#heidi schreck

Disclaimer that I do not have any insider knowledge of this project specifically, this is just my educated perspective from my experience with IP and TV.

First and foremost, I will believe this project is actually happening when it is showing on my TV and not a moment sooner. Let's just say that.

Now assuming it IS happening, here's what you should understand...

IP is usually use it or lose it. If Dreamworks wants to keep the rights to make She-Ra content, they very likely must have something in active development or risk listing it. If Netflix isn't willing to make more of the animated series right now, then the Amazon deal is all they have or give She-Ra up entirely. 

If you're an SPOP (2017) fan, you're in favor of Dreamworks retaining the license over losing it because, so long as they have it, the door is always open for more of our SPOP in one way or another. This reboot doesn't negate the possibility of a continuation of the animated version or vice versa. (Fans of frequently rebooted properties like TMNT and MLP would be happy to tell you about how there's been content for multiple gens at the same time.) It's not like the new version erases the old. If anything, a reboot often makes it more likely you get content of a past gen because of renewed interest in the property as a whole.

"But what if it's sexist trash!" The biggest fear people had about this reboot was that it would be some male gaze disaster made to please the worst kind of people who hate all kinds of diversity. Obviously, we'll see what we get, but the fact that they specifically got a feminist playwright as the writer is a big thing should alleviate some of that fear.

"But will it be gay????" I've seen lots of freaking out that Adora's going to kill Catra and marry a man on her grave and other equally unlikely fears. And the fact is: We don't know if it will be gay! With this writer, the gay door certainly isn't closed, but that doesn't mean it's open either. But honestly the real question you should be asking is: will it be explicitly gay? Because the rainbow homo-eroticism is baked right into She-Ra OG so even if we don't get an explicit same-sex kiss on screen... it's likely still gonna be pretty gay.

Even a bad or infuriating reboot will revitalize the fandom and bring new fans to SPOP (2017) AND increase the chances of continuation. Say the new show is terrible. Say they annoy everyone by giving Catra and Adora a supercorp queerbaiting thing and then never make it canon or make Catra and Hordak in love and everyone is mad. (Which I feel obligated to point out is *extremely* unlikely as this is literally still Dreamworks' show. They are the same people that gave you the gay. They are keenly aware of what their audience wants so, even if they are reluctant to make it canon, at the least they are probably going to tease it.) But even in the worst case scenario of the straightest possible version of She-Ra, what are people going to do if the new show pisses them off? Turn back to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, create more fanworks, interact with what's already there, keep the fandom alive for everyone. You want that!

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RIGHTS. In terms of some of the drawbacks of the Constitution, Schreck  “learned about two kinds of rights: negative rights and positive rights”--and which kind are emphasized in our Constitution:

“Negative rights protect us from the government taking our stuff, locking us up, killing us.

“Positive rights are active rights. They are things the government must do or provide. They include things like...like the right to a fair trial, to an attorney, and in some countries, the right to health care. 

“Our Constitution, primarily, with some exceptions, is a negative rights document. It was designed to protect the men who made it and their property--their property that was sometimes people--from the government.” 

[emphasis added]

Shreck says it was because of the emphasis on “negative rights” in the Constitution that the originalist/ textualist Scalia was able to decide in Caste Rock v. Gonzales (2005) against a woman who sued the police for not having enforced a restraining order against her ex-husband (who ended up murdering their three young daughters). The police didn’t enforce the restraining order despite a Colorado law that seemed to state clearly that restraining orders should be enforced.

For a variety of reasons, Scalia claimed that the plaintiff didn’t have a right “to any active or positive protection from the police.” 

That decision according to Schreck was considered by a number of scholars to be “the death of the Fourteenth Amendment for women” because 

“it basically shuts down the possibility to look to our federal government, to our Constitution, for protection from physical or sexual violence.”  [emphasis added]

Schreck plays an audiotape where Scalia debates the meaning of the word “shall” in the Colorado law (the one to which the plaintiff maintained the police had not complied). It was chilling to realize that Scalia used his strict interpretation of the language of the Colorado law to undo the spirit of the law, which was to ensure the enforcement of restraining orders.

After watching What the Constitution Means to Me I was more convinced than ever that we as a nation will not become a fully developed first world nation as long as we have a court packed with conservative originalists and textualists, who are: 

Wed to the most limited view of the rights of Americans.

Inclined to protect the rights of the propertied classes

Question whether the government has a constitutional obligation to foster and/or protect the “positive rights” of the working classes.

Anyway, Schreck’s play is more than worth watching. It offers arguments both pro and con regarding our current Constitution and raises very important questions. It provides an enjoyable way to learn more about the Constitution--knowledge of which I believe is necessary for citizens to have at this critical juncture in our nation’s history.

[edited]

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