Anime (pt. II)

Belladonna of Sadness

Ghost in the Shell

Konichiwa, my dear, kawaii readers. In this fast-paced and frenetic world, it’s easy to be desensitized and ambivalent to the constant stream of beauty and horror (but mostly horror) happening all around us. Having just survived my first jury duty summons ever (it was a murder trial, of course) I was once again reminded how casually morbid every day life is. As I listened to the prosecutor make jokes about how none of us potential jurors wanted to be there, the man on trial sat stone-faced just feet away, and I felt the dread rise from a pit in my stomach. I was lucky to not be selected for the jury, I was lucky to not be the one on trial, and even sitting in my overwhelming anxiety from 9am til 5pm I still knew how lucky and privileged I am. The more I think and the more I write, the less equipped I feel to articulate how fucked up the world is. The fact that a 21-year-old black man named Trey Reed was found hanging from a tree at his predominantly white college this past week and it barely made headlines, in order to make room for the headlines and think-pieces and “calls for unity” about the gummy-mouthed bigot who was killed in a manner that he often justified—I can’t make sense of it. The fact that another late night TV host has been fired for practicing free speech is beyond terrifying. When I refer to our current era as “dystopian”, I’m not even remotely joking, and last week’s silent films proved that the artistic explorations of our everyday horrors are not without humor, or salient critiques. Another cinematic realm that is known for its political and social commentary, as well as its wacky sense of humor and whimsy, is Japanese animation, also known as anime. I’ve dabbled in anime a few times, and similarly to silent films, the distinct styles and immense ambition of anime never ceases to amaze me. Like noir, there is much debate over whether anime can be considered a genre or a style, especially when there is so much material to classify. It was nearly impossible to choose just two films to watch this evening, but I landed on a couple of vivid and vintage films that really represented the full, zany range of Japanese animated films. And these selections feel especially appropriate, in this current moment, because their antagonists are an overzealous, predatory king and misguided government that loses control of a dangerously-sentient piece of technology that they created. Feels scary relevant to me!

Up first is a deep cut from the earlier days of cartoon cinema, a tragic but gorgeous fairytale (many such cases) that, at first, seemed like a fairly simple fable of love and loss from the “give peace a chance” generation, but proved to be way more complex as it went on: this is Eiichi Yamamoto’s 1973 film Belladonna of Sadness. The film begins as all ill-fated love stories do—with “once upon a time”—and we are introduced to a young couple, Jean and Jeanne, as they are wed. Jean and Jeanne are simple farmers, but they are drunk on the happiness that their love brings them. This is conveyed through some of the most glorious and unique artistic styles that I’d ever seen in an animated film—I’m not sure if I’ve ever experienced watercolors and tie-dye like this. The drawings are simultaneously childlike and sophisticated, as you can clearly make out the streaks of markers and the strokes of paint, even as the pictures become more detailed. The villagers rejoice at Jean and Jeanne’s marriage, flowers and rainbows form in abundance and do not cease. That is, until we are introduced to the king and queen of this land, who swiftly demand that they be granted some form of gratitude in the midst of all of this communal joy. This, of course, means that Jeanne is delivered to the king to be raped—a moment that is somehow more graphic and horrifying than an actual rape scene might’ve been. And as unpleasant as this sounds, I actually appreciated the gory and ghoulish symbolism of this depiction, as a fiercely feminist critic who is often let down by much of the modern media that is too sanitized to really critique rape culture. It is one of the most viscerally painful and vibrantly memorable visuals, in a film filled to the brim with loud, sparkling, evocative imagery. This traumatic event completely upends Jeanne and Jean’s blissful lives, it causes Jean to not act like himself, and it leaves Jeanne utterly depleted of the vitality and brightness that once emanated from her being. She sings a sad song, with lyrics both shallow and deep, describing what is left of her will to live as, “a creaking hinge of rusted hope.” Suddenly, a small creature appears before Jeanne, claiming that he heard her screams, and wishes to grant her the power that she seeks. Confused but distraught, Jeanne agrees to whatever Faustian fate this little goblin offers, and because this is anime, this manifests in the form of a little phallic apparition entering her body and giving her an unrealistically powerful orgasm. I’ve watched enough Japanese media to know that the “oos” and “aas” of the feminine form are often implemented and exploited to the highest degree, but it didn’t bother me so much here as it made me laugh. I mean, this was 1973 and it was made by a man, why would I be surprised that the only way our female protagonist can find freedom and contentment is through a magical penis monster? But every time I chuckled or rolled my eyes at the lunacy of this film’s lust for lust, it would hit me with another moving line of dialogue that stopped me in my tracks—as when a war breaks out and Jeanne says, “men love war in any age, women are always the ones left to suffer.” This film is so psychedelic and a bit psycho, it was a bit hard to follow at times. But like any classic fairytale, it was simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. With each bizarre sex scene with the magical penis monster, Jeanne gains powers and rises in prominence, transforming her into a formidable witch of the wilderness whom the villagers come to love and respect much more than their monarchs. This love and respect is depicted through—you guessed it—more fucking! But what I found fascinating to observe, as this film descends into further melodramatic madness, is how this boundless orgy morphs into a formless, undetailed mess of shapes and colors. Sex loses all meaning, all horniness, all salaciousness, and this film fully embraces the absurdity of its premise as groovy, generic 1970s rock plays. As I said in my last anime double feature, there are rape-y aspects to nearly every anime I’ve ever watched, and I know that I am definitely not the best person to comment on the interesting cultural attitude surrounding sex in Japan, but it is endlessly fascinating, to this critic. Since gratuitous female nudity is such a staple in anime, I expected to see it here, but I was pleasantly surprised by the creative way it’s shown. No description I provide will properly convey how pretty and haunting the detailed hand-drawn animation of this film is, you’ll just have to see it (or Google it) for yourself. I won’t spoil how Belladonna of Sadness ends, but I will say that this phantasmaorgasmagoric Japanese animated sex tragicomedy fairytale also somehow had room to reference the French Revolution, on top of everything else. So that’s…interesting.

Tonight’s next film was just as visually stunning but not necessarily as interesting to this critic, though its premise is fairly intriguing—this is Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 cult classic: Ghost in the Shell. (This is not to be confused with the 2017 live-action, American remake starring Caucasian Scarlett Johansson.) Ghost in Shell is based on the beloved manga by Masamune Shirow, who titled his work after Arthur Koestler’s book about philosophical psychology, The Ghost in the Machine. Set in the year 2029, Ghost in the Shell follows Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg public security agent in “New Port City”, Tokyo. In this not-so-distant future, technology has evolved so rapidly that the human body is capable of being partially or completely augmented with cybernetics. The term “ghost” refers to the consciousness inhabiting a “shell”, or a body. Major is a full-on cyborg, which, of course, translates to a super sexy, youthful body of a woman, equipped with weapons and precise fighting skills, with an older, wiser consciousness. She is tasked with assassinating a foreign diplomat, but this event only triggers more chaos and destruction, as the Foreign Minister’s interpreter is then ghost-hacked—presumably by the mysterious hacker known by the moniker “the Puppet Master.” This leads Major and her team on a wild goose chase to find the Puppet Master, discovering along the way that there are hidden ghosts inside numerous people presenting as mere humans, and perhaps their foe is even more nefarious and clever than they’d expected. When we finally meet the infamous Puppet Master, he monologues and waxes poetic about what it even means to be human in an increasingly less-human world—in classic, old-school sci-fi fashion. He says, “Humanity has underestimated the power and consequences of computerization”, a man in a suit retorts, “Nonsense! This isn’t proof you’re a real life form”, to which the Puppet Master then responds, quite smugly, “Can you provide proof of your existence?” It’s the kind of writing that would’ve really blown my mind if I hadn’t already read Frankenstein or seen countless other movies about sentient robots. To its credit, Ghost in the Shell has some really funky, existentialist ideas to explore, that have only proven to be more accurate and terrifying as time goes on. It is considered to be one of the greatest anime and science fiction films of all time, inspiring filmmakers such as The Wachowskis, Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Mostow, and James Cameron, who described it as “the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence.” It is a thrilling visual experience—it plays with shadows and silhouettes and action scenes in a really fun way, and explores a gloriously-expansive fictional city that blends analogue aesthetics and cyberpunk sensibilities (which was based on Hong Kong, and how it looks, IRL.) There were some magnificent shots here—some that intentionally mirrored other films, others that were totally unique. I loved how angular and chiseled and tall and sexy everyone was in this near-future, and I appreciated its prescient dialogue about foolishly letting artificial intelligence gain so much power that these machines eventually might demand autonomy and even political asylum. What I didn’t appreciate was just about everything else Ghost in the Shell had going on. This film throws so much techno lingo, government parlance, and frantic futuristic language at you, that I’m not ashamed to admit that I was confused basically the entire time. I was sober, took feverish notes during, did extensive research after, but I still could not tell you exactly what happened in this film. I find it funny that so many filmmakers saw Ghost in the Shell and seemingly said to themselves, “let’s do this, but comprehensible”, because I do see its influence in other projects. To quote my buddy boy Roger Ebert, in his 1996 review, “(it is) too complex and murky to reach a large audience ... it’s not until the second hour that the story begins to reveal its meaning.” Which is really significant coming from Roger Ebert, who profoundly loved titties, and yet the titties in this movie weren’t enough for him. There are some really radical and compelling ideas thrown around in Ghost in the Shell, as when the Puppet Master suggests human DNA is nothing more than a program designed to self-preserve, just as a machine might be designed, and surprisingly or unsurprisingly, there are even more feminist undertones to this film than Belladonna of Sadness. Cultural critic Carl Silvio called Ghost in the Shell a “resistant film”, due to its inversion of traditional gender roles, its “valorization of the post-gendered subject”, and its “de-emphasis of the sexual specificity of the material body.” Which is all super cool to me, in theory! But in practice? I’m not so sure. It all just felt too dense to be completely fleshed out, too overwhelmed with establishing its world that I never really felt like I got to spend any actual time in it. I can still appreciate the value of this film, and its impact upon pop culture, but I just found myself a bit disinterested by the end. Well, that’s all I can compute for now, so I’ll log out and unplug. Until next time, the cyborg in me recognizes the cyborg in you.

Also, shall we get scary next week? Time will tell…