Pinocchio, Solarpunk and Capitalism

Three words with seemingly no connection, but if you let me get to it, I promise it will make sense in a couple lines. First let’s freshen up on Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio.
In the old Italian story, the title character gets lured into a place called Pleasure Island, where boys are promised endless fun with no rules. But big surprise, Pleasure Island is not as pleasurable as the name might suggest. It is a false utopia that lures in the naïve and binds them to a cruel fate. The boys who got enchanted by the hopeful promises of Pleasure Island get turned into donkeys and become slaves. This might be perhaps the biggest hazard of utopian thinking, the hopeful promise is so moving that it inspires utmost dedication, possibly for the wrong cause; and this is where solarpunk comes in. 

Of course, there are utopias that yearn for righteous, and philanthropic causes, much like the notion of solarpunk does. But at the crux of this problem lies not with the idea itself, but what you do with it, or who does what with it. Pleasure Island does not sound so bad after all, endless fun, why not? The point at which the utopia goes awry is when the notorious Coachman steps in, the antagonist who uses a wonderful idea for his benefit, at the cost of others, needless to say. No matter how noble a utopian idea might be, it will always run the risk of being abused, and this is already happening with solarpunk. 

Solarpunk as an interdisciplinary movement, involving both art and technology, can be understood in many ways. Whenever it is introduced in an article, a video, or any form of media I sense a certain amount of confusion about what we are actually talking about. Depending on who you ask, it is an artistic movement, a sci-fi subgenre, a way to organize society, or a utopia. Of course, these are all just boxes which might not fit the full size of the movement, as a solarpunk enthusiast might argue, but it is important to understand what it is, otherwise people will make of it what they want. This pluralism makes it elusive to critique and subject to misinterpretation. As a sci-fi subgenre, artistic movement, and so on, who’s to stop the Coachman to use these awe-inspiring visuals for his profit. Or in more direct terms, who’s to stop capitalism. 

Companies are already taking up the aesthetic, using a green high-tech future for promoting dairy products, such as it is the case with the advertisement Dear Alice by the company Chobani. And it is true, this representation by Chobani, robots and green fields, is not what solarpunk is directly about. Solarpunk is also about the abolishment of class, it is about anarchy, and community; or at least sometimes it is. Put differently, it is hard to pinpoint. Because on the one hand it can be anti-capitalist, but on the other it does not need to be for an advertisement to work. 

What’s more, with companies like Chobani shaping what solarpunk is, or what it is understood as by the general public, solarpunk changes. Because there is not much rock-solid representation of solarpunk, such as it is the case with cyberpunk, it will be whatever media makes of it. Unlike cyberpunk, it does not have the genre defining media pieces.  Solarpunk cannot remain in its often-idealized form if its biggest representation is a yoghurt advertisement. Besides, if the idea of solarpunk becomes what Chobani depicts it as, a future with humans relying on robots, I wonder when the lines will blur between cyber and solarpunk.

Companies can use this aesthetic to green wash their technologies and sell them under the solarpunk umbrella. 

The solarpunk aesthetic is a very appealing one, as it addresses a multitude of societies struggles with ideal and beautiful solutions. No wonder that it’s popular. Same as Pleasure Island, the promise is wonderful on paper. But since the distinctions are not very solid, and big companies are taking over the image, new ideals take place that threaten the initial promise. Solarpunk does not have to be high-tech, but it sure can be if someone wants it to. Companies can use this aesthetic to green wash their technologies and sell them under the solarpunk umbrella. 

Also, even if companies do not green wash their technologies, and they actually fit the solarpunk ideology, under Capitalism there will always be a Coachman. What I mean to ask is: who will be mining the metals necessary for solar panels? an essential technology for solarpunk. As of now, most metals come from countries that support child labour or suffer from post colonialism. The second question that arises from this thought is: who will profit from this mining? 

Of course, I do not have a crystal ball to predict the right answers to these questions. But turning an eye over to the white house, and to who was attending the inauguration of President Trump in 2025, there is a guess to be made. The importance of tech companies is rising dramatically, never before did a couple individuals hold so much power over the fate of our world. These individuals, these Coachmen, also did not achieve this power through elections or military conquest, but purely through the means of influence and money. Never has the saying money talks, bullshit walks been truer. I question whether ideals will hold up against such power. These Coachmen are no strangers to utopianism. Musk promising free speech on X and sci-fi fantasies such as occupying Mars are just different versions of Pleasure Island. There is a serious concern that solarpunk might feed into this.

With solarpunk’s susceptibility to capitalist ventures, and the rise of tech companies, solarpunk starts sounding less and less like a utopia, and more like its dystopian counterpart: cyberpunk. Because that is what lies at the core of cyberpunk, tech companies becoming so influential, that they outgrow states in power. The individual then swears their allegiance not to a country but a company. That is the worst-case scenario of course; as of now Elon Musk still needs the white house, for better or for worse.

It would not be the first time that Coachmen (or Silicon Valley to be more specific) hijack counterculture in order to turn it into profit.

But it would not be the first time that Coachmen (or Silicon Valley to be more specific) hijack counterculture in order to turn it into profit. The 60s counterculture of love, community living, psychedelic consciousness, and anti-capitalism (ideals also that seem related to solarpunk) gained so much traction, that the Valley simply could not help itself but to co-opt the movement. The ideals of the journey inwards and self-actualization turned into self-optimization through lifestyle consumerism and neo-liberal work ethics. 

The most famous example would probably be that of Steve Jobs, barefoot hippie turned billionaire CEO and king of Silicon Valley. Inspired by other hippie tech guru’s, such as Stewart Brand, and concepts such as tech libertarianism (the idea of a personal computer enabling also individual liberation), he commodified the counterculture and effectively neutralized it through capitalism. Using slogans such as Think different for Apple, giving the illusion of the promise made in the 60s, but essentially turning it on its head. Here The Promise of Acid Communism (a concept that Thijs Lijster introduced) is clearly broken; or even worse, corrupted, pacified, and then commodified. 

Solarpunk embodies similar ideals such as those of the 60s counterculture, specifically those about community living and a decentralization of power overlap. In The Promise of Acid Communism, it goes to show that ideals don’t matter much to Coachmen, or perhaps they do, but not the way you would think intuitively. The better the ideals -the more fun a Coachman promises- the easier it gets to lure in Pinocchio. 

But this does not have to be the case. Say these ideals would not be in the hands of a Coachman, but the Blue Fairy, the entity trying to help Pinocchio. Say these ideals would not exist under capitalism, but under a reformed system. Trying to find out who or what the Blue Fairy is, is something highly educated and intelligent people have spent their lives figuring out, and still, it is not entirely clear. So, I won’t attempt to point a finger in the last lines of this essay. However, one thing is clear, with both solarpunk, cyberpunk, and the 60s counterculture movement, there is always the same roadblock, the same wall people keep hitting their head against. 

Only the future can tell if solarpunk can make it through this wall. But based on cyberpunk and the 60s counterculture it seems the wall is pretty thick, and we first need to chase the Coachmen out of town, before we can start thinking about Pleasure Island.