The Politics of Arcane (or lack thereof)

A sequel to my Arcane & Palestine essay except I actually have an opinion this time.

There was always a plan to write an essay for the second season of Arcane. It’s been almost three months since I first watched it and two weeks since I rewatched it. Before finishing the season, the plan was to expand on my point on Palestine. After watching the season, the plan was to break down the show’s theme and make concessions in regards to my first essay: something along the lines of how fascism can exist among both the oppressors and the oppressed. Yet, there’s a surge of video essays and analyses that said exactly what I would’ve said. And while my analysis of the theme would more or less hold true to what the show-writers tried to convey, I didn’t necessarily agree with it.

What I Got Wrong

If you asked me how I felt about the show immediately after finishing it, I’d have said I loved it. But there’s a certain amount of thinking that I would’ve failed to do at that point before I should’ve said that. What I felt was exhilaration. The fight scenes were great. There was a semblance of good dialogue. The TikTok discussions evaluating the moral convictions of the characters were thought provoking. The memes were funny. Oh boy, the edits were amazing. But once I forced myself to sit with what the show had to say, beyond literary themes and character evaluations, I found very little to work with. Of course, there was Jayce and Viktor’s arc, which took up a majority of the meaningful runtime in this season. In a paper I wrote for my science history class, where I evaluated the societal implications of the atomic bomb, I wrote the following:

“Arcane is a show about the sacrifices one makes in the name of progress. One means of progress explored in the show is scientific progress, and that pursuit is personified by two young scientists: Viktor and Jayce. As their research and technological advancements are threatened to be exploited for the purpose of war, they are forced to reckon with the costs associated with unrestrained progress. As they’re finally hit with the consequences of their decisions when Viktor loses his assistant and Jayce accidently murders a child, Viktor says to the other, “In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.” Throughout the two seasons of the show, Arcane explores how far any single person is willing to go in order to make progress, and as characters run head-first into their limits, they begin to question their original goal. While J. Robert Oppenhiemer, Albert Einstein, and all the other major contributors to the Manhattan Project were driven by the goal of peace, they ended up being indirectly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. In the modern world, where scientists and engineers have increasingly become tied to unethical corporations such as weapons manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies, science itself has become an ethical dilemma.”

I have to say that the Viktor/Jayce storyline has easily become my favorite of the show. But, in fleshing out that arc, the show writers neglected the entire premise that had made me so invested in the first place: the dynamic between Zaun and Piltover. Perhaps it’s on me for expecting the show to merely solve the tensions that escalated over the course of the first season in a realistic way. After all, that would require the creators to actually take a stance on a very real, very controversial political issue (cough cough Palestine).

Here is where my main grievance arises. The first season of the show brought up a multitude of political issues ranging from police brutality, class divides, and radicalization. In my mind, the very existence of those issues indicated that the show writers had something to say of them. The show gave me a premise to think about, and I formed an opinion of my own:

“Jinx’s radicalization was fueled by her oppression. After losing her entire family, she turned to the one person who affirmed her hatred instead of demonizing her for it. She joined an organization that made it their mission to tear down the power-structure that was the root cause of all of her suffering, from the death of her parents to the sub-par conditions she was raised in.

My ultimate point is this: one doesn’t prevent terrorism by fostering a breeding ground for more terrorism. One prevents terrorism by nurturing the next generation of children, ridding their mind of more reasons to hate. The war on terrorism must be a battle fought on a smaller scale, in the mind of each individual child rather than on the rubble of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps.”

Season 2, however, showed me that much of what I thought the show-writers were saying was actually self-imposed. The sidelining of the Zaun-Piltover dynamic throughout the season and its ultimate conclusion is a testament to how little the writers actually wanted to make worthwhile political commentary.

Season Two’s Shortcomings

In the intermediary stages of trying to draft this essay, I was going to write about how the spectacle of the final battle took away from the ultimate theme that they were trying to convey. But I soon abandoned the idea out of fear that it would seem like I’m desperate to find a flaw in the show or that I’m trying to be different. Also, there really wasn’t that much to say about the final battle.

The summary of what I would’ve wrote was that the Arcane final battle is lazy because it focuses more on the spectacle of the fighting rather than having thematic significance. Even though this essay didn’t come to fruition, it still pinpointed what bothered me so much about Arcane’s ending. Season 2 abandoned the questions that it posed in the first season in order to make an aesthetically pleasing show without definitive political commentary and, once again, says very little.

My only grievance immediately after finishing the show was how Caitlyn essentially has a non-existent moral compass. Going from gassing the vents of the undercity to almost shooting a child to abandoning Vi to becoming a leader in Ambessa’s political plans to helping Vi undercut Ambessa to ultimately giving up her seat on the counsel to Sevika is an insane sequence of decisions. It initially struck me as odd but necessary to move the plot forward, but now it just strikes me as lazy writing. After the third episode, I expected Caitlyn to either 1) go fully into the whole fascism shtick, or 2) get a crazy well-written redemption arc. However, I would soon find that good writing is a rarity in this season.

But what does Caitlyn’s poorly written decision-making say about the politics of the show? I’d argue that it says absolutely nothing. The show pretended that it wanted to answer a question of how two cities so decidedly pitted against each other could possibly reconcile, and whether or not the violence that forgoes such reconciliation is justified. Caitlyn’s arc simply shows the viewer that the writers haven’t really thought about it that hard at all. “How do we obtain the long awaited peace between the oppressors and the oppressed?” the viewers asked. Oh, I don’t know. Something just happened to change Caitlyn’s mind between the third and eighth episode. Something we don’t exactly see, but one could guess it’s something along the lines of Cait being super duper attracted to Vi so she kinda had to give up her fascism in order to get properly eaten out in a jail cell.

That brings me to my second grievance with the show. In the first season, it’d be an understatement to say I was invested in CaitVi as a ship. Their playful banter in the and moments of vulnerability in the first season were SO well written and oh my LORD Vi is so hot. But season 2 follows a trend of butchering the characters and character dynamics that were set up in the first season. It’s not hard to see what makes their relationship so problematic.

One of the reasons that I believe queer relationships in media are almost always more investing than straight relationships is the lack of an obvious and exploited power dynamic. But Caitlyn obviously holds more power over Vi throughout the entire relationship, right? Perhaps their unbalanced power dynamic was simply easier to ignore in season 1, since most of their interactions occur in the undercity—a place where Vi clearly has the upper hand. But it was also the fact that they treated each other like equals, despite any existing power structures that would make the sentiment false. I digress.

CaitVi isn’t just uninteresting in season 2, it’s downright problematic. If the show wanted to focus on a ship that followed a character from the oppressing class and a character from the oppressed class, there’s a certain level of character development that both characters would have to undergo in order to make it unproblematic. It’s easy to see how Caitlyn changes over the course of season 1: she begins to see the humanity of people she previously didn’t mind holding power over, and ultimately becomes more sympathetic to their struggle. Vi, on the other hand, sees the humanity of a topsider and believes that there are people in Piltover that would actually be willing to help her. Independently, season 1 seems to argue that peace begins with de-alienation of the oppressors from the oppressed. Oh, but I forgot! The show-writers can’t say something so radical! Something that could actually spur discussion of how the capitalist structures that are so deeply embedded into our society are the root cause of political unrest!

Hence, we get a storyline that abandons Caitlyn’s desire to help those of the undercity and a relationship that seems purely driven out of mutual attraction and not much else. And sure, one could certainly argue that Caitlyn does care about those in the undercity, and that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have given up her seat on the council to Sevika. But what I’m saying is that Caitlyn’s final decision doesn’t indicate anything meaningful if viewers aren’t exposed to the thought process that leads to Caitlyn making said decision. It doesn’t answer the question of how we address the power dynamics between the oppressors and the oppressed. And even if one does take Cait’s decision at face value, I would still argue that it doesn’t actually help anyone in the undercity.

Sevika is a singular member of the council—a council full of members who hate her and everything she stands for. It’s just so hard to see a world in which Sevika’s spot on the council would actually make a difference for the civilians of the undercity. Even then, it still serves as lazy writing. Throughout the show, Sevika is portrayed as a character who has no loyalty to any singular person, but the liberation of Zaun itself. It’s so drastically out of character for her to simply accept a spot on a council of people she absolutely hates and try to work from inside the system of oppression to dismantle it.

I also feel the need to talk about Vi’s character. Vi is a person who, as a child, committed herself to the undercity’s liberation. Yet, she pretty much abandons her radicalization for Caitlyn’s sake. From choosing to gas the undercity in an enforcer uniform, to having sex with Cait right after Jinx heavily implies that she’s going to kill herself, to calling herself the “dirt underneath [Caitlyn’s] fingernails” (tf??) in the final episode, it becomes clear that Vi’s will to fight for the people of the undercity completely disappears by the end of the show.

Finally, I want to go back to my grievances with the final battle. I watched the Arcane finale with a few of my friends, and like I said, I felt exhilarated. Jinx’s entrance was so freaking cool, we hollered when Ekko used his rewind power, and were thoroughly surprised by Sevika’s entrance alongside the undercity forces. I was so enamored by the sheer amount of energy radiating from the characters, so impressed by the amount of skill it likely took to animate fight sequences that were so intricately choreographed, so curious as to how Jayce and Caitlyn could possibly defeat an antagonist of that caliber.

Yet, caught in a rush of emotions, I failed to consider what the show was trying to say. Or rather, what it chose not to say. The spectacle of it all just feels like a mere distraction on the rewatch. One could argue that the resolution for Zaun and Piltover’s conflict was how the two groups of people came together to fight Ambessa, but it feels like a cop-out. We’re left wondering what could have possibly pushed the people of the undercity to stake out their lives to help Piltover, the people who have oppressed them and made their lives as hard as humanly possible for decades. Now that I think about it, the writer’s choice to not include exactly what Ekko said to Jinx in order to get her to not kill herself and instead join the fight was also probably just laziness, and not the intentional storytelling tactic that I originally assumed it was. I mean, what purpose could it possibly serve for the writers to leave out a conversation so important?

Well, I believe the writers chose to skip over so much character development not just out of laziness, but because to do so, they would have to make concessions that don’t align with the message they were trying to send. If Piltover and Zaun ever had to realistically reconcile to a point where they would join forces against an external enemy, Zaun would actually need a certain level of autonomy. They wouldn’t just need autonomy, they would need leaders who truly genuinely care for the wellbeing of the citizens. The leaders would have to come from Zaun’s own population (because, obviously), and that would require the population of Zaun to actually be well off. And in order to be “well off,” Piltover would have to make so many reparations: letting go of their economic control over Zaun, ending the over-policing and corruption amongst enforcers, investing in Zaun’s impoverished, giving the people proper healthcare and education systems, the list goes on. And in order for Piltover to get to a position where they’d be willing to do all that, they would need to be met with resistance. And sometimes, an oppressed peoples’ only form of resistance is violence.

But that’s a message that Arcane so adamantly refuses to agree with. Like I said, Arcane is a show about “the sacrifices one makes in the name of progress.” And it argues that when one is willing to give up too much to achieve said progress, whether that be scientific or political, they lose a part of their humanity. This message works so incredibly well when considering Viktor’s disillusionment, and how he lost sight of himself in pursuit of the “glorious evolution.” But in this sense, Arcane failed at having nuance. Viktor and Jayce’s unadulterated ambition for scientific advancement is nowhere near the same thing as the undercity’s longing for a better society. One group of people wants to make cool tech for the sake of wealth and efficiency, and the other wants to fight for their basic human rights.

Yet, I can’t even argue that Arcane writers make a blanket statement for all types of progress and in doing so, demonizes violent resistance. Because they don’t. They don’t say anything about the moral dilemmas surrounding violent resistance. I can’t even say that I disagree with the political view that Arcane put forth, because in all honesty, they didn’t put forth any political view.

At the conclusion of the show, the most we see of the characters in the undercity is Ekko, who is left with literally nothing but a (seemingly) dead lover; Vi, who’s still subject to an unhealthy power dynamic with Caitlyn and is assumed to be staying in said relationship; and Sevika, as a member of a council who despises her. Oh, and then there’s Jinx who is at worst, dead, and at best, gone from Piltover and Zaun for good. I understand that her (presumed) decision to leave Zaun is her “choosing herself,” but that just falls in line with the idea that the fight for liberation simply isn’t worth the effort. It’s a lazy conclusion and the idea that “there’s no world in which Vi and Jinx can coexist and be happy” just sends the wrong message. Peace is something one must work for, and running away from that work doesn’t make the world better for anyone.

I guess you could argue that no one on Piltover's side necessarily got a good ending either, but my ultimate point is that those who previously committed themselves to Zaun’s liberation are now stuck in a place of complicity with their oppression. This is ultimately a testament to how little the show did to address the Zaun-Piltover conflict, and serves as a reason for why season 2 disappointed me.

How to Write Political Commentary

I realize that it sounds like my problem with Arcane is that it didn’t make a political statement that I agreed with. I also realize that it makes me sound like a woke asshole who can’t enjoy art that doesn’t align with my woke leftist values.

In recent BookTok discourse, someone claimed that it’s impossible to “keep politics out of BookTok” since “books in it of themselves are political.” I both agree and disagree with that idea. Not all art is inherently political. Some stories choose to focus on interpersonal relationships and some art intends to use said relationships to explore political ideas. Arcane seemed like it was going to be an example of the latter: it sets up so many political questions in the first half (police brutality, due process, the wealth gap, etc.), but it doesn’t give a satisfying answer to any of them. Obviously, I can’t expect writers to have the solutions to every single political problem in modern society, but when writers make a plot so heavily driven by politics, I do expect them to at least try.

My Hero Academia, my favorite show of all time, is a perfect example of how to use political commentary in storytelling. The premise isn’t subtle: in fact, the opening lines of the show are “People are not born equal.” But as the show went on, there was a flawless balance between exploring the interpersonal relationships of the show and its political commentary. The main character is essentially crippled in the first episode, and is treated by his peers accordingly. The villains were products of abandonment by society. The aspiring heroes and the general public are blinded by the promises of a quirk-based hierarchy. The ultimate antagonist of the show isn’t just All for One, but also the hero society that enables AFO to do what he intends to do. Each of the character’s actions and mentalities are driven by the politics of the society they live in.

This is what Arcane got right. Each character serves as an (almost) accurate representation of the part of society they were raised in, which is what makes discussions surrounding the show so nuanced, despite the show itself not saying very much.

[Skip the following paragraph to avoid My Hero Academia spoilers]

Back to MHA: this is a show that isn’t afraid to hold its own characters accountable. Following a final battle sequence that is also very exhilarating, but more importantly, thematically significant, the show actively portrays how society begins to change. Horikoshi introduces a completely new potential villain, except this time, the child is met with a society that reaches a hand out to help. In the epilogue, it’s shown how the quirk-based hierarchy begins to crumble as the profession of the hero becomes less necessary. One of the main characters starts a quirk counseling program to ensure that children don’t get alienated for their quirk or lack thereof. The result is that villainy on the whole decreases. There’s so much more to MHA’s ending that makes it pretty much perfect, but I might save that for another essay.

My Hero Academia has a theme completely independent of its political commentary. But the politics of the show remain ever persistent alongside its theme and character dynamics. In fact, Horikoshi intertwines the character dynamics so thoroughly with the show's political commentary that it’s so hard to ignore it.

Arcane, on the other hand, uses politics as a mere backdrop for interpersonal relationships. Everything Vi holds against topsiders is treated as a mere obstacle for her relationship with Caitlyn. Ekko’s contempt for Piltover pretty much has no bearing on his decision to just let Heimerdinger into the Firelight’s base. Jinx’s violence against enforcers is villainized, and her character arc is portrayed as her realizing that she doesn’t need to fight Piltover in order to be fulfilled. The oppression faced by the undercity is aestheticized, and not properly addressed in any capacity. Instead the anger felt by the undercity is summarized in a music video for “Paint the Town Blue,” and beyond that episode, we never see any meaningful form of resistance again. In other words, Arcane is essentially just oppression-porn. We get to see marginalized people struggle, we start to feel bad for them, and we get invigorated by their resistance. But we never see their resistance efforts make an actual difference for them.

The Implications

The cycle of being invigorated by resistance and then settling for the same old oppression is the sole reason that modern liberation movements almost always fail. Ismatu Gwendolyn, a writer whom I very much respect and take so much inspiration from on a daily basis, puts it far better than I ever could:

“True radicalization, the kind of change of thought that translates into changed action, only happens for a precious few. The vast majority of onlookers never really wanted to move from their position as spectator; they just fervently wished for a happier ending. So when there is less to look at (because the news cycle needs fresh blood; because the people providing live, on the ground coverage have been killed; when there’s less to look at because we have seen so many clips and photographs and accounts of visceral deaths that looking only makes us numb anyhow), we turn our eyes to the easiest narrative of hope that our screens can provide. We accept a manufactured happy ending.”

Arcane is a show that wants the semblance of a happy ending far more than it wants to say something meaningful. There’s so much irony in how I originally compared the plot of season 1 to the events surrounding October 7th in Gaza. Now, while the genocide may be over, the Palestinians will most certainly return to a state of apartheid and oppression. Sure, we got the ceasefire that we protested for. But at the end of the day, no protest can revert rubble back into lively communities and ancestral homes. No essay comparing real-world events to a show can bring back the 45,000 lives that were taken. The people of Gaza have experienced a place worse than hell and haven’t yet come back. Undoubtedly, Palestinians are more radicalized than they ever have been before. As a result, Israelis have never been more unsafe. In Gaza, we got what western media deems a happy ending, but the cycle of killing will still continue. Unfortunately for Arcane show writers, Silco’s whole assertion about how “the only way to end the cycle is to walk away” simply isn’t an option for any real person in the real world.

In my first essay, I claimed that Arcane was “undoubtedly a pro-Palestinian work of art, before the idea of being ‘pro-Palestinian’ ever became mainstream.” Boy, was I wrong. Arcane simply attempts to be a pro-PEACE work of art. Even then, it still fails.

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom" Malcolm X

Final Verdict

Arcane is a good show. And I’m not just saying this because I think I’d get killed by the fandom if I say otherwise. Even if I didn’t believe it’s a good show, the ratings would strongly disagree with me. And between me and thousands of other people who would rank it as one of the greatest shows of all time, it’s clear whose opinion means more. My newly formed opinion on the show is simply the result of comparing every new show I ever watch to the peak that is My Hero Academia and also the fact that I tried so hard to look at the show from the angle of real-world politics and simply failed to find a worthwhile conclusion.

I’ll probably even keep recommending it to people. After all, the questions Arcane forces us to consider (in the first season) are still meaningful and worth a second thought, even if I disagree with its presented conclusion.

On a side note, there’s a phrase that’s been circulating the internet recently: media literacy. The Google definition is “the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media and to determine their accuracy or credibility.” There’s a lot of people using the word to shame others for interpreting works of art incorrectly or not wanting to think critically about the content they consume. But in general, I think the Arcane fandom can also benefit from practicing some form of media literacy, by recognizing that this show is made for a western audience from a western perspective. This might be one of the reasons that the show failed to make an actual political statement that differs too strongly from the status quo. But that’s just speculation, so I’ll leave it there.