(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)
3. Discuss the various elements of modern culture and/or society, both good and bad, as reflected by least one of the following centaur groups: Bird-taurs, Centaurs ™, Mole-taurs, Cat-taurs, Cold-taurs.
Birdtaurs:
The Birdtaurs reflect both social media and fandom culture. In their introduction episode there’s a heavier focus on the fandom culture aspect. They kidnap the herd out of their normal life because they think they’re entitled to an „update“ on their „show“. It is worth noting that they could have gotten that update from one of the birdtaurs, but they instead go to the effort of kidnapping the herd and basically forcing them to reenact what happened in the rift. They also have to do HerdCon for „brand recognition“ and a mendatory Q and A after the reenactment. Meanwhile they won’t even listen to what the herd really thinks of this or thought that maybe forcing them to relive that and to turn it into a spectacle might be traumatic for them.
The Birdtaurs seem so engrossed in their obsession with the herd’s adventures that the lines of fiction and reality get blurred. Despite Horse repeatedly telling them they do not realize that none of the stuff they saw is acted but actually happened. They demand the finale of the first season to be redone, which seems very entitled even if it were just a show. They don’t understand that there’s an actual war coming and that all of them could (or if Horse can’t succeed in raising an army, will) be killed. It seems a similar (if much more higher stakes) portrayal of fans in the real world getting actors and characters mixed up, becoming obsessed with the actors (or author, or band members or whatever, depending on the medium) and acting like they actually know them.
They also represent all the positive sides of fandoms. They have fan clubs for certain characters, write fanfiction, create fanart and merchandise, binge-watch the show, ship characters and even organize a HerdCon. The herd is flattered by all this effort, similarly to how the creators of a show, book, movie etc. irl would be glad that their hard work touched so many people to the point that they would devote this much free time to it. However (just like some people irl) they cross a line by dragging the herd into it against their will. (It reminds me a bit of people sending fanfiction or spinoff-ideas to their favourite authors. Or worse, „love“ letters to celebrities.)
Some other negative sides of fandom culture that are also touched upon are discourses within the fandom. We get introduced to all the different favourite-character-based sub-groups within the fandom – the Horse Force, Ched Heads, Hot Gosslings, Team Durp, Glendale’s Pregnancy Hole Children (insane name btw) and the Dougligans – and it’s said that the only thing they can agree upon is that „Wammawink’s the worst“. That not only implies that they probably constantly fight over everything else in the „show“, but also that they can’t agree on even one positive thing. Their only common ground is hate for one character (which is also once again taken out of the „show“ and onto the real Wammawink).
Now let’s get to the social media aspect of Birdtaur culture. For one, social media is pretty important in the fandom context too. The Birdtaurs admit that their favourite thing to do is watching each other watching the „show“, not watching the „show“ itself. It begs the question of whether they even really like the show or just watch it because everyone else does and they don’t wanna feel excluded on social media.
The main influencer we get to see in the introduction scene is Crandy. She is obsessed with being watched, so much so that she doesn’t even really take the time to enjoy talking to the herd (whom she supposedly loves). Instead she runs off almost immediatly to tell her subscribers that she met the herd and even afterwise she does not listen to them at all as they tell her about the war, instead posting on social media. It reflects our tendencies in the real world to not live in the moment and instead document everything and anything for social media. This even goes so far that in the hootenanny episode Crandy claims that the important thing about hootenannies is to share the message of kindess and love on social media, not the message itself.
The other major influencer we see is Bayden. He takes this critique even further, bringing himself in mortal danger for likes (kinda reminds me of all these stupid dangerous tiktok challenges) and then instead of saving himself just keeping his followers updated. His need for validation on social media is so big that it’s even (as far as we know) the only part of his personality that survives being turned into a minotaur.
Another interesting thing is how social media works in Centaurworld. Instead of introducing some kind of technology or magical social media system, the Birdtaurs talk to their eggs and have their newborn babies deliver the message. This reflects on one hand how social media obsessed parents often tend to ignore their children’s needs and exploit them for content and likes. On the other hand it can be seen as symbolic, this new generation being confronted with social media from (even before) birth. (We don’t know if the grown-up Birdtaurs also once were used as messages when they were born or if social media is a newer development in Centaurworld, just like it is irl.)
Centaurs™️:
The Centaurs™️ are the social elite of Centaurworld. They can afford to live in a fortress, where they do nothing all day but eat cake, drink tea and watch the tulip steppers. Their castle is decorated pompously even from the outside with gold and gems and inside there are many decorations and portraits. The Centaurs™️ themselves are pretty much the only society in Centaurworld that wears clothes, and ballgowns witch giant wigs at that. This can be seen as a standin for the rich and powerful in our world. Combined with their bad security and the dirt in all the places that are not meant for the public eye (according to the herd once they return from the luggage room) it’s very much giving Versaille vibes. At the same time it shows us that the Centaurs™️ only care about their public image and not about actually being amazing people.
In fact, the Centaurs™️ treat all the other species in Centaurworld as lesser. Ched is used as a ball by Malandrew and the herd is treated as luggage when Horse tries to recruit the Centaurs™️ for the war. They are viewed as objects, not as equals to the Centaurs™️. The first thing we learn about the Centaurs™️ is that they sued everyone in Centaurworld so they would own the „title“ of Centaurs, despite the fact that Centaur is also the generic term for any creature that’s half-human and half-animal, effectively stripping all the other groups in Centaurworld of their equality.
With their privileged position in society, the Centaurs™️ can afford to focus all of their attention on the arts. As I said, they have tons of paintings and they love the art of tulip stepping. Even their baking can be viewed as an art form. Unfortunately, the Centaurs™️ are also very snobby about art. They won’t allow non-Centaur™️ tulip steppers to compete and (at least in Ched’s case) laugh at them instead. Similarly in our world, high society and the price tag on the art piece usually determine whether something is viewed as „real“ art or not.
Furthermore, the Centaurs™️ also don’t share their ressources. As long as they think their privileges will keep them safe, they don’t care about the war or the fact that their muscled up tulip dancers might be the only ones strong enough to fight. At the same time, they’re being wasteful with their ressources. A lot of their cake ends up smashed one way or another instead of eaten, and despite obviously having the means to train people, the Centaurs™️ (according to the herd) have very poor security, instead only training tulip dancers.
I think in a way that is best shown through Malangela, the Centaurs™️ have totally lost all relation to reality. She can’t focus on a normal conversation for even two minutes and has convinced herself that privilege is a burden without even being able to say why it would be (seeing as they don’t take the responsibility that should come with their power, it actually isn’t one). She can’t take the threat of the Nowhere King seriously, despite the fact that their poor security could neither keep the herd out nor keep them from sneaking out of the luggage room or keep Glandale from stealing.
The Centaurs™️ reflect the First World and its supperiority complex. It seems to live under the impression that its status will keep it from any war that it doesn’t want to be in, that suffering is something that only happens to other people and (like in any princess vs normal people movie) being in power is actually a burden because it comes with following stupid social rules that we put upon ourselves. By even calling itself the first world it does what the Centaurs™️ did by trademarking their name and strips the rest of the world of it’s dignity and makes it lesser.
(Another thing that the trademarking of the name Centaur reminded me of was how Disney tried to trademark Dia de los Muertos after publishing Coco. No, it doesn’t belong just to you, it’s part of a larger culture, wtf.)
Unfortunately I’m not sure this commentary is done in a way that will get a lot of people to reflect on their behaviour, their position in society or western politics. The Versailles-esk setting and over-the-top actions make it really hard to recognize our modern society in the Centaurs™️.
Moletaurs:
Moletaur society reflects both unneccessary bureaucracy and police states. Outsiders (like the herd) will be found guilty of something just so they can be locked away, which is stated multiple times during S1E6. When the herd states that they have committed no crime, the judge immediatly assumes they’re spies, just so she has another reason to sentence them to jail.
As the Moletaurs sing, „law is fixed and the world needs rules“. This is true to a degree. Law and rules prevent for example that people just take what they want or spiral into endless circles of revenge after one initial crime. However, law is (ideally) supposed to be just and not punish people for existing, which is essentially the point that Moletaur law has reached. E.g.: Despite magic being perfectly normal in Centaurworld, the Moletaurs punish it with three consecutive life sentences (which is also Gary’s fate btw). It reflects how laws in the real world don’t always make sense and can be biased and unjust.
We see that their conviction that they just love following rules to the T is also bullshit when they discharge the herd. Because if it were just about blindly following the law, then Horse at the least would have to go to prison for using magic. However, because it was a kind of magic the judge liked she decided to pardon the herd and even give Horse her keypiece. Similarly, judges in real life are biased and can let their personal opinion influence their verdict.
Cattaurs:
Cattaur culture is based around Johnny Teatime’s Be Best Competition (in the following shortened to JTBBC). The idea is that they use this beauty pageant to distract themselves from the real problems, like their trauma from the Great War. This is reflecting of our culture’s tendency to also ignore real problems (like war, climate change, discrimination etc.) in favour of more fun (but superficial) stuff like celebrities, fashion, TV shows and movies, stars or social media. On a surface level this seems effective, at least to a certain degree: If you only ever focus on everything that’s wrong in the world you’ll probably get depressed sooner rather than later. However, it obviously solves absolutely nothing, because those problems won’t magically go away just because you don’t focus on them. It can even lead to you not noticing new problems arising, because you become to focused on those superficial distractios. Similarly, the Cattaurs claim that pageantry and zeal help them to heal from their losses and trauma from the Great War, but I doubt that such deep scars actually get any better by them just ignoring what happened.
The Cattaur society reflects our society‘s obsession with meeting (nearly) unobtainable beauty standards that are set by only a select few (in the Cattaurs‘ case Johnny Teatime and maybe Splendib). What counts as beautiful can change on a whim as we see at the end of S1E7, when Comfortable Doug is declared the winner, despite him meeting none of the standards that are set the entire 20 minutes before that. None of the cats have an own sense of what beauty means to them, as they now blindly applaud for Comfortable Doug because Johnny Teatime / Splendib announced him as the new ideal. And the contest is held every day, so hypothetically the ideal could change every day. You would never be able to reach it, constantly running in a new direction for the slim chance of getting Johnny Teatime’s (and therefore society’s) approval, just for one night (as the next day it starts all over again). Meanwhile you lose yourself, your identity, never figure out what you like best or enjoy the most because if it’s not what Johnny says you wouldn’t even consider it.
As Zulius points out, efforts don’t count in Cattaur society. Even great efforts for JTBBC go ignored if they don’t win you the sash by the end, so I doubt any efforts outside of it (let’s say for example, to help with the emotional aftermath of the Great War) are valued.
To a degree I think the Cattaurs might be too aware of what their culture does and why it does it. In real life, a lot of people don’t realize (or don’t want to realize) that the beauty industry and the diet industry as well as celebrity culture try to turn your focus away from real problems and instead get you invested in chasing after unobtainable goals. The Cattaurs however all know that this is just to distract from the aftermath of the Great War, they even sing about it. They seem to have no problem with investing all their time and energy into this practically meaningless beauty contest. On the other hand they seem unaware that this makes it impossible for them to ever be loved for being their authentic selfes, and that it leaves them vulnerable in case of a new catastrophy because they never took the time to reflect on the last one and learn from it.
Coldtaurs:
The Coldtaurs are representative of the people who fight for something (a party, an organization etc.) despite this thing advocating against said people. (For example, LGBTQ+ people defending homo- or transphobes, immigrants voting for right wing parties etc.) We see this as the Coldtaurs decide to fight for the Nowhere King, who wants to bring suffering, pain and death over any living being he meets. The Coldtaurs have convinced themselves that he would treat them kindly and help with the cold as long as they support him, that he would make an exception for them as long as they’re useful.
The herd, or actually mostly Glendale, deal with this by asking the Coldtaurs to look within themselves. She recognizes her own anxiety in them and thus can help them with their actual problem. The Coldtaurs might on some level have been aware that their discomfort did not come from the cold, but from their anxiety. Until Glendale confronted them with this, they did however not admit to it. It was the easy solution to blame the cold and then avoid any obvious solutions to that problem. Because if you managed that (for example, like Horse suggests, by moving to a place that’s warmer), you would have to face that your discomfort does not stem from the cold. You would either need to confront the real problem (which the Coldtaurs were already not comfortable doing) or make up a new scapegoat, so you might as well stay with the first one.
You could of course also interpret it as complaining about the minor inconveniences in your life while avoiding the major problems. Logically the cold should be a minor problem for a Coldtaur, if it is one at all. But it’s easy to complain about and maybe more importantly, it’s an outside factor. You can’t control the weather, so you have all the right in the world to complain about it. Meanwhile your anxiety is a reaction of your brain to outside factors. You would have to put the work in if you wanted to manage it, and that’s way more exhausting than complaining about factors outside of your control.
Glendale solves this extremely well by telling the Coldtaurs it’s natural, that she can relate to them and that she knows it’s hard to deal with it. She then gives them tools for handling their anxiety, which is not something they had access to before. They admit that they were „projecting [their] inability to control the unpredictable brutality of nature by answering the violence perpetrated on [their] psyches by externalizing violence onto other centaurs around [them]“. Here I think the showrunners idealized reality a bit. If you try to tell some gun-crazy, confrontation-seeking assholes who think everyone who doesn’t threaten other people within 10 seconds is „weak“ and complain about wokeness all the time that they just internalized hate speach about groups that they are a part of and should therefore know better than to hate, I doubt you would get them to actually reflect on their behaviour. However, at least trying to empathize with them, taking away their fears and showing them how to be better is probably the only approach that might get to them (after all, most people just wanna feel heared).
Bonus – Trashtaurs:
So I’m not sure if they were intentionally left out of this list or just forgotten, but I figured with this question they should be included. Trashtaurs are outsiders from any of the societies in Centaurworld. Everyone forgets they exist to the point that Horse doesn’t even think to recruit them, they just heared about the war and came forth to volunteer for the fight. And though they’re the first ones to join, Horse isn’t even happy about it, despite not knowing anything about them. (She comments „At least there’s a lot of you“, but it’s not like she‘d know whether they can fight or not.)
In the same way poor and homeless people are usually dismissed on a glance in our world. People assume they’re not capable of anything, even though it’s usually a result of bad circumstances that leaves people homeless (had to flee from their homes, have a medical condition that prevents them from holding on to a job but that they can’t afford to get treated, got into debt because of things out of their control, …).
The Trashtaurs probably join the army because they know they have little choice. They know noone will defend them once the war comes (since they’re alread ostracized) and they’re likely to be the first ones to die if the Nowhere King attacks. This way they’ll stand at least a small chance. Similarly homeless people irl are often forced to do jobs they don’t want or that are even dangerous for them just to survive.
At the hootenanny the Trashtaurs sing that the others shouldn’t let their trash laying around if they don’t want Trashtaurs. Similarly you could say that people shouldn’t be forced to live on the streets if you don’t want to see people living on the streets.
