![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootHindu mythology is just written all over this show. As if the physical appearance of Dios/Akio and Anthy weren't enough, we're whapped over the head with all the symbols associated with Nanami: elephants, cows, eggs. The power to revolutionize, to turn that is, harks strongly to the whole concept of yugas--well, actually, to the cycle of time in general, which has all sorts of manifestations in Buddhism. As for Dios/Akio, he rings loud Trimurti bells, only missing Brahma, which seems to be a major plot point. What is behind the Rose Gate, I would say, is the aspect of the Creator. See, I take Dios as the Preserver (Vishnu) and Akio as the Destroyer (Shiva). Dios is the one who preserves a stable condition (for all girls to be princesses, to be protected from all trouble). Akio, the Morning Star, the End of the World, well, what more do we really need to say? The Preserver's time ended when his sister sealed him away to save his life, sacrificing and suspending her own life by doing so. The Destroyer's time ends when Utena makes it through the gate and offers a new choice to Anthy. So it's back around to the Creator.
Anthy represents, I think, not so much power as a chance, an opportunity to turn the ages. She is the occasion of agency, but doesn't have any of her own except at the very beginning, when she chooses to end the Preserver's age and take on the hatred that action engenders, and at the very end, when she reaches out to Utena, making a new choice and ending the Destroyer's age also.
Agency is a complicated thing in Utena. Akio attempts, more or less, to steal Utena's agency, which I expect is why he fails. He can never make it though the Gate, because he simply doesn't have the capacity--he can't change, he is, as Anthy says at the end, locked in his cozy coffin. I think that's what the progression of the swords is all about. We start with normal, external swords; Black Rose moves to using the sword/soul/agency of another person, stolen; the final arc progresses to using one's own sword/soul/agency, called forth in cooperation with someone else. That last is something that cannot be effectively stolen.
Love and sex are another tangled item here, not least because I can't right offhand think of an example of love in this story that is not also sexual. Well, maybe Wakaba. As the story went on I started to think of the sexuality as radiating from Akio, but I wound up thinking of it as ultimately coming from Anthy. That, I think, is the witch aspect, what Kozue calls impure, the opposite of a proper princess. It's filtered through the age of the Destroyer, though, which is what I think makes it such a tangled thing, always doubled back on itself, claustrophobic, hurtful. The three sibling pairs, Juri and Shiori, definitely Saionji and Anthy, Saionji and Touga, Mikage and Mamiya, etc.--they're all twisted up. There is also that rather disturbing shot toward the end of Anthy riding in the car with Akio; at first she looks and sounds like she's experiencing sexual pleasure, especially given the seductive connotations of that car, and then Akio asks if she's in pain and we see a flash of the swords. Sex and pain are completely elided at that point, and it made me wonder if they weren't elided all along. Another possibility for why the sexuality sourced in Anthy is so troubled, if it's actually an expression of her agony.
The repeating motifs, on the other hand, are simply a joy: circles like the carousel, spirals like the stairs up to the dueling ground--figures of no escape. The elevator in the Black Rose arc, with the butterfly regressing until we're left with a leaf: something drawing into itself until its nature changes completely. The gondola, which looks like it's traveling straight up, when the outside view shows it tilted--or is it the castle and ground that are tilted? The cameras and photographs that seem to alter rather than capture a scene--capturing souls? And, of course, the basic unit of Duelist and Bride, in which so many Duelists seek to substitute a Bride that will not put them to the test that Anthy's imprisonment will.
Curious, that the movie focused so much more tightly on the psychological aspect, the idea of the school as, more or less, the inside of one's head, the castle as a trap, the whole thing as a metaphor of growing up and moving into the outside world, the world outside oneself, one's own mind, outside the stories and pretty, simple roles. It did make it much clearer that the sexuality starts with Anthy, and that Utena is the vehicle, literally, of her power and will should she choose to use them.
*happy sigh* Great series.
Anthy represents, I think, not so much power as a chance, an opportunity to turn the ages. She is the occasion of agency, but doesn't have any of her own except at the very beginning, when she chooses to end the Preserver's age and take on the hatred that action engenders, and at the very end, when she reaches out to Utena, making a new choice and ending the Destroyer's age also.
Agency is a complicated thing in Utena. Akio attempts, more or less, to steal Utena's agency, which I expect is why he fails. He can never make it though the Gate, because he simply doesn't have the capacity--he can't change, he is, as Anthy says at the end, locked in his cozy coffin. I think that's what the progression of the swords is all about. We start with normal, external swords; Black Rose moves to using the sword/soul/agency of another person, stolen; the final arc progresses to using one's own sword/soul/agency, called forth in cooperation with someone else. That last is something that cannot be effectively stolen.
Love and sex are another tangled item here, not least because I can't right offhand think of an example of love in this story that is not also sexual. Well, maybe Wakaba. As the story went on I started to think of the sexuality as radiating from Akio, but I wound up thinking of it as ultimately coming from Anthy. That, I think, is the witch aspect, what Kozue calls impure, the opposite of a proper princess. It's filtered through the age of the Destroyer, though, which is what I think makes it such a tangled thing, always doubled back on itself, claustrophobic, hurtful. The three sibling pairs, Juri and Shiori, definitely Saionji and Anthy, Saionji and Touga, Mikage and Mamiya, etc.--they're all twisted up. There is also that rather disturbing shot toward the end of Anthy riding in the car with Akio; at first she looks and sounds like she's experiencing sexual pleasure, especially given the seductive connotations of that car, and then Akio asks if she's in pain and we see a flash of the swords. Sex and pain are completely elided at that point, and it made me wonder if they weren't elided all along. Another possibility for why the sexuality sourced in Anthy is so troubled, if it's actually an expression of her agony.
The repeating motifs, on the other hand, are simply a joy: circles like the carousel, spirals like the stairs up to the dueling ground--figures of no escape. The elevator in the Black Rose arc, with the butterfly regressing until we're left with a leaf: something drawing into itself until its nature changes completely. The gondola, which looks like it's traveling straight up, when the outside view shows it tilted--or is it the castle and ground that are tilted? The cameras and photographs that seem to alter rather than capture a scene--capturing souls? And, of course, the basic unit of Duelist and Bride, in which so many Duelists seek to substitute a Bride that will not put them to the test that Anthy's imprisonment will.
Curious, that the movie focused so much more tightly on the psychological aspect, the idea of the school as, more or less, the inside of one's head, the castle as a trap, the whole thing as a metaphor of growing up and moving into the outside world, the world outside oneself, one's own mind, outside the stories and pretty, simple roles. It did make it much clearer that the sexuality starts with Anthy, and that Utena is the vehicle, literally, of her power and will should she choose to use them.
*happy sigh* Great series.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-03 06:37 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-03 06:37 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 06:59 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-03 08:05 pm (UTC)The thing that got me about this anime is the role of men. The fact thatwe have an anime where the women really are the protagonists, not simply acting as foils for male characters or representations of ideals. None of the characters (except with the notible exception of Utena) are 'ideals' rather they are archetypes and alegories(sp).
I always thought of the movie as something of a sequel. Of Anthy coming back to lead Utena out of the place she became trapped in when she fought to free Anthy, and this time it was Anthy's turn. (except, the school being the labyrinth that it is, Anthy is caught again) because in that school Touga and Anthy are already dead. Touga more clearly a 'ghost' that everyone *but* Anthy and Utena walk through.
But there is such a wealth here. Reading someone elses analysis of the series always makes me want to write for it. #^_^# But I haven't the nerve. It is, very much, a yuri writer's ideal.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 09:10 am (UTC)The whole repetition in a different register that the movie does would certainly fit very well with the circular pattern of the tv version, if it were a continuation. And we have no real assurance that Utena has realized, at the end of the tv show, that it's all right that she isn't a prince, that that's the best way for things to go. Anthy knows it, though. And her sexuality in the movie is considerably more positive than before.
The page on the movie just got longer, I think....
The idea of writing in Utena affects me kind of like the idea of writing in Cowboy Bebop: what else could I possibly say? For all that both shows are fantastically open ended, they're also so full. I can do critical writing on them, but creative actually intimidates me...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 11:21 am (UTC)The idea of writing Utena terrified me for a long time but my style of writing is starting to get heavily influenced by T.S. Eliot and the like, so the idea of writing something short, something descriptive, though not necessarily real (as in ground in the real world, but rather a place where the real and the imaginary are hard to disentwin.) And... It's not that I would be adding anything, but more ... exploring what's in my head.
It doesn't help that the relationship between Anthy/Utena--specially the movie version, is such a beautiful vehicle for me to deal with some of my own issues regarding sex, sexuality, and the expression of sexuality. Rather like Relena/Dorothy is a way for me to deal with my ex issues. The offer of a completely new way of writing is so very seductive.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 11:42 am (UTC)Infinitely. That whole scene where she axes open the water pipe and it washes away all the roses...
Ooo. That reminds me--why roses? The tv version at least does show them very much as a hot-house flower, one that needs constant cultivation. Images of romance, perhaps. A constrained romance.
Which fits in very nicely with the washed-away-roses scene, since that's the start of Anthy's last journey toward un-constraint that ends with both of them naked whisking away into the real world.
The offer of a completely new way of writing is so very seductive
I can definitely see that.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-03 11:11 pm (UTC)Er, don't mind me. I'm a friend of
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 09:22 am (UTC)At first I wasn't at all sure about the Hindu layer, because the Christian layer was in front of it: Dios/God and Akio/Lucifer. Nanami and her cows and eggs really clinched it for me, because for the longest time I couldn't imagine why she had so many episodes to herself that didn't seem to have anything to do with anything--it just wasn't like the writers at all.
Thing is, I think the God/Lucifer layer is a misdirection. It sets up a closed dualism between Dios and Akio, and I think that dualism is false. Neither of them have the right answer to get past the Rose Gate and/or save Anthy. Dios thinks Utena needs to be a prince, and Akio thinks she needs to be a princess, but neither of those things will open the door. Utena rejects being the passive princess, and she admits at the end that she hasn't succeeded in being the prince who saves the day either. What she hasn't seen yet, I think, is that she's done something far more profound. She opened the door and offered Anthy the choice of passing through it. Anthy takes the choice, and that is what frees her. If Utena had been a princess, Anthy would still be the witch, the target of the swords; if Utena had been a prince, Anthy would only be a princess and still wouldn't have any agency of her own. Instead they both find the third way and break out into a new age.
Er. Didn't mean to burble on so. I'll stop now. It's just that this show punches all my "analyze! analyze!" buttons with a vengance...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-06 01:32 am (UTC)(And that of course begs the question...is the show layered like an onion, or like a cake...[grins])
I also agree with you on the interpretation of the end of the show -- and I have to say that's the most elegant way I've heard the "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" moral of the story explained. Anthy needed Utena to escape her coffin, sure, but Utena could only open the damned thing. Anthy was the one who had to climb out of it. (Which always makes me wonder...could you in theory do the same thing for Akio, if he could ever be made to want to change? Hmm. But then a redeemed Akio isn't half as much fun as the unredeemed version...)
This show has been punching my Analyse This! buttons for YEARS. I've already written two too long essays about this damn show. Next I will be getting into Hindu mythology just so I can write something equally rambling about Nanami...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-06 06:37 am (UTC)It's so true...