Grok My Enthusiasm (38)

By: Robert Wringham
September 28, 2016

One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars.

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As a sleepy librarian played by Hector Mann, it’s unusual for me to grok something so new and cool and colourful as Steven Universe. But grok it I do. In the face of this cartoon show, all cynicism drifts away and I’m moved to excitedly rattle off a list of favourite characters to you like an overstimulated toddler. Stevonnie! Lion! Garnet! Sadie! There. I think I got away with it.

At the time of writing, Steven Universe is a fairly new and ongoing Cartoon Network series for which I’m probably not the intended audience. Having said that, I can’t help feel that its creator Rebecca Sugar may have set out to make something demographically transcendent and internationally uniting, as Jim Henson did with Fraggle Rock. I don’t know. Whatever her motivation, the cartoon she’s unleashed is an exciting, hilarious, moving, glamorous, inclusive, and kind creation.

Tell us more, grandpa? Okay. Steven is the fourth member of a Sailor Moon-like order of superbeings called the Crystal Gems. It’s Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl… and Steven. Why the ellipsis? Well, Steven’s not like the other Gems. That’s why he’s called Steven and not “Emerald” or something. He’s pudgy, unsophisticated and at first doesn’t seem to have any powers. He’s the silly one, a juxtapoz punchline like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters or Clyde in Pacman. He can’t surf the pink and singing waves of the cosmos with the others, for unlike his teammates he’s part human.

At first Steven Universe looks like an episodic thing-of-the-week affair (albeit an inventive one: an early episode manages to be cute, trippy and creepy when Steven morphs into a conjoined mass of mewling cats) to be watched as one might watch SpongeBob SquarePants, but there’s an important cumulative narrative that’s worth staying unbaked for. After watching 100 episodes (look, they’re only ten minutes long), I can tell you that the Gems’ actions have consequences and that the plot advances as Steven’s powers mature. We learn that the Gems are exiles from a complex society of ancient aliens. New characters come forth from the background, each with their own motivations and appetites. Characters pair off and relate unpredictably to each other like modular furniture designed by Dali. Some of what happens is deeply surprising.

Politically, the show’s about seven years ahead of the curve. It’s been described as queer — which with its matter-of-fact portrayal of transgender characters and same-sex, polyamorous love, is probably true — but where it really shines is in post-gender sentiment. It doesn’t matter in Steven Universe (the Universeverse?) if you’re a girl or a boy or neither or both. Most of the characters are women and the overriding energy of the show is unmistakably, gorgeously yin, but the male characters are wonderful and aren’t written off as hapless douches.

It’s also geek-literate without being a daft bundle of references. It doesn’t rely on rewarding your knowledge of Harry and the Hendersons or Hulk the Slayer. It has sprouted from the leaf litter of thirty-odd years of pop culture in a similar way to The Venture Bros but it’s more relaxed about the sum of its parts and hence more mature despite being a cartoon ostensibly for children. Geekdom today, Steven Universe tells us, is a sorority, not a contest.

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Grok My Enthusiasm (38)

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