Analysis Is Magic
Monday, April 14, 2014
Got cable, started watching Cosmos...
It's pretty basic, but then it's supposed to be. First episode annoyed me with a couple of inaccuracies (its depiction of the asteroid belt is VASTLY too crowded, and it's not true that the Sun powers all life on Earth--there's a handful of organisms that ultimately derive their energy from geothermal sources), but on the other hand I really liked the animated segment on Giordano Bruno. It could have been slightly clearer on this, but it still got across that he was a mystic and a fanatic, who by coincidence happened to be right. The early history of science is littered with such; it's as close as I've seen a popular science work come to admitting that there's a reason so many of the founders of science were monks, alchemists, and astrologers.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Sometimes it can be hard for a shy pony like me to stand up for myself (Keep Calm and Flutter On)
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| The Mad Hatter and the March Hare... which of course makes Fluttershy the door |
You may have noticed that there's a pattern in the news stories I chose for this article. There's a reason for that, but first let's discuss "Keep Calm and Flutter On," story by Teddy Antonio, teleplay by Dave Polsky, and directed by Jayson Thiessen.
There is a read in which this episode is completely innocent. In that read, Fluttershy is a patient parent or teacher dealing with a recalcitrant child. She is patient and kind while the lonely, undisciplined child acts out, until his growing attachment to her brings his behavior more or less under control.
The advantage of this reading is twofold. First, it's relatively non-problematic. It's consistent with Fluttershy's characterization as a caretaker, and explains why Celestial thought Fluttershy was the mare for the job. Second, it's a relationship familiar to the primary audience. A four- or six-year-old hasn't had much opportunity to experience friendship, but parents, tantrums, and possibly teachers are familiar concepts by that age.
Unfortunately, that reading has the slight snag that there is no textual support for it whatsoever. Fluttershy positions herself as a friend to Discord, treats him as a houseguest rather than a family member, and, most importantly, is by far the younger and less powerful of the two. She is definitely not Discord's mother-figure. While she does chide him for his misbehavior, it is no different from the way she chides Rainbow Dash at the dinner party in the episode, which is to say, she's treating Discord as an equal.
This is deeply troubling, because Discord spends the entire episode acting like a controlling, abusive boyfriend. He starts by asserting dominance over and marginalizing Angel, who, depending on which episodes you go by, is either Fluttershy's caretaker or her prior abuser (or, of course, both). He then begins pushing Fluttershy's boundaries, using her kindness and hospitality against her. He continually tests how far she will let him go, trashing her home and property, and when she objects, he acts like the aggrieved victim. This is classic abuser behavior, calculated to make his victim start doubting her own feelings and beliefs, thus making her easier to control. For similar reasons, he tears down her friends and acts out at the dinner party to force her to take his side against her friends, isolating her.
Discord's motive is perhaps not that of the typical abuser. He is more interested in isolating and controlling Fluttershy because it takes all of the Mane Six working together to use the Elements of Harmony against him, and thus so long as Fluttershy is kept away from her friends and under his thumb, he can wreak havoc as he pleases. On the other hand, it is an entirely selfish motivation, in which any possible affection he feels for Fluttershy (which affection he does seem to feel, if the end of the episode is anything to go by) is secondary to his desire to wield power. In that sense, this is a fairly typical abusive relationship.
In that sense, the show does a good job of showing how our sexist culture encourages and supports man-on-woman abuse in a way that other forms are not quite as supported. Our culture constructs the gender binary in large part by contrasting hegemonic masculinity with emphasize femininity. Hegemonic masculinity constructs masculinity as being about the possession and expression of power and dominant status. Put another way, expression of masculinity are expressions of power and vice versa, hence masculine associations for activities such as hunting, fishing, war, community leadership, business, and so on--activities where a man can assert his power and dominant status through status in a hierarchy, killing enemies, or providing meat for the tribe. Note that, for instance, preparing food for one's family is not seen as particularly masculine, but running a restaurant kitchen is an almost exclusively masculine occupation--the former is not a position of social dominance, but the latter is. By contrast, emphasized femininity encourages women not necessarily to embrace a submissive role (though that element is certainly present) but to exaggerate gender differences and play to men's desire for power. To quote R.W. Connell's Gender and Power, which introduced both concepts, this emphasis can be seen in "the display of sociability rather than technical competence, fragility in mating scenes [e.g., in popular entertainment or as an adopted posture in courtship and sex--note that much of our culture's concept of flirtatious body language for a woman involves making herself look smaller, weaker, or more childlike], compliance with men’s desires for titillation and ego-stroking in office relationships, acceptance of marriage and child care as a response to labor-market discrimination against women."
This plays out in Discord and Fluttershy's relationship in this episode (which is, of course, non-romantic, but they are living together for the duration of the episode, so many of the same concepts apply). Discord spends the entire episode trying to assert his power and dominance. He deliberately usurps Angel's role in the home, taunts and torments him, just to demonstrate his power, while also trying to manipulate and isolate Fluttershy so that he can dominate her as well--and the end goal for all of this is to eliminate the one thing that limits his power, the combined power of all six Elements of Harmony. Fluttershy, meanwhile, is deliberately exaggerating her (traditionally feminine) traits of kindness, meekness, and nurturing, playing along with Discord's hegemonic posturing in an attempt to get him to become dependent on her friendship.
The rest of the Mane Six, especially Rainbow Dash and to a lesser extent Twilight Sparkle, are horrified by this arrangement. Equestrian gender roles do not generally work like ours, and so in-character this is probably their first encounter with such toxic gender norms. They can see that the practical upshot is that Discord is taking more and more power and control, which forces Fluttershy to go to greater lengths to appease him, all the while convinced that she is in control even when it is plainly obvious to an outsider that Discord is using her. Fluttershy's determination to reform Discord puts her in the position of trying to figure out what she can do to make him behave, which has the effect of absolving him of responsibility for his behavior--there is little difference between Fluttershy's "I'm sure I can reach him if I keep treating him nicely" and "If I didn't burn the pot roast, he wouldn't have needed to hit me." She is being abused, and like many abuse victims, resisting her friends' efforts to get her out--which isolates her still further and makes her easy to control.
So far, so good, but this is where the episode runs afoul of the existing norms and rules of the show. The best ending is for Fluttershy to realize that her relationship with Discord is toxic, get her friends, and turn him back into stone, but within the show that ending cannot occur, because it closes off future plot lines with a popular villain and suggests that there are things friendship cannot do. Instead, when Fluttershy threatens to terminate their relationship, Discord spontaneously reforms and everyone becomes friends. So remember, little girls, if fifteen years from now your abusive boyfriend feeds you the "please, baby, don't go, I promise I'll change" line, you should definitely stay, because he's totally going to actually change and isn't just desperately saying anything that will keep you in his power.
And as disgusting as the ending is in that respect, it is toxic in more immediate ways as well. There is enormous pressure on young children, especially girls, to be "friends" with everyone. This episode suggests that there is a responsibility to be friendly even with people who are horrible to you and your friends, that Fluttershy's approach of suppressing her aggressive feelings and allowing people to walk all over her to maintain their friendship will actually get them to like her enough that she can then shift the relationship to a more genuine and equal friendship. This is precisely the nonsense that forces girls into the "alternative aggressions" documented by Rachel Simmons in her Odd Girl Out, creating the toxic culture of overt "niceness" and covert nastiness, rumor-mongering, and ostracizing that explodes among girls around puberty and ruins the latter portion of the school experience for so many.
Later episodes temper this somewhat by making clear that Discord is still colossally self-centered, manipulative, and sadistic, albeit more of a morally ambiguous trickster than the outright villain he was in his first appearance. In the fourth season, he is still devoted to testing the boundaries, going as far as he can without quite losing the support of Fluttershy, but at least it appears his contact with her is rather more limited.
Even in a purely narrative view, deliberately ignoring the toxic implications about gender, friendships, and abuse, this is still part of Season Three's flailing desperation, in this case the standard desperate-TV show trick of bringing back a popular villain--yet it reduces the most powerful, dangerous, and effective villain in the show to an abusive boyfriend.
And yet this is not the nadir of the flail.
Next week: Quite possibly the worst thing Spike has ever done. And that's still not the nadir either!
Discord's motive is perhaps not that of the typical abuser. He is more interested in isolating and controlling Fluttershy because it takes all of the Mane Six working together to use the Elements of Harmony against him, and thus so long as Fluttershy is kept away from her friends and under his thumb, he can wreak havoc as he pleases. On the other hand, it is an entirely selfish motivation, in which any possible affection he feels for Fluttershy (which affection he does seem to feel, if the end of the episode is anything to go by) is secondary to his desire to wield power. In that sense, this is a fairly typical abusive relationship.
In that sense, the show does a good job of showing how our sexist culture encourages and supports man-on-woman abuse in a way that other forms are not quite as supported. Our culture constructs the gender binary in large part by contrasting hegemonic masculinity with emphasize femininity. Hegemonic masculinity constructs masculinity as being about the possession and expression of power and dominant status. Put another way, expression of masculinity are expressions of power and vice versa, hence masculine associations for activities such as hunting, fishing, war, community leadership, business, and so on--activities where a man can assert his power and dominant status through status in a hierarchy, killing enemies, or providing meat for the tribe. Note that, for instance, preparing food for one's family is not seen as particularly masculine, but running a restaurant kitchen is an almost exclusively masculine occupation--the former is not a position of social dominance, but the latter is. By contrast, emphasized femininity encourages women not necessarily to embrace a submissive role (though that element is certainly present) but to exaggerate gender differences and play to men's desire for power. To quote R.W. Connell's Gender and Power, which introduced both concepts, this emphasis can be seen in "the display of sociability rather than technical competence, fragility in mating scenes [e.g., in popular entertainment or as an adopted posture in courtship and sex--note that much of our culture's concept of flirtatious body language for a woman involves making herself look smaller, weaker, or more childlike], compliance with men’s desires for titillation and ego-stroking in office relationships, acceptance of marriage and child care as a response to labor-market discrimination against women."
This plays out in Discord and Fluttershy's relationship in this episode (which is, of course, non-romantic, but they are living together for the duration of the episode, so many of the same concepts apply). Discord spends the entire episode trying to assert his power and dominance. He deliberately usurps Angel's role in the home, taunts and torments him, just to demonstrate his power, while also trying to manipulate and isolate Fluttershy so that he can dominate her as well--and the end goal for all of this is to eliminate the one thing that limits his power, the combined power of all six Elements of Harmony. Fluttershy, meanwhile, is deliberately exaggerating her (traditionally feminine) traits of kindness, meekness, and nurturing, playing along with Discord's hegemonic posturing in an attempt to get him to become dependent on her friendship.
The rest of the Mane Six, especially Rainbow Dash and to a lesser extent Twilight Sparkle, are horrified by this arrangement. Equestrian gender roles do not generally work like ours, and so in-character this is probably their first encounter with such toxic gender norms. They can see that the practical upshot is that Discord is taking more and more power and control, which forces Fluttershy to go to greater lengths to appease him, all the while convinced that she is in control even when it is plainly obvious to an outsider that Discord is using her. Fluttershy's determination to reform Discord puts her in the position of trying to figure out what she can do to make him behave, which has the effect of absolving him of responsibility for his behavior--there is little difference between Fluttershy's "I'm sure I can reach him if I keep treating him nicely" and "If I didn't burn the pot roast, he wouldn't have needed to hit me." She is being abused, and like many abuse victims, resisting her friends' efforts to get her out--which isolates her still further and makes her easy to control.
So far, so good, but this is where the episode runs afoul of the existing norms and rules of the show. The best ending is for Fluttershy to realize that her relationship with Discord is toxic, get her friends, and turn him back into stone, but within the show that ending cannot occur, because it closes off future plot lines with a popular villain and suggests that there are things friendship cannot do. Instead, when Fluttershy threatens to terminate their relationship, Discord spontaneously reforms and everyone becomes friends. So remember, little girls, if fifteen years from now your abusive boyfriend feeds you the "please, baby, don't go, I promise I'll change" line, you should definitely stay, because he's totally going to actually change and isn't just desperately saying anything that will keep you in his power.
And as disgusting as the ending is in that respect, it is toxic in more immediate ways as well. There is enormous pressure on young children, especially girls, to be "friends" with everyone. This episode suggests that there is a responsibility to be friendly even with people who are horrible to you and your friends, that Fluttershy's approach of suppressing her aggressive feelings and allowing people to walk all over her to maintain their friendship will actually get them to like her enough that she can then shift the relationship to a more genuine and equal friendship. This is precisely the nonsense that forces girls into the "alternative aggressions" documented by Rachel Simmons in her Odd Girl Out, creating the toxic culture of overt "niceness" and covert nastiness, rumor-mongering, and ostracizing that explodes among girls around puberty and ruins the latter portion of the school experience for so many.
Later episodes temper this somewhat by making clear that Discord is still colossally self-centered, manipulative, and sadistic, albeit more of a morally ambiguous trickster than the outright villain he was in his first appearance. In the fourth season, he is still devoted to testing the boundaries, going as far as he can without quite losing the support of Fluttershy, but at least it appears his contact with her is rather more limited.
Even in a purely narrative view, deliberately ignoring the toxic implications about gender, friendships, and abuse, this is still part of Season Three's flailing desperation, in this case the standard desperate-TV show trick of bringing back a popular villain--yet it reduces the most powerful, dangerous, and effective villain in the show to an abusive boyfriend.
And yet this is not the nadir of the flail.
Next week: Quite possibly the worst thing Spike has ever done. And that's still not the nadir either!
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Favorite vs. Best
Since there's no new episode of Friendship Is Magic today, have a short post instead.
Do you distinguish between your favorite examples of a genre or form and the best examples? I was musing the other day about the fact that my five favorite anime and the five anime I consider the best of what I've seen are the same five anime, but if I were to create actual top five lists, they'd be different.
In fact, here are those lists, plus an explanation of why the anime is where it is.
Favorites:
Do you distinguish between your favorite examples of a genre or form and the best examples? I was musing the other day about the fact that my five favorite anime and the five anime I consider the best of what I've seen are the same five anime, but if I were to create actual top five lists, they'd be different.
In fact, here are those lists, plus an explanation of why the anime is where it is.
Favorites:
- Princess Tutu: The most badass anime about a ballet-dancing duck ever. Also, super-secret ultra-hidden direct Neverending Story reference.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: It makes me laugh, it makes me punch the air and cheer, and certain episodes make me cry no matter how many times I watch them. Also it just looks great.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Total brainsink. I can just watch and think about it for hours. Also, it's absolutely visually stunning.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Compelling, emotional, intriguing, great fight scenes, and an utterly kick-ass soundtrack.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Explosions, giant plot twists from nowhere, and an emotional continuity that more than makes up for the plot spending most of the middle part of the series meandering aimlessly, and then, just as it's finding its feet again, collapses into total incoherence.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: The most semiotically dense thing I have ever watched, easily surpassing any other TV show or film.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Packs more thematic complexity, character growth, and intriguing ideas into 12 episodes than most series manage in 50.
- Princess Tutu: Masterfully constructed as a pastiche of dozens of classical ballets and folktales, and yet despite the fact that in each episode the characters are playing out the roles of characters in a given source story, there is also a strong character arc for each of them across the series as a whole.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: The last two episodes are a staggering work of absolute genius and the best-executed narrative collapse in all of anime.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: A masterclass in creating a sprawling, complex plot with a massive cast (by the Promised Day arc, there are fifteen separate groups of characters being independently followed by the narrative) and still making sure that everything is driven by the choices of the characters, and every character's choices are consistent with their distinct and idiosyncratic personality.
Friday, April 11, 2014
I don't even know for sure what this is part of, if anything...
I leap from rooftop to rooftop, my skirt fluttering in the wind and my twintails streaming behind me. The city beneath is quiet, at least here in the touristy parts of town. The moonlight bathes everything in eerie, fantastic silver, punctuated here and there with the almost-warm yellow glow of a streetlamp or the cycling colors of a traffic light. Buoyed by magic, I bound across the city's rooftops almost effortlessly, scanning with preternaturally sharp eyes and ears--and other, stranger senses--for the tell-tale signs of an infarction.
Perhaps I should introduce myself. I'm Shannan, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Benjamin Banneker High, a good student at a good school. I like mythology and mint ice cream and cheerleading, though I didn't quite make the squad. I guess I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes, and I'm kind of shy, but I do all right.
Oh, and at night I transform into Magical Pretty Girl Annan and battle the forces of the Dark Between to keep them from penetrating into this world. So there's that.
It's hard sometimes, and scary, and lonely, especially now that Shea and I are the only ones left. But there are advantages. Even untransformed, I heal ridiculous fast, and I'm faster and stronger. Then when I use the magic to transform, I change completely. I come out looking more like a twenty-year-old model or an actress than a random teen, all big blue eyes and five-foot-long strawberry-blonde tails and cream-colored legs and Jake Henderson would probably drool all over me if he saw it. Plus I get even stronger and even faster, so I can easily jump fifty or sixty feet straight up, I've got all kinds of neat magical powers for fighting infarctions--it's a pretty great deal Shea gave me!
I leap down near the corner of 9th and F. During the day this is right on the edge between downtown offices and tourist shopping, but at this hour it's completely deserted. I transform back and check my watch.
Not enough time to get to Metro before it closes; looks like I'm either calling a cab or walking home. Of course I don't have my purse--I've learned the hard way you don't want to bring that with you when you transform, it tends to get lost. So a cab isn't really an option. Fortunately there's no particularly bad neighborhoods between here and home, but still, I try to do everything the way my long-ago self-defense instructor suggested. Walk confidently, briskly but not quickly enough to look scared. Don't get squirrely and start looking around. Stay calm, and don't act like prey.
My self-defense instructor was basically full of shit, but at least I can pretend I'm doing something. Luckily, the closest I get to encountering another person is someone zipping past on a bicycle on the other side of the street. If you're going to walk around the city alone at night, one o'clock on a Monday morning at the tail-end of winter isn't a bad time to do it.
And of course, I could always just transform if I got in trouble, but I don't like doing that if I can help it.
Regardless, after a little over half an hour of walking I'm at the door to my apartment. I open it, flick on the light, nod to the cockroaches desperately scurrying under the fridge. I'd do something about them, but I heard they eat bedbugs, so instead I occasionally make a crumb-trail from the fridge to the couch in the hopes they'll get the hint. They haven't yet.
"Home sweet shitpile," I say, and flop down on the couch. I've learned from experience that if I let them bite me now and here, they won't do it as much when I go to bed. I should probably eat something, but I have to get up for work in five hours. Maybe I should try to sleep instead.
Oh! I should probably introduce myself again. I'm still Shannan, thirty-four-year-old SAS application developer for a government agency (I would tell you which one, but then I'd have to be embarrassed about that not actually being grounds for killing you or even a secret at all, really). I'm also chair of our office's branches of both BIG and FEW. I still like mythology and mint ice cream, but I never did make that squad, so for cheerleading substitute softball. And I still have that shy streak, too, but I'm not klutzy now that I'm not growing three inches in one year.
Twenty years ago I made a deal, and gained the power to become Annan. Twenty years of growing up, definitely older and hopefully wiser. College, jobs, dates here and there, a couple of boyfriends, the normal stuff, except for the whole slipping out at night to do battle as the only defender of humanity for hundreds of miles.
And in all that time, Annan hasn't aged a day.
Perhaps I should introduce myself. I'm Shannan, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Benjamin Banneker High, a good student at a good school. I like mythology and mint ice cream and cheerleading, though I didn't quite make the squad. I guess I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes, and I'm kind of shy, but I do all right.
Oh, and at night I transform into Magical Pretty Girl Annan and battle the forces of the Dark Between to keep them from penetrating into this world. So there's that.
It's hard sometimes, and scary, and lonely, especially now that Shea and I are the only ones left. But there are advantages. Even untransformed, I heal ridiculous fast, and I'm faster and stronger. Then when I use the magic to transform, I change completely. I come out looking more like a twenty-year-old model or an actress than a random teen, all big blue eyes and five-foot-long strawberry-blonde tails and cream-colored legs and Jake Henderson would probably drool all over me if he saw it. Plus I get even stronger and even faster, so I can easily jump fifty or sixty feet straight up, I've got all kinds of neat magical powers for fighting infarctions--it's a pretty great deal Shea gave me!
I leap down near the corner of 9th and F. During the day this is right on the edge between downtown offices and tourist shopping, but at this hour it's completely deserted. I transform back and check my watch.
Not enough time to get to Metro before it closes; looks like I'm either calling a cab or walking home. Of course I don't have my purse--I've learned the hard way you don't want to bring that with you when you transform, it tends to get lost. So a cab isn't really an option. Fortunately there's no particularly bad neighborhoods between here and home, but still, I try to do everything the way my long-ago self-defense instructor suggested. Walk confidently, briskly but not quickly enough to look scared. Don't get squirrely and start looking around. Stay calm, and don't act like prey.
My self-defense instructor was basically full of shit, but at least I can pretend I'm doing something. Luckily, the closest I get to encountering another person is someone zipping past on a bicycle on the other side of the street. If you're going to walk around the city alone at night, one o'clock on a Monday morning at the tail-end of winter isn't a bad time to do it.
And of course, I could always just transform if I got in trouble, but I don't like doing that if I can help it.
Regardless, after a little over half an hour of walking I'm at the door to my apartment. I open it, flick on the light, nod to the cockroaches desperately scurrying under the fridge. I'd do something about them, but I heard they eat bedbugs, so instead I occasionally make a crumb-trail from the fridge to the couch in the hopes they'll get the hint. They haven't yet.
"Home sweet shitpile," I say, and flop down on the couch. I've learned from experience that if I let them bite me now and here, they won't do it as much when I go to bed. I should probably eat something, but I have to get up for work in five hours. Maybe I should try to sleep instead.
Oh! I should probably introduce myself again. I'm still Shannan, thirty-four-year-old SAS application developer for a government agency (I would tell you which one, but then I'd have to be embarrassed about that not actually being grounds for killing you or even a secret at all, really). I'm also chair of our office's branches of both BIG and FEW. I still like mythology and mint ice cream, but I never did make that squad, so for cheerleading substitute softball. And I still have that shy streak, too, but I'm not klutzy now that I'm not growing three inches in one year.
Twenty years ago I made a deal, and gained the power to become Annan. Twenty years of growing up, definitely older and hopefully wiser. College, jobs, dates here and there, a couple of boyfriends, the normal stuff, except for the whole slipping out at night to do battle as the only defender of humanity for hundreds of miles.
And in all that time, Annan hasn't aged a day.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
What do Aragorn, Danaerys Targaryen, and Dream of the Endless have in common?
In case you missed it, yesterday's The Very Soil entry went up late.
They're all relatively rare instances of heroic kings in an era when the everyman hero is far more common. Fascinating article on the typical folkloric king in the European tradition, and the ways in which these modern instances of the hero-king both do and do not conform to that tradition. Link below, and it's definitely worth clicking through to the PDF of the full article, if only to see serious, scholarly work saying in effect, "Yeah, this is a hero on a journey, and Campbell's bloody useless to understand it."
http://www.medievalists.net/2014/04/05/returning-king-medieval-king-modern-fantasy/
They're all relatively rare instances of heroic kings in an era when the everyman hero is far more common. Fascinating article on the typical folkloric king in the European tradition, and the ways in which these modern instances of the hero-king both do and do not conform to that tradition. Link below, and it's definitely worth clicking through to the PDF of the full article, if only to see serious, scholarly work saying in effect, "Yeah, this is a hero on a journey, and Campbell's bloody useless to understand it."
http://www.medievalists.net/2014/04/05/returning-king-medieval-king-modern-fantasy/
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Perhaps hopelessness is (The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me)
Sorry this is so ridiculously late. I just COULD NOT WRITE last night, which meant I had to do this during lunch and bathroom breaks and such at work. Also, this one proved to be a struggle to write, because there is SO MUCH happening in these final episodes.
We begin at the end, with the wheel of fate. It is everywhere in this episode. The great grinding gears of Walpirgisnacht are the cycles of hope and despair that transform the magical girls (back) into witches, and they are the endless cycles of reset time Homura creates. Both are the wheel of fate, as is the round clockwork buckler Homura uses to travel in time.
 |
| "Hail Hydra." |
At the far end of the episode from them, Kyubey explains that Homura created Madoka. With every rebirth, Madoka carries the karmic burdens of the previous cycle into the next. In the Classic Buddhist explanation of rebirth, it is like lighting one candle with another; nothing of the candle is passed on, but the flame, the flame is the same. (That Homura's name means "flame" is no accident.) In other words, though Madoka carries no concrete memories from time to time, only a few vague impressions no doubt arising from her deep connections to the one person who does remember previous timelines, and though she is physically recreated in each timeline, she still maintains the connections to the world of the previous timeline. And since these worlds are being created and destroyed for her, it is the weight of the entire world she carries.
And it is a weight. In the end, these connections to a world hurtling headlong to destruction can lead only to suffering. The rising entropy of the world feeds into Madoka, transforming her in successive timelines from an inexperienced, but outgoing and confident, magical girl to an uncertain and unpowered sidekick whose associated heroines keep dying.
And why does this happen? Because Homura tried to protect her. Homura is a Christian (or, at least, attended a Christian school). Like Kyoko, she has absorbed the belief that it is possible for one person to save another--that there is something to be saved from, and somewhere to be saved to. It is a fundamentally dualistic proposition--here is bad, but there is good. But as Kyubey has made clear, we are in a Buddhist world. What both Kyubey and Homura have failed to understand is that in a Buddhist universe, the decay of the material world is an illusion because all binaries are illusions. The past is the present is the future. Decay is life. Magical girls are witches. The material is immaterial, and the other is the self. Homura cannot save Madoka because there is no Madoka to save and nothing from which to save her. All things are One--and since this is a fictional story, that One is the narrative itself, and in turn the gestalt entity within which that narrative exists, the implied author.
We no longer have a Mami to contrast with Homura, but we do have the woman who kept being paralleled to Mami in the early episodes, Junko, who has two very important scenes in this episode. In the first, she discusses Sayaka's disappearance and its effect on Madoka with Madoka's English teacher. In this scene, she seems to parallel Sayaka more than Mami: she is gently chastened for her inability to stand by and do nothing, for insisting on doing rather than being, and a shot from the teacher's point of view is bathed in blue light and framed to focus on her hair clip, with the result that she even looks like Sayaka.
Hovering above Junko throughout the conversation with Madoka's teacher is a reproduction of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Notably, the position of the two characters aligns Junko with God and the teacher with Adam; at the same time, the red lighting on the teacher's side and blue lighting on Junko's causes God's red mantle (which has been compared by scholars to both a uterus and a brain) to be barely visible; it is instead Adam who appears wrapped safely in red warmth. This image foreshadows Junko's second scene in the episode, in the shelter, when she realizes that she has to stop protecting Madoka and start trusting her. It is a tragic scene, culminating in possibly the single densest shot in the series, a simple image of Junko's mom-jeans-and-sweater-clad crotch, lower abdomen, and hand, Madoka's mother reduced to a womb. The hand reaches out as if to grab Madoka, pull her inside--and then stops, and we cut back to Junko's face. The woman will not be idealized (read: reduced and objectified) as a mother; she overrides her own mothering tendency and makes the active choice not to act, to allow Madoka to risk the life Madoka owns. Watching, we feel Junko's pain as she lets go, but we also feel the profound respect and trust she is showing toward her daughter.
But Homura has been doing the opposite, pursuing a Christian ideal of salvation, in which the higher protects the lower, a permanent womb. She is trying to block Madoka from choosing the self-sacrifice she knows Madoka would make; if Junko is showing respect and trust toward Madoka, what is Homura showing towards her?
The answer, as of all people the supposedly unempathic and unemotional Kyubey notes (revealing once again that he has plenty of intellectual empathy, just no emotional empathy, a not entirely inaccurate first-order description of a sociopath), is that it has long ago ceased to be about Madoka. Homura herself described her journey to protect Madoka as a labyrinth, and the inside of her apartment resembles nothing so much as the surreal interior of a witch's labyrinth. Extradiegetically, magical girls began as witches; diegetically, they all end as witches. Homura can transcend time. In Homura, all things are one, the past, present, and future become a single wheel. She is, in other words, both magical girl and witch, trapped in a labyrinth that is the narrative of the series itself. In that role as magical girl/witch, she brings both wishes and curses, at once protecting Madoka and ensuring her destruction.
But what transforms a magical girl into a witch is the transition from hope to despair, from the optimism that things will work out to the realization that death and decay are inevitable and inescapable, and Homura has never experienced that transition. Homura has never had hope. She was a weak and sickly child who became a magical girl out of desperation and a sense of duty, wishing to become not Madoka's savior but her protector. Even in her wishes, she does not imagine that she will actually succeed, only that she will try. She is entirely and innately hopeless, and as such she is immune to despair--because like all other binaries, hope and despair are one. Thus it is not hopelessness that finally breaks Homura; rather, the realization that she is making things worse causes her to doubt her path for the very first time. For her, it is the transition from determination to doubt that threatens to bring about her transformation.
And there laughing at her is Walpurgisnacht, the witches' Sabbath, the wheel of fate, the Harlequin. In the old commedia dell'arte, the Harlequin is a trickster figure, mocking all authority and order, and competing with the stern, sad Pierrot for possession of the beautiful Colombina. Like the Harlequin, Walpurgisnacht will dance forever with Homura, laughing at her and snatching away Madoka, her Colombina, defying rules or containment, a living symbol of the irreducible unpredictability and chaos of life. There is no higher and lower in the face of a trickster, only people. Rules are broken. Systems come crashing down.
And it is in this moment that Madoka arrives to make her wish.
Hovering above Junko throughout the conversation with Madoka's teacher is a reproduction of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Notably, the position of the two characters aligns Junko with God and the teacher with Adam; at the same time, the red lighting on the teacher's side and blue lighting on Junko's causes God's red mantle (which has been compared by scholars to both a uterus and a brain) to be barely visible; it is instead Adam who appears wrapped safely in red warmth. This image foreshadows Junko's second scene in the episode, in the shelter, when she realizes that she has to stop protecting Madoka and start trusting her. It is a tragic scene, culminating in possibly the single densest shot in the series, a simple image of Junko's mom-jeans-and-sweater-clad crotch, lower abdomen, and hand, Madoka's mother reduced to a womb. The hand reaches out as if to grab Madoka, pull her inside--and then stops, and we cut back to Junko's face. The woman will not be idealized (read: reduced and objectified) as a mother; she overrides her own mothering tendency and makes the active choice not to act, to allow Madoka to risk the life Madoka owns. Watching, we feel Junko's pain as she lets go, but we also feel the profound respect and trust she is showing toward her daughter.
But Homura has been doing the opposite, pursuing a Christian ideal of salvation, in which the higher protects the lower, a permanent womb. She is trying to block Madoka from choosing the self-sacrifice she knows Madoka would make; if Junko is showing respect and trust toward Madoka, what is Homura showing towards her?
The answer, as of all people the supposedly unempathic and unemotional Kyubey notes (revealing once again that he has plenty of intellectual empathy, just no emotional empathy, a not entirely inaccurate first-order description of a sociopath), is that it has long ago ceased to be about Madoka. Homura herself described her journey to protect Madoka as a labyrinth, and the inside of her apartment resembles nothing so much as the surreal interior of a witch's labyrinth. Extradiegetically, magical girls began as witches; diegetically, they all end as witches. Homura can transcend time. In Homura, all things are one, the past, present, and future become a single wheel. She is, in other words, both magical girl and witch, trapped in a labyrinth that is the narrative of the series itself. In that role as magical girl/witch, she brings both wishes and curses, at once protecting Madoka and ensuring her destruction.
But what transforms a magical girl into a witch is the transition from hope to despair, from the optimism that things will work out to the realization that death and decay are inevitable and inescapable, and Homura has never experienced that transition. Homura has never had hope. She was a weak and sickly child who became a magical girl out of desperation and a sense of duty, wishing to become not Madoka's savior but her protector. Even in her wishes, she does not imagine that she will actually succeed, only that she will try. She is entirely and innately hopeless, and as such she is immune to despair--because like all other binaries, hope and despair are one. Thus it is not hopelessness that finally breaks Homura; rather, the realization that she is making things worse causes her to doubt her path for the very first time. For her, it is the transition from determination to doubt that threatens to bring about her transformation.
And there laughing at her is Walpurgisnacht, the witches' Sabbath, the wheel of fate, the Harlequin. In the old commedia dell'arte, the Harlequin is a trickster figure, mocking all authority and order, and competing with the stern, sad Pierrot for possession of the beautiful Colombina. Like the Harlequin, Walpurgisnacht will dance forever with Homura, laughing at her and snatching away Madoka, her Colombina, defying rules or containment, a living symbol of the irreducible unpredictability and chaos of life. There is no higher and lower in the face of a trickster, only people. Rules are broken. Systems come crashing down.
And it is in this moment that Madoka arrives to make her wish.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoiler-Filled Review
Apologies for lateness.
Spoilers below the cut!
Spoilers below the cut!
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