Cartoon Conversations #3: Steven Universe, The Matrix, and the Evolution of the Trans Narrative

Welcome to Cartoon Conversations! The semi-regular written essay series where I break down cartoons, their influence, importance, and purpose because I already look like the kind of guy who would do that so I might as well live up to the stereotype. Due to the sensitivity of the topic in this article, it's important to note beforehand that all views and opinions expressed here are my own and come through the context of a cis-hetero lens. That being said, the subject of societal progression is an interest to me and I hope that I've portrayed this particular group in an if not accurate then at least an appropriate light. So, without further ado: one of the most progressive cartoons in the history of the medium and the reason a ton of conservative parents started panicking about their kids’ sexuality.

Created by esteemed artist and notoriously colorful producer Rebecca Sugar while she was still working on the cult-classic ‘Adventure Time,’ ‘Steven Universe’ follows the eccentric and colorful adventures of the titular character, his single dad, his three polymorphic alien aunts, and the various zany citizens of his sleepy beach town. Over the course of the series, it is revealed that Steven is the half-human son of an alien freedom fighter named Rose Quartz, which makes him a target of the galactic Gem Empire, the same tyrannical government that his mother and friends fought against 5000 years ago. Despite the high-concept sci-fi backdrop to the narrative, the show has a stylized visual palate, unique performances, and deals with themes of identity, sexuality, and, above all, gender. It came out in 2013 and recently wrapped up its fifth season, with plans for a TV movie being announced at last year’s ComiCon.

But for a moment, forget all that. Cast your mind back to a different time, a simpler time. More specifically 1999. A movie comes out with a dazzling visual style, performances unlike anything audiences had seen before, and, despite being a high-concept science-fiction/action-thriller, it took the time to address themes of identity, orientation, and gender in a new and evolving world. It concerned a computer hacker using the new technological medium to discover that the uber-conformist world he’d grown up in was just an illusion created to make him complacent by unseen mechanical overlords. You may have heard of it, it only transformed the cinematic landscape and set the tone of blockbuster filmmaking for the next nine years or so.

I don’t intend to talk about movies all too much in this series, but ‘The Matrix’ series includes the short film compilation ‘The Animatrix’ so I figure I have a little leeway here.

On the surface, the similarities between the two seem circumstantial at best. After all, there’s no shortage of stylized works of pop culture that deal with these very broad themes in new ways. But in the ‘Steven Universe’ season five finale, something changed. Known for its “Steven Bombs” the show has a habit of dropping a handful of fifteen-minute episodes at once every few months, each of which tends to include a major revelation that whiplashes the direction and tone of the show. The season five finale was no exception as it once and for all established in as clear a voice as it possibly could just what and who Steven truly is.

Without boring the unfamiliar with some of the more convoluted details and inner lore of the show (despite being aimed at kids and tweens, this show is super nuanced), Steven is actually two separate people. Half of him is the human child of his father, his own person and identity. The other half is his mother. As in, literally his mother. As in a woman who felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable in her own body and chose to sacrifice it to not only become human, not only become male, but to transition into a separate person entirely. To put it in simpler terms, Steven is the persona his mother took on when she transitioned. Steven is transgender and has been transgender this entire time.

Which brings us back to ‘The Matrix.’

Now, this is where I have to include a little caveat. See, I myself am not transgender and I feel more than a little squeamish about speaking with any authority on the transgender experience, transgender art, or transgender narratives. In fact, I’ve been guilty of some pretty harmful statements concerning the subject when I was young and dumber. I’m especially hesitant to call ‘The Matrix’ a trans narrative as the Watchowski sisters, who wrote and directed the majority of the series, have never confirmed that their magnum opus was a prelude to both of them coming out as transgender women several years later. Textbooks have been written on the subject of fluctuating gender in ‘The Matrix,’ but without authorial intent to back it up, it’s all conjecture and interpretation. And I am in no way qualified to interpret any work as representational of life experiences I did not and will never have myself. I only spoke so confidently about ‘Steven Universe’ being a trans narrative because it was far less subtle with its message and symbolism.

So while I don’t think I can address ‘The Matrix’ as a trans narrative, I can certainly identify deeper connections between it and ‘Steven Universe’ that lend to that theory. For example, Steven comes to the understanding that his existence was predated by that of his mother, Rose Quartz, and her previous identity, Pink Diamond. He is both those people but also his own self, separate from their personas. In ‘Matrix Reloaded,’ the series protagonist Neo learns that, despite being the prophesied chosen one who will save humanity from the Matrix, he is actually one of a series of “chosen ones” who naturally reject the robot’s programming. Both main characters have to face the tough realization that who they are is the continuation of a previously existing identity that tried and failed to operate in their respective worlds.

This realization also causes both of them to make decisions unique to them. After learning that his predecessors all chose to save the hidden human sanctuary of Zion at the expense of their own life and the lives of their loved ones, Neo makes the conscious choice to be true to his own desires by jeopardizing Zion to save his lover. For his part, Steven spends several separate episodes coming to terms with his mother’s violent past as a warrior. He was always something of a pacifist character, but after these revelations he continues to chose the nonviolent path as often as possible, despite having simpler, more violent options available to him.

The matter of choice is also very important to their respective births. Neo is actually the online identity of an average office worker named Thomas Anderson. He took the name Neo to hide his identity during his illegal hacking operations, but transitioned into the Neo persona entirely when he made the choice to take the famous red pill, which allowed him to break free of the Matrix’s control for the first time. This triggers a sequence with lots of rebirth, transformation, and new identity imagery, all of which is very hard to miss. Likewise, from what little the audience is afforded of Steven’s mother through flashbacks, it becomes apparent that she was enamored with the sheer concept of free will. She saw Earth, which was supposed to be her first colony planet, as a world free from the preconceptions and expectations of the rigid Gem Homeworld, a place where she could choose to be someone different than who she was born as, first Rose Quartz and then Steven himself.

There’s also how both series use their antagonists. The primary villain of ‘The Matrix’ is the rogue program Agent Smith, a nigh immortal code within the Matrix itself who can convert anyone within it into a copy of himself, leading to some incredible action sequences where Neo is forced to fight a literal one-man army. It’s indicated that, with his traditionally authoritative appearance, he represents aggressive conformity to socially assigned roles.

In ‘Steven Universe’ the overarching villains are the Diamond Authority, the three remaining Diamond Gems who rule over the Gem Empire. They were once the mother and older-sister analogues to the younger Pink Diamond who never learned of her transition and believed her to be dead. Once they become privy to that information, they each react to it in their own way, ranging from casual disbelief to outright rage. In the finale of season five, they all use language reminiscent of a family unit trying to come to terms with a loved one’s new identity. White Diamond in particular even has similar powers to Agent Smith.

While very different in their goals and motives, both antagonists share several traits. For one, they both insist of using their enemies’ previous name. Smith always refers to Neo as “Mr. Anderson” while the Diamonds don’t fully accept Steven to be Steven until the very tail end of season five. Up to that point, they continued to call him “Pink.” This indicates that they are unwilling or unable to accept their new persona.

There are more indications in ‘The Matrix’ that it is a trans story, but for the context of this essay, it’s only important that you understand that it and ‘Steven Universe’ share near-identical themes and demonstrate them in similar ways. That’s enough of a significant connection that we can now address the opposite. How do these two series differ? What has changed in these kinds of narratives in the years between ‘The Matrix’ and the first season of ‘Steven Universe’? And, perhaps most importantly, how does this reflect on how we as a society view the types of people being represented in these narratives?

The answer to how they differ is pretty evident just by looking at images of the two franchises. ‘The Matrix’ was born in the late 1990s’ and looks like it was custom built to churn out Hot Topic merchandise. Leather trenchcoats, dark glasses, and sexual androgyny were shorthand symbols for violent, counter-culture revolution and the film’s dark, almost pessimistic tone was reflective of the decade. Unlike the previous fifty years, western culture didn’t really have anything to define it in the ‘90s. The Cold War was over, the war on drugs had pretty much decimated the inner cities, and the mainstream popularity of grunge music had already come and gone. Culture itself seemed to have settled into doldrums, broken only by bursts of racial tension and social unrest, preludes to the chaotic reinvention and return of the civil rights crusade that would emerge in the following decades.

1999 in particular was gripped with an overarching sense of ennui, especially among the white, male, upper-middle-class demographic. This bled its way into cinema through the critical and popular reception of films like ‘American Beauty’ and ‘Fight Club.’ At first glance, ‘The Matrix’ seems to mirror these movies. Like the protagonists of those films, the main character of ‘The Matrix’ starts out as a twenty-something white man from a middle-class background who finds his well-paying job and stable life unfulfilling. Unlike the others, however, ‘The Matrix’ targeted a younger generation. Not only was it the only one of these three movies to be rated PG-13, but it was action heavy, dealt with real-world technology analogues that only the new generation had yet mastered, and used period-relevant imagery of counter-culture revolution.

‘Steven Universe’ was also aimed at a youthful audience. Obviously. It’s a cartoon. For kids. But tastes in contrarianism have changed in the decade separating the two properties. ‘Steven’ used a pastel color palate, a visual style that emphasized curves as opposed to angles, and emphasized comedy over action. It’s telling that Steven’s natural weapon is a shield and his natural reaction to most threats is to joke about them. While Neo often chooses to go on the offensive either with ballistic weaponry or his implanted kung-fu skills, Steven’s tools of choice are both defensive, meant to protect him from dangers both physical and emotional.

This is reflective of how both characters are portrayed. Neo is a stoic, unfeeling warrior, he has to be in the context of his environment. Only when he is victorious over the oppressive robots who want to put him back in his place can he be free to express himself. And give credit where it’s due, Keanu Reeves took some flak from critics for being stiff and wooden in his performance as Neo, but given the understanding that he’s still trying to adjust to a new identity in a world where such a transition makes him literal prey, he sells it like a champ. Steven, on the other hand, is afforded a genuine childhood and, as a child himself, is free to express his emotions and identity. He’s loud, friendly, bold, and sensitive, all conveyed with expressive art and the award-winning voice work of Zach Callison, who himself was only sixteen when he was cast.

The biggest difference between the two, however, isn’t in narrative, visuals, or performance, it’s in tone. After all, ‘Stephen Universe’ isn’t a hero’s journey about a man using new resources and a new perspective of the world around him to fight for the right to be his true self like ‘The Matrix’, it was the tale of a boy fighting to retain his childhood innocence despite the slow introduction of a world that might not acquiesce to his mindset, forcing him to defend his own right to exist. It lives and dies on a stance of unwavering optimism. Even when characters reflect on negative experiences, deal with hardships, or have fights, they remain united by an overarching sense of whimsy and fantasy, typical of a kid’s show but not usually one of such minutiae. True the show has had its dark moments, both in narrative and visuals, but it never fully escapes from the grip of positivity and hope.

So if these are the general and clear differences between these two queer-friendly franchises, then what has changed between 1999 and 2013 that would invite such drastically differing views of the same subjects? Well, a lot of things happened. 9/11, hundreds of school shootings, the death of David Bowie, the rise of Justin Bieber, a few other notable tragedies. But in the context of the themes of ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Steven Universe,’ the biggest change in the two decades was the public’s general view of the non-heteronormative communities.

And here’s where I have to be particularly sensitive because there are very valid arguments that would say that society’s opinion of queer people hasn’t changed all that much from the 1990s. Hell, in my research for this article, I came across a few legitimate points to show that we might not be as LGBTQ-accommodating as we were in the 1950s. However, looking strictly at the history of civil suits in courts around the country between those two years where queer discrimination is involved, it shows a clear direction in which the world is swinging as far as such things are concerned.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a ton of homophobia, transphobia, and intolerance in the world today, some of it backed or even encouraged by various laws and legislation. But between 1999 and 2013, civil-unions and gay marriage were both legalized in several states, federal protections against hate crimes and discrimination were implemented, “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed, the first openly gay politicians were elected to federal offices, and the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits. So, no, not perfect, but certainly an upgrade from when none of those were considered guarantees. Given the momentum the LGBTQ civil rights movement has garnered in this period, it would not be unfair to say that true equal rights in the western world is a matter of “when” not “if.”

So with that context in mind, it’s important to distinguish that ‘The Matrix’ came out at a time where to be out about one’s queerness was still a major risk, forcing many to keep their identities and orientations in the closet, a practice that any psychiatrist worth their diploma would call “bad.” The emerging power of the internet and global communications introduced these closeted individuals to a community of their peers and fellow queers, giving them the confidence to vocalize, protest injustice, and come out to the world as their true selves. In a very broad-strokes view, ‘The Matrix,’ in which the main character uses new technology to unlock his chosen identity and achieve his ultimate self, is a reflection of this phenomenon.

‘Steven Universe’ came out at a time when there was far less stigma against the LGBTQ community, but still enough that children needed an animated education in open-mindedness and acceptance. And thus, a fun, friendly, colorful adventure series about a goofy kid and his ambiguous supporting cast fighting aliens with a pre-deterministic ideology was born. It makes its message a palatable as possible by being as good a show as possible and letting its themes wash over the audience naturally. And given how many kids I’ve seen with Steven’s signature hamburger backpack or star shirt, it appears to be working.

But that still leaves a significant question left unanswered. Given how and why these franchises are different, what does their separate approach tell us about how trans narratives are approached in today’s world?

The answer is literally in the details. As stated before, ‘The Matrix’ was so subtle and obscure with its references to transgenderism and the queer rights crusade that even mentioning them in the same sentence requires some measure of explanation. It had to be so secretive because a blatant trans narrative would not have had any of the mass market appeal that ‘The Matrix,’ which advertised itself as an edgy sci-fi movie for the internet generation, did. Meanwhile, this was featured in the latest ‘Steven Universe’ advertisement:

Clearly, the market for queer narratives is there, or at least a major studio like Cartoon Network thinks so. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have put a boy in a dress on the poster for what has become one of their flagship programs.

‘Steven Universe,’ with its vibrant colors, unquestioned gay characters, and optimistic tone, is a rainbow flag planted firmly in the terrain of the 21st century that represents not only how far LGBTQ rights have progressed but also how far they have to go. Not by being a groundbreaking work of high art that encapsulates the life experiences of an oppressed minority, but by letting kids know early in life that the gender binary is malleable, other sexual options are available, all body types are acceptable, and that the future is as bright and positive as they want it to be. Naïve and childish? Probably, but it’s a children’s show. Meant for children. What's your excuse?

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