Welcome back to Double Take, the series in which I examine early episodes of Star vs. the Forces of Evil in order to show how they prepare the audience for increasingly complex ideas in later episodes. Remember that the goal of Double Take is twofold: not only do I intend to show how the writers presaged these complex ideas in earlier seasons, but, by revealing this, I also intend to highlight the writers’ true mastery of their craft and bolster my claim that the writing in Star vs. the Forces of Evil is vastly underappreciated.

I have scratched and clawed my way back from the abyss to bring you this post. It has been a long time coming.

Some of you may recall that I have previously written about (though not for this blog) the relevance of the pratfall effect to Star and Marco’s relationship with each other, as well as with the audience. If you don’t remember what the pratfall effect is, don’t worry; I’ll explain it later in this post.

Season one gives us plenty of examples of the ways in which Star and Marco are similar to each other – for example, their propensity to make mistakes. The first episode in which this comparison is driven home is “Cheer Up Star” – an episode that is, as I have always maintained, truly extraordinary. It is my hope that this post reveals the extent of the episode’s brilliance.



First, A Disclaimer

“Cheer Up Star” is, in part, about sexual desire, and this is not a subject that I intend to avoid writing about; Star’s desire for Oskar is the beating heart of the episode, and I would be remiss if I did not include it in my analysis. (That the production staff got away with depicting it to the degree they do is, after all, part of what makes this episode so astounding.)

I am aware of the risks I take in writing – even analytically – about sexuality in a cartoon which is aimed at teenagers: there are, for example, certain overzealous and ostensibly well-meaning persons who may use this post as evidence that I am nefarious. Well, I can’t control what those people think, and I certainly have no interest in placating them. My goal is to accurately write, to the best of my ability, analysis that sheds light on the ideas behind Star vs. the Forces of Evil – no matter what they may be.



Therefore, if the subject of sexuality makes you uncomfortable, I advise you to read no further.

Why this Episode?

Earlier, I briefly touched on part of what makes “Cheer Up Star” unique: in characterizing both Star and Marco as being prone to mistake-making, the episode plays out a practical application, before our very eyes, of the pratfall effect. And, yes, I still think “Cheer Up Star” shows us the precise moment in which Star first starts to be attracted to Marco – a scene that I’ll talk about in depth later in the post.

“Cheer Up Star” also pays special attention to the idea of irony and, relatedly, contains some of the most striking symbolism and metaphor of the entire series, all of which is especially interesting to me – I lectured on irony when I was a graduate student – so I think now would be a good time to talk about the adroit way the series uses irony in this episode.

Lastly, “Cheer Up Star” demonstrates incredible imagination and vividness in depicting – both in actuality and in visual metaphor – Star’s highly-charged sexual attraction to Oskar. The fact alone that Star’s desire is presented in such stark terms sets the show apart from others with regard to its approach to the concept of desire, and this approach returns in season two with a fuller realization in episodes like “Running with Scissors.”

The Pratfall Effect

Let’s go over just what the pratfall effect is: simply put, when an audience observes someone competent making a mistake, they tend to like that person more. My argument is that “Cheer Up Star” centers around the idea of mistake-making as a way for Star and Marco to develop affection for one another. I’ll go over those examples in a moment.

“Cheer Up Star” hints that it’s consciously making use of the pratfall effect by showing a literal pratfall. In comedy, pratfall is the term for a character falling flat on their ass. These types of falls were a staple of classic vaudeville acts, and, interestingly enough, Star falls in much the same way:

Indeed, there is a great deal of significance behind this moment, and we will return to it later in this post.

By this point in the series, Star and Marco are shown as competent when it comes to fighting monsters (“Star Comes to Earth,” “School Spirit”), and Marco is academically competent (“Matchmaker”). Yet “Cheer Up Star” puts Star and Marco in those same contexts – monster fighting and school – in order to show their vulnerability. Examples include:

The episode starts with Star and Marco running away from monsters instead of fighting them.

Marco misses the bus, then gets tossed into a pile of garbage on school picture day.

Star gets swallowed by a fish while trying to cheer up Marco.

Marco’s attempts at cheering up Star all end up disastrous.

A tongue-tied Star proves unable to have a conversation with Oskar.

Crucially, Marco is depicted laughing at Star when she gets swallowed by the fish she conjures. While it does cheer him up, there’s also a pratfall effect occurring: Star’s mistake inadvertently leads to success, which makes her more endearing – both to Marco and to the audience.

Similarly, Marco’s mistake of luring the monsters to Earth with Star’s wand turns out to also be successful:

As we can see, both Marco and Star benefit from each others’ mistakes and come to have more affection for one another as a result – and, as viewers watching these two adorable screw-ups, we come to feel more attached to them as well.

This attachment eventually becomes quite literal by the end of the episode: Star hugs Marco – another mistake, as they now become stuck together due to Star’s earlier spell. They are both literally and metaphorically stuck together, and the episode cements this bond (so to speak) by having the laughing cyclist from earlier return.

There’s something deeper going on with the pratfall effect as well: the idea that a mistake might actually be beneficial is a recurring theme in season two, with the most prominent examples being Star’s cleaved wand and Star’s Song Day celebration.

In “Baby,” the fact that Star is to blame for the cleaved wand is driven home, yet that same episode reveals that the cleaved wand allows Star to channel her emotions to access a greater form of magic. Similarly, in “Face the Music,” while it at first appears Star made a huge mistake in revealing the stolen book of spells to everyone, we later learn in “Starcrushed” that if Star hadn’t done so, Moon would have likely confronted Ludo alone and been killed. The Magic High Commission ends up accompanying Moon solely because of Star’s mistake – a mistake that ultimately saves Moon’s life.

The episode’s use of literal falling as part of the pratfall effect later returns in episodes like “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” – note how many times people fall throughout the episode – the effect of which is to paint those characters in a more tragic light. The heavy-duty symbolism in “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” is also prefigured by symbolism and irony in “Cheer Up Star.”

It’s Supposed to be Ironic

Let’s talk about what irony actually is. Many people make irony out to be something it isn’t, yet there’s actually a very simple definition of irony – one that is easy to remember and practical to apply when subjecting a work to critical analysis:

Cicero referred to irony as “saying one thing and meaning another.”

That’s all there is to it. Here’s an example: if it is raining, and I’m upset because I don’t have an umbrella with me, and I say, “Oh, great. It’s raining” – I am being ironic. You know, by my tone of voice, that I am not truly happy that it’s raining; in actuality, I am frustrated by the rain. I said one thing, but my real meaning – which you grasped – is something else. That is irony.

In my experience, most people incorrectly use the word irony to refer to a funny coincidence or mere incongruity (so-called situational or cosmic irony), but irony is neither: it is when someone says something and means something else. Irony is therefore broadly tied up with some types of figurative language, under which fall simile, metaphor, symbolism, and so on. For more on this, I suggest reading Cleanth Brooks’s essay “Irony as a Principle of Structure” – but the essential idea here is that speech which says more than it literally says is ironic.

Quite unusually, Marco in “Cheer Up Star” uses the word ironic correctly. His ringtone is set to “Space Unicorn,” a song which “says” something about the people who choose it for their ringtone – but Marco intentionally picks this ringtone (so he claims) for ironic purpose (i.e., in order to mean something else).

Likely, Marco is trying to imply that he doesn’t really like the song and only picks it as his ringtone to be funny because of how annoying most people find it (e.g., Ludo and his monsters). This in itself would, I think, be irony on the writers’ part, since Marco appears in actuality to truly enjoy “Space Unicorn” – see “Starsitting” and “Running with Scissors” – and not to have chosen it merely for ironic purposes.

Put clearly: Marco claims to be ironic in choosing a ringtone for his phone that no one would ordinarily think he would enjoy (and, in fact, pretends not to). Later, however, it becomes clear that Marco actually does enjoy the song, making his earlier claim to irony itself ironic, as the writers intend for us to understand that Marco is probably just too insecure to admit that he genuinely likes the annoying song – i.e., the writers have Marco say one thing, but the writers intend for us to grasp a deeper meaning to what he says.

In literature, irony is a technique which is commonly used to reveal a character’s subconscious, as it does with Marco in the case of his “Space Unicorn” ringtone. Furthermore, that type of double irony – i.e., the irony is itself ironic – is common to Star vs. the Forces of Evil, whose writers often layer meaning as thickly as they can.

As I mentioned earlier, the concept of irony is tied up with figurative language. Metaphor and symbolism are types of figurative language that Star vs. the Forces of Evil makes use of – particularly visual metaphors and symbols. In terms of the show’s often arcane symbolism, I believe there’s a great deal of influence from Revolutionary Girl Utena, which is a highly abstract work littered with potent symbolism. (I will write more about Revolutionary Girl Utena in a future post.)

In “Cheer Up Star” in particular, there’s a great deal of metaphor and symbolism, more of which I will cover in the next section. For now, let’s focus on one notable example: Jackie’s broken skateboard.

As many viewers have pointed out, this scene appears to be quite portentous – and I agree with that estimate – by acting as a metaphor for the end of Marco and Jackie’s relationship. Given that Jackie’s skateboard has a heart on it, the words “Marco, you broke my skateboard” can be metaphorically understood instead as “Marco, you broke my heart.”

In addition, metaphor and symbolism play a large role in “Cheer Up Star” in communicating aspects of feminine sexuality. The lengths the episode goes to in order to communicate these ideas is, as you will see, amazing.



The Gravity of Attracted Stars



Every time I watch “Cheer Up Star,” I can’t help but feel astonishment at just how many things this episode slipped past the censors. There are only a handful of overtly sexual moments, but other things (which I will discuss) are heavily symbolic and reinforce the sexual undertones of the episode – that is, they all nurture the idea of Star’s desire for Oskar. Let’s start by discussing the overtly sexual moments.

Even without looking into any of the metaphorical or symbolic elements, “Cheer Up Star” makes it obvious that it centers around romantic attraction and desire – namely, Star’s desire for Oskar, which is clearly established early on:

Other obvious elements throughout the show reinforce the notion of romantic attraction or desire, such as Marco’s shirt, the way Star presses her wand against her body, and the flower monster’s reaction to Star’s Honeybee Tornado Swarm spell.

The flower monster is particularly interesting, since honeybees do, in fact, pollinate flowers – that is, help them sexually reproduce – which explains the flower monster’s look of pleasure during the spell.

The most obvious and strongest element of all, however, is the frank depiction of Star fantasizing about Oskar:

Her tone of voice, her actions (the wand in her mouth), her body pose (slumped against the wall), and her thoughts (which we see in her fantasy) leave little doubt as to her feeling of pleasure in fantasizing about Oskar. Even the painting in the background is vaguely sexual – as if it were inspired by a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I still can’t believe this scene got past the censors.



Beyond all the obvious depictions of desire or attraction, there’s also a good deal of metaphor and symbolism in “Cheer Up Star” which hint at a latent sexuality. For instance, water, especially running water, has long been shorthand for female arousal – e.g., Pam Poovey’s “Sploosh!” in the series Archer – and, interestingly, “Cheer Up Star” places an unusual emphasis on a variety of water and other liquids, including a number of slippery or sticky liquids:

The wet fish that Star pulls from her hat in cheering up Marco.

“My car is a flying snail” – snails, as the episode shows us, leave a trail of slime in their wake.

“Mermaid pools filled with puppies’ drool.”

Marco splatters a bucket of red paint against the wall.

The music in this scene seems intentionally reminiscent of underwater themes from the Super Mario Bros. series. (Listen for yourself!)

series. (Listen for yourself!) Marco breaks open the aquarium, flooding Star’s room with water.

“Syrup Tsunami Shockwave!”

Even Oskar’s name, Oskar Greason, is suggestive of something slippery – grease.

One of these is particularly notable: the red paint that Marco splatters against the wall, for instance, violently interrupts Star’s fantasy. The sudden scene shift, the sound of the paint against the wall, and its vivid color serve to make the scene transition striking, drawing attention to the bucket of red paint.

I’ve long considered the bucket’s significance – its abrupt interruption of Star’s fantasy is a clue that it has some metaphorical significance – and I have a few guesses. Buckets, bowls, and similar containers are often used in literature as symbols for female sexual organs, and the fact that the bucket is filled with red paint – i.e., blood – could allude either to menstruation or to a loss of virginity, the latter of which would fit well with the sudden violence of the thrown paint (not to mention the fact that Star later wears that same bucket on her head – perhaps a subtle visual pun on maidenhead).

The bucket of red paint could also be a metaphor for the Holy Grail. As most of you know, I’ve written about the Grail before and its long use in poetry and prose as a metaphor for a woman’s sexuality or the divine union of male and female. The Holy Grail is a vessel that catches the blood of Christ, and in fact in some works has been depicted as being literally filled with blood. (This sense is possibly preserved in the etymology of sangreal.) Whatever its meaning, the bucket of red paint is absolutely not incidental.

Why is all this sexuality in “Cheer Up Star” important, though? I believe the answer, which finally returns in “Running with Scissors,” is simple: the writers clearly believe that lust is an integral and healthy component of romantic relationships.

I won’t go into the various psychological theories of love – you can read about those for yourself – but the basic idea is that stable romantic relationships are made up of several components, including commitment, erotic attraction, and empathy. In “Cheer Up Star,” the audience gets a taste of infatuation – of pure lust with none of the other elements of love behind it, such as friendship or duty.

In other words, Star doesn’t see Oskar as a friend or even a person – he’s a sex object. And, crucially, the episode passes no judgment on Star for this: it is perfectly ordinary to be sexually attracted to people for superficial reasons, especially when one is young.



In “Running with Scissors,” however, the idea of erotic attraction is turned on its head – and it’s Marco who becomes the object of Star’s desires:

The writers clearly intend for us to understand that lust is a normal – and, indeed, integral – part of a healthy romantic relationship. (For I believe, as I have written about before, that the writers intend for Star and Marco to eventually become lovers; the symbolism of “Running with Scissors” cinches it.) Without sexual desire for Marco, Star’s relationship with him would merely be close friendship. Her physical attraction to Marco is what pushes her over the line of friendship into truly wishing him to be a lover. I am honestly having trouble coming up with examples in animation of lust depicted in the context of a healthy, burgeoning relationship, and I applaud the writers for making such a bold statement in Star vs. the Forces of Evil – it’s rare to see it!

I mentioned earlier that I still believe an earlier scene in “Cheer Up Star” depicts the singular moment in which Star starts to be attracted to Marco, and it is indeed the following scene, which I will now discuss in depth:

Falling (in Love) Stars

This scene in “Cheer Up Star” is what inspired me to write about the pratfall effect, but I also believe it is, appropriately enough, the precise moment at which Star starts to become attracted to Marco. Or, if you like, we can say that her perspective of Marco changes (both figuratively and literally!).

The scene is a peculiar one. It immediately follows a sad scene, and there’s no music that plays during it. The sound that we hear during the scene is of the monsters pounding on the door – which, to me, somewhat resembles a heartbeat. (The pounding on the door lacks dramatic tension, which is why there seems to be some symbolic significance to it.)

When Star falls down and the junk in the shed plummets to the floor, it’s as if reality has come crashing down around her: she now views Marco from a different perspective – from his level. That, I think, is the exact moment when Star realizes that Marco could be a potential love interest instead of just a friend.

I’ve already noted several points throughout the episode in which it is actually Marco, not Oskar, who gains Star’s attentions – and isn’t it strange that the very first episode depicting Star’s attraction to Oskar actually revolves around Star and Marco’s growing closeness through their efforts to make one another happy? Oskar is merely a distant voice on the phone; Marco is immediate and tactile.

It is remarkably telling, in fact, that Star uses Marco’s phone to talk to Oskar instead of her own or the home line. Marco is even responsible for telling Star to answer the phone in order to talk to Oskar:

As I said earlier, “Cheer Up Star” depicts bonding between Star and Marco both literally and figuratively – for what is the final shot of the episode? It is Star and Marco sticking together – bonded together, cleaved together.

Glossaryck: Cleaved? Now that’s a funny word. You can cleave something apart, or you can cleave something together.

Think about it.

Some Remaining Observations

After having watched this episode a number of times (a number of times), I’ve noticed a few interesting things about it. None of these really fit with the main thrust of the post, so I’m including them here at the end. Perhaps you will find them interesting as well.

Marco kissing a ninja is subtly reminiscent of Hekapoo’s task in “Running with Scissors.” When Marco leans in to blow out Hekapoo’s flame, it appears as if he’s about to kiss her. Additionally, Hekapoo’s speed, agility, skill with blades, and ability to clone herself are all associated with fictional depictions of ninjas.

The fact that Ludo does, in actuality, hire new monsters is a subtle bit of foreshadowing eventually leading to the appearance of Toffee.

Throughout “Party with a Pony,” a reoccurring gag has Pony Head holding her dimensional scissors in her mouth, with Star also later mimicking this gag. The gag briefly reappears in “Cheer Up Star.”

“Flying Snail,” the song that Oskar sings in “Cheer Up Star,” is not actually a song by Oskar – the song takes place entirely in Star’s fantasy and seems to demonstrate an unusual amount of lyric complexity compared to Oskar’s other works. Therefore, Star is actually the one who writes “Flying Snail,” providing more evidence that Star is quite skilled with lyric compositions. Other songs written and composed by Star are the end credits theme (this is probably a song that exists within the fiction), the serpent’s song in “Star vs. Echo Creek,” and, in part, “The Ballad of Star Butterfly.” Interestingly, Star’s facility for lyric composition dovetails neatly with her gift for imaginative spellcrafting – a topic worthy of a post of its own, especially given my appreciation of the show’s formidable linguistic capacity in general.

We’ll Meet Again

I’m sorry that this post was so long in coming. It’s finally done now! I hope you enjoyed reading it. Feel free to ask me questions here. I intend to post some writing samples on my about page soon, so please look forward to those!

Here are some things I intend to write about in the future before season three begins:

A recap of my theories and analysis so far, and an explanation of what to look for in the July 15th movie.

A Double Take on “Pixtopia,” loneliness, and wabi-sabi .

. A Double Take on "Monster Arm” and its significance in foreshadowing Toffee.

A post on Revolutionary Girl Utena’s connection to Star vs. the Forces of Evil … eventually.

That’s all for now. I’m excitedly anticipating the start of season three!

