Goetz JPVisual Culture and Film

PRESENT DAY. PRESENT TIME. HA HA HA.

This time around, I decided to do something slightly different than simply watching the prescribed episodes in class. I had always wanted to watch Lain for a long time, but dropped it after episode one because I couldn't understand it. Now, I'm going to try once again with a more socially critical lens and see if I can pick out any themes I've noticed!

In the very first episode, one of Lain's classmates commits suicide. I feel like a lot of episode one centers around the fact that people are obscuring their genuine personalities behind the ever growing facade that this new technological society offers us. She says "I do not need to stay in a place like this" before committing suicide. Meanwhile, Lain, the only technologically averse person in the show, does not understand the situation of a world surrounded by tech. I mean, she's literally in a classroom with a teacher teaching C and using PCs with emails (I think that was big at the time!) and struggles with it immensely. When she walks home, the power lines buzz incredibly loudly and are the only things standing above the illuminated parts of the street. Maybe Lain's friend didn't want to live in such a technological society? I mean, it doesn't sound so far fetched when you realize people kill themselves very often from things they've seen online.

Lain, in my opinion, represents a "mob" human, or a person who stays in the background. Lain is presented with very little background, giving the watcher the ability to project themselves onto her. Since she is generally not very opinionated; most of Lain's character development is simultaneously done through the watcher as well. With the coming of the internet, we see the clueless Lain as the watcher.

We are also aware of Lain's family. The father is obsessed with technology, and the mom is resentful of her father's obsession with it, neglecting Lain when she mentions her dead friend's email.

As we saw in the first two episodes, technology was once a standalone item- kept as a different entity than the user, and time was set aside to use it. Nowadays, however, (in Lain's universe), technology grows with humans, and even becoming a part of them. As Lain even said herself, "Everyone is connected".

It's fun to eventually be able to experience the anime predecessor to Inception, and it was thankfully much less complicated in a scientific sense.

To me, the main theme of the movie is that people are unintentionally stifled by society, and while that's not necessarily a problem, that does change the way people behave. I think it's important for doctors, such as our main character, to keep an outwardly composed and intelligent facade. However, she takes this to the extremes, sometimes accidentally coming off as cold faced. Her alter-ego, or dream persona is named Paprika, who aims to help people while simultaneously having fun. As we see the film progress, we understand the necessity of escapism to lead a happy life, however becoming fixated on and obsessed with constant escapism nearly ruins Chiba, so this gives the impression that moderation is very important when it comes to pleasure.

I want to touch back one more time on the "completely new person" thing, though. I was shocked to see Chiba's utter transformation into Paprika. You tend to think that people are just born with the personalities they have, but now we can see that people usually just tend to fit the role they're given. I wonder if this also makes a statement about general Japanese society, which tells people to essentially not judge a book by it's..... contents? That's a new one.

Anyways, Chiba scares of several love interests in the movie. Some men are very interested in her as Chiba, and some love her as Paprika. I really like how the film makes a point that people effectively lose interest in her once they figure out about her second self, which I guess also implies that the audience should do some soul searching themselves. Do you love your partner because of who they truly are? Or just how they present themselves. This theme delves deeper than simply saying "Do you love me for my personality?" because it argues that personality might not even be someone. Sorry, that's hard to word well. But anyways, at the end, Chiba gets with a programmer named Tokita who loves her no matter how she expresses herself, because he doesn't see her as an object or pleasure item, but a complicated human being, just like him.

This movie covers themes that I think very well could be aiming toward the Japanese society, however I also think that it can be applied to other people all around the world.

Before this class, I had already watched Spirited Away, but honestly, I was not a fan! This time I attempted to watch it with a new lens and see what life lessons and motifs I could gain from it that I hadn't done before. I know for many movies, Ghibli moves are an experience rather than a message (and it had been that way for me as well) so this time I challenged myself by looking for hidden messages! Here are some things I noticed.

Right as the movie starts, we see a sullen Chihiro. She's bothered that she has to move to a new town, and spends a good amount of time pouting in the car. According to some trivia I had read on this animation beforehand, Miyazaki was actually supposed to go into retirement after the creation of Princess Mononoke, but he was inspired seeing a coworkers annoyed child that he felt inspired to continue creating. The main conflict for Chihiro herself is her adversity to change, she is uncomfortable with scenery around her moving and doesn't know how to process her emotions. I see this film as a coming of age, where she learns to be able to accept change while also realizing that it's okay to be sad and upset, but to at least confront these emotions and keep them in check. She ends up passing this lesson onto Haku by the end (but not before begging him to not leave her, signifying her issue with change once again).

The movie criticizes negative behaviors such as gluttony and sloth. The no face creature and Chihiro's own parents are gluttonous, which hurts not only them, but those around them. We see her parents turn into pigs, and no face ends up going crazy and destroying the bathhouse due to being fed insane amounts of attention and food. I.e. he was corrupted!?

The one character I don't understand and will never understand is the creepy radish guy. He seem to be inspired by bathhouse patrons, which are usually almost naked old fat guys!? I know at some points he saved Chihiro from evil workers, but man I felt so creepy watching him slowly walk towards her haha. I couldn't gauge his intentions well at all.

Anyways, My last lesson that I've learned is that we need to work together to overcome our adversity and other personal issues. Haku and Chihiro worked together to help cleans the river that was so stinky it brought in a spirit (who I think was supposed to be a river god) that was just completely covered with sludge and ended up destroying a significant portion of the bathhouse. If Chihiro had not worked together with Haku, and even that creepy mustached, several-armed guy in the basement of the bathhouse, she would have never been able to save the river and return home. She might have even turned into a pig then and there!

Below is an image of the dirty river god who appears as sludge. The second portion of the image shows all the manmade filth (representation of capitalist greed) being flushed out from the spirit.

Dang, my expectations for Sukiyaki Western Django were changed once I saw the opening scene, and then changed again halfway through the movie. The entire thing plays out like an intentionally silly mishmash of cultures, both appreciative and mocking, but also making tons of references to the popular old culture of Japan (and America too I think). I was definitely not expecting the entire movie to be in English, and even more, I was definitely not expecting Quentin Tarantino to pop up as well!??! Haha.

A lot of this movie involves the typical gunfighting you'd see in a Tarantino film, but they are across two clans of 'cowboy-samurai'. I also noticed that much of the dialogue pans out in a "spaghetti-ramen-western" type of way, where there is traditional Americanized dialogue between cowboys meshed with an old-Japanese-esque feel (they reference so so many old Japanese movies).

Right off the bat, there are several over-the-top fighting scenes. A red/white gang war, guns on top of guns (I think one guy even had a bazooka type thing), and people exploding really made me laugh. I also enjoyed how katana were involved, despite guns clearly being the more physically dominant weapon. Lots of the scenes were mishmashed together, creating a hodge-podge feel (for example, the woman dancing in a burlesque manner, pulling a necklace from her throat only for the bar to explode into violence not much long after), that made the film feel more like a playful absurdist piece of art than a movie made to make any serious message. I enjoyed the theme it exuded, of a mix between olden-time cultures because it also reminds me of the current age. People around the world are slowly mixing races and cultures, and out of it something truly beautiful happens!

The amount of references in this movie is crazy too. It feels like we've genuinely stepped into the modern age with just how many movie references were made, I remember Yojimbo (who I had to research), Django, and Genji. I didn't know those references immediately, so some of the charm was unfortunately removed for me. Although I do appreciate the effort and thought to this massive cultural homage.

This movie was genuinely beautiful and tugged at my heartstrings! It was much less action packed than the average Japanese action film (or any action film for that matter), but I felt like it was one of the more meaningful things I've watched this semester.

The main themes it touches on are, at least from Sentarou's perspective are the public's perception of the elderly, honesty, and circumstances of one's actions. From Tokue's perspective, I suppose the watcher is taught to appreciate what they have while they have it, and understand with age comes prejudice. Although it was never Tokue's fault for having leprosy, she was forced to be removed from her job only to die not much later, which compares the treatment and public perception of those with infectious diseases to inhumanity and a lack of compassion. I remember researching the American aids epidemic for a school project not much longer ago, and although AiDS was never infectious through F2F communication, a lot of people believed that AiDS patients were infectious, and as a result they were ostracized from society and sometimes even physically abused.

I also do not take kindly to old people! I know that sounds very mean, but as a Floridian who gets crowded in their own home during snowbird season, I feel a sense of discomfort when I drive on the road seeing old people, or being yelled at at a restaurant by an elderly lady who ordered fries and then got upset she was served fries. However, now I see that this social generalization is often just as bad as racism, and can really harm the people who built the backbone of our society. Nobody deserves to be ostracized from the public, especially old people who have been working their entire lives to provide for the younger general public. I have rethought my actions after this movie.

I did have to do some google searching about what leprosy was post movie as well, and how it affected the Japanese population. There are lots of little things you don't know about a society or country until you're forcefully shown by movies, so I appreciate An taking the time from it's plot to feature such an (nowadays) unknown disability.

Lastly, seeing Sentarou running from his dark past only to confront it was honestly very stressful but releiving at the end of it all. I think a lot of people spend their lives running from some unknown past mistakes that they never really seem to confront. It makes me happy that we can see Sentarou used a role model, helping the viewers learn that they need to confront their past mistakes as well. This is applicable to not only Japanese people, but lots of people around the world.

"Shin Sekai Yori", also known as "This New World" is an anime about societal control, manipulation, and groupthink.

The jist of the aesthetic is a tactical mix of old-world visuals and a new world aesthetic, which definitely demystifies the idea that your society could be manipulating you without even realizing it. I think a lot of the time, people associate this type of manipulation and society with the 'older' age, including emperors and rituals, etc., so when we see it in a modern day anime atmosphere with slice of life theming and schoolchildren, it makes the viewers feel like this could be applied to their lives too. Many of the characters in this society follow rules only because the ones who don't are killed off. Saki's mother had lost her own first child, as children are 'removed' from society until age 17 for anti-state behavior. Pupils are continuously taught rhetoric and stories involving those who go against society, and the things that happen to those who are deviant. Children are made to cast their Cantus into fire without even recognizing the need for this ritual, inducing this aura of blind obligation, and absolute authoritarianism. People are taught that this is necessary because they need to keep society safe, but in doing so they stifle children's individualism and turn them into a hivemind of people who keep their heads down out of fear.

The first case of the modern day application of this anime is the scene where the queerats fell into the river. Most of the girls and boys didn't want to help the drowning queerat because they were worried about punishment from their superiors, as the system is made to keep people separated into classes. Saki helps the drowning queerat, despite it being against the rules. This is reminiscent of modern day Japanese social issues wherein people are told to 'not cause a fuss' by drawing attention to themselves, especially in public. This has caused bystander effect crimes, in which individuals see a crime but refuse to intervene because they otherwise don't understand what is happening, don't think it is their place to intervene, or think that somebody else should be helping. While most of the famous bystander cases happen in America and China (both notably collectivist and individualist countries), Japanese society still has their fair share too. People all over the world generally tend to not care about things until it affects them.

The latter 4 episodes to Eden of the East were honestly very funny, and felt more commentary driven than the first 4 assigned. I enjoyed most particularly how the NEETs were portrayed. At first, they were nothing but a concept, which let the viewer determine how they wanted to perceive the NEET. Most of the time, in real life, people complain about NEETs being stupid, lazy people who contribute nothing to society, however Eden shows that this couldn't be farther from the truth. Yes, their portrayal was definitely much less than ideal, but they were still treated like humans in comparison to the rest of the cast. The NEETs were able to band together to disarm the bomb, which I thought was really interesting, and Yutaka was effectively a genius too. He was able to help Akira hack into databases and find information on Noblesse, and his backstory describes him as an intelligent man who stayed indoors due to his anxieties about the real world. NEETs are portrayed as people with potential to help society, but are misguided, rather than people who are lost causes that need to be destroyed. He even created a world computer that served as a sort of calculator on his PC too. None of this could have been accomplished by Akira.

I also noticed the social determinism device that was created by the child prodigy, Mikkuru, introduced around episode 6. It was portrayed as a wonderful device made by an intelligent young girl, but it was also a tracking device... in its own way? This begs the question regarding social monitoring: Is it really helpful enough to overcome the issues society poses caused by invasions of privacy?

Lastly, I want to point out how dismayed I feel by Saki's character development. In that, I kind of felt like there was none? haha. The show continues to shove most of the development onto Akira, while simultaneously portraying him as a misunderstood guy from the start. The show went as far as to put down other male characters that doubted Akira's authenticity by putting them in socially shameful situations. Saki is otherwise treated like an innocent princess who is left out of most major conflict (and Akira is obviously her prince (literally, too!)). It dampens her ability to contribute to the show in any way other than being a (very cute) damsel in distress. Or rather, the ideal female for the male that male watchers can project themselves onto, which I definitely felt was a weak point in effectiveness. (Looks like an otaku, behaves like a badass, go figure.)