What a grim cartoon!

 


Adam Somerton on the Anime series Attack on Titan, and whether we should view it as politically toxic.

Adam Somerton

Attack on Titan is a rather ugly manga and anime storytelling effort from a country with some ugly chapters in its history.  Among the adults and parents of our first fully Net-connected generations (the Millennials and older Zoomers) there has been a bit of controversy on whether Isayama Hajime is trying to promote race-hatred or fascism, and what should be done about that.  Some critics on YouTube are calling it fascist, and demanding that their viewers stop watching and reading it.  Somerton has a rather more nuanced take on what Isayama is shooting for.

"In this world good and evil rarely exist as absolutes; a world of absolutes can't really exist.   The only truly absolute thing is death itself -- which  [is] a component of fascist ideology.  In this Cult of Death, how one dies is more significant than how one lives.  Perhaps all these characters are meant to be cautionary tales.  So many of them let single-minded devotion to the greater good lead them to their deaths, and, in that process, did they ever truly live?  Were they ever truly free?  Death as an absolute shouldn't lock us into fatalistic paths but should allow us to realize what freedoms we do have while we are alive.  If death is the absolute then all other things exist as nuances in shades of gray.  Ascribing absolute values of good or evil is to reject the range of experience that life has to offer.  The more we cling to absolutes in anything in life the more we can sign ourselves to a path with no way to turn around or change course; that's what Aaron did: he decided that the greater good was worth trapping himself on a doomed road that would only end in his premature death. 

"That's what hatred does to people: hatred traps you; hatred removes your options.  Hatred takes away your freedom and it tricks you into thinking those you hate are the ones who have taken your freedom away; and like the characters in Attack on Titan, we exist in a world so full of hatred that it's hard not to get mired in it sometimes.  It's our job to reject hate and those who propagate it -- not to hate them in return, but to pity them: they've let their intolerance control their lives -- don't let it control yours!  Fly free!  And when the fascists and bigots and hate mongers of the world try to demonize you, [you must] know that it's because they see your freedom.  They see you being yourself, not trapped inside a cage, and they hate that you can be free and they can't: you have strength they can't even imagine and it horrifies them because there is nothing more horrifying to a fascist than someone they hate who refuses to die."

Speaking for myself, I'm not going to get too deeply involved in any AoT reading or viewing; The Lord of the Rings is grim enough for me.  Any opinions out there?

A small warning: this video is an hour long! 😉

Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan



 

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