fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4440 ]

[ SECRET POST #4440 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4440 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 45 secrets from Secret Submission Post #636.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation.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.

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[ SECRET POST #4440 ]

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