fem-Zoi fansite. You see, the sentiment that I set out to criticize is not the overt one that most female-Zoi fans display, namely, that Zoisite, with his pretty face and male lover, is better suited to a high-pitched voice. No, I am attacking the implicit maxims that female-Zoi fans accept. These fans are, by virtue of their choice, turning a blind eye to a rather nasty social bake, one so pervasive that it could force an editing team to covertly commit what would be considered, in normal artistic and productional senses, a superfluous alteration. (If you yet have doubts to the superfluousness of it, I entreaty you again to try the Tombstone trick.) In calling this tactical forfeit an improvement, particularly in the face of the civil ugliness that could force such a forfeit, fans of the female Zoisite adopt a kind of unwitting social callousness. Even if homophobia is the last thing motivating their choice, even if they simply like the idea of Zoisite and Kunzite getting married and having kids (like everyone else on Sailor Moon), they still assume - albeit without even knowing it - the unforgivable blindness that is inextricably tied to their heroine. It is their heroine. "Zoycite" is the dirt one piles on a landfill; she is the v-chip in one's TV; she is the easy way out. She was created to treat the symptom, not cure the disease. That’s a sick thing to be a fan of, but that’s the trend one perpetuates by accepting her.

Here’s the last counter-point from the fem-Zoi side, but this one comes only from a select bunch. We are not, they say, insensible of the civil messiness that produced the female Zoisite. We hate queers. We think that the female Zoisite is the best thing that ever happened to the moral integrity of this nation. Righto. I’m not out to convert anybody to becoming, as Kayador once put it, a fruitbat. I’ll leave that up to the nekkie pics of Zoi-boy in my fanart gallery, and the few rare and wonderful lemons of the DK world. However, I am going to say that to think of the female Zoisite as a beautiful and moralistic creation, one that is going to help clean up America, makes one even sillier than the fans who just like her voice. One can’t side with DiC, saying that one hates queers, because DiC isn’t an force to be sided with. They had a show to release, and too many people to please, and this was the easiest way out.

So, there you are: your agent of social reform is a company that doesn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Your weapon is not the brainchild of an artist or a visionary; it’s a product. An evasion, not even ostensibly original. Thinking that endorsing this half-assed creation will help further your beliefs can be likened (if I may wax cheesy metaphorical again) to plucking a cherry from atop a pile of shit, thinking that you're helping to clean it up. You are the monkey with its hands over its eyes, and, as I said before, that's the only principle you teach.

But no, go on; do it anyway. After all, it’s what you prefer, isn’t it?