Steven Universe‘s “Gem Harvest” Revisited
On aspirational versus topical representation, and other heady stuff.
What, really? This again? I know. I hope you’ll bear with me, a few deep breaths out if holding no more concrete answers.
We’re a few weeks out now from “Gem Harvest,” from the election, from….everything. On something of a precipice of waiting for things to happen. And I’ve been thinking about that episode a lot, because I think it deserves it a step or two removed from the deeply unfortunate flashfire when it aired. And I kinda…still don’t think it works.
“Gem Harvest” is an admirably ambitious episode in many ways, with a lot to say about the general cultural climate of this year if not the last few months. And it bit off way, way more than it could chew, trying to do in one double length episode what would normally be the work of four or five (not helped by the fact that the adorable but thus far tangential introduction of Pumpkin takes up five minutes of a 22 minute running time–about a quarter). That leaves about an episode and a half to introduce Andy, the entire introduction of Greg’s tenuous relationship with his family (in itself a huge revelation for Steven with his concerns about feeling isolated from his humanity), the idea of what makes a family in general (found versus blood, and the issue of trying to balance or choose when they come into conflict), and digging past Andy’s apparent issues with the Gems to his actual issues of loneliness.
That is way, WAY too much for fifteen minutes. By the end of the episode Andy is indeed in a narrative place where he could be a really interesting addition to the cast dynamic, but there are likewise some pretty ponderous issues hanging over the character that aren’t going to be solved until whenever the heck we see the character again, which could be a few episodes down the line or a whole half season. And while that kind of pick-it-up-put-it-down style of character writing came to suit Adventure Time, which often invited us to watch somewhat from arm’s length and saved the big emotional guns for special occasions, when Steven Universe leaves something unsaid it can often feel a lot more raw.
“Bismuth” had this same problem, introducing a very powerful and complicated issue and then proceeding to bottle it back up straight away. It’s bold and innovative for the Crewniverse to want to tackle larger, darker issues, and they do have a better track record at representing silenced voices than a lot of shows on TV. Maybe that’s why the bar is set so much higher. At the same time, both “Gem Harvest” and “Bismuth” are just adjacent enough to real-world issues that the rebottling of the genie, as it were, becomes a bigger problem.
Bismuth’s story struck a raw chord with many over its examination of when the oppressed are justified in taking up violence against their oppressors and what the fallout is for those in-between. Andy’s story is, in its way, also about those in-between: he’s a man who is hurtful out of ignorance, who really wants to mend fences deep down and will implicitly come around. But while that works in broad strokes, the script then explicitly evokes real-world harmful terminology (illegal aliens is a pun alright, but it’s too darn loaded with real-world baggage to be worth using unless that’s then the central issue of your episode) that brings the episode’s conflict out of a more abstract, self-contained one to explicitly nudging us to parallel it with real and dangerous threats many Americans are now facing.
One of the greatest powers media has is instructing through example, and artists who can do so with subtlety are rare and valuable indeed. Possibly SU’s greatest strength is its delicacy and its willingness to act as aspirational–to write diversity not as something that needs a handholding “very special episode” mentality, but assumes a world where everyone’s already gotten their shit together on that front. Beach City is multicultural. Nobody bats an eye at the three women living together on the beach and raising a child. For all intents and purposes, racism and homophobia and even sexism didn’t seem to exist in this world, and that’s what made it such a powerful escape. Seeing that bubble burst produces a great shock in response.
It’s a difficult needle to thread–at once, there is the not-invalid thought that children should be free from having to grapple with the world that adults face; and at the same time, there is the reality of how many children are already affected by those politics every day, even if they don’t yet have the terms or the matured faculties to grasp the full scope of what’s going on. What media is it important to have, then? How much escape and vision of a happy future, and how much instruction for the now?
I don’t know. It would be wrong of me to suggest that I do. I think that maybe putting the responsibility of closing the gap between adults in the hands of the youngest cast member wasn’t the way to do it. Not in this one case, where it comes so perilously close to the real world. Maybe a smaller-scale climax would’ve helped, as irresistible as I’m sure the plane chase was; a big, declarative climax like that best suits a fairly straightforward emotional declaration, rather than the fairly fraught one we were dealing with.
Traditionally-produced media exists in a difficult space right now. As I mentioned the first time around, this episode was doubtlessly written and produced months and months before the time of its release, when our culture was plagued by the same underlying fears but things felt a good deal less dire (no unabashed white supremacists had yet been appointed to the White House, for instance). It’s easy to forget that within the immediacy of web shows, current events programming like Last Week Tonight, or one-day-turnaround podcasts–even something like Welcome to Night Vale, which does have some lead time but is also flexibly accessible enough that a timely message could be put in the preamble show notes right after the election.
Media is a comfort, both as distraction and as response. I don’t know that it’s the job of media that can’t be one to be solely the other, but the balance has shifted considerably since South Park was the only fictional show with a realtime weekly output.
I’m not entirely sure what I set out to accomplish in coming back to this. Maybe to see whether my instincts failed me (I’ve certainly written the occasional recap where my reception came to be warmer over time than what made it to print). Maybe, in some minute microcosmic way, to show that when people react with strong emotions to something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are irrational (a complaint I see levied too often these days against people who are fearful about Trump’s rise to power). Maybe to remind myself that it’s good to check back in and sure I can think through the logic of a decision with strong emotions attached, the better to convey it to people.
I say “I” because I’m a critic. I love my work, but it’s not on the level of political action and discourse of those actively engaged in current struggles. It’s always going to be that step removed, that bit abstracted and sometimes tortuously trying to connect those thoughts to the audience–sometimes failing abysmally at the latter. So I hope this thought exercise has helped someone, anyway.
And also, “Three Gems and a Baby” was a stellar return to form.
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Vrai is a queer author and pop culture blogger; they’re really hoping they didn’t fuck this one up. You can read more essays and find out about their fiction at Fashionable Tinfoil Accessories, listen to them podcasting on Soundcloud, support their work via Patreon or PayPal, or remind them of the existence of Tweets.
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