mother the star is here
We've been watching Steven Universe and liking it a great deal! Highly recommended on multiple levels! And a whole bunch of it is on Hulu, where it runs without commercials, and that's great. If you're the kind of person who can get a kick out of things not specifically made for adults, you owe it to yourself to see it. It's like Adventure Time, but its weird is a lot less alienating and nightmare-inducing.
There's one thing about it that's kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, though. And since it's spoilertastic, it's going behind a cut.
I spend so much of the backstory-focused episodes mad at Rose Quartz. I don't know if the show is going to lay commentary on that one way or another, but right now it's pretty much seemed to me to have settled on her being the slightly weird but unimpeachably good (former) heart of the operation.
But what I'm seeing is that there was a woman, and she was an important woman not just to her close friends, but on a global, semi-cosmic scale. She met a man she loved and decided, after what must have been a fairly short time (especially in a gem's lifespan), to have a child. And then she basically committed suicide, widowing her partner, leaving her friends without both their close friend and a vital component of their planet-protecting job, and dumping on them a special-needs child minus any helpful instructions for his care.
It would have been one thing if this had been done in conversation, or if there had been unforseen complications that had resulted in Rose's death. But I got the very strong impression from that one home-movie segment that Greg had no idea what was about to happen, while Rose was fully aware that she wasn't going to survive childbirth. Similarly, time and again the gems make it clear that Rose left a lot of unfinished business and locked doors. But instead of making arrangements for her absence, she ... well, we don't know what she did. But what she didn't do, apparently, is prep for what she knew was coming.
And I just don't know what the show is saying with that.
Maybe part of my problem is that I don't identify with Steven at all -- I'm an old fart who's more with the gems and Greg. Maybe they don't know that Rose knew she'd never make it? But if they did, I can't imagine they wouldn't be dealing with a lot of anger. Pearl gets weird about how Rose wasn't her total confidante, but that's as pissed as any of the characters seem to be. Greg in particular, as easygoing as he is, has the most right to be mad -- she killed herself and made him a single parent in one move. The gems all express frustration about how they don't know how to parent Steven, to the point where I suspect not one of them would have made the choice to be a parent, had it not been thrust upon them by Rose's death.
I guess without being a mother, I am sensitive to this valorization of martyr/motherhood. Maybe I've just run across too many stories of (Evangelical Christian, usually) women praised for priviliging their unborn children over their own health. Or maybe I'm sick of the way mom-status so often takes cultural precedence over basically anything else a woman has done, or how I've known so many women who have been all but marched at gunpoint into giving up their own aspirations in order to support families. Even death isn't viewed as an extraordinary consequence of childbirth, but just one more thing A Mother's Love will convince her to give up for her children. This isn't about mothers' being willing to die to protect their kids in general, either; this is more about how that sacrifice gets romanticized, and doubly so around the act of giving birth. The whole Western Canon is chock full of nobly dead moms. What does that make the rest of us?
(And oh, there is a sidebar here about how my not being a mother means my whole place in relation to the rest of my family is at times deeply awkward. But put a pin in that.)
So what is the show saying with Rose? If I'm a little girl watching the show, what do I make of that? What is the priority? What responsibility is better? What am I worth? It's great that it's got all these strong female(-presenting, yeah, I've seen talk about gem gender) characters, but what does it mean when the biggest and badassest of them seems to have decided that being big and badass is not nearly as good as being a mother ... and dead?
The show is still in progress, and I'd absolutely believe they're going to do something with it. But because its a kids' show, if there's any anger, I'd bet it's concentrated around Steven's anger at never having gotten the chance to know his mom, and having all her responsibilities dumped on him to boot. And that abandonment anger would be completely valid and realistic even if her death had been unforseen and accidental, but its being (apparently) purposeful puts a different spin on things.
I guess I just ... feel for Greg, you know? His wife dies, he becomes a single father, and then he doesn't even get custody because of his son's special needs. I'm amazed he's doing as well as he is.
...But I really do love the show! I do! It has so much goodness to it! But I think it's painted itself into a dead-mom-worship corner that all but paves over Rose's presence as an independent character. Most of the time, she's not a character; she's memory, idealized and portraitized and hung on the wall to remind everyone of her greatness. I would love for the show to do something with what a problem that is, especially in terms of dealing with grief. It's just an uncomfortable corner.
There's one thing about it that's kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, though. And since it's spoilertastic, it's going behind a cut.
I spend so much of the backstory-focused episodes mad at Rose Quartz. I don't know if the show is going to lay commentary on that one way or another, but right now it's pretty much seemed to me to have settled on her being the slightly weird but unimpeachably good (former) heart of the operation.
But what I'm seeing is that there was a woman, and she was an important woman not just to her close friends, but on a global, semi-cosmic scale. She met a man she loved and decided, after what must have been a fairly short time (especially in a gem's lifespan), to have a child. And then she basically committed suicide, widowing her partner, leaving her friends without both their close friend and a vital component of their planet-protecting job, and dumping on them a special-needs child minus any helpful instructions for his care.
It would have been one thing if this had been done in conversation, or if there had been unforseen complications that had resulted in Rose's death. But I got the very strong impression from that one home-movie segment that Greg had no idea what was about to happen, while Rose was fully aware that she wasn't going to survive childbirth. Similarly, time and again the gems make it clear that Rose left a lot of unfinished business and locked doors. But instead of making arrangements for her absence, she ... well, we don't know what she did. But what she didn't do, apparently, is prep for what she knew was coming.
And I just don't know what the show is saying with that.
Maybe part of my problem is that I don't identify with Steven at all -- I'm an old fart who's more with the gems and Greg. Maybe they don't know that Rose knew she'd never make it? But if they did, I can't imagine they wouldn't be dealing with a lot of anger. Pearl gets weird about how Rose wasn't her total confidante, but that's as pissed as any of the characters seem to be. Greg in particular, as easygoing as he is, has the most right to be mad -- she killed herself and made him a single parent in one move. The gems all express frustration about how they don't know how to parent Steven, to the point where I suspect not one of them would have made the choice to be a parent, had it not been thrust upon them by Rose's death.
I guess without being a mother, I am sensitive to this valorization of martyr/motherhood. Maybe I've just run across too many stories of (Evangelical Christian, usually) women praised for priviliging their unborn children over their own health. Or maybe I'm sick of the way mom-status so often takes cultural precedence over basically anything else a woman has done, or how I've known so many women who have been all but marched at gunpoint into giving up their own aspirations in order to support families. Even death isn't viewed as an extraordinary consequence of childbirth, but just one more thing A Mother's Love will convince her to give up for her children. This isn't about mothers' being willing to die to protect their kids in general, either; this is more about how that sacrifice gets romanticized, and doubly so around the act of giving birth. The whole Western Canon is chock full of nobly dead moms. What does that make the rest of us?
(And oh, there is a sidebar here about how my not being a mother means my whole place in relation to the rest of my family is at times deeply awkward. But put a pin in that.)
So what is the show saying with Rose? If I'm a little girl watching the show, what do I make of that? What is the priority? What responsibility is better? What am I worth? It's great that it's got all these strong female(-presenting, yeah, I've seen talk about gem gender) characters, but what does it mean when the biggest and badassest of them seems to have decided that being big and badass is not nearly as good as being a mother ... and dead?
The show is still in progress, and I'd absolutely believe they're going to do something with it. But because its a kids' show, if there's any anger, I'd bet it's concentrated around Steven's anger at never having gotten the chance to know his mom, and having all her responsibilities dumped on him to boot. And that abandonment anger would be completely valid and realistic even if her death had been unforseen and accidental, but its being (apparently) purposeful puts a different spin on things.
I guess I just ... feel for Greg, you know? His wife dies, he becomes a single father, and then he doesn't even get custody because of his son's special needs. I'm amazed he's doing as well as he is.
...But I really do love the show! I do! It has so much goodness to it! But I think it's painted itself into a dead-mom-worship corner that all but paves over Rose's presence as an independent character. Most of the time, she's not a character; she's memory, idealized and portraitized and hung on the wall to remind everyone of her greatness. I would love for the show to do something with what a problem that is, especially in terms of dealing with grief. It's just an uncomfortable corner.