You might consider it useless or a waste of time and energy, I don’t care, let’s just do this stuff, no need for academic level research or analyzing a whole show, just do it ig. And yes this is post an excuse for me to rant about Ben 10.

Everyone knows this show probably, cartoon network show about a kid who basically has an alien WMD that turns him into Aliens. I used to love the show as a kid and I started thinking about it more these days.

Show obviously falls into the power fantasy trope that other super hero shows have, but it changes depending on the writer of the episode, sometimes he’s Jesus christ sometimes he’s just a kid that turns into Aliens that beat other Aliens. There was a few “what if” episodes where Ben used his means who turning into a big fish for fascism or money or fame, classic superhero stuff.

Ben 10 has some political episode, there was one called “prisoner 775” which was basically an allegory for Guantanamo bay. I’ll focus on Ben 10 omniverse because I’m writing this smh.

Omniverse talks about racism, immigration and Colonialism. It represents immigrants as literal Aliens who live in an underground city, they’re painted as similar to humans but not equal in rights or opportunities, they’ve been shown to go outside and chill but there’s a beauty/human lookalike privilege. There’s a character in the show who’s basically a right wing news anchor who’s racist towards Aliens, creating hatred because he’s funded by a right wing human supramacist group (the forever knights), then later in the show this racist news anchor turns into an Alien (I don’t like that with the racism allegory). Then there’s a few episodes on colonialism and a colonialist Alien race called the incursions or something, colonialist frogs who colonized I think three planets, Earth which was saved by Ben coming back and a revolution thing happening then the princess betraying her father to become a leader and going away with her army, The “upchuck” thingie planet which ended by them just eating the planet to make the colonizers seeth (Literally), then the third one is for later.

There was another episode where Aliens who come from a very hot planet have an extremist group who want to melt planet earth because they need it to be hotter (allegory for Sharia law prolly).

I obviously expect the show to have liberal points of view no shit but some stuff is still surprising.

In the show, the Plumbers is an organisation that plays the role of intergalactic police/counter space terrorism, Ben 10 isn’t a member but to connect him with them in the show are two main characters, his grandfather and his partner Rook, an extremely professional plumber… Who was shown getting information off a criminal through releasing toxic gas on an entire bar in the second episode of the show, which he gets nothing out of and the criminal gets away anyhow. Rook doesn’t get punished for torture which could mean that torture is allowed or even encouraged by the plumbers because he’s not supposed to be a “corrupt bad apple” he was top in his academy and a literal law nerd.

The types of criminals the organization deals with does range from a buff chicken stealing eggs to build up muscles, to basically squid Alien Adolf Hitler, the plumber prison system is clearly shown to be for punishment rather rehabilitation, as often times prisoners who do their sentence end up causing more chaos, which I guess is fine for a very small number of cases, as there’s no way to rehabilitate a character who was basically Squid Alien Adolf Hitler’s best buddy… BUT WHY THE FUCK MUST THEIR JAILS LOOK LIKE THIS

Another point about the plumbers is their similarity to the United States or what it pretends to be, The plumbers are protectors of worlds, saviors and bringers of peace who can do no evil, there’s some characters that are shown to dislike them, but they don’t show any reason to dislike other than doing illegal stuff (duck dude and the Aliens calling them redspots). The plumbers are an ethnically diverse group of pigs with all types of representation, from white people to useless Alien fellas. You might think that I’m insane and there’s no way plumbers are an allegory for the writers view of the USA, but both canonically (and I wish I was making this up) were founded by George Washington, so yes the intergalactic hero police were founded by a slave owner.

The plumbers utilize complicated and resource hungry space ships, vehicles, weapons and builds military bases in planets as means of maintaining space law and order, which raises the question of funding and gaining material, could be from a space confederation thing that pays for it to maintain peace. What raises questions is why do multiple planets refuse this service for example Revoggandah and a system populated by creepy Aliens, in the show the reason painted for the creepy Aliens is that they’re racist to outsiders… This leads me to believe that the plumbers probably use materials from the planets they build bases in.

This is the third planet that got colonized in Omniverse, I’ve kept it for itself because I feel there is much to unpack. The people of this planet are shown to be simple farmers who lack advanced technology and live off the only plant that grows in their planet which can be used for food, clothes, building and most importantly as a fuel source. This planet is clearly supposed to represent a third world country rich in natural resources.

In an episode of the show the planet gets colonized, the people are turned into slave workers using a brain controlling device (which if you want to make it an allegory for propaganda then it is) and the natural resources of the planet are being depleted at an extreme rate. Ben 10 then comes and saves the day destroys the mind control thingie and helps the people defeat colonialism hooray.

The colonialism in the episode is painted as a bad thing which is good, because classic colonialism is bad. But another issue is that Rook (the plumber torturer guy from earlier) is a native to this planet, which makes him seen as a traitor to his planet by the elders and an idol by his younger siblings who want to become plumbers.

Now the thing is that it’s completely fine for the people of the planet to basically not want to become a space NATO base and possibly have their resources be depleted by them, but the show represents the dislike towards plumbers using an elder of the planet who is seen as outdated and too much in the old ways of tradition. This is basically straw manning resistance of neocolonialism as old people not wanting the world to change.

Although ben 10 omniverse does a good job at representing the struggles of immigrants in a new country and facing racism and oppression, It has a false perfect view of the USA which is expected ig.

I’ve probably made some mistakes in this or have too fangirlish idk.