Another PPG reboot? @.@

Femme Fatale

One of the classic TV tropes (not the website) done to present empowered female characters is to put them in a team of three, and have them work together while dealing with their individual differences. Usually they each have one particular defining trait. Like a girlband gimmick, someone will be The Smart One, The Tough One, The Funny One, maybe even The Leader One. It’s shorthand for creating a “diverse” set of characters but at the same time, it implies that they are at the very least interchangeable.

One of the things I appreciate about Steven Universe is the characters. And for this, I’ll be comparing it with two of the first shows that come to mind when discussing this trope. In order: The Powerpuff Girls, and Totally Spies! The first thing you notice when you look at these characters is this:

(Source: Wikipedia)

PPG was first aired in 1998, and it shows. The characters look identical, except for their assigned colours. From the theme song alone, their roles have already been pre-assigned to them. Blossom as the leader; Bubbles, the “joy and laughter;” Buttercup, the fighter. The majority of episodes have them fighting against a common enemy always an evil villain. (I’ll be talking more about the morality of SU in the future.) The minority of episodes have them resolve conflict revolving around their differences, and these differences are a direct result of the character traits assigned to them. TS does the same thing. Sam is the leader and smart one, Clover is the impulsive “valley girl” with a penchant for shopping and beauty products, and Alex is depicted as more naive and sporty. The three wear identical jumpsuits, go to the same school, and were always together.

In their heyday, they were heralded as important shifts in pop culture, because they put women front and centre as capable and powerful even. The thing is, attempts have more or less lagged since then. Children’s shows now like Monster High and My Little Pony, also featuring a group of female protagonists, fall back on the same formula of having singular defining traits (and colour schemes) for each of their characters. What the visual medium does, though, is emphasise how similar these characters are in physical appearance. Even with Alex, who looks a bit more ethnically different, all these characters will have similar body types, faces, and accents with one another, almost as if they’d been socialised the same way or at the very least had similar upbringing and backgrounds. I’m not saying that they were useless or detrimental to say, the feminist movement or to children’s shows, I’m just saying that the storytelling device seems to have been stuck at that stage.

But in the opening of Steven Universe, this is the first thing viewers see

(Source: Steven Universe Wikia)

Three characters with very different body types, heights, facial features, and body language. Immediately, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, resonate with different sets of viewers because they are different. It’s subtle because they’re just presented to the audience as them. They do not go from homogenous to heterogenous in a transformation. There is a clear visual translation of their uniqueness in their very design. No one has to spell out that Pearl will be more delicate and deliberate in her movements, just from that opening pose. Or that Amethyst will be more rough and tumble in the way she relates with people close to her. Or Garnet, just from her position and sunglasses, projects the image of leadership and self-assuredness. I say these the way I do, very deliberately, because Steven Universe is a show, which continuously develops its characters over the course of the episode. No one has one thing about them, which is just them. Any of them can be rough, angry, sad, graceful, confident, and independent. Certain personality traits though, such as how they relate to other characters, and how they see the world and themselves, tint their actions and development throughout the show.

All three possess skill sets that are unique to them, but also do not define them. As the show progresses, they learn, innovate, and adapt. In future posts, I’ll talk about each at length. Right now, it’s just an overview of something I really appreciate. The dynamic nature of the characters is what not only makes them more relatable, but also pushes the perceptible designing of characters, a trait unique to visual media.