getoswomb

(That one time in question)

featuring transfem geto :)

This article revolves around a concept called the "prohibition against looking" which according to the author, Osamu Kitayama, is a taboo in the pre-Oedipal stage of the mother-child relationship (when the child was still an infant). This taboo is reflected in several Japanese myths which follows the formula of:

A male protagonist marries a beautiful woman, who warns him against looking at her when she performs certain activities.

He does it anyway and discovers that she is in fact an animal, such as a crane, a snake, or a crocodile capable of turning into a human. The myths would end with the humiliated wife leaving the husband heartbroken and guilty.

It also doesn’t have to be the husband looking at the wife in her true, animalistic form, only that he looks at something forbidden by her, such as the box Otohime forbid Urashima to open, or Izanami’s fetid corpse.

Examples of the myths used by Kitayama are: The crane wife, The legend of Urashima-taro, The snake wife, the myth of Izanagi-Izanami.

According to Kitayama, these myths symbolize the infant’s transition from the idealized image of a nurturing, loving mother upon whom it can depend entirely, to the realization that her provisions come at a cost (namely, the bodily functions that are necessary to produce it - symbolized by the wife’s body parts or a certain object, such as the crane wife’s feathers, the snake wife’s lactating eyeball, or Otohime’s box) and the guilt of having “wounded” its mother for demanding/needing such provisions. Here the wife is split into two images, that of the loving, idealized and beautified woman and the impure and disgusting animal. Notably, the male protagonists of these stories are often kind and innocent, but demanding and passive in his receiving of affection, like a child. Conversely, the heroines are devoted, self-sacrificial and forward like a mother.  

When the male protagonists break the prohibition, he sees the heroines as an animal, as he struggles to reconcile the reality of her bodily functions / “animalistic” side and his idealized image of her. This disillusionment causes the separation. Later on, the shame and guilt comes as he realizes the animal and the woman are one in the same, and that he has “wounded” his wife/mother. 

I can see some parallels between this and Gojo and Geto’s relationship in HI/PD. According to Gojo’s VA, Geto was Gojo’s emotional support and with him, Gojo was free to act like a spoiled child. Geto would indulge Gojo, putting his needs second to Gojo’s, like when Haibara asked Geto what he should give him as souvenirs, Geto based his answer on what Gojo would like.

Gojo also viewed Geto as his moral compass and depended on him to make moral decisions, such as when Gojo asks Geto if he should kill the cultists. This points to a level of idealization.

Their separation came when Geto snapped and massacred an entire village. Though notice how the core of the conflict and Gojo’s anger at Geto is not because what Geto did was wrong according to some abstract idea of good and evil, but rather that Geto went against his pre-established morals (by killing meaninglessly) and thus shattering his idealized image of him. In this scene we also see Gojo without his glasses, which (aside from when he’s in battle) means that he’s being able to perceive Geto for what he truly is - he’s looking at a side of Geto he has never seen before, and he struggles to reconcile it with his idealized version. He views it, at least on some level, as a personal offense/betrayal (“Explain yourself.”). He reacts to the revelation with anger and violence, though like the male protagonists of the myths he ultimately resigns to Geto’s abandonment.

It should be noted that according to Kitayama, the prohibition against looking, unlike certain taboos such as incest, is to be broken as the child learns to view its mother as a full human being and mature, kind of like how Gojo only starts to mature after Geto left him. 

Kitayama also relates the personality and lifestyle of the heroines in the stories to the “masochistic caretaker”, which he defines as the type of person who “takes extremely good care of people who request help” who “tend to take on work beyond their capacity, have no time to rest themselves, and repeatedly find themselves in a state of exhaustion, both physically and psychologically. When they fail to take good care of others, they feel ashamed;...it is hard for them to receive proper assistance from others, even when they are physically ill and psychologically hurt…” who has a “self-tormenting nature.” I think all of this describes Geto quite nicely. 

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