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



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Image
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By   DARREN LINVILL   &   PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t  “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,”  as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ P...
Read more

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Image
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term   (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President  Donald Trump  could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent  Joe Biden  when more votes are tallied.  This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President  Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This...
Read more

When Life Hands You Lemons

Image
 It's like this folks: sometimes your mind goes blank. Happens more than usual with me of course. Take this forum for instance. I wanted to post something today and couldn't think of a topic. At least not a non-sexual one and we know sexual ones lately have been frowned upon.  Then along comes one of our regulars and complains about something. Well, they might not say it was a complaint, just an observation, but it was a complaint. A minor one. It has something to do about being able to make something out of nothing. Sort of like me this morning, how to make a thread out of an empty head? But they (notice I am using the correct pronoun, not saying he or she), by what they said got me thinking. What I thought was: Not sure if that is the actual saying, if I remember correctly, I remember the saying going something like this: Umm, no, I don't think the saying I am thinking of goes that way either, maybe ONE of you good folks can remind me how the saying goes. Either way, when...
Read more