This Week's Recommendations for Younger Viewers
Star vs. the Forces of Evil: “Party with a Pony” (2015)
Recommended for Grades 2+
Available on Disney+
This free-spirited and hilarious cartoon from Daron Nefcy, one of the few women creating original content for Disney Television Animation, features Star Butterfly, a magical, excitable, and impulsive princess. From the program’s opening lyrics warning “It’s gonna get a little weird here. Gonna get a little wild,” viewers are swallowed up in a roller coaster adventure ride as Star learns to use her magic on Earth, a safer dimension to practice than her home dimension of Mewni. Posing as a foreign exchange student, she befriends Marco Diaz, a student notorious for his cautious nature, and lives with his family in suburban Los Angeles. The second story within the pilot, “Party with a Pony,” finds Star juggling feelings about having two best friends: Marco, her best friend on Earth, and Flying Princess Pony Head, her best friend from Mewni. Using dimensional scissors, shears used to cut portals for dimension travel, Pony Head arrives with the stated intention of partying with her bestie. However, ulterior motives reveal a different reason for Pony Head’s visit. Competition between besties becomes a true test of friendship, demonstrating how when it comes to friends there are no adversaries.
Viewing Questions
- How does Pony Head feel about Star having a new best friend on Earth?
- Who are the mysterious figures that follow Pony Head as they cut from one dimension to another? Why are they after Pony Head?
- What is unique about the Bounce Lounge Dimension or Arcade Dimension that Star, Pony Head and Marco visit? If you could create an alternative dimension, what would you find in it? What would it be called?
- Why does Pony Head return to help Star’s other best friend, Marco? Do you think it’s possible to have more than one best friend?
- What are things about your best friends that you like?
Additional Resources
Read Watch This Week's Recommendations for Older Viewers
Rafiki (2018)
Recommended for Grades 9+
Available for Free on Tubi
The first Kenyan film to premiere at the Cannes film festival, Rafiki (“friend” in Swahili) was banned in its home country of Kenya. This glittering, elegiac, and beautifully photographed film centers on two young women finding the magic of love in a country where their sexuality is criminalized. Kena and Ziki are coincidentally each the daughter of two men who are political rivals running for the same public office in Nairobi. The young women’s blossoming relationship, an act both scandalous and dangerous, attracts the eyes and ears of gossips at the local food kiosk. Homophobic men and women create a hostile atmosphere where Kena and Ziki must conceal their love. However, in nightclubs masked by Day-Glo face paint or in the sanctuary of a deserted bus brightened by candles and rose petals, the two find safe harbors to embrace and explore their love. Tender and stunning, the film exquisitely arrays the intricate beauty of clotheslines, the dry dust of soccer fields, the solitude of wire mesh stairwells, and the hard concrete of austere architecture. Nairobi, its people, and their everyday life are rendered in cinematic beauty. However, in a land where mothers and preachers exorcise demons from their sapphic daughters, this story must fade out to a brighter future when a moment of return and reflection becomes a promising reunion of friendship and love.
Viewing Questions - How would you describe Kena and the relationships she has with her friend Blacksta, her father, and her mother?
- How do Kena and Ziki meet and why is their relationship especially problematic for each of their fathers’ career?
- How would you describe the different women in the film, including the mother and daughter kiosk workers, Kena’s mother, Ziki’s mother, Ziki’s friends?
- When Kena says she aspires to be a nurse, what is Ziki’s response?
- What does Ziki aspire to do with her life?
- What is Kena’s mother’s initial response to her new love interest?
- When Kena and Ziki wake up in the abandoned bus, Kena says she wishes what they had was real. What do you think she means?
- What are Blacksta’s feelings towards Kena?
- After Blacksta takes Kena for a ride on his motorcycle, they sit in a sunlit field and she says, “I wish we could go somewhere to be real.” Who is Kena talking to?
- After Kena and Ziki are attacked by a mob with the police offering no assistance, who does Kena’s mom blame for this incident? Why do you think she does so?
- How does Ziki’s father react to his daughter’s love affair? And what is the consequence of her actions?
- In the end, what happens to Kena, and do you think she is able to reunite with her love, Ziki? How would you write the ending of this romance?
Additional Resources
Read Watch As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at eduny@paleycenter.org.
Happy viewing,
Carlos Pareja
Manager of Education
Rebekah Fisk
Director of Education
Photos—Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Disney+; Rafiki: AfroBubbleGum
The Hearst High School Media Internship at The Paley Center for Media is a 5-week, paid, best-in-class media-focused summer internship for rising 11th and 12th grade students. Applications due March 31, 2025, by 5:00 pm ET. Re-creating Radio Workshops at The Paley Center for Media in New York City Free Podcasting Workshops at The Paley Center for Media in New York City
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