THE ABSOLUTE HORROR OF STARSCREAM IN S4E1 OF EARTHSPARK
This post is just a rant about first part of the special. It's not a review and not a commentary of the entire thing. I won't be mentioning the second part of the special, I think it deserves its own time as my feelings about it are way more complex. This out of the way let's talk about what happened with Starscream in S4E1, how he is treated by the show and other characters, his agency and portrayal also in the context of previous seasons (I wrote a rant about him in S2 and mentioned the show's treatment of him in a post about S3 which both may give some context).
Starscream's personhood: narrative perspective
So, starscream is mind controlled. Yay. We will talk about implications of that fact later, but first it is important to notice how little he is of a character outside of that. I wasn't counting precisely, so maybe I forgot about something, but I think there are... three? Four moments? When he talks as he himself in this over 40 minutes long episode. None of which are before he gets posessed. Two of which are moments when he begs for mercy and being saved from his predicament. His body is used not only by mandroid who controls him, but also by the show. It could not matter less for the plot, aside from some jokes, that it is him specifically that is being controlled.
I think the second scene in which he appears is also pretty telling about how the show sees him. The shot is cut so we don't see Starscream's face, leaving only mandroid in our vision. Starscream does not exist in that scene, not as anything other than a tool for mandroid and the narrative.
Starscream's personhood: characters' perspective
Starscream is not seen as a person by characters of the show, not by this point. This can be observed in the nicknames mandroid gets from terrans: "manscream" and such. The implication in the joke is that, as the "droid" part of mandroid, Starscream became just that: a part of some other person, an appendage.
The instant response to his predicament from others is violence, all tries to free him are secondary, minor, and made only to get rid of a threat that his host provides. Not that I expected anything else at this point, but the lack of reaction at his begging for help still struck me. His tone is absolutely gut-wrenching and none of the Terrans reacts. He is not seen as a victim at any point by anyone.
Both the show itself and its characters are so desensitised for this character's suffering it's honestly shocking. But... is it? He is not a person to no one in this show at that point, S3 showed him as being "crazy", in a way that is somehow archetypic for kids shows that was supposed to be humoristic. "Crazy" character that is not a person, no, they are a joke, a being without motivation or goals or agency, at best they have some source of their "craziness", but no personhood. They are just a thing the others have to put in a place in which they won't cause too much discomfort for others (by that I mean how Starscream landed in autobot prison cell at the end of S3). Starscream is not a person for the show at this point, so how can the show recognize his suffering at that point? It can't.
Mind control: implications, parallels and the horror
It is absolutely insane to me that this mind control shit happened, I'll be blunt. And how it's executed is even worse.
S1 made a direct parallel between Starscream's experience of abuse and Hashtag's experience of being mind controlled. Mind controlled by the same person that does it to Starscream in S4E1. He experiences now what is literally spelled out by the show itself a mirror of his previous suffering. He is forced to live through it again. I can't imagine what was that needed for.
What makes it worse is that it's not exactly what Hashtag experienced. in S1, when mind controlled, Hashtag was surrounded by her family who tried to help her and at the end succeeded in helping her, reminding her of who she was, encouraging her to fight back.
There is no one in S4 to help Starscream. There is no singular person that is willing to help, there is no singular positive relationship that could help him. The usual plot devices used to fight mind control: positive affirmations, are not only unused here, they have no right to exist, there is no source for them to come from. It's so hopeless it makes my head spin.
It's so hopeless it makes Starscream beg Megatron himself for help. Megatron. Who wrote this, who wrote this shit. Why are we making this character symbolically relive his experience of abuse where he's so hopeless he begs for help from a person who did the abusing.
Megatron thoughout the episode is acting like an absolute psychopath and besides one unsure question from Twitch he is never called out for it. He is happy to kill, or at the very least seriously harm Starscream under the pretense of current situation. And no one cares.
Megatron has the opportunity to beat the shit out of mind-controlled Starscream, a direct opposition to what happened at the end of S1, where Starscream, while helping Terrans fight mandroid, had the oportunity to fight mind-controlled Megatron. It was an important moment, a revenge that was not acted upon only for the sake of revenge and it was empowering. By making them switch possitions in the first part of the special, all of that is meaningless, metodically taken away from Starscream, "repaid". He can't have that.
In S1, in "What Dwells Within" episode Megatron was cruel, heartless towards Starscream. But the purpose of the episode was for others, and partially Megatron himself to realise it is bad. He was cruel and heartless but at the same time niuanced, able to change, to keep changing to be the redeemed person he sees himself as. Everything in S4 feels like it was just what Megatron at the start of "What Dwells Within" would want. He can brutalize Starscream with no one bothering him about it. He can outright state he is ready to kill him. He can throw him in a prison cell to "never see him again" as he says. As if it was Starscream who personally wronged him. He can make it sound like it was Starscream who personally wronged him, because he is more in control of the narration than Starscream, because, unlike in S1, in S4E1 he is unchellenged by anyone among the autobots and terrans.
Even after returning to control over his body, Starscream has no control over their story and how it's told. No one cares, and isn't it just like the beginning of that S1 episode, when no one believes him? We are back to square one.
A lot of what I was talking about was returning Starscream to some pre-Season-One- arc place, and about taking away his agency/personhood. This is because the two are inherently connected. Both serve to dehumanize him, to take away any deep element of this character. S2 and S3 made him one-dimentional "crazy" guy, S4E1 made him less than that. It made him into a gimmicky tool that got used and thrown away, in story: back into a prison cell, oustide of it: out of the plot.
We also regress in our understanding of niuance in the show, yet again, after all what S2 and S3 already did. Or maybe it is just being spelled out. That we can watch a victim of abuse relive their trauma, be beaten by their previous abuser and thrown into a jail cell. And it can be okay. Because, after all, he is a villain. Because he is crazy and evil and shallow and hollow and isn't it just logical that it doesn't matter what happens to him? Isn't his place in a jail cell? It's so obvious, so mind-numbingly obvius it does not require thinking. So don't think about it, don't think about him, just let the door to his cell close.
