Are many seemingly-symbolic elements merely spectacle or window-dressing? Sure. But windows need dressing. It makes them pretty.

Rosesareawesome101 wrote:

I dare anyone to tell me the point of the Cross shaped explosion in Evengelion aside from looking cool.

To make things seem more mysterious.

And to be in line with the entire, in the end relatively pointless but wholly eye-pull, Judeo-Christian motif.

Sometimes the point of things in entertainment is how they make you feel. That's why we have soundtracks for movies, really. They're not one-to-one symbol and symbolized, they're atmosphere.

I mean, to pull this back to Utena, the "wrong tape" scene in the movie: Is that there because it symbolically shows someone Anthy tortured and then Anthy's animal avatar attacked by Shiori's avatar? Or is it there, because a little silly bit of wtf right before the horrific revelations is a nice breather and puts the audience off guard? (Or, both?)

Is the strobing effect and fruit-breast smashing at the end of Hedwig and the Angry Inch symbolic, or does someone having a meltdown while a strobelight flickers madly just have a particular effect on the average viewer?

I'm not the absolute judge of these. You're not. Arguably, the author isn't either. If it works for an audience, it works for them.

Why do you hate 2001 so bad?

I agree with DD. 

The pointer in the Black Rose Arc, specifically Mikage, is actually a visual cue that lets us know time is passing in some scenes (such as that cat having kittens, if I remember correctly).  If it is symbolic of anything, it is symbolic of a "path" being prepared, or the specific bits and pieces of the world around Nemuro that lead him into making the decisions that he does.  They resemble the pointer mouse on some computers, because Nemuro is lauded and faulted for having both the intellect and the emotional capacity of a computer. 

But even if that isn't at all what you take away from it, that shit is fucking creepy, which is what the Black Rose Arc ultimately is.  In fact, not being able to understand why it is there, or having what its selecting not being at all thematically congruous adds to that sense of "something is very, very wrong here" during an otherwise normal, and in some contexts, boring character interactions.  There is just something interesting about that pointer! DD hit the nail on the head that some visual abstractions and oddities are not there solely to, or at all, represent some other idea entirely.  Sometimes they just make you feel a certain way, even if you don't know why.  The first time I watched Utena I had only half an idea what was happening during the finale, but I felt all the right things at all the right times, because a lot of the imagery was properly atmospheric and evocative even if I didn't know its meaning.


I think symbolism only really fails when it is both too obscure or vague to gain any meaning from, but at the same time is utterly critical to understanding the story because so little else was used to do it.  In such cases the symbolism was meant to a thing, and didn't do the thing.

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (06-26-2014 10:44:00 AM)