fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4440 ]

Kaiser tends to assume that real women agree with whatever she thinks. If she hasn't looked up the gender of someone whose art she doesn't like, she assumes they're male even if they're not. If she has looked up their gender, she assumes they don't really mean what they're saying. (According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.)

According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.

I don't think this is a contradictory thing to say. It might or might not be a correct stance, but I think it's at least coherent. It's an opinion about what the work should do, not an opinion about what the creator would actually do.

I'm not familiar enough with the website or the arguments or the context, I'm just going off the example provided.

if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution
So...
It's an opinion about what the work should do, not an opinion about what the creator would actually do.

Protip: read the piece of text you're quoting.

(Oh, and this is nayrt, btw)

I did read the piece. But we're relying on OP summarizing a point of view that they admittedly don't agree with. I did try to quickly look for whatever the original source of this argument was, but I couldn't find it in a quick 5 minutes of Googling.

And I sort of doubt that the argument was that Steven Universe actually factually definitely would support violent revolution if it was made today, because that's an obviously stupid claim. So I sort of thought it was more likely that OP made a slightly loose choice of verb mood when summarizing, because that's the kind of thing that happens literally all of the time.

That was the worst hot take ever. Like, what, we’re not alllowed to be hopeful or optimistic because it’s... what, retro? The world went a bit crap so all we can consume is crap?

According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.

Can you post the link to this? Thanks!

https://www.themarysue.com/steven-universe-recap-legs-from-here-to-homeworld/

And Steven Universe, it is increasingly clear, is burdened by the era in which it was made—“Gem Harvest” and its unfortunate airing date threw that issue into the spotlight, but the concern has never really gone away. When the show was planned in those first few years, the overall culture was more optimistic. There was a sense, whether true or not, that things were getting better.

It was the kind of atmosphere where a story about an oligarch who grows a conscience and tries to start over, making terrible mistakes in pursuit of making things right, might play—where all it takes to make things right is to reach out with your sincere emotions, because there’s good in everybody deep down.

There were not brazen white supremacists in power when Steven Universe was planned, to put rather too fine a point on it.

But one cannot change course on a show’s core narrative four years in, with so much investment of time and so many hard-working artists working on episodes months in advance—even before we get into the much-lamented indignities on the part of Cartoon Network’s marketing branch. So here it is, and here we are, and it is difficult to know what to do.

. . .

But the pointed emphasizing of Steven’s Special Chosen One status at the end of this episode makes that slow build feel somewhat pointless, particularly as the show has finally turned its full attention to the Diamonds. The cosmic scale, both literal and figurative, of these characters has slowly begun to separate the viewer from those everyday concerns that were so vital to the early days of the show, turning us instead toward a chess game in which being born special is an intrinsically important component.

Chosen One narratives aren’t the worst thing, and Steven is plenty rounded as a character, but it feels like a somewhat tired narrowing of focus that further underlines how unintentionally disconnected the show feels from the current plights of its intended marginalized audience. Bismuth is the character for 2018, and she’s back on Earth.

(For reference, Bismuth wanted to change the Crystal Gems' tactics from largely nonlethal to killing everyone in their way.)

Maybe I'm missing something but none of this seems to really support the claim that "if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation".

At most, it seems to be saying that the writer of the piece disagrees with the tone of the show, and the writer of the piece thinks that "Bismuth is the character for 2018". But I really don't see where it's saying that Rebecca Sugar definitely wouldn't support peaceful negotiations, or anything like that.

There were not brazen white supremacists in power when Steven Universe was planned, to put rather too fine a point on it.

nayrt: White supremacists have been in power for over 400 years now. The idea that Sugar, who came of age under a white supremacist president when it was common to talk about bombing Iraq and Afghanistan "down to glass" was naively ignorant of age-old debates about nonviolent vs. violent change when creating SU is a deeply stupid take.

Never mind that SU isn't a political manifesto about regime change. It's politics serve as a metaphor for queer family dysfunction.

^This
It seems quite condescending to assert that obviously Sugar would have done it differently today, because any right thinking person will agree with Vrai! Right? Because, like, the debate between the "let's destroy our oppressors by blood and fire" and the "let's explain to our oppressors, in words of one syllable, why being dicks is bad" schools of thought - that's totally new! That definitely came into being within the last few years!
Also, Martin Luthor King and Malcolm X totally didn't spend years talking shit about one another. Definitely not.

I don't think that Tasker is saying that the distinction is new, or that Sugar would have done it differently if the show was being made today. At least, that's not what Tasker says in the piece OP quoted. All they're saying is that the themes of a show are less germane and less appropriate to the specific moment than when the show first came out.

You don't have to agree with them about their political views and the utility of violent revolution but like... the piece just doesn't assert that "obviously Sugar would have done it differently today". If it does, I definitely am missing it.

The idea that Sugar, who came of age under a white supremacist president when it was common to talk about bombing Iraq and Afghanistan "down to glass" was naively ignorant of age-old debates about nonviolent vs. violent change when creating SU is a deeply stupid take.

I don't think that the writer is suggesting that? Rather, they're suggesting that the circumstances in which the show was created are germane to its thematic content. And I don't think they're wrong - Steven Universe would be a different show if it came out for the first time today. Even if the show was exactly the same, it would still be different, because it would exist in a different historical context.

And yet, I'm pretty sure that the message that even if you were raised to have shitty and harmful beliefs, you can still be a decent person if you're willing to make the effort is still relevant to kids today.

Sure! That's valid. I can understand why someone might feel that way, and I can understand why someone might disagree with that and think it's an incorrect political stance for the times. I think they're both valid things to want. You don't have to agree with Kaiser's argument on the merits.

But like... the argument that's being made is not that "Sugar, who came of age under a white supremacist president when it was common to talk about bombing Iraq and Afghanistan 'down to glass' was naively ignorant of age-old debates about nonviolent vs. violent change when creating SU". Or that "obviously Sugar would have done it differently today." Or that "any creator who puts in any real effort to include positive representation in their work must therefore be all things to all people, or else they're some sort of turncoat." And it's strange to me that people keep interpreting it that way.

Ah, I see. From what I remember of Vrai's SU recaps (and for the record, Vrai's nonbinary and uses they/them), it wasn't so much that they think SU would support violent revolution as it was that in the current political climate it's a lot harder to be hopeful that dictators can be brought down by being nice to them, which is a pretty common criticism of SU. Vrai isn't saying nonviolence is wrong, just that it's not as easy to believe in it as it was when SU started. I think that's a pretty reasonable stance.

Actually, I went ahead and skimmed through their most recent SU recaps, and came across this one, which I think is what you're talking about? And there isn't anywhere in it where Vrai puts it the way you do. I think you're misremembering. Unless there's some other one where they talk about that.

But... SU is a kids' show. Kids' shows generally emphasize nonviolent ways of solving problems, this is nothing new.

I know, but most kids' shows don't emphasize using nonviolence as a method of ending systematic oppression, which SU kinda does. And that's a harder sell these days.

Kids aren't watching SU and thinking "Oh golly gosh the villains' crime is systemic oppression!" The villains are trying to Take Over the Universe, a very common goal for kids' show villains that usually comes with implications of oppression that go over kids' heads. SU is no different in that regard, so I don't know why people always act like it's the first show ever to do this kind of villain plot and solve it peacefully.

Fair point, but that feeds into what Vrai says--that sort of message would have been understandable when the show started, but the world is different now, and things we would have been fine with before now take on different meanings. Also, most of the people I know who are into SU don't watch much other current kid's programming. It makes sense that they would criticize something they've actually watched instead of something that's barely on their radar. The pacifistic stuff they watched as kids, again, was made in a different time, so it gets judged differently. (To say nothing of what nostalgia does to your perceptions of a work.)

I think it's a bit ridiculous to try to ascribe deeper messages to children's programming than the standard be kind to others/don't treat others differently because they're different/don't solve things with violence/etc. It's kids' stuff, it's not meant to be deep or nuanced the way media made for adults is because that sort of nuance will fly right over kids' heads. It's just made to be entertaining and usually impart some gentle, simple lessons.

Rebecca Sugar has always said that the main lessons of Steven Universe were about family. Steven is based directly on her brother, and the three main Gems are all based on different parts of Rebecca herself. The plot about Homeworld is all secondary, as you can see when the fandom complains that not every episode is about that and there's too much "filler" that's just based on interpersonal relationships between Steven and the Gems and the townspeople. Even the Homeworld plot isn't literally about an intergalactic dictatorship. It's about another family that's come apart. It so little resembles any real world sociopolitical system that the only people who see it that way are not the people it was made for.

I don't know, if these themes are in the show, it kind of seems reasonable to comment or critique based on them? Even if they're not supposed to be the main part of the show? Obviously you don't have to agree with that point of view, they just want a different thing from the show than you do?

Perhaps not, but SU does present more progressive views on gender and queerness than most other kids' shows, which makes it easier for adults to want the rest of the show to be similarly nuanced. You don't expect much from something that gives you nothing, but when something gives you a little, you might expect it to give you more.

Right, but the simple fact is that it's not made for adults and people need to keep that fact in mind. Even if adults enjoy it, it's still a show aimed at kids and thus the storytelling is on a level that's meant to appeal and be understandable to kids.

[ SECRET POST #4440 ]

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