It's a gaping hole in her chest.

Kita-Ysabell wrote:

RE: Utena's hair.

I'd have to say I prefer it in the series as well.  My take on it is that he long flowy hair (somewhat princess-like, as mentioned) contrasts with the more masculine uniform to highlight the conflict between the roles that Utena is seeking to take on, (to be the prince and to be with the prince) and foreshadows the way she must address this conflict throughout the series.  With short hair, Utena's look is more uniformly masculine, and though this is probably more of a facade than anything, I feel it sort of looses sight of the idea of a girl struggling with the implications of femininity, which is kind of one of my favorite things about the show.  Yes, I will judge a work on whether or not I personally like the themes it explores.  Suck it.

What's more, there's the contrast between the straight hair and wavy hair or curly hair, which Anthy and Utena get switched in the movie.  In the show, I see Anthy's mass of wavy or curly hair as a symbol of her as something "untamed" and primal.  She's something unknown and unconquered, and she can be fiercely cruel to anyone, even the brother she is complicit with, and she's out of even her own control.  Utena, on the other hand, projects a self-image that is more "civilized" and consciously constructed, and trust me, no one's hair does what hers does without some work.  See also Saionji and Touga.  So while straight hair works on movie-Anthy, (she's in control and she knows it) I don't think I would describe movie-Utena as "primal."

Oh dear, I've just gone and closely analyzed a bunch of fictional people's hairstyles.  What.

But for most of the movie, outside the duels, Utena's hair is pulled up. Doesn't that count as "civilized"?

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

(Whether or not this is intended by any of the talent involved in the movie.)

Well, it fits the themes well enough!

Atropos wrote:

One thing many people don't notice about the movie is that at the beginning, Utena is Touga's princess. With this in mind, his actions take on a new light: it begins to look like he's intentionally distancing himself from her.

I "didn't notice" it because I completely disagree. Saying that implies that your interpretation is the actual truth and the rest of us are wrong for not seeing it. As I suggested earlier, what I think Utena feels for Touga at first is resentment and betrayal, which bears out in her angry and mistrustful manner toward him. She's anything but his princess at first, and his entire impetus during the movie is to make her into that - whether she likes it or not, and whether it's good for her or not. Distancing himself? He takes a number of steps to make sure he is always in her mind.

I could go on, but you know where to find the specifics. It's fine to have that as your viewpoint. Your own interpretation, your own personal canon. I may disagree and ask you to consider my arguments, but as long as you've done that, I won't tell you you're wrong. Saying that we "didn't notice" is another thing, though.

Last edited by Aelanie (12-29-2012 07:44:59 AM)

Atropos wrote:

It's a gaping hole in her chest.

I'm going to miss this when the thread gets to a new page and I don't have to scan down the page to the new posts and see this along the way.

Partly because it's something that comes to mind, for me, when people try to downplay the magical or metaphoric levels of SKU, but also because it's just funny. One of those rare times that sentence can ever been funny to anyone not a psychopath.

I don't know, in either version, that either of them is the other's savior. In the show, Anthy leaves of her own accord later. In the movie, they leave together, but they get out simply because they're the only ones who keep going. The bulk of the cast can go, they just turn around. And Shiori crashes because she's too caught up in competing and trying to prove something. The most support either gives the other, in the end, is the assistance of presence.

It's when Utena stops trying to fix Anthy or herself, and when Anthy stops manipulating Utena and manipulating herself, that they become potentially free of Ohtori.

(Maybe. I'm game to be unconvinced.)

What savior-ish dynamic do you see, in the end, Aelanie? Prince evidence?

Last edited by Decrescent Daytripper (12-29-2012 08:24:41 AM)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

What savior-ish dynamic do you see, in the end, Aelanie? Prince evidence?

Well, it's all written out above, and in my analyses, which I hope you've read. If not, please do me the honor. I know I keep mentioning them, but those four documents are truly precious to me. I really put all of my heart and mind into writing them as I struggled to figure out the movie for myself, and to me at least, I succeeded in forming a complete, meaningful and logically consistent picture of it. The weeks I spent writing them was a time filled with passion, purpose, and inspiration that I continue to remember with great fondness.

To be honest though, our views of the movie seem a little too fundamentally different. You see movie Utena and Anthy in a fundamentally more pessimistic way than I do, with more flaws, more selfishness. You can see from the above that I deeply feel their relationship was and is something that was mutually good and therapeutic for both of them, and that my general opinion of the movie is one of great optimism and positivity.

I feel that for a lot of people watching the movie, the series versions of the characters carry an unwarranted weight of influence on how the movie characters are perceived. I talk about that in my analyses too. If you read them and are still not convinced, that's fine. Their existence allows me to feel comfortable that I've already made the best arguments I could possibly make.

Last edited by Aelanie (12-29-2012 09:24:26 AM)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

I read the excerpt above, and I agree with much of it, but I don't see any of it as evidence explicitly of either being a prince/savior of the other, nor both simultaneously. I was hoping for something more concrete, I suppose, so I could weigh it against what I'm seeing and why.

Though I don't agree with your analysis on this (the prince/savior) aspect, please don't think I'm dismissive of it.

That actually wasn't from the analyses, but from a more general review of the Utena movie that I wrote on another site. My analyses do go into great detail about the specifics of the character's actions and reactions and my thoughts on each. However, if you heard my earnest request and still felt disinclined to read them, there's perhaps not much more I can say to convince you to do so.

Last edited by Aelanie (12-29-2012 09:40:38 AM)

It's not necessarily about giving up on childish dreams, but about breaking free of the world your parents and other adults made for you and creating your own stage. Utena and Anthy aren't grown up at the end of the movie, but they're free, and that's what matters.

I'm sorry I don't have more time/energy to do turn this into a more polished, integrated sort of thought, but the discussion of Anthy and Utena saving/being saved by each other reminded me of some stuff I've read.  I'll throw it out here, and if anyone feels like picking it up, good for them.  Seriously, good for them.

First of all, in "The Banking Concept of Education", Paolo Freire mentions/invents/what have you the term "mutual humanization," which I've found to be... somewhat enlightening? Interesting?  See, I said I had jack shit for brain power at the moment.

The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rabbit. The "humanism" of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons -- the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human.

Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.

But the humanist revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to materialize. From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them.

The banking concept does not admit to such partnership -- and necessarily so. To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for the role of student among students would be to undermine the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation.

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator. In this view, the person is not a conscious being (corpo consciente); he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty "mind" passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside. For example, my desk, my books, my coffee cup, all the objects before me, -- as bits of the world which surround me -- would be "inside" me, exactly as I am inside my study right now. This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects which surround me are simply accessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of them, but they are not inside me.

It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the educator's role is to regulate the way the world "enters into" the students. The teacher's task is to organize a process which already occurs spontaneously, to "fill" the students by making deposits of information which he of she considers to constitute true knowledge. (2) And since people "receive" the world as passive entities, education should make them more passive still, and adapt them to the world. The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is better 'fit" for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well suited for the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquility rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have created and how little they question it.

I think Fromm might have something to say on the subject, but he tends towards a romance-novel kind of interpretation (not to mention the hilarious/aggrevating-in-hindsight sort of heteronormativity) and I haven't got "The Art of Loving" on hand.

And I thought it wouldn't be available online unless you've got a subscription with a university, but hey!  Here's Emmanuel Ghent's "Masochism, Submission, Surrender: Masochism as a Perversion of Surrender" in which he discusses sadism and masochism (in the clinical sense, mind you, which is very different from the subculture sense) as failed attempts on the part of an individual to realize a sort of "true self" which, later in the essay, becomes equated with a sort of "inner strength".

In describing the course of an analysis, Winnicott (1954) wrote, "The false self gradually became a 'caretaker self, ' and only after years could a caretaker self become handed over to the analyst, the self surrender to the ego. ... The theory is being put forward of regression as part of the healing2 process" (p. 281). The yearning for surrender of this false self is emphasized by Winnicott: "The organization that makes regression useful has this quality distinct from the other defense organizations in that it carries with it the hope of a new opportunity (italics mine) for an unfreezing ..." (Winnicott, 1954). My point here has been to highlight the centrality, despite its buried secrecy, of a longing for the birth, or perhaps re-birth, of true self.

As tags of meaning begin to attach to our notion of surrender, it seems to take on the sense of being in some way the obverse of resistance. Resistance is the name given to motivational forces operating against growth or change and in the direction of maintenance of the status quo. Surrender might be thought of as reflective of some "force" towards growth, for which, interestingly, no satisfactory English word exists. Submission, on the other hand, either operates in the service of resistance, or is at best adaptive as an expedient. The superstructure of defensiveness, the protections against anxiety, shame, guilt, anger are, in a way, all deceptions, whether they take the form of denial, splitting, repression, rationalizations, evasions. Is it possible that deep down we long to give this up, to "come clean, " as part of an even more general longing to be known, recognized? Might this longing also be joined by a corresponding wish to know and recognize the other? As to the developmental origins of such longings I would locate them as being rooted in the primacy of object-seeking as a central motivational thrust in humans.

To develop further the meaning of surrender, some features that characterize it may be enumerated:

1.    It does not necessarily require another person's presence, except possibly as a guide. One may surrender "in
the presence of another, " not "to another" as in the case ofsubmission.

2.    Surrender is not a voluntary activity. One cannot choose to surrender, though one can choose to submit. One can provide facilitative conditions for surrender but cannot make it happen.

3.    It may be accompanied by a feeling of dread and death, and/or clarity, relief, even ecstasy.

4.    It is an experience of being "in the moment, " totally in the present, where past and future, the two tenses that require "mind" in the sense of secondary processes, have receded from consciousness.

5.    Its ultimate direction is the discovery of one's identity, one's sense of self, one's sense of wholeness, even one's sense of unity with other living beings. This is quite unlike submission in which the reverse happens: one feels one's self as a puppet in the power of another; one's sense of identity atrophies.

6.    In surrender there is an absence of domination and control; the reverse is true in the case of submission.

7.    It is easily confused with submission and often confounded with it for exploitative purposes. Certainly in life they are often found together. Considering the central thesis of this paper, that submission be viewed as a defensive mutant of surrender, this juxtaposition should not be surprising. (Nonetheless they are intrinsically very different.)

8.    The distinction I am making between surrender and submission helps clarify another pair that are often confused. Resignation accompanies submission; it is heavy and lugubrious. Acceptance can only happen with surrender. It transcends the conditions that evoked it. It is joyous in spirit and, like surrender, it happens; it cannot be made to happen.

In the West surrender has meant "defeat." In the East it has meant transcendence, liberation. In the West "ego", as used in the vernacular, has meant one's strength, rationality, a very close relative, until recently, of one's self. In the East "ego" has meant maya, (dream, the illusion of one's self), a concept close to Lacan's "the Imaginary" or Winnicott's "unit self" world of identifications and projections, or Fairbairn's closed inner world. The goal in all of these systems is the awakening from the "dream world." In the East, to quote Heinrich Zimmer (1954), "the primary concern—in striking contrast to the interest of modern philosophers of the West—has always been, not information but transformation, a radical changing of man's nature and ... a renovation of his understanding both of the outer world and of his own existence." Perhaps we see vestiges of this distinction in the schism between analysts whose emphasis is informational (insight is what cures) as against those for whom the focus is transformational (with cure comes insight). Seen in this light the controversial "short hour" of Lacan acquires new meaning, its intent and sometimes effect being to at least momentarily awaken the analysis and from the world of the Imaginary, the dream ... and perhaps provide a glimpse of something closer to the Real.

There might be an essay out there somewhere that gets closer to the heart of the matter, but I haven't run across it.  And once more, I apologize for the massive source-dump.  Maybe I'll come back later and do a proper analysis of it all and relate it to SKU instead of just quoting around the matter.

Edit: To bring the interpretation meter from "zero" to "slightly more than nothing," I think what I'm getting at bringing up these particular sources is that the movie depicts a paradigm shift on behalf of Anthy/Utena (if no one else) from that of a prince/princess dichotomy, in which one saves and one is saved, to that of mutual humanization, where they save each other and are simultaneously saved through the reflective witnessing of a "true self" in order to gain a sense of agency.

I also remember that I wanted to mention that, when reading the phrase "the prince is dead," one can either take the literal meaning, that "the prince" was a real, living person who underwent the literal process of literal death, or the figurative meaning similar to what is meant by "god is dead" or "the author is dead," that is, the idea of a prince was either irrelevant or false (i.e: there never was a prince) and this is now understood.  Given that this is SKU, I think it's safe to say that both interpretations are possible to some degree.  I happen to favor the idea that movie-Touga's death was as much suicidal as it was heroic, and his disappearance is the product of Utena accepting his "death" on both literal and figurative terms.

Bonus points for that in that I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that if you read suicides like Tarot cards, death by drowning represents the dissolution of self, in either that it is what the subject wishes for or that it is a recreation of what has already happened.  And in the series, Touga has no sense of self.  Fancy that.  Which is sort of what I mean by the idea that the movie doesn't really stand on its own.  And I'm starting to love it for that.

Last edited by Kita-Ysabell (12-29-2012 03:14:10 PM)

Lurv wrote:

I can see that as them becoming each other princes, but at the same time they enter the world in their birthday suits. Casting away their roles (including the prince role). Or something.

It might just be me, but couldn't that be linked to something like birth? Like, "the birth of a new life/start of a new chapter in life"?

This a spoiler-free review I wrote via MS words that sum my opinion on movie:

Revolutionary girl Utena: adolescence apocalypse in a nutshell

"This is a shit adaption of my favorite anime
It tries too hard to artsy
It really pretentious and shallow
The presentation is great but the plot is a disgrace"

"The Character are shit version of their Tv counterpart
Utena is a cliche version of his Tv self
Anthy is a passive aggressive whore in this movie
Saionji is one-dimensional
Touga is a walking plot p oint
Juri is a caricature version of herself
Miki is bland to point that he rarely seen in move
Shiori is even worse in this movie"

"Akio is absolute shit in this movie too
He is a pathetic to the point
that it insults me as a fan of his character

Every time I see him flipping over the hood of his car
while Shouting "Tou!", I die a little inside because of how
cringe worthy it is"
His death is the worst death scene I've seen in any anime it
comedic to the point that it depressing
The plot point that relate to specifically his car key obsession
are the worst aspects of a already terrible adaption" 
fuck the new Seiyuu they gave him
Mitsuhiro Oikawa voice is already annoying to listen to while singing but it much
worse when he voices akio
and it destroys his character while doing it
Fuck Movie-Akio and his Seiyuu"

"The symbolism is a step backward
While it more Surrealistic and artsy
It pretentious to the point that it not worth interpreting"

"The love story between Anthy and utena is great
but it a step backwards thanks to lack of emotional impact
and character development that the tv version had"

"The car scenes made me cringe alot
it pretentious and bizarre to the point
that it ruins the last 20 minute"

The movie is everything wrong with movie adaptions of anime these days; while the presentation was great, everything about the movie is a step backwards compared to the Tv series; while it takes many of concept of the tv series and them on crack and tries to please shippers; it still a step back compared to the masterpiece that was the Tv anime; it the worst kind of adaption, it completely changes everything we know about the source material and insult it fans while doing it; Thank you Ikuni for giving the fans of your Magnum-Opus this abomination of a adaption.

I hate this movie and if anyone the this shows fandom likes it better than the Tv-series because of visual and lesbianism should be impaled by the swords of hate.

Last edited by Rosesareawesome101 (02-23-2013 03:23:27 AM)