Abstract
Cooley argues that Steven Universe reimagines the cartoon trope of “fusion” as a generative, queer mode of being that blueprints configurations of sexuality that are not possible (or not yet possible) outside of the relaxed physics of animation. He reads fusion as an imaginative outside to compulsory heterosexuality and reproductive futurity, connoted here by Homeworld’s Imperial reproduction. Challenging cartooning scholarship that overemphasizes presence, Cooley proposes that Steven Universe performs a certain “tracing by effacing” (a potentiality within cartooning to make meaning from units of absence) to materialize queernesses resistant to limiting discourses. The essay concludes with a meditation on the default academic pessimism toward radical visual media produced in corporate circumstances, like Steven Universe, and evaluates the show’s methods to bypass that pessimism.
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Episodes Referenced
“Alone Together” (season 1, episode 37, 2015)
“Beta” (season 3, episode 22, 2016)
“Bismuth” (season 3, episodes 20 and 21, 2016)
“Earthlings” (season 3, episode 26, 2016)
“A Giant Woman” (season 1, episode 12, 2014)
“Jail Break” (season 1, episode 52, 2015)
“Jungle Moon” (season 5, episode 12, 2018)
“Keep Beach City Weird” (season 1, episode 31, 2014)
“Mindful Education” (season 4, episode 4, 2016)
“Off Colors” (season 5, episode 3, 2018)
“Reunited” (season 5, episodes 23 and 24, 2018)
“A Single Pale Rose” (season 5, episode 18, 2018)
“The Answer” (season 2, episode 22, 2016)
“We Need to Talk” (season 2, episode 9, 2015)
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Cooley, K. (2020). Drawing Queerness Forward: Fusion, Futurity, and Steven Universe. In: Ziegler, J., Richards, L. (eds) Representation in Steven Universe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31881-9_3
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