There've been a few threads in the SKU and Penguindrum forums recently that asked questions of the form, "why X?"  Why penguins?  Why duels?  And I notice that when we discuss those questions, we're sometimes talking at cross purposes.  We're not all really answering the same question, even when we are.  That made me think about what it means to ask Why?, and that led to this wall of text.  Warning: the following is super-pretentious.  I have no idea who will be interested in it.

I think "why" is probably the vaguest question word in English.  You can almost make a game out of experimenting with different flavors of "why."  Here are several compatible answers to what is nominally just one question.

Why did you steal that loaf of bread?
1. Because my family was starving.
2. Because I didn't have the money to buy it.
3. Because I thought the store owner wasn't looking.
4. Because that's how destiny planned it.
5. Because Victor Hugo wanted to establish a political setting.
6. Because all the others were moldy.

There are a few ways we could try to organize these answers.  For instance, some of them seem "deeper" than others.  #1 is very deep and explains the motivation behind the action of getting bread, but it doesn't explain why you stole bread instead of feeding your family some other way.  #2 helps answer that question; it is shallower, closer to the action, but without #1 it doesn't explain why you needed the bread in the first place.  #3 is even shallower; it explains why you thought you could get away with it, but gives us no hint about your motivations for getting bread or your reasons for stealing it instead of buying it.  But then what do we do with #4?  Is that deep or shallow, or is it something else entirely?  It seems to be related to #5, which also invokes a higher authority, but #5 seems to address purpose in a way that #4 doesn't -- does that make it deeper, or just different?  And #6 is answering a different question entirely: "Why did you steal that loaf of bread?"

I want to try to organize these different kinds of Why along two dimensions at once.  The first dimension I'll call specificity, and I'll recognize two different levels of it.  One level, the General Why, is a nihilistic Why: it asks, "why is there something rather than nothing?"  Answer #1 to the bread question is a General Why, because it explains why any action took place at all.  The other level, the Specific Why, is a relative Why: it asks, "why is there something rather than something else?"  Answer #2 is a Specific Why, because it explains why one action (stealing) took place instead of another action (buying).  So those are the two levels, General and Specific, of the first dimension.

The second dimension, which is especially important when we're analyzing media, has to do with whose purpose we're talking about.  I'll call this dimension immersion, which I think I can discern three levels of.  The bottom level is complete immersion: we are asking Why? from a standpoint completely within the universe where the action happens.  Answers #1 through #3 are all completely immersed, because they all deal with the motivation of the person who steals the bread.  The top level, conversely, is complete removal: we step completely outside the "fiction" of the universe where the action happens in order to answer the question.  Answer #4 is completely removed.  The reason for the bread-theft has nothing to do with bread or theft; it's just the inscrutable workings of destiny.  In between these levels, between complete immersion and complete removal, is what we might call an integrated stance: we are standing outside the fiction of the universe, but looking into it and making decisions based on a purpose related to what we see there.  Answer #5 is an integrated answer to the question.  It's an answer that explains the motive of an author instead of that of the thief -- this is why it's not completely immersed -- but it does involve the thief's motive, because Victor Hugo will use the thief's motive to achieve his objective of establishing a setting.

The crucial thing about all these kinds of Why? is that they are completely compatible with each other.  The same Why? question can have true answers on both levels of specificity and at all three levels of immersion.  And most answers will have clear locations on both dimensions.  As we've seen, Answer #2 is a specific answer that is immersed.  Answer #1 is a general answer that is immersed.  Answer #5 is a general answer that is integrated.  Answer #4 is a general answer that is removed.  When we look at Why? this way, there are six kinds of answers we can give: general or specific, and immersed, removed, or integrated.  Two by three is six.


And usually if we've only looked at one kind of Why?, we haven't completely answered a Why? question, especially about media.  I want to illustrate this with a question from a SKU thread: why are there duels in SKU?  Here are some of the answers that have been offered, or could be offered.

Why are there duels in SKU?
General-Immersed: Because only one person can have the power of revolution.  Because End of the World wants to make Utena into a prince.
Specific-Immersed: Because none of the characters feels like deciding who gets the power of revolution by sitting down and having a reasonable conversation.
General-Removed: Because conflict makes a show marketable.
Specific-Removed: Because there were already enough anime about fighting giant monsters.  Because Enokido and Saito liked The Three Musketeers better than The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
General-Integrated: Because Utena is a show about relationships, and dueling showcases relationships.  Because duels settle thematic arguments about reality between characters.
Specific-Integrated: Because fighting giant monsters together wouldn't have put the characters into regular conflict with each other.  Because duels have relevant and well-understood symbolic baggage that other formats for conflict do not.

All of these answers are true, but none of them is complete by itself.  I think different Why? questions invite people to focus on different kinds of answers, and it might be true that some people find some of these kinds of answers more interesting than others.  In this particular case, I don't find the removed answers very satisfying; I think the integrated answers are much more interesting.  But when we were talking about why Penguindrum uses penguins instead of something else (a specific Why? question), I was content to stop with the removed answer that penguins are an especially marketable mascot.  I'm not sure what the difference is.  Possibly it has something to do with my investment in the fiction, or maybe I think that in some sense all the explanations have to add up to 100% and I felt like "marketable" already covered most of it.

This concludes my rambling about Why? questions.  I may use the ideas here as a kind of note-to-self about the different kinds of explanation the next time a Why? question comes up for analysis, or to ask clearer Why? questions myself.