“Hope Punk”

Dear Beloveds,

Hope Punk is a term coined by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland in a 2017 Tumblr post that went viral across other platforms as well, where she wrote “The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.”

For reference, “grimdark” is sub-genre of fantasy and sci-fi. Grimdark stories are nihilistic, dystopian, amoral, and violent. In grimdark stories there are no heroes, even the protagonists you might come to root for aren’t great people. The mood tends to be cynical and disheartening – Nothing matters and what if it did?

Grimdark is a Song of Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones. Grimdark is The Third Body Problem. Grimdark is N.K. Jemison’s The Fifth Season. The Sopranos is Grimdark.  Also, Westworld, Penny Dreadful, The Expanse. Liz Bourke says Grimdark is “a retreat into the valorization of darkness for darkness’s sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action … as either impossible or futile.”

Hopepunk is the opposite. And although there’s debate about whether hopepunk is a sub-genre, it certainly is a theme, a trope, and vibe. What makes it “punk” is the anti-establishment and resistance to oppression present in the work. Alexandra Rowland further explained her take on hopepunk in essays and interviews. She noted that Hopepunk is a refutation of the “glass is half empty” lazy nihilism of grimdark.

“Hopepunk says, ‘No, I don’t accept that. The glass is half full.” Yeah, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but – and here’s the important part – we’ve also been soft and forgiving and kind. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness don’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.”

I LOVE that idea. Hope is Joe Strummer and the Clash.

Some hopepunk stories you might know include The Lord of the Rings,  Star Wars, The Hail Mary Project, The Hunger Games, The Book of Eli, The Good Place, Arrival, The Shawshank Redemption (“Hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things.”). 

I learned about hopepunk a couple of years ago at the Festival of Homiletics in a sermon by Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana called “HopePunk and the Gospel: Narrating Hope When All Seems Lost.” In that sermon she made a case for the Jesus story – not contemporary American conservative Christianity-  but Jesus’s story and teaching as being hopepunk.

(continued)

I think Hopepunk is the new spirit rising in contemporary resistance to injustice. Black Lives Matter is hope punk, Greater Danbury Unites for Immigrants is hope punk, adrienne marie brown and Pleasure Activism is hope punk, Greta Thunberg is hopepunk, and  Unitarian Universalism is hopepunk. 

Hope is not blind optimism. Austin Channing Brown says that for white people hope is optimism, but for black people hope is duty. We have a duty to those who come after to fight for what is right because it is right.

Things can seem dark right now. But there’s way through this time and a way to defeat fascism, authoritarianism, meanness and cruelty. It’s kindness, love, local action, admitting our own faults, doing what’s right for its own sake. Duty, love, resistance, rebellion – it’s punk. Hope punk. Like Unitarian Universalism.

Hopefully,

Rev. Tony