by Josef Steiff
The nuclear bomb, with its ability to replicate the fiery forces of the sun, exemplifies the kind of universal power referred to by Adorno and Horkheimer. Tragically, exposure to this new form of terror springs not simply from a desire to destroy, but from a desire to know, to create, and to exert some measure of control over the conditions of human existence. The bomb and the achievement of nuclear fission represents the highest technological advancement and expresses this complicated desire—to no longer be at the mercy of, but to control the essential productive capacity of the universe.
Artistic representation cannot escape the contradictions of the atomic age. Technology and art are both ways of engaging the world in order to create new conditions for existence. Moreover, it is from the mimetic faculty—the ability to present the world with a mirror—that art finds its power. As Adorno explains in Aesthetic Theory, from its reflection of the concrete experiences of any given historical moment, art makes its claims to relevance. The advent of the atomic, however, represents a fatal implosion of scales of power, the point at which the twinned desire to create as well as to control turns back upon itself. Technology, which is meant to secure the meaning of human life, becomes instead the latest weapon of mass destruction, the easiest means to an end and the ultimate threat for the continuation of that life. Mimetic representation in the wake of the atomic bomb cannot help but express this anxiety of a world at once full of technological promise but shadowed by this universalizing terror.
Existing Otherwise
Atomu pays a price for his inability to seamlessly integrate his atomic power with his life among humans. Even though advanced robotic technology enables him to look nearly identical to the child he is modeled after, he is in the end an artifact of the atomic age, one that touches upon a lingering anxiety that his human counterparts can only express alternately with awe and disgust.
As artifact Atomu is both human and non-human. Most obviously, he appears at surface-level as a human. He is also human in the sense that as a human creation—in this instance a nuclear-powered weaponized robot—he bears the history of human technological progress and its deadly underside in his physical structure. Ultimately, his existence has little meaning outside the human world of which he is the product. And yet he is also non-human, for despite his external replication of the human form, he is never considered truly human. As machine he is only a tool for world-making, a non-human object by which the human world structures its atomic future.
Thus Atomu’s life is structured by a two contradictory requirements: he is expected to live among humans, according to their rules, however unlike the other boys that Atomu goes to school with, it is he alone who is ruled by the categorical imperative to save his human companions at any cost to his own structural integrity. Episode 3 (of the English version), “Save the Classmate,” offers an early example of Atomu’s problematic status. After rescuing a group of school bullies from certain death in a roller-coaster accident, and nearly fatally shorting his own circuitry in the process, the story ends with Atomu physically separated from the humans he has served, looking on as the boys are reunited with their relieved (though angry) parents. While some of the more friendly children accept Atomu’s sacrifice and reconcile themselves to his presence in their class, the parents of the saved classmates are the very ones who, early in the episode, want to see Atomu removed from class. These parents, who are also the school’s benefactors, do not acknowledge Atomu’s efforts or notice the injuries he receives while endangering himself on their behalf. In their minds, his sacrifice is expected as a robot created to serve their human ends.
Martin Heidegger argued that the future of humanity rests on an ability to understand our relationship to modern technology. He put the dilemma in simple terms: atomic energy “can be released either for destruction or for peaceful use.” While Heidegger refused to be wooed by the fairy tale ideology of atomic utopia, he acknowledged that technology is essential to any definition of what it means to be human, as such it is much more than merely “a means and a human activity.” Although the use of technology is a defining characteristic of the human, in the events of the twentieth century Heidegger identified a shift in the way technology is used. Not only is technology a way of using objects to the benefit of man, technology has become a way of “unlocking” the energy stored inside objects.
Objects are thus not things belonging to this world encountered and used, but a representation of human virtual power. Just as a pirate seeks his secret treasure seeing only the wealth it will be converted into at some later date, human beings create a relationship with objects, and the world itself, as mere means for human enrichment. The world and everything found therein only exists as something to be mined, resources to plunder. When this happens the things of this world are no longer objects, a category of being that for Heidegger implies an autonomous existence and an other-ness outside the confines of human experience. They become, rather, that which properly belongs always at the ready for human control, what Heidegger calls standing-reserve:The danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself. (The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, p. 27).
Each object, turned standing-reserve—now a disposable representation of universal power—serves as a mirror for human achievement. As this power grows and copies of the human appear in every reflection, so grows the impoverishment of the world. By forcing an image of the human on all that is encountered, a kind of coerced existential mimicry becomes the ruling logic of modernity. Objects do not exist as objects but as potential forms of human power.
Herein lies the melancholy of Astro Boy. Atomu is an object turned standing-reserve; his value as a being in this world is measured by how well he fulfills his function and by how well this functioning resembles or mimics the universal power that humanity seeks to master. And yet particularly striking is that the series goes to great lengths to create an affective relationship between the viewer and the robot, Atomu. As he silently casts his glance downward, head bowed with every scene of abandonment, we are induced to sympathize with him and shed the tears that he cannot. In his innocent curiosity and delight in the people and things he encounters, Atomu embodies a form of subjectivity preserved only in the early years of childhood. Tenma’s rage can be understood in this light, for Atomu’s inability to grow is also an inability to “grow up.” This inability acts as a kind of refusal of the ruling social order and thus serves as an implicit critique of a human world defined by increasing levels of mastery.
In Atomu’s imperfect mimicry of the human, and in our ready identification with his constant exclusion, we better understand Heidegger’s argument that the transformation into standing-reserve is not limited to objects. In a world that exists only for command and control, a world in which utility is the highest form of measure, the human being also becomes standing-reserve. Every individual instance of the human is already marshaled for that same ultimate purpose awaiting the life of all things: the production and reproduction of power. In this way, each of us is virtually robotic, a truth which explains Astro Boy’s cult status as well as the constant anxiety present in the show’s more “human” characters.
The Sacrificial Lamb
From its inception, Astro Boy reflects the tragic conditions of the atomic age. Like every good television show, each episode ends in minor triumph. Despite his abandonment and exclusion, A
tomu proves his worth by sacrificing his own body for the humans, who refuse to acknowledge his existence as something other than their inferior copy or their machine. Yet, the larger crisis remains. One is left with a sense of profound sadness as Atomu looks on at a world to which he does not belong. Rey Chow offers a conception of mimesis that may help us understand the seemingly strange confluence of living and dying, inclusion and abandonment, the human and the non-human in Astro Boy:. . . mimesis, one may argue, is the sign that remains—in the form of a literal being-there, an externalization and an exhibition—in the aftermath of a process of sacrifice, whether or not the sacrifice has been witnessed or apprehended as such. Mimesis is the (visibly or sensorially available) substitute that follows, that bears the effects of (an invisible or illegible) sacrifice. (“Sacrifice, Mimesis, and the Theorizing of Victimhood (A Speculative Essay),” Representations 94, p. 137)
According to the conventional definition of mimesis as aesthetic representation, mimesis is essentially productive and has been present in human civilization since its most ancient beginnings. Chow provocatively suggests that sacrifice is in fact the destructive analog to the creative faculty, and that both mimesis and sacrifice underlie the very processes through which we make meaning of our world.
In a fully rationalized world, sacrifice now represents the violence we are willing to submit ourselves to in our quest to fully master those forces that belonged to a non-human world. As the secret of the atom—what we have long held to be the “building block of the universe” or in Truman’s term the “basic power of the universe”—is unlocked and mobilized, so what was a universal power becomes more properly, though no less terrifyingly, human power. Mimesis was then in its primitive form a non-violent repetition of nature’s violence. However, in a world in which human beings claim themselves masters of the universe, and the sphere of the non-human diminishes in its ordering as standing-reserve, mimesis becomes the repetition of human violence.
Astro Boy then offers unique insight into the historic conditions of existence in the atomic world. Written and produced in the decades following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Astro Boy’s episodes mimetically re-enact a sacrificial logic whereby the new world order—announced dramatically with the deployment of the atomic bomb—rises from the ashes of the burning cities. With every subsequent revision and translation for global audiences, what emerges in the robotic version of the young boy is a nostalgic, static vision of an innocence no longer possible in a world turned nuclear.
The darker side of the atomic age is visible most clearly in the death of Tobio, a death that marks the birth of Atomu’s narrative. Traces of this founding violence haunt the show in every failed attempt to reconcile the utopic possibilities of the age with what we might call an atomic diegetic demand: the world can only be saved with the sacrifice of the abandoned.
15
Grave of the Child Hero
HAL SHIPMAN
Set in Japan during the last days of World War II, Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies tells the poignant tale of two orphaned children, Seita, and his younger sister Setsuko. The children lose their mother in the firebombing of Kobe and their father in service to the Imperial Japanese Navy. As a result, they have to try to survive amidst widespread famine and the callous indifference of their countrymen, eventually striking out on their own in rebellion against a distant family member. Both children die of malnutrition, demonstrating that the consequences of wars are not only violent.
Though not a commercial success when it was first released, Grave of the Fireflies has become one of the most critically acclaimed anime films, due to its graphic and truly emotional depiction of the consequences of war on all people. As such, its relevance resonates even today as we hear about the impact of armed battle on civilian populations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza. But Grave of the Fireflies tells us as much about the prevailing ideas regarding the nature of childhood development and adolescence within mainstream anime as it does about the damages of war.
Natural States
Anime largely relies on the trope of the child hero, most often an adolescent (pre- or newly pubescent), who is thrust into a dire situation and sometimes even responsible for saving the world. Often, the children succeed specifically in spite of the adults, who ignore or disregard the insights of the protagonists, forcing these young heroes to take action on their own, for the salvation of us all. Adults are sometimes advisors or support, at best, but the children are ultimately left to their own devices to solve whatever problem is facing them. This perspective that children are capable of facing the challenges of the world—even a fantasy world—on their own is based in an ignorance of the concept of “adolescence,” which only began to break down in Western thought at the end of the Middle Ages.
Up through the Middle Ages, the notion of childhood development, including the concept of adolescence, simply did not exist. There was a clean break between early childhood and adulthood. The ability to reason, to make sound choices, was assumed to be granted in one big lump once adolescence began. Someone like Seita should be perfectly capable of succeeding in his goals. And if he were in any other anime film, he probably would. The overwhelming majority of anime films and series focus on children, up through their teens, who are clearly able to make sound choices. These characters are supposed to be of adolescent age, visually distinct from the films’ adults, and yet their capabilities are on par with adults. Despite being children and adolescents, they are hyper-competent and capable, literally saving the world many times over. These are fantasies, almost exclusively centered on a romanticized version of medieval concepts regarding the essential nature of a child.
But unlike most of his filmic peers, Seita does not succeed. His story more closely reflects a perspective of childhood proposed by Aristotle, who suggested that the child is “unfinished” in regards to its development of “human nature,” meaning adulthood. The qualifier “unfinished” implies that while the human [adult] nature is not yet fully realized, it will be realized as long as it is properly provided for and protected from harm and random influences that could deflect or damage its natural growth. In other words, actualization as a human comes through the progression of development from nature to habit to reason.
The role of the parents is to temper the child’s wildness, the natural state, through nurture and discipline. Aristotle even believed that children are incapable of happiness (which can only be achieved through reason) as they have not yet developed the ability to use their intelligence to guide their actions. The child’s actualization as a person, a fully realized human being, only comes when the child attains the ability to reason. This fundamental concept is the core of modern childhood development theory and our modern understanding of how children develop the capacity to make thoughtful choices throughout their teens.
Like Adults, Only Smaller
Despite anime adventures often depicting a child’s natural state—wildness, innocence and/or a purity of spirit—as the key to solving the problems that face his or her world, many cultures now see it differently. American culture doesn’t recognize children as being able to make decisions on their own behalf until they are at least eighteen years old, and this maturation includes an individual’s ability to decide to live on his or her own. It is this specific trope of anime that falls apart under the modern lens and which Grave of the Fireflies most directly argues against. As modern adults, we understand that a child living on his own, without an adult, will most likely have a tragic existence including life on the streets, drug addiction, and prostitution. If a child strikes out on his own, he leaves the protective, nurturing sphere of the family while unprepared to make healthy choices. Seita demonstrates the importance of this preparation throughout the film, through the negative examples of making unhealthy choices time and time again. Fundamentally, Grave of the Fireflies is a cautionary tale about a child’s inability to make these choices precisely because he isn’t yet old enough to reason.
/> Though it seems obvious to us now, the development framework Aristotle recognized and espoused was ignored until the beginning of the Early Modern period. In his book, Centuries of Childhood, Philippe Ariès describes how concepts of childhood have varied through history. The very notion of a child, he argues, is historically and culturally conditioned and was at its lowest ebb in the west during the Medieval period. The concept of “child” as an innocent to be protected and nurtured didn’t really exist until the end of the Middle Ages, when Descartes and Locke first returned to Aristotle’s notion of the development of reason. Instead, children were thought of as little adults, with no awareness of the need to develop the capacity to reason. In medieval cultural artifacts, most often paintings, children as we know them simply don’t exist. Ariès points out that the children look and dress exactly like adults, only on a smaller scale to indicate their age.