Wednesday, January 16, 2019

This Is Beautiful: Steven Universe

I don't think I've posted about "Steven Universe" before, which is a huge mistake on my part, I do apologize. "Steven Universe" is probably the best cartoon on air right now, it's on Cartoon Network and the creator is Rebecca Sugar who got her start on "Adventure Time." It's such a wholesome show with excellent characters.

The story centers around Steven, a boy whose dad is a long-haired musician now running a car wash and whose mom is Rose Quartz the leader of the Crystal Gems. Happy family. Essentially out in space there is a race of gems made into sentient, female, beings. They wanted to colonize Earth and use it to mine new gems from the ground, but Rose Quartz and her gang of Crystal Gems stopped them. Rose then decided to have a baby, and she gave him her gem, meaning that Rose isn't around anymore, but Steven has her powers.

The Crystal Gems as a whole function as Steven's mom now. There's Garnet, who is super badass and can see into the future; Amethyst, the youngest and a bit of a mess; and Pearl, the neurotic very organized and concerned type. Together they all go on missions to keep the other gems away from Earth! And Steven learns a thing or two about love and compassion along the way.

My personal opinion on this show is that it is a great example of meta-modernism. (This is about to get more philosophical.) Modernism can roughly be summed up as the idea that there is meta-narrative, that we all play a unique part in a larger story and life has meaning. Postmodernism is basically that there is no meaning and we are all worthless. Meta-modernism goes one step past that and says that yes life has no meaning, but we can try to create good things anyways.

Steven is very meta-modern in that he keeps going up against these terrifying situations with love in his heart for everyone around him. As he learns more and more about how his mom wasn't perfect (and I will argue that his mom is essentially his god, she died creating him and everyone worships her I mean the parallels are right there people) he grapples with his resentment of her, but he always comes back to this position of love and how he can do better. Which is very similar to the meta-modern agenda. I don't want to get too into it, but maybe I'll flesh this out more in the future.

Bottom line: this show is so good, regardless of what age you are. If you aren't watching it you are wrong, so put it on right now, episodes are only 10 minutes each!

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