04-04-2006, 01:22 AM
In order to see how this fear of the true nature of the self connects to Evangelion, we must first understand the true nature of the main character, Shinji, who, as I mentioned earlier, really doesn't have an identity until halfway through the series. But what is this identity? Possibly it is best seen through consideration of where Shinji tries to hide this nature through cowardliness. Three scenes come to mind immediately: first Shinji's refusal to destroy an Eva possessed by an Angel but containing a human being inside;[16] second Shinji's indecision when faced with destroying the last Angel, Kaoru;[17] third Shinji's reverting to what almost seemed a premature crybaby state in End of Evangelion.[18] Aside from Shinji's weak appearance in these three scenes, they are all connected in a much more important way: in all three ways Shinji was empowered, given the potential to become not a created identity but a creator (or destroyer) of others' identities. In fact, in End of Evangelion, Shinji achieves the power to judge all of mankind in his control of the Third Impact.[19] In essence, Shinji has found his true nature, and it is an identity of power. Shinji has found the power to destroy the father he hates so much; moreover, Shinji has found the potential to create a world of perfection, a world where all people are united and there is no pain. Freud would say that Shinji has become the father. Lacan would say that Shinji has found the Center which controls all, that Shinji has become the Phallus.[20]
For Shinji, as it probably would be for many of us, becoming the Phallus, the center of all power and of all symbolic order, can be a scary thing. As much as Lacan stresses that everyone wants to become the Phallus, he explicitly states that such a state would be impossible to achieve, by its very nature of being the center of symbolic structure.[21] Unfortunately, not only does Shinji achieve this impossible identity, but he also arrives at it, as J.S. observed, without any identity other than those created through symbols-an identity born not of the Real, but constructed by the Symbolic, by the Phallus itself. And most prominent in this constructed identity is Shinji's idea that he is obligated to save the people of the world, an idea drawn both from his father's demand that he pilot the Eva and his own desire to be accepted by others by piloting the Eva. Yet what is he to do with this power that seems now to demand that he destroy first individuals and then possibly mankind, in the Third Impact?
Shinji reacts against this real identity he has found for himself in the most powerful way he can, turning himself into a total coward. Thus he himself constructs the final and most powerful self-identity to protect against this growing power. This "shield identity," in fact, is so strong that it is even physically manifested in both his Eva and his AT Field. After all, the AT Field represents the boundary between one's soul and the outside world-a force field constructed to conceal the real identity from outsiders.[22] And the Eva, according to interpretations by K.G. and A.Y.L., represents Shinji's mother, and possibly his desire to revert back to his mother's womb, so that his true nature may be protected. Although it is true that both the Eva and the AT Field were present from the very beginning of the series, it is only toward the end, where Shinji begins to learn of his powerful true nature, that both the Eva and the AT Field become less objects of attack and more mechanisms of defense, protecting Shinji from the invading Angels.[23] What is most crucial, though, is not the manifestation of this final constructed identity but rather the fact that it was actually created by the individual for that individual, and not imposed by someone else or produced to gain someone else's acceptance.
For it is the realization that we ourselves are truly the creators of our own constructed identities that allows for the potential to break them down. Miyazawa is able to confront her desire for praise and break it down, allowing her to become a silly but happy person who is able to live her life to her own content.[24] Arima realizes that he is not his father, and thus he reveals his true self without becoming a terrible person.[25] Shinji finally accepts his position of power and, rather than cowering away from it, uses it to "save" humanity from the Third Impact.[26] How did these characters all manage to break down their masks of constructed identity?
Perhaps most important, at least to Anno, is the recognition of freedom of choice within the real identity. All three characters mentioned above feared what their real identities could turn out to be, but consequently all three failed to recognize that such an identity is not static. The true Miyazawa was definitely not the perfectly controlled personality of her constructed identity, but nor was it the total slob. As she develops in the series, not once do we see her wearing the red sweats she tried to hide, showing that that which she feared to be her real identity is in fact controllable by her.[27] Shinji fears using his power because it will cause pain in others; in the end it is those powers which save humanity from its final destruction.[28] It is these characters' recognition that accepting the real identity doesn't lead to a single, predetermined fate that allows them to accept this identity.
A final point to consider is how all this relates to us, the audience. Clearly Anno makes limited direct reference to his viewers, and one may wonder if he had his viewers in mind at all. S.J.H., however, in her study of self-perception in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, comes to the conclusion that what the characters learn about themselves the audience can learn about itself as well. This proves to be a highly valuable analysis in our case as well, for what more is Anno depicting than his characters' self-discoveries about identity? And through the appropriate analogy, Anno hopes that we may discover our own masks of constructed identity, find our reasons for creating them, and thus release ourselves from those masks.
One may wonder where, from his own life and culture, Anno came up with his motivation to write on such themes. Certainly there can be parallels drawn between Anno's own experiences and the concepts of identity which he presents. According to Professor Susan Napier, Anno had been going through a period of depression during his directing of Evangelion, and much of the anime reflects his sorting out of the conflicts within his personality, stemming from his work and the work of Gainax Studios, his parent organization, being considered the "ugly duckling" of animation in Japan. Toward the end of the concluding movie to the series, Anno reflects on his experience of art imitating life, in a short dialog which reads, "Where is my dream? It is the continuation of reality. Where is reality? It is at the end of your dream."[29] According to Gold, this reflects Anno's views of his creating Evangelion in particular and animation in general, in that his creation, or his dream, is merely an extension of his own life, but his life must continue after his work is finished. Anno, in later interviews, explains this in terms of his writing of Evangelion:
You need to like this sort of thing [animation] a certain amount to be able to do it. And once you've given it up, you'll be OK....[When will you be okay?] The instant you wake up to reality again. When you realize that enjoyment alone won't see you through.[30]
As nice as it was for Anno to be able to escape reality through his animation, he realized that it was no substitute for reality. Evangelion had become the dream, it had become Anno's own constructed identity; but eventually reality had to win out over fantasy.
Anno's choice of themes is even more logical when one considers that themes of real and constructed identity can even be connected to recent Japanese history. Toward the close of the twentieth century Japan had achieved a monumental financial record, leading, as Professor Napier observed, even Western nations looked upon the land of the rising sun as the potential financial leader in coming years. But the reasons behind Japan's financial success could all be traced back to dramatic changes in Japanese society ranging back to the Meiji era, when Japan rushed to westernize its culture and government-in effect, Japan had constructed a new identity for itself.[31] During the 1990s many people in Japan were realizing that this new identity was effectively killing off their nation's heritage and national identity-the constructed identity was overshadowing the real. Animators such as Miyazaki and Takahata looked back nostalgically at traditional Japan in their respective films Princess Mononoke and Only Yesterday.[32] Anno merely would have been taking this loss of national identity to a higher, more personal level, the level of individual, psychological identity.
But Anno is not pessimistic. He does not fear that these constructed identities will unrelentingly and inevitably overcome the real. His portrayal of characters who can discover their own flaws reflects his belief in our abilities to discover our own flaws; his portrayal of characters who repair these flaws reflects his belief that we can repair them as well. If he believed that mankind could not overcome its problems of identity, then he would have no reason to explore these problems and resolve them in his works. On the contrary, Anno hopes that we may learn from his works, and gain a greater understanding of, if not resolve completely, this paradox of human identity.
<end.>
Don't hate me for such a long post guys- just thought it was interesting and I couldn't find a working link to it anymore.
For Shinji, as it probably would be for many of us, becoming the Phallus, the center of all power and of all symbolic order, can be a scary thing. As much as Lacan stresses that everyone wants to become the Phallus, he explicitly states that such a state would be impossible to achieve, by its very nature of being the center of symbolic structure.[21] Unfortunately, not only does Shinji achieve this impossible identity, but he also arrives at it, as J.S. observed, without any identity other than those created through symbols-an identity born not of the Real, but constructed by the Symbolic, by the Phallus itself. And most prominent in this constructed identity is Shinji's idea that he is obligated to save the people of the world, an idea drawn both from his father's demand that he pilot the Eva and his own desire to be accepted by others by piloting the Eva. Yet what is he to do with this power that seems now to demand that he destroy first individuals and then possibly mankind, in the Third Impact?
Shinji reacts against this real identity he has found for himself in the most powerful way he can, turning himself into a total coward. Thus he himself constructs the final and most powerful self-identity to protect against this growing power. This "shield identity," in fact, is so strong that it is even physically manifested in both his Eva and his AT Field. After all, the AT Field represents the boundary between one's soul and the outside world-a force field constructed to conceal the real identity from outsiders.[22] And the Eva, according to interpretations by K.G. and A.Y.L., represents Shinji's mother, and possibly his desire to revert back to his mother's womb, so that his true nature may be protected. Although it is true that both the Eva and the AT Field were present from the very beginning of the series, it is only toward the end, where Shinji begins to learn of his powerful true nature, that both the Eva and the AT Field become less objects of attack and more mechanisms of defense, protecting Shinji from the invading Angels.[23] What is most crucial, though, is not the manifestation of this final constructed identity but rather the fact that it was actually created by the individual for that individual, and not imposed by someone else or produced to gain someone else's acceptance.
For it is the realization that we ourselves are truly the creators of our own constructed identities that allows for the potential to break them down. Miyazawa is able to confront her desire for praise and break it down, allowing her to become a silly but happy person who is able to live her life to her own content.[24] Arima realizes that he is not his father, and thus he reveals his true self without becoming a terrible person.[25] Shinji finally accepts his position of power and, rather than cowering away from it, uses it to "save" humanity from the Third Impact.[26] How did these characters all manage to break down their masks of constructed identity?
Perhaps most important, at least to Anno, is the recognition of freedom of choice within the real identity. All three characters mentioned above feared what their real identities could turn out to be, but consequently all three failed to recognize that such an identity is not static. The true Miyazawa was definitely not the perfectly controlled personality of her constructed identity, but nor was it the total slob. As she develops in the series, not once do we see her wearing the red sweats she tried to hide, showing that that which she feared to be her real identity is in fact controllable by her.[27] Shinji fears using his power because it will cause pain in others; in the end it is those powers which save humanity from its final destruction.[28] It is these characters' recognition that accepting the real identity doesn't lead to a single, predetermined fate that allows them to accept this identity.
A final point to consider is how all this relates to us, the audience. Clearly Anno makes limited direct reference to his viewers, and one may wonder if he had his viewers in mind at all. S.J.H., however, in her study of self-perception in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, comes to the conclusion that what the characters learn about themselves the audience can learn about itself as well. This proves to be a highly valuable analysis in our case as well, for what more is Anno depicting than his characters' self-discoveries about identity? And through the appropriate analogy, Anno hopes that we may discover our own masks of constructed identity, find our reasons for creating them, and thus release ourselves from those masks.
One may wonder where, from his own life and culture, Anno came up with his motivation to write on such themes. Certainly there can be parallels drawn between Anno's own experiences and the concepts of identity which he presents. According to Professor Susan Napier, Anno had been going through a period of depression during his directing of Evangelion, and much of the anime reflects his sorting out of the conflicts within his personality, stemming from his work and the work of Gainax Studios, his parent organization, being considered the "ugly duckling" of animation in Japan. Toward the end of the concluding movie to the series, Anno reflects on his experience of art imitating life, in a short dialog which reads, "Where is my dream? It is the continuation of reality. Where is reality? It is at the end of your dream."[29] According to Gold, this reflects Anno's views of his creating Evangelion in particular and animation in general, in that his creation, or his dream, is merely an extension of his own life, but his life must continue after his work is finished. Anno, in later interviews, explains this in terms of his writing of Evangelion:
You need to like this sort of thing [animation] a certain amount to be able to do it. And once you've given it up, you'll be OK....[When will you be okay?] The instant you wake up to reality again. When you realize that enjoyment alone won't see you through.[30]
As nice as it was for Anno to be able to escape reality through his animation, he realized that it was no substitute for reality. Evangelion had become the dream, it had become Anno's own constructed identity; but eventually reality had to win out over fantasy.
Anno's choice of themes is even more logical when one considers that themes of real and constructed identity can even be connected to recent Japanese history. Toward the close of the twentieth century Japan had achieved a monumental financial record, leading, as Professor Napier observed, even Western nations looked upon the land of the rising sun as the potential financial leader in coming years. But the reasons behind Japan's financial success could all be traced back to dramatic changes in Japanese society ranging back to the Meiji era, when Japan rushed to westernize its culture and government-in effect, Japan had constructed a new identity for itself.[31] During the 1990s many people in Japan were realizing that this new identity was effectively killing off their nation's heritage and national identity-the constructed identity was overshadowing the real. Animators such as Miyazaki and Takahata looked back nostalgically at traditional Japan in their respective films Princess Mononoke and Only Yesterday.[32] Anno merely would have been taking this loss of national identity to a higher, more personal level, the level of individual, psychological identity.
But Anno is not pessimistic. He does not fear that these constructed identities will unrelentingly and inevitably overcome the real. His portrayal of characters who can discover their own flaws reflects his belief in our abilities to discover our own flaws; his portrayal of characters who repair these flaws reflects his belief that we can repair them as well. If he believed that mankind could not overcome its problems of identity, then he would have no reason to explore these problems and resolve them in his works. On the contrary, Anno hopes that we may learn from his works, and gain a greater understanding of, if not resolve completely, this paradox of human identity.
<end.>
Don't hate me for such a long post guys- just thought it was interesting and I couldn't find a working link to it anymore.