TV Shows Watched: Tales Of The TMNT: S1E11 and S1E12 (Paramount Plus) with audio description narrated by Wes Haas, Bad Monkey: S1E2 (Apple Plus) with audio description narrated by Laura Post, Women In Blue: S1E4 (Apple Plus) with audio description, and Kite Man: hell Yeah! S1E6 (MAX) with audio description by Jedidiah Barton.
Podcasts (through Apple Podcasts using Speed modification): Access Fuckery (Liz Gutman’s new podcast), The Bright Side (interview with MJ Rodriguez), Here’s The Thing With Alec Baldwin (Interview with Mary Lou Henner), Pod Save America (Politics), and Health Hacks (The Importance of Breakfasst)
Youtube: None
Movies: None
Today, as I finish Tales of the TMNT, I want to bring out one specific thing. Mustang Sally. While this show has existed for a week, what I’m able to find on the character suggests it was created for the show. Mustang Sally is voiced by Danny Trejo, aka Machete. Very low, gritty voice. Trejo’s pronouns are he/him/his. Mustang Sally is a Seahorse. A seahorse is pretty well known for being that thing that is always brought up that the male seahorse caries the babies. They could have picked any oceanic creature, the creators chose a seahorse. The audio description pervasively uses she/her pronouns, obviously thrown by the name. I think the design of the character is pretty clear, and as you might expect from a Nickelodeon show, Sally doesn’t get to use his pronouns. But again, Danny has pronouns, and I have to believe they chose seahorse for a reason. I’m also a gay film critic, and in so many situations because I present male I introduce myself with pronouns so anyone else can feel comfortable follow up with theirs. I would say if the AD team questioned this at all, they should have stuck gender neutral. But, it seems pretty clear to me that the character design for Mustang sally was to identify him as male. So, the pronoun usage kept throwing me. I kept wondering… what is it that you know, that I don’t? While there is very little information on this character (as he was just created) he does have an action figure now, and people are referring to this as a male character on other websites. I think if the creators had wanted to make a statement with this character, they would have clearly defined Sally as non-binary or transitioning, and maybe picked a different voice actor. I think this comes through someone who had a very narrow minded view of the name “Mustang Sally” being only applicable to females. With so many gender neutral names, I’m not sure you can only use that here. there’s a lot more intentionality being thrown in here, and perhaps we are missing the opportunity to remind kids about the magical uniqueness of being a seahorse.
