We’re currently moving to the new domain, so I figure it’s the perfect time to celebrate the event by writing this little essay. If you read my Babylon’s weekly summary you’d know that I am mixed on Babylon as a whole, but there’s one segment in that messy show that rile me up, that I find myself still thinking about it even now, and even inspires me to envision a whole new tale in response to it. I won’t trouble your time with the latter, though, but I’m here to critique that particular segment through a specific lens. There is no spoiler and it’s about the flashback of one character, so I encourage all readers, even to those who haven’t watched Babylon, to read through this mini tiny think-piece. [UPDATE: If you want, you can watch that sequence right after the jump, from the beginning to 11:40), no prior knowledge of the show required)
So the flashback that I mentioned makes up the first 10 minutes of episode 5 (again, I believe it’s safe that you can watch that segment independently as it’s a self-contained flashback). The gist of the story is that, detective Seizaki with his assistant wants to learn more about this femme fatale Ai Magase, whom he believes is responsible for the mass suicide days ago. They meet Ai Masage’s uncle, a doctor, and he tells them a twisted tale of how she literally mind-raped 7 of her schoolmates without even touching them, and how he himself feels aroused when he sees her. Did I mention that this show is fucked-up? Well, it’s told with a dead-serious manner that, to its credit, you can feel the weight of that fucked-up in the same breath as when Madoka finds out about magical girls fate.
The uncle/ doctor has every reason to be afraid of Ai Masage. She poccesses an inviting sexual charms and her every gesture encourages the boys, and his inner sexual drive even without her saying so. The boys all suffer from slight post trauma symptoms, where they all claim that Ai Masage had entered their mind and raped them. The doctor doesn’t fare any better. He lusts over her presence to the point he arranges another 6-month counselor with her just to see her (in case you wonder, no they didn’t commit adultery), then runaway out of shame and guilt. I must give credits to the visual motifs displayed here, with the image of her body dissolved into his private part (that’s a powerful image) and the constant motif of a bird flies out of its cage (“the bird has flown”) – signifies how Ai Masage is out of his control. Without a doubt, we can sense how dangerous and formidable Ai Masage can be.
But that where my issue with the segment lies.
Let’s me step back a bit to discuss about femme fatale role. Throughout the history of cinema, femme fatale characters have became an established archetype and gathered opposite reactions across the viewers regarding its portrayal towards its female characters, me included. On one hand, they are one of the first established characters tropes that portray women as complex who use male is a tool to achieve what they want: be it fame, rich or safety. On the other hand, it gains major criticism towards 1) it paints women as someone negative and 2) it projects a male’s perspective, especially their primal fear towards the opposite sex. “We, males, are much stronger and more sexual driven than female counterpart, but what if there’s someone who can control that sex drive and manipulate us and corrupt our mind until we lose sense of who we are?” That, for me, is one of men’s biggest fear.
And makes no mistake, Babylon suffers the same male’s gaze, male’s mindset and fear with Ai Masage characters. Here, we have an uncle declares her as “a bad child” in his first sentence. Here, we have an entire college boys playing victims where, when you look at it closely, Masage didn’t do any single thing to them. Here, she corrupts their souls by whispering something in their ears to persuade them to kill themselves (read: all the victims we see her directly involved with are male detectives, with a single female victim she chop her off instead, convenient, don’t you think?). And I still haven’t touched the part where she can change her appearance and personality at will – basically she can become any woman. Babylon might frame her as the ultimate badass villain, but for me she’s more of a victim of male’s prejudice.
I’m not going too far to say Babylon is misogynistic. After all, women in this show don’t get beaten up randomly here or being treated awfully here. But the male projection towards female image is too strong, one-sided and sourly taste here. Just like some insensitive remark that girls in revealing clothes get raped because they ask for it.
Haven’t watched the show. I mean anime is a medium of extremes. It does have good female characters at the same time very trashy ones who have little agency beyond pleasing a male lead. This industry is prominently male managed.
I suppose my question is how bad does this gets? Is it a propagand scheme like what I’ve heard with Darling in the Franxx. Is it low hanging fruit like a harem anime? Is it misguided?
I mean from the sounds of it, sounds kind of interesting, since it’s a true fear. Since in media, it usually plays very restrictively with female characters, allure, cute and innocent, tomboyish. Rarely they’re put outside of a romantic interest or maternal lens.
Also on the surface level this reads a bit on having a female character playing a villainous force of nature.
It’s a hard point of discussion, mainly because while we want to be better about treating these things, in reality there are harsh things happening to women, and in media we can’t decide what we want them to be.
Sorry for the rant. Just too many voices and too little space to debate.
Thanks for the reply Vonter. Interestingly when I read your first paragraph I thought of the word “misguided” and there you said that.
Even though my post might come off as negative, in truth I’m also still figuring out what I feel about all these issues. It’s clear Babylon doesn’t aim for fan-service. It builds the case where this woman character holds a destructive power – something that makes it better than thousand fan-service shows out there. It has all the right intentions, but it’s clearly written by a guy with the perspective of a guy, and for me the kind of discrimination where they don’t know that they are discriminating.
I’ll try to include the episode in the post later so that you can watch the segment (no prior knowledge needed) and see if I’m over-reaching or not