…There’s a reason we try to teach our children this kind of sympathy. Lack of sympathy, or outright cruelty, to animals, stems from the same mindset that, more egregiously, can deny humanity to other people by denying their capacity to think or feel. The Victorians considered women less rational than men, and regarded other races and the lower classes as less sensitive to pain, thus denying these groups full humanity and consequently full legal rights. Given these attitudes toward members of our own species, it is unsurprising that many Victorians felt panicked when Darwin suggested our kinship with other creatures.
Editor’s Note: I’m very happy to introduce our newest writer, Isabella Cooper! I hope you’ll enjoy this heartfelt, nuanced look at our feelings toward animals–and how we can avoid letting our sympathy become a “zero sum game.”
I am a strong proponent of the idea that the things you loved most at age six are probably the things you should pursue for the rest of your life. The thing I loved at that age was animals. My first memory is of delightedly watching the sea lions at Monterey Aquarium. I can’t actually remember the fishy smell, the barking, or the antics of those particular sea lions, but I remember the feeling. And that same complex feeling—a mix of awe and joy and something I can only describe as love–that I felt watching those sea lions returns to me whenever I see an animal happy or in its natural habitat, living its wild animal life.
All children are fascinated by animals, even if not with the same intense, protective attachment I felt for them. The first time it occurred to me to feel guilty about caring so much for animals occurred after going to see the 1994 live-action version of The Jungle Book with my grandparents. My grandfather mentioned to my parents the way I’d cried when I thought Baloo the bear had died, but had been pleased when the human “bad guys” died. I felt rebuked, as I always have when someone has suggested that my emotions are excessive or inappropriate. Beyond that, the implication was that I cared more for animals than people. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d face that charge, and feel like I was somehow a species traitor. (Let’s just say no one was surprised when I became a vegetarian at fourteen.) But that experience with my grandparents was my first realization that a core part of my being might be viewed by others as emotional self-indulgence. Continue reading “Animal Feeling”
As pretty much anyone who’s ever met me can attest to, I have a lot of feelings. About everything. I have a lot of feelings about reproductive rights, education policy, the environment; I cry at the end of happy movies and sad movies and at emotionally charged scenes in the middle of movies; since the birth of my niece I even occasionally cry at commercials featuring babies. I’m not quite at Kristen Bell levels of emotional lability, but I’m pretty close. Traditionally, having an abundance of feelings has been associated with a lack of rational thought. Calling someone “emotional” is a hair’s breadth away from calling them “hysterical”; it signals an inherent “femininity,” an inability to think straight. “You’re being emotional” is used to dismiss women, whether they are calling out sexism or arguing about whose turn it is to clean. There are other variants on this theme: “Calm down,” “you’re just overreacting,” and my personal favorite, “is it that time of the month?”
But Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out, makes the best argument I have ever seen in mainstream media for the importance of emotions. The main “characters” of the film are the emotions of a cheerful 11 year-old girl, Riley, as she goes through a difficult transition in her life. Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) has been at the helm of Riley’s emotional “control center” since birth, but when the family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco, Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith) begins to take over.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t yet seen Inside Out, go watch it. Bring a pack of tissues. Then come back and keep reading.)
Image from @PixarInsideOut / Twitter. Inside Out is filled with clever visual gags and references to psychology, including a literal “Train of Thought” and “The Room of Abstract Thinking.”
Throughout Riley’s childhood, we see the way Joy, Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black), serve their purposes. Joy guides Riley happily through most of her life. Fear keeps her safe, Disgust stops her from being poisoned – physically or socially — and Anger both alerts Riley to what is unfair and gives her hockey game its verve. But over and over, Sadness is relegated to a corner; on the first day at a new school, Joy gives out assignments to the other three emotions, then draws a chalk circle, ordering Sadness not to leave. But in the tumult of the move, Sadness oversteps her bounds and puts her hands on some of Riley’s “core memories,” turning them from a joyful yellow to a melancholy blue. Sadness doesn’t mean to do any harm, she just does.
Joy and Sadness wind up in a tussle over these core memories, and the two of them are sucked up in a memory storage tube – one of Inside Out’s many clever literalizations of the inner workings of the mind — leaving Fear, Disgust, and Anger at the helm. Without Joy or Sadness, Riley becomes listless, irritable and withdrawn. She cries in class and hates herself for it. She snaps at her parents. In a misguided attempt to help bring Joy back into the fold, the three remaining emotions implant the idea – with a light-bulb, of course – of running away back to Minnesota (well, Anger and Disgust do. Fear wisely protests, but holds no sway over Anger). As Riley goes through with this plan, however, they realize their mistake, and try to get her to turn around. But, in a beautiful metaphor for depression, the controls no longer work. Riley is completely divorced from emotion, and in being so, is also completely divorced from reason.
Inside Out is a thoroughly researched film: director Peter Docter consulted at length with two well-established psychologists, Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman. In a New York Times article titled “The Science of Inside Out,” the two UC Berkeley psychologists make a case for the importance of emotion:
“Emotions organize – rather than disrupt – rational thinking…emotions guide our perception of the world… most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation.”
Of course, we can get over-emotional, but at their core, emotions alert us to what is happening in the world, and help us navigate our way through. Anger tells us when something is unfair to us, and can drive our sense of justice in the world. Without anger, we are complacent. Fear keeps us from doing things that might get us killed, and without it, we are reckless. Disgust alerts us to foods that might be poisonous, or social behaviors that might isolate us. Joy keeps us going. Of course, there are more than five emotions, but Docter wisely chose to keep the number of central characters low rather than try to achieve full psychological accuracy. The question at the heart of the film is “what does sadness do?”
In their efforts to get back to Riley’s control center, Joy and Sadness fight and separate; Joy falls into the abyss of lost memories. While stuck down there, carefully guarding her bag of core memories, she examines one of her favorites – Riley, buoyed on the shoulders of her hockey teammates, cheering wildly. But when Joy replays the memory (which she does by swiping – apparently, our memories operate on touchscreens), she sees blue, not yellow. She sees the moments leading up to Riley’s joyful rally with her friends; a forlorn Riley sits on a tree branch, head in her hands. Her team had just lost a big game, and she thinks it’s her fault. First, her sadness draws her parents to her, and then her team.
The people Riley loves and who love her are drawn to her sadness; because of her sadness, they protect her, they lift her up, they bring her joy. This is consistent with what many scientists believe is the evolutionary purpose of sadness and its teary manifestation.
In an earlier moment, Riley’s former imaginary friend Bing Bong is crying candy tears, too overwhelmed with mourning to help Joy and Sadness to the Train of Thought. Joy tries everything she can to cheer him up; she tickles him, she makes funny faces, all without success. Then Sadness sits down next to him. She doesn’t try to cheer him up. She doesn’t tell him not to be sad, or that things will be okay. She just acknowledges how he feels. She acknowledges the very real pain that comes with Bing Bong’s realization that he is no longer part of Riley’s life. She just lets him feel what he needs to feel. Soon, he feels okay again – despite the continuing sad circumstances which lead to his ultimate sacrifice – and is able to help Joy and Sadness on their journey.
“How did you do that?” Joy asks. “He just needed someone to talk to,” Sadness replied, “so I listened.”
As we see in the first part of the film, not all emotions – at least according to common perception – are created equal. Inside Out deals with the way in which Sadness tends to be looked down upon – something also touched upon by Allie Brosh in her chronicle of depression, and our own K.H. in her rocky start to graduate school. Like K.H., I have dealt with my fair share of depression; I have also experienced loss, sometimes of people far too young to die, and its accompanying grief. Often, the most well-intentioned people will say things like “are you feeling better?” or offer a well-meaning “chin up,” “pick yourself back up,” “it’s okay” – anyone who has been sad for a prolonged period of time (or, really, any period of time) has heard these things. Whether they come from a desire to make those around us happy or a deep discomfort with negative emotions, these responses can be damaging.
We would do well to take a cue from Sadness. At times, the best we can do for people struggling with difficult feelings is just sit down next to them and say, “I am sorry this is happening right now. I’m sure it hurts a lot. Take your time. I’m here.” Sometimes we need to know that it’s okay to be sad, that sadness is a perfectly logical reaction to some things in life. Sadness often responds best with room to be sad, rather than the frenetic distractions offered by Joy. It is only when Joy herself realizes Sadness’ power that she is able to get back to Riley’s control center, hand the reins to Sadness, and save their girl.
While I applaud Inside Out’s nuanced portrayal of Sadness, the movie did not give Anger the same treatment. And when you are a woman, or a person of color, anger becomes very complex indeed. When you move through a world that sometimes seems to hate you – a world that, at best, can make life very difficult for you – anger is, well, a totally rational response. I get angry when men go out of their way to intimidate me on the street, or go even further and grab at my body; I get angry when politicians who will never have to worry about getting pregnant do their best to strip me of my reproductive rights. How else am I supposed to react?
As E.Y. observed in her piece on #distractinglysexy, the policing of women’s bodies – our clothes, our makeup, the way we walk – is racialized in addition to being gendered. This certainly holds true for emotions, as well. The stereotype of the “angry black woman” forces many black women to be extra-demure, lest they get dismissed – or worse – for expressing even the tiniest hint of anger, no matter how justified. In the aftermath of the Charleston shooting, a narrative of forgiveness – a narrative, that is, of not showing anger – dominated the media. Roxane Gay argues that in looking for this narrative,
The call for forgiveness is a painfully familiar refrain when black people suffer. White people embrace narratives about forgiveness so they can pretend the world is a fairer place than it actually is, and that racism is merely a vestige of a painful past instead of this indelible part of our present… What white people are really asking for when they demand forgiveness from a traumatized community is absolution…I, for one, am done forgiving.
On a day-to-day basis, anger (along with fear and sadness) is policed along lines of both race and gender. If you are a woman, and angry, you are irrational. It’s that time of the month. You’re acting like a man (and not in one of the acceptable ways). If you are a black man, and angry, you are a threat. You’re out of control. If you are a black woman, and angry, you risk falling into either or both of the above categories, and getting pegged as an “angry black woman.” Often, it seems that only certain people are allowed to feel, or at least express anger. Of course, those who are allowed to express anger – white men – are not allowed to express “feminine” emotions like fear and sadness.
Our feelings can make us vulnerable, but that vulnerability can enforce a sense of community. And, perhaps even more importantly, without emotions, we are not highly-evolved, perfectly rational Vulcans. We are complacent, we are reckless, we are compassionless. We’re depressed, empty. We need to move beyond the idea that being emotional is “feminine” (as if that’s a bad thing) and weak, and that cold logic is always better. We also need to move beyond the idea that emotions and logic are at odds; one can be both intensely emotional and highly logical.
When Anger and Disgust (Fear is pretty meek) are at the helm of Riley’s command center, they decide she should go back to Minnesota to be happy again. But soon after implanting this idea in Riley’s mind, they realize it’s a pretty terrible one. However, as Riley’s depression worsens, her emotions are no longer able to influence her at all. Despite their best efforts, her three remaining emotions cannot make her turn around. She ignores her mother’s worried phone calls, and on a bus bound for Minnesota, she stares out the window, her face blank.
But just in the nick of time, Joy and Sadness make it back to the “command center.” Joy, having learned her lesson about Sadness’ power, steps back, pushing Sadness towards the controls. As soon as she is at the helm, Riley sits bolt upright, asks the bus-driver to let her off, and runs home as fast as she can, breaking down into tears as she crosses the threshold. At the end of the movie, Sadness saves the day, allowing Riley and her parents to reach a new level of empathy and understanding. Riley continues to be a happy, if slightly more somber, girl whose control center is shared equally by Joy and Sadness (and Anger when she’s on the ice).
Through Joy, Sadness, and the rest of the team, Inside Out provides its young audience with a crucial vocabulary for articulating emotions both celebrated and often unfairly maligned. The ability to discuss the importance of these emotions should not be underestimated—and these emotions, especially anger and sadness, should be divorced from questions of who is “allowed” to feel them.
Studio Ghibli’s latest and perhaps last offering, When Marnie Was There, is a strange and compelling turn into the Gothic, signaled to us by its abandoned mansion, haunted grain silo, and little girl maybe-ghost. But the movie also delves deeply into some of the studio’s best storytelling centered on the growing pains of young women, like its slightly lighter and more fantastic peers Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Like any good coming of age tale, it makes room for sweetness and allows for bitterness. But unlike its more famous counterparts Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Marnie’s focus is less on a magical world and more on the dark possibilities of self-loathing internalized by young women struggling to find their way and worth.
**no spoilers**
Image @ghibli_intl / Twitter
Studio Ghibli’s latest and perhaps last offering, When Marnie Was There, is a strange and compelling turn into the Gothic, signaled to us by its abandoned mansion, haunted grain silo, and little girl maybe-ghost. But the movie also delves deeply into some of the studio’s best storytelling centered on the growing pains of young women, like its slightly lighter and more fantastic peers Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Like any good coming of age tale, it makes room for sweetness and allows for bitterness. But unlike its more famous counterparts Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Marnie’s focus is less on a magical world and more on the dark possibilities of self-loathing internalized by young women struggling to find their way and worth.
Image @ghibli_intl / Twitter
Our protagonist, Anna, opens a window onto mixed, found, interracial families and issues with abandonment—themes that many Ghibli movies touch upon without exploring as fully as Marnie does. Primarily, this movie melds a ghostly mystery with the joy of struggling toward a fulfilling girlhood friendship. Is this movie feminist? Not overtly, perhaps not intentionally. But like the rest of Ghibli’s most memorable protagonists (Kiki, Chihiro/Sen, Mononoke, Arrietty, Ponyo—all young women!), Anna reminds us of the intermingled heart-swelling joy and pain of learning to like oneself, to struggle in a new and unfamiliar place, and to succeed. More than other Ghibli films I’ve seen, it is less about external struggle and more about learning to love oneself despite a self-perception of deep unhappiness, of self-dislike, and of failure.
Anna and Marnie. Image @ghibli_intl / Twitter
When Marnie Was There is a sentimental movie, one that works to bring emotion to the surface. Its resolution is, without giving too much away, fairly neat and obviously packed with emotional force. I admit, I am very susceptible to this. Ghibli movies, for me, have always toed the line between joyous consumption of the sentimental, and my ingrained, ~*disaffected youth*~ sense that to purely enjoy sentimentality is deeply uncool, deeply “unintellectual.” But the value of allowing oneself to both look at a text—movie, novel, whatever—with both uncritical pleasure and critical understanding cannot be overstated. When Marnie Was There reminds us both of loneliness (that preciously parsed intellectual theme) and its antidote, the love-laden ending. It allows us to live for a moment in that precious Ghibli world of mysterious harbor towns and windswept landscapes (isn’t it always windy in these movies?), where it’s always summer and it’s always possible to slowly, dreamily, be alright.
One of the great pleasures of being an academic (though I won’t be for too much longer!) is revisiting stories, TV shows, and movies I loved as a child with a more knowing eye, and getting new readings/explanations of these stories from other scholars. When I went to the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts this spring (with Acro Collective writers K.H., K.S., and A.C., no less!), one of my favorite papers was by scholar Kate Goddard on this weird and wonderful anime that I once picked up in my Ohio public library and was never able to forget (or…really understand). Here, Kate offers us a shorter introduction to the amazing and always-entertaining Revolutionary Girl Utena.
“Once upon a time, years and years ago, there was a little princess, and she was very sad, for her mother and father had died. Before the princess appeared a traveling prince riding upon a white horse. He had a regal bearing and a kind smile. The prince wrapped the princess in a rose-scented embrace and gently wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Little one,” he said, “who bears up alone in such deep sorrow. Never lose that strength or nobility, even when you grow up. I give you this to remember that day.”
“Will we meet again?”
“This ring will lead you to me, one day.”
“Perhaps the ring the prince gave her was an engagement ring. This was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him…that the princess vowed to become a prince herself one day. But was that really such a good idea?”
Thus begins the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, a visually stunning, densely layered, frequently surreal 39-episode series that poses the question of what it means to be a prince and whether it is possible to escape the binaries imposed by society. This opening narration frames the story in fairy tale language from the start, despite the fact that it is set in the modern day. Utena Tenjou is a student at Ohtori Academy who wears the male student uniform as a mark of her determination to become “a noble prince who saves princesses” like the mysterious, half-remembered figure who saved her from despair as a child after her parents’ deaths. Utena does not identify as male; rather, her goal is to take on the noble, dynamic, and protective role that a prince occupies in fairy-tale tradition. She is clear about her identity as a girl regardless of her choice in clothing and use of typically masculine pronouns (“boku”) in referring to herself. But as the opening narration suggest, the series continually questions whether Utena’s goal of becoming a prince is attainable — and even if it is, is it “a good idea”? On the surface, this might well seem problematic from a feminist perspective: is it only by forswearing feminine behavior and interests that a girl can lay claim to agency? Does gender essentialism mean that any attempt to challenge the prescribed norms is doomed from the start? But Revolutionary Girl Utena is more multi-layered than that, exploring the meaning of nobility and power through the trope of the prince while ultimately condemning the rigid binaries of its fairy tale framework. This series consciously undermines the societal “truths” set up by broad fairy tale traditions, first through Utena herself, as a “princess” who wants to become a prince, and eventually through Anthy Himemiya, the Rose Bride who is doomed to subservience to whoever wins her hand in a series of duels.
In the series, Utena inadvertently becomes caught up in a system of duels and intrigue when she challenges student council vice president Saionji for hurting her best friend Wakaba. Utena is led to a mysterious arena with an upside-down castle spinning above it, where the mysterious and quiet student Anthy Himemiya prepares her for the duel. When Utena wins the duel by knocking the rose from Saionji’s chest, she learns that as a result she is now “engaged to” Anthy, the Rose Bride who is bound to obey the victor of the duels. Utena initially wants nothing to do with the dueling system — and claims that despite what her attire may suggest, she is a “perfectly normal girl” who wants a “perfectly normal boy,” not a female fiancée (episode 2, “For Whom the Rose Smiles”), but as she gets to know Anthy she becomes increasingly resolved to protect her. Utena’s feelings for Anthy continue to grow as the anime progresses, blossoming into a devoted friendship and (while it remains understated in the series) romantic love as well. Over the course of the series Utena must duel the other members of the student council, who have the same Rose Crest ring that she does, and ultimately face the mastermind behind the dueling system, Anthy’s brother Akio, who may or may not be Utena’s childhood prince.
Utena and Anthy
Utena’s engagement to Anthy is a conscious queering of the system established by fairy-tale-style romance from the very start. However, the situation is also more complex than a princess in distress being rescued by a prince. Anthy is, in fact, effectively enslaved by the dueling system regardless of whom she is engaged to, for she is bound to obey her fiancé(e)’s every order, completely robbed of agency. This complicates Utena’s desire to “save” her through much of the series, raising questions as to whether she too is merely imposing her own wishes onto her “bride.” The Utena movie, titled Adolescence of Utena, is something of a hybrid between a reboot and a sequel (leaning more towards the reboot side), and it has become renowned among anime fans for its bizarre and surreal elements. Watching the entire series does help substantially in providing coherence on many fronts, but rest assured, plenty of spectacularly bewildering elements will remain. The English dubs of the episodes and the movie are available online, but if you have the option, definitely go for the subbed versions.
The dueling arena
Revolutionary Girl Utena is visually stunning and fraught with allegory and symbolism that frequently ranges into the surreal. It is an excellent choice for those who enjoy analyzing their media and grappling with possible meanings; not as much for those who prefer their anime straightforward and easy to understand. However, there are many excellent fan analyses of various episodes and elements available online which can offer assistance to the bewildered. Potentially sensitive viewers should be warned that the series does include sexual situations of dubious consent, chiefly involving an incestuous pairing (brother/sister). No actual sex is shown on-screen and the relationship is not portrayed in a positive light, but viewers who are easily triggered should take this into consideration. Those who do elect to give this series a chance will find it a fascinating journey with marvelously developed characters and a sophisticated take on the themes of power, loss of innocence, and growing up.
Here at Acro Collective, our favorite saturday jokes are dad jokes, and our favorite Saturday sunshine sound is dad rock. S.A. slingshots us back into childhood with this sweet springtime dad rock playlist. Listen in, and don’t forget to call your pops today.
Here at Acro Collective, our favorite saturday jokes are dad jokes, and our favorite Saturday sunshine sound is dad rock. S.A. slingshots us back into childhood with this sweet springtime dad rock playlist. Listen in, and don’t forget to call your pops today.
My radio childhood comes in fragments of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and baseball. My dad used to call his secret friends and scheme their fantasy league while I leaned against the back seat window and covered my ears to what’s become so central to the way I’ve listened ever since. I’ve always assumed my dad was never self-conscious about how much I hated Dylan in my early teens; on my end, the horror of playing something in the car that he wouldn’t approve of hardly ever made it worth risking. It’s not a problem anymore. Years later and now an “adult,” I’m eternally jamming to the flexible genre of late ‘60s and early ‘70s dad rock.
Far be it from me to limit the purview of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Dad! Driving the fifteen-hour shot from Charlottesville, VA to Newport, RI with a friend of mine last summer was my most recent reminder that dad rock takes many shapes: my dad would probably shrivel into a raisin at the prospect of cruising the coast to the tune of Queen or Styx, just like if I had an EDM dad(???) I might’ve leaped out of that window that bore my preteen forehead for so many years. Take this, then, as an essential oil, or a certain brand of cigarette—this dad is of the contented springtime variety. For this Saturday afternoon, he’s really trying to relax.
My own Rock ‘n’ Roll Dad probably wouldn’t sign off on everything in here, but in all honesty, I put some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard into this mix. George Harrison’s “Apple Scruffs” is hazy and elated, with melty harmonies that make me confused about where music could possibly come from. The Velvet Underground’s demo of “I Found A Reason” makes me want to spin around in personal circles until I take off like a joyful twenty-something UFO. The Zombies’ “This Will Be Our Year,” Johnny Cash’s cover of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Chunk of Coal,” and Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” are some of the happiest, most bare-facedly hopeful songs ever recorded. Since in the deep-dark heart of late ‘60’s-early ‘70’s Americana it’s hard to find exuberance unlaced with grief, lots of these tunes lean into the death-in-life undershadow: The Face’s bittersweet “Ooh La La,” Dylan’s lolling “Peggy Day,” The Byrds’ country crooning version of “Nothing Was Delivered,” Doug Sahm’s begging “Wallflower,” Love’s only sort of silly “Alone Again Or.” As always, Linda Ronstadt exalts in her pain, betting “No One Ever Hurt This Bad” before Nick Drake’s peripatetic “One of These Things First” and the Rolling Stones’ rollicking “Prodigal Son.”
The one I hold closest, though, is Townes Van Zandt’s “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” released in 1968 on his debut album, For the Sake of the Song. For the Sake of the Song housed what would become many of his big hits in the countriest form he’d ever play them, stripped down in subsequent albums as he honed his folk sound. “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” is the kind of song my dad would’ve played me when I was stubborn and little if he’d heard it first—it tumbles out of itself, with a cheery harmonica and up-tempo that dialogues quietly with lyrics that promise commitment so insistently that you can’t help but wonder what could’ve happened to make the narrator need to promise to begin with. Singing through the history of country and rock—borne of the myth of the family and the myth of the outlaw—Van Zandt swears an end to his rambling that “resolves” in the minor. Again, the undershadow; Alone Again Or; Little Miss Queen of Darkness. Thanks to my Rock ‘n’ Roll Dad for the reminder that rock ‘n’ roll is for thieves and profits, mooring its ships on tempered American turf.
![Studio Ghibli says goodbye with “When Marnie Was There” [Spoiler-Free Review]](https://acromag.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/marnie1.jpg?w=600)
acromag.wordpress.com 