About a year ago, Chobani collaborated with Studio Ghibli¹ to make an animated commercial for the various yogurts they sell. On it’s own, that could warrant a headline: after all, I have yet to meet a single person who doesn’t like Ghibli films. But that’s not the most interesting thing to me. The thing I want to talk about is how the commercial very much takes after solarpunk aesthetics.

Now before we go any further, let’s take a quick detour to explain what this word “solarpunk” means. If hearing this word brings to mind stuff like cyberpunk and steampunk, you’re on the right track. Whereas steampunk is an industrial vision of the future, and cyberpunk is a digital one, solarpunk envisions what would probably be called a “green” future. But where solarpunk differs from the other punks is that it very much was started with a political purpose: it wasn’t intended to be just an aesthetic style but an art movement of sorts.

Politically, it seems to draw from a form of anarchism which is also environmentalist and socialist. Pacifism and the citing of indigenous influence are also recurring. To a lot of people, those last sentences probably were meaningless. All you need to know really is this: in simple terms, the politics of solarpunk is hippie politics. So how does solarpunk build on that? From what I can gather in my research, two main ideas:

One, that it is possible for technology and civilization to evolve in harmony with nature rather than molding it in its image.

Two, that all those aforementioned left-wing movements need to start looking to the future instead of the present and use optimistic messaging to fight climate change.

Using art makes sense towards the latter principle; art does allow people to broaden their understanding of what is possible. It’s a strategy which has been used by countless other movements throughout history. However, it also means that any criticisms made on political grounds hold more weight.

And you might be seeing where I’m going with this. Let’s return back to the Chobani ad. I’ll play it right now, try to see what you can observe in it:

This ad actually caught my attention when one of the larger voices in the movement happened to cite it while going on about what distinguishes solarpunk from what he calls “eco-modernism”. Quoting the thread here:

Solarpunk is often confused with ecomodernism but they’re actually very different in both aesthetics and values. Solarpunk is Down-to-Earth, vibrant, decentralist, and full of stylistic fusion. Ecomodernism is sterile, corporate, and centralist.

To know the difference, if it looks like the future has been designed by Studio Ghibli in collaboration with African and indigenous artists, it’s solarpunk.

If there’s a bunch of skyscrapers with green shit all over them, and it looks like it came out of a corporate pamphlet, it’s not solarpunk, it’s ecomodernism.

Solarpunk is to ecomodernism what indie rock is to corporate pop. Ecomodernism is a vision of the future in which all the existing hierarchies stay in place, but with an environmentalist sheen. A future in which power remains centralised.

Well, there you go, that should explain it… except it doesn’t. But before we even get to that, let’s rewind to that second tweet.

That image right there was in fact designed by Studio Ghibli¹. Were they collaborating with African and indigenous artists? I have no idea, but that’s beside the larger point. Obviously, this image is a frame from the yogurt commercial. When I first connected the dots that this person ranting about corporate design was citing a corporate design, it got my gears turning.

Obviously, the irony was lost on basically nobody. People cracked jokes. Others talked about ‘greenwashing’.

Some went as far as to edit the video to remove the yogurt.

One guy in the comments even was about to write a whole paper on it².

Regardless, the ad was very much a success. I think it’s easy to chalk all this up to “big corporation co-opts radical aesthetics” but I think that misses the larger, and honestly more interesting picture.

To get an idea of what I mean by the bigger picture, let’s return to that thread on eco-modernism. As I said earlier, it doesn’t seem to clarify very much. We’re given a lot of aesthetic statements, buzzwords, and platitudes but not really much in the way of actual substance. And the values which could possibly serve as a departure point don’t really seem to be reflected much in examples he gives. Like, does the image on the left (his idea of an authentic vision) look really that much different than the image on the right (his idea of a corporatized vision)? Both are coated in the exact same green slop.

The whole argument seems to really play to this idea that the underdog has some special, rebellious qualities which can’t be matched by the megacorp. It invokes analogies like indie rock and corporate pamphlet, but this completely misunderstands how the market works. This isn’t some sort of kids’ movie where you have a bunch out-of-touch elites sitting around a table. Markets work as an automatic network of consumers and talent which is incredibly responsive to changing trends.

And let us ignore for a second that the video was made by Chobani. I want to focus on the merits of the video itself. Is it well-produced? Of course. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss. As this falls under solarpunk, we have to remember the goal of solarpunk: to envision an alternative future. One in our daily lives are fundamentally altered. So, as we think back on the video, ask yourself? What about society has actually changed? How has our understanding of what is possible and what changes we can work towards been expanded? Have any of the key questions regarding socialism, anarchism, or climate change actually been answered?

In our own present world (just like the world of the ad) we have nature reserves, we have private gardens, we have household machines, we have family dinners. Who’s to say this couldn’t be the product of technological innovation under capitalism? It’s really telling that a consumer good like Chobani yogurt slots so neatly into this world. This isn’t the future, this is the present in a flattering art-style.

And I can already imagine what the obvious response to this post would be. Aren’t I overthinking this one post from this one guy about this one topic? What bearing does this actually have on solarpunk as a whole? So far, these are valid points. All I’ve done so far is talk about what’s raised my suspicions, but not what has justified them. I mean, after all, the idea that the Chobani ad is just one instance of a company capitalizing on a trend isn’t entirely unreasonable.

So, how about instead we look at an earlier example, a collection of drawings by Tumblr user Miss Olivia Louise which seems to be regarded among the community as one of the classic examples of solarpunk. This should provide us with sufficient authenticity.

The post consists of some drawings³ and some off-the-cuff thoughts. Pretty standard for Tumblr, and given the subject matter, it makes sense to present it this way.

But, before we get into the art itself, let’s look at how the artist defines solarpunk, so we know what to look for.

What’s most striking is how aesthetically driven this vision is, you don’t really get a sense for imagination. “Artisan” and “organic” are words that companies like Chobani love to use too, after all. The Solarpunk Manifesto tries to expand on this, but even then it mostly stays grounded in defining aesthetic terms.

The common theme across these drawings seems to be that more focus is given to certain aesthetic motifs than logistics. We have a postcard but not a society. If solarpunk is something you like for primarily aesthetic reasons, this is not at all a problem. There’s a distinct style and fashion here with a lot of room for others to build on. However, if you choose to hone in on a political application, then there’s issues which have to be discussed.

Starting with this first image, exactly what are we seeing here? What would the process of constructing this look like?

The ground is entirely paved to make way for roads. Pools of water are enclosed in a very specific boundary, and would most likely have to be displaced here from other, natural bodies of water. The entire street is excessively laced with electric lighting of different colors. The landscape, both in the foreground and background, is dominated by skyscrapers with little sign of natural life barring this one conveniently placed tree. This is all very reminiscent of our world, and doesn’t at all seem to reflect the principle of living in harmony with nature. We have more muted colors and rounder edges on the buildings, but once again that’s an aesthetic shift. Overall, very little is left to the imagination here.

I think the second image does quite a better job in this regard. As I was thinking about what it would take for the landscape to look like this: a bunch of skyscrapers separated by water, the answer hit me. Rising sea levels. Something essentially negative is taken and turned into a positive, a way to rebuild the city.

Is it unrealistic? Yeah, but that’s kind of the point. First an idea has to exist before people can answer the question of how, and the idea is only going to come if there is hope that something can be done. That’s essentially what solarpunk is about and this image gets that principle across. The elevator, the trolley, the pipe, these are all things which can be logistically debated and actually give us insight into how people here live. This even brings to mind questions of zoning and how to most effectively re-use these pre-existing buildings.

A while back I saw another piece of art making the rounds. It was by some Maoist who was trying to imagine what an America run by his preferred form of government may look like. While working on this post I was reminded of it.

There’s a lot of parallels that can be made between that and the picture we were just discussing. The scale, the level of detail, the political motivations, and the ways in which technology is used. But looking closer, I think there’s also a key contrast. It ties back to what I was saying earlier about the difference between a postcard and a society. Underneath the flags littered all over the image, there’s just a city. A regular city, with people going about fairly regular commutes. There’s brutalist architecture, surveillance, and floating islands but nothing about that tells us about the actual substance of his communism. The most interesting thing to me is that there’s very little room for cars, but given that there are cars in the picture, this seems more like an oversight than anything meaningful. At least with that last solarpunk piece, there was a some difference in how the society functions.

Do I think that last solarpunk piece was perfect? No, but I do think it was a step in the right direction. Something was actually conveyed, there was actually something for the audience to stop and think about rather than just uncritically gazing at the pretty picture.

Instead of focusing on aesthetics, what the imagination needs to turn towards is the big questions. How will food be grown? How do people get where they need to go without cars? How will people spend their time? How do we make landscapes livable without large amounts of terraforming? These are tough questions, and what art has the potential to do is get us to shift our perspective and inspire new solutions. What needs to be re-imagined above all else is daily life. If we are still living the same exact life and doing the same things, then what good does a change of setting actually do? Once the novelty of the fancy architecture wears off, will this society be any different really?

I want to take one last aside to talk about some real life landscapes, because at the end of the day, politics is a statement on reality. I also think that these will do a good job getting across the point that being critical is important if one does take solarpunk seriously. First, there’s Central Park in New York City, an incredibly iconic example of modern urban planning.

This picture was taken within the parameters of Central Park. Looks quite nice, with a lot of greenery. It’s obviously not solarpunk, it lacks the futuristic aspects, but it definitely gives similar vibes to the reference photos given in the Tumblr post.

Let’s zoom out.

Central Park is entirely boxed in. Right outside of its perimeters is the sort of architecture you’d expect out of a major city. It serves as a retreat from concrete, rather than anything actually transformative. We even see signs of this in how the park is laid out. Zooming back in, notice all the fences and how the pathways are neatly laid out? Plants are tolerated as long as they stay in their zone: this rule holds true for wildlife, bodies of water, and arguably people. These are the details most important to look for, in my view.

Do I personally believe in solarpunk? No. I think that there exist fundamental issues with these sort of utopian forms of prefiguration. Also, I’m not particularly attached to the core principles it promotes. But it’s far from the worst use of time either. But given what a lot of online leftists spend their time doing, even something as simple as making art shows itself to be a much healthier way to engage with politics.

I’m mildly curious to see where this movement goes, even if I am highly pessimistic about what becomes of it. But to sit here and criticize solarpunk on a fundamental level would require me to criticize utopian politics as a whole. There have existed in-depth countless critiques of this stuff penned by people such as Engels or Adorno, so I don’t see much value in repeating their takes.

It makes sense that I wouldn’t have much new there to say because solarpunk isn’t new. In some form or another, its approach has existed just as long as the ideologies it draws from. Even looking through just the 20th century alone, stuff like arcology and communes have played a key role in hippie politics. Solarpunk just another incarnation of that strategy.

Instead, I want to keep my point relatively narrow. If you like solarpunk for its aesthetics, that’s cool. I think it has a neat style too, and most of this stuff will probably have no bearing on you. But if to you, solarpunk is a political project, you need to be actually critical of what is going on in the worlds you imagine and share. Art carries meaning, and to shy away from discussions of that meaning robs it of its impact. From the discussions and works I see come up the most often, this seems to be something a lot of people are missing.

There’s value in being emotionally moved by a work of art, but that can’t be all. It has to make people feel but also make them think. If I’m not getting a clear idea of how my daily life will be different in this world, why should I work towards it? If I can’t reflect on how each piece of the puzzle fits together, how can I work towards it?

In this context, art is the bridge between the impossible and the possible. If it dwells entirely in the realm of fantasy, it becomes unreal and fails to connect with our world. If it restricts itself to the familiar, it feels mundane, incapable of challenging anything.