demonstrates that there is no universal concept of family.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

"Steven Universe" is an animated Cartoon Network series

created by former "Adventure Time" storyboard artist Rebecca

Sugar.

And you should watch it.

It is great.

Also, can we just literally pause here

for a moment to acknowledge that Adventure Time is

kind of like SNL in the '70s just churning out talent.

The main character, Steven Universe,

lives in Beach City with three aliens called

the Crystal Gems-- Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl.

Steven is the child of a gem, the late Rose Quartz,

and a human, Greg Universe, who lives in his sweet van

next to the car wash he works at.

Steven and the Crystal Gems protect earth

from extra dimensional threat, and, of course, always

find a way to save the day.

But really the focus of the show is the characters, their home,

and their relationships, which feel

real and intricate and ambiguous.

Especially at the start of the show,

the writing doesn't go to great lengths

to make much about each character explicit.

It even sort of pokes fun of itself

in the first season when Mayor Dewey asks--

Are any of your sisters home?

My sisters?

Is there anyone else I can talk to about this?

Regardless, or maybe because of that ambiguity,

I think Steven Universe gets the idea of family really right.

The easiest Western concept of family

is that it is a group of people that one has a blood

and/or legal relationship with.

Hey, adopted brother.

Slightly more complicated is the idea

that a family is a network of supportive individuals.

Maybe your coworkers or friends or collaborators or even

your customers are a family.

You'll be treated like family.

You treat your customers like family.

And we work together like a family.

Treat 'em like family.

You're not just a guest, you're part of our family.

In other words, family is a group

of people who care about one another with the implication

that you should care about people you have a blood

relationship with.

But, I mean, come on, it's so much more complicated

than that, right?

Families are almost, by definition, hierarchical

and highly regulated.

In the states, at least, that hierarchy

is based on the nuclear family and reinforced

by laws, tax codes, and institutions, none of which,

I think it's worth saying, can really make you love someone.

Relatedly, families traffic to varying degrees

in discipline and structure.

A family is a group of people that encourages the behavior of

and produces knowledge for one another.

That behavior and knowledge is frequently

based on social values, which makes

the family an important political institution as well.

Families also have a strong connection

to history, both learning to cherish it

and not wanting, under any circumstances, to repeat it.

In other words, family is a cultural process

that exists in tension with it's biological factors.

A family is something we do just as much

as it's something we are.

And I think Steven Universe does family really well.

For instance, in the Universe family unit blood relations,

like the one between Steven and Greg, are celebrated

but they're not hegemonic.

They form the basis for relationships,

but they are not their entirety.

Steven's guardians can and do teach him

about himself and the world, how he fits into its history,

but they don't force that history onto him.

They have expectations of him.

They support and encourage him, but they also

worry, underestimate, overprotect, and enable him.

But in return, he challenges and surprises them,

teaches them about his world as much as they do the same.

Everyone, mostly, doesn't assert more authority over the others

than they have.

They are eventually honest about their problems.

And they keep secrets because they are unsure

or want to reveal themselves responsibly,

not because they are deceitful.

This is made all the more meaningful,

I think, because Steven's family is highly functional,

though it is highly nontraditional.

I mean, besides the fact he lives with literal aliens.

Its structure is not externally or institutionally determined.

I can't imagine what their tax returns

look like, but determined based on their situation.

He's got three adoptive mother figures,

one of whom is more like a big sister,

another of whom has romantic feelings for his late mother,

and a third who, depending upon how you read it,

represents either a loving relationship between two other

female characters or the possibility that someone with

dissociative identity disorder cannot only reconcile

their, in this case, obviously loving personalities,

but also be a total badass because of them.

Garnet is the best.

Steven's dad doesn't cohabit, but that doesn't

make him any less his dad.

And as is often the case with nontraditional families,

it sometimes feels like there is a whole world against them,

which, in this case, I guess makes

sense, because there actually is.

That the Gems and Universes can so

powerfully evoke functional family,

though they exhibit few or none of the biological,

institutional, or structural characteristics

the West tends to require of functional families,

shows that maybe there isn't a perfect universal concept that

defines such a thing.

And I mean, spoiler alert, there isn't.

Different cultures structure family differently, sometimes

drastically so, and expect different things

based on those structures.

There is way too much to cover here.

We'll put some links in the Doobly Doo.

But I hope it suffices it to say that there

are many kinship systems throughout the world's

communities.

And though they are all very different,

they all equally define family.

In this way, it might be fair to say

that there is a kind of family resemblance for families.

Not like, whoa, you really look like your sister family

resemblance, but Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of family

resemblances, that there are sets

of things with similarities-- affinities,

he called them-- that don't really

sit within a clear, rigid boundary.

He wrote about family resemblances between languages,

games, and numbers.

We know when a certain thing is an example of each,

but to clearly and accurately describe

what makes all games, all languages, or all numbers

alike would be impossible.

Can we make a similar case for families?

Maybe.

Can we test that network's boundaries?

Where does it get fuzzy?

When are we definitely outside of it?

For me, coworkers, collaborators, and customers

remain outside that network.

Of course, your experience may vary.

But weirdly, certain fandoms, not all of them,

but certain ones, might sit at an edge.

Punk rock, I think, belongs here.

I've never felt more whatever family

is for a group of strangers than when

I was in my punk rock days.

That is, of course, until I started making Idea Channel

and began meeting all of you guys.

Also, in before, punk rock is not a fandom.

And I mean, hey, what about the "Steven Universe" fandom?

We can see how "Steven Universe" is in a family of shows.

I might claim that that has created a family of fandoms.

Does the "Steven Universe" fandom conduct itself

in a family-like manner?

Again, your experience may vary.

But as the show has grown in popularity,

especially over the last couple months,

it seems like the people making it and its fans have had

to deal with the kinds of things growing and popular fandoms--

deal with-- collective identity, hierarchy,

new members' relationship to the past, and, in my opinion,

the mostly fair and reasonable expectations of its

"guardians."

Of course, not all families struggle with these things.

And all entities struggling with these things are not families.

But I think the resemblance is strong, at least as strong

as it is between Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl and Steven.

And

What do you guys think?

What does "Steven Universe" demonstrate

about the idea of family?

And when do non-family things, like fandoms,

become family-like?

What's the edge of that network?

Let us know in the comments.

And if you want to join Idea Channel's

massively nontraditional family, please subscribe.

So when an Idea Channel video has a significant number

of upvotes, should I feel bad because it

means I haven't presented a sufficiently

controversial idea?

Let's see what you guys had to say about Reddit and democracy.

Before we get to comments, two quick things.

You can still send us records for the record wall

until April 28.

This week we received some records

from Jason, who sent us the "BioShock Infinite Soundtrack,"

and from [INAUDIBLE], "The Super Bowl Shuffle," which

I am very excited about.

So if you want to send us stuff, details

in the Doobly Doo, including some restrictions, which do

apply.

We're keeping the things you send us forever.

And second, I was on of my friend Davis

and David's podcast, "The Electric Cybercast II--

Online," talking about Zork and text adventure games.

I made them play Zork, which was maybe, as it turns out,

not a nice thing to do to your friend.

So if you want to listen to that,

we'll put a link in the Doobly Doo.

OK.

On to comments.

Mica says there might be a deeper

level to this discussion, specifically

the divorce between the operations

of governmental democracy and the practical needs of people

who are affected by it, and asks this question of,

you know, if the operation of government

exists too much in the realm of ideas, maybe

in the same way that the internet and Reddit does,

that, you know, you're responding to ideas

and not practicalities.

And I think that this-- I think that this

holds some water, in that there's always a threat.

And I think that this is something

that, like, I fall victim to-- of getting

stuck in your own politics and not stepping back and trying

to think about how it relates to actual people

in the actual world.

Yeah.

It was a great comment.

On the subreddit, Axylon talked about their experience

with heavily moderated subreddits and the relationship

that that kind of moderation has to the idea of oligarchy

And a really, really great conversation followed that.

So I would suggest checking it out.

And it reminded me of another great conversation

that followed a comment Christopher Willis left

on YouTube about Athenian democracy, which sort of has

this aspect of randomness.

And that's a thing that Jacques Ranciere talked about,

actually, a bit in "Hatred of Democracy,"

which was the book that I quoted in the episode.

He talked about how there was this idea

that people who were just randomly given power

would be the least likely, probably,

to abuse it because they had no interest in turning it

into more and more power.