Owl House said fuck capitalism
So this episode was interesting. Lilith pretty much killed her sister. Why the fuckĀ would she do that?
Even more interesting: why is Belos like that? How did Hooty put his head through one of those guards? Who the fuck is the Titan, and why does everyone like him? And how are these all tied together?
This episode was a metaphor for capitalism
ā¦and another delicious step towards radicalizing the youth into dismantling this fucked-up neo-feudal system.
Weāll start with Belos.Ā
Emperor Belos is a weird name, donāt you think? We all thought it was spelledĀ āBellows,ā but it wasnāt. In fact, itās five letters, starts with Be, ends with os, and describes a megalomaniac emperor that restricts peopleās freedom in order to accumulate wealth for himself.
Emperor Bezos Belos created capitalism. He saw the beauty of magic and decided to make himself the most powerful.
Belos created a system that destroys the masses and boosts his power.
Ā Iām dipping into fan theory a little, because the fan theory fits. We know that people get branded with coven magic that makes it so they can only specialize in one area. We know that Belos is the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. We know that the excess magic, magic created by restrictions, has to go somewhere.
Itās the same system that many viewers see all the time. AĀ job takes up all your day and tires you for the night, so you can only do one skill for the rest of your life. Jeff Bezos is the most powerful man in the United States. Excess money, money taken by restrictions, has to go somewhere.
The magic goes to Belos, like how the money goes to Bezos. Belos created capitalism, and he won it.
The guards arenāt real.Ā
Look, weāve never seen their faces. Theyāre all the same. Why would you work so hard to get to the top, just to become a nameless, faceless killing machine?
Oh, also Hooty stuck his face through one. There is nothing under the armor.
Why? Well, itās the same reason you see all those celebrities going around flaunting their wealth and bragging about how hard they worked. Like all those songs about how they grind every day and work harder than everyone else while youāre out clubbing, and that makes them dope. And then you take a closer look at them and see that they had a small loan of a million dollars fueling them, or an entire talent agency behind them, or their dad was a famous country star in the 80ā²s.Ā
Theyāre fake. Theyāre hollow. Theyāre a ploy created by the capitalist emperor to try to delude you into working harder.Ā
Let me put this into perspective. I guarantee that every single one of you has heard stuff like this:Ā āHard work makes you successful.āĀ āI put in the work, and thatās why Iām successful.āĀ āIf you work hard enough, then you can be as successful as Mark Zuckerberg.āĀ
And unless youāre a robot or really lucky, Iām sure all of you have failed at this. Maybe they told you that hard work would make you good at math, so you spent 22 hours a week working on calculus, only to pass it by 3 percentage points and have it destroy your perfect 4.0 GPA. Maybe they told you that if you talked to people enough, then you would make friends, so you spent a lot of time talking to people, only to end up lonely and friendless. Maybe they told you that if you did well in school, you would get a good job, so you spent all your time working hard to be a good student, and then ended up in a soulless, dead-end job.
The guards are there to delude you. Look, who reallyĀ gains from you being productive? The answer is the ruling class, the CEOs, the government, the bourgeoisie. It has always beenĀ that. All you get from working is a paycheck that lets you survive. They get a paycheck that lets them get rich. Just like Belos gets the magic and productivity of the specialized coven witches.
The guards are there to trick you. The truth is that nobody can join the Emperorās Coven.Ā Itās just there to make you thinkĀ that hard work will make you successful. Then you spend your entire life working hard, trying to prove to the person in charge that youāre worthwhile. You give your whole life to the Coven, and they give you nothing.Ā
Magic is supposed to be something you pursue for fun. Being skilled at things, being good at something beautifulā¦thatās supposed to be something you do because you wantĀ to. But they took that and made it into a source of productivity. It doesnāt matter if you make good content. All people fucking care about is if you upload the day of premiere, if you make a lot of content quickly, if you maintain a million different conversations with strangers who expect you to be the most interesting person in the room. They donāt care how it hurts you. They donāt care how you crack from the stress. How you cry when you think no one can see you, and then you check your phone and someone can see you, someone didĀ see you, and you have to put on your face and be the charming, magnetic person they want you to be. (oh by the way thatās why I wasnāt online much last week)
And it ruins it. Suddenly you canāt watch The Owl House without being stressed. You canāt make any content. You canāt make spells as powerfully as you want to. Your passion is replaced by perfectionism and insecurity, a voice telling you to keep being the best at what you do, or else theyāll forget you and let you die.
Thereās also the Titan.Ā
So nobody has mentioned him before, because in addition to the Boiling Isles being a hellscape full of witchcraft and queerness, itās also full of atheists.Ā
But suddenly we have people saying all this shit about him? Shit like, he gave witches the gift of magic, and then they learned to use it in a civilized manner, since being uncivilized was disrespectful?
I mean, first off, thatās fucking wrong. The islandĀ gives people magic. The island, which just so happened to be shaped like a titan-sized human. But the island/titan gives everyoneĀ all types of magic. Hell, even Luz gets to use magic, and sheās human.Ā
It sounds really fucking familiar. (tw for discussion of homophobia and colonialism and misogyny). It sounds likeĀ when the news is on and they show some Tr*mp supporter talking about how fetuses have more rights than people and it is their holy duty to take away a womanās control over her body and force her through unbearable pain and into an 18-year commitment she didnāt want to make. It sounds like all the times people tried to say homosexuality should be illegal, citing a single line in a book written two thousand years ago and heavily edited by a European king. It sounds like all the times people said God wanted them to conquer, to own the entire earth, to force the other races into pain to support them.
This is that bullshit thing people do where they commit awful sins and justify it by citing the will of God.Ā
Or, itās the Coven using religion as an excuse for evil.
Look, the Emperorās Coven is clearly colonizer-coded. Saying that peopleās original form of magic was wild (and showing a picture with the same joyous, rowdy energy of an 18th or 19th -century Black or indigenous party), and that it was Godās will for them to beĀ ācivilized?ā Sounds like that thing that powerful white people did where they went and murdered people and forced them into their twisted capitalist system. God, gold, and glory, is what they said, because history books just loveĀ to omit the gore.
Lilith is passing the abuse cycle along.Ā
You know, like a good little colonizer. God I fucking hate her. Sheās a MILF, in the sense that sheās a Mother Iād Like to Fling off a cliff.Ā
Ah, enough screaming about how much I want to drown Lilith in a tub of Hootyās mucus. Letās go into why I want to do that, and how she took the evils of capitalism and justā¦adopted those.
So, Lilith is sick and twisted for what she did to her sister. But, uhh, thatās the point. You see, there are so many other people out there like Lilith who would do the exact same thing, if given the chance. These are the people who do mean things when the teacher isnāt looking, and then act nice and try to frame you. These are the people who will hate you if youāre better than them. These are people who would do anything to bring you down, if you dare outperform them.
Itās greed, my friends. The mental illness that capitalism blesses us all with.
Lilith herself said it: she dedicated her entire life to the Coven. What she wanted was to be the best. And she almost wasā¦except for her own sister. Someone who lived with her, annoyed her at home, bested her at school. Someone she could never beat, no matter how hard she worked. And her sister was younger than her, too! How insulting was that? Lilith wanted to be the best, and someone in her exact situation did better than her.
Lilith was insecure. And it consumed her.
But why? Why does insecurity consume her? I mean, no one can be motivated by insecurity forever. Well, not unless someone conditions it into you.
The lovely thing about the capitalist system is the morals it teaches you. Things like:Ā āYouāre only useful if youāre the best.āĀ āBeing school smart makes you smart, while being social smart or sports smart or creative smart or fandom smart is worthless.āĀ āYour worth can be quantified by numbers and is based off arbitrary measures like your income or your grades.ā Things that can and will drive us crazy if we let ourselves believe them.
And it did drive Lilith crazy. She got so twisted by a society that said being good at magic is her only worth. Look, Lilith used to be good at things, probably. She was good at sports. At times, she slips up and does an okay job of being Edaās sister. She has a powerful presence when sheās in a room. And sheās wicked good at manipulating people.Ā
But that didnāt matter. Lilith bought into the lies. She let herself believe that magical skill was the only way to measure her worth. And since she needed to be the best, she hurt Eda for it.
The beautiful thing is, Eda didnāt buy that.Ā "Itās my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it.ā Is what Eda said, as she used up the last of her power, the last of her life, to save Luz. In her final moments, she proved that sheās not like them. Sheās stronger than them.
None of this matters. Not magical prowess. Not the hierarchy. Not the promise of joining the Coven and having more power than anyone else.
The only thing that matters to Eda is her family. Her real family. Her Luz, King, and Hooty. And by extension, Willow, Gus, and Amity. Those are Edaās real reason for fighting, for dying: to protect them. Look, thereās no way she wouldāve come out of that fight alive. She has a family, and her love for them is stronger than greed or jealousy or capitalism.Ā
Lilith never understood that. She thought the water of the womb was thicker than the blood of the covenant. Or, that the water of the womb and the blood of the covenant are stronger than the bonds of found family. She thought it didnāt matter if Eda loved, her, only if the Emperor loved her. Fucking bitch.
And now, a little something to worry about, before we go.Ā Amity Blight. The girl who wanted to join the Emperorās Coven more than anything, who dedicated her whole life to doing well in school, to being the best, to being perfect.
And then she met Luz. She fell for Luz. Now sheās in a tricky place, where habit and conditioning want her to join the Emperorās Coven, but her heart wants her to do the impossible and destroy capitalism.
She wasnāt in this episode. Funny that being injured and unable to work ended up saving her from watching her future mother-in-law die. So she bought some time.
But Luzās true mom is dead. This is the second mom she has lost, and sheās only fourteen. As powerful as King and Hooty are, Luz needs Amity. Luz needs Amity to support her and help her get back her mom.
So Amity has to make a choice. Fear and insecurity, or love and a high chance of death?Ā
Sheāll probably choose death. Because thatās the message that this family-friendly show is giving us kids. Fuck capitalism. All you need in life is to do what makes you happy and be with the ones you love.
