Media(tion) and Trauma in Serial Experiments Lain

If trauma has come to the forefront as a prevalent concern in contemporary culture, it is because trauma studies has come to realize the ripple-effects of trauma. The proliferation of media images is, for some, an inappropriate appropriation of the traumatic event; nonetheless this intersection between trauma and media has become the dominant mode of representation between thing and images, event and reportages. Thus, contrary to Adorno's acute formulation that “[writing] poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Adorno 34, quoted in Luckhurst 5); it has become necessary to ask why “poetry” – and its inverse, pornography – has only become more rampant after the Holocaust. By reading Lain as the site where media (as communication) and trauma (as responses to shock) converge upon one other, the first part of the essay elicits examples where an anime's mediation of its own medium – i.e. a mediation of the anime's own already mediated “reality” – points towards a space of “transmissibility” between media accounts and catastrophic events.[1] In the later parts, the essay briefly examines media outside anime and argues for media's possible mediation of itself. In other words, how trauma moves from a question of retrospective, aesthetic representability to one of temporal and spatial “transmissibilty”.

Serial Experiment Lain begins with the suicide of Lain's schoolmate, Chisa. Soon students receive e-mails from Chisa, telling them how one can exist in the Wired (i.e. digital) world alone. Lain, too, receives Chisa's posthumous e-mail, and is haunted by Chisa's phantom throughout the anime. There are myriad struggles in-between the 13 episodes: the dissolving boundary between online games and reality, Lain's amnesia of her doings in the Wired, rumors and conspiracy theories spreading across the internet. Lain, initiated into the Wired world, soon becomes a god-like entity (a “software”) who transcends the boundaries between reality, the Wired, and other media. In turn, Lain is mediated as an omnipresent “media-figure” in the Wired. Lain's self is correspondingly split into three (largely discontinuous) identities: 1. Lain of “reality”, amnesiac and exposed to traumatic experiences, 2. Lain of “Wired”, aggressive, transcending media boundaries and 3. Lain according to rumors and conspiracies, i.e. a third Lain rejected by 2. and 3. as not-same.[2] Increasingly aware of the porousness of identity and memory in the Wired, Lain decides to go through an “all-reset” process wherein events throughout the 13-episodes are reversed; and only Lain retains knowledge of what has happened. The suicides which acted as catalysts for the story-line are undone; and people of the Lain universe live in blissful ignorance of Lain.

The anti-realistic visual representation of Chisa's suicide – together with the posthumous emails – anticipates a rupture that operates on multiple levels. On a visual level, the suicide is split into a gesture and a consequence, a death-act and death itself. The juxtaposition of typographies (“I . . . don't need to stay in a place like this”) both before and after Chisa's death,[3] coupled with the extreme close-up of Chisa's muttering mouth (fig. 1), suggests a communicative and even performative dimension to the suicide.


(Figure 1)

This rupture can be further developed on a narrative level, where Lain is further exposed to the split dimensions of Chisa's death. While her schoolmates gloss over Chisa's emails as if they were pranks, Lain alone recognizes the communicative gesture. Out of this curiosity, or desire, to know and communicate with the dead, Lain is initiation into the Wired world. Yet, while the communicative and traumatic converge, they do not displace the other; Lain remains haunted by Chisa's ghost made manifest in Lain's own psyche, even after talking to Chisa in the Wired world. In other words, while most schoolmates mourn the death of Chisa, it is Lain who is exposed to the dual specter of trauma: the desires to mourn (the trauma) and communicate (with the dead); but, at the same time, the incongruity of these desires.

That the two desires are incongruous is made apparent when, asked in the Wired how suicide feels, Chisa replies: “[suicide] really hurts :)”. Here, the established context of suicide works against the emphatic use of “really”. The suicide reminds audiences this conversation is occurring in the Wired – as opposed to a reality – and displaces the apparent subject (of genuine “reality”) asserted by this speech-act. Moreover, within the statement itself, the smiley – an ostensible expression of happiness – corrodes the expression of pain immediately preceding it. Juxtaposed together, the irony within this sentence points towards a more general incongruity: that post-traumatic gestures of communication must acknowledge its trauma, which nonetheless undermines what is said by underscoring the singularity of genuine expression.

It would seem that the above incongruity stems from a deferred relation between trauma and a retrospective attempt at representation, thus communication. In this sense, all mediation of trauma, whether it be media accounts or aesthetic representations, always appears post-mortem. Irony, as a challenge towards sincerity, becomes inherent in this attempt at communication, because we think of trauma as a primary event that precedes the secondary, and subsidiary, act of representation.

Yet, recent trauma studies increasingly formulates the affects of trauma as a ripple-effect,[4] i.e. how secondary trauma can be as immediate as what we conventionally consider as “primary” catastrophes. In his essay, “Trauma as Representation”, Wallace raises this question provocatively:

In other words, is representation's connection to trauma always a function of representation's capacity (or incapacity) to illustrate? Is it possible that representation's relation to trauma is not a matter of representation's ability to present again, that it is not a matter of trauma's assimilation or inassimilability as facilitated or precluded by the representational act? . . . After all, isn't it by now clear that certain representations are, in and of themselves, traumatic events? (4)

By italicizing “again”, Wallace suggests that we cannot construe the trauma-representation question in purely temporal terms, that we cannot understand (media/artistic) representation as purely secondary, because it increasingly contains part of the primary that is trauma. E. Ann Kaplan, extrapolating from Martin Hoffman's concept of vicarious trauma,[5] suggests that we can consider an over-exposure to media-images a potential kind of vicarious trauma: . . . some of the responses given by clinicians to Hoffman and Friedman's questions would suggest that visuality links cinema, victims' accounts, and therapists' responses to those accounts. In reporting their work with trauma patients, for example, therapists use language that sounds as if they were creating a film in their minds of the events people narrate . . . the border between television or movie images and the “reality” of her patients' experiences is blurred for the therapist. The comment also confirms the power of visual media to trigger symptoms of vicarious trauma, at least when the viewer is primed by treating trauma victims or by having been a victim himself or herself. (89)

Although far from conclusive, Wallace and Kaplan are formulating a reciprocal relation between media and treatments of trauma. Kaplan, through adopting the idea of vicarious trauma, asserts a continuity between trauma and media. Similarly Wallace, through denying that the trauma-representation question is always one about assimilability, asserts that there is something beyond a linear question of retrospective reference. As opposed to earlier discussions of trauma, which focuses on the impossibility of communicating trauma, recent discussions thus focus more on the overlaps between trauma and representation, and points towards the deficiency in seeing trauma as (primary) and media formulations of trauma as secondary, i.e. a linear account that reduces the trauma question from one of “transmissibility” into one of retrospective reference.

It is, then, important to understand “transmissibility” not only as what can be transmitted – which would re-invoke the question of reference – but to understand “transmissibility” also as an open space where what we conventionally think of as the secondary (the communicative, what can be meant) slips towards the primary (the traumatic, what can only be experienced), and vice versa. An understanding of “transmissibility”, then, should be reformulated in terms of this problematic temporality between media and trauma. If media does not merely seek to make sense of the catastrophe retrospectively, can a mediation of trauma by media – what I would call a media(tion) – anticipate, thus dissipate, to an extent, future traumas?

That this understanding of “transmissibility” opens up a contesting space could be better illustrated by linking two related scenes from the 1st and 11th episode of Lain (Layer 01: Weird, Layer 11: Infornography). Both scenes stem from – but also reformulate – Lain's experience of Chisa and Masami Eiri's suicide.

In layer 01, minutes after she communicates with Chisa on the Wired, we see Lain in a smoke-filled realm. Standing beside train tracks, Lain spots a girl dressed in school-uniform, with a ghastly and ever-morphing face (fig. 2).


(Figure 2)

The train rushes on and soon runs over the girl. Visual-wise, this spatializing posits Lain into a realm that is neither real nor digital. It represents, and is only representative of, a re-enactment of Chisa's death in a realm that is neither memory (because not a flashback), nor action (because nothing is done, only witnessed). This scene (among a line of other similar scenes) is what Freud would call a compulsion to repeat, a futile attempt driven by desire “to master the stimulus retrospectively” (37) – in this case, the trauma of death. With respect to the immediate visuals, then, this scene formulates a rather conventional understanding of trauma; a response-mechanism that always seeks to mediate retrospectively.

By bringing in the question of narrative and temporality, however, this scene anticipates the suicide of another individual that is yet to be narrated. In Layer 09, we are told that Masami Eiri, a god-like entity in the Wired, is also run over by a train years before Chisa's suicide.[6] Yet, already in this scene – with the juxtaposition of Chisa/Eiri's double, shifting face upon a crashing train – Eiri's suicide is anticipated and superimposed upon Chisa's. To further complicate matters, Eiri's death precedes Chisa's in the plot, but occurs after Chisa's in the narraive. In the same scene – indeed within the very image of Chisa/Eiri's unstable, shifting face – a flashback and flashforward is achieved in the same figure.

In his discussion of Resnais' traumatic cinema, Luckhurst suggests that the flashforward, as opposed to the flashback, links it “to the (im)possibility of narrating trauma in film” (190). Further on, Luckhurst observes an “intrinsic transmissibility of trauma in Resnais' work: one site seems to invoke another” (190). Temporality, then, works similarly between Resnais' works and this particular scene in Lain. First, there is indeed a “transmissibility of trauma”, in which both suicides are juxtaposed to form one traumatic image for Lain – and, implicitly, the audience. Time – as history, present experience, and future recognition – is here inter-mingled and mediated without differentiation. Chisa and Eiri's double face at once effaces and covers up the other – but they are, paradoxically, one of the same face. Lain's experience of the two vicarious traumas – one before and one after the narrative plot – thus at once repeats, anticipates and is combined. The two traumas (as external events) here accumulates and constricts upon Lain (who experiences it personally).

We hence reach this alleged “(im)possibility of narrating trauma”, precisely because it is the point where the very concept of temporality is localized and fractured. Instead of positing trauma as an event of pre-defined time and locale, it is experienced (by Lain) inversely as a compressing of such. This (im)possibility – in brackets – does not relish in any ambiguity; rather, it points towards the very transmissibility of the traumatic, propagated across time.

If in Layer 01 trauma is constricted into a single image, by Layer 11 Lain experiences trauma through mediated lenses. The episode opens with a MV-style juxtaposition of scenes from earlier layers. While devoting an episode to recap earlier footages is not uncommon,[7] Nakamura stealthily juxtaposes previously unseen (but similar) images and typographies upon other recycled images, thus at once rehashing and reformulating previous plots and narratives.

In the train-sequence in Layer 01, we see Lain imagining herself the witness of a suicide. A very similar transmission of trauma is done again in Layer 11 – but the two episodes depart in their very method of representation. Where the train-sequence signifies with its anti-realistic aesthetics, in Layer 11 the sequence questions the very reality of presentation. For the sake of analysis, I will break down the sequence into three major scenes, and illustrate by stills:

1. Cyberia Suicide

Here, the suicide of a Wired criminal (a scene from Layer 03) is recapped somewhat authentically, with Lain of “reality” being the witness of the man's death. Yet, between the scenes there are two close-ups upon Lain's eyes that do not belong to the original sequence found in Layer 03. The first image is a side-shot of Lain's left eye (fig. 3),


(Figure 3)

while the second image concludes the sequence with a slightly arced shot of Lain's right eye (fig. 4).


(Figure 4)

Not only do the two shots emphasize Lain as a first-hand witness (something which the original scene does well enough), they break down the very act of witnessing into two partial – left and right – angles, suggesting vividly the highly subjective and aporetic nature of Lain's witnessing. These two shots, then, function in a different realm – as commentaries – against the linear sequence that they interrupt.

2a. Chisa's suicide

After a brief sequence of montages that combine Lain's cityscape against wires, Chisa's suicide in Layer 01 is re-enacted, albeit with two major discrepancies. In the first, a reverse-shot of Chisa's hands show Lain standing in the scene of suicide (fig. 5).


(Figure 5)

Not only does the shot upset the established narrative, the positing of Lain into a reformulated “reality” – as opposed to an imagined realm in the train-scene – suggests a fundamental repositioning of Lain's experience of trauma. Linking scenes 1. and 2a., we can perhaps suggest that a transference has occurred where Lain's first-hand exposure to one suicide has led to her being exposed (retrospectively) to (all) other traumas. In other words, a re-exposure, that is as real as any “primary” event.

2b. Chisa's hands

There are two continuous closeups of Chisa's hands (fig. 6 and 7). Continuous, because they proceed within the same zooming-in shot.[8] This apparent continuity works in tension against the two when we realize that the


(Figure 6)


(Figure 7)

first close-up emphasizes on the “real” (i.e. the normative) style of Lain as anime. The second close-up, however, imitates a “media” (i.e. televised) version of the self-same hand. The loosening – death-embracing – hand of Chisa thus remains constant across two media; a conclusion all the more upsetting when we realize that, on the roof-top, there is no “first-hand” witness – nor any captured footage – of Chisa's suicide. Within this animation, this continuity becomes one without witness.

What these scenes in Lain do, then, is to show how media functions as different levels of discourse that converges around the issue of trauma. The portmanteau “infornography” – the name-sake of Layer 11 – thus departs from pornography in that while the latter is an excess that is nonetheless caught in a single-dimension (a visual fetish), the former is an excess that overflows through different levels of discourse. In other words, “infornography” is the basis for which a media(tion) across various media can occur. Specifically for Lain, we see 1. a media as discussed within the context of the animation, which encompasses questions like the blurred boundary between the real and Wired world, 2. the media that the animation imitates (thus mediates) on a formal level, which includes questions like the splitting and layering of different imitations of other media.

There is a parallel relation between these first two levels of “medium”. Taro, the self-proclaimed boyfriend of Lain, remarks in Layer 03 that “[m]ost people take on a different identity in the Wired than the real world, but [Lain is] totally opposite”. He acutely observes how Lain of “reality” is completely opposite to her “Wired” self, and that the third Lain exists – conceived by others' rumors – precisely as a necessarily mediated version of this split-identity. In this sense, the split between these two levels of “medium” parallels the split of Lain's first two identities. By offering a third level to Lain's identity, Nakamura thus explores a level of media(tion) which links up the first two levels, i.e. the question of what we can locate between the communicative blur (on the first level) and the traumatic split (on the second level).

In this sense, the operation of media(tion) becomes a direct critique of certain aspects of media-culture. The inverse of media(tion), or infornography, is perhaps pornography. To justify this, we can briefly contrast animation against the popular genre of “torture porn”. In her paper on trauma and the rise of the “torture porn” genre, Hallam traces the rise of torture porn “[along] cultural fears and traumas resulting from 9/11 and the subsequent incident at Abu Ghraib” (231), and argues that “[g]raphic violence is used in order to heighten the engagement with reality and with the experience of trauma” (234). Here, Hallam formulates the cathartic effects of torture porn, which finds its cinematic precedence in directors like Sam Peckinpah. Yet, this formulation sidetracks the major concern of trauma – precisely, how a victim cannot frame the overwhelming after-effects of trauma that repeatedly haunts him/her, possibly, but not necessarily, in the form of visuality.

Torture porn series like Hostel and Saw, with their over-arching focus on (“realistic”) visual representation as trauma, mis-equates the traumatic experience to the visual traumatic. Here, while one may argue, as Wallace does, that representation itself becomes a form of trauma; the problem of “transmissibiltiy” is sidetracked. In other words, trauma is mis-taken as a one-dimensional experience; which, as we see in Lain's operation, is not quite the case. There is no inherent intersection between, say, a cutting off of a person's torso in Hostel to 9/11. Representation, in this specific case, can indeed become traumatic; but this does not imply that all representations are traumatic, nor does it engage on the problematic relation between trauma and representation in any way. This trauma becomes un-communicative, is empty, a mere over-exposure of a single level of discourse (visuals, in this case) without any context or consideration for causations, situations, and the post-traumatic. Without, in other words, addressing the foreignness of the foreign, which ultimately begs the question of communicating trauma.

At risk of stigmatizing genres, we may nonetheless formulate a certain opposition between “torture porn” and animation.[9] Anime, as a drawn-out and mediated version of reality, potentially offers us a mediation of traumatic experience. If we contend that (a part of) trauma is always located outside (a narrow, represented version) of reality, then anime – formulated as a site of mediation – points precisely towards the mediated nature of what we call “reality”.

It is precisely the multiple discourses raised by Lain's media(tion) that culminates in Lain's final decision to go through a “all-reset”, where events throughout the 13 episodes of Lain is reversed, and the Lain universe starts anew without being traumatized. This return to apparent innocence, where the events are erased; nonetheless confers no change upon Lain's identity. In other words, we cannot understand the gesture as a simple erasure of memory, for erasure of information about the traumatic suicides does not entail the erasure of the traumatic as experienced by Lain. Rather, we raise questions like what (if not memory) is forgotten, why Lain's erasure of herself from others equates with the erasure of (traumatic) events, why we are only shown how Lain is being forgotten, but not how people forgets Lain, and ultimately, how this forgetting transmits to our society.

In his chapter on the Holocaust, Jean Baudrillard formulates a reverse-process of forgetting that is eerily tangential to the “all-reset” in Lain. In this brief section, Baudrillard argues for an “artificial forgetting” that is effected by a cold medium:

Forgetting extermination is part of extermination, because it is also the extermination of memory, of history, of the social, etc. This forgetting is as essential as the event, in any case unlocatable by us, inaccessible to us in its truth. This forgetting is still too dangerous, it must be effaced by an artificial memory (today, everywhere, it is artificial memories that efface the memory of man, that efface man in his own memory). This artificial memory will be the restaging of extermination - but late, much too late for it to be able to make real waves and profoundly disturb something, and especially, especially through a medium that is itself cold, radiating forgetfulness, deterrence, and extermination in a still more systematic way, if that is possible, than the camps themselves. One no longer makes the Jews pass through the crematorium or the gas chamber, but through the sound track and image track, through the universal screen and the microprocessor. Forgetting, annihilation, finally achieves its aesthetic dimension in this way - it is achieved in retro, finally elevated here to a mass level. (49)

What Baudrillard provokes here, through the term “artificial memory”, is a continuous relation between a forgetting of what is traumatizing – i.e. a psychological process of repression, deferral and, transference – and a forgetting that is “within” the medium, mediated as a “system” that, while having its psychological basis, is inherently “cold” and dehumanized. Here, it is important to note how “artificial memory” departs from memory. This forgetting by the medium is systematic, and by arguing for its prevalence, Baudrillard seems to suggest that this collective forgetting effaces and ultimately over-rides the personal trauma experienced. In other words, where the gas chamber sums up individual deaths, the sound/image “track” is inherently conceived for and through a “cold” collective.

I would argue that an understanding of this “forgetting”, stemming from (an aporetic) memory – but soon achieved via the media as a systematic erasure – is the crux to understanding Lain's “all-reset”. Significantly, Nakamura frames Lain's erasure from Lain's privileged but partial perspective; in other words, instead of showing how the collective forgets the personal – i.e. how people forget Lain – Nakamura shows how Lain effects her own forgetting. This shift of perspective parallels Baudrillard's transition from memory to artificial memory. Moreover, the typography in Layer 11 – “No, it's nothing as ambiguous as memory” (fig. 8) – further echoes Baudrillard. There is, in other words, always other “systems” at work that is beyond the summation of personal memories.

While Baudrillard and Nakamura share similar concerns, I would argue that what Lain does is essentially accounting for Baudrillard's argument in reverse. Through assigning Lain the split-position of a human/software, Nakamura re-orients (i.e. mediates) the medium through a personal lens. Where Baudrillard discusses (the televised) media from a markedly analytic and elevated position – e.g. “you are the screen, and the TV watches you” (Baudrillard 51) – Lain is the medium that “watches” herself, as a person. Since ultimately Lain does not lose either her memories or body, we could perhaps better understand Lain's process of “artificial forgetting” – not as amnesia – but as a disconnection. Any traces of trauma are effaced when the one who experiences it (i.e. Lain) is disconnected from Lain's society at large.

Although Lain is disconnected from her society, we still see a Lain questioning herself through the TV screen (fig. 9). Lain is not so much effaced as repressed by a society that has already mis-construed her unique traumatic experience as rumors and conspiracies. Lain's incessant questioning of her self, is hence a viscious corollary to the society's apathy towards, and misconstrual of, her concerns. It is this apathy that effects the “all-reset” as a total repression; it is this repression that brings in a temporal rupture between the collective and the personal. Privileging Lain's point of view, we as audiences become a witness of how collective, artificial amnesia cannot sufficiently do away with personal trauma. Instead, the personal (as victim) is left behind – is repressed to a different “time” – in relation to a society that has “moved on”, precisely at the cost of leaving behind the victim. Thus, even when a grown-up Arisu meets Lain – who has not aged – in bodily form, i.e. in the “real” world, she cannot recognize Lain. The forgetting of trauma comes at the cost of forgetting the traumatized.

Through an animation that personifies the media, Nakamura opposes media(tion) – as a possible form of multi-discourse within the medium – to pornography, a sensationalist but always partial account of trauma. In other words, while Baudrillard sees TV-culture as a system of visual traumatic, proliferating one-dimensional images “which suggests nothing, which mesmerizes, which itself is nothing but a screen” (51); Nakamura posits Lain as an alternative media, a media(tion) – which suggests many things, which mediates, which itself contains multiple screens. Through framing the “all-reset” as a reversal, Nakamura thus points out the costs of undoing (traumatic) extermination, how this erasure is not forgetting, and how society at large – having repressed the trauma – runs the risk of re-experiencing this trauma as it once did, without knowing that what it takes to be the traumatic is, perhaps, a forgetting of previous traumas.


NOTES

1. An idea increasingly formulated by critics after Caruth's idea that different traumatic events could be transcribed with a renewed concept of history-writing, with emphasis on the psychological affects of trauma (see Caruth, also Luckhurst). Kaplan also discusses the idea of “transmissibility” in the context of a “translation” of trauma across cultures.

2. The tripartite split of Lain's identity is already planned in the early stages of Serial Experiment Lain, as drafts of three separate Lains can be found in Lain's concept art-book. There are, interestingly, certain biblical overtones in the narrative of Lain, in which Lain's initial position as a powerful being conceived by Masami Eiri (the “God” of Wired), and ultimate sacrifice of her real-world identity (the “all-reset”), parallels the Bible's narrative. But this discussion is beyond the scope of this essay.

3. Chiaki Konaka, the writer of Lain's screenplay, cites Godard's use of typography as a heavy influence. For details, see Nakamura's interview published in the Asian Movie Technical Journal HK in France. http://www.konaka.com/alice6/lain/hkint_e.html

4. I chose to compare the breaking-down of trauma/representation as primary/secondary to a ripple because, while the initial waves of a ripple stem from an “origin”, waves rebounding from the edges of the frame would in turn interfere with the said “origin”. The ripples (of trauma) are always framed because it always occurs within specific cultural contexts, and is propagated through some media.

5. Vicarious traumatization (VT), is a psychiatric formulation which describes the transference of trauma between patients and psychiatrists. Vicarious trauma can be transferred by the communicative acts like patients' recounts of the traumatic event. Symptoms of vicarious trauma include insomnia, emotional lability, sexual difficulties, among others. (See Kaplan, especially 87-91, who borrows from Hoffman's work, Trauma and the Therapist).

6. Not coincidentally, Eiri also committed suicide in order to “live” completely in the Wired realm.

7. It is, in fact, one of the dominant traditions unique to Japanese animation. Some of its conventional functions are: i) to reiterate the plot, ii) to provide a brief hiatus between two episodes, and iii) to introduce the anime to new audiences. Nakamura, however, already goes beyond this conventional mode when he includes new events and images into the sequence. The framing of this recap as a MV – with its rhythmic use of montage, jump-cuts and speeding up in accordance to the rhythm of the background music – also calls into attention the double media (a MV within an anime) of presentation.

8. There are, of course, no “zooming-ins” for animation in the filmic sense. I would argue that this is another instance in which Nakamura mediates across media through animation.

9. I am here taking torture porn as its own category instead of, say, as an example of cinema. As illustrated by recent films which include, but are not exhausted, by torture porn elements (e.g. Von Trier's Antichrist), media(tion) is by no means something restricted to animation alone. Nonetheless, a cinematic engagement of the traumatic must always be something more than the visual traumatic.

WORKS CITED

Baudrillard, Jean. “Holocaust”. Simulacra and Simulations. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. 49-52. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961. Print.

Hallam, Lindsay. “Genre Cinema as Trauma Cinema: Post 9/11 Trauma and the rise of 'Torture Porn' in Recent Horror Films”. Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives. Ed. Mick Broderick &Antonio Traverso. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 228-36. Print.

Kaplan, Ann E. “Vicarious Trauma and 'Empty' Empathy: Media Images of Rwanda and the Iraq War”. Trauma Culture: the Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 87-100. Print.

Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Serial Experiments Lain. Dir. Ryutaro Nakamura.Triangle Staff, 1998. Animation.

Wallace, Isabelle. “Trauma as Representation: A Mediation on Manet and Johns”. Trauma and Visuality in Modernity. Ed. Lisa Saltzman & Eric M. Rosenberg. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2006. 3-27. Print.

Defining Childishness

In this research, the definition of “childishness” is questioned. In doing so, two pieces of Japanese animation titled, Air and Paprika are analyzed. Theories of child development in psychology and philosophy, as well as concepts of regression and childhood are addressed. Two ways of defining “childishness” are considered: a state of regression, as defined by Sigmund Freud, and Gareth Matthew’s “deficit conception of childhood.” Sigmund Freud’s regression can be defined as, “A defense mechanism leading to the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way;” and Matthew’s “deficit conception of childhood” is defined, “according to which the nature of a child is understood primarily as a configuration of deficit—missing capacities that normal adults have but children lack (The Philosophy of Childhood, 3). These two definitions are then applied to the characters of Air and Paprika in order to determine if the definition can, in fact, be applicable to any given situation or context and, moreover, if it can stand alone as the accurate or legitimate definition of childishness. In the context of childishness, both Matthew’s and Freud’s definition of regression are negative, in the sense that it is seen as a stage of “deficit” and limitation. However, childhood, as a developmental stage, should be, and can be, seen with a more positive outlook, specifically regarding a child’s capabilities. Furthermore, through this analysis, it seems that the dependency implied by the concepts of childishness and regression cannot only be perceived as a “defense mechanism” but more so as a “window of opportunity” to fulfill the “deficiency,” and is therefore, more of a rehabilitation mechanism.

One must look to the characteristics of childishness in order to understand the meaning and the idea of it. Thus, I have chosen Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, where a man named Tokita is called both a “genius” and “a child” by his colleagues. For example, Tokita is a scientist who had the idea to create a machine that will allow people to share the dreams they have when they sleep. After he explains his invention to the detective, Kogawa, Kogawa mimics Tokita saying, “ Isn’t it a wonderful idea. To see a friend’s dream as if it were your own …” (32:13) but then states “such a silly thought…” (33:24). In this scene, Kogawa is talking to another scientist and colleague of Tokita, named Shima, who responds, “He’s a kid trapped inside the body of a genius.” Then, the antagonist, the Chairman, enters the scene and says, “It’s an adult’s responsibility to steer that genius in the right direction” (33:52). In this scene it becomes evident that Tokita’s childishness is characterized as contrary to a “genius,” and contrary to an “adult.” It seems that Tokita is called a child in this scene because of his “silly thought.” Therefore, it seems having silly thoughts is also a characteristic of childishness. So, given the Chairman’s words, responsibility is something that a child does not have, but an adult does. Moreover, it relays the idea that a child specifically lacks moral responsibility. In this case, a child is lacking the means to support himself/herself. In Matthew’s The Philosophy of Childhood, this concept of a child lacking the means, and an adult needing to “steer” is supported through Aristotle’s concept of a living organism and his/her “Final Cause” where the organism must reach maturity in order to fulfill his normal function (2). Aristotelian thought defines maturity as “that form or structure thought to enable the organism to perform its function well.” Therefore, to put it into perspective, “a human child is an immature specimen of the organism type, human, which, by nature, has the potentiality to develop into a mature specimen with the structure, form, and function of a normal or standard adult” (2), according to Aristotle. Matthew states that most people today have this Aristotelian outlook of childhood, which, leads many adults—whatever that may be—to feel “obligated to provide the kind of supportive environment those children need to develop into normal adults” (2). It seems this is the same kind of “responsibility” that the Chairman takes upon himself as an “adult.” However, it is ironic then, that in Paprika, the Chairman, though the most powerful foil character in the plot, assumes this adult responsibility by trying to control Tokita’s invention, the “DC Mini,” in a way that harms others, and is himself, lacking the moral responsibility needed to steer or guide himself or anyone else to make ethical decisions. This becomes evident when Paprika and the others realize that the Chairman was the culprit who stole the DC Mini and is using the power to harm others. Therefore, it seems adults can be seen as corrupt; whereas children like Tokita, in contrast, have motives that are innocent in its harmlessness—which, ironically, some would say is ethical, by definition, because what brings the least harm and the most good is most “ethical.”

Therefore, one can conclude that an adult can fail to accomplish his/her adult responsibilities—which makes him/her imperfect. Furthermore, if one were to assume that an adult has the moral responsibility that a child lacks to “steer in the right direction,” than it is less excusable for the adult and his/her failure because he/she should have the moral capability to make the right decision. And perhaps it is because the Chairman, as an adult, (or assuming himself to be one), ultimately pays the price of death because his unethical behavior of harming others to benefit his selfish gain is unforgiveable. As a child, however, Tokita is forgiven for his “immaturity” (35:45) possibly because of his childlike, harmless motives. One may also say that he has been forgiven for his “negligence and conceit” (33:56), because he is steered in the right direction by another adult named Chiba. Chiba assumes the role of the adult when she calls Tokita “just a kid inside” (28:42). She also assumes that role when she scolds Tokita for his “irresponsibility” of “doing what he wants to do and ignoring what he has to do” (37:38), and then takes it upon herself to save those trapped in the DC Mini dream. However, it can also be said that Chiba is not perfect as we see that she struggles to be truthful to herself and her feelings for Tokita. It is ultimately Paprika who saves everyone who is trapped in the dream that the Chairman uses to control others. Chiba separates herself from Paprika when she states Paprika is not her alternative-self and tells Shima to thank Paprika, not herself, for saving him. Thus, Chiba clarifies that she is not the hero, but rather, is herself saved, and counseled by the adult, Paprika, who tells Chiba to be truthful to her feelings for Tokita. Therefore, it seems that there is no perfect or complete adult except for Paprika, who saves everyone from the destructive Chairman and his dream. It seems that Paprika argues that everyone is himself/herself suffering from childishness, and thus, questions whether an adult can be both an adult, yet childish, at the same time. Also, given that Paprika, the only character that is created through the dream-world, is the one who saves everyone from the control of the Chairman and his dream, one may question what is required, and is it in the ability of a human being to correct anyone, whether adult or child, from his/her deficiencies. Furthermore, defining “childishness” as a state of deficit seems inaccurate if it is defined by the relation it has to being an adult, which is in itself, a state of imperfection. Therefore, the “deficit conception of childhood,” is at least to some degree, flawed. Thus, the analysis of society’s preconceived constructs of childishness and adulthood must be redefined to mean more than states of deficiency or incompleteness, and to have a relation between each other that is more than contrary.

Moreover, Matthew argues that children and their capabilities are underestimated. In some cases, children excel above adults. For example, he states, “Philosophical thinking in children can hardly be seen as primitive or early-stage efforts to develop a capacity that adults normally and standardly have in a mature form. Moreover, adults are less likely to think philosophical thoughts than children” (6). He associates child philosophy to child art, where children tend to have a “freshness, an openness, and a creativity in painting, which is the same case in philosophical thinking that is missing in most adults” (6).

Matthew states that the “philosophy of childhood” has gained recognition as an area of inquiry, inviting philosophical scrutiny, reflection, and analysis of the conceptions people have of childhood and attitudes they have toward children (1). However, the dilemma of “learned helplessness” can persist if an underestimation of children’s capabilities continues. Learned helplessness forces children to live under the expectations of adults. The dilemma that results occurs when children’s capabilities are overlooked, and thus, cannot progress any further than the expectations preconceived that the adults construct.

In this way, the act of labeling others as “childish” can be seen as a form of diagnosing. And if the perception of childishness is limiting and negatively skewed, then being labeled childish is like being labeled with a disability. In that, a person with a disability is perceived as a person of incompetency. For example, in Label Jars, not People, Douglas Biklen, Robert Bogdan, and Burton Blatt explain that calling people “ugly” is a form of labeling others with a disability, which is similar to the case of calling someone immature. In this reading, Biklen, Bogdan, and Blatt state that “diagnosing” others with this “disability” of “ugliness” allow the labelers to better address the person’s disability appropriately. In their research, they state that social media has constructed the perception of “ugliness” to not only refer to it as a physical misfortune, but to be “sometimes associated with criminality, [and] even monstrousness” (3). Similar to the case of labeling others as “childish”, calling others “ugly” allows certain behaviors to be attached to the idea of “ugliness” in a way where the person being “diagnosed” as “ugly” has some sort of condition where he/she is lacking in something—associating incompetency or disability as the condition. Biklen, Bogdan, and Blatt go on to say that initially, “disability labels such as mentally retarded, blind, deaf, physically disabled, emotionally disturbed have their origins primarily as descriptive terms” however, “now…those terms may evoke more than their creators intended…they act as cues for images of dependence, pity, guilt, childishness, incompetence” (3). Moreover, they state, “We cannot presume incompetency” (4) because assuming such from a person restricts their potential in assuming his/her capabilities.

It also illustrates the proverb, “Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a person as if he were what he could be, and he will become what he could and should be.” In other words, if calling someone a “child” is seen as having some sort of a disability, then one may be preventing, and even so far as trapping, the “childish” person to continue in their incompetency. It is a “self-fulfilling prophecy” and the dilemma of “learned helplessness.”

Learned helplessness can be seen in Tatsuya Ishihara’s Japanese-animated series, Air, where being a child refers to being in the state of dependency as this kind of thinking can be seen as perpetuating the idea of “learned helplessness.”


(Figure 1)

For example, on the left-side picture shows Misuzu, the protagonist, deciding to go outside, by herself. She has decided to continue living her life in loneliness. However, on the right-handed side, she is visibly a smaller and weaker girl because the hat is larger, she is in a wheel-chair, and she is reluctant to go outside because it’s too hot and it makes her feel dizzy. This transition depicts her loss of strength and motivation. Thus, Misuzu regression back to her childhood is characterized by her physical body weakening. This shows that childishness, or childhood, is characterized by weakness, which implies helplessness and dependency.

In another instance, Misuzu’s regression to a child is illustrated when she physically and mentally regresses towards a state of weakness, confusion, and dependency. For example, one day Misuzu, falls asleep as her mother gives her hair a trim. She accidentally cuts hair too short, so when Misuzu wakes up, she says, “You cut it too short, I feel like a kid again…Mommy’s kid.” This scene is significant because Misuzu verbally declares her physical appearance has regressed to a time when she was still a child, and moreover, her mother’s child—when she still belonged to someone and did not feel alone. This is especially significant because Misuzu particularly calls back a time when she was still owned by her mother when she states, “Mommy’s kid.” Misuzu. It is from this point where Misuzu’s mother makes a commitment to Misuzu that Misuzu physically becomes weaker, forcing her to become dependent on her mother again.

In other instances, her mother starts to spoon feed her meals. Misuzu emotionally breaks down and cries on her mother’s lap saying, “Mamma,” because she is physically hurting from a sickness. This illustrates her regression from an independent being who told herself she would continue living a lonely life, but instead, reverts back to a young child who needs her mother to push her on a wheel-chair, feed her, and take care of her. In this way, Misuzu and her mother decide to get through Misuzu’s pain together. For example, the mother starts to lose sleep, afraid that Misuzu might not wake up. Misuzu’s sickness slowly drains her energy and motivation, where she loses the motivation to go to the summer festival, or the beach, which she originally wanted to do with her mother when she was younger.

There is a sense of regret and loss of time that becomes prevelant. For example, Misuzu’s motivation to go to the beach is easily lost when it gets too hot. Misuzu finds it hard to walk, so her mother carries her. When they arrive at the beach, Misuzu is sleeping because she is tired. It is ironic that the time they try to “make up for the lost times,” it seems it is too late for Misuzu because of her illness which allows her mother to take care of Misuzu, and reconnect with her daughter, yet prevents Misuzu from fully enjoying and fulfilling what she wanted to do as a child with her mother. It gives a sense of regret that the mother vocalizes several times.


(Figure 2)

For example, in the image above, Misuzu’s mother vocalizes that she wonders how she used up the time she should have had with Misuzu. A sense of pity towards the two is given off. In this way, the relationship and the time spent between a child and his/her mother/father is given tremendous worth.

In Air, the “deficit concept of childhood” is evident in Misuzu’s weakness and dependency on her mother to do everything. However, it is somehow put in a positive light, as it allows Misuzu’s mother to care for Misuzu, and develop a bond that was lost. In this way, Misuzu’s regression allows both her and her mother to repair their broken relationship. This allows them to return to a past that was evaded and not talked about before.

In another scene, the mother carries Misuzu while Misuzu sleeps. The mother is forced to give Misuzu to her father. The mother gives Misuzu’s father her favorite juice, and toy. When the father walks away, Misuzu wakes up, and falls to the ground crying and calling “Mamma.” The picture below is an image taken from that scene where Misuzu wakes up and calls for her mother. Her teary eyes and the sound of the one word, “Mamma” that Misuzu yells, further illustrates the complete regression that Misuzu reverts to, but more so, illustrates the reconnection of intimacy and dependency Misuzu has with her mother that was lost when she was forced to live alone, and independently, when her mother was afraid of commitment. Thus, this scene serves as the symbolic and climactic image of the childhood that was lost between Misuzu and her mother, retreived.


(Figure 3)



To add, in this scene above, Misuzu is reaching out saying, “Mamma.” Around this time in the story, it becomes evident that her vocabulary has shrunk from short, simple sentences, to one-word sentences. Overall, Misuzu’s regression is not so much a defense mechanism, as Freud states, but is rather, a stage of child development where there is a high level of dependence by the child to the parent. It would seem, then, that the “deficit conception of childhood” is portrayed more in Air. In Air, this deficit is a lack of nurture, care, and friendship in Misuzu’s earlier childhood. In Misuzu’s case, her deficiency is “cured” when her regression allows her to become more fragile and thus, dependent, as a child. Jeffrey S. Applegate states in, The Facilitating Partnership: A Winnicottian Approach:Fostering Healing and Growth: A Psychoanalytic Social Work Approach, “Reflecting current social norms, most contemporary psychotherapists view regression and dependency as antitherapeutic because they impair functional adequacy, undermine self-sufficiency, and thereby loot the public purse. Ubiquitous though these views are, they ignore what child development researchers and therapists know about the ways early emotional development influences adult functioning.” Thus, it seems that social norms view regression and childishness similarly negative—a state of impairment. Like childishness, regression and dependency, can be overlooked. In Misuzu’s case, for example, the “deficit conception of childhood” applies, however, the regression that is characterized by Misuzu’s dependency on to her mother can be seen as more than a “deficiency,” but more of as a coping mechanism, as Freud states, that is more forgiving to receive as a child. In this sense, reverting to a childlike state positively reinforces “growth,” which Applegate states, is usually evident when someone can communicate and develop a relationship with another. Therefore, because dependency is associated with the concepts of regression and childhood, it is important not to overlook dependency as only a deficiency, but rather, an opportunity or a gateway for others to develop a relationship and progression.

On the other hand, when we look at Tokita’s “childishness” as a form of regression, it seems accurate. For example, Freud’s idea of regression states, “development, fixation, and regression as centrally formative elements in the creation of a neurosis where one will evade external difficulties by regressing to his/her fixations” (Introductory Lectures). In this sense, Tokita shows his fixation on the DC Mini, and is then attributed to his negligence, immaturity, and irresponsibility. He fails to see how Himuro and he are both alike in their fixations. He fails to inquire the truth about Himuro’s death. His reluctance to inquire Himuro’s death beyond what he is told can be interpreted to show an evasion of the truth, where the he avoids questions with his “preoccupation” to the DC Mini. (37:38). It seems paradoxical then, that though Tokita is a “genius,” when his genius lends itself to his shortcomings. It is evident that Tokita faces “regression that is the revision of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way” when Chiba asks him to think about the likeliness that Himuro was not a victim to his own death. Tokita reacts by thinking that the possibility to be something fantastical and exciting, like a “mystery” novel; He fails to recognize the weight of the grievances that everyone is facing because of the DC Mini. The “adult way” would be to take responsibility of the DC Mini and find a solution to the mishandling of the DC Mini—which Tokita tries to do only after Chiba scolds him.


(Figure 4)

In the image above, Tokita’s enlarged eyes and open mouth illustrate a look of surprise and unawareness. In this image, Chiba states, “Don’t you understand that your irresponsibility cost lives?” His shocked face illustrates that he doesn’t understand and is not aware of the weight of his mistakes.


(Figure 5)

In the image above, an image of a cartoon robot appears exactly at the time Chiba calls Tokita a “kid inside.” The image of a cartoon robot on Tokita’s shirt perpetuates the idea that children are associated with fictional, fantasy-related imaginations. In this way, it seems the message of children thinking up of impractical, absurd ideas, such as unrealistic robots (in contrast to realistic, life-like robots), are expressed.
To add, Tokita’s eating habits can also be seen as a form of regression and fixation where the “behaviors associated with regression can vary greatly depending upon which stage the person is fixated at.” In this case, Tokita’s obesity shows he is fixated at the oral stage defined in human development psychology where one can excessively eat.

There is no denying that there is a natural correlation to childhood and adulthood. As Matthew states, “what happens in childhood principally affects our view of total lives through the effects that childhood success or failure are supposed to have on mature individuals” (5). That being said, it seems that only on the basis of experience can one say that adults have any kind of superiority or advantage over children that lends itself to the negative connotation that the term “childishness” has received. In both Paprika and Air, childishness was perceived as a state of deficiency of some kind, where an adult figure was needed for guidance. Thus, it is evident that childishness suggests the necessity for guidance.

At the very least, both definitions: Freud’s regression, and Matthew’s “deficit of conception” are applicable to both Paprika and Air. However, it is also evident that childishness can be characterized in different ways, but the negative connotation of incompetency that is easily suggested by labeling one “childish” should be reconsidered as it is also evident that a child’s capabilities can be misrepresented, and that the relationship one has with a child is valuable and should not be taken for granted. Furthermore, that “regression” is a coping mechanism that allows healing and repair to the stage of “deficit,” as seen in Misuzu’s case where she lacked the care and attention of her mother in Air.

Constant Relation

Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers relates the constant relation between intimacy with the potential for harm, and further, the isolation that results. His anime film represents the lives of “kildren,” children unable to age that work as fighter pilots, how they interact with the world in order to show the problems of human intimacy, and how this has stunted the capability for growth and/or change. Oshii exemplifies the constant relation between intimacy and the potential for harm through the relationship between Suito Kusunagi and her daughter Mizuki Kusunagi. Suito must balance the relationship between her conflicting image as mother/older sister as well as the commanding officer of the kildren. The relationship challenges Suito’s connections to both worlds, and results in the potentiality of harm. In addition to this relationship, Suito’s relationship with Yuichi Kannami, as she drunkenly opens herself up to him in a car after attempting to shoot down the “Teacher,” she intimates to Yuichi the problems that she has with their world, and exposes herself to the potential for harm. The constant relation between intimacy/harm creates a cause and effect situation. Through this constant relation, kildren often isolate themselves from one another as a solution to avoiding potential harm. Oshii represents the kildren’s isolationism through their withdrawal from one another. For example, when kildren die, they come back to life again, except with a different name. When Suito meets Yuichi, a reincarnate of Jinroh, for the first time, she acts like she doesn’t know him despite the intimate past between the two. Suito’s withdrawal represents the isolation she feels, and inability to create a positive change in her world. In addition to this initial encounter, Suito also represents withdrawal when she learns that the Teacher had been spotted in the air. By taking the risk of flying, and attempting to shoot down the Teacher, Suito shows the disconnect between herself and the people in her world.

The Sky Crawlers represents the cause and effect relationship between intimacy/harm and then the isolation that results. Kildren that engage in intimacy expose themselves to the potential for harm. When harm is done, the kildren withdraw from one another, creating a sense of isolation within their community. By showing the inextricable relationship between these two entities, Oshii creates a direct understanding of the flaws of human intimacy, and how these flaws affect the way that the kildren react to one another. Overall, he reflects the idea that the kildren are not very unlike human beings of our world, therefore showing us the flaws of intimacy in not only The Sky Crawlers, but in society in general. By creating complex scenes and relationships in The Sky Crawlers, Mamoru Oshii represents the constant relation between intimacy and harm, and the withdrawal/isolation that occurs as an effect of it in order to show the problem of human intimacy in today’s society, as well as provoke the emotion towards change.

In the relationship between Suito Kusunagi and her daughter, Mizuki Kusunagi, Suito opens herself to the potential for harm by allowing her daughter a constant contact relationship. Mizuki, a normal human girl, can grow old and mature past her own mother. This difference reflects a constant strain and barrier between the two characters. Despite this barrier, Suito allows her daughter to come into contact with her and the kildren world, which Mizuki doesn’t fully understand yet. The constant variables in the two’s relationship represents the



potential for harm. For example, by allowing Mizuki free reign over the kildren’s world, Suito provides for herself a relentless reminder of the difference between kildren and normal humans, as in the still image of her talking to Yuichi. Suito’s self-loath stems from her relationship with her daughter, as well as the fears of what will happen in the future. Directly after the still, Suito says, “Because that kid will catch up to me fast. What will happen after that?” (The Sky Crawlers). The direct correlation between Suito’s self-loath and her concern for the future with her daughter represents the constant relation between intimacy and harm. As a member of the kildren, Suito has stopped aging past a certain point of childhood, which ultimately means that Mizuki will “catch up” to her own mother. Suito asks, “What will happen after that?” not because she seeks an answer, but rather, to emphasize the hopelessness of the situation. In her intimate relationship with Mizuki, harm, although only potentially seen in this scene, is inevitable. As in the still image of Mizuki and Suito holding



hands, Suito allows her daughter the physical touch that creates a bond between the two characters. Suito offers Mizuki her hand, an act that symbolizes Suito’s intimacy with her daughter. The scene represents the first time in the anime film that Suito not only offers her hand, but also allows a physical connection between her and someone else. She holds Mizuki’s hand as a way of protecting and guiding her, which shows Suito’s motherly instinct. The conflict that Suito feels between wanting to protect her daughter and her life as the commanding officer exposes her to the potential of harm because she can’t have both worlds. At some point, Mizuki will grow to be an adult, and begin to understand the peculiarity of her origins. Suito will not always be able to hide behind the label of “big sister,” and will suffer the consequences. By examining their relationship, Oshii suggests at the inextricable nature between intimacy and potential harm.

Oshii uses Suito’s drunken confusion in the scene of her in the car with Yuichi after they discuss the purpose of the kildren in order to show the constant relation between intimacy and potential harm. Sitting in the car with Yuichi, Suito clutches onto him in the belief that she could reenact the intimacy she had with Jinroh with his



reincarnation. This recreation of intimacy illustrates Suito’s vulnerability and potential towards harm. The still image captures two contrasting messages. As she holds Yuichi, she asks the question, “Or are you willing to kill me?” (The Sky Crawlers). Here, intimacy mixes with the idea of death, ultimately representing the constant relation between intimacy and potential harm. Suito clutches onto Yuichi because he embodies the intimacy that makes Suito’s life as a member of the kildren impossible to live. Life as one of the kildren means a life saturated by rules of constant fighting and war. Engaging in an intimate relationship with Yuichi means straying from the purpose of the kildren, and endangers Suito to the potential of harm. Suito’s question to Yuichi represents her desire to end the cycle of her life. Death means erasing the intimacy, and starting over again as a member of the kildren. Death, for Suito, represents a blank slate. As she struggles with Yuichi for the gun in the still image, Suito and Yuichi struggle over the idea of intimacy and potential harm. Staying alive means living with the consequences of their intimacy rather than dying and erasing her complicated life. Suito’s hand




interlaced with Yuichi’s represents the very thin line between intimacy and life/death. Through their struggle, Oshii suggests not only that intimacy is impossible without the potential of harm, but also perhaps that the cycle needs to undergo change in order to break the tie between intimacy and potential harm. He does not offer a clear-cut solution, but rather, offers thee idea of the constant relation between intimacy and potential harm in order to provoke the desire for change in the audience.

In addition to the relationship between intimacy and potential harm, Oshii emphasize the effect that intimacy/harm has through the withdrawal of the kildren from one another. By showing Suito’s withdrawal from Yuichi in the scene that they meet, Oshii illustrates the rules of withdrawal that the kildren live by in order to protect themselves from the potential harm of intimacy. As the commanding officer, Suito secludes herself from other kildren through staying in office. Often seen looking through a window, or hiding behind the sunlight of her big office chair, Suito embodies the symptoms of withdrawal. Behind the glass window of her office, Suito watches as Yuichi first arrives (still image). She traces the path that leads to Yuichi. Behind the glass window,



Suito separates herself from Yuichi. This separation represents the isolation that Suito subjects herself to in order to avoid the potential harm of intimacy. As she puts her finger on the glass, she shows her desire to be near him, yet the isolation that she faces by showing the gap between window and human touch. By acknowledging his presence, Oshii hints at the idea of recognition. Suito recognizes Yuichi as Jinroh, a former pilot that she had an intimate relationship with, but does not show this recognition to Yuichi when she meets him. As she beckons Yuichi to “come in,” Suito sits at her desk, looking small and aloof in her big chair. Without much eye



contact, Suito greets Yuichi, tells him where he’ll stay and when he’ll fly, and curtly says, “You are dismissed” (The Sky Crawlers). Suito withdraws herself from Yuichi because of the potentiality of harm. As a reincarnation of Jinroh, Suito has already suffered the painful consequences of intimacy between kildren, and withdraws herself from him in this scene. Her facial expression, sitting position, and office all represent the withdrawal of Suito from not only Yuichi, but also options of life outside of the rules of the kildren world. The sunlight of Suito’s office does not act to lighten up the room, but rather, acts to blind those who come into her office. Light cannot reach Suito behind her chair, which represents the loss of intimacy in her life. Intimacy can’t reach her because of her own withdrawal. Her lips create a straight line, without the possibility of emotion or room for possibility. Through her isolation, Oshii comments on the effect of intimacy and harm. He shows the constant relation between intimacy/harm and then isolation in order to represent the flaws of human relationships in the hopes of showing the audience the need for change through his anime film.

By relating Suito’s intimacy with the Teacher, the harm that she undergoes, and then the withdrawal from Yuichi upon learning about the spotting of the Teacher, Oshii shows the cause and effect relationship between intimacy/harm and isolation. Using Suito as a connecting point between the normal human world and the world of the kildren through the relationships that she has maintained, Oshii shows the withdrawal that occurs from the harm of intimacy. Although Suito decides to create an intimate relationship with Yuichi, when he tells her about spotting the teacher, Suito withdraws from him again. The still image represents Suito’s withdrawal by showing her ability to turn away from him, before the conversation can naturally end. Her withdrawal stems from the harm she felt in her intimacy with the Teacher. Suito’s hierarchal relationship with the teacher parallels the relationship between her and Yuichi. Through this parallel, Oshii shows how harm done from a prior intimacy can cause withdrawal in another. Using her authority as commanding officer, she says, “You can go” to Yuichi (The Sky Crawlers). Suito chooses to take her relationship to Yuichi as commanding officer over her intimate relationship because it gives her the power to isolate herself. By giving herself permission to withdraw herself from intimacy, Suito flies for the first time in the film in order to take down the Teacher. By choosing to fly, she disregards not only her intimate relationship with Yuichi, but the relationship she has with herself. Knowing




that shooting down the Teacher is an impossibility, Suito sets herself up for death, which represents the ultimate withdrawal from the world of the kildren. Oshii shows Suito’s disregard for her own life in order to parallel it with the pain of intimacy, which the sighting of the Teacher brings to the forefront of her mind. Suito, through her actions, show how she would give anything, even her life, in order to erase the harm done through intimacy. In her crash, Suito’s face shows the loss of hope in her situation. The still shows her hanging by her seatbelt, eyes closed, and head down. Alone in her crashed plane, Suito looks so small, and completely withdrawn from the world of the kildren. By showing Suito’s complete withdrawal, Oshii represents the cause and effect relationship between intimacy/harm, and the withdrawal that follows. By showing this relationship, he hints at the flaws of human intimacy in order to show how society has crept into a cyclical pattern of self-harm and isolation.

In Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents,” the neurologist/theorist explains that man’s purpose towards life is to achieve happiness. He claims that humans “strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavour has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure” (Freud 76). By limiting happiness to the “absence of pain and pleasure,” human beings are “restricted by our constitution” (Freud 77). By framing man’s purpose into a singular notion of happiness, Freud makes human possibility very narrow and more than likely unsuccessful. Of the pain that men may feel, Freud believes that the worst suffering comes from the relationships with fellow man. In order to avoid this, Freud suggests that, “the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness.” Although this represents one option, he also emphasizes that the “better path: that of becoming a member of the human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to the attack against nature and subjecting her to the human will. Then one is working with all for the good of all” (Freud 77).

In regards to The Sky Crawlers, Oshii shows the pain of relationships between kildren (or man), but does not necessarily agree that the purpose of life to be happiness. By showing the complexity of the intimacies between Suito, her daughter, and Yuichi, happiness cannot change the world that they live in. The source of harm in intimacy for Suito comes from outside forces. For example, the potential harm of the intimacy between Suito and her daughter come from the fact that they live in two different societies. Mizuki will grow to be old, she can have a husband, produce memories that will stay with her for a lifetime, and then one day she will die. However, Suito can create memories, have a partner in her life, and yet lose all of that when he or she dies, only to be reminded of that pain yet again through the kildren’s reincarnation. Oshii does not believe that mere happiness is enough for the kildren. Their world forces them into isolation because of the never-ending process of intimacy and potential harm. Happiness is only fleeting for the kildren. For the cycle of intimacy, harm, and withdrawal to end, their world must change.

Oshii also does not agree that happiness can occur in the “quiet life” or through subjecting nature to science and “human will.” By withdrawing to the “quiet life,” kildren accept the rules of their world, rather than try to find a method towards change. However, subjecting nature to “human will” cannot be a solution either. The kildren’s world represents a world where nature is forced into human will, thus creating a society of people that must fight wars in order to sustain “peace.” Rather, Oshii believes that change, and human purpose, must come from a change within. Although he does not offer a solution, Oshii represents the problems of intimacy through the Suito Kusunagi’s relationships in order to show the pattern of intimacy, potential harm, and withdrawal. Thus, provoking some thought towards change.

In Lauren Berlant’s “Intimacy: A Special Issue,” the author represents intimacy as a way that humans perceive life. As society has changed through time, the expectations between “public and domestic” have changed (Berlant 284). She believes that, “intimacy seen in this spreading way does generate an aesthetic, an aesthetic of attachment, but no inevitable forms or are attached to it” (Berlant 285). Berlant believes that intimacy becomes a societal thing, no longer just belonging to an individual, but to the state. As people begin to feel different emotions and things towards intimacy, contrasting views forms, but people still seek for one aesthetic to express intimacy. She says, “These polar energies get played out in the intimate zones of every day life and can be recognized in psychoanalysis, yet mainly they are seen not as intimacy but as a danger to it” (Berlant 285). By representing intimacy as something that can vary, Berlant addresses the problem of intimacy by showing a different manner of looking at it. As a manner of living, “to rethink intimacy is to appraise how we have been and how we live and how we might imagine lives that make more sense than the ones so many are living” (Berlant 286). By addressing intimacy as a way of life, Berlant gives humans the opportunity to change their perspectives on intimacy. She says, “Intimacy was supposed to be about optimism remember? But it was also formed around the threats to the image of the world it seeks to sustain (Berlant 288).

In accordance with Berlant’s ideas on intimacy, Oshii would agree that intimacy represents a way of life, and that it is our duty to change it as the world continues to evolve. In The Sky Crawlers, Suito and the other kildren treat intimacy as something to fear rather than to embrace because intimacy also involves the potential of harm. By showing the cycle of intimacy, harm, and then withdrawal, Oshii shows the problematic way of how society runs itself. Berlant’s idea that intimacy represents optimism parallels with Oshii’s optimism that the kildren can change their lives for the better. Oshii believes that intimacy can change. Intimacy does not necessarily need to have just one face. Intimacy is an ever-changing entity that requires constant work and improvement by human beings. For example, Yuichi says, “You can choose which side of the road you walk on every single day. Even if the road is the same, you still see new things. Isn’t that enough to live for?” (The Sky Crawlers). By showing the cause and effect relationship between intimacy/potential harm with withdrawal/isolation, Oshii points out the problem with the system. However, he does not show this problem as an eternal one without the chance for change. “You can choose.”

In Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, he creates the complex Suito Kusunagi and dwells in her intimate relationships, potential harm, and withdrawal in order to represent the problems of human intimacy in today’s society. By contrasting the differences between Suito, a member of the kildren, and her daughter, Mizuki, as a “real human,” Oshii shows how in the world of the kildren, intimacy cannot occur without the potential of harm. He reflects this by showing how Suito can never have the satisfaction of calling Mizuki her daughter formally because of the complexities of intimacy, and how their use of intimacy is somehow wrong. Oshii shows Suito’s intimacy with Yuichi, the harm she undergoes, and her withdrawal in order to emphasize the recurring cycle. Yuichi becomes the catalyst, representing Oshii’s hope towards change. By understanding Freud and Berlant’s stances on human intimacy, Oshii’s message can further be understood in contrast or in addition to their beliefs. Both Freud and Berlant help to illuminate the problem of intimacy. Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers illustrates the constant relation between intimacy and potential harm, and then withdrawal/isolation as an effect of the relation in order to demonstrate the problem of human intimacy with the potentiality of progress.


WORKS CITED

The Sky Crawlers. Dir. Mamoru Oshii. Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV), 2008. DVD.

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: J. Cape & H. Smith, 1930. Print.

Berlant, Lauren. "Intimacy: A Special Issue." Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-88. JSTOR. Web. 1 June 2011.