Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.
Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.
And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:
They all fall to their deaths.
Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.
It’s a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So….cliff.
Steven Universe, whatever else it’s faults, took at step back and said “but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad”, and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked “what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?” And then did that.
Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.
It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn’t even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I’ve seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn’t do a murder.
Quick question: how do you do “restorative justice” for a man like Frollo who actively tries to commit a genocide?
Hitlers exist. They need killing.
There are other ways to remove a person’s ability to wield political and social power to commit genocide than dropping them off the side of a burning building that are all just as effective.
I’d also like to point out that the idea that you can prevent a wholesale genocide by like, killing the RIGHT individual, is a rather…simplistic understanding of what causes genocide.
Frollo, to use him as the example, is a priest (in the book), and a judge (in the Disney movie.) He’s not just a bad guy. He’s an extention of the Catholic Church/The State (depending on which version you want to lean on here.) His power to do harm comes from his position within those institutions and the power of those institutions themselves. The persecution of the Roma people within France isn’t because there was a bad guy, but because of those systems of power being used to kill the people that the church and the government wanted dead. Frollo getting dropped off a building wouldn’t stop the persecution of the Roma in any world that isn’t, maybe, a Disney film.
In the real world, it’s very easy to hold up Hitler as the boogeyman. But if Hitler had died, but the war machine of Third Reich Germany hadn’t lost the Battle of Berlin/the War as a whole, the Holocaust wouldn’t have magically stopped just because 1 guy died.
Look. I’m not saying that there’s never been a situation in the world where killing 1 guy wasn’t the objectively best option in a high stakes, immediately dangerous situation. The world is full of Trolley problems and self defense situations and nuance and context.
But this post is about Restorative vs Punitive Justice *systems*, and about how many people, in general, start and end their analysis of Justice with “did the bad guy get killed?”
I would even argue that this mentality, where as long as you are sure in your heart that it will SAVE LIVES, killing people is just and good and shouldn’t be questioned because some people are just bad- that mentality? Forms the core of Police killings in our culture. Justifies shooting first and asking questions never. Because once you decide that someone has done harm, they need to die for there to be Justice?
I dunno. I just think maybe as a society, we should be open to…other ideas on the matter.
amhrancas 