Climate Change is a Bigger Existential Threat Than AI

Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash

It's been the year of fretting about AI. While there are many ethical considerations with AI, the issue of labor being one of the primary ones (see The Work of Art in the Age of AI), what AI evangelists talk about is often rooted in "Longtermist" concerns such as the end of human civilization as we know it. "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," reads a statement signed on by CEOS, academics, and other members of the business elite.

This framing has always been precarious, not only because it overstates the current level of this technology (AI is nowhere near Skynet levels) but because it undercuts the actual existential threat we are currently facing — i.e., climate change. Over the next few years, our society will be shaken to its core, not by AI but by our warming world, and any conversation that is not grounded in dealing with these concerns is fundamentally not serious and a red herring.

Existential Concerns about AI are a fantasy

Some concerns about AI are again valid. Like with most things under capitalism, technology over the last decade has been used not to help society as a whole but to extract wealth into narrower and narrower hands. From ridesharing apps to social media, the pattern has been clear: disruption is, in actuality, the practice of using regulatory arbitrage (i.e., taking advantage of regulatory gaps in government policy) to increase profitability.

This economic reality is not what people, like the AI alarmists who signed onto that statement, are referencing when they speak about the existential threat of AI. Signatory Geoffrey Hinton, for example, the infamous "father of modern AI," is heavily influenced by the philosophy of Longtermism, or the idea that influencing future outcomes is a key moral priority. He warned The New York Times that although immediately he was worried it could inflame job insecurity and misinformation, AI becoming more intelligent than humans was a considerable concern.

This type of rhetoric is common among Longtermist adherents. A common existential fear brought up with AI is the "paper clip dilemma." In short, this involves a massive, interconnected AI being instructed to produce as many paperclips as possible and, in the process, converting all of humanity, maybe even all organic matter, into paperclips.

It sounds scary, and the paper clip problem is an interesting thought exercise worthy of being written about in science fiction (and it has), but here, in reality, we are nowhere close to this scenario unfolding. Some experts have described current AI as merely a Stochastic Parrot. It simply cannot do what this scenario suggests: it might never.

The modern economy still requires the labor of real people, and even with the integration of more AI, that will still be the case for the foreseeable future. We are not at risk of turning everyone into paperclips because that would require real people to make those decisions, and that happening would result from a much bigger problem than AI.

Furthermore, Longtermism has been criticized for being quite vague, as what constitutes a "future good" is not as clear-cut as they often argue. At its more extreme, this philosophy can lead to a hyper-utilitarian outlook, allowing those in power to focus on far-off problems rather than the systems of harm they directly benefit from. As Parmy Olson writes in Bloomberg:

“ Silicon Valley technologists…certainly mean well. But following their moral math to the extreme ultimately leads to neglecting current human suffering and an erosion of that other very human feature — empathy.”

Instead of causing a techno-apocalypse, what we are in danger of from AI is uncritically implementing this technology so that a couple of rich people can continue the era of wealth extraction that began with Web 2.0 and, in the process, exacerbate preexisting discrimination on a massive scale. Because AI is trained on datasets produced by people, it has recreated the same systemic biases of people. We have seen problems, such as facial recognition and hiring software discriminating against people of color, that should give us pause.

These are the actual dangers we have to worry about when it comes to AI. We need not fret about AI becoming Skynet, GLaDOS, or Hal-9000, but rather that algorithms will continue to be used to discriminate against marginalized identities and classes. The solution is not to ward off or prohibit AI, “deep learning”, or whatever you want to call it, but to place these resources in the hands of the public so that they may be properly audited and changed. As several AI academics note:

“We should be building machines that work for us, instead of “adapting” society to be machine readable and writable. The current race towards ever larger “AI experiments” is not a preordained path where our only choice is how fast to run, but rather a set of decisions driven by the profit motive. The actions and choices of corporations must be shaped by regulation which protects the rights and interests of people.”

However, such a solution would mean denying Silicon Valley its latest toy. So, instead, we get monologues about science fiction that move the debate away from these more sensible actions. Silicon Valley executives and founders get to frame themselves as Pandoras, benevolently warning us in advance of the boxes they had to open.

And while these leaders overinflate the significance of AI, fearmongering about how it could upend all of human civilization in the next five years, climate change threatens us all, not simply in the future, but right now.

Unlike GLaDOS and Skynet, Climate Change is Real

It cannot be overstated how existentially of a risk climate change is to our overall security as a species. Even being conservative, the projected effects of the carbon we have already signed for can potentially change everything we take for granted.

The rise in sea levels is the most common example brought up. Current estimates place the level of rise at 1 foot (30 cm) by 2050 (that's less than 30 years from now) and an additional 2 feet by the end of the century, but this will fluctuate more or less by region. 2 feet may not sound like a lot, but it will have a devastating effect on coastal regions across the world. Cities like Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Shanghai will just be gone.

In America, the East and the Gulf Coasts are expected to be hit far worse on average. According to research from the group Climate Central, if pollution remains completely unchecked, the coastline of Louisiana — New Orleans included — will be unlikely to make the transition. Florida, from Miami to Jacksonville, will come to know devasting floods as a routine part of life. In fact, from Savannah to Boston, few major cities on the East Coast will be spared from the effects of sea rise, with Boston probably sharing New Orleans and Miami's fate of being one of those cities that doesn't make it.

We could spend the rest of the article analyzing the effects of these changes alone — of what happens when hundreds of millions of people are forced to move inland. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Boston alone: Where do they go, and how will they be treated once they move? In her 2021 essay for The Intercept titled A Climate Dystopia In Northern California, Naomi Klein described how the material stresses of the California wildfires pushed the liberal college town of Chico to move to the right (a situation that does not appear to have improved). As she writes in the article:

“Today, Chico, with its brutal crackdown on unhoused people in the grips of a deadly pandemic and in the midst of serial wildfire disasters, does not demonstrate community “resilience.” It demonstrates something else entirely: what it looks like when the climate crisis slams headlong into a high-end real estate bubble and social infrastructure starved by decades of austerity. It also shows what happens when locally developed climate justice plans are denied the federal and state financing that they need to rapidly turn into a lived reality.”

Imagine Chico on a country-wide, even global scale. We are already experiencing a surge of xenophobia and far-right fascism from the beginning effects of climate change. By 2050, the instability from what has been estimated might be over 1 billion climate change refugees will have taken its toll. I can't predict what that kind of world will look like, but it will be utterly unrecognizable from today.

Part of the reason for this xenophobia is that we will be working with fewer resources overall. We know that an increase of 1.5 degrees celsius, which is all but inevitable given current pollution levels, will have major impacts on crop production. Some crops, such as corn, could see a marked decline. At the same time, wheat's growing range could be expanded. However, even in optimistic scenarios, climate change will increase the likelihood of "killing-degree days" where crops cannot grow at all and possibly even die off. These drawbacks will require immense shifts in production that will need to be addressed if we want to continue producing food at our same levels (so people don't, you know, starve to death).

Another primary concern is water. Something that often gets lost on people is that the water cycle (i.e., the continuous movement of water in the atmosphere) is based on a very delicate balance. While it is technically renewable, parts of it are stored in processes that are replenished very slowly. Canada, for example, claims to have 20% of the world's freshwater, but only 7% of that is "renewable," meaning that it only cycles regularly in a particular area and time at that rate. The rest is stored in lakes, underground aquifers, and glaciers that will not necessarily be replenished quickly in human terms if tapped out, adding an element of scarcity that most people need to consider when it comes to water.

And so, as we add further stress to the water cycle through human consumption and rising temperatures, we will have some regions that have less water overall. One only needs to look at the situation unfolding with communities dependent on the Colorado River to understand this problem. Nearly a century of overuse has led to a situation where the Southwest is now faced with significant water shortages.

Overall, there will be less food, less water, and less land, and that will create a toxic sociopolitical cocktail that has the potential to push us toward a more authoritarian world. That is the problem affecting us in this decade, not some weird sci-fi BS that might never come to pass.

Yet, we are not seeing the investments needed to do much about it. Joe Biden may have signed the "largest environmental bill" in US history (a low bar given how bad our country has been in this area), but this $375 billion investment over a decade (37.5 billion roughly a year) is inadequate compared to what is needed to prevent some of the scenarios I have pointed out coming to pass. Its passage also came at the expense of increasing the number of oil and gas permits being approved, which makes this entire matter tenuous. We don't have much time to dick around here. Increased investment in the green economy cannot come at the expense of new emissions if we want to enjoy future luxuries such as the city of Boston still existing.

We should treat climate change as a crisis, forcing companies to pay the cost of transitioning to a more ecologically stable world upfront. Instead, we are watching billions being sunk into AI (several billion coming from the federal government): a technology that is costly to train, both financially and ecologically, and does nothing to solve the problem at hand.

It feels like a strange distraction. If AI causes the apocalypse, it will be because of neglect, not a robotic hivemind nuking humanity into oblivion.

A Warming Conclusion

It cannot be emphasized enough how frustrating this conversation on AI is because it entertains the runaway fantasies of the rich at the expense of the present. AI does have drawbacks we have to worry about. It perpetuates the systemic biases of current society and risks creating a culture where racial and class-based inequalities are exacerbated in the name of "progress."

Yet even these worrying problems pale in comparison to the threat of climate change, which is an existential threat to human civilization in the here and now. If we do not start making serious investments in our climate and paradoxically divestments from our capitalist system, then many of us will not survive the chaos of this next decade.

Most of us do not have a New Zealand or Mars compound to retreat to. We need to focus on the problems we face, not the paranoid ramblings of rich people's imaginations.

The Dad Joke Was A Long Time Coming

FuriousYogi

My favorite Dad Joke comes from the video game Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator. Your player character is at a barbecue, and in one dialogue option, you and a cadre of other dads fire off a stream of dad jokes. "He's un-grill-ievable," they begin. Their children boo and plead for the dads to stop.

These types of puns have been around for a long time. A famous one comes from the Greek text the Odyssey, where our protagonist Odysseus tells a Cyclops that his name is "no man." Odysseus then stabs the creature, and when the Cyclops calls out for help, they say (roughly), "No man is attacking me." The other cyclops assume he is ill and fail to come to his aid (talk about a flawed medical system).

The "dad joke" is a sub-type of these puns. Wholesome and insufferable, they are all about inflicting mild humiliation and suffering onto a father's children or family. What we will be exploring today, or “Internet Exploring” for the dads out there, is how these jokes specifically got associated with masculinity and fatherhood and what that says about our larger society.

So strap in your seat belts as we drive into this bumpy subject.

The classical origins of Daddom (“da-dum,” if you will)

The concept of fathers having an entitlement to use wholesome puns to tease their children (as opposed to mothers who, in the modern era, are stereotypically portrayed as humorless) has more to do with current norms of masculinity and patriarchy. A dad's close relationship with their children, so much so that they can tease them with "dad jokes," hasn't always been a thing.

The thing we have to grapple with when analyzing this topic is what it means to be a father: and please keep your Hollywood monologues at the door. Child rearing has varied dramatically throughout history. In ancient Rome, for example, the head of household, or paterfamilias, was not necessarily the male parent but the oldest living male citizen in the home. He had absolute power and could sell, disown, or sometimes even kill his children if they slighted him (so sort of like Florida).

Back then, humor could run from poking at banalities of the day (e.g., bad breath, hernias, etc.) to reflecting the cruel realities of Roman life. In one example, a member of the aristocracy purchases an enslaved person, who dies shortly afterward. When the enslaver complains to the trafficker, he is told: "He didn't die when I owned him."

Dad jokes certainly existed. We see a contemporary-seeming dad joke in one example written in the Philogelos, one of the oldest surviving jokebooks (translation courtesy of

Mike Fontaine

). A father asks his son: "Should I call you my hope or my salvation, Pseudolus?" His son Pseudolus replies, "Both!" To which another father cheekily jumps in and says: "Hi, Both!" (I hope you don’t strain your eyes too much because we have only just started).

Yet this humor was not solely associated with fathers. In the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero, we have an example of a soldier kicking a ball around at night, and in his play, he's suspected of breaking important statues. When it is asked why he hasn't shown up for his platoon's morning workout routine, peer Terentius Vespa quips, "Oh, it's okay — he said he broke an arm," in reference to the statue he broke the following evening (because nothing helps a joke more than explaining it in academic detail).

Humans have always seemed to love their puns. Yet, Ancient Rome is a valuable jumping-off point in this conversation, not just because it had dad jokes galore, but because its conception of fatherhood would impact the very roots of American society, and if you live in America, you know that's not necessarily a good thing.

Colonial Dads (”It’s my lawn now”)

We brought up the role of paterfamilias because it would remain alive and well into the American Colonial Period (1639 CE to 1789 CE). Though, I want to emphasize that these expectations could vary widely by race, class, and religious denomination. As John B. Kamp begins in their fantastic essay Patriarchy and Gender Law in Ancient Rome and Colonial America:

“In Colonial American society…women saw their rights restricted on the patriarchal basis of a woman’s “natural” role as pious homemaker. Roman and Colonial American gender law share a common misogyny; one rests in the patria potestas and the other in European patriarchal culture. There existed, between Roman antiquity and Colonial America, a similar legal and social discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Men mostly controlled the legal and financial rights of their spouses. Fathers also had more of a say in their children's lives, often winning custody in the case of divorce (so pretty much the modern-day Republican platform). The relationship between an individual child and a father might involve their schooling and teaching them how to do a craft. Depending on the community, communal expectations were higher, with the Puritans in the 1600s having selectmen who would inspect if children were being educated "in the right way." Children would be expected to take on economic roles far sooner, and it was not uncommon for working-class parents to contract their children out for forced labor to another family.

Of course, this dynamic assumes the child had a parental figure. In the 1600s, there were examples of street children being shipped to the Americas as indentured servants. There was also a large percentage of the child population that was enslaved, and access to parental figures would depend highly on whether their families were separated from them, which is nothing to joke about (I’ve tried).

The extent parents played and joked with their children is difficult to ascertain. We know through letters and other historical writing that some parents certainly indulged their children, but others, such as the Puritans, as theorized by Morgan in The Puritan Family, overall tried to limit it, sending their children to other families so affection would not get in the way of better manners: no one quite did social shame like the Puritans. Child play was inevitable in the early colonial days, but a father regularly joking with their kids and participating in that play seems unlikely in many colonial communities.

When we look at jokes during the early American period, while what we would know as "dad jokes" certainly existed, these did not seem explicitly tied to fatherhood like today. Take the following pun from Joe Miller's Jests, first compiled in 1739:

“The same gentleman, as he had the character of a great punster, was desired one night in company, by a gentleman, to make a pun extempore. Upon what subject? said Daniel. The King, answered the other. The king, sir, said he, is no subject.”

It's a typical "dad joke," a pun on how the word subject can be about both a topic and a reference to someone's relationship to a monarch, but it has nothing automatically to do with fatherhood or embarrassing one's children. A punster was just someone known for their puns.

Another joke from that book that might fit the traditional mold better goes as follows:

“A rich farmer’s son, who had been bred at the University, coming home to visit his father and mother, they being one night at supper on a couple of fowls, he told them, that by Logic and Arithmetic, he could prove those two fowls to be three. Well, let us hear, said the old man. Why this, cried the scholar, is one, and this, continued he, is two; two and one, you know, make three. Since you have made it out so well, answered the old man, your mother shall have the first fowl, I will have the second, and the third you may keep yourself for your great learning.”

We can see the cultural framework for the "dad joke" present. There is wholesome wit being applied here, but it's not exactly a pithy word pun, and again these puns were not associated with fatherhood. Given the radically different norms of the time concerning play with children, these puns would not be readily used on young children in the same way. Of course, every family was different, and the breaking of norms had to happen.

Industrial Dads (“Get to work, kiddo”)

Skipping forward, from industrialization onwards (starting roughly in the mid-19th century ), we see a new norm with households developing. The work of crafts, once the lifeblood of households, started to become the domain of factories, stores, and other firms, as the family moved from a unit of production to consumption. In something right out of DeSanti's presidential platform, the idealized expectations became that women keep up the home and men go to work — again, this expectation was both racialized and classist and not followed by everyone.

This shift had an understandable effect on childrearing. A more romanticized version of maternity (see the cult of domesticity), coupled with an emerging conception of childhood innocence (see child labor laws), led to the distancing of fathers from some childrearing activities. This change created a stereotype of fathers during this period, especially among middle-class white fathers, of stern patriarchs.

However, it is important to stress that the reality, like my sex life, is always more complicated. As Stephen M. Frank writes of 19th-century fatherhood in Life with Father: Parenthood and Masculinity in the Nineteenth-Century American North: "Beyond the idiosyncrasies of particular families and events, however, enough fathers occupied places toward the affectionate end of the emotional spectrum to refute stereotypes of the starched Victorian patriarch, self-contained and presiding remotely over his family.”

And indeed, poorer households could struggle to adhere to this standard as unemployed fathers might have to tend to the home as their children and wives worked. As Stephen M. Frank notes, "the family man" was primarily a middle-class invention. It was an ideal all fathers should strive toward, but not all could, and some even patently resisted.

And so, what was the record of play and joking during this period?

When we look at how fathers were sometimes depicted in literature, humor is sometimes there. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), which was technically released during the first Industrial Revolution, the father figure, Mr. Bennet, is famous for his wit. He jests in the novel: "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" It is a very funny line, but it's not very punny, and it was hard to find the latter in many of literature's more famous fathers of the time.

Like every era, magazines, newspapers, and the like were packed with puns. Victorian Scholar Lee Jackson reminisces this dark gem in History Today: "Why is a dog like a tree? Because they both lose their bark once they're dead." Another goes: "Who is the greatest chicken-killer in Shakespeare? Macbeth, because he did murder most foul." While these puns were highly enjoyed, it does not seem to have been the norm for these to be linked with dads in particular.

However, as we continue into the modern era, the joking dad becomes not just a fringe example but one seen by everyone, whether their children like it or not, including on the Silver Screen.

TV Dads (“Father puns best”)

The gender and family trends of the Second Industrial Revolution would solidify during the 1900s, as the standardized expectation (though not always the reality) for white, middle-class men became that men went to work, and women managed the household.

When we look at media in the early to mid-1900s, radio and later television, this role is personified by media patriarchs. For example, the 1930s radio sitcom The Aldrich Family was about the teenager Henry and his antics. Henry was the person who played the "funny man" or comic, and his parents reacted to it as the comedic foils. In the episode Henry's Blind Date, Henry talks about giving a class pin to his crush. The crush did not like it, and when asked what the pin was, Henry explains: "All it says is 'Vote the Democratic Ticket.'" The bit escalates further as Henry tries to get his father's fraternity pin to no avail.

In a family or marital dynamic, men, particularly fathers, were the comedic foils in a double act, which was a carryover from Vaudeville where one character would be nonsensical and zany, and the other would try to poke holes and unsuccessfully bring the bit back down to earth (sort of like every group project ever). In the 1930s radio show and later 1950s TV show sitcom the Burns and Allen Show, for example, the ditzy Gracie Allen is the comic to George Burns's foil.

Several decades later, titles such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best would replicate this dynamic. Children and sometimes spouses (looking at you, I Love Lucy) would do zany things, and the man would react to them as a cool "patriarch" with a sense of reason. If this archetype sounds familiar, it’s pretty much the ideal conservatives have been latching onto for the last century, like a leech on a leg.

For example, in the episode of Leave it to Beaver called Beaver's House Guest, Wally tries to get his brother's friend Chopper to get him a new pair of football shoes. Their father tells Wally not to mooch off their brother's friends, to which Wally says: "Yeah, I guess you're right, Dad. I got friends of my own." The kids were constantly pushing against the father's common sense (which could seem quite archaic by today's standards—well, some people’s anyway), and that's where the humor lay.

As we got to the era of second-wave feminism (starting roughly in the 60s), the family would shift with the slow liberation of women in politics and economics (an ongoing project). The household, while still a unit of consumption, would see gender norms evolve. It was suddenly more socially acceptable for white women to take on a job or political office (note: poorer women, particularly poorer Black and Brown women in America, always had to work on the side, and even white women's emancipation was far from equal).

The dads in media would change as well. The Andy Griffith Show is an excellent example of this reality. It started in 1960, and in the first episode, his kid Opie is zany as can all be (objecting to his maid's wedding and everything), but the father has a wit about him. Andy Taylor, joking with Opie about their new maid, who raised Andy, saying:: "She used to squeeze me so hard I'd turn all colors. That's right. I was the most loved purple baby you ever saw."

The Andy Griffith Show is a great transition as we have both a "family man" archetype, a single father no less (at least initially), but also one who has no problem cracking jokes with their kid. The era of the dad joke was upon us!

The Dad Joke comes of age

By the time we get to the 1980s, there are still gendered divisions in labor and childrearing, but the rigid patriarchal barrier where fathers do not interact with their kids had lessened. A 1987 article by Jim Kalbaugh, credited by some as thee originator of the dad joke, shared the sentiment that dads should joke with their kids. Titled Don't ban the "Dad" jokes; preserve and revere them in the Gettysburg Times on June 20th — the day before Father's Day, it argues on behalf of dad humor.

Gettysburg Times, June 20th, 1987

One of the first things you will notice is that we see some of the more stereotypical dad joke humor noted in this article. "Why do they have a fence around a cemetery? Because people are dying to get in there?" Kalbaugh jokes, referencing the familiar dynamic of the recipients of the joke being uncomfortable. "'Oh no,' someone, not a visitor, moans," Kalbaugh writes of the typical reaction to the dad joke.

It's also worth noting that Kalbaugh explicitly links these jokes to masculinity, particularly a stereotypical, often whiter aspect of fatherhood. "The 'Dad' Joke is one reliable aspect of fatherhood," he writes. "It's what children and Moms can count on from a 'Dad.' It's as sure as three meals a day at home." This perspective shows us something interesting because the "right" for a father to humiliate their children playfully is patriarchal.

Another thing of note is that this article is by no means the originator. In the first paragraph, Kalbaugh is reacting to a "young joke teller, freshly certified by a comedy workshop [who] who recently made his debut on network television," doing a set about how all Dad jokes should be banned. Dad jokes were popular enough in 1987 for someone to hate, though given that the word dad is in quotation marks in the title of Kalbaugh's article, the phenomenon may have preceded the phrase (though this is merely speculation).

As the decades rolled out, dads would only get zanier and punnier with their kids. Homer Simpson of The Simpsons was filled with puns: "English?" he jests in one episode, "Who needs that? I'm never going to England." Hal, the father from Malcolm In The Middle, mentions his love of puns directly, saying: "Hey have you seen my pun file? It's in a box marked laughter thoughts."

And yet these puns were still not automatically associated with dads. In 2004 the book Dad This Joke's For You: The Best Dad Jokes from the Funniest Comedians was released by Judy Brown, and here we see that although "dads' joking with their kids" is depicted as the norm, it's still not necessarily punny. Most of the humor in this book is quotes from famous standup comedians, and they are anything but wholesome. "These kids are nuts today. I got a kid myself, ten years old. He's going to be eleven, if I let him," goes a quote from Kenny Youngman (father of the year right there).

We would have to jump to the mid-2010s before we started seeing the wholesome puns being explicitly linked to dads. One of the first things I started doing for this project was to Google the term, tracing back the dad joke as far as the Internet would allow. I immediately found a 2013 Facebook post from the drink company Innocent, approximately a decade ago, writing: "Dad Joke time: Why do you never see elephants hiding in trees? Because they're very good at it."

Captured on Facebook (June 26, 2023)

The mid-2010s was when dad jokes started to pick up in the zeitgeist. Google Trends clearly shows it gathering favor, and we can see this emerging popularity in accompanying media. Buzzfeed, for example, published an article retreading posts from the subreddit DadJokes (founded 2011), titled 27 Cringe-Worthy Dad Jokes You Can't Help But Laugh At. The dad joke's fashionableness would increase so much so that three years later then-President Obama would tell such jokes in his final Turkey pardon in 2016.

Captured on Google Trend (June 26, 2023)

Going forward, the dad joke would solidify into the humor we know today. We would see dad jokes in sitcoms, movies, and even video games.

A punny conclusion

The pithy pun has always been around. We started this article referencing puns in ancient Rome that are thousands of years old. They have most likely been around far earlier, and Gaia-willing will be around much longer.

What has been far more difficult to ascertain is when this type of humor became explicitly linked to fatherhood. The archetype of the inoffensive, overbearing jokester father started in the mid-1900s but did not really take shape until the 1980s and has only been dominant since the 2010s.

The evolution of the dad joke illustrates how endearing certain practices can be while also highlighting how quickly their contexts can change. If you ask me, that fact is punquestionably a good thing.

Queer People Shouldn’t Have To Suffer To Be Taken Seriously

For the longest time, you were more likely to know a trans person because they had died than lived. The names of dead trans women, men, and enbys have hung in the air for my entire adult life. People like Venus Xtravaganza, Brandon Teena, and Islan Nettles have been a part of my community’s history: a reminder of what this society does to people that go against the grain.

These people deserve to be remembered — I am thankful to know their names, even though it's painful — but there is something that has always bothered me about how we use their names as a shield against attack. We point to these people who our anti-queer society has harmed as an argument for our own autonomy. “You hurt us,” I hear us say. “Acknowledge our pain.”

And as the years progressed, I have found it frustrating that queer pain is the first and sometimes last line of defense against those who hurt us.

Queer Pain

My most popular article on Medium is titled Dear Ted Cruz: I Do Regret My Transition. It’s a direct letter to Senator Ted Cruz, about how harmful his anti-transness is to my community and to me specifically. I get very personal about how, for years, anti-trans rhetoric stunted my personal growth and contributed to suicidal ideation.

In many ways, the article is a microcosm of what I have seen throughout the years, where trans pain is the opening salvo in the war for our rights. If you have followed this discourse (and given that we exist during an anti-LGBTQ+ moral panic, I’ll wager that the likelihood you have is high), then the trend of trans suicides has probably come up. The argument, and reality, is that anti-trans rhetoric and legislation are terrible for trans peoples’ mental health, and contribute to suicidal ideation and, well, suicides.

There has been an almost clinical approach to the defense of trans adults and youth. Studies are trotted out that show that when our identities are affirmed, our mental health improves (see this somewhat limited meta study here), and when they are not, it deteriorates (see another limited study here).

As Carrie Davis (she/her), Chief Community Officer at The Trevor Project said of a recent survey the group did of almost 34,000 Trans youths across the country:

…“these findings underscore the disparities in access to mental health care and systems of support among LGBTQ youth, a group consistently found to be at significantly increased risk for suicide due to the anti-LGBTQ victimization they face, and how they are mistreated in society at large.”

This same argument is made against “conversion therapy”; the practice of trying to remove someone's queer orientation or gender identity using pseudo-scientific or religious practices. When a child is forced to suppress their sexuality or gender because of the wishes of their family and community, it’s detrimental to their mental health.

And it’s primarily this argument about health that we use to combat the latest anti-queer panic. Many of the articles and debates we see right now are about whether discriminating against a particular group makes their mental health worse: this medico-scientific framing is at the forefront of a lot of discourse.

A few trans activists have questioned this overreliance on the medical community. Quite a few psychologists and psychiatrists have historically been very discriminatory towards the queer community, and this has led to a lot of tensions, even among LGBTQ+ people themselves.

For example, the argument between “trans-medicalists” (those who believe that only trans people with diagnosed gender dysphoria are valid) and everyone else in the trans community is caused by friction over whether the medical community should be the ultimate arbiter when it comes to accessing gender-affirming care.

It’s argued by some that this emphasis on needing validation from medical professionals to be considered trans has lead to pathologization and gatekeeping. Many within the medical community (and outside of it) are now actively campaigning for an informed-consent model that tries to lessen the input such practitioners have in denying trans people access to care.

As Henri Feola argues in Scientific American:

The gatekeeping endorsed by WPATH and other institutions is a product of attempting to fit the infinite array of human gender diversity into a convenient box. It pathologizes trans people and dismisses our suffering and our survival. It punishes us for our anger, our hurt, and our coping mechanisms, and refuses to listen when we say we know what we need.

I believe that the suicide debate in the trans community should be seen through this lens of autonomy. Even if the medical community had always been a beacon of progressivism, the overreliance on trans pain as our primary argument would still make me uncomfortable because it relies on our pain being seen by medical professionals (as well as everyone else) for our autonomy to be recognized.

Queer Autonomy

Ultimately, my argument comes down to the following: I shouldn’t have to be suicidal, and I certainly shouldn’t have to broadcast it, for people to develop empathy for the fact that my autonomy, as well as the autonomy of my queer comrades, is being stripped away.

At the core of the matter, I should have rights because I am a person. We are a society that believes people are entitled to do things to their bodies, and by arguing against that, you are arguing against my personhood (see also: abortion rights).

There is nothing else to be argued or debated; you either respect bodily autonomy or you do not.

Even if transitioning is harmful (and it isn’t), we let people do harmful things to themselves all the time. Excessive alcohol consumption can at the higher end shave years off your life. Modern video games have gambling mechanics that prey on addictive personalities, and we put those in the hands of children. Most contemporary social media was built from the ground up to build internal triggers so that you are compulsively addicted to it. Autonomy means that you forfeit the right to stop people from doing harmful things to their own bodies.

And it must be emphasized that transitioning is essentially not harmful. Most people do not even engage in medical transition (such as the use of hormones or surgeries). They change their pronouns and gender presentation (the clothing, spaces, and mannerisms attached to their gender). These changes have no cost, other than how other people might treat the individual. By pushing against those changes, you rob people of their autonomy and deny them freedom.

Those that do rely on hormones and surgeries (which, by the way are vastly different things) find that these interventions have negligible drawbacks, if any at all, when administered safely.

I use hormones legally, and my endocrinologist requires routine bloodwork. I am probably more in touch with my bodily health than most people, and that sense of safety goes away if I have to get hormones “under the table” without that regular monitoring. Yet regardless of the perceived harm, it's still my choice to do this, and I find it hypocritical that the Republication Party, the supposed “Party of Freedom,” would paternalistically stop me from exercising said freedom.

Some will argue that children do not have rights to their own autonomy. That parents have a right to deny their children the free expression of their identities. These are people who loudly proclaim that their children will have the gender expression and orientation that they choose.

And to that, I say, being abusive to your own children is not the trump card you thinks it is. Parents deny autonomy to their children initially because the child lacks the basic faculties to do things such as walking, eating, decision-making and reasoning. You make decisions for your infant child because they cannot do so rationally. In this sense, a young child’s lack of autonomy, and absolute parental authority, are justified.

However, as children develop more personhood, being a good parent means ceding them more autonomy. If your child expresses an action related to their body, and it isn’t harmful (and again, transitioning isn’t, except in a minority of edge cases), then denying them that freedom is abusive.

I’m not interested in going back and forth with someone who does not realize the fundamental fact that being a good parent means learning to let go. That is what we all must do in the end: you either learn to see people as people who can make their own damn choices, or you hold on ever tighter, trying in vain to control the actions of others.

A Declaration of Freedom

I do not want another decade of trans pain. I do not want to argue over statistics and queer deaths. I regret engaging in the tedious online fights over biology and definitions of gender. I regret being open and vulnerable, only for miserable people to discredit my pain.

It’s a fight which relies on the oppressors recognizing the suffering of those they harm, and it's not one I am convinced is very effective.

Hate activists, such as Matt Walsh, routinely call trans people “selfish” for having suicidal thoughts. At best, this argument about suicidal ideation has given us tenuous acceptance, dependent on the medical community’s current understanding of the science; at worse, we are performing for people who nonetheless shut their ears and close their hearts to our suffering.

We can go around in circles disproving what these people believe (I know I have), but this back-and-forth leads to debates that are, ultimately, beside the point.

Queer people deserve rights because we are people and we are entitled to liberty and freedom: we should have autonomy over our own bodies, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

"Ōoku: The Inner Chambers" Is A Fascinating Deconstruction of Gender

Captured: Netflix

In today's pop culture lexicon, deconstructions of gender are everywhere. The dystopian TV series Handmaid's Tale, based on the book of the same name, is about what happens when theocratic Christian patriarchy dominates all aspects of the United States. And, of course, Amazonian mythology has been rehashed in everything from Xena Warrior Princess to Wonder Woman.

Netflix's Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is among these stories, as it dared to push boundaries and challenge conventional norms around gender. As an adaptation of a manga series, this show delicately positions itself in a socio-historical context, the Edo or Tokugawa period, when Japan remained insular, shutting its doors to foreign interventions. However, there's an imaginative twist: this self-imposed isolation is due to the devastation of Red-face smallpox, slashing the male populace to a mere fourth of that of women.

This premise allows the series to say many fascinating things about gender while remaining grounded in its historical roots and world-building.

A brief history of plagues

Historically, gender-plague tales have been a mirror to the societal tensions and anxieties surrounding gender politics. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1915 creation Herland, envisioned a society that, following a volcano eruption, thrived in the absence of men. Gilman was impacted by the racist underpinnings of first-wave feminism, and her "ideal" society would not be considered great by today's standards. Gilman was a eugenicist, and her narrative explicitly references Aryan superiority, with women refusing to have children with "undesirable traits."

The gender plague stories written following second-wave feminism (roughly starting in the 1960s) tended likewise to be utopian, but the source of that perfection was different. Many characters had progressive ideologies that celebrated diversity, queerness, and polyamory. Unlike in Herland, where society reproduces asexually, Joanna Russ's The Female Man introduces a utopian world called Whileaway, where the women are focused on same-sex relationships and engage in activities such as duels that we would have once considered masculine. It's also a world that writer Sandra Newman notes was created from the genocide of men, alluding to the same eugenicist strand first seen in Herland.

In the current era, many stories no longer relegate male absences to a remote past but thrust them into the throes of the present. The story Y: the Last Man, for example, is not focused on the rebuilding of a post-man world but on the pain that happens immediately during and after the plague, as things are collapsing. As Sandra Newman insightfully notes in The Guardian:

“The 21st-century revival is a very different animal. First, instead of being a dimly remembered political event, the mass death comes now. It has no good aspects. Men die horribly in front of us. Women are plunged into collective grief. Technological society falls apart for lack of skilled workers, and the world goes into decline. Women, meanwhile, are just as violent as men, and no more cooperative or empathic. The only result of generations of indoctrination into female roles is that girls are crap at engineering.”

Newman's commentary here is incisive. Gender plague stories have, until quite recently, created gender-essentialist narratives that turn society into a utopia because the violence of men is no longer present. Even if men disappearing is not an act of God but purposeful, such as in The Female Man, their removal allegedly paints the way for a better tomorrow.

However, this type of thinking can get dicey quite quickly. While, on average, there are many stark differences between men and women, these roles aren't inherently linked to gender and are more about societal conditioning. Women aren't genetically predisposed to make less money at their jobs or be less timid. It's about what we train people to do, and there are people of male sex with feminine traits, and vice versa. Some people fit neither inverse. The premise that you can target maleness or femaleness has historically led to narratives that exclude transgender and nonbinary people at best and malign us at worst. We cannot be blind to this context when we examine such works.

Yet that doesn't mean that gender plague novels should be discarded entirely. There is starting to be more self-aware commentary in this area. Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, for example, has received much praise for being a gender plague novel written from a trans perspective, and I argue that the complexity of The Ooku: The Inner Chambers is also a text that is a little bit more nuanced in how it deconstructs gender.

Gender Plague in Japan

This brings us to Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, a harmonious blend of past and present storytelling tropes. Initially set 80 years into the matriarchal reign of female Shōguns, in particular, the Shōgun Yoshimune; it paints a world where women dominate every sector of society spanning from trade to households to politics.

The show's title alludes to the Shōgun's harem, the Ōoku, which by Yoshimune's time has a whopping 800 men meant to dot on her reverence — a testament to her formidable power and influence. Originally only some of the men in the Ōoku were meant for the Shōgun's sexual gratification. Most were brought to Edo Castle as a protective, military force to guard the Tokugawa lineage in the wake of potential political instability brought on by the Red Face Smallpox pandemic. When the male heir to the line dies, however, the Ōoku gradually transforms into a harem so that the surviving female heir of the Tokugawa line, Chie, can produce a son.

It's these initial steps to protect the patriarchal control of the Shōgunate that become its undoing. Slowly over time, norms change so that women control more and more of society, and men become decorative playthings for the wealthy. One way to see this is with clothing. Men in the Ōoku initially wear the sparser clothing of the samurai but slowly start to adorn themselves in extravagant attire, in essence, peacocking to appeal to the Shōgun. By Yoshimune's era, although these men still practice the art of the sword, it was largely a ceremonial act. Their real battles are now confined to courtly politics and intrigue.

Yet, this show isn't a mere gender-reversal act that we see in texts such as I Am Not An Easy Man, where women occupy and do all the same things men do now. The narrative is more mature and discerning than that, as the story seems to argue that even the preexistence of patriarchy affects the society that emerges after it. The roots of this matriarchy trace back to the initial years of the Red Face Smallpox. The transfer of power to women was an extended emergency decree, with the underlying premise that it might eventually revert back to patriarchy.

In essence, even while men were dying off, the ascendant female ruling class still had to make the patriarchal men around them feel comfortable.

This appeasement also applied to some women as well. In fact, one of the biggest upholders of the patriarchy in the series is Lady Kasuga, the wet nurse of the male shōgun Iemitsu. Kasuga initially abducted a female child Iemitsu sired out of wedlock named Chie with the purpose of producing a son to extend the Tokugawa line. She wants to restore the patriarchy, not upend it. Chie, who would eventually take on the name of her late father, Iemitsu, cannot initiate the emergency decree to put women in power until after Lady Kasuga's death. Kasuga is so intent on puppeting men from the shadows (as she was trained to do) that she becomes one of the last barriers to the show's ascendant matriarchy.

This is all to say that the shift from patriarchy to uneasy matriarchy wasn't abrupt. It was a gradual process. Women donned male roles, leading to a compelling interplay of gender presentations. Many male heads of noble households exacerbated this shift by pressuring their daughters to secretly take on the role of heir by presenting as men. These female heirs were, in a way, "socialized" as men and many of them found that they preferred the status of men much more than that of women.

Even in the show's current era, women in power are identified by male names, a practice hinting at the vestiges of patriarchy. The character arc of Shogun Yoshimune exemplifies this duality. She's so entrenched in the matriarchal fabric that she's initially oblivious to why she's officially referred to by a male name.

Unsurprisingly, the condition of men 80 years into this alternate future is far from enviable. Reduced to mere carriers of the seed, many are pampered to the point of being infantilized, while others are commodified into sexual servitude. Those in the rural areas, who are no longer sexually viable, are often abandoned in the wilderness.

But notably, it’s still not a complete reversal. The reins of the household, alongside the rest of society, remain firmly in female hands. Men are too precious to tire out and risk getting sick. A combination of history and biology pushes the narrative away from a one-to-one swap with gender, and that is refreshing in an era of lazy gender plague stories.

A viral conclusion

Gender plague stories have been around for over a century. At their best, they provide us with a lens through which to deconstruct gender, but at their worst, they resort to gender essentialism and anti-transness. We often get boring stories that vacillate between the absence of men being depicted as a utopia or a dystopia rather than diving into the messy complexities of what such a disruption would look like.

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is not just another gender-plague tale but a profound exploration of power dynamics, societal norms, and the intricate weaving and remixing of gender. It challenges, educates, and entertains, making it a shining exemplar of how pop culture can both mirror and mold society's perceptions.

Barbenheimer: A Surprising Battle of Messaging and Framing

This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 520713.

Barbenheimer emerged as a meme to talk about the joint release of Greta Gerwig's pink and feminine metacommentary Barbie and Christopher Nolan's brooding and masculine Oppenheimer. Soon the Internet was ablaze with talks of double features, promotional deals, and fans coming to the theaters dressed to the nines in pink.

And so, given that these two films have been paired as a viewing experience, it seems only natural to compare them critically. When we do that, we come across contrasts in not only how they talk about gender but also these films contrasting messages, which nevertheless intersect well with one another.

Barbie: great framing, mixed messaging

Barbie is about "Stereotypical Barbie," as well as all her other iterations, both old and new, in the fictional dimension of Barbieland. This is a land of imagination powered by all the children who play with these dolls. From Mermaid Barbie to a Barbie President, Barbieland is a feminist matriarchy where people there believe all the problems of patriarchy in the real world have been solved through the representational politics of the Mattel Corporation (more on this later).

Yet when a tear opens up in our two realities, Stereotypical Barbie quickly learns that "representational politics'" conquest of patriarchy is a lie. She goes on a fabulous journey of self-discovery to the "real world," which, coupled with her naivete, allows the film to have a frank conversation about gender and the patriarchy that rules our world.

From a very blunt takedown of the ruling Citizens United to a plot-essential bit making fun of mansplaining, everything we see in the film is meant to deconstruct patriarchy, and it's pretty cathartic for the viewer. America Ferrera's Gloria gives a brilliant monologue on the paradoxical rules of womanhood, saying:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman….You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

When I finished watching this speech, the audience was in tears. The whole point of this monologue was to name, as Gloria calls it, "the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy" and provide the viewer catharsis that their feelings are valid.

This film is very aware of how it is being perceived and how it frames things to the viewer, all to aid in that catharsis. For example, there is a throwaway line where Stereotypical Barbie, who Margot Robbie plays, is talking about how she doesn't perceive herself as beautiful. The narrator jumps in, joking that Margot Robbie was the wrong actor to cast in this role to make that point. This narrative technique being used here is referred to as "lampshading," or bringing to the viewer's attention a narrative problem and then moving on. It's not only a result of this film's overly meta approach but of wanting to reassure the viewer that, yes, "it gets them" and is "in on the joke."

Yet, while I loved most of what this film does, there was something unsettling with its concluding message. Throughout the film, there is a bumbling Mattel CEO character, played by Will Ferrell, who just doesn't get how out of touch he is. He gets defensive and abuses his power, but he is never portrayed as anything more than oblivious. I found it a strange choice to make, especially since, narratively, nothing happens to his character other than him referencing silly suggestions and "tickling retreats."

We can go around in circles on whether this framing was appropriate, but what bothered me is that toward the end, after the chief tension of the film has been resolved, Gloria proposes to him to create an "Ordinary Barbie" that will not succumb to the exceptionalist narrative the Barbie doll has traditionally adhered to (note: someone outside Mattel has made this). The CEO initially rejects this idea, but after he's told it will make money, he quickly agrees. We have here not a refutation of Mattel's power to set cultural norms but a plea for it to change its priorities. It's an argument of finding incremental change through the marketplace, and given how badly this company has messed up our norms in the first place; it's one I am wary of.

We see this incrementalism further in how the Barbies take back power from the Kens after the latter had done a coup. The Barbies ultimately shun the more "masculine" violence of the Kens (who pantomime war in the best musical number of the movie) and vote their matriarchy back into power. It was a narrative move that felt very strange given the dire straights Gloria's daughter Sasha depicted society being in in the first half of the movie. She says Barbie represents "sexualized capitalism," "rampant consumerism," and "fascism." Is voting harder supposed to be the solution here?

Furthermore, are we supposed to approve of this returning to the status quo? The film ends with the Kens still being oppressed under the Barbieland matriarchy but given a token lower-end court position by President Barbie to symbolically represent the disproportionate amount of power that women have in the real world. The film denies us a tidy resolution, which I am torn on. On the one hand, patriarchy isn't resolved in the real world. Why should the matriarchy be abolished in Barbieland?

On the other hand, the problem comes with the solutions they have pushed for in this film: market forces and voting, which, although they cannot be ignored (I have a long history of encouraging people to vote), are inadequate on their own. If voting harder and buying more ethically were viable solutions to "rampant consumerism" and "fascism," we would have done it already.

Barbie ends with a delightful text that frames the problems women face under patriarchy beautifully but leaves the viewer with a mixed message on how to fight it. In many ways, this film is a fascinating counterpart to its more "masculine" twin: Oppenheimer, which has a tighter message but fails in my perspective in how it frames its characters.

Oppenheimer: great message, terrible framing

Oppenheimer is inevitably about masculinity. The thing about "male" movies is they often don’t have to be explicitly framed as conversations about masculinity because male is the current default (particularly white, straight, cisgendered men). Yet considering this is a biopic about a Great Man of History, the implication is clear.

Oppenheimer is a story about quantum mechanics physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer who would go on to be a key figure in the Manhattan Project, notably Project Trinity: the codename for the first atomic bombs. The weapons he would help build, named Little Boy and Fat Man, would be dropped over the municipalities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing at least one hundred thousand people. These actions were initially heralded as ending the war with Japan, but in more recent times, have been criticized as needless posturing used to establish US hegemony and ignite the Cold War with the USSR.

There are many messages you can tease from this 3-hour film spread across three separate timelines (a small note I have is that it was way too long), but one is that the development of nuclear weapons was a mistake. Dr. Oppenheimer later rejects the argument that dropping the bomb was necessary, and we, as the viewer, are given no evidence that he's wrong. The film ends with him nihilistically talking to Einstein about how the development of nuclear weaponry "destroyed the world," referencing the cataclysmic nature of what he has released.

Another message is that the men pushing for this "great" development are spiteful and short-sighted. There is a brilliant scene where Oppenheimer is talking to President Truman about how the dropping of the bombs has made him feel guilty, and the president perceives it as a sleight against his greatness. In real life, Truman allegedly called Oppenheimer a "crybaby scientist."

We see this pettiness further highlighted in a key plot point involving a series of political hearings: one for Oppenheimer's security clearance after the war; and another, much later, for Lewis Strauss's confirmation hearing in the Senate for Secretary of Commerce. Strauss was another key figure during the Manhattan Project and later the Atomic Energy Commission. Oppenheimer and Strauss should have been friends (or at the very least begrudging allies), but because Oppenheimer has a mild conversation with Albert Einstein that causes the man not to register Strauss's presence, he assumes, incorrectly, that Oppenheimer is turning Einstein against him. It's this nonexistent sleight that pushes Strauss to work secretly to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance and eliminate his influence.

This pettiness applies to Oppenheimer himself, who works on the bomb (despite being told by many that it's a mistake) because of his ego. Oppenheimer perceives himself as one of the few that can pull it off and chooses to let himself get wrapped up in nationalistic propaganda, not seeing through this jingoism until after the damage has been done. It's hard to see any of these great men of history as truly great, and that's the whole point: one I enjoyed immensely. When you zoom in on the posturing and petty fights, the shine of their greatness dims.

The problem I had with the film (besides, again, it being too long) was how it framed many of its characters, particularly its women. Despite the text criticizing the men in the film ruthlessly, few prominent women are involved in the narrative that Oppenheimer isn't f@cking directly, and even these characters are severely neglected in the movie. His first partner, Jean Tatlock, was a reporter for the Communist Publication the Western Worker and probably a queer woman. However, she is depicted in the film as deeply unhappy that she and Oppenheimer have separated and kills herself shortly after he calls off their relationship. Still, in reality, the situation is more complicated. The pathologization of homosexuality is argued by some to be a factor in her suicide — a fact the film glosses over.

Similarly, Oppenheimer's wife, Katherine, or "Kitty," also has an arc, but it feels almost lazy. Her transformation from disillusioned housewife to battle-worn politico feels sudden and unearned. We simply didn't see that happen in the film (though I would have loved to), and it speaks to how uninterested Nolan was in developing his female characters.

The only women characters Oppenheimer isn’t f@cking that receive notable screen time are during the Operation Trinity flashbacks. These include engineer Lilli Hornig, whose inclusion is very relegated to the margins, and scientific librarian Charlotte Serber, who, in a bit of sexist revisionism, is depicted as Oppenheimer’s secretary. In real life, Project Trinity had many women scientists involved in it, making their absence in this film notable. This absence (as well as the others we have discussed) is more about Nolan neglecting this history than anything willfully malicious.

When discussing how women characters are often ignored in period films, particularly in those surrounding “Great Men,” there is a tendency to bring up that period’s misogyny as a defense. "That era was misogynistic," goes the argument, "so wouldn’t these women be ignored and belittled?" And yes, they would (and were, and are), but that’s speaking past the point. We are not discussing history here but how women characters are framed in this fictional narrative. In a story, you can have female characters that exist in the past, who experience hardships and discrimination, and still have a proper arc and character development. They can even be somewhat empowering (see Carol, Hidden Figures, etc.).

The same point can be brought up with the indigenous tribe that occupied some of the grounds in Los Almos before the military seized the land for the project. Several times in the film, it’s brought up that the land was used by this unnamed tribe, including during a tense conversation with President Truman, but we aren’t given any more details than that, and we really should have. Historically, there was an indigenous woman who worked on Project Trinity, hematologist Floy Agnes “Naranjo Stroud” Leea, whose point of view in the film could have made that conversation more impactful.

Looking from a birdseye view, I enjoyed the message of Oppenheimer, but how it framed its characters could have used more work. It is a criticism of Great Man Theory that still slips into it every once and a while. His genius is brought up repeatedly in the film in a way that feels gratuitous, and centering on the other intelligent women in his life may have been helpful to counterbalance that. My advice for this text about how "Great Men" are petty and exclusive would have been to include maybe the characters it thought these men were marginalizing.

An Explosively Pink Conclusion

All in all, I enjoyed the Barbenheimer phenomenon. These films are so different, yet core themes tie them together, which I suspect was part of the reason this trend happened in the first place. Oppenheimer is gritty, slow, and grounded in the "real world." It's also very, very male. Barbie was fun, irreverent, and very very into talking about patriarchy.

There were undoubtedly drawbacks in how these films broached these subjects. Barbie had tight humor and framing but lacked a message to go with its cathartic conclusion. Oppenheimer was tight in what it was trying to say but could have benefited from a more intersectional approach to framing its marginalized characters during this contentious period of history.

Regardless, Barbenheimer was a fun treat in the hellscape known as the 2020s. Pretty in Pink never felt so dark and foreboding.

The Show Steven Universe’s Terrible Approach to Fascism

Steven Universe is about a boy called Steven who is half human, half alien. He lives on Earth, in a picturesque beachside town, and on the side, he goes on heroic missions with the alien freedom fighters, the Crystal Gems. As the series progresses, Steven learns more and more about his lineage and a thousand-year-old Civil War, which still has effects on the present.

From its vibrant animation to its deeply relatable characters and masterful storytelling, Steven Universe, created by Rebecca Sugar, has earned its place in the hearts of millions worldwide. The series, hailed for its celebration of diversity, its inclusive, queer-driven narrative, and its willingness to delve into complex themes, does an excellent job when viewed through the lens of LGBTQ+ families.

However, when it comes to handling the weighty issue of fascism (i.e., to simplify, when power is concentrated into a narrow set of hands, and a mythology around those figures is created) there is a problem. The aliens (i.e. the Gems) that Steven shares his biology with are ruled by a fascist government called the Diamond Authority. The show's approach to this subject often oversimplifies the painful reality of this creed in favor of a problematic “kill them with kindness” approach.

And so, let’s grab our guitars and take a deep dive into the brilliantly animated world of music, friendship, and interstellar, genocidal space rocks.

A metaphor for estranged family

To begin with, it is necessary to recognize how Steven Universe wonderfully portrays dealing with estranged conservative family members. A recurring motif in the series is the protagonist, Steven’s ability to reach out to those harboring misguided views, offering compassion, patience, and open dialogue to change their perspectives. This approach, though tedious, is often (though not exclusively) an accurate depiction of the slow, painful work required to bridge ideological gaps within families.

A striking example is how the show handles the character Peridot, a cog in the Diamond Authority who came to Earth to destroy it by activating a McGuffin called “the Cluster.” Steven and the Crystal Gems are able to not only foil this plan but deradicalize Peridot to the point where she rejects The Diamond Authority and joins them on Earth.

Another example of this is the episode “Gem Harvest,” where Steven meets his estranged cousin, Andy DeMayo. Despite initial misunderstandings and Andy’s xenophobia, presented through a thinly veiled metaphor as he rants against “illegal aliens,” the episode ends on a hopeful note. Steven and his Gem family’s persistent efforts to connect with Andy successfully break through his prejudices. It is portrayed as a heartwarming narrative that champions the transformative power of empathy and dialogue.

However, the success of this approach in such a context reads largely as fan fiction for how liberals want to convert their conservative family members during Thanksgiving. Deradicalization is a painful process that can take months or years, if at all. As I write in You’re Delusional if You Think Queer People Are Responsible for This Moral Panic:

“While some people do change, many do not, and it’s not on you to be responsible for how other people think. Part of fighting for social progress means recognizing that some people will never accept you. They will go to their graves bitter and hateful. There are countless politicians, family members, and former friends with whom we will never receive closure, no matter how palatably we frame our words.”

This deradicalization also doesn’t translate to larger, more systemic issues, especially when the series ventures into the domain of fascism. The show’s portrayal of the Gem Homeworld, a civilization steeped in hierarchy and domination, is one that cannot be defeated through kindness. This society, with its preordained roles and worth assigned based on gem classes, effectively embodies the strict hierarchy fascism relies on. The “Diamonds,” leaders of this society, are dictators that have perpetrated countless atrocities against those they deem “lesser.”

Here’s where the series starts grappling with its approach to handling this heavy theme. While there are snippets of these brutalities, as well as remnants littered throughout the Earth of the Gem Rebellion or the “Gem War,” Steven Universe often opts for a softened representation. The Diamonds, despite their oppressive reign, are humanized excessively. Episodes are devoted to their long and profound sadness of the loss of their sister Pink Diamond, including the fabulous song What’s the Use of Feeling (Blue)? sung by Patti LuPone.

This humanization kicks into overdrive after we learn that Steven’s mother, the leader and cause of the Gem Rebellion, was Pink Diamond. She was a member of that fascist Diamond Authority, and so this makes the entire plot of dealing with this empire a familial one first and a political one second.

This is not to argue against the character depth of awful people, even that of genocidal ones, but the sympathetic portrayal of these dictators often overshadows the horrors of their actions. They’re seen grappling with guilt, loneliness, and emotional turmoil, inviting the audience to empathize with their plights. However, the same time is not devoted to the active horrors they committed.

The Fascism Ignored

The genocides the Diamond Authority has committed are only seen in retrospect and are very brief. Since Steven has some of the memories of his mother (Gem biology is complicated), we see a Pink Diamond flashback where her family member Yellow Diamond is engaging in a planetary terraforming operation that will wipe out all organic life on the surface. This terraforming process is, in fact, how Diamonds reproduce, as planets, irrespective of whether they have organic life on them, are hollowed out for the inorganic Gem life to emerge.

We are led to believe that the Diamonds have done this process dozens if not hundreds of times across the galaxy, and yet we do not have moving songs devoted to the victims. There are no pieces about the cruelties that were inflicted. Everything is done through the perspective of the Gems. The closest we get to an under caste being represented is “illegal fusions” living in the underbelly of the Gem Homeworld (note — Gems can fuse with each other to create a unique entity, but it's a taboo to fuse with another type of Gem). These are people within the Empire being oppressed, not outside of it.

Furthermore, the show’s resolution to the Diamonds’ fascist regime is concerning. Steven manages to dismantle their rule, not through collective resistance or military action, but through personal dialogue and emotional understanding. He makes White Diamond laugh by telling a joke, and her facade of control breaks.

This plot beat is where the series, while maintaining its theme of love and acceptance, strays into problematic territory. In the real world, such systemic issues are rarely, if ever, dismantled through dialogue alone. They require collective action, resistance, and significant sacrifices. We didn’t defeat the Nazis with humor, and kindness and understanding have done little to chip away at America’s own brand of fascism.

By excluding these elements from its narrative, Steven Universe risks giving an overly idealistic and naive perspective on combating fascism. It’s essential to question the potential implications of such a portrayal, especially on younger audiences, who might walk away with an oversimplified understanding of societal change.

Moreover, the narrative’s failure to hold the Diamonds accountable for their actions is another significant misstep. After centuries of oppressive reign, and biological and cultural exterminations, their only real consequences are self-imposed. The Diamonds inverse their powers to have positive effects on the population, and they turn Gem Homeworld into a Democracy. There are no Nuremberg Trials. No conversations about ceding over land or paying reparations. The Diamonds give up power, and then the show skips ahead five years when everything is better, avoiding the messiness of dismantling such regimes.

This lack of repercussions feels inappropriate and dilutes the severity of the Diamond's actions. In this context, the show’s broad narrative themes of redemption and change can be misleading. Instead of focusing on the Diamonds’ path toward change, the narrative should have given equal weight to justice and reparations for their numerous victims.

Going back to the episode “Gem Harvest,” we see a similar pattern. Andy’s xenophobic views are resolved neatly within the confines of a single episode. While this quick resolution aligns with the show’s positive themes of conversation changing people’s minds, unfortunately, it also presents an overly simplified view of tackling deep-seated prejudices. Just as with the portrayal of the Diamonds, the series fails to acknowledge both the harm such figures enact as well as the systemic efforts needed to address the issue of xenophobia.

The painful reality is that some people will never be won over by such conversations, a point Steven is unable to acknowledge until the show's epilogue (see Steven Universe Futures), well after the battle against fascism has been won.

Conclusion

The natural rejoinder to all this will be something along the lines of “Who cares? It's just a kids' show.” This logic feels strange given that we are currently undergoing a moral panic where people are claiming to be very concerned about the content children are watching. It's also important to note that no one made Rebecca Sugar talk about fascism in a kid's show. It's a serious theme, and it being handled respectfully is even more important when your audience is younger and less able to pick up on the nuances of certain arguments.

Steven Universe, while a gem in the realm of animation for its explorations of diversity, inclusivity, and complex themes, falls short in its portrayal of fascism. Its approach, although beautiful in the context of personal relationships and bridging ideological differences within families, fails to translate into larger systemic issues. Its portrayal of fascist leaders as redeemable figures who face minimal consequences for their actions is deeply problematic, as is the idea that these oppressive regimes can be dismantled through dialogue alone.

While it’s important to remember that Steven Universe is a children’s show, and certain elements are simplified for this demographic, this doesn’t absolve it of its responsibility to address these themes accurately. Ultimately, while we celebrate the series for its positive impact and narrative brilliance, it’s also crucial to critique its shortcomings. Such discussions, after all, pave the way for more nuanced and responsible storytelling in the future.

A24's ‘Beef ’— A Story of False Class Consciousness

Captured on Netflix

Beef is the story of two Asian Americans and their ensuing feud after a road rage incident. Danny Cho and Amy Lau come to loath one another as we watch them stalk, manipulate, and sabotage each other’s prospects, setting them on a path of mutually-assured destruction.

Yet Beef is more than merely two people pettily taking each other down. It’s a discussion about class and success and how people that should be united against their oppressors often redirect their anger onto easy targets just above or below them.

Everyone is miserable

As we watch Beef, the sad reality is that both of our main characters have more in common than they would like to admit. They are people alienated by the capitalist system that surrounds them, but they are so wrapped up in their own suffering they end up bringing others down with them.

For Danny, it comes in the way of poverty and societal expectations. A working-class contractor, he not only has to struggle to pay the bills but live up to the idea that he will one day provide for his parents in Korea. He is on the verge of contemplating suicide when we first meet him, one he only avoids at the last second. However, he doesn't work on his shit (insisting that “Western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds” throughout the season) and, instead, projects his anger onto others. He, for example, escalates a minor sign of disrespect from Amy as the chance to engage in a heated road rage incident: the starting trigger for the show's eponymous beef.

For Amy, who is on the cusp of becoming a capitalist when the show begins, it's the orbit of the capitalist class's expectations that constrain her. There is a CEO character, an insufferable white woman named Jordan Forster, who often forces Amy to pervert her values and ethics to maintain a deal that will solidify Amy’s financial status. Jordan will make ridiculous demands of Amy, leading to a deeply uncomfortable series of exchanges. It’s evident from watching the show that Amy latches on to the road rage incident and later Danny himself (going as far as to extensively stalk him) because it gives her a sense of control.

These characters lack a sense of control and feel overwhelmed, and this pattern of behavior isn't sudden. They both grew up poorer and had childhoods where economic stresses were common. Amy's parents come to resent the economic burden that a kid placed on them, having loud arguments that made Amy feel thoroughly unwanted. Danny was not only routinely bullied as a kid, but one of the few flashbacks we see of their parents is them fretting about losing their motel business to a larger chain. An event we know comes to pass because, in the present, they have failed and moved back to Korea. Economic precarity was and continues to shape their psychologies, and it has led to resentment, projection, and deep depression.

Yet even the rich, “successful” characters in the show are deeply unhappy. Amy’s mother-in-law Fumi Nakai, after enjoying a lifetime of financial security, is teetering on economic ruin. Naomi, another side character, is financially healthy but does not seem to have many friends. She is not in the inner circle of Forster until the very end of the show (despite initially being married to Jordan Forster’s brother). When stressed Naomi routinely cuts out the world by zipping herself in a sleeping bag and then using a sock puppet account to anonymously harass close acquaintances.

Whether we are looking at the upper class, the working class, or the ascendant professional-managerial class, everyone in the show seems miserable. All of these characters suffer under the current system, but none of them seem to cooperate with each other, instead holding onto belief systems that prevent them from making connections and forming community.

Toxic Mentalities

There are many toxic mentalities that get in these characters' ways. Danny has held onto the belief that you have to both work hard to succeed (i.e. “meritocracy”) and stand by your family (i.e. “paternalism”). This has caused him to generate resentment for those that he perceives as taking shortcuts. He, for example, believes his younger brother Paul Cho's investment in crypto is gambling (which, fair enough) and doesn't like how he disrespects their cousin, so he demands access to Paul’s crypto wallet and changes his passwords. He is quite literally being paternalistic there because his hustle is not the “right” type of hustle.

Amy likewise also believes that hard work is paramount, telling Paul when he asks for money that becoming rich “takes a lot more work than good intentions” and that she has busted her ass for years. Amy monologues: “I’ve sacrificed my well-being, the wellbeing of my family. It’s not millionaire in no time.”

For her, at least initially, this trade-off is worth it. She chooses to let herself be strung along by billionaire Jordan of the Forster company because she is enamored by the possibility of becoming a wealthy capitalist. Amy becomes more and more toxic the longer she is in Jordan’s orbit and eventually gives a Ted Talk-esque monologue about how “You can have it all.”

Likewise, Danny’s brother Paul is not entering into solidarity with anyone. He invests in crypto in the hope of “getting rich quick.” Rather than engage in the meritocracy of his brother — one he believes is stupid — he has devoted himself to “hustle culture,” even though it's sort of clear that it's one he's not really welcome in. There is a very telling scene in episode five where Paul is hanging out with his fellow crypto bros, and the only white one is “pretending to be poor” for rhetorical cred, but it's clear that only Paul knows what poverty is actually like.

In a different vein entirely, both Fumi and Naomi cling not to wealth (they already have it) but to celebrity. Naomi is obsessed with being in an article listing some of the “most successful people” and is deeply resentful that this achievement is not recognized by those around her. She does whatever she can to cling to the recognition she thinks she deserves, eventually partnering Jordan Forster in a very hollow relationship.

Fumi wants to maintain her status in the art world, holding onto the legacy of her dead husband even though her finances are severely at risk. She could have at any moment sold a high-value work of art or confided in Amy about her deteriorating wealth, but instead, she pushed her daughter-in-law to pay for elaborate and unnecessary renovations: all for the prestige of how a wealthy, cultured family should look.

When we take a step back, we see a bunch of stressed, lonely people pointing the finger at everyone but the ones responsible: the capitalist system that alienates all of them from truly building solidarity.

Conclusion

Meritocracy. Hustle culture. Celebrity. Prestige. None of these characters are able to collaborate with each other because they are all reaching for a type of success that alienates and pits them against one another.

What all these characters lack is class consciousness or an awareness of where one's place is in the class hierarchy. Regardless of whether you are working class or middle class, if you have to use your labor in order to subsist, then you are a worker, at odds with the capitalists who own the world. It’s telling that our one billionaire character in Beef is unceremoniously killed by the door of their own panic room, a signal to the audience of who we should really be placing our ire on.

Yet all of these characters are so convinced that they will become successful that they do not do this work. It's only when Danny and Amy perceive having lost everything, are trapped in the wilderness, and are forced to talk to each other that these separations give way.

Hopefully, the viewers of Beef will not need to make such an extreme sacrifice to learn the same lesson.

Nimona: Fictional Discrimination At Its Finest

Captured: Netflix's Nimona

Nimona is a futuristic fantasy story set in an alternate world where technology has surpassed modern-day heights, but the society we see has not moved beyond the politics and aesthetics of the medieval era. The movie is called Nimona, after the shape-shifting persona of the same name that volunteers to be the sidekick of fallen knight Ballister Boldheart. Along the way, these two outcasts not only become great friends but change everything they know about the society they live in.

The story is not the most original. If you are familiar with basic adventure story tropes, you will see most twists and betrayals well in advance. I was not surprised by how this story ended. Though, predictability does not in and of itself make a piece of media bad.

And indeed, even if its basic plot beats remained unchanged from your standard adventuring story, what Nimona does well is subverting expectations on how the portrayal of discrimination should work in a fantasy setting.

Fictional Discrimination

There is a common complaint with metaphorical -isms, where a type of discrimination meant to be a stand-in for racism, anti-queerness, and the like is depicted as impacting white cisgendered, straight characters. We watch or read about people who, in real life, are near the top of the hierarchy monologue about systemic oppression, and in the process, often undercut their story's message.

The superhero genre is full of these arcs, where overpowered white people face intense discrimination by the government for being superpowered. These characters fight against this discrimination while not only having immense privileges within the text (i.e., their superpowers) but are typically played on film by traditionally privileged people: think Captain America in MCU’s Civil War.

Nimona doesn't fall into this trap. It may use the discrimination this society has against monsters as a metaphor for queerness and, more specifically, transness (e.g., Nimona describing how shifting feels natural, her general gender fluidity, etc.), but it also ensures that it's textually queer. There is a queer romance in the story, with a central tension for one of the duo being whether they should have more loyalty to the state or each other. Many characters are also played by queer actors and actresses, including Nimona herself, who Chloë Grace Moretz voices.

There's also how oppression is shown within the film. Normally, texts like this will have a TROT character (i.e., that racists over there) as the main antagonist, who will explicitly show their discrimination for all to observe (see Bryce Dallas Howard's character in The Help). Nimona has a TROT in the form of Knight Thoddeus "Todd" Sureblade. He is someone who hates commoners (another type of discrimination in this medieval society), but he is importantly not the Big Bad. Todd is merely a cog in the machine, following his social conditioning.

Like in real life, this discrimination is far more subtle than what we often see in film and TV. Nimona constantly shows how this society's hatred for monsters is learned through ingrained messaging. From the games and advertising children see on TV to the transmissions they observe from political leaders, thousands of societal forces teach them from a young age to hate monsters. As Nimona monologues: "They grow up believing they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different. And I'm the monster?"

As we touched on briefly, another type of metaphorical discrimination is against commoners. This medieval society doesn't let non-nobles participate in prestigious roles such as Knighthood. At the film's start, co-protagonist Ballister Boldheart is "one of the good commoners" who has risen from the ranks to break this "glass ceiling.” Through media segments, we see the public debating this marginal improvement, with demonizations of Ballister coming via social media posts and TV punditry.

In a more traditional piece of media, this "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" narrative would have been played seriously. Ballister’s main point would have been to prove the TROTs and naysayers wrong. We would have observed Ballister struggle to gain acceptance in this system before finally proving himself to those on top and then finding his place there.

Take the animated Disney film Mulan, where the protagonist of the same name lies about her gender to join the army. She is shunned once her secret is revealed and only gains acceptance as a woman once she proves herself useful — in this case, stopping the Hun army from killing the emperor. Mulan (the film, not the person) doesn't create systemic reform or textually challenge the oppressiveness of these gender norms in anything more than blithe comments.

In the end, Mulan can only carve out a tenuous, individual acceptance for herself because she is so exceptional: a Savior of China — not a new mold that will liberate others. The film concludes with her conforming to the traditional female gender role of the 90s. She finds a partner, the exact thing she shunned at the beginning, ensuring the movie’s contemporary audience is not too challenged by the subversion they originally witnessed.

Nimona isn't interested in upholding such exceptionalism and, in fact, lambastes it. It's pretty clear from the start of the film that the Queen is using Ballister as a token. She does not want to reform the system but is rather desegregating Knighthood to guard against more radical change. "…starting today, any of you should be able to hold the sword if you want it. If you earn it," the Queen tells her people. She is pretending that meritocracy is enough to combat classism. The Queen is making the case that overcoming the systemic oppression commoners face in this fictional society— barriers she, as monarch, directly reinforces and benefits from — are as simple as using individual willpower.

This is a very insidious type of politics we don't see critiqued too often in children’s media. By placing what would normally be the entire arc of a movie at its start, we get an entire run time to deconstruct why this sort of representational politics doesn’t work.

As we soon see, even this token reform is too much for those in power. The Queen is assassinated for pushing this milquetoast change, and Ballister is framed for it in an attempt to stop desegregation from coming to pass. All of Ballister's knightly peers instantly turn on him, and he is forced to go underground, where he meets and befriends the titular Nimona. If he truly were accepted, his peers would believe him even during hard times, not merely when he's doing well: a point this text highlights at every turn.

As an example, Ballister becomes convinced that if he simply removes the person who wronged him— i.e., the Director of the Institute that oversees monster-slaying knights — then everything can go back to how it was before. "I don't know why she framed me," Ballister says upon seeing a video of the Director sabotaging his gear before his botched knighting ceremony, "but the Instiute's not the problem. The Director is."

Yet this text is explicit that Ballister is being naive here. As Nimona rebuts seconds later: "They brainwashed you good. You think this stops with the Director? You should be questioning everything right now. The will of Gloreth, the institute, the wall."

And indeed, all of those concepts she rails against are proven to be false, but that doesn't stop the public from being anti-monster. Even releasing a clip of the Director's confession to the assassination isn't enough to sway the public. She lies and blames it on Nimona's shapeshifting abilities. Only after the Director threatens to blow up half the city using its anti-monster defenses (and Nimona sacrifices herself in plain sight of thousands) do some people change their minds about the nature of monsters.

When it comes to fighting discrimination, it's not as simple as taking out the Big Bad. You have to assume the system will not be there to save you and engage in a very public struggle to win "hearts and minds." Nimona and Ballister didn't go about things the “right way.” They broke property, spied on people, and leaked state secrets to the public: the opposite of the bootstrapping narrative this film rejects in its first act.

A monstrous conclusion

It's evident from the start that this film doesn't want to follow the traditional narrative of metaphorical discrimination being solely the result of a Big Bad's opinions and viewpoints. The text has a very sophisticated conversation (for a children's movie, anyway) about the nature of social conditioning and how we come to hate and marginalize certain groups.

Now there are criticisms to be made that this narrative doesn't quite go far enough in its rebuttal of the TROT trope. After all, even as they criticize "the removing of the villain to drive social change" story structure, they still succumb to it in part. When the Director is killed, their society does begin to change, albeit because of a very narrow set of circumstances.

There is also the whole nature of policing in the film. We are shown a horrifying police state throughout its runtime, with the government directly spying on its citizens to “protect them from monsters.” Yet Ballister is still wearing his Shield badge in the final scene (an equivalent to a cop badge), and we see a knight playfully interact with a child as a sign that the institution is getting better. This futuristic, medieval society may have started questioning things, but the old, oppressive systems are still very much in place.

Yet these criticism feel very nitpicky, and the nature of societal reform seems like a lot of pressure to put on a 138-minute children's movie. While Nimona may not be the most innovative narrative, it still brought to the table themes and conversations that most children's movies cannot even dream to have, and what can be more metal than that?

The Apocalypse Is Already Here (for some)

Photo by Catalin Pop on Unsplash

As Europeans started to make landfall in America, the apocalypse would soon begin. A disease killing upwards of 90% of the Indigenous population (estimated to be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions) would soon cause cities to crumble and empires to fall. According to one study published in the Quaternary Science Reviews:

“From 119 published regional population estimates we calculate a pre-1492 CE population of 60.5 million [across the Americas, and 2.8 million to 5.7 for North America specifically]….European epidemics removed 90% (IQR 87–92%) of the indigenous population over the next century.”

These plagues would themselves be a vanguard of a brutal invasion that would take and take until most pre-colonial cultures became shadows of their former selves. There would be over a thousand documented attacks against Native tribes in the intervening years. By the close of the American Indian Wars (i.e. the 1630s to the 1920s), the indigenous population would sit in only the low hundreds of thousands. Forced to live amongst ravenous new empires feasting on the life of the Americas, native people had to watch as colonizers set their eyes on everything they could see.

If we look at America from the perspective of the Native cultures still battling an oppressor-state, then for centuries, the apocalypse has been here. This is a helpful primer for any conversations on climate change. The apocalypse never affects everyone all at once, and often, those left to live in its wake most suffer at the hands of those who refuse even to acknowledge its existence.

Apocalypses are common

Most Americans are ignorant of the history that happened to this continent's earliest inhabitants, in part because there has been a concerted effort to prevent people from learning it. The recent conservative efforts to curtail Critical Race and Queer Theory are one such example, but the suppression of history, particularly the history of Indigenous people, has been going on for a long time. We are not very far removed from the legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (see “The Civilization Fund Act of 1819”), where white missionaries and others were paid to set up schools in tribal territories with the explicit purpose of killing Indigenous cultural practices under the pretext of "civilizing the natives” (i.e. cultural genocide).

There is too much to go over for a short article, but in essence, Indian-American relations have concerned European and colonial powers (and later the United States) making promises to various tribes, in some cases pitting tribes against one another in military conflicts and then breaking said promises months or years later. In reneging on these promises, many indigenous people have often been killed in the process, all for white settlers to gain even more of a foothold here (see Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous People's History of the United States for an excellent primer). As this author argued at the Organization of American Historians 2015 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, this expansion has been quite genocidal:

“The form of colonialism that the Indigenous peoples of North America have experienced was modern from the beginning: the expansion of European corporations, backed by government armies, into foreign areas, with subsequent expropriation of lands and resources. Settler colonialism requires a genocidal policy….The objective of US authorities was to terminate [indigenous people’s] existence as peoples — not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.”

Unsurprisingly Indigenous scholars have been making the comparison to the apocalypse for a long time. You can read references to the apocalypse everywhere, from this New York Times piece to this academic Journal, and many more. As Nick Estes notes in an interview with Dissent Magazine:

“Indigenous people are post-apocalyptic. In some cases, we have undergone several apocalypses. For my community alone, it was the destruction of the buffalo herds, the destruction of our animal relatives on the land, the destruction of our animal nations in the nineteenth century, of our river homelands in the twentieth century. I don’t want to universalize that experience; it was very unique to us as nations. But if there is something you can learn from Indigenous people, it’s what it’s like to live in a post-apocalyptic society.”

Many Black Scholars have likewise made this connection. If one's people were violently taken from their homeland, forced to work that new land (often to death), stripped of their identity, and then even after being given some semblance of emancipation, permanently resigned to second-class status, it makes sense to perceive things in somewhat apocalyptic terms. As Gerald Horne argued in the book The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism:

“What is euphemistically referred to as “modernity” is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, with the bloody process of human bondage being the driving and animating force of this abject horror.”

In the current era, many people are now using the concept of the apocalypse in regard to the collapse of our ecosystem. The most notable example is the group Extinction Rebellion, which frames climate change in these apocalyptic terms. "We declare it our duty to act on behalf of the security and well-being of our children, our communities, and the future of the planet itself," asserts the organization in its manifesto.

However, this framing ignores how apocalypses are largely a contextual phenomenon. The founding of America was apocalyptic for the tribes that lived here first, but it was not an apocalypse for United States citizens. In this case, one people's downfall was another's violent and brutal ascendancy.

Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups are correct that many people are dying because of our capitalist system's inability to address climate change, and many more will continue to die. I am reminded of a recent fishing trawler carrying refugees that sunk off the coast of Greece in June of 2023, killing hundreds in the process. Many of those refugees were fleeing resource wars and famine (situations that will be worsened by climate change). The Greecian government was aware of the boat off its waters and ignored it, allowing over an estimated 700 people to die.

This is not a new reaction. Western governments often ignore refugees, even though the West, particularly the US, is one of the more prominent contributors to the instability these people are often fleeing from. As things stand right now with climate change, many refugees will die because of the West's neglect and cruelty, both at home and abroad, and people are right to be both concerned and horrified by that reality.

Yet even as climate change claims the lives of millions, many will survive — they always do. And unless things change, like has often happened throughout our cruel history, people will be sorted into two broad camps: those who try to take everything; and those forced to live in the wastelands.

The wastelands are coming— The wastelands are here

It was the wastelands my fellow white people consigned many indigenous people to, particularly the Great Plains, east of the Rocky Mountains. This area was referred to as "The Great American Desert," a myth first perpetuated by Edwin James, chronicler of Zebulon Pike and Stephen H. Long's 1820 expedition. James called this region: "uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence."

During the height of the "removal era" (from roughly 1820 to 1850), which is a polite way of saying genocide, nearly 100,000 Indigenous peoples were expelled from east of the Mississippi River to this new "wasteland": an Indian territory thought to be valueless by white people. The most famous is probably the Cherokee Trail of Tears, where people from that tribe were violently forced to relocate from Georgia to what is now modern-day Oklahoma, but there were officially five of these violent "relocations" (see also the Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, and Chickasaw "removals").

Then, when this "desert" was deemed valuable, that land was also seized bit by bit. Indian territory would be abolished, and most of this new land would eventually be ceded to white settlers and become territories and later states. That final act of statehood led to the dissolution of tribal governments and communal lands (see “The Curtis Act of 1898”), which would further incentivize white settlers to ignore tribal laws and illegally claim land.

And we are still taking. As one example, these last few decades have been one of massive oil and natural gas projects that often go through or directly impact indigenous lands (see the Dakota Access pipeline, Keystone X, Line 3, Line 5, etc.). Under the pretext of energy independence, we have willfully violated the sovereignty of many indigenous tribes — not in the distant past, but right now.

Furthermore, this trend does not only apply to indigenous people. How many times has a Browner or Blacker neighborhood been deemed valueless in America, only for the land there to be seized for redevelopment and turned into a highway system or luxury condos (see the racist history of the US highway system)? How many times have cultural touchstones such as African-American Vernacular English or AAVE been otherized, only for them to be recontextualized as "cool" and become part of the "mainstream" (see “cultural appropriation”)?

This has been the pattern given to those living in the American wastelands. Almost everything is demanded of the oppressed, and next to nothing is given in return. And then, when those who are forced to live there nurture that wasteland and turn it into something beautiful, or it's learned that there was something of "value" there all along, colonizers change the rules and take that too. Treaties are broken. Land is seized. Culture "changes."

In the shuffle, my fellow colonizers never bother to acknowledge the harm done both before and after the taking until well after the fact. Rarely are reparations paid, and certainly, the system of racist capitalism that upholds that taking is never dismantled. The conversation is always about individuals having a “conversation” and “unlearning practices” and never about stopping the capitalist system from continuing to do harm.

And as we ignore the causes of the "wasteland" (i.e., white supremacist capitalism), we let it expand as new people come to call it home. With climate change getting worse, which is to say, with the Colorado River drying up, black ash falling over the coasts, the ocean toxifying, animals dying in record numbers, food costs rising, and forests large and small ceasing to exist, there are those looking at the future with sobering resignation. People who were promised a "good life" are terrified that that future will disappear. That if they are lucky, they too will be left to roam the apocalyptic wastelands alongside everyone else.

The wastelands are coming. The wastelands are here. Maybe you'll be wandering in one of them in the future. Maybe you are already there. And if that sounds like your fate, you might be seeing this grim future on the horizon or this grim present you already endure, and asking yourself: "What the f@ck are we going to do about it?"

Well, what the f@ck are we going to do?

There is a portion of people who revel in the coming collapse and think that it will open the door for some profound change (see “accelerationism”), but from what I understand from history, there is nothing to guarantee that the formation of a new wasteland will cause the overarching system to break. As I wrote in the article Forget Collapse: Things May Be Like This Until You Die:

“A terrifying thought is not that everything will end but that things will go on like this forever. We will continue to have a terrible healthcare system, a terrible police state, and terrible parasitic corporations draining all of our wealth, cut by cut. Some places will suddenly lose services after decades of neglect, while others will blissfully remain plugged in, referring to the forgotten places as “bad neighborhoods” and “trashy zip codes.”

It is the privilege of the oppressor to forget history, to unsee the margins and the wastelands they both create and rediscover. We are going to have more people slipping through the cracks in the years to come (over a billion refugees if some studies are to be believed), and that horror in and of itself will not cause change.

As a person who knows my people, I can tell you several choices in the face of this sobering reality: a false one and a true one. The false one is to cling to the teet of those in power, making yourself so incredibly useful and indispensable that when lines are redrawn, as they tend to do, you will find yourself on the right side. The more comfortable side. The one with AC and a nice view.

There is no guarantee you will achieve this feat. You can do truly heinous things for those in power and still be discarded. And if you fail, everyone left around you will hate your guts. But there is always a slim chance that you will make it, living in an insulated compound, filing reports for the people that took everything.

The other option is to fight. It is to reject the White Supremacist, capitalist system eating away at our planet. To join other activists and community members battling against that system and to engage in work that will chip away at it until we are ready to replace it entirely (so easy, I know).

I don't know if this path will succeed either. Colonizers lie, and we lie often. There will be plenty of sweet promises made to weaken people's resolve in the next couple of years (see “greenwashing”). Every last one of them will be broken. We didn't honor the treaties with Indigenous people. Capitalism hasn't uplifted Black America. Green, intersectional capitalism won't save us either, but by the time people realize that things will become more complex: the wasteland will widen.

Yet even if we do fail, the connections made in this struggle will be the ones that also help us in the wastelands because we will have to fight there, too: many are already fighting there. The history of Black, Indigenous, and Brown America has been one of resilience. It's been one of the marches, civil disobedience, and righteous violence.

People have always had to deal with the fallout of being "losers of history" because the apocalypse, the ending of things, isn't the result of the 21st century. It's been around for a while — for some.

Black Mirror's 'Beyond The Sea' Fails to Deconstruct Toxic Masculinity

Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash

The episode Beyond The Sea is probably one of the most disappointing ones in the entire sixth season of Black Mirror. Set in an alternate 1969, it's a story about two astronauts that have the ability to transfer their consciousnesses back down to Earth on their mission's downtime into artificial robots called replicas. This technological feat allows them to maintain their lives back home in a kind of inverse work-from-home situation.

What follows is a story fundamentally uninterested in both the science and the world it has created. The narrative doesn't go into the specifics of how this technology works or the many accompanying technologies that make the space station they work in possible (seriously, the ship has artificial gravity, and they never justify it).

Nor is Beyond The Sea interested in its greater world. A major plot point is that the astronaut David Ross's entire family is killed, and we are never shown grief counseling or any direction or lack thereof from mission command. The narrative is merely these two men and their families: a decision that makes everything almost too small.

Yet, rather than pick apart all the various plotholes, the subject we are going to talk about is how toxic the men are in this episode and if it succeeds or fails in deconstructing toxic masculinity.

Diving into toxic masculinity

It's not very clear that toxic masculinity was the focus of this episode. When scanning the commentary of writers, showrunners, and actors, it seems larger inspirations were the isolation of the COVID pandemic, the Sharon Tate murder by the Manson Family cult, and the early space race.

And so, why focus on toxic masculinity in this review if it's not the show's intention?

Well, regardless of what the showrunner and writer intended, it's an inescapable element of the show itself. When you have an episode focused on two middle-class white leads in 1960s America and how those men process their feelings in the wake of trauma, masculinity is an inescapable element. As Brynna Arens in Den of Geek notes about the show, and more specifically, it's ending: "[It's not] just a commentary on trauma and the vast loneliness of space, [but] also serves as an argument against toxic masculinity."

In the show, we are presented with two types of men: the "good" astronaut and the bad one. The astronaut, Cliff, is the more obvious example of toxic masculinity. He's a stern and emotionally stunted patriarch. He forces his son and wife to obey his orders and struggles to make basic emotional observations.

Cliff is unable to connect with the people in his life, especially David. When he provides access to his replica, he assumes naively that giving him an hour of time on Earth will be enough to process a recent trauma. "Well, it feels like that really worked," he tells his wife with all the emotional intelligence of a sea cucumber.

Meanwhile, the other astronaut David is depicted as initially being one of the "good ones". He has an emotionally stable support network or at least a stereotypical one for the 1960s (i.e. a wife and two kids). He handles situations with grace and humor, and everything in his life appears to be going okay (cue foreshadowing).

However, when "hippies" kill his family for his replica being unnatural (destroying his replica in the process), he is left isolated in the space station for the rest of his four-year term. Cliff then offers up his replica for an hour at a time to David. Cliff does this so that David can still go to Earth and not be as alone, an offer David unsurprisingly accepts. This setup leads to a series of events where David oversteps, which enrages the patriarch, Cliff, enough to have him cut David off from his replica.

David, the narrative seems to suggest, is supposed to be a quintessential "nice guy" — someone who feels entitled to the affections of others around him. He even tries to manipulate Cliff into giving him replica access under the pretext of accountability. After Cliff learns that David has made advances on his wife, he lectures about David's toxicity, saying: "You're a conman. The worst kind. The arrogant kind."

All of these narrative choices should lead us to a fulfilling discussion on toxic masculinity, and yet they sputter for several key reasons.

Why the narrative doesn't work

The first big reason this deconstruction fails is that the narrative's focus is more on the pain of the men in the show than the women and children it uses as props.

For example, Cliff isn't simply a stern man by 1960s standards but is patently abusive. He has moved his social butterfly wife to the countryside, isolating her from all her friends and contacts. He controls what his wife can read and who she can interact with and withholds physical contact. He may not hit her, but he does take a thoroughly possessive approach, telling David in the end that the man can no longer see Lana because she is "his."

His wife eventually confesses that she is unhappy. Yet it's not exactly clear what narratively the show is advancing with this confession because it's framed more as emotional miscommunication than the clear abuse we are seeing. Is this how she really feels, or is she couching her language toward her emotionally abusive husband?

The episode never resolves this tension or makes it plain that what we, as the audience, are witnessing is abuse. We largely don't care about this narrative thread after Lana's confession. There is a huge point made of how stunted the men around her are, Lana being the only figure David is able to cry in front of following his family's death, but narratively the show isn't much better in its treatment of its female characters.

In the end, Lana receives no closure in the episode. She is fridged (i.e. the act of killing off a female character for the development of your male characters) to make the show's ending more impactful for the two men: who both lose their families (her included) by its end. David murders Cliff's family to "level the playing field." As the camera zooms out to the coldness of space, both of them are left drifting through Earth's orbit, no longer tethered to the Earth, and we are meant to be haunted by their situation.

There were ways for this narrative to have been more satisfying, but it would have had to have focused on the reasons why these two men are awful. Perhaps if the show narrowed in on Cliff's abusiveness, finetuned David's nice-guyity, and not killed a bunch of children and women for emotional effect, we would have been left with a less convoluted story.

Instead, this entire message becomes undercut by the second major reason this episode doesn't work, which is that the central conceit of the show — i.e. the isolation David experiences following his family's death — undercuts anything meaningful this episode has to say about masculinity.

To reiterate there is no bereavement plan shown for David. No psychologist counseled him during this process. We, as the viewer, likewise never see any form of mission control at all to assist him. Not as a reflection of 1960s society but merely because it's not there in the narrative at all. We see nothing to help this traumatized man sort through this life event, which is unbelievable even for a high-stakes position like this in the 1960s. David is largely alone in the void of space, left to stew on his misery until he snaps and massacres Cliff's family.

When David starts obsessing over Cliff's family and wife, it's depicted as something we should find disgusting (and it is), but given the intense isolation we are seeing, is it truly such an unbelievable thing? There is a reason isolation has been classified by some as a form of torture, and the phrase cabin fever is part of the popular lexicon.

While men do feel more entitled to violence overall, no one knows how they personally would react in that sort of situation, and it makes this whole conversation dicey because we are left trying to find where the line is between David's toxic masculinity and his insanity.

A Jettisoned Conclusion

To me, when David kills Cliff's entire family, it narratively feels lazy. We are left with a shock ending for shock value in and of itself, and it makes the entire episode's message messier (note: this was a common problem throughout season 6th of Black Mirror, with many episodes ending in death and destruction).

It seemed like the show wanted to be this epic deconstruction of the effect of isolation on the human psyche, with the violence David enacts on Cliff being part of a cycle that men inflict upon each other. David loses his family, and then, unable to really communicate with anyone due to both circumstances and his own emotional stuntedness, breaks down, hurting those more vulnerable than him to get a man's attention. For the entire episode, one can argue that women and children are pawns men use to hurt each other.

Given that most mass shootings are committed by men, it's not an unbelievable ending for a man to take out his anger on women and children (see the news). But the show doesn't put in the necessary work to take this theme home. Many of these observations I am making are subtextual (i.e. the text doesn't spell them out). I am sure that this cyclical commentary on male violence is something a lot of viewers didn't pick up on, not because they are stupid, but because the show did a poor job highlighting this theme — if it intended to highlight it at all.

Worse, the show's central conceit (i.e. being isolated on a spaceship) doesn't help make these actions seem toxic but rather insane. Many people probably walked away with the idea that David killed Cliff's family not because of toxic masculinity but because he's crazy, and that points to the notion that the narrative was not as strong as it could have been.

From a birdseye view (or a spatial one), when you have a text where two men are being awful to each other, is it an epic deconstruction of toxic masculinity or merely an enactment of it?

Why Can’t “Black Mirror” Kill Fascists?

Netflix

The Black Mirror episode Demon 79 is a fun romp set in 1979 England. Protagonist Nida is a Brown woman that works at a department store. The episode is set against a rise in white supremacist fascism, particularly the xenophobic National Front or NF. She stumbles across a demonic rune that forces her to sacrifice three bodies or risk causing nuclear armageddon, leading her to take revenge against some of the more awful figures in her life.

There is a lot to like about this episode. The central relationship between Nida and her demon companion Gaap is delightful. The premise is also something that I love: I can never get enough stories about protagonists killing fascists (a huge reason why I simply loved the show Santa Clarita Diet).

This episode had everything I needed to be one of my favorite ones of the year, and then the ending happened, and it stepped back from its premise in one of the most frustrating ways.

So close, yet so far

For most of the episode, the show had set up some excellent commentary on the nature of politics and fascism. The racism that Nida endures is often more subtle than being directly attacked. A scene near the beginning has her going to the fish and chips place around the corner from her home. There is a sense of tension in the air as she glances at the sight of a skinhead and nervously tries to open her door. The following day she awakes to find the symbol “NF” on her front gate.

This hatred is a constant element in her life and one that she often does not feel empowered to fight against. Nida has intrusive thoughts where she violently punishes the racist men and women who harass her daily, and the arrival of Gaap and the three sacrifices conceit allows her to fight against a system that she would be normally punished for resisting.

The racism of 1979 Britain is a persistent and often banal force. Perhaps one of the best monologues on this issue comes from Conservative party member Michael Smart, who is running a “tough on crime,” “save our neighborhood” campaign — in essence, one filled with xenophobic dog whistles. He is interacting with one of Nida’s coworkers, Vicky, a pretty open NF supporter. He tells her that she should vote for him instead of the NF because he’s just as racist, but unlike the NF, will actually win, saying:

“[NF] is too overt. People feel it’s, um, bad manners. You know why I don’t print stop immigration in gigantic letters on my campaign literature?…Because…You know what I stand for.”

That’s a refreshing monologue in an industry that often tries to depict racism as an overt series of actions rather than a system of harm. Nida’s journey to murderous corruption is fun to watch because it’s centered in response to such a system. She kills a pedophile, a repulsive man that murdered his wife, that man’s roommate, and as her last victim, Nida sets her sights on Conservative nominee Michael Smart. She has been told via demonic premonition that Smart will grow to immense power and eventually succeed in building a surveillance-based ethnostate in Britain. So it seems only natural that this figure even hell has described favorably should be last on the chopping block in Nida’s race to stop the apocalypse.

We are being set up for this big catharsis, where Nida chases down Michael Smart in her car, dressed up to the nines in a fabulous red jacket, and moves to bludgeon him to death with a hammer, but then a f@cking cop arrives and stops her from killing him. Nida (and Gaap) fail their assignment, and the apocalypse begins — though Nida thankfully gets to spend eternity with her demonic companion in some empty cosmic void (yay?).

The failure to stop the apocalypse is not the issue here. Not every story needs to end in a peaceful resolution, especially Black Mirror, which is notorious for its grim conclusions. The strangeness and frustration come in the framing of that last scene, where Nida is held to this moral standard by a f@cking police officer, who convinces her not to kill a man we know would cleanse Britain of millions if he had the opportunity. And she does this for what, kindness?

For me, there is a racial and gendered element that comes with how the scene unfolds. We end with a police officer literally policing the rage of a brown woman who is trying to stop the emergence of both the apocalypse and an ethnostate. It feels paternalistic, and if there had been a white man or even a white woman in the same position, I am not sure the narrative would have let Smart off so easily.

In fact, given that this season started with a white woman smashing a simulated universe and killing billions of digital life in the process (see Joan Is Awful), I can safely say it wouldn’t. I mentioned briefly the Santa Clarita Diet (another Netflix show), but just to reiterate, there is an entire scene in that show where the protagonist kills neo-nazis for food, and we are meant to find it funny. We could also look at the dozens upon dozens of films where men mow nazis down without the viewer batting an eye.

It seemed strange to deny the audience this catharsis and ultimately somewhat cowardly, given how strong they came out against white supremacy in the first half of the episode.

A fiery conclusion

With this narrative, I see a deep squeamishness with the reality that sometimes hateful people must be dealt with by using violence. The story is perfectly fine with pedophiles and murderers getting the axe (or, in this case, hammer), but somehow draws the line at British Hitler. It feels absurd.

The most disappointing fact is that this episode was quite strong, and if it had only made this single adjustment, I would have written an entirely different review. Again, the ending could have still finished sadly with the apocalypse, but at least give us the catharsis, or if you refuse to do that, deny it to us some other way that ties into the themes of the narrative, such as the police officer being an NF supporter who ultimately defends Smart from harm.

Instead, we are left with frustrating paternalism just as dangerous as any apocalypse.

Can Netflix Critique Itself? (ft. Black Mirror)

Netflix

Netflix recently launched its sixth season of the anthology series Black Mirror, and its inaugural episode, Joan Is Awful, is quite a doozy. The episode is a bit of self-parody where a Streamberry viewer (i.e. a viewer from a platform very similar to Netflix) named Joan watches in horror as a show is aired based exactly on her life, plus or minus some significant embellishments (she is played by Salma Hayek, yall).

The second episode, Loch Henry, continues the self-parodying trend with amateur documentarians attempting to create content about a series of gruesome murders in one of their hometowns. They ultimately create this content for Streamberry, and we get an examination of the behind-the-scenes nature of how this content is made and what purposes it serves.

What follows are narratives that heavily come down against the content media environment Netflix helped build. This type of product raises the interesting question of “whether a company like Netflix can actually be receptive to such commentary, even for the ones aired on its own platform?”

The content

At every turn, we are meant to find this content ecosystem to be morally dubious. A scene early on in Joan Is Awful shows Joan consulting a lawyer and learning how the company Streamberry has every right to violate her privacy like this. "…you assigned them the right to exploit all of that," the lawyer explains. "Terms of service.…it would have popped up on your phone or whatever when you first signed up for Streamberry,"

Taking advantage of the obscure ToS agreements all software has you sign is a nightmare scenario and not one many viewers probably support. What follows is a morality play on the dangers of this invasion of privacy. We see Joan's life goes quickly off the rails. She is fired because the show releases her company's information, her finance leaves her, and the public comes to truly hate her.

Joan eventually hatches a plot to stop this show from being produced, which turns out to be the result of some magical quantum computer technology tapping into the 21st century's vast surveillance system all of us opted into via phones and the Internet of Things. The show doesn't bother to examine the specifics, as it's too busy engaging in shenanigans with Salma Hayek, fun double twists about the nature of consciousness in a simulation, and cool celebrity cameos.

You will either find that misdirect tacky and frustrating or fun and entertaining, but wherever you fall on that spectrum, the episode ultimately has little respect for that magical quantum computer technology. It ends with the version of Joan we have been watching smashing the quantum computer. It's revealed that we have been watching a "fake" reality all along. We then cut to the "real" Joan, whose life after destroying the show is better off now that she has taken "charge" of her life.

Likewise, the central premise of Loch Henry is how alienating the content production of true crime documentaries is for the actual victims of said crimes. The twist is that one of the documentarians is too close to the subject matter he is filming. This leads to a series of events that end the lives of both the character Davis's mother and partner. The narrative finishes on a pan of Davis's face alone in a hotel room after the Streamberry series, based on his attempt to uncover the truth, wins a prestigious award. He has success but now feels empty.

We can dive into whether these endings are good stories, but something that I would like to focus on is what it even means for a company like Netflix to produce and profit from such commentary.

The platform

I am not convinced this network will change its behavior after delivering this "self-referential" commentary. The second episode of this season, Loch Henry, which effectively is about how manipulative true crime documentaries are, rings hollow because we all know the platform will not change its behavior in this area. They have released hundreds of such documentaries, and in 2024, we see no signs of this trend stopping.

It isn't just the content either, but how this company responds to criticism. They don't seem to care about growth (outside the financial kind), often telling both internal and external critics to go "fuck themselves," just like the Streamberry representative did to Salma Hayek in Joan Is Awful. Following the Dave Chappelle The Closer controversy, Netflix forwarded an internal memo telling employees to quit if they were offended by the content the company produced. As employees organized around that issue, several were fired, and now that we are amid an anti-trans backlash, the company hasn't appeared to backtrack with the original content (note: a settlement of some kind has been reached, but the details on it are sparse, and it does not change this original point).

There is this frustrating standard where the company puts out “diverse” content that they receive awards and accolades for — content that appears to be the first on the chopping block when financial troubles arise — and then uses that to justify their more problematic moves. As then-co-CEO Ted Sarandos justified in that 2022 memo where he told employees to get over themselves:

“…content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm…We have ‘Sex Education,’ ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ ‘Control Z,’ Hannah Gadsby and Dave Chappelle all on Netflix. Key to this is increasing diversity on the content team itself.”

We see here how Netflix leadership is comfortable weaponizing the more leftist or progressive content they produce and then using its existence to defend and, in some cases, finance more regressive content.

Take, for example, the hit drama Squid Game, a pretty on-the-nose commentary about how our economic system is corrosive. It's about a game show where contestants fight with their lives to secure a considerable cash sum. The contestants on this deadly game show find themselves there by "choice" because of the financial destitution they are enduring outside the games — remove capitalism, and it seems doubtful that the Squid Game would have many contestants (see America is the Squid Game).

And so, what does this Network do with that commentary?

They greenlit a reality show (see Squid Game: The Challenge) that attempted to replicate the actual games of the Squid Game without the satire (i.e., playing it straight as an actual game show, sans the killing off of their contestants). Reality shows are a product that started as a way to circumvent union labor (see the previous writer's strike), and this production has been likewise fraught with reported labor issues. As reported on the infamous Red Light-Green Light challenge filmed during a cold snap in Variety:

“…as the game got underway, the atmosphere changed. Coats were taken away; hand and foot warmers were scooped out of pockets and plimsolls; and the players’ jackets had to remain unzipped in order to display their numbers as well as the fake blood that would squirt from devices strapped to their chests if they were eliminated. When the show’s giant killer doll stopped singing, they had to freeze in position — but what began as the promised two-minute wait was quickly bumped up to 10 and then 15 minutes. Marlene says she counted a 26-minute wait during one round. (Sources close to the production say the wait time increased to allow independent adjudicators to assess the gameplay.”.

Netflix has denied these and other allegations; however, it's hard to take that denial seriously when we have established that they have a history of refusing to respond well to criticism. They also have a history of engaging with other production companies that have reported labor violations (see Love Is Blind).

There does not appear to be much self-reflection with this company's leadership. If Netflix had a Streamberry-esque quantum computer that allowed them to produce Joan Is Awful content based on a technicality like in the show, they probably would.

The point

The thing I keep gravitating to is why call it Streamberry?

Typically, the distancing done in a film or TV show of making a fake brand is for legal or financial reasons. A company doesn't want to suffer a lawsuit from a pissed-off brand, or they don't want to give a competitor free publicity.

In the case of Black Mirror, however, they are parodying themselves. Netflix is the entity that paid for and is hosting this content. This distancing is unnecessary from a legal or financial standpoint and has to do more with psychological distancing. The company may be parodying itself for laughs and profit, but it has no intention of being held accountable or changing its behavior.

A result of true self-reflection is change. If Netflix is still doing the same awful things it has always done (i.e., the promotion of harmful content, suppressing employee organizing, and potential labor violations), then what this new season of Black Mirror represents is not self-reflection but the packaging of the aesthetic of self-reflection to sell as a commercialized product — to you.

And what could be more dystopian than that?

‘XO, KITTY’: A Messy, Terrible Show That Might Be the Future of Content

English: XO Kitty Cast photo at the LA premiere on May 11, 2023

INT. KITTY'S BEDROOM — MORNING

A bright and cheerful room adorned with posters of cute kittens. KITTY, a spirited and sassy 16-year-old, bounces around her bedroom, preparing for an exciting day. She wears a pink shirt that says "Cat Lover" and shorts, her hair tied up in a messy bun. Kitty's phone sits on her bed, buzzing with notifications.

KITTY (Smiling) Today's the day, Kitty Song. You've got this.

Kitty picks up her phone and checks the screen. A series of texts from her friends appear, along with a notification from "Bao Bao," her long-distance boyfriend.

Kitty taps on the notification, her face lighting up as she reads the message.

BAO BAO (TEXT) Can't wait to see you, Kitty. It's been too long. 😺

Kitty squeals with delight and starts typing a response.

KITTY (TEXT) Me too, Bao Bao! I'm on my way to the airport now. Prepare for a surprise of a lifetime. 😼

The intro above was composited by the deep learning algorithm Chat GPT (you may have heard of it) after I told it to "Write the first page of a script for the Netflix show "Kitty, XO," plus or minus some other details for specificity. It's not a good script. "I know she'd be proud, but I also know she'd want me to pack some of her secret cookie recipe to charm Oliver even more," my protagonist says with all the tact of a subpar piece of fan fiction. If the "AI" Revolution were based on clever twists and producing great art, I wouldn't bat an eye as a writer over job security.

The truth is, however, that the world of modern content is not based on artistic merit. XO, Kitty was a poorly written show written by humans, and its ratings have been healthy, seeing as Netflix has already renewed it for a second season. It's the type of content that is the bread and butter of the streaming era, and the future of content depends on whether it can be easily automated.

The story isn't the point

XO, Kitty stars the titular Kitty as she convinces her parents to let her go to an International school to pursue her long-distance boyfriend, Dae. Along the way, she meets new friends, learns more about her dead mom, who also attended the school, and engages in lots and lots of drama.

It's not surprising that a show based on a movie where “the protagonist accidentally sends letters to her past crushes and receives replies back” is based on one or two coincidences. Happy coincidences are the bedrock of the modern Rom-Com, with the meet-cute (i.e., our two romantic leads accidentally meeting) being the foundational trope.

XO, Kitty pushes these coincidences into overdrive. Her pen pal boyfriend she moved to Korea to be with conveniently has money problems the moment she arrives, and so he is forced to date a rich queen bee who needs a boyfriend to appease socialite standards. Kitty bumps into the fake girlfriend, Yuri, coincidentally while en route to her new school and is given a ride in the girl's limo. Kitty then coincidentally is confused as a boy and "forced" to room with Dae and his best friends. And don't even get me started on the weird backstory with Kitty's mom. At every turn, the plot stumbles into a new contrivance to force our characters to interact as much as possible.

As you can tell by now, the writing for this show is not great, and critics panned it. As Abby Cavenaugh writes in Collider: "Unfortunately, XO, Kitty has none of the charm and humor that made us fall in love with Kitty in the first place. It tries, to the point of overkill — but the plotlines are so contrived and frankly ridiculous that this sequel doesn't even reach so-bad-it's-good territory."

The cleverest part is when you learn that Kitty is perhaps bisexual and has a crush on Yuri. That narrative twist recontextualizes bumping into Yuri as a meet-cute and is actually clever. It's the kind of twist that belongs in a better show, and if the writers were smart, they would have given more room for it to breathe, but sadly we are always on to the next contrivance. This show would have benefited from some significant editing. Half of these plotlines could have been axed, yet it's evident that quality was not a concern in their production but popularity and profit.

The show XO, Kitty was greenlit off the back of the success of the To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy, right when the final movie, To All the Boys: Always and Forever (2021), ended in October of that year. It was a purely data-driven decision about how successful that in-universe franchise had been and had nothing to do with the quality of the art.

Netflix has built its brand by making these types of decisions. They have been routinely praised and criticized for relying on analytics, which they often sparingly show to the public. It's impossible to know what exactly drives every renewal or greenlit decision, but it's been quite clear that telling stories within existing IP has been a priority. From a spinoff to The Witcher (see The Witcher: Blood Origin) to multiple stories centering around the Spanish show Money Heist (see Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area, Berlin, etc.), this company's most significant investments are content that tries to ride the coattails of preexisting media, especially media they already have rights to produce or syndicate.

And yet Netflix is by no means the only company ordering, producing, and syndicating content based on this strategy. The Game of Thrones spinoff The House of The Dragon was exclusively about riding its predecessor's success, and multiple may be on the way (see also A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight). Paramount+ and Disney+'s entire strategy has been to retread preexisting IPs (i.e., Star Trek and the MCU/Star Wars, respectively). Once a modern company gets hold of an IP they believe is profitable, there is a natural incentive to keep iterating on the same kinds of stories, even if there isn't a good idea to anchor that story in: the need to advance the IP almost always precedes the need for a story.

And naturally, if that is your starting point, if one only cares about retelling the same stories over and over and over again, why would one value writing?

This technology can't do art

With the launch of ChatGPT 4, it's safe to say that this has been the year of handwringing about AI. There have been a lot of takes about what this technology will mean for the future of work, life, and the nature of art. This debate has intensified with the recent 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, where writers from this union withheld their labor in exchange for better pay and protections. A fight over the implementation of AI was initially a central sticking point in negotiations, and many are now arguing about the future of this technology.

The widespread consensus is split between two poles. Those who are advancing this technology, or at the very least perceive a financial benefit to it, see the advancement and implementation of AI as inevitable. Many executives in Hollywood and beyond conveniently have submitted the idea that AI will generally replace writers. As Nick Bilton argues in Vanity Fair:

“The more I see of these new machine-learning algorithms, though, the more I realize that the future is coming quickly. And in that future, a good number of people could lose their jobs — not to mention their grasp of what originated in the mind of a human or a machine. Soon, you’ll be asking yourself every time you read an article, Did a human write this, or did an algorithm? The answer is: You’ll never know.”

Yet many are quick to point out the supposed ability to replace writers outright doesn't currently exist. Where Are These AIs That Can Write TV Scripts, Exactly? goes the title of an article by Paul Tassi in Forbes. "AI [came] up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit," described co-showrunner for the series Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, to Empire Magazine. As Tassi goes on to say in that Forbes article:

“One particular case that keeps coming up is the idea that AI is going to replace the creative field of writing. While in some cases, hyper-generic SEO bait on websites, that may be true, in fields like TV or film writing, the tech is not there. The tech is not even close to there, and everyone is acting like the extinction of writers in these fields is imminent, and that AI is some cudgel that can be wielded against creatives as they push for higher pay.

It’s a bluff.”

As someone who has been playing with predictive algorithms for a while now (Grammarly, Inferkit, and now ChatGPT), I fall mainly into the latter camp. For this article, I tried very seriously to have ChatGPT reproduce a workable pilot script of Kitty, XO, not because I thought this was a benchmark of high art, but rather the opposite. Kitty, XO is a poorly written show, and if this technology cannot even regurgitate this repetitive content, what hope does it have in replacing all writers?

Although I was eventually able to find success, it was not in the efficient way that men like Nick Bilton are advocating. After ten iterations, I quickly learned that ChatGPT could not write a workable 25-minute script, not even an adequate draft. It can provide formulaic outlines (I'm talking bullet points). It can tell you some familiar tropes, but every prompt I used came away with narratives that were so unusable editing them would require me to effectively rewrite the entire thing from scratch.

It's important to note that this technology isn't AI in the science fiction sense. Artificial General Intelligence is where entities like Hal 9000 can think and plan. Current AI cannot think. It is a very advanced predictive algorithm cribbing work from across the web without the ability to understand if the string of words it's adding truly fits. That lack of context is critical to this discussion because it prevents AI from crafting anything more advanced than SEO copy. If something requires context to make a decision, then this technology will struggle with it.

The way I was finally able to produce a script with ChatGPT that was even half decent was the prolonged and painstaking process of having it generate a scene based on an outline where I inputted a specific set of requirements (e.g., who are the characters, where they are, what they want to accomplish, and how the scene would end), pausing to read it, thinking of what should go next, and then providing a new scene outline with an equally detailed set of requirements. I was writing paragraphs of text to get a rough approximation of each scene I wanted to tell, which inevitably needed to be edited, trimmed down, and rewritten. Every scene was filled with fundamental mistakes, with a lot of crucial context not being transferred over from scene to scene.

Eventually, my prompts were getting so detailed that it called into question the fundamental premise that AI could bang out a script. That prompting work I did wasn't effortless. It required a lot of thinking and planning to do well. Even when there were no major structural mistakes in a scene, all AI-generated dialogue was too clunky to use. Hours in, I realized that it might have been faster to have written a draft on my own.

ChatGPT struggled even to write a bad episode of XO, Kitty — and even then, not without me holding its hand every step of the way. For complex tasks, current AI is very good at producing a lot of words, but if most of that work is utter nonsense, what's the point?

The fear of AI

As far as I can tell, the fear with AI is not that this technology can replace human labor. It simply cannot at any stage do that. It's that those in power use the introduction of this technology to devalue the work of workers so they can pay them less. Even in the most dystopian cases, writers will still need to do a lot of the work to stitch together the jumble of words AI produces into something that is not merely an incomprehensible mess. It's just that those words will be less valued (see The Work of Art in the Age of AI).

We have seen this trend before of companies using disruptive technologies to devalue labor with other industries. Take the example of AI translations. Often the translation produced by modern AI is not perfect. There are a lot of mistakes and context lost with AI translations. Still, many industries have stopped caring, using them as a pretext to pay translators less, even though these translators have to effectively rewrite vast portions of it, and are expected to be paid less. As noted by Max Deryagin, chair of the British Subtitlers' Association in The Guardian about subtitle translations in TV and film:

“There is no lower limit [in pay]. It goes all the way to almost zero. “It should be a golden moment. We have insane volumes of work. [Instead, what he sees is widespread stress and burnout as subtitle translators try to make ends meet].”

This technological innovation has not led to higher gains for workers but the opposite, and the same thing will undoubtedly happen with writing. If you use the speed at which AI can produce work as a justification to reclassify existing writers as non-union prompting engineers or some other such nonsense, industry owners will be in a position to demand a higher rate of productivity for far less. Because, again, telling a good story isn't the point here. It's about generating content that fits a particular itch that current algorithms say existing audiences want to watch and pay for. As long as numbers on a screen tell companies like Netflix that audiences are tuning in, the quality is irrelevant.

Imagine you are a writer. You log into an app and check the job listings. You notice a series description for a new show: "Draft for a show about a girl named Kitty. Must tie into the Netflix series To All The Boys I Loved Before. Main character Kitty moves to Korea to find love. Ten episodes. The plot can be flexible but must be appropriate for the 11 to 17 female demographic."

That's all you get. You place a bid lower than your usual rate because you didn't get any leads yesterday. You get an automatic acceptance, provisional for completion under twelve hours. You start using the app's built-in AI, which costs about $20 a month. You have the AI give you an outline. It requires an hour or so of tweaking.

Once you are confident that the outline is coherent, you painstakingly work from scene to scene, making sure the AI iterates appropriately, having to rewrite dialogue and descriptions as you go along. 10 hours pass. It's a mess, but it makes sense structurally, and you don't have any more time. You hit the submit button. Seconds pass. Your story is fortunately approved, and you are paid a flat rate of $50.04. That draft is sent to another writer and probably another one after that. Only the showrunner will be credited.

This is the future I see happening with AI-assisted writing. One where human labor is a necessary component in an assembly line but is not valued any more than the people who stitch together our clothes or the many other blue-collar professions out there. Again, this is already the reality for many translators in the media field who have studied for years to hone their craft, only to realize their education is no longer leading to reasonable rates.

This is not a new trend with writing either (stares at Medium). One of the main reasons we are seeing more of a reaction now against automation is the unique place TV writing has in our society. The industry is heavily unionized. It is also highly visible, with famous TV writers having a lot of social capital due to social media and the Internet, which allows them to interact with the American public directly.

In other words, automation is starting to affect rich people. We are having this conversation because of the unique privileges associated with this field, but it's still addressing a real problem and one that asks as a society what we want from work and art more broadly.

Well, what do we want from art?

Writing serves an interesting tension because, under capitalism, it is both a product and not one simultaneously. As Ursula K. Le Guin said of literature: "Books aren't just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art."

With AI, we are seeing a clash between these two interests come to a head in a powerful way. On the one side, those that think art and work should not always be tied to profit.

On the other side, there are those that see the point of media as not to make art but to increase numbers on a graph. They are delighted by the prospect of AI because there is nothing more they would love than to automate everything. They want to crush all of humanity into numbers.

Is that what you want too?

Or, to put it another way, would you like everything on TV to be even worse versions of XO, Kitty? Hundreds of XO, Kitty's perfectly tailored for your preferences, but in a way that is not good or even mediocre, but merely okay. Bland sludge where Kitty tells you a rough approximation of what you want to hear so you can shut off your brain and not think about the algorithm you will have to press buttons for in eight hours.

We are a society so keen to introduce technologies at a breakneck speed, comfortable with disruption (and so afraid of being called Luddites) that we do not resist things that seem terrible for fear of being called wrong.

Or, as ChatGPT would say:

“This fear of being labeled as luddites or resistant to progress has led us down a path where we often overlook the potential consequences of embracing new technologies without thorough evaluation. As a result, we find ourselves grappling with unforeseen challenges and ethical dilemmas that arise from our haste. It is crucial for us to strike a balance between innovation and thoughtful consideration, to question and critically assess the implications of each technological advancement. By cultivating a society that encourages constructive dialogue and values foresight over blind adoption, we can navigate the complexities of our rapidly evolving world with greater wisdom and ensure a more sustainable future for all.”

Hey, maybe the robot has a point.

I Support Queer Rights, But…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14596658998/, Source book page

Of course, I support trans rights, but I just think that a rigid definition of gender is how we all must live, and I support legal efforts to make that happen. We must think about the children.

Of course, I support gay people, but you've been loud and mean in asserting your basic humanity, and while I abhor "these new laws," you really should have been a tad nicer. It's your fault, really.

Of course, I think kink, polyamory, and all of that weird "stuff" is fine inside a theoretical bedroom, but must you talk about it? Must you expose potential hypothetical children to the idea that there are other healthy possibilities to monogamy?

These are the justifications I hear a lot. And before we go further, yes, even from self-identified queer people who have internalized the message that they must not take up space in order to remain unharmed by straight society (see You're Delusional if You Think Queer People Are Responsible for This Moral Panic). There are lots of people who are pushing for anti-queerness while at the same time providing themselves with rhetorical cover against accusations of anti-queerness, and I wanted to discuss this tension.

I support queer people, but I think queerness is disgusting

This rhetorical dance is standard both online and off. Again, someone will caveat their statement by saying that they support queerness and then add a but followed by a string of the vilest arguments and justifications. As Maya Forstater argued on the website Crowd Justice:

“I agree that transgender people should not face discrimination and harassment as they live their lives. But I am concerned about the impact of self ID on women and girls, and in particular on single sex spaces and services such as women’s refuges, hostels, prisons, changing rooms and hospital wards, as well as women’s sports.”

Here, we can see a level of cost avoidance going on. Maya Forstater has internalized a bias — in this case, that the act of trans acceptance in public settings will lead to more harassment — but she doesn't want to come out and say that we must not accept trans identity in public life because that would sound awful. There is a social cost for being openly bigoted and calling an entire class of people predators. In multicultural societies such as the US and the UK, it's generally not socially acceptable to say that you want to discriminate against or exterminate a particular group (although that calculus is changing).

We can spend ages trying to understand the psychological reasons for this cost avoidance. Maybe she is playing a political game, hoping to push social conventions toward discrimination and extermination. Maybe she doesn't want to experience the shame and guilt that comes with being open about it. Perhaps she can't even be honest with it herself because doing so would challenge her conception of being a "good person." The answer is unimportant. We can never truly know what is inside someone's heart. Regardless of the justification, this caveat allows her to defer the social and perhaps even psychological costs of trying to strip away a group's social and political rights.

For years, there has been this framing that many people, particularly conservatives, can no longer say certain things. "Nearly 70% of Conservative Students Fear Social Repercussions for Opinions," summarized a recent article from the Young America's Foundation. Many socially regressive people are perfectly aware of the reality that there are things they can't say and have been trying to dance around that reality for a while now. Sometimes, as with this headline, even framing it as oppression.

It's that fear that leads to this sort of rhetorical posturing of faux-acceptance. Anti-queer people might change their rhetoric to be more direct later on, after they have pushed anti-queerness toward more open discrimination and extermination (that's partially what the recent Groomer rhetoric is for), but initially, this caveat can serve as a bridge to lay over untested waters. The "I support X but…" statement and its many derivatives allows advocates to dress up themselves and their discrimination as reasonable to those that may be attracted to the mere language of reasonableness and moderation.

For example, take medium writer Steve QJ's piece Trans Activism's Self-Inflicted Backlash. Steve insists that noted hated speech advocate Matt Walsh is a terrible person — that's his caveat. However, he goes on to say that a deeply flawed documentary Walsh has produced called What Is A Woman? — one that was made quite duplicitously (see You Don't Need To See The Documentary "What is a Woman?") — has some "good points." Steve essentially prefaces his article with the claim that he isn't a bigot and then pivots to not only push anti-trans rhetoric but to place the blame for this latest anti-trans panic onto a narrow set of trans activists.

“For the first time in history, there’s been a decline in LGBT acceptance among young Americans. And it’s hard not to suspect that that decline is being driven by one particular letter. Not because they suddenly hate trans people. Not because they’re “right-wing.” Not because they’re fascists or religious fundamentalists or boomers. But because lesbian, gay and bisexual people aren’t demanding sweeping social and societal changes, all without any debate, under penalty of being hounded out of your school or losing your job or losing your children.”

This argument sounds "reasonable" but ignores that many of the people passing anti-trans legislation never really supported trans people in the first place. Many bigoted activists have consistently tested the waters to see what arguments will turn the public against us (see the 2010 bathroom debates). Steve QJ's view is taking a few edge cases where anti-trans people are fired from their jobs for holding bigoted views (most bigots still aren't) and then claiming that those rare examples (often done by cisgender people reacting to bad publicity) are enough to blame trans people for the discrimination being levied against them.

It also ignores that many queer people have demanded sweeping changes throughout history — yes even the gay and lesbian ones. The grassroots campaign AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was a queer HIV/AIDs movement that capitalized on loud, in-your-face stunts such as "die-ins" that were not well appreciated by the public of the time. In fact, most social justice movements we consider successes now made people deeply uncomfortable. The Black Panthers, now touted for their free school lunch programs and other community services, were often demonized and are still remembered quite poorly. If polling data is to be believed, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s was very unpopular for most of its history.

And, of course, there is the elephant in the room that this rhetoric doesn't always stop at only passive acceptance of bigotry. Steve QJ has rationalized his hatred by claiming that it's not hatred at all. He is shifting the blame from the people passing anti-trans laws to the persecuted minority reacting to that discrimination. It's easy to see this logic being used to justify further radicalization. As laws get worse, trans people respond to that discrimination, and people like Steve point to their “imperfect” reactions as further justification for why they are being harmed. It's the metaphorical equivalent of the "why are you hitting yourself" meme, except instead of an annoying toddler using your arm to hit you in the face, bigots are using your pain and grief to blame you for the suffering they are perpetuating, or at the very least, are comfortable bearing witness to.

I have already argued that the US is pushing toward a trans genocide, so I will not retread those arguments here (check out Surprisingly, This Is What a Trans Genocide Looks Like). What I want to highlight is that before the passage of regressive laws and the rounding up of undesirables, there are rhetorical strategies used to defer social costs so that people can be more confident in their discrimination (see also "It's just a joke"), and the "I support X group, but…" tactic is one of them.

But what do we do about it?

Now again, plenty of people are not using this rhetoric maliciously. Not everyone who is anti-queer is a fascist. However, the foundation for fascism is there. If all it takes to get one to abandon their support for a marginalized group is the mere assuaging of one's shame, then one can be taken to some pretty dark places. It has not been lost on me that people were radicalized against queer people in a rapid amount of time, with the tide turning against issues like children being able to access puberty blockers and trans people being able to use the bathroom of their choice.

And so the natural question becomes, how do you deal with this caveat?

In some ways, I am not sure if you can do this directly. If someone is building up a psychological shield because they don't want to be held accountable for their words and actions, they are likely to meet you with defensiveness rather than meaningful dialogue. The idea that you can "win" against that is a tad naive. All you can do is politely offer resistance (or don’t) and then move on.

From a movement level, the answer to this problem comes from who we decide to prioritize, a fact many people have mentioned before (see The Alt-Right Playbook: The Cost of Doing Business, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, etc.). While deradicalization will always have a niche place, it's our base that we need to expand. Maybe focus more on reaching out to liberals and leftists who are merely misinformed, not moderates and conservatives who don't care about your humanity and are only looking for you to provide them absolution for their shame.

Ultimately, base-building is what is needed to be done. Find the people that don’t need years of work but merely a nudge, and then find a hundred more. That scales much more quickly than arguing with the metaphorical equivalent of a brick wall.

The Sadly Authoritarian Nature of the Modern Workplace

CIPHR Connect: Flickr

People often glamorize the life of a boss. This was the appeal of Donald Trump's reality TV show, The Apprentice (and for some, his presidency in general). He had people present to him their ideas, and ultimately, with his infamous catchword, "You're Fired," he got to decide if they were worth his time.

People loved that show, and its successor Celebrity Apprentice, with it consistently garnering millions of views. There has been a lot of speculation for why, but to theorize, I believe it's because people love the idea of being a boss, and the show allowed them to do that vicariously. Many Americans report wanting to be their own bosses in survey data, and that makes sense because most jobs suck (see “Bullshit Jobs”), and at least on top of the workplace pyramid, things seem more manageable.

Yet that centralization of power that many of us covet comes with it the right to lay down the law for all those working beneath you. When someone works for a business, it's the boss that has the ultimate say, and that lack of freedom is a dynamic underpinning most of our working life.

The authoritarianism of the workplace

Do you think that your workplace is fair?

I am not referring to the more abstract answer of whether, philosophically, the nature of work and existence is fair. We are born into a random universe, and shit happens. I am talking about how your boss, your leader in the workplace, governs.

When your company's executives make decisions, do they have to factor in your wants, needs, or suggestions at all?

When they have wronged you, are there any mechanisms within the organization (i.e., not outside like the courts, your union steward, or a lawyer) that allow you to receive proper restitution? Entities that prioritize your needs rather than the companies (so not HR)?

The answer for many is no.

For example, there is a common trend in businesses where management tries to make situations so intolerable that they force employees to quit (see "constructive dismissal"). If you are hourly, a company may cut your hours (or your store's hours in general) or make scheduling shifts and time off in advance more challenging. A boss might tell one's employees they are unwanted and deny them essential resources such as air-conditioning during the height of summer — all to make their employees' financial, psychological, and material situation at work so terrible that they "decide" to part ways. As someone posted in one workplace horror story:

“I discovered my boss was stealing around $8,000 of my salary a year. She was classifying my position and pay differently in budgeting reports to the federal and state government, and that difference was going directly to her salary. I confronted her, and after much resistance, it was corrected, but it didn’t come without retaliation. I was also denied the back-pay she had stolen from me. She retaliated relentlessly and gave me a poor performance review. My coworkers were also asked to review me and provided high scores that didn’t match hers. I was also monitored every hour and given frivolous tasks.

…HR did nothing to help me and was only there to protect the misconduct of management. Remember this — corruption is a chain. On my last day, they also tried to audit me. All I did was try to fight for what I was worth and avoid exploitation. My boss was embezzling money and faced no punishment at all. My advice to anyone facing these issues at work is to leave immediately. I spoke with lawyers who told me that there is rarely any accountability when it comes to workplace misconduct from management. It makes me sick that I was gaslit and treated this way for fighting for correct compensation.”

This scenario sounds like a fringe case, but elements of it are shockingly common. One 2017 study indicated that one in five American workers believed they worked in a hostile environment. A 2021 study showed that just under half of all respondents indicated experiencing harassment at work.

There are laws, of course, that are meant to stop such discrimination (as well as many others), but these are typically imposed from outside the organization (e.g., laws, unions, etc.), not within, and they are not always enforced well. For example, workers are terminated all the time for union organizing — organizing that US citizens are legally entitled to do — but that doesn't stop companies such as Starbucks and Amazon from conveniently laying off workers that just so happen to be agitating for unionization. The insecure and one-sided nature of many jobs means that if your boss (or the company leadership higher up the chain) doesn't like you, they can fire you quite quickly under some other pretext, such as being late for a minute after your shift starts.

These outside-the-workplace rights also require resources for an employee to assert them in the first place. If an employee needs to hire a lawyer to go toe-to-toe against their employer, an entity with multiple people at its disposal, then increasingly, those rights will belong only to those who can afford to utilize them. Winning an employment lawsuit is statistically a tough feat to accomplish. A study out of Cornell Law School analyzing claims from 1979 to 2006 found that employees in an employment discrimination lawsuit only won 15% of the time (as opposed to 51% in non-employee cases). It's not any better in the current decade.

More so, many of these inadequate, external laws meant to make workplaces a little fairer are actively chipped away by more conservative (and corporatist) interests. One of the main reasons unionization has dipped dramatically is because of a campaign to pass anti-union efforts such as "right-to-work" laws across the country — many pushed by leaders heavily financed by corporations. We can say the same with employment cases, with Congress consistently underfunding the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the chief body meant to enforce the prosecutions of such violations.

Any business that works hard to remove external advocates and resources from its workers is not one that ultimately respects them. Not all businesses were behind these legislative efforts (the business community is not a monolith), but in truth, there isn't an opposing force from the business community trying to expand worker rights either. At best, many are indifferent and, at worst, actively trying to undermine the bargaining power of their employees.

This imbalance relates to how contract labor is inherently structured. A worker — due to requiring resources to secure housing, food, and healthcare — must often sell their labor to a business to live. Unless one has a union to help negotiate prices or is tremendously privileged, they are already at a disadvantage negotiating an employment contract independently. An individual will always have fewer resources than a collective, especially one able to contract its own legal team.

Furthermore, a worker's highest level of negotiating power happens before they are an employee because that's when one can truly walk away and pretend they are equals (although that might not be a genuine possibility depending on their financial situation). It's that transaction that dictates an employee's power inside the business, and decision-making is rarely provided, and certainly not significant decision-making. Ask yourself the last time you could vote on any important decision as an employee that your company was making.

Once an employee agrees to a contract, the power differential between worker and boss only increases because they now rely on their employer's resources to subsist. If they were not able to secure power in that initial round of negotiations, then outside a very tenuous managerial track, it is doubtful appeasement to internal management will help there. And even if that is successful, it certainly cannot be for everyone (note: this is your friendly reminder that only a handful of people can ever be managers).

As a result, most employees essentially don't have a say in day-to-day decisions — and few have ways to file grievances and push for reforms that don't prioritize the company's needs first. Overwhelmingly one's boss only factors in their employee’s feedback if they believe it's a good thing to do. And even then, it's usually about the productivity and value that that leader can extract from their employee.

From dictating one's attire to, in some cases, one's physical appearance, bosses have tremendous control over what an employee can do at work — i.e., the place the latter spends most of their working hours residing within. If an employee disagrees with that decision-making or feels wronged by it, but their boss doesn't think it's valuable feedback, then that's tough shit for their employee.

All things considered, that feels quite authoritarian.

Conclusion: we need democracy in the workplace

None of this is how a fair exchange should work. Given everything we have mentioned, we can make the case that the modern workplace is anti-democratic. Democracy is about all participants having some say in decision-making. The entity wants to do X, and you get some (not total) say on whether that happens. The modern workplace is a strictly dictatorial structure where you are told to do X regardless of whether you think it's a good idea — and can sometimes be removed from your organization for providing that feedback.

In other words, authoritarianism.

Now you may agree with preserving the strict hierarchy we have described for “efficiencies” sake, but we shouldn't pretend these institutions are egalitarian. Workplaces aren't a democracy. They aren’t a family. They aren't really even a community as much as a strict chain of command where you are hired to do X, and your needs will always be secondary to X.

The natural question for some is, ‘How does one turn workplaces into real democracies?’

Ultimately, decision-making needs to be expanded to the people who work there. Unionization (i.e., electing an outside firm run by workers to help negotiate contracts and facilitate disputes) is often floated as a solution to this, but as much as I love unions, they don't solve the fundamental problem we are discussing. They are necessary, but they are still an outside mechanism putting constraints on your place of work and not redistribution of who owns what. They can fall victim to the same problems we have discussed. Companies coopt and sidestep union regulations all the time (see “employer-dominated unions”).

To change the incentive structure, we again need workplaces themselves to be democratized. This can come in the form of companies electing workers to sit on their boards (see “worker boards”), literally dividing up the ownership of the company to everyone that works there in an equitable way (see “worker coops”), internally electing executive functions like your CEO, CFO, etc., and many, many more. There are countless different (and not mutually exclusive ways) to democratize a workplace (and union power can help achieve them).

Knowing that workplaces are authoritarian, will you defend this structure or work to change it? Because the one thing we know about democracy is that it's not a given: it must be fought for.

No, a 4th Stimulus Check is Not "Just Around the Corner"

Back in 2020, I wrote a piece called "The Men Who Sold the False Hope of Stimulus Checks" that chronicled an online trend of "finance gurus" reporting about news on the potential release of a second round of stimulus checks. This was after the Trump administration gave out $1200 checks, and people eagerly awaited a second one (there would be three total). An entire cottage industry emerged that tried to tap into people's desperation and, in the process, often directed followers to "get-rich-quick" courses and services. As I wrote in that initial article:

“The men who preached stimulus updates…could have said that a second stimulus check was months away. They maybe could have even scrutinized the specific political leaders who held up negotiations and told their followers to bother them. Instead, they instructed cash-strapped viewers to buy stock and to sign up for get-rich classes they couldn’t afford, and we should never forget it.”

Now, years later, it's safe to say that a fourth round of stimulus checks on the federal level will not happen in the foreseeable future (note: some states and cities are distributing funds to particular groups). However, some people are still putting forth the idea that a chunk of money is just around the corner.

And so let's once again return to the good, the bad, and the downright despicable of this persistent element of the attention economy.

This is a weird grift

Something that needs to be underscored from the start is that, politically, a fourth stimulus check is a non-starter right now. No one on the Hill is seriously entertaining this idea. As the blog TEC Talks states bluntly (and correctly) in their video 4th Stimulus Check The TRUTH | Talk vs Reality: "It's not even close to happening. I do not hear any politicians talking about a stimulus check."

The House of Representatives, which the Republican Party controls, will not award the Biden administration an easy victory by handing out $1400 checks to every American. They are not incentivized to give them that economic win. If a severe economic downturn occurs before the election, they will blame the Democrats for it and then move to pass legislation once the election cycle is over. We have at least a year of inactivity on this issue.

Yet telling people this more sobering reality is not the type of content that gets clicks. Instead, many of these content creators postulate about the "near" certainty of stimulus checks and then dance around the issue for their video's entire duration.

Take, for example, Blind to Billionaire, who, in their video, $1,400 4th Stimulus Check with the 2023 Recession, argues that a more than mild recession is likely, and if that happens, a stimulus check is quite possible. He says: "Basically, we're writing [a recession] in the books here. It's coming. How big is it going to be? Well, that's still to be determined. We won't know until we're in it, and then we'll start to see Congress frantically panicking all around…[and passing] packages."

However, since recessions are an inevitable aspect of capitalism (a great system we got here), his statement is almost as helpful as saying one day it will rain. Of course, we will hit a recession one day — that doesn't mean stimulus checks granted to individual Americans are an inevitability.

Worse, Blind to Billionaire takes an almost conspiratorial tone with how he talks about this issue, saying the Feds don't want to cause a panic, and so "they" are keeping the truth from "us." In that same video, he asserts: "The Federal Reserve knows better. They know that if they were to come out and say, 'Oh yeah, we're going to see a pretty bad recession in the second half of 2023, they would cause panic and chaos in the markets." He is basically suggesting that all timid comments from the Federal Reserve indicate a massive downturn is coming.

Similar speculations are made by the Youtuber Josh Anderson, who, about a month ago, argued that there is a "pretty big chance for a fourth Federal stimulus check to go out maybe later this year or perhaps in early 2024." He's referencing the same announcement from the Federal Reserve about a mild recession, and again, given the political hurdles we have already described, this language is misleading. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would rather lick the wigs of every drag queen in the state of Florida than give Democrats the tiniest inkling of a political victory.

Then there are the users who are more transparent in their grift. How To Guys, for example, started as a Tech channel, producing videos about Windows's Operating System and Home Assistance Installation tutorials. Yet stimulus content has become their channel's entire personality, and based on the nearly incomprehensible descriptions underneath every video, they are pretty blatantly doing this content to try to gain the algorithm.

Captured under FOURTH STIMULUS CHECK UPDATE: WILL AMERICANS RECEIVE ANOTHER STIMULUS CHECK IN 2023?

It seems they are cultivating an audience on people's desperation because that's where the market is. Again there are dozens of these channels (see also Meet Bailey David, TrueLife Investing, and more). Most of them are regurgitating the same updates, often widely speculating, to an audience of desperate people. They have titles and hooks that provide the false hope that "maybe soon" a stimulus check is coming. Any conversation not grounded in the fact this stimulus will not happen soon is lying to its audience.

And, of course, this anxiety all these creators are tapping into is used not only to channel attention but, for some, to secure specific financial benefits. Creators like Josh Anderson often direct their followers to signup for stock applications such as WeBull and MooMoo. Blind to Billionaire regularly get sponsors for their videos. Many of the others we have talked about consistently give away gift cards to their audiences (a common online growth strategy), undoubtedly in the hope that they, too, will be big enough to receive similar sponsorship deals one day.

It seems ethically dubious to use the attention of people desperate for a $1,000 check, which all things considered is not a terrible amount of money in a US context, and to build an audience off of that — let alone influence that mostly poor audience to buy stocks. All sponsorships bring with them some ethical dilemmas (an issue we will not be touching today in this article), but this area of content seems particularly fraught.

Conclusion

Listen, it's hard to be a content creator, and many of the most successful are capitalizing on some questionable practices (see The World of Online Publishing Makes Liars of Us All). However, when your entire business model is about providing false hope of relief, I question your ethics.

Conversely, we have excellent content creators giving good financial and political advice. I briefly mentioned TEC Talks, which has been quite clear about another round of federal stimulus checks not being on the horizon. I am also a massive fan of The Financial Diet. People can clearly do this work well enough, but we should be critical of when others are doing a poor job, and most of the people mentioned in this article are doing a lousy job.

Again, Federal stimulus is not anywhere likely until after the 2024 election, and even in a genuinely terrible economy, the stimulus doesn't require a flat check being sent to every American. It could come in the form of business grants or loans, or tax credits for people with low incomes. We should not assume that an economic downturn, even a bad one, will make our leaders so magnanimous — they usually must be made to be.

Ultimately, be careful who gives you advice on the Internet and pay attention to their motivations (yes, even mine). Some creators want you hooked regardless of the consequences, even if that means serving up a steady supply of false hope and regret.

The Ugly-Looking Propaganda Mill in Illinois (ft. The Heartland Institute)

Why hello there, traveler, and welcome to the "Apocalypse Tour." This is the walking and architecture tour for all those catastrophe lovers out there, where we note the locations that significantly impacted species 947's collapse (947 were also known as humanity [hyoo·ma·nuh·tee]). We discuss the physical, digital, and sensual locations that contributed to humanity's untimely end on a tiny planet called Earth in the year 90,423 XE (what humans may know as 2XXX AD).

Today, we are looking at a propaganda monger called The Heartland Institute, which produced denialist literature meant to convince Species 947 that everything was fine and that their environment was not, in fact, collapsing. Denialists are common in collapsing ecosystems (for a more infamous example, see the wedon'tgiveaglorp death cult of Deoruta VI).

The headquarters for this unsavory organization was tucked away in an ecologically unstable community known as a suburb [suh·brb] — a type of community known for its unsightly and wonderfully disgusting architecture. The Heartland Institute was no different from every other sprawling building constructed during the downfall of human civilization. The giant house, referred to as a McMansion after a popular meat patty of the time, was a massive tan structure that snaked its way down a suburban street.

One immediately comes away with the impression that there is much to look at and not at the same time. One could be mistaken for believing that some unforgiving God duplicated the same hideous features over and over again in a holovid-building game. Why the flat walls that eke across the property? Why the hideous window frames that, when shut, make it look like the house is boarded up? And why the green sign vaguely reminiscent of an upscale Earthling dining establishment known as Olive Gardin (no, connection, as far as I can tell)?

Ultimately, why were so many resources spent building something that made it seem like even the architect was bored designing it? We may never know.

What we do know from temporal research is that the massive size and unfriendly composition are partly because suburbs were about an individual's right to have a lot of stuff over community resources and emotional connections. That may seem strange and unhealthy to a species like yours, capable of surviving for millions of years without imploding, but the economic and philosophical foundations of the American Empire were deeply selfish and unstable. History has proved that point for us!

In a suburb, ideally, one interacted with as few individuals as possible. They required the use of metal death vehicles called cars to move around from place to place. An informal caste system existed between those who used such vehicles, called car-users, who found it easy to reach almost anywhere in their community, and those who shamefully decided to use their appendages, known as legs, to get around instead. These latter beings were referred to as pedestrians, and extra points were awarded to humans who ran over them with their death vehicles — something that reminds me of a game popular in the lowest levels of the Galactic Capital.

The humans behind The Heartland Institute loved this way of life. They loved cars, hitting things with said cars, and they especially loved that these vehicles were powered by gases that generated death chemicals such as carbon dioxide as a byproduct. It was essential to this organization that the production of these death chemicals went unabated. The Heartland Institute produced propaganda downplaying or denying outright these chemicals' contribution to the climate adjustment period we all know eventually destroyed their ecosystem.

For example, check out this denialist propaganda by Linnea Lueken, released in the human year of 2023, arguing that fracking, a process that used the pressure of a water-mineral compound to extract oil and gas from beneath the surface of the Earth, did not cause water pollution.

Oh, Lueken, her delusion would almost be adorable if it did not help contribute to the extinction of most humans on the planet, plus or minus one or two warring tribes. For a more credible source on fracking, please check out this human study examining the risk fracking had on infant development, this breakdown of a study proving that it contaminated water in Wyoming, or just use your common sense that there are consequences for putting contaminated water into the ground.

The Heartland Institute was founded in 1984, as Species 947's oil and gas industry was beginning to realize the harm it was having on the planet. The token hoarders in charge of such businesses sought to fund a competing narrative that muddied the waters, as the now-extinct Earth saying went. It was specifically founded by David H. Padden, a former director of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Both Cato and Heartland allegedly received heavy funding from members of the old and gas industry. The Heartland Institute did not publicly disclose its funders; however, various reporting from the historical archives noted funders such as the Mercers (who made money from hoarding shiny circuitry) and the Koch Foundation (a gas company), among others (see the Financial Money Slugs of Ollillon to better understand the inner psychology of such parasites).

The organization had been noted for convening an annual "International Conference on Climate Change," where some of the biggest whose who of climate denialists came together to assure themselves that they definitely were not leading to the death of the planet. Fun fact, the last conference ever, happened secretly inside a billionaire's survival bunker. A faulty plumbing line burst, drowning everyone there (an all too common occurrence for those bunkers, but that's a topic for another time).

For our temporal travelers, if you would like to visit The Heartland Institute over at 3939 N Wilke Rd, Arlington Heights, IL, know that all suburban Meat Patty houses are quite concerned with privacy and security. A thick hedge surrounded the perimeter well into what humans would call the 21st century — although, like everything in suburbia, it is pretty accessible by a metal death vehicle.

Note — for the humans who have somehow bypassed our encryption protocols, take comfort in the fact that this is a joke from a normal human and not a retrospective on your species' imminent demise.

DO NOT use this information to stop this future because that would create a time paradox and go against your people's laws, as well as Medium's ToS., which I'm told are very important. I AM NOT encouraging you to take the law into your own hands, something I cannot do as an appendageless species.

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Queen Charlotte & the Pitfalls of Representational Politics

photo by Shakko, Portrait of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818)

The Bridgerton series has officially become an expanded universe with the series Queen Charlotte. The story chronicles the origin of the titular Queen and her tumultuous relationship with King George, which, in this alternate history, leads to the desegregation of British High Society.

There’s a lot to unpack on this show. A surprising delight was how they handled the insensitively named “Madness of King George” (who most likely had bipolar disorder) with actual compassion. The show also included a gay romance and, of course, had plenty of BIPOC characters navigating these new halls of power in style.

Yet, it’s the lack of class commentary that we will examine today. This show advances a form of representational politics that ultimately is very hollow.

A royal problem

Unlike in Bridgerton, the exploration of race is present in the show from the onset. Again, the story is about the desegregation of British High Society (cheekily called “The Great Experiment”), which happens matter-of-factly after King George’s mother accidentally learns that her son’s bride-to-be from Germany is Black. The Queen gives several BIPOC people from the 1% titles to save face.

The contrivance for why this happens is unbelievable and silly from our perspective (see the Royal family’s reaction to Meghan Markle in the 21st century), but for the most part, we are meant to absorb these beats uncritically. Queen Charlotte, the show, not the person, tells the viewer exactly how it wants to be examined. In a wink and a nod to the audience, the gossipmonger Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julie Andrews) narrates: “[This story] is not a history lesson. It is fiction inspired by fact. All liberties taken by the author are quite intentional.”

In other words, stop taking this fun, ahistorical piece of media seriously.

Yet this bit of commentary misses the point of what a lot of the criticism around the original Bridgerton was about. While some triggered conservatives were angered by the alleged revisionism (a point I am not here to defend), many people on the left were not criticizing it for historical accuracy. A work of fiction does not have to be a documentary. Stories can be illogical and ahistorical if there is a reason to do so within the narrative.

However, what a story cannot do and cannot be is apolitical. All narratives have messages being advocated for, which deserve to be criticized. And Queen Charlotte has repeatedly received such criticism for uncritically placing a Black woman at the head of a very racist and exploitative empire on the one hand and advancing a type of meritocratic politics on the other. As the creator Princess Weekes argues in Queen Charlotte & The Bridgerton Problem:

“When it comes to Black people playing monarchs, British monarchs and [not in a theater way]…things get a little messy because of slavery, because of imperialism. Because of what all of that means.”

It’s this historical context that the show both ignores and embraces simultaneously. We are not meant to think about the horrors of colonialism (more on this later), but much of the plot is again about the ups and downs of desegregation. There is an entire subplot on whether the titles awarded will transfer to the heirs of this new Black and Brown aristocracy or if these gains will last a single generation. The narrative wants one to engage with this theme, and from the context, it clearly, wants one to walk away with the moral that royal desegregation is a good thing. “With one evening, one party, we have created more change, stepped forward more than Britain has in the last century. More than I would have dreamed,” one character says of an attempt to integrate the aristocracy.

The show is advocating strongly for the idea that it’s a good thing Black and Brown entrepreneurs and capitalists are being let into the upper reaches of society. “I never thought I would see this day,” the misogynistic Lord Danbury says, admiring the new land bequeathed to him, nameless servants in the background. He continues: “…the old days are over, and that this is a new world. That men are men regardless from whence they come.” One can call this outlook representational politics, or the idea that expanding who is represented in the halls of power will cause other changes to snowball.

Yet who are the old days over for?

Certainly not the many voiceless servants we see throughout the show. This assumption that we should fantasize about letting marginalized members into the halls of oppressive institutions deserves criticism. Because while the world might be getting better for the Queen Charlotte’s and Lady Danbury’s of the world, it’s a debate whether this approach truly helps those at the bottom.

Representational Empire

The British Empire may have desegregated its nobility in both Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte, but it’s still an empire. The aesthetics of their imperial holdings are almost immediate, as the protagonist Queen Charlotte lectures about the Indian sapphires in her dress in one of the earliest scenes in the first episode. The show is very much about the royals: their money, their wealth, and the countless nameless people who serve them, with very little consideration for all the horrors that gave them those shiny jewels.

There is a particularly telling scene where Queen Charlotte is told through a series of interactions that she is out-of-touch and that her “walls are too high.” She learns that her decision to pick her own oranges has led to some of her staff’s dismissal — although it’s not entirely clear if they were switched over to another position or were fired outright. She begins to feel guilty, but we don’t see her try to help these staffers — in fact, she later argues the necessity for her high status to benevolently protect her subjects.

The decision she makes to rectify her insecurities about her power is to attend a ball hosted by a fellow Black royal. It’s this action that King George accredits to being the biggest change to Britain “in the last century.” We are supposed to be comforted by defining progress very narrowly to the expansion of the upper class when historically, we know this Empire they seek to find power in was detrimental to the lives of so many people. The British Empire’s policies would go on to kill hundreds of millions during the age of colonialism. In the early 1800s, when Bridgerton was set, slavery was still very much legal in the Empire.

These decisions still negatively impact the lives of people to this day. How this Empire drew up borders from everything to the partition of India and Pakistan to the Middle East continues to have devastating geopolitical consequences. This is not to mention the resource extraction that British companies (as well as the US and other European ones) are still doing to the Global South.

It’s perfectly fine to tell a story with royals, but when one’s narrative is about how “cool” it would be to diversify the institution without providing the context of its horrors, the story ends up laundering that institution’s reputation. The conversation ends up being about who is in the room of these institutions and if they can “modernize” or not, and not whether these rooms should have existed in the first place.

Now, fictional narratives don’t have to talk about these issues in a historical way. The Bridgerton universe certainly doesn’t, but how they narratively approach the problem of monarchy, particularly the British monarchy (i.e., whether it’s ethical or not), deserves to be criticized. The one time the monarchy’s dissolution is brought up is in jest when King George mentions what’s at stake if he doesn’t appear before High Society, and it’s framed as a bad thing. If we are not getting points of view in support of abolishment (and we don’t), an alternate history that treats de-colonialism thoughtfully (and we aren’t), or at the very least highlighting the abuse of the monarchy (nope), then the narrative ends up uncritically propping up the importance of this terrible institution.

The show is so firmly planted on the side of royals that non-royals are treated chiefly as passive objects. The public is viewed as sycophantly worshipping the monarchy from a distance. Many nobles, no doubt, felt this way about the public. However, there is a difference between a character’s perspective and the viewpoint of the narrative overall. And Queen Charlotte does not care to examine any of the problems we have mentioned, preferring to go along for the ride. The few non-royal characters, much like the upstairs-downstairs relationships of Downton Abbey, are staffers quite loyal to the people they serve and are mostly narrative objects for their lord’s emotional development.

While the creators had every right to make a work like this one, we are likewise entitled to criticize it for this rather significant failing. Again the British Empire, more broadly speaking, was straight-up evil to the world’s poorer, browner residents, and it is unconvincing that “The Great Experiment” would change that status quo. Is this Blacker aristocracy attempting to disband the East Indian Company? Have they apologized for being instrumental in the slave trade? For it still existing? We certainly don’t know either way because this show doesn’t want to dive into those topics and risk having us instantly lose empathy for our royal characters — Black and white alike.

Instead, the world these new royals are aspiring to is quite conservative. They are accepted into high society because of their wealth, education, and breeding. As a young aristocrat says to rebuke her mother’s blatant racism:

“Mother said they were not us. But the king gave our family a title and land. All the families of the ton got their titles and land from the king…and mother, they are gentlemen. Daddy always defines a gentleman as a well-educated man of a good family…so they are exactly like us. Better in some cases considering several of them are from royal families of their own and have much more money than we do.”

This is an argument based on tradition and meritocratic capitalism, and given this girl’s mother is framed as unreasonable (her husband rolling his eyes and everything), it’s one we are meant to be amenable to. Yet just in the same way that today’s Black and Brown billionaires do not uplift the Black and Brown workers beneath them, we have no indication that this Blacker and Browner aristocracy will engage in more radical politics that helps the working class. The one servant character serving Queen Charlotte who has any story arc does not find acceptance. His gay lover is not around during the flash-forward scenes as it seems queerness is far from accepted in this more tolerant society. The Queen is depicted as so demanding that he has hardly had time to make a life for himself outside of serving her.

This show presents a very selfish and non-intersectional type of diversity, celebrating those at the top who “work hard” (never mind the hundreds of servants in the background who also work hard) for “getting theirs.”

A queenly address

Queen Charlotte’s narrow scope — one only interested in a pastiche of royalty in a way devoid of context — is a very telling one. We are presented with a narrative entirely removed from the effects and reality of monarchy. One that insists that through expanding the representation of those of means, their gains will trickle down to the rest of us.

Despite attempts to frame it otherwise, that is not a progressive narrative but a conservative one. It’s impossible for a pro-monarchist narrative not to be. From Game of Thrones to Downton Abby, this criticism does not apply only to the Bridgerton universe but to most modern monarchy narratives (see Our Obsession with Westeros (and Royalty in General) Is Unhealthy). Queen Charlotte merely makes this problem more visible because we are asked to imagine a world where this terrible institution is “reformed” and instantly comes up against the limits of this perspective.

You cannot morally improve Empire and have it still remain an Empire.

Some will claim not to take this show too seriously, that it’s merely a fantasy, but this is naive. All fantasies have things to say about our world, and Queen Charlotte has profound things to say. Light superficial content does not have an entire subplot where a main character is tortured. With its beautiful messages about mental health acceptance and the need for greater tolerance, it seems silly to say the show does not want its viewers to be moved and occasionally even to think.

We are allowed, as viewers, to disagree with some of the messages advocated here while appreciating others. And when it comes to how this show frames monarchy, my dear gentle reader, it has much to be disagreed with.

America Has Always Been A Pretty Unrealistic Utopia

"American Progress" by John Gast

The United States of America is both a country and an ideal. The Declaration of Independence put forth the principle that we would be a country where "…all men are created equal" and that citizens would have certain "unalienable Rights [such as] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." It is a declaration claiming that all citizens are entitled to certain rights under the law because some of our founders thought they were intrinsic to the human condition.

Yet, for anyone with an even passing understanding of history, this ideal has never remotely lived up to reality. Indigenous inhabitants were pushed from their lands and continue to be treated quite poorly. Black Americans were denied their freedom outright, and even centuries later still have significantly worse outcomes than their whiter counterparts. The freedom of America has been a limited type of freedom denied to many.

When you think about it, America as an ideal is pretty unrealistic, arguably even utopian, but that reality is rarely acknowledged. There is this double standard where defenders of America's "founding" vision use the rhetoric of utopianism to attack alternatives while ignoring the same criticism for themselves. This allows supporters to sidestep calls for change while reinforcing the status quo.

A brief history of misunderstanding utopia

The word utopia (i.e., a seemingly perfect community) has been used pejoratively for a long time. From the often-mentioned famines of the USSR to the eugenics-like prescriptions in Plato's Republic, utopias are commonly thought of as dystopias in disguise. As conservative philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel roughly wrote: "There is a tyranny in the womb of every utopia."

Yet the history behind this concept is more complicated. While the idea has been around for a long, the word itself is commonly attributed to British academic and statesmen Thomas More in his 1551 book, Utopia. It comes from the Greek word outopos, meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. The word itself was a pun of the Greek word eutopos, or good place (although he initially preferred the Latin version Nusquama).

More's book is made up of two parts. The first book is an academic conversation between several fictional and real people about governance, particularly about how one should punish theft. The characters bring up accounts of different political structures, some real, others imaginary, including the Isle of Utopia. Through this dialogue, these characters, one of them being More himself, provide a blistering critique of then-contemporary Europe.

The second part goes into further detail about Utopia — its geography, culture, politics, etc. This island nation supposedly evolved from a "primitive" state of nature to one of near perfection. Instead of focusing on private property laws, they adopted a "communality of possession," which is a fancy way of describing a proto-form of communism. Everything is shared, and "though no one owns anything, everyone is rich." Utopians hated war and detested opulence (note: they also shunned vices and had slavery, so not everything was idyllic).

Our current negative association with the word utopia might have one thinking that More was against many of the principles described in the book, as he has a fictional account of himself rejecting many of Utopia's ideals. There were probably some ideas he did disagree with. However, in an era where criticizing the monarchy could mean literal death (and would eventually lead to his execution over an unrelated matter), this literary distance was, in many ways, a safety measure meant to stave off deadly criticism.

People have often ignored this context, trying to flatten the text to only be about a man railing against an overly idealistic perfectionism—an impression supported by many publishers of the time. As noted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“For much of its reception-history, Utopia has been treated as if it consisted exclusively of Book 2, and this impression was supported by some printed versions which omitted the first book. It was this that gave rise to the misleading adjective “Utopian” with its negative connotations of unreal and unattainable aspiration.”

And yet we must recognize that Thomas More was using the Isle of Utopia as a lens to criticize the monarchies of Western Europe — a political structure that many contemporaries would now label as archaic. Even with the most flowery language, utopian rhetoric is almost always about the present, a call to change and improve broken systems.

The weaponization of utopia

Yet, right now, to call something utopian is practically synonymous with labeling it as a disguised dystopia. "If something seems too good to be true," goes the common saying, "then it is." This especially applies to left-wing policy, which is routinely scolded for being a pie-in-the-sky fantasy, even if the word utopianism is not used to dismiss it.

Take, for example, single-payer healthcare, i.e., the payment of a population's healthcare under a single administrator rather than by many redundant ones. It's common for opponents, even within the Democratic party, to portray this policy as unrealistic or "too expensive." The status quo — one of the most expensive and inefficient medical systems in the modern world — is deemed more practical than one streamlined system because, well, systemic reform simply can't be done. As Joe Biden said on the campaign trail about the plans of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:

“It is totally unrealistic and can’t be done. My plan can occur the day after I’m elected, we can get it done, you don’t have to wait 5–10 years to get it done. I’m not criticizing them personally, but look there’s a little truth in advertising here. Bernie and Elizabeth: How much is your plan going to cost?”

Almost four years later, the biggest healthcare item the Biden administration has managed to implement is Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire in 2025—a bandaid and one easily removable if Republicans ever retake office. Given the reality of how ineffective the incrementalism of Biden has been, this attempt to frame more radical reform as lackluster is disingenuous.

Also, the current medical system, by the standard of money, is again already very inefficient. Healthcare spending per person and as a share of our GDP is already much higher than in most "developed countries, and we have far worse healthcare outcomes than them. Life expectancy has actually been going down for most demographics in the US.

Let’s turn the question around: how is Biden going to solve any of this?

In fact, most advocating for Medicare-for-all aren't pushing for a utopia in the pejorative sense, where everything is perfect, but one that tries to remove the inefficiencies of the current system for something that covers more people. We would pay for it by redirecting the profits from, say, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and focusing those resources that would normally go to shareholders and salary bumps into providing people with actual healthcare. Surprisingly, rather than claiming to be perfectly grounded in a win-win scenario, it's a position that is advocating for political losers (i.e., those who have hoarded wealth via current inefficiencies), and one very much concerned with the practicalities of the current medical system.

By framing systemic reform as utopian you are telling people it's impossible — that anything that is not picking at the margins is insanity. We see this everywhere. Whether framing debates on how we reallocate police budgets (i.e., defunding the police) as "beyond the pale" or calling alternative economic systems "good in theory but not so great in practice", the goal of many on the Right has been to use the language of utopianism to depict all attempts of changing the status quo as either "going too far" or being "unrealistic."

And yet, and we must stress this, this same logic applies to America and all right-wing ideologies trying to depict themselves as realistic and commonsense. It's utopian "nonsense" all the way down.

America is "unrealistically" utopian

The thing about most of the ideologies on the Right is that they are no less utopian. Many religious fundamentalists want to restructure society under the premise of an otherworldly being’s grand design. Ethno-nationalists find that structure in the social constructs of race and ethnicity. Market fundamentalists find salvation through capitalism. Even most centrists believe that the ideal way to structure society is by finding the point in the center of the discourse. It’s all about supporting an ideological framework that one believes will build them as close to perfection as one can get.

The American ideal is no different. The argument often heard is that the principles that structured America (e.g., life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) will lead the country in the right direction. The ideals of the framers that we have come to romanticize in retrospect (not to be confused with the far messier political debates of reality) were that they advocated for a system of "checks and balances," "minority protections," and political compromise that were supposed to make us a more rational society.

And yet, this vision is hard to square with the major drawbacks those utopian principles created in reality (see slavery, genocide, imperialism, etc.). To this day, even some of America's strongest adherents are some of the first to admit its flaw. In the words of a proclamation from the Biden administration:

“This country was established upon the profound but simple idea that all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives. It is an idea America has never fully lived up to, but it is an idea we have never fully walked away from either.”

Here, we get to the central tension because it's rare that American utopianism is accused of being unrealistic in mainstream discourse. When Biden monologues about reaching toward the American ideal, it's treated aspirationally — a goal to reach toward. And yet, under the same logic, shouldn't we treat it with identical disdain? Isn't America something that likewise sounds good in theory but doesn't match up well in reality? Why is American Utopianism treated positively when this exact type of argument would get laughed out of the room for any other competing philosophy?

These are, of course, rhetorical questions. The answer is that American nationalism is the dominant ideal in this country. Otherwise, America the country would not continue to exist. And yet this paradox deserves to be brought up because it forces us to ask whether these utopian ideals are worth striving for in the future. All frameworks have tradeoffs where they are advocating for losers, even if those losers are just the narrow beneficiaries of the previous system.

And so, we must ask ourselves if we are comfortable with the “losers” generated by the current system.

American dysfunction

When we look at the problems we have pointed out, many of them were caused by our founding ideals. The people instrumental in this country's origins were, for example, deeply skeptical of majority rule, or “the tyranny of the majority.” In perhaps one of the most famous Federalist papers, James Madison wrote how the new government would protect against this problem, claiming:

“[I]n the federal republic of the United States… all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.”

The dysfunction of our electoral system, as well as the lopsided hold the current Republican party has over electoral politics, is, in part, because of the institutions created to "safeguard" against this founding fear. The Senate overinflates the power of less populous states by ensuring that all of them have the same amount of votes (see the Virginia Compromise). The Electoral College, in its current incarnation, has the same bias, so much so that five presidents have lost the popular vote but won the election. Furthermore, the ridiculously high benchmark to amend the Constitution ensures these policies are very difficult to change — recalcitrance that historically just so happened to empower a small, aristocratic minority.

In fact, the Electoral College was originally conceived as a tool to find a philosopher-like-king of America, who would be just as well-received as George Washington. There was no democratic impulse behind it. As Eric Black argues in Minn Post:

“…it’s worth noting that the Framers had no thought that the president would have a “mandate” from “the people.” They were looking for excellence, not popularity…. [it was] not until the fourth presidential election — the one in 1800 in which Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent president John Adams but inadvertently tied with his own running mate — did the idea develop that a president derived some of his authority from a popular mandate.”

This utopian plan to select the president never happened because the framers had a blindspot when it came to factions. They didn't provide restrictions in the Constitution itself concerning parties because they naively thought their system would be able to ignore them altogether — a very pie-in-the-sky, utopian impulse.

The parties that inevitably formed often decided political nominations in a very cagey, and indirect way. Elections for Senators were decided by state legislators until the early 1900s (note the House was a popularly elected body, albeit from a richer, whiter, more male constituency). Primaries weren’t really a thing until the late 1800s, and they had little significance on the national level until the Democratic Primary of 1960 (imagine that). For much of the 1900s, it was the infamous "backroom deals" of party bosses that came to dominate who would be put on the ballot.

There have been many good reforms in this area, and yet, to this day, political parties in the US continue to be largely private entities that hold a lot of sway over the internal rules of who gets to run under their banner (see the debate schedule). And because other policies limit voting to just two options (see winner-take-all), this effectively allows party leaders to squash dissent on their ideological flanks and slows down more just reforms.

Most of the "gains" we have enjoyed from a social justice standpoint have been the result of slowly dismantling the hold of these founding principles. Many consider it good that the three-fifths compromise (i.e., the part of the Constitution that counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person to inflate the representation of slave-holding states) was abolished. Many not only think that increasing enfranchisement to social minorities was a positive, but that democratizing our elections was preferable to the more closed-door politicking of the past. Yet the architects of this country would be horrified by the ideals we have abandoned, finding themselves more at home in the Republican Party than anywhere on the left.

Rather than being supported by our founding principles, defenders of social justice frequently find themselves crashing against the wall of American Utopianism. And for those raised to believe in the idealistic principles of America, that is a bitter pill to swallow.

A pie-in-the-sky conclusion

We have seen how the rhetoric of utopia has been used to historically dismiss alternatives. When someone labels something as utopian they are criticizing it as unrealistic and ill-fated — a dystopia in disguise. It is a line of attack often meant to preserve the status quo and, in the context of US politics, is particularly weaponized against left-wing alternatives.

Yet most ideological systems have a utopian base (a vision of how things should be) because they are striving for an ideal. This especially applies to America, which was founded on principles that often directly contradicted the reality of what America would become. The Framers wanted to do away with political factions, insulate minorities from majority interests, and create a perfect system of checks and balances. Instead, political factions formed almost immediately, we now very much exist under a tyranny of an oligarchic minority, and the mythical checks and balances created a system so intractable that we cannot even begin to solve our most basic problems.

This is not to dunk on the impulse to build something better. Even if I ultimately disagree with most of the principles the framers held dear, I admire the drive to create a better world. We need utopias to guide us because it's impossible to do away with ideologies, viewpoints, and perspectives. Those who read this article and come away with the moral that all "isms" are flawed have missed the point (and undoubtedly fail to realize that their viewpoints are governed by "isms" as well).

It's the looking back that matters. When one builds a system with the eyes of ideology, which is to say when one builds a system at all, they must have the humility to realize they can be wrong — that the world they wanted to make was not achieved. And to assess the flaws in their vision before the damage stigmatizes so badly that seeing it becomes impossible.

The vision of America, in retrospect, was deeply flawed, and it will not be the last time that a dream goes sour, but hopefully, when we commit to seeing things with different eyes, the damage the next time will not be so profound.

The Owl House Subverted A Generation of Anti-Fascist Media

Deaf-Machbot

Dana Terrace's show, The Owl House, ended on April 8, 2023. It was about a nerdy woman named Luz Noceda who was transported to a magical land called the Boiling Isles. There she learned magic, gathered friends and allies, and faced off against a dictator named Emperor Belos, who wanted everyone to conform to his rule.

There has been a lot of ink spilled, and words typed about how Disney, the network that produced The Owl House, unfairly ended it because of how one executive was uncomfortable with the vibe of this openly queer show (see my article Does Disney Care About Diversity?). We will probably never know the real reason, but I encourage you to read Dana Terrace's own words on the cancellation.

Instead, I want to talk about this shows perspectives on authoritarianism and fascism. Unlike many kids' shows out there, The Owl House gets a lot more confrontational and hands-on with the types of actions it thinks are appropriate for fighting fascists, bucking over a decade of popular media in the process.

A Primer on Cartoon Fascism

Right away, it should be noted that authoritarianism (i.e., a submission to authority and a centralization power) and fascism (i.e., a combination of authoritarianism and a centralized mythos about how the world should be) are very common in children's cartoons. Everything from Steven Universe to Avatar: The Last Airbender to Amphibia has our protagonists facing off against evil authoritarians who control entire countries, planets, or galaxies.

This trope is partly because, strangely enough, fascism can map metaphorically onto traditional family structures. Parents are essentially authoritarians with a direct say over their kids' lives, albeit for a better set of reasons (usually). It's easy to see children imagining themselves rebelling against a strict authority as a substitute for the lack of control in their own lives. All the examples we listed above have plots where characters are interacting with a family member(s) who is a fascist (i.e., Prince Zuko and the Firelord, Steven and the Diamonds, etc.). While these texts directly talk about fascism, they are perhaps even more centrally speaking about family.

This perspective is one of the reasons why many of these shows conclude with relatively peaceful resolutions to their conflicts. Zuko can tell off his father, the Firelord, because Aang removes the Firelord's bending through mystical turtle magic. Steven effectively collapses the Great Diamond Authority by making White Diamon laugh. Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia stops an interdimensional, fascist empire from winning the day by revealing to its monarch some last-minute information (that and also God magic). You can resolve most problems with family members, even abusive ones, through either dialogue or distance (i.e., cutting abusive people out of your life). And so, it makes sense these shows would deliver a similar message.

And yet, and I feel I must stress this, the solution to fascism (and yes, the Diamond Authority, the Fire Nation, and the Amphibian Monarchy are fascist; please look up the actual definition) has never been kindness and distance. Historically it has been violence. Deradicalization may work on an individual level, and even then on a case-by-case basis, but it has and cannot be the primary strategy for dismantling fascist regimes. We didn't defeat the Third Reich by being very nice to Adolf Hitler, and we aren't going to defeat the regimes of today and tomorrow with kindness, either.

Most kids' shows that draw upon authoritarian and fascist villains completely fall apart the moment you stop looking at them through the lens of family. And this is because, in a nutshell, asking victims to engage in an open dialogue with their oppressors is a framework that values the feelings of the oppressor over the harm that oppressor has done and continues to do. We do not have Gods or magical turtles to help us. To save more lives, you often have to prioritize getting dictators out of power through violence (and maybe even death) over changing their minds.

And so, what does this all have to do with The Owl House? Well, its conclusion sets up and completely subverts this trope for the better.

The breaking of a fascist

There is much debate on the exact definition and criteria for fascism. Umberto Eco lists fourteen criteria in their essay Ur Fascism, including hero worship and doublespeak. Scholar Roger Griffin described fascism in two words: palingenetic ultranationalism, or a revolution attempting to reform a nation around a core myth. Regardless of the ideology used to maintain it, its generally regarded as a concentration of government power, a transition into a dictatorship, and a nationalistic mythology that allows dictators to achieve these ends.

We see all these elements in the show The Owl House. Again, the main antagonist is a dictator (i.e., a leader who holds power with very few limitations). Emperor Belos has set up a government that places him at the top of the hierarchy. His rule over the witches beneath him appears to be absolute, with no significant oversight.

He gained power by relying on a foundational lie, claiming to speak on behalf of the Titan, the mythical creature they all live on top of who granted the Isles its magic. Belos uses that myth to try to force every witch into a strict coven system under the promise that this will make everything better. He rises to power by literally promising them national rebirth. Note: there is more to his machinations, including a twist that he is a witch hunter from the 1600s seeking to genocide all witches, but that doesn't change the central premise of him using fascism to gain power.

What's refreshing is how The Owl House depicts our main characters fighting this fascism. The show set up a family dynamic that could have led us to a similar ending as all the other shows we mentioned. The side character Hunter, it's revealed, is a clone made to appear like Belos's deceased brother. We could imagine a twist that rationalizes Belos's genocidal ambitions as an extension of the grief he feels for his dead brother. Hunter would then deradicalize him through a heart-to-heart.

Likewise, Luz muses throughout the last season about whether wanting to kill Belos makes her no worse than him. We again could have seen the heart-to-heart happen through her, where she convinces Belos that modern society now abhors the Witch Trials, and he questions his current path — it's certainly an approach we have seen followed in a previous generation of kids' shows.

Instead, the show refutes this perspective at every turn. While these arguments are made, they do not convince Belos, and he begins his genocide of the Boiling Isles in earnest. There is even a heartbreaking scene where the Collector, a Godlike entity with the mental capacity of a young child, tries to stop the Emperor by saying he "just needs kindness and forgiveness," only for Belos to try to kill him.

Belos is eventually defeated through violence via a fantastic anime-esque fight scene, but what's telling is how the show treats him post-defeat. A magical McGuffin could have allowed Luz to seal him away, remove his powers, or change his mind, but instead, she watches passively as the boiling rain from which the Isles derive their namesake begins to melt him away. He lies to her, saying he is now freed from a curse, and that she should help him. When that fails to garner sympathy, he resorts to false equivalency. "You'll be just as bad, just as conniving, just as evil," he calls out, but the narrative does not accept this framing. Two other characters emerge onto the scene and curb-stomp him to death in an almost comical scene.

It cannot be overemphasized how much of a radical departure this is from all the other narratives we have mentioned in American children's television. There is no massaging away here of how all of us can resolve our differences. We are left with only a cold realization that some awful people, once all other avenues have been exhausted, must be dealt with through violence.

"This is a little more complicated," Luz tells the Collector after he tries to solve the problem of the big bad with kindness. That it is.

A magical conclusion

The closing credits are the most rewarding facet of the show. The Boiling Isles begins the work of not only rebuilding after Belos's genocidal rampage but demilitarizing: Belos's police force is disbanded, the coven system is abolished, and Wild Magic becomes an accepted form of study.

It's difficult to know how this show would have progressed had The Owl House not been prematurely canceled for "not fitting the Disney brand." When shows realize they are headed to the finish line, they sometimes shoot for the moon and add all the elements they wish to do so initially without fear of greater studio oversight. It's not lost on me that Belos's death may have been handled with a lighter touch if given a more proper runway.

We will never know, but speculations aside, I am thankful for how this show ended. In a sea of fascism being a substitute for familial dynamics, it was refreshing for The Owl House to treat this philosophy seriously with the “respect” its adherents deserve.