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I am going to bring up this show again, but only as a prop for discussing some peoples' reactions to it. Obviously there are spoilers here, but I'm guessing that anyone who hasn't seen the show yet, or hasn't seen the big spoiler moment either doesn't care about spoilers, or doesn't plan to watch it anyway.
Season Five was full of moments to make anyone tear up if they had been following since the first season. The last season deals with topics like redemption and reconciliation. Though it is not limited to Catra and Adora, a big part of its story arc is devoted to the rescue and redemption of the former, and the emotional healing of both.
The key part here, though, is redemption.
I read and watched some of the complaints levelled by detractors of the show, and mixed in with the usual mom's basement crowd who took exception to what they saw as the SJW aspects of the show, there is also a fairly vocal crowd who disliked Catra's redemption.
Or Hordak's.
Or Shadow Weaver's.
We'll skip over the latter two for now, since neither of them actually achieved redemption - though one of them died on their own terms (which means she escaped punishment). People are upset that neither of them was shown to face "justice".
On the main topic, though, there are many who do not feel that Catra atoned enough for her crimes, nor even that she was even necessarily redeemable because of the nature of her crimes.
I agree with them only to the point where I'd like to have seen a bit more friction between her and Glimmer, given that it was the cat's earlier actions that ultimately led to the loss of Glimmer's mother. That said...
There is a solid contingent who believe that Catra did not earn her redemption, and that the resistance should not have been so quick to forgive her. They don't feel that she ... suffered enough. Many people struggle with the idea that others may forgive a person that they would not. Not unironically, many of the folks who feel this are the same who believe that they themselves are redeemed because somebody else took the blame for them. Ergo, it is okay for them to be forgiven for ostensibly unforgivable things, but not for others.
I think this may come down to the innate human sense of fairness. Studies have shown that we are not the only creatures that possess a sense of fairness - it seems to be a trait wired into a lot of higher order creatures that live in communal environs. We seem to be hard-wired to favour the zero-sum view of the world, where a gain one place must equate a loss somewhere else. This leads to the birth of adages like, "let the punishment fit the crime." By the "eye for an eye" principle, if the perpetrator of a crime comes out of their punishment with the equivalent two working eyes, then there is an unbalanced ledger.
The problem is that a lot of people in our culture conflate punishment and revenge. More than balancing the sheet, we as a society have fetishized what we think as justice to the point where - even in our religious teachings about divine forgiveness - we accept that eternal torture and damnation are a balanced punishment for somebody who doesn't say "I'm sorry" to God. Look at the images of people celebrating the execution of criminals, holding signs and exulting in the thought that these people will face an eternity of unspeakable suffering and horror. We want people to suffer for their wrongs. We love revenge.
Some of the Scandinavian countries come to mind as places where we seem to be slowly maturing out of that mindset. I watched a video a few years ago where a sheriff from an especially notorious prison in the US was given a tour through a prison in a country where they practise much more progressive justice than we have over here. He was utterly befuddled by the fact that the prisoners lived in conditions that were more like a communal condominium than a prison. He couldn't believe that they were allowed to cook their own meals, with actually steel cutlery. They had a music room, and wood shop, and facilities to learn skills they could use once they were released.
None of the inmates could leave. For all of its amenities, it was still a prison. Their freedom was forfeit for the duration of their stay.
Still, the sheriff could not accept what he was seeing. "This isn't a prison - this is a luxury resort. These people are not being punished. Where's the deterrence factor? Where's the justice?"
They pointed out to him that once they were released, ex convicts in this country had a recidivism rate a fraction of that in the US - specifically in his part of the country. The sheriff was still dissatisfied with their system, even with this revelation. He could not wrap his head around the concept of "correction" over "deterrence". It did not matter to him if the system was churning out reformed citizens if they did not receive adequate punishment for their crimes. The ledger needed to be balanced.
I admit that I can be a little torn about this one as well. On the one hand, I would prefer that our prisons churn out people who can integrate back into society and are unlikely to commit another crime, but at the same time, there are those whose crimes are a bit tougher to forgive. And there are those who are likely beyond reform.
Still, if I was going to make errors in justice, I'd prefer to err on the side of reformation and redemption over revenge and punishment. I prefer to believe that we are better than that as a species.
In short, I am on team Catra. I am siding with the people who are willing to accept her repentance and forgive her sins. I like to think that the detractors who begrudge others for offering what they consider unearned forgiveness, or people like that sheriff who refuse to accept that reformation can be achieved through means other than suffering, are both slowly being pushed out by a more enlightened view.
But I am not very hopeful of that we will see much of shift in the next couple generations. Many of the justice porn warriors are younger folks.
We're just too attached to our internal concept of fairness.
Somebody needs to lose an eye.
Season Five was full of moments to make anyone tear up if they had been following since the first season. The last season deals with topics like redemption and reconciliation. Though it is not limited to Catra and Adora, a big part of its story arc is devoted to the rescue and redemption of the former, and the emotional healing of both.
The key part here, though, is redemption.
I read and watched some of the complaints levelled by detractors of the show, and mixed in with the usual mom's basement crowd who took exception to what they saw as the SJW aspects of the show, there is also a fairly vocal crowd who disliked Catra's redemption.
Or Hordak's.
Or Shadow Weaver's.
We'll skip over the latter two for now, since neither of them actually achieved redemption - though one of them died on their own terms (which means she escaped punishment). People are upset that neither of them was shown to face "justice".
On the main topic, though, there are many who do not feel that Catra atoned enough for her crimes, nor even that she was even necessarily redeemable because of the nature of her crimes.
I agree with them only to the point where I'd like to have seen a bit more friction between her and Glimmer, given that it was the cat's earlier actions that ultimately led to the loss of Glimmer's mother. That said...
There is a solid contingent who believe that Catra did not earn her redemption, and that the resistance should not have been so quick to forgive her. They don't feel that she ... suffered enough. Many people struggle with the idea that others may forgive a person that they would not. Not unironically, many of the folks who feel this are the same who believe that they themselves are redeemed because somebody else took the blame for them. Ergo, it is okay for them to be forgiven for ostensibly unforgivable things, but not for others.
I think this may come down to the innate human sense of fairness. Studies have shown that we are not the only creatures that possess a sense of fairness - it seems to be a trait wired into a lot of higher order creatures that live in communal environs. We seem to be hard-wired to favour the zero-sum view of the world, where a gain one place must equate a loss somewhere else. This leads to the birth of adages like, "let the punishment fit the crime." By the "eye for an eye" principle, if the perpetrator of a crime comes out of their punishment with the equivalent two working eyes, then there is an unbalanced ledger.
The problem is that a lot of people in our culture conflate punishment and revenge. More than balancing the sheet, we as a society have fetishized what we think as justice to the point where - even in our religious teachings about divine forgiveness - we accept that eternal torture and damnation are a balanced punishment for somebody who doesn't say "I'm sorry" to God. Look at the images of people celebrating the execution of criminals, holding signs and exulting in the thought that these people will face an eternity of unspeakable suffering and horror. We want people to suffer for their wrongs. We love revenge.
Some of the Scandinavian countries come to mind as places where we seem to be slowly maturing out of that mindset. I watched a video a few years ago where a sheriff from an especially notorious prison in the US was given a tour through a prison in a country where they practise much more progressive justice than we have over here. He was utterly befuddled by the fact that the prisoners lived in conditions that were more like a communal condominium than a prison. He couldn't believe that they were allowed to cook their own meals, with actually steel cutlery. They had a music room, and wood shop, and facilities to learn skills they could use once they were released.
None of the inmates could leave. For all of its amenities, it was still a prison. Their freedom was forfeit for the duration of their stay.
Still, the sheriff could not accept what he was seeing. "This isn't a prison - this is a luxury resort. These people are not being punished. Where's the deterrence factor? Where's the justice?"
They pointed out to him that once they were released, ex convicts in this country had a recidivism rate a fraction of that in the US - specifically in his part of the country. The sheriff was still dissatisfied with their system, even with this revelation. He could not wrap his head around the concept of "correction" over "deterrence". It did not matter to him if the system was churning out reformed citizens if they did not receive adequate punishment for their crimes. The ledger needed to be balanced.
I admit that I can be a little torn about this one as well. On the one hand, I would prefer that our prisons churn out people who can integrate back into society and are unlikely to commit another crime, but at the same time, there are those whose crimes are a bit tougher to forgive. And there are those who are likely beyond reform.
Still, if I was going to make errors in justice, I'd prefer to err on the side of reformation and redemption over revenge and punishment. I prefer to believe that we are better than that as a species.
In short, I am on team Catra. I am siding with the people who are willing to accept her repentance and forgive her sins. I like to think that the detractors who begrudge others for offering what they consider unearned forgiveness, or people like that sheriff who refuse to accept that reformation can be achieved through means other than suffering, are both slowly being pushed out by a more enlightened view.
But I am not very hopeful of that we will see much of shift in the next couple generations. Many of the justice porn warriors are younger folks.
We're just too attached to our internal concept of fairness.
Somebody needs to lose an eye.
