Lain: a point of resistance to the post-modern fatalistic ‘utopia’

Lain: a point of resistance to the post-modern fatalistic ‘utopia’

The anime Lain presents the watcher with a world at the brink of collapse at a point in which the Wired threatens to infringe upon the ‘feminine’ social realm of human interaction and feeling, engulfing it in a labyrinth of networks promising a utopian technological ‘connectedness’ or transcendence- the pseudo-'collective unconscious'1 of the Wired. At this fragile, transitory edge in history, Lain ultimately challenges the watcher with the ethical and philosophical issue of choice in the schizophrenic post-industrial world through the figure of Lain who personifies this fracturing of social consciousness. On one hand, Lain represents the social, ‘feminine’ sphere wherein one has a stable identity, but has to exist in a structured society and grapple with the realities of loss, betrayal and pain present in the intricacies of human relations. On the other hand, she- in her Wired form- embodies the aesthetic way of existence, wherein identity is characterised by “variability and brilliancy” (Dreyfus 82)2, contact is established through the ‘masculine’ 3 technologies of computers, and gratification is immediate, although continually characterised by a never ending despair and disappointment after the fulfilment of each ‘little death’4. By bringing these issues into the physical realm and taking them upon her body, Lain acts as an archetypical5 Christ-like figure, providing both the watcher and the characters with the question of choice in breaching- through a levelling in perception- the borders of the Wired and the Real World. Thus, she brings forth a point of resistance to the politics of power innate in the masculine technologies of post-modern existence by creating a new 'public' space in experiential and fictive reality much like agora of Greek tradition where a debate on the ethics of cyberspace can resume and hence, decisions can once again occur.

With the introduction of new technologies such as the media and the web in the post-industrial world, a new de-centralised space has been created where everything can be gotten at one’s fingertips, resulting in the breaking of social, political, and spatial boundaries. Hence, one is no longer encumbered by the physical and socially constructed reality of God and Man and is able to manoeuvre freely between borders of space, time, and social class. In the utopian ‘cyberspace’ of Dreyfus, everyone is equal, everything is easily obtainable and the issue of responsibility towards one’s fellow man dissolves with the efficacy of human interaction. In this mode of contact, the complexities of human interaction in typical society are exchanged for the immediacy of net-constructed identities. Likewise, the liberating realm of knowledge, the traditional 'thorn-filled path' toward wisdom, is replaced by the immediacy of obtaining information (here, treated as a new form of currency) at the click of one’s fingertips, removing the need for a mediating force. Through the creation of the Wired in Lain, thus, people are introduced to a whole new way of relating to society and reality where actions no longer have direct social consequences and hence, responsibility can be forfeited. In a variation of the moral allegory, Lain contrasts the masculine and feminine modes of ‘connecting’ present in the aesthetic sphere of existence wherein “enjoyment (is) the centre” (Dreyfus 80) of life and an existence wherein one has the intimacy of human contact, but has to grapple with the realities of “disappointment, humiliation (and) loss” (Dreyfus 80). The latter results in the risk of pain and the pangs of responsibility- as can be seen in Lain’s interactions with Alice-, whereas the former is shadowed by a despair suffered ultimately alone as each libidinal gratification of the moment only serves to temporarily alleviate the heaviness of Chronos6 time.

4 I allude to the french term for orgasm un petit mort which directly translates to ‘a little death’, pointing to the fatalistic nature of pleasure.

6 I refer to Jayamanne’s concept of “Chronos time”, in which “only the past and future subsist, and... subdivide each present, ad infinitum” (Jayamanne 194), contrasting with “Aion” time of the present, which is cyclical and infinite. The latter is ‘heavy’ in its implications for the individual as it contains the entirety of the past, present and future.

In Lain, the schizophrenia innate in the post-modern mind is articulated into a physical form. She takes the split between the Real World and the Wired upon herself in her dual personality and perceptions. Reality, for Lain, is innately flimsy. People dissolve into shadows, shadows dissolve into data, and information- written on the blackboard by her teachers- dissolve into digits. Likewise, the ‘natural’7 world of birds is replaced by the buzzing of telephone lines, signalling the omnipresence of the Wired even in the real realm of human interaction. The Wired hovers treacherously over the Real World, threatening to engulf Nature even in the physical realm. The dissolving of information into digits that Lain sees can be seen as the increasing tendency of the post-modern mind to perceive everything through a macro-lens by which ‘data’ consumption- the ‘smaller narratives’- replace the ‘grand narratives’8- of modernity. Here, the nature of post-modern perception is highlighted by the displacement of natural realities by the electronic 'streaming' of data even in the physical realm. Through Lain’s dual perceptions, the myth of a post-modern existence freed from responsibility in the real world is proved to be false, as the Wired realm is shown to subconsciously ‘seep’ into our perceptions of the real world, inevitably affecting out actions therein. Lain, thus, proposes the idea that one’s existence on the side of the Wired inevitably affects one’s physical existence in the Real World, alluding to the impossibility of a completely schizophrenic existence with two distinct and separated existences and personalities.

7 In referring to Nature as the a female principle, I am alluding to the traditional idea of Nature/the earth as an essentially female force created by, and balancing, the typically male creator.

In addition, as everyone is equal and everything is obtainable in this newly constructed ‘cyberspace’, things lose their meaning, resulting in a technological nihilism. The structural transformation of the public space of society into a utopian ‘level’ ground unfettered by spatial and social boundaries, thus, results not so much in a spiritual transcendence, but a techno-saturated ‘freedom’ whereby “everything is equal in that nothing matters enough that one would be willing to die for it” (Dreyfus 73). Instead of producing an “elite public whose critical debate determined public opinion” (Dreyfus 74), it produces an unmotivated, passive private sphere wherein pleasure replaces principles, and passion is replaced by the hopelessness of decision-making. “A passionless but reflective(ness)” public results, “compared to a passionate one”, where what is “gain(ed) in extensity… it loses in intensity” (Dreyfus 78). The post-modern self is, thus, saturated in a resultant nihilism accompanied with the ‘masculine’ answer to the essentially ‘female’ issue of needing to feel, connect and touch, disabling him from ‘acting out’ against the overwhelming structures of the Wired.

8 The term ‘grand narrative’ was coined by the French philosopher Jean--François Lyotard in his 1979 work “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” to explain the form of thinking that shaped the modern mind. It refers to the uniting truths and worldviews people subscribe to.

The Cyberia cafe, particularly, exemplifies this idea in its levelling of public and private spaces, mirroring Lain’s nature in its liminal standing between the real world and the Wired. In this constructed space, identity is unstable, and relationships are characterised primarily by the exchange of cyber-commodities. Here, Lain, God of the Wired, is able to breach the borders of the electronic and physical and enter into the real world in order to communicate physically with its inhabitants. However, the constructed name ‘Cyberia’ is similar to the ‘siberia’ of the North, implying that the relations- the ‘connection’- that cyberspace/the Wired promises is intrinsically cold and devoid of warmth, thus contrasting starkly with the ‘warmth’ Lain experiences when she communicates physically with Alice through speech and touch. Likewise, the inhabitants who frequent the cafe drown themselves in a techno-fuelled fugue, consuming cyber ‘drugs’ like accela in order to disassociate themselves from reality. Thus, the relations that cyberspace creates between human beings is proved to be ultimately a poor replacement for the tangible, emotive quality of human contact to affect, rather than effect. Similarly, contact with the man-made god Lain- who is ultimately a technological software constructed by a patriarchal authority- only results in a series of unexplained deaths. Hence, the loss of faith present in post-modernity after the death of the God in modernity ultimately proves irreplaceable due to the overarching structures of masculine technology pervading the networks enveloping the Wired.

As a consequence of the materiality innate in the aesthetic sphere of experience, likewise, a spiritual ‘gap’ is created that cannot be fulfilled through material means. This gap can be seen as a result of a longing for the lost female principle present in the feminine modes of connecting, and is continually highlighted by the various characters that get ‘addicted’ to being connected. The accela drug, for example, enables one’s consciousness to operate at the same speed of the Wired, allowing the user to experience a sped-up ‘ecstasy’ uncannily like a drug providing a high. The gratification of the Wired, thus, is likened to a drug paradoxically providing momentarily relief from pangs of existence present in Chronos time yet killing one bit by bit. In the promise for ultimate transcendence of the physical realm and a re-connection to the lost feminine realm present in the spirituality of cyberspace, a fatality dwells where one is drenched in despair. The watcher is, likewise, presented with the consequence of embracing such an existence in its totality with the figure of the Knight wannabe in the “Society” episode who wears an encumbrance of technical machinery about his body in order to ‘connect’ to the Wired reality. He mistakenly thinks that he will find his lost family and God by descending into the depths of the Wired. Flashes of his family appear to him next to mythical fantastical creatures in the Wired as he maniacally laughs that he is “attached everywhere… (and can hence) send his body anywhere”. The presence of the familial and the mythical in the electronic, here, alludes to the emotional and spiritual investment we put into materiality to provide us with a fulfilment beyond the moment. However, this promise of (re)connection ultimately proves false, as the watcher is presented the ironic, tragic image of the Knight wannabe’s dead figure at the end of the episode encumbered by steel machinery that buzz a meaningless stream of white noise, presumably dead as the result of a failure to connect. Even though he does find “God” in an encounter with the Wired Lain, this causes death, rather than redemption. The road to the higher realms of consciousness that the utopian existence of the Wired promises, thus, proves ultimately fatal, as the Knight wannabe fails to reunite with his family and the larger unit of the lost mythical realm of the feminine he desperately seeks. In the Knight Wannabe’s delusion, Lain implies that the search for a new spirituality to redeem and provide a lost ‘truth’ arrives from the desire to (re)connect to a lost feminine principle. Furthermore, in his death, Lain warns against the complete embracing of the masculine mode of connection through technology, showing the watcher such a reliance results in a regression into the feminine that can have fatal consequences.

In addition, Lain’s continuous hallucinations of her classmate’s ghost and the mingling of the ‘supernatural’ realm with the real realm that occurs as Lain increasingly figures into the hallucinations of network players in the Wired can be see as the “vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images” sent up “in dream, broad daylight or insanity” (Campbell 89). With the repression of ‘natural’ reality of the matriarchal realm and the ‘feminine’ mechanism of social interaction through contact, the supernatural- a product of the irrational, potentially destructive force of the feminine- inevitably re-emerges like the ‘unconscious fumes’ that rise from the ‘Aladdin’s cave’ of the subconscious. Lain, as the archetypical hero, is the ultimate ‘god’, not only in her existence as Lain, god of the Wired created by the Wired God, but as “the seeker and the found.. (existing) inside of a single, self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the manifest world” (Campbell 40). As Campbell states, “the great deed of the supreme hero is to come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it known” (40). Lain’s purpose, thus, is to- in the conflating of the Wired and the Real World through her continuous hallucinations- bring these essential psychological issues present in the post-modern consciousness into light for the audience, thus creating a new positionality where self-reflection is possible. In addition, her femininity provides a balancing counterpoint to the male God of the Wired, making her a particularly appropriate figure to address intrinsically feminine issues of the lost matriarchal realm.

Lain’s social interactions, likewise, address the social issues present in the post-modern existence. All of her relationships- with the single exception of Alice- are characterised by a coldness. In episode one, we see Lain’s father talking through a wall of computers to Lain; we do not see his eyes, and it appears the ‘faces’ of the computers have become extensions of his personality. The question of the post-modern identity also emerges as Lain constantly questions her identity as various “Lains” are woven in and out of the narrative, yet divorced ultimately from her perception of herself. Lain, thus, reveals the multiplicity of constructed identities one can accumulate in the Web results in a fracturing of identity, rather than psychological progress towards a wholeness present the Jungian concept of Individuation10. In such a way, Lain takes on the psychological issues present in the post-modern way of existence upon herself and presents them to the watcher as a question, pushing the watcher and the characters in the series to make a choice between the social and the aesthetic way of life. Naturally, the Knights see the power innate in her position in shaping the future of the Wired and how people interact with it and thus, seek to manipulate her for their own ends. They recognise that- in being hero-God of the people-, she presents a crucial turning point wherein people are forced to make the personal decision of having to choose between the atomised sphere of isolated existence and the public sphere of actual human interaction.

In the episode “Infornography”, particularly, the psychological issues present in the Wired existence are brought to the watcher in a flashback sequence reminiscent of the information overload present in the Wired. By drawing together the words ‘information’ and ‘pornography’, Lain likens the gratification of information present in the aesthetic sphere to the fatalistic pleasure- the ‘little death’- one experiences through pornography. Ironically, the viewer is brought on this journey towards the ‘Truth’ (a continual pursuit in the Lain universe) of the spirituality promised by Muchluhan’s ‘global village’11 through the technological medium of animation. The story, at this point, reaches its climax, as the borders between the Wired and the real world become increasingly fragile, eventually breaking down, thus allowing the Lain of the Wired to enter into normal human consciousness. Likewise, borders between the watcher and the anime break down, as the watcher, through the emersion of sound and image, is immersed in the ecstatic moment of Wired existence yet brought to the light to the tragedy- and resultant despair- present at its core through an experience mimicking the post-modern way of processing information through disparate flashes. Through a visceral experience wherein the borders between the senses and intellect, viewer and screen break down, the portrait of the tragedy of a completely material, technologically saturated experience wherein materiality becomes the new spirituality is brought to the watcher in a fugue-like juxtaposition of images. A complex weaving of sound, image and data flash across the viewer’s screen, and the viewer feels a surge of libidinal energy, suffering the ‘little death’ through the gratification of information. At this point, questions are explicitly brought to the forefront, as we are questioned repeatedly with the necessity of the human body through flashes of data stating “I don’t need to stay here”, “inconvenient body” and “all this talking has worn me out”. At this point, the watcher is presented with issue of choice as the warm realm of human contact present in Lain’s friendship with Alice together with the pain implicit in such relations (portrayed, here, in the pain Lain feels when she realises she shares the responsibility for the leaking of Alice’s secret) is juxtaposed next to images of the ‘siberia’-saturated ‘cybernetic’ nature of human interaction in the Wired. As the technological realm increasingly engulfs the natural sphere, we are presented with a wasteland of telephone wires swallowing the skyline wherein buzzing becomes the only sound one can hear. Henceforth, we are told in a monotonous voice that the Tachibana cooperation- the inventors of the Wired- “have mapped the human genome”, implying the heralding of the computer era and the arrival of a new public ‘cyberspace’ would bring the promise not only of democracy, but the answer to the meaning of life.

10 Jung’s concept of Individuation refers to the personal journey towards a wholeness, the end point in which one finds one’s ‘true self’. It is a Hegelian notion that posits one’s journey in life is towards a greater goal. As such, it belongs to the category of “grand narratives” forsaken in post-modern consciousness.

The promise of a utopian existence without a body wherein spiritual transcendence can be achieved, however, is proved to be innately farcical by the accompaniment of the garage-saturated sounds of whining guitars that highlight the despair implicit in the new spirituality cyberspace provides. The ultimate idea that “‘a new global mind’ (would) emerg(e) out of digital networks… a union of computer and nature- of telephones and human brains and more” (Wise 185) is proven ridiculous in its idealism, as we see a heap of Lain at the end of the sequence lying on the floor entangled in wires, mentally sucked of all energy and enthusiasm for life, and dangerously close to a ‘software overload’. Here, the masculine machinery of technology is seen as fundamentally incompatible with the female realms of connecting through emotion and feeling in its tendency to encumber rather than liberate. Thus, the vision of a ‘global village’ whereby “higher levels of spirituality leading to a new age of harmony… (compel) commitment and participation” (Wise 185) is false, as it presupposes that the ‘higher’ realms of spiritual consciousness can be achieved through the material masculine structures of networks present in Lain.

Lain, as saviour figure, thus provides the viewer with the tools for self-reflection by presenting two distinct options for survival in the post-industrial era. On one hand, she promises a utopian existence without a body in which the Wired gives ultimate spiritual transcendence and everyone is connected through a vast network of ‘collective unconsciousness’; on the other hand, she represents the fatality implicit in the reality of such an ideal. Through Lain, the ‘collective unconsciousness’ of the Wired is shown not to be that of Jung’s unified ‘collective unconsciousness’ containing the reservoir of human experience through history, but an artificial construct that divorces, divides and even causes a psychological and- potentially physical- death. Thus, the anime Lain ultimately criticises the notion of that materiality can being about spiritual transcendence by parodying the ridiculous nature of trying to access the ‘feminine’ way of connection through masculine structures, positing there is no true alternative to human contact. Furthermore, the ethics of freedom that post-modernity promises is also brought into light by the wake of deaths Lain of the Wired causes in her schizophrenic, dual existence. While the realm of the real is paved with hardship and responsibilities that come with human relations, the alternative post-modern ‘freedom’ proves to have equally incriminating consequences.

By taking on these psychological, ethical and political issues onto her body, Lain acts as a Christ-like figure suffering the consequences of both existences for the audience, bringing the viewer the knowledge- the ‘truth’- of what responsibility, ethics and freedom means in the post-modern existence. Thus, Lain acts as a point of resistance to the patriarchal structures of power inherent in the technology saturated post-modern existence by becoming the material platform by which issues of post-modernity can be discussed outside the confines of screen. The anime Lain, thus, is particularly revolutionary in its ability to subvert its own mediatic medium in its existence as a product of material relations and technological ideologies, bringing to the watcher the self-affirming tools for a true liberation towards a ‘truth’ beyond the confining structures of post-industrial reality.

Works Cited

Serial Experiments Lain - Boxed Set (Signature Series). Dir. Ryutaro Nakamura. Perf. Artist Not Provided. Geneon [Pioneer], 2001. DVD.

The Portable Jung. London: Penguin Books, 1988. Print.

Campbell, Joseph. “Prologue: The Monomyth”. Print.

Doty, William A. “Definitions and Classifications”. Print.

Dreyfus, Hubert. “Nihilism on the Information Highway.” Print.

Laleen Jayamanne. “A Slapstick Time: Mimetic Convulsion.” Print.

Leeming, David Adam. “Introduction: The Meaning of the Myth”. Print.

Wise, Richard. “The Myth of Cyberspace”. Print.

Identity, Ethics and the production of Genre as seen in the character of Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop

Amy Goh #260354243
EAST 214: Japanese Animation and New Media
Professor Heather Mills, Professor Gye-won Kim
20th March 2010

Ethics, Identity, and the Production of Genre as seen in the Character of Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop, in its mixing of the Western, noir, and cyberpunk, presents itself as a revolutionary ‘super-generic’ work. However, it takes this a step further, addressing the essentially materialistic issues that occur with such a transformation through the temporal fluidity of its protagonists who are eternally straddling a lost past and a future essential to their survival. In other words, even though diversion from genre verisimilitude makes a production much more appealing and culturally relevant to its audience, this evolution is not an innocent dialectical transformation into an ideal as presented by Hegel’s dialectic1, but operates within a capitalist system of production and is based, thus, essentially on materialist relations of power, hierarchy and profit. Cowboy Bebop, in its hybridisation of genres, utilises the nostalgic attachment to the past apparent in the temporally unstable world of the Western, the dissatisfaction with the present in noir, and the technologically saturated futurity of cyberpunk where masculine structures dominate to address the issue of attachment inherent in the transition to a present imperative in the genre industry. This essay will address specifically the sacrifice generic hybridity makes in its obligation to a present essential to its survival through the character of Faye in Cowboy Bebop, as well as the issues at stake in the production of genre virtuosity.

1 Hegel posits that history is a dialectical process by which the process of change serves to advance civilisation to an ultimate “Ideal”. In this light, the deeply rooted problems of society are seen as transitory issues that will eventually be overcome by evolutionary dialectics.

Faye’s character is a paradoxical one: she confuses ideas of gender, desire, time and identity in her body and actions, transgressing and re-inventing conventional definitions of gendered identity and audience identification present in classical cinema. On one hand, she embodies femininity through her sexually suggestive clothing, yet her actions are crass and language loud. Faye’s temporality is also confused- she is transported from the past to the distinct future through suspended animation, leaving a gap of experiential time where she did not exist as a person. She constantly longs for a past lost which she is sure will reveal her identity to her, yet she is materially tied to the present for her own survival and in order to pay a material debt to the company that preserved her body. In this aspect, Faye embodies the very nature of genre and the sacrifice it makes in being part of institutionalised companies and the commercial production of meaning. In other words, she reflects genre as not merely an innocent form of social communication- a “cultural language whereby America understands itself” (Gledhill 68)2- as posited by Wright, but a product of “popular culture” that is, as a rule, governed by “market pressures to differentiate to a limited degree in order to cater to various sectors of consumers and to repeat commercially successful patterns, ingredients, and formulas” (Neale 177)3. Film is, ultimately, a commodity, and hence, the generic system that structures its place in the film industry obeys economic rather than aesthetic rules. As a result, psychoanalytical anxieties of lost origins re-emerge in this innately disruptive and opportunistic regime. In Cowboy Bebop, Faye’s narrative becomes the platform by which “conscious and unconscious, self and other, part and whole meet” (Williams 711)4 to address the primordial anxieties present in generic transformation when the film product is deducted from the realm of aesthetics and put in the system of market forces and economic relations.5

In conventional cinema, identification and spectatorship is orientated toward the masculine audience in the conception of a central, male subject; in such an axis, the female body becomes the “primary embodiments of pleasure, fear and pain” (Williams 704). Similarly, in the traditional Western movie, the female exists solely as the object of masculine, heterosexual desire for the male protagonist, ensuing female identification with the central hero. As a result, her body is inevitably saturated with sexuality. Her sensationalised body- the portrait of her body in the crux of “out-of-control ecstasy” (Williams 704)- becomes the spectacle by which the instruments of identification can take place in the audience towards the male protagonist. Naturally, this presents the problem of identification in female spectatorship as the female, in identifying with the male protagonist, inevitably undermines her own femininity.

Note: According to Williams, “Body genres” like pornography, horror and melodrama feature a sensationalised on-screen body that “produces” on the bodies of spectators an “almost involuntary mimicry of emotion or sensation of the body on screen”. Here, she attributes the power of such works lies in their ability to evoke fluids in the watcher. It is for this reason that "horror makes you scream, melodrama makes you cry, porn makes you “come”.

Faye, however, subverts this with the autonomy of her narrative and the ferocity of her femininity. She possesses her own narrative independent from the men she surrounds herself with, propelling her story arc through her own actions. Likewise, even though Spike and Jet are her partners, this union is motivated by her own selfish interests- Faye, ultimately, is an opportunist, unafraid to manipulate situations to get her way. Also, Faye does not shy away from using her femininity as a tool to hunt her bounties, understanding the power of her femininity in rendering men speechless and, as such, wears revealing, sexually charged clothing. However, she does this while toting a gun, a blatantly phallic symbol charged with masculine power. In a way, her trademark is that of an alluring smile that glints like a knife’s edge- a laugh, supplemented by the brashness of a gunshot. In this way, Faye re-appropriates her femininity to manipulate men, privileging the power of the feminine in her ability to turn the tables and make the men of her choosing the spectacle by borrowing masculine strength through the form of the gun. Instead of the female body serving as the sensationalised object of viewer fixation, thus, the male body becomes the site of gendered excess by which extreme emotions of pain, fear and horror are inflicted. Thus, she manipulates the politics of power present in conventional genres of excess in her subversion of the spectacle of the female body as the primary site of excess by making her male victims bleed, convulse and crumble in the shower of her bullets. The sensationalised body, here, becomes that of the male, causing the audience to identify with the female protagonist rather than the male specimens on which violence is inflicted. Thus, Faye could be said to constitute a new kind of “femininity of men who hug and the new masculinity of women who leer” (Williams 710). Her militant femininity is progressive in its nature, reflecting a contemporary tendency to privilege the female over the male. In this aspect, she embodies the dialectic nature of genre and its ability to manipulate constantly culturally evolving concepts of gender identity and politics to its advantage in order to seem progressive and hence, attract an audience.

5 The realm of the economic can be posited as “patriarchal” in its structuring of emotive and economic energies and the realm of aesthetics “matriarchal” in its privileging of emotions and feeling. However, it is beyond the scope of this essay to address this issue in an in-depth way.

Likewise, Neale (168) states that genres “do not exist by themselves; they are named and placed within hierarchies or systems of genres, and each is defined by reference to the system and its members” (Neale 168), and that genre virtuosity is a product of the fact that “individual genres... themselves change, develop, and vary by borrowing from, and overlapping with, one another” (Neale 171) in order to “cater for a sector of the market” (Neale 177). The system genre operates under, thus, is a structured regime enforcing controlling operations in order for its own survival. It operates, thus, by the patriarchal control and structuring of power relations through market forces and audience interest, raising up the issue of ethics in the formation of its ideologies. Even though meanings and norms are repeatedly re-worked and revised to produce audience interest, it is done so for “economic imperatives”, and not “self-expression, creative autonomy and originality”. It is, thus, never “(free) from all constrictions and constraints” (Neale 177).

Likewise, the cynicism that saturates Faye’s outlook reflects the materialist values that propel the production of genre hybridity. Even though Faye relentlessly uses her femininity to reassert her gendered power as female, she does not do this out of a shared female solidarity with others of her sex, but rather for personal profit. She is essentially an opportunist, squeezing what she can for her own survival in a profession wherein economic security isn’t assured- bounty hunters, after all, are tied ironically in a subordinate position to the bounties they chase. She understands that as a lone female in a world governed by patriarchal systems (embodied on one level by the dominance of technology and the other on the absence of women), she must operate by cunning and the skills she possesses. In such a world, masculine structures of economic relations dominate; thus, feminine relations of emotions, ideas and feelings are neglected. Faye, however, navigates around this dystopian world presided by technology effortlessly in her ship Red Tail, catching up with her male peers and even standing her ground in aerial fights against Spike. Thus, she utilizes all she has for all her survival, recognizing the lifting of her mask of feminine strength will result in her downfall.

Faye’s femininity, thus, is divorced from the collective female body and its fight for gendered equality in the broader political context of social action, serving purely a tool she utilizes for her own survival in order to generate a living and pay her debt. Her interests are, ultimately, selfish and monetarily motivated and thus, removed from her contemporary ‘feminists’. As such, it lacks the empowering nature of feminism in its noble promise of effecting actual historical change. Here, her materialism can be said to reflect the impurity of the generic expressions of ideas. Even though conventional ideas about gender, identity and sexuality are constantly transformed and re-made in the production of a continuous strand of transgressive characters and subjects, this is done not for humanitarian reasons, but purely for the film’s survival in a harsh industry that relentlessly exploits the politics of desire and expectation. Film is, thus, dissimilar from canonized literature in the fact it is not a pure expression of the human heart’s conditions in its material obligations to its commercial market and its position in the generic ‘regime’ where the play of ideas serves as another commodity that can be bought and sold.

However, Faye’s embracing of masculine traits and manipulating of gendered re-appropriations to assure her own survival also results in a melancholy she carefully hides under a mask of ambivalent, cultivated cynicism. She longs for the purity for ‘free expression’ divorced from the present imperative. Her depiction ‘new feminism’, thus, is ultimately removed from her identity. In a way, it is merely a tool she uses for her ultimate goal- the search for a lost past which she is sure will return to her what she loses in sacrificing her own integrity for her survival.

The temporality of Faye’s body is, in this light, particularly interesting in the way it transitions directly from the past to the future through a process of suspended animation done in order to save her life after a space shuttle accident. In this sense, she embodies the fluid nature of time inherent in genre. Genre floats between different historicities and cultural milieus, borrowing and using what it finds useful to construct a new kind of virtuosity relevant and appealing to the culture it speaks to. Likewise, Faye is temporally fluid, embodying both an absent past and a future imperative. Her temporality can be seen, thus, as both ‘too early’ and ‘too late’ in light of William’s discourse in which the temporality of the subject in genre films is connected to the originary fantasy it evokes through its perversions. Even though Faye dances about space dodging bullets and possesses the settings she occupies, the fertility of her actions does not result in any successful bounties gained, thus becoming inherently farcical in their futile nature. This is partly attributed to the temporality of her body itself. In transitioning straight into the future, she constantly evokes a past forever compromised in genre’s obligation to the present. Neale addresses this, stating that the evolution of genre is not a “continuous ‘development,’ but rather in the sense of a ‘struggle’ and ’break’ with immediate predecessors through a contemporary recourse to something older” (Neale 173). Even though genre continues to “change, develop, and vary by borrowing from, and overlapping with, one another” (Neale 171), it does this by the disruption of each of the elements it borrows from. In other words, generic hybridisation is an intrinsically disruptive process that constantly ravages past historicities to propel its own survival in the market. By tearing apart heterogeneous elements in genre virtuosity, thus, genre destroys the integrity of the past it borrows from, rendering the homogenous organic ‘whole’ a wasteland of disparate parts. Thus, even though genre borrows from past historical conventions and present cultural trends, it does so at the stake of the past’s identity. Faye particularly reflects this in the way her progressive femininity is undermined by her psychological immaturity. Her melancholy, in this light, can be seen as a consequence of the brutality of identity disruption inherent in genre transformation. This is particularly apparent in a moment in the episode “Hard Luck Woman”6 where, having recalled a piece of a past while watching the water spurt out of her shower head, Faye walks out of the shower and bumps into Spike. Her mask of feminine power falls away, and she starts like a little girl, stuttering a “sorry… I… have to go” to a startled Spike. This moment is particularly revealing, as it is one of the few instances we see her without her sexually provocative attire in a fully exposed, emotionally vulnerable state. For a moment, we glimpse in Faye’s suddenly unveiled innocence what is truly at stake in genre’s relentless pursuit of an audience- namely, the loss of identity that inevitably results in a regression to a childlike state. Herein lies the innate tragedy of generic transformation- in its ‘evolution’, it inevitably raises primordial, psychological issues that deal with the self, the past and the integrity of identity. Thus, even though generic transformation is imperative- just as the preservation of Faye’s body is essential for her survival in the future-, it is innately problematic in its disruptive nature.

Likewise, Faye’s journey back to her homeland reveals the innate ruthlessness of generic production and the primordial anxieties it consequently raises. In this instance, Faye, having remembered a piece of her lost past, ventures back to Earth but, rather than uncovering a kernel of her lost identity, finds the land laid waste and devoid of inhabitants. She is greeted by an old classmate, who starts at Faye’s youthful appearance. She mistakes Faye for a ghost, who ironically replies that she is a ghost, before running away. Here, we see the vampiric nature of genre production and the way it leaves all it borrows from to a process of decay having sucked up what it needs for its own transformation. In the wake of its catapult into the future, thus, it ravages the past, leaving wastelands and deserts in its relentless re-working of past trends for its own survival. As Faye ‘evolves’ in order to survive by claiming a militant femininity, she leaves behind her old comrades and friends, herself becoming a ‘ghost’. Hers is not a successful transition from a past to a future (reflected on a psychological level in the transition from childhood to adulthood), but a violent start up to the present. Thus, she inevitably leaves behind a lost self- a ‘ghost’- in forsaking her childhood for a future that demands her attention. The authenticity of Faye’s identity in the ‘now’, thus, gets called into question, as the audience can no longer be sure of which of her traits is manufactured and which is real. In a sense, Faye ‘fades’ like a ghost, possessing more of a phantom-like existence as her past catches up with her.

Faye’s confusion of temporality, hence, reflects the fatalistic conditions present in hybridisation, revealing genre’s ability to float freely through space and time results always in a confusion of identity and a certain ‘lack’ or gap. This gap lies between “an irrecoverable real event that took place somewhere in the past and a totally imaginary event that never took place” (Williams 712) that is always present in the destruction of temporal and spatial boundaries. This ‘lack’ haunts genre’s transformation like a ghost, saturating the actions and outlooks of all those involved in its creation. Williams defines this as the “insoluble problem of the discrepancy between an irrecoverable original experience (a real event) presumed to have actually taken place… and the uncertainty of its hallucinatory revival” (Williams 712). Just as Faye is constantly seeking for a lost past she believes will reveal her true self, genre will always leaves behind a vacancy- a lacunae- imbued with loss in its evolution. There is always, thus, a nostalgia inextricable from genre tied intimately to its materialism and its need to produce meaningful content in order to be relevant to the present for its own survival. In the formation of “the bourgeois subject (Williams 713)”- that of Faye, in this case- the anxiety of the origin myth is invoked, raising up issues of identity inextricable from the discourse of generic hybridisation.

Genre is always governed by a set of rules and obligations to present industrial, commercial and institutional conditions. The production of new, progressive generic categories guarantees a maintenance of audience interest by re-inventing the subject in order to ensure viewership identification. Unlike canonised literature, thus, the production of generic categories is not a product of a ‘freedom of expression’, but the result of materialist conditions present in the film and anime industry. Faye reflects this by re-working the politics of identification, switching the seat of spectator identification from that of the male to that of the female. Moreover, in her portrayal of a new militant feminism, she projects a progressive idea of femininity, thus remaining culturally relevant to a society in which “the patriarchal unified subject” has collapsed, together with “the dialectics of Spirit, (and) the hermeneutics of meaning” (Wolmark 5)7, ensuing Cowboy Bebop’s continual appeal.

However, the overall ironic nature of all of Faye’s endeavours and the cynicism that soaks her outlook reflects a new self-consciousness that has risen in our post-modern era wherein the look is inverted and the signifier brought to the forefront over the signified. In this light, Cowboy Bebop can be said to be reflective of a new post-modern generic category of self-critical, ironic, ‘avant-garde’ works that has arisen due to the audience’s increasing awareness of culture as a form of artifice and hence, genre’s need to re-invent itself with the creation of another category of desire. Cowboy Bebop reflects this trend, taking an ironical, self-critical stance on genre hybridisation, acknowledging its own need to tear apart past trends to remain culturally appealing, yet constantly reflecting back on the process that makes its cult status possible. In it’s transgressive nature, thus, Cowboy Bebop is able to provide a revealing portrait of the post-industrial world to an audience rendered increasingly disillusioned with the reaping of desire in the commercial market. However, ironically, it is also in it’s transgressive nature that Cowboy Bebop is able to survive in the competitive anime market.

Works Cited

Cowboy Bebop Remix: Anime Legends. Dir. Sunrise Studios. Perf. Animation. Bandai Entertainment, 2008. DVD.

Gledhill, Christine. “The Western” in The Cinema Book. Print.

Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre.” Print.

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Print.

Jenny Wolmark. “Introduction and Overview.” Print.

Tradition, Modernity, and the Archetype in Mushishi

EAST 214: Japanese Animation and New Media
Professor Heather Mills, Professor Gyewon Kim
15th February 2010

Tradition, Modernity, and the Archetype in Mushishi

In Mushishi, the audience is presented a solution to the modern loss of identity that occurred with the “Death of God” phenomenon through the archetypical figure of Genko who mediates between the world of tradition and modernity, as well as the dualities of light and darkness and sight and blindness. In addition, we are warned to the dangers of a “Freudian” regressing into the pre-modern consciousness1 in the imagining of the past as that of a rural, idyllic and unified utopia.

In the episode “Light of the Eyelid” 2, we are introduced to an alternative pre-modern world of rural villages as seen through the modern, cynical eye of Genko. Although this mythic world is shown to be a magical, marvelous universe populated by spiritual entities called mushi, they are “dangerous because they threaten the fabric of security” (Campbell 8)3 of the modern consciousness, causing and spreading diseases. Genko, acting as part folk healer, modern doctor, psychotherapist and collector of the weird, represents the progressive individual who seeks to overcome the pre-modern consciousness through a process of successful integration of selected archaic values- a symbolic psychological ‘healing’- into the kernels of the modern identity. His role, thus, is the modern equivalent “of the Wise Old Man of the myths”, “the modern master of the mythological realm, the knower of all the secret ways and words of potency” (Campbell 9), who is vital in enabling humankind to mediate between difficult, conflicting binaries.4

1 Joseph Campbell refers to this idea in his chapter “Myth and Dream” of “The Monomyth”, stating that, “the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the un-exorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood”. Likewise, the re-emergence of the pre-modern consciousness can be the result of the unsuccessful integration of that realm from the ‘childhood’ of man into the ‘adulthood’ of modernity.

In the anime, mushi are described as “beings in touch with the essence of life, far more basic and pure than normal living beings”. They are ephemeral, unable to be perceived by the naked human eye. Only those with the power of supernatural sight- the mushi master or individuals with special sight- are able to see and interact with the mushi. In quintessence, mushi are entities that live beyond the physical level of consciousness; they can be likened to the essential matter of subconscious materialised in an outward form. They are creatures of both fear and awe analogous to the folk spirit, the foundation from which superstition and folk belief stem from. They project the idea that there is a level to human perception and understanding that cannot be comprehended by the modern Enlightenment-influenced mindset. This is the anarchic world of superstition, tradition and the rural village. In this world, yokai and spiritual deities live among humans, in forests and in objects. Here, God is a living entity existing in Nature. It is, thus, in direct conflict with the modern world and naturally an attractive counterpoint to the atomised modern neurosis of Jung’s “mass man” whose “rootedness and depersonalisation amid the masses of the modern industrial city seemed like a dark parody of tribal collectivity” (Ellwood 28)5.

4 I refer to the Levi-Strauss’ theory stated in “The Structural Study of Myth” that myth serves as a structure that enables society to mediate between conflicting dualities that may pose a problem when presented at face value.

However, as anachronistic creatures, the mushi only arise to cause diseases in the modern world. They are the “vapours, odd beings, terrors… in dream, broad daylight, or insanity” (Campbell 8) that the unconscious manifests when the modern mind represses the traditional in his seeking of progress. In this particular episode, Sui gets afflicted with an eye disease caused by the yami mushi that thrive in darkness and is thus unable to go into the light, living all of her existence in the storage shed of Biki’s house. She is rendered, thus, immobile and unable to participate in daily life. Later, it is learnt that the reason for this is because when she opens her second eyelid- here, reminiscent of the ‘3rd eye’ of Indian mysticism-, she is lured by a strange river of light that enraptures her to the point in which she is not only unable, but unwilling, to close her second eyelid. Crossing the river, at any instance, would have proved fatal, furthering her from any chance of recovery. Her diagnosis by Genko is that she “spends too much time in the darkness”. Modern medicine cannot cure her, and only Genko can; ironically, he uses the apparatus of the modern doctor such as syringes, glass eyes and externally administrated medicine in the form of a tamed mushi, indicating a need to negotiate past and present realities through one’s resourcefulness rather than romantic affiliations. Furthermore, Sui’s disease can be seen as an example of how the traditional past can be damaging to the present, serving to add- rather than subtract- from the modern ‘sickness’. As a hero-healer figure, thus, Genko “retreat(s) from the world scene of secondary effects to those casual zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside” (Campbell 17), to the dark river of the subconscious in order to eradicate the now demonic ‘anti-matter’ psyche debris, manifested in the yami mushi.

Genko also plays the archetypical6 role of the ambivalent modern hero for the audience, serving as the mediator between the traditional and the modern. Genko’s mission is to move through villages ‘healing’ people from various diseases and afflictions inflicted by the mushi. Often, the motif of disappearance, blindness and getting lost reoccurs in the symptoms of the disease, indicating a connection to the danger of losing one’s identity to the past. Genko, in solving these cases, restores the identity, re-establishing a present, stable reality.

Moreover, Genko is a liminal figure, straddling the modern and pre-modern world. He moves through rural villages dressed in modern clothing, betraying his modern outlook with his blatant cynicism. He is divorced from the social conditions of rural Japan, not having to subscribe to their customs and traditions. Genko’s cynicism can be interpreted not so much as an intolerance in embracing the traditional world, but as stemming from an understanding of how this pre-modern world is a fragment of the past and thus, must be ‘put away’. Like Sui, he had crossed the river and lost his eye. Sight, in the Mushishi universe, is a recurrent, important motif. It represents the ability to see things as they actually are on the spiritual level (ability to see the mushi) and on a physical level (maturity, wisdom). Genko can be said to possess both forms of sight in his ability to see mushi, yet acknowledge the reality of the real world. However, he has a ‘second eyelid’ and is able to see the river of light made out of mushi. The sacrifice of sight, in Genko’s case, gives the audience some comfort that even Genko- purveyor of modernity- succumbed to the romantic tendency of desiring to ‘cross the river’ into a deeper darkness. As a heroic figure, he becomes the “scapegoat for (the modern mind’s) fear and… guilt” (Leeming 267), descending into the ‘underworld’ of the lake and emerging alive and “transfigured... (to)… teach the lesson” (Campbell 20) of its dangers. The darkness of the world beneath the second eyelid, thus, is the darkness of Aladdin’s cave. It is the consequence of leaving the present for a stagnant past that ensnares, rather than liberates. Thus, in the portrayal of Genko, the audience is reminded that everyone has the tendency to want to ‘regress’ to the world of romanticism that Gnosticism projects in its promises of salvation; however, one has to ‘move on’, ‘reject the river’ in order for one’s psychological health.

The river made out of yami mushi, in this episode, represents the attractive light of the past- it is the internal light of the folk that resonates from the river that holds the Gnostic promise that the past will provide salvation. It is made out of a different element of earthly light- the mushi- which Genko states is harmful and represents escapism into the primordial realm of the traditional past. In the anime, Biki states “It was so pretty I felt myself being pulled towards it. I wanted to stare at it forever”. Likewise, the light of the past is alluring, beautiful but dangerous, and when Biki spends too long with Sui in the darkness, he contracts her disease and gets dragged into the darkness. Thus, the anime acknowledges the past is awe-inspiring, beautiful, and romantic to the modern eye, but in this allure there is a danger that is potentially fatal. If one mediates too long upon it, one suffers potential irreversible damage- Sui, in the anime, suffers the loss of her eyeballs as they get eaten up by the darkness. Likewise, when Sui embraces the light, she is bathed in light and is initiated to the beauty of the real, present world- that of trees, flowers and the sun. She enters “through the sun door (into) the (continuous) circulation of energy” (Campbell 42) of the earthly realm and is able to heal. It is stated, too, that she probably will never get lured into the strange light again now she has successfully exorcised it. She goes through katharsis “a purification… from sin and death” (Campbell 26).

However, there is a parallel to this dangerous light in the light of the daytime realm- that of the sun, which represents the promise of the future. The mushi are drawn naturally to light, wanting to come out into the consciousness of the psyche to disrupt the modern reality of progress: they are naturally antagonistic. When they emerge, though, they dissolve, wither, disappear, charred by the sun. They- like the mushi in Sui’s eye transforms into a dragon/serpent entity- transform from invisible, inscrutable entities to yokai. Like forgotten gods, they ‘metamorphose’ into monsters when neglected. This is reflective of the modern consciousness’ predicament: one fights a desire to cling onto a primordial world where universal values were held in great esteem, but has to deal with the realities of a disassociated, atomized existence. In our present world, the universe does not simply ‘disappear’, but lurks at the edge of the modern consciousness. Mushi are, here, like memories that need to be buried properly and given the appropriate funeral rites so one can move on psychologically. The mushi, however, only have power when one chooses to reside in the darkness, rejecting the present reality. When exposed to light, they disappear like the yami mushi disintegrates when Genko calls them out into the light. As the anime postulates toward the end, “it (was) perhaps for the better to those living for before that time. It is said that many had lost their eyesight from staring too much at the river of light”. In other words, it is a life/death imperative that one stays in the present light of the sun, and does not regress into the past, mythic world by “crossing the river”.

Finally, the fact that Sui is given a glass eye with a mushi injected into it by Genko seems evident of the necessity to restore a remnant of this old world in the modern framework. The pre-modern can be ‘tamed’ to Sui the modern. This seems to be Mushishi’s ultimate solution: one salvages what is useful to the present reality, and healing and (partial) wholeness is restored. However, as the modern man has lost an essential thing, he is forever lacking something. As Sui’s eye is constructed by the mechanics of science, our eyes are coloured by the rational, progressive outlook. We no longer possess ‘true sight’, having glass eyes. However, preserving a remnant of the mushi in our eyes helps us mediate between both ways of seeing, and live a spiritually healthier life. Ultimately, Mushishi teaches us that the solution to the modern problem of the loss of the spiritual consciousness is not a regression to “the primordial and eternal world” (Ellwood 7) of “small, self-contained idyllic villages” (Ellwood 5) envisioned by nineteenth century visionaries, but in confronting the past through a successful integration, and then moving on to the present life imperative.

In our modern era, there is a tendency to romanticize the past “as a repository for disappearing traditions” (Foster 139)8. However, in Mushishi, we are alerted to the dangers of such a mindset by the figures of mushi. Genko, in this case, brings to us a post-modern ‘elixir’9 as a counterpoint to Modern Gnosticism in the artful balancing the past and present. The present- in the end- is imperative and the past serves only as a curiosity we have to put into the museum of the past wherein they become relics to be admired by the modern eye just as Genko, inevitably, can’t help but collect artefacts of the mushi for seemingly ambivalent reasons. Having rightfully integrated memory into its rightful place, we are able to relish a more practical sanity in reality’s light, whatever historical milieu we happen to find ourselves in.

9 I refer to the stage of the hero’s life stated in Joseph Campbell’s theory of “The Monomyth” in which the hero returns, transfigured, with an ‘elixir’ to transform his society

Works Cited

Mushi-shi: The Complete Series. Dir. Hiroshi Nagahama. Perf. Yûto Nakano, Travis Willingham, Kenny Green, Randy Tallman, Mika Doi. Funimation, 2007. DVD.

Campbell, Joseph. “Prologue: The Monomyth”. Print.

David Adam Leeming. “Introduction: The Meaning of the Myth” . Print.

Doty, William A. “Definitions and Classifications”. Print.

Foster, Michael Dylan. Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai. University of California Press, 2008. Print.

Thury, Eva and Devinney, Margaret. “The Structural Study of Myth: Claude Lévi-Strauss”. Print.