Steven Universe and the Era of Hopepunk
Jan. 25th, 2019 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaosonwheelsAlrighty so now that I have a decent platform to discuss discourse without being flayed alive, I have some thoughts about Steven Universe and its recent episode. Expect spoilers under the cut.
First of all, I just wanna say that I absolutely LOVED Change your Mind and I love Steven Universe. I will be a Sailor Moon fan until I die, and that show's influence on SU shines in the best of ways. I watch SU and feel lighter than I did before I turned it on. It's like playing one of my favorite video games. Watching SU is self-care, if you will lol. The world has so much life in it, from the music, to the writing, to the voice acting. People put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this show come alive, and it shows. The passion makes it a joy to watch.
That being said, there's only so much sunshine I can handle before I start to squint.
I was really looking forward to this arc of Steven Universe because, like I said in a quick post on Tumblr, now we finally have Abusive Mom. We got the gaslighting, the belittling, the black-and-white thinking of the unyielding matriarch. Steven would finally be in a situation where the person he was against did not give a fuck about his feelings, and that was much more relatable to me than a family who was always willing to calmly hear your side of the story. I grew even more excited when Sugar confirmed that Steven would have to do something different in order to get through to her. Finally, some real conflict, some real risk. The more I watched, the more excited I got. All the fusions? Hype. White smacking Blue and Yellow's heartfelt confession aside and brainwashing them anyway? Hype. White brainwashing the gems? Almost killing Steven? The Pink Ultra-Instinct Steven???? HYPE AS FUCK.
But I have yet to figure out what exactly he did that was different. All that build-up amounted to nothing when all it took was White seeing Steven love himself wholeheartedly for her whole worldview to shatter. 'People can just love themselves???? Without reason???? But who am I if not a predetermined cog in the machine?? Who are you?? But I want everyone to conform to my will!!! I wanna, I wanna!!!!' Steven calls her a child for her throwing a fit and then, magically, she realizes the error of her ways and is embarrassed by her behavior. She turns pink, making her off-color--which prior was a very loud metaphor for disability so not sure how to read that--and it feels very much like we're supposed to believe White was just like everyone else, insecure and misunderstood, and she just needed someone to reach out to her. She just needed to "Get out of her own head."
This brings me to this new....concept I've heard about on fandom.ink called Hopepunk. It's part of this new fad of putting -punk at the end of every word and making it a thing, but this time it focuses on the idea that loving yourself and taking care of yourself is a radical movement. This is very true. It's been taught in general punk circles the whole time, so separating it as some kind of unique doctrine is not only redundant, but also, in my opinion, counterproductive. Creating art that sparks various dialogues has always been a large part of the punk movement. Shit, creating in general is a big part of the punk movement. Art inspires, art warms, art gives a voice to the people and thoughts that otherwise get smothered under the smog of capitalism. Art brings hope just by existing. But you separate a non-threatening part of punk away from the very unapologetic, hands-on action of the rest of the movement, and you're left with a hollow sliver of a much bigger picture. "Hopepunk" or a lifestyle that is specifically about making you "feel good" (i.e the self-care trend) seems very easily hijacked by basic capitalist ideals, imo. I fear this will start sparking debates about what is or isn't "hopeful" art, the harms of consuming/creating "hopeless" art, shit about "positive vibes only", and how if we feel sad or angry, it's because we're focusing too much on the negative, not because we're living in a fucking dystopia. It takes all responsibility of change away from those in power and instead puts it on the individual. "The only disability in life is a bad attitude (:" lookin ass shit. If I'm being blunt, it just seems like another attempt to sanitize the punk movement into something palatable-y neo-liberal. My best friend and I started a podcast where we talk about pop-culture and other fangirly shit, among other things, and we discussed this topic this week. She said it best, "Once you feel good, once you're doing yoga and writing in your bullet journal every day and doing yarn macrame... after all that, what are you gonna do?"
I feel like Steven Universe fits under the Hopepunk umbrella (Can we call it a genre? I feel like it would work better as a genre). Despite it's very punk themes of queerness, racial identity, gender identity, ability, otherness, and rebellion, it presents these things on a plate of sunlight and fluff. An important part of any balanced punk diet if you wanna survive out here, don't get me wrong, but nothing someone can sustain themselves on. I want to believe that humans could survive on love and light alone, but sometimes a bitch just needs to set something on fire and watch it burn, y'know? Abusers don't get out of their own head when you tell them to, they just tell you, "My reality is my reality" and dig their heels in harder. When I told my mom she needed to be an adult and communicate, you know what happened? Not productive conversation, that's for sure. In order for change to happen, the oppressor has to have no option but to change. It can't be coddling, it can't be gentle, it has to be explicitly "change, or face serious consequences". This doesn't have to be violence, of course. In an abusive relationship, such as the diamond authority, it could be "Change, or I'm leaving", "Change, or you won't see your kids/grandkids", "Change, or I'm kicking you out". Nothing will ever get better without incentive, and even then, power is one hell of a thing to give up.
Steven Universe is a "Happily Ever After" story, and that's more than okay. There needs to be more narratives where the people who always have to struggle in stories have nothing but happiness, safety and love. Beach City exists so we can rest under the rays of the sun and feel the warmth of the soft sand under our skin, especially when so many of us live in a world where we don't have the luxury of softness and light. But if I was forced to live there day in and day out, even my black ass would get sunburned from sitting in the light too long.
First of all, I just wanna say that I absolutely LOVED Change your Mind and I love Steven Universe. I will be a Sailor Moon fan until I die, and that show's influence on SU shines in the best of ways. I watch SU and feel lighter than I did before I turned it on. It's like playing one of my favorite video games. Watching SU is self-care, if you will lol. The world has so much life in it, from the music, to the writing, to the voice acting. People put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this show come alive, and it shows. The passion makes it a joy to watch.
That being said, there's only so much sunshine I can handle before I start to squint.
I was really looking forward to this arc of Steven Universe because, like I said in a quick post on Tumblr, now we finally have Abusive Mom. We got the gaslighting, the belittling, the black-and-white thinking of the unyielding matriarch. Steven would finally be in a situation where the person he was against did not give a fuck about his feelings, and that was much more relatable to me than a family who was always willing to calmly hear your side of the story. I grew even more excited when Sugar confirmed that Steven would have to do something different in order to get through to her. Finally, some real conflict, some real risk. The more I watched, the more excited I got. All the fusions? Hype. White smacking Blue and Yellow's heartfelt confession aside and brainwashing them anyway? Hype. White brainwashing the gems? Almost killing Steven? The Pink Ultra-Instinct Steven???? HYPE AS FUCK.
But I have yet to figure out what exactly he did that was different. All that build-up amounted to nothing when all it took was White seeing Steven love himself wholeheartedly for her whole worldview to shatter. 'People can just love themselves???? Without reason???? But who am I if not a predetermined cog in the machine?? Who are you?? But I want everyone to conform to my will!!! I wanna, I wanna!!!!' Steven calls her a child for her throwing a fit and then, magically, she realizes the error of her ways and is embarrassed by her behavior. She turns pink, making her off-color--which prior was a very loud metaphor for disability so not sure how to read that--and it feels very much like we're supposed to believe White was just like everyone else, insecure and misunderstood, and she just needed someone to reach out to her. She just needed to "Get out of her own head."
This brings me to this new....concept I've heard about on fandom.ink called Hopepunk. It's part of this new fad of putting -punk at the end of every word and making it a thing, but this time it focuses on the idea that loving yourself and taking care of yourself is a radical movement. This is very true. It's been taught in general punk circles the whole time, so separating it as some kind of unique doctrine is not only redundant, but also, in my opinion, counterproductive. Creating art that sparks various dialogues has always been a large part of the punk movement. Shit, creating in general is a big part of the punk movement. Art inspires, art warms, art gives a voice to the people and thoughts that otherwise get smothered under the smog of capitalism. Art brings hope just by existing. But you separate a non-threatening part of punk away from the very unapologetic, hands-on action of the rest of the movement, and you're left with a hollow sliver of a much bigger picture. "Hopepunk" or a lifestyle that is specifically about making you "feel good" (i.e the self-care trend) seems very easily hijacked by basic capitalist ideals, imo. I fear this will start sparking debates about what is or isn't "hopeful" art, the harms of consuming/creating "hopeless" art, shit about "positive vibes only", and how if we feel sad or angry, it's because we're focusing too much on the negative, not because we're living in a fucking dystopia. It takes all responsibility of change away from those in power and instead puts it on the individual. "The only disability in life is a bad attitude (:" lookin ass shit. If I'm being blunt, it just seems like another attempt to sanitize the punk movement into something palatable-y neo-liberal. My best friend and I started a podcast where we talk about pop-culture and other fangirly shit, among other things, and we discussed this topic this week. She said it best, "Once you feel good, once you're doing yoga and writing in your bullet journal every day and doing yarn macrame... after all that, what are you gonna do?"
I feel like Steven Universe fits under the Hopepunk umbrella (Can we call it a genre? I feel like it would work better as a genre). Despite it's very punk themes of queerness, racial identity, gender identity, ability, otherness, and rebellion, it presents these things on a plate of sunlight and fluff. An important part of any balanced punk diet if you wanna survive out here, don't get me wrong, but nothing someone can sustain themselves on. I want to believe that humans could survive on love and light alone, but sometimes a bitch just needs to set something on fire and watch it burn, y'know? Abusers don't get out of their own head when you tell them to, they just tell you, "My reality is my reality" and dig their heels in harder. When I told my mom she needed to be an adult and communicate, you know what happened? Not productive conversation, that's for sure. In order for change to happen, the oppressor has to have no option but to change. It can't be coddling, it can't be gentle, it has to be explicitly "change, or face serious consequences". This doesn't have to be violence, of course. In an abusive relationship, such as the diamond authority, it could be "Change, or I'm leaving", "Change, or you won't see your kids/grandkids", "Change, or I'm kicking you out". Nothing will ever get better without incentive, and even then, power is one hell of a thing to give up.
Steven Universe is a "Happily Ever After" story, and that's more than okay. There needs to be more narratives where the people who always have to struggle in stories have nothing but happiness, safety and love. Beach City exists so we can rest under the rays of the sun and feel the warmth of the soft sand under our skin, especially when so many of us live in a world where we don't have the luxury of softness and light. But if I was forced to live there day in and day out, even my black ass would get sunburned from sitting in the light too long.
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Date: 2019-01-25 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-27 07:15 pm (UTC)(And I also love Steven Universe.)
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Date: 2019-01-27 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 09:28 pm (UTC)That said, we seem to have encountered very different definitions of what hopepunk is. Based on what I've seen, it's a direct challenge to the assumption that "The world is terrible and people are terrible, and there's no way to make a difference, so you might as well get yours while you can"--but more "There are terrible things in the world and people do terrible things, and making a difference is hard and painful and messy, but it's possible and necessary because we're all in this together" than "Love and light and self-care can solve everything uwu," if that makes sense. Like, I don't know if we share any fandoms, but for me the encounters I've had with hopepunk in media have been ones where I came away in tears because whatever I just watched/read touched on something fundamental about the highest potentials of human nature, even (or especially?) if the path there was paved with the absolute worst humanity has to offer. Cloud Atlas comes to mind, as well as Rogue One, The Lord of the Rings, certain Discworld novels, etc.
Not sure if any of that makes sense to you, but there's my $0.02. I can probably dig up links to the stuff on Tumblr I've seen addressing this topic if there's interest, since I'm getting over a cold and have no idea if I'm being coherent or just feelsing all over the place, LOL. In any case, this post really helped me sort through my own thoughts, so thank you for that. <3
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Date: 2019-01-30 04:37 am (UTC)I hope you're feeling better! Thank you for the read ^_^
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Date: 2019-01-30 03:31 am (UTC)I think hopepunk works better as a genre, myself. Although, like
I'm also a bit "hey, wait" about Change Your Mind, because in the very end bits of that episode, I saw Season 6 fly by in a couple of minutes, where we could get more of that digging in to how change is difficult, and especially for the Diamonds, and watch them have to do the work of accepting Steven and all of his friends (especially Garnet) until you might believe they meant it, rather than what seems to have been a pretty pat solution. So maybe I would class Steven Universe not as hopepunk, but as a fairy tale?
A good read all the same. Thanks for letting it be shared more widely.
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Date: 2019-01-30 04:43 am (UTC)Thank you for enjoying the post! ^_^
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Date: 2019-01-30 01:57 pm (UTC)Steven Universe does seem like a fairytale at times.
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Date: 2019-02-04 09:21 pm (UTC)I remember that happening in the episode Bubbled, and reading over the transcript it has some very interesting foreshadowing:
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Date: 2019-02-04 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-16 12:45 am (UTC)I think one of the reasons emotional abuse doesn't get handled well in media is that it's not story-shaped. Doesn't really conform to a nice narrative with a bow on top. In my life, when I've fought for healthier relationships with people in my family, it just takes -- a long time, because of ingrained habits. There's a lot of mundane stuff to get through, two steps forward, three steps back, arguments in which people understand a little more next time and then mess up again and maybe apologize but a year later, they do it less often, because they're trying. Basically: like
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Date: 2019-03-07 08:59 pm (UTC)Lol Lapis is my favorite too <3