One thing that children's cartoons have always excelled at is being able to express complex ideas simply; because children may not be able to completely understand the adult world, cartoons are often used to explain difficult situations in ways that children can understand. Be it discussing race, mental illness, or other important life lessons, cartoons can break those tough facts of life into bite-size pieces that help give children the tools to successfully navigate situations as they grow in and interact with the real world.
One of the most recent episodes of Cartoon Network's "Steven Universe" (episode "Alone at Sea") features a particularly serious topic: abuse. In the series, Lapis Lazuli is a character who always seems to get treated poorly, whether it's in her one-on-one interactions with other characters, or whether she's being held as a prisoner of war. In season one's "The Jail Break," Lapis tries to escape after the ship she was on crashes to earth. Jasper, a much stronger character, begins manipulating Lapis. Needing to use her powers to fuse with Lapis without consent to turn into a stronger character so that she can destroy Lapis's friends, Jasper says, "How long did [your friends] keep you trapped here on this miserable [earth]? ...They kept you prisoner. They used you. This is our chance to take revenge! C'mon--just say yes." What Jasper says here is indicative of emotional abuse and manipulation in a number of ways. First, for those who know the show, they know that Steven (the show's main character) and his friends (the "crystal gems") helped Lapis escape from her captivity after the war. Once they helped her escape, she was taken prisoner by Jasper again and held in a locked cell, where she was left unprotected and forgotten by her captor when the ship came crashing down. But, trying to get Lapis to forget all of this, Jasper tries to give Lapis a sense of power which, in reality, is only Jasper's way of using Lapis's body to gain strength. Jasper doesn't want to help Lapis feel better, and she doesn't care about Lapis's wants and needs. Instead, she only wants Lapis to agree to being fused with her so that she can fulfill her own selfish desires.
(To be continued....)
