This blog post was originally published in my February monthly newsletter. Subscribe to receive next month's essay along with book and music recommendations.
One thing that comes with the territory of small children is the media and entertainment of small children. On a fun note, that means books! (I think that's fun.) On a less fun note, that means TV, which is pretty unavoidable, and I hardly need to tell you that television designed for toddlers isn't exactly pleasing to the mature and highbrow ear. But actually, some of it isn't so bad, even arguably pretty good, and I'm not talking about Bluey, a show that seems designed to make adults cry (my son doesn't like it, I don't know why, he just doesn't pick up what Bluey's putting down). Basically, this is my opportunity to compare and contrast two things you maybe haven't thought about before, or maybe you have: Young Jedi Adventures (good!!!!) and Marvel's Spidey and His Amazing Friends (fucking insufferable).
Young Jedi Adventures, henceforth simply Young Jedi, is a show about three Jedi younglings, Kai Brightstar, Lys Solay, and Nubs, who live and study at the temple of Tenoo. It's set in the heyday of the High Republic, which means it's basically the only Star Wars media that I know of set during a time when Jedi are thriving. This wonderful imaginary utopia of intergalactic peace allows the story to focus on the richness of the world(s) and its various flora and fauna, which is cool from an SFF point of view, and also provides the framework for significant independence and skill to its child characters.
Spidey and His Amazing Friends is about Peter Parker (Spidey), Miles Morales (Spin), and Gwen Stacy (Ghost-Spider????????? Why isn't she Ghost or Ghosty ugh I fucking can't with this show) and listen, I know a lot more about Star Wars than I do about Marvel, so I'm just going to kind of gloss over the fact that they are all friends in the same timeline somehow and live in some kind of city where they routinely fight crime against the Marvel franchise's usual villains.
The Jedi are kind of like space cops themselves, except they're also, I don't know, dignitaries and monks and wizards, but the main difference between the shows' characters, e.g. Kai Brightstar and Spin (who, by the way, are voiced by the same kid), has to do with the moralities of their respective TV shows, which is probably a reflection of the morality of the franchises themselves, though I won't claim that kind of wealth of expertise. The thing that makes Young Jedi interesting to me is that the villains are very rarely villains for no reason, and they often seek redemption, are shown forgiveness, and/or are given long enough narrative arcs to effectively employ complex archetypes.
For example, Taborr Val Dorn is a masked pirate who torments the three Young Jedi heroes throughout most of the first season, with occasional glimpses of a more complicated nature that our heroes don't yet understand. Taborr and Kai in particular are often shown to be foils of each other—Kai observes that he and Taborr share the same weaknesses, prompting the other characters to remind him that what matters is the choices they make. Even so, Kai never tells Taborr he's a bad person. Kai consistently repeats the thematic messaging of Star Wars as a whole, which to my interpretation is: it's never too late to make the right choice. (The show later reveals who Taborr really is, something I caught right away because I'm a grown-up with access to the database of voice actors, but it is genuinely a fun twist and very interesting storytelling.)
By contrast, the Spidey Gang (I can't help thinking of them as just Those Meddling Kids) are superheroes with some kind of tacit mandate from god to keep order in the streets, probably owed in part to narrative dependence on cameos from other Marvel characters. Basically, the bad guys are always bad and there's a terrifying incuriosity as to why. I know, it's really insane for me to have such strong feelings about this, but as a person alive today in what I can only call clown world, I think it is very, very dangerous to unilaterally decide that people who share your moral convictions are good and anyone who acts outside your social code is bad, with no pursuit of explanation.
I suppose I've already said it—the point of this weird dumb essay is to say that the flaw in Spidey and Friends, and the reason it's banned in my house, is its incuriosity. The real purpose of this is not to complain that these fucking kids are inflexibly self-righteous, self-congratulatory, and smug (although they are), but to point out that my main job as a human being is to feel compassion for others, and to never delude myself into thinking that only people who agree with me amount to any value in this world.
I'm already on record saying that moral inflexibility is dangerous. It's the entire backbone of the corruption arc that drives the ATLAS series, and it creates a warped sense of scope that leads to despicable conclusions, in politics and beyond. In a world where contemporary evangelical takes include "the sin of empathy,” it matters not to follow one path so far and so blindly that it burns everything else down.
On a final note, in case you're tired of me shitting on Marvel and want me to wrap this up—my son also loves Superkitties, which I initially opposed on account of it looking visually oversaturated and potentially kind of dumb. It turns out, though, that Superkitties takes a similar approach to Young Jedi to understanding other points of view and showing empathy—it introduces an interior concept, where one of the Superkitties experiences an emotional difficulty, and then emphasizes its lesson in exterior way, where the Superkitties then model that emotional resolution for the "villain." It helps that Superkitties also occasionally has some banger musical numbers and its villains are campy, often sweet, and very fun. Buddy, ALSO voiced by the same kid as Kai and Spin, is particularly funny, and I have caught myself laughing at his jokes.
But the point here is not to say that Jedi or Superkitties should be my son's model for behavior—I'm just saying that good storytelling makes a difference, and more important than being right is showing the capacity to grow.