Khensu presents the Ancient Egypt special collections room
Back in August 2020, when I had begun to write reviews of libraries in animation, I wrote that in the episode “Clubbing,” after Cleopatra, her friends Brian and Akila, and her teacher/mentor Khensu go to the Ancient Egypt section of the school’s library, equivalent of a special collections, that Cleo, dismayed by the amount of records on Ancient Egypt, offsets a positive depiction of libraries by sucking all the electricity of the school and nearby Mayet City into her body, resulting in a power outage. While that seems like a valid assessment, I’m not sure if what I said next is correct: “The message of this moment is that libraries need adequate resources and support to assist the communities they serve—otherwise there will be information deficits that put patrons at a disadvantage.” I decided to re-examine this scene, especially since I was encouraged to add this by Lindsey Simon of I Love Libraries when I wrote this post for that website. [1]
The scene begins when Cleo goes with her friends Brian and Akila to the special collections room after hours. At first, Cleo is excited to see what they have, but there are only a few dozen artifacts, fragments of scrolls, and books. Khensu shows her how to access all of it and hands her a scroll, the only thing that mentions her by name. Akila tries to cheer her up, but it doesn’t work, as she thought she might find something about herself. She is amazed to see they have a statue of her dad. As she begins feeling emotions for him, she starts glowing pink, giving off a “weird energy signature,” floating, sucking the power out of everything, including the shield protecting the city from asteroids. Following that, they run out of the library to avoid the asteroid attacks, ending the scene in the library, and they never end up returning to that room at any point in the series.
It is clearly a stretch and overreach to say that this scene somehow indicates that “libraries need adequate resources and support to assist the communities they serve” and that if they don’t there “will be information deficits that put patrons at a disadvantage.” This scene, prior to the asteroid strikes, is indicating the importance of preservation and value of information. I also incorrectly termed this the “library’s Ancient Egypt section,” with physical records in a trunk. While they can be accessed as holograms, it is a whole room of information, and it probably is not accessible to the general student body, as they accessed it after-hours. As such, the information inside is restricted, perhaps to only the professors of PYRAMID Academy, not the students who actually attend the academy. It is possible it may be accessible to specific students, like Callie, who heads the Ancient Egypt club at this intergalactic high school, but that can’t be confirmed.
Furthermore, Cleo’s use of the pink power is not as much a dismay at the records that are contained within the room. Rather it is a longing for her father who she will likely never see again, and her home. The imagery and symbolism of this scene makes this interpretation the right one, rather than the one I stated in I Love Libraries at the time. Unfortunately, with the attack in the final episode of the series by Octavian’s forces, this room was likely damaged during the fighting, and it is not known how much of it remains.
On the other hand, there is clearly a lack of information in this room, as Cleo is acutely aware of. There probably isn’t much in terms of weeding that is going on in acquiring materials for this room, i.e. the removal of items from a collection. Rather, there is careful acquisition since the villainous Octavian has destroyed much of the galaxy’s information in what they call The Blight, while likely keeping copies of this information for himself. Obviously it is not mentioned in this episode, but the upkeep of the room itself is undoubtedly incorporated into the budget of the PYRAMID library.
Unlike some other libraries, this library is about knowledge and learning, not some institution that is acting as a “profit center,” as some like to frame libraries and make them synonymous with business that is trying to gain a profit. That is something that libraries, especially those which are public or non-profit, should not be doing, even if they are encouraged to think that way in order to be “competitive” or speak like corporate CEOs. In the end, while Cleopatra in Space is not talking about information deficits in libraries, it connects to other library themes and remains relevant in terms of representation in popular media.
© 2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] My original draft of the post that I submitted to I Love Libraries did not include this line, only noting that the scene in “Clubbing” was two-and-half minutes long, ended when Cleo and her friends have to avoid asteroids crashing into the school.
https://popculturelibraries.wordpress.com/2022/09/13/is-cleopatra-in-space-really-talking-about-information-deficits-in-libraries/
#AncientEgypt #cats #CleopatraInSpace #corporations #informationLoss #informationNeeds #magic #restrictions #specialCollections
Matt Willemsen
Pop Culture Library Review