Incorruptible Good vs. Bureaucracy

     The runaway success of the critically-acclaimed anime One Punch Man is not something that should be discounted as a fluke or aberration within the visual media sphere. Indeed, it is rare for anime, a genre that is riddled with too many examples of the worst traits that entertainment has to offer, to produce something of such a great quality that it can be instantly recognized as having more to do than keep children entertained while they watch it on TV. This is not to say that the series is not entertaining, far from it in fact. But rather, the truth is that while One Punch Man puts on a great display of the typical good guy vs. bad guy punch-fest formula, it is also undercutting everything that it is showing and asking viewers to question themselves over what they are viewing.

     For those who do not know, One Punch Man is a teenager to young adult oriented anime whose premise centers on a hero, Saitama, who has become so powerful that he defeats every foe he faces with a single punch. Because of this, and also because he originally became a hero just for the fun of it, Saitama now finds his work as a hero and his life in general boring. This does not stop him from facing whatever foe may arise, but it does push him to question himself and what he is doing. The first episode of the series sums up the core idea of One Punch Man with the "Overwhelming power is boring as hell." line delivered by Saitama has he fells a one hundred foot-tall colossus with a single hit. The remainder of the series constantly reiterates this sentiment as it becomes more of a theme than a thesis for the series. So what is the thesis of One Punch Man then? The answer can be found in the most challenging obstacle that Saitama must face: bureaucracy. 

     The world that Saitama inhabits has a unique system in terms of how it handles its super heroes. Officially sanctioned heroes must apply and go through a rigorous physical and mental evaluation. Saitama (eventually) does so and sets records in every aspect of the physical evaluation where his performance is so strong that some would-be heroes leave simply after seeing him perform. However, the mental evaluation does not treat Saitama so kindly, as he fails it miserably and thus assigned to the lowest denomination for heroes: Class C. Out of the four hero classes, S, A, B, and C, heroes in the class that Saitama finds himself in must meet weekly quotas of heroics to stay sanctioned. They are also the first ones to be called away from potential threats as they are considered the weakest, and therefore useless against many, if not all, of the superhuman threats that arise. But Saitama is hardly deterred by his incorrect classification, but instead the classification deters the system that assigned it. Saitama is never assigned to any of the threats that he faces, and in one instance he practically has to ask permission to go fight. He is also subject to attempted initiation practices by other lower level heroes. But Saitama overcomes all of this by way of his unwavering determination.

     One can only imagine what might happen if Saitama were to be deterred by any of the non-villain foes that he comes up against. But he is not, and so he continues to fight in and for a system that barely values him at all. The show repeatedly demonstrates that Saitama is far more capable than any of the other heroes around him, but at the same time he is deemed to be beneath almost everyone else. Even after Saitama's hero rank increases, he moves from C class to B class, the resistance from the system does not dissipate, and in many ways it increases as well. Rumors are spread that he has cheated to achieve this rank, and other heroes that feel threatened by him become more hostile as well. Saitama is only present for the final fight of the series, which happens to be against a threat that is of the highest possible level, because he tagged along with his disciple who happens to be ranked in class S. 

     One Punch Man serves as a good exploration of a variety of concepts that are often only touched upon, or completely ignored in other series not only limited to the anime variety. While it is determined that there is not any physical threat to Saitama because of his power, the series introduces the seemingly unmountable obstacle of bureaucracy and all of the limitations that the system Saitama exists in attempts to impose on him. It is only when someone or something goes counter to the system that Saitama is able to perform as a hero and save the day. But when all the protocols are followed, almost nothing is accomplished, and yet the system continues to follow its standard order. Saitama is deemed to be an unstoppable force, but in the end his most dangerous enemy is that which claims to be on his side.    

 

Throne of Blood and Adaptation

     Of all of Akira Kurosawa's jidaigeki films, Throne of Blood (1957) holds a unique place in his film canon. While it is certainly not the most famous, Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954) are constantly vying against each other for that honor, Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth is something that is exceedingly rare in cinema, both when the film came out and even now. It is a Shakespeare adaptation that actually works as a film. 

     But to say that the film works is something of an ambiguous claim. Indeed, the film is unique in that it is less of a direct adaptation of the famed play, and more of an adaptation of the themes and characters that the play presents. Toshirô Mifune's Washizu is the titular character of the play, and it is a fortress known as Spider's Web Castle that he seeks to rule, not Scotland. The film is set during Japan's feudal period, and the main characters are all samurai warriors engaged in a bloody border conflict. It is because of these elements, not in spite of, that the film succeeds. The film, being made and set in Japan, does not even sound like a typical Shakespeare play partially because all of the dialogue is in Japanese. However, those who have watched other Kurosawa films will note that the dialogue of Throne of Blood is much more theatre-inspired than many of the director's other works.

     This is the first hint that something is truly different about Throne of Blood. While most of the characters in Kurosawa films, including his jidaigeki films, speak like you might hear an everyday person actually speak, the characters of Throne of Blood speak like they are in a play. The dialogue is far from a direct translation of Macbeth, but it is clearly drawn from the theatre. The dialogue is not the only way that the film's characters convey what needs to be said. Kurosawa is able to tell the viewer much about each of the characters by simply giving his actors masks. These are not literal masks as one might picture, but rather the principle actors' faces are meant to resemble the masks typical of the Japanese Noh theatre. Washizu holds his face in an almost permanent scowl, reminiscent of the warrior mask. His wife, Lady Asaji, bears makeup that transforms her face into a living embodiment of the mask meant to resemble a middle-aged woman, called the fukai or shakumi mask. Her mask later changes as she suffers more and more tragedy and slowly goes insane. Washizu, on the other hand, is a warrior to his bloody end.

     Through these means Kurosawa has succeeded in making the film his own. Once all the pieces have come together, Throne of Blood can only said to be an adaptation of Macbeth in the loosest sense of the word. The character archetypes are there, as are the relative circumstances that motivate their actions, but in the end the film is different enough from its source material that it cannot, and perhaps should not, be fairly called an adaptation. So the question arises: how should Throne of Blood be viewed? Should it be viewed as a Shakespeare adaptation even if doing so would betray much of what makes the film unique? Should it be viewed simply as a Kurosawa film even though this would ultimately not allow the full scope of all the of elements present in the film to be properly appreciated. The proper answer is likely neither of these. The most appropriate way to view and judge the film is simply as a film. This is not to say that all of the influences present in Throne of Blood should be discounted, quite the opposite in fact, but rather they should be appreciated as pieces of a whole, each equal in their own way. Kurosawa has indeed incorporated Shakespeare, but he has also incorporated Noh theatre, Japanese history, and a variety of other features that have made this film much more than a simple adaptation of an English play. Throne of Blood is its own film in the end, and it would be neglectful to judge it any other way.  

The Humanity in Blade Runner

     What is human? This question defines Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and even more so in The Final Cut (2007), from which the content of this reading is pulled. Early in the film the argument is made that the boundaries between human and non-human (in the film they are referred to as “replicants”) are crystal clear. The humans are the good guys, the ones who deserve to live and are legal and free to do so on Earth. The replicants are stated to be none of these things. They are not born, they are made. They are illegal on Earth and any of them that come to Earth are marked for extermination. As the film says in reference to this process: “This was not called execution. It was called retirement.” These quasi-humans are not considered to have the ability to die. They are not human; they are essentially machines that are created for a singular purpose. However, as the plot of the film progresses it becomes increasingly clear that the lines between what is and is not human have been blurred. The protagonist of the film, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), is tasked with retiring a rogue group of replicants who have made their way to Earth. Through his eyes the audience bears witness to the systematic extermination of the fugitives, but through this process it is illustrated that even though the replicants are not human, they demonstrate more human characteristics than the actual humans that inhabit the film. This does not make them human, however, but their shared fate with humans, death, allows them to become essentially human.
     Throughout the film the human characters display few traits that would identify them as humans as opposed to the alternative. Deckard spends the film following the orders given to him, which are to terminate the replicants. Though he does initially show resistance to these orders, simply for the fact that he does not want to do them, he does eventually follow them almost all the way to completion. He needs only to be pointed in the right direction and he relentlessly carries out his orders to terminate the imposter humans. He only questions these orders after he meets a replicant that initially fools him into thinking that she is a human. This replicant, Rachael (Sean Young), also furthers the image of replicants as more human than human.

     Rachael’s introduction comes early in the film when Deckard travels to the Tyrell Corporation headquarters to see whether or not the standard replicant test is effective on the newest generation of them. The Tyrell headquarters are gigantic, pyramid-shaped buildings that tower over the entire city of Los Angeles. Within them dwells Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), the man who essentially created the quasi-humans. From the pyramids that house the practical god of the replicants, the sun can be seen. This is the only time in the entire film that the sun is visible in any way, and Tyrell is constantly bathed in it’s light. The other characters in the scene, Rachael and Deckard, are only ever partially in the light at most; there is always some sort of shadow covering part of them. Tyrell is not immune from the shadows, but he experiences more light than the other two characters and he is never completely immersed in shadow. The only character that experiences this is Rachael, whose back is toward the sun as Deckard administers the replicant test. As the test begins the light is removed from the room almost entirely. Rachael is made to be as human as possible, but when her humanity is tested the light vanishes from the one place in the entire film where it is present. After her in-humanity is proven, Rachael leaves the room, and, on a greater scale, the pyramid entirely. Her lack of humanity results in her leaving the house of the god. The light vanishes from the place of creation after it is proven that the god (Tyrell) cannot create a perfect false human. Deckard leaves the pyramid, never to return, and Tyrell stays, only to later be killed by one of the replicants he created. This follows the iconography of death that pyramids traditionally resemble and it follows with the overall tone of the inescapability of death. Rachael, who is said to be as close to human as possible, is also said to still have an expiration date. Despite the great efforts to grant her humanity by her creator, Rachael will still die.

     Rachael demonstrates the humanity of the replicants in a different way from the others in that she has been given the memories of a human. In this, Rachael breaks the fundamental boundary between the synthetics and the humans. Rachael has gained memories of emotions and as the film progresses she is shown to demonstrate emotions herself. Anger, after a dispute with Deckard. Fear, when Deckard explains that she will be hunted. This transcendence of the boundary between humans and replicants essentially make Rachael a human in almost every ways except for the fact that she was made and not born and that she has a premature expiration date.

     The core difference between Rachael and the other replicants, Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), Leon (Brion James), Pris (Daryl Hannah), and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), is that Rachael’s quasi-emotions are given to her through the experiences of an actual human being. In contrast, the emotions that are demonstrated by the other four fugitive replicants are solely products of their own experiences. They have come to Earth in search of their creator in the hope that they can prolong their rapidly expiring lifespan. This motivation alone shows some degree of fear, the fear of losing their lives and their memories. As Roy says, in reference to his memories as he dies: “All these moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain…” It is inferred, through Batty’s referencing to his memories, that these memories and experiences have gained value for Batty and that he fears the loss of these things. This fear alone pulls Batty towards the side of humanity.

     Deckard’s choice of weapon is a pistol, which is used on Zhora, Leon, and Pris. Each time it is used by Deckard there is a significant blood spray from the victim. In this the replicants are uniquely distinguished from the humans in the film, especially Deckard. When Zhora is shot there is a significant blood splatter as her shoulder practically explodes. The second time she is shot, which is the fatal shot, there is even more blood and by the time Zhora is lying dead on the ground her transparent jacket is streaked with a significant amount of blood. With Leon’s death there is significantly less blood, though his head does blow open as he is shot. This is interesting in that Leon is not actually killed by a human, but rather, by Rachael. His bloodless death puts him more in line with a machine than a human. Death by a human hand grants the replicants an essential trait of humanity: the ability to bleed. Death by anything else denies them this human ability and Leon is unceremoniously (his death is granted the least screen time of the four replicants and it is the only one not shown in slow motion) killed off.

     The final replicant death, Pris’, occurs with a significant amount of blood as she is shot in the abdomen three times. After the third shot Pris’ final death throngs are shown in slow motion as blood practically covers her chest and stomach as it flows from her wounds. The blood from Pris’ death alone is far more than the total amount of blood shown in the film that belongs to human characters. Even the opening scene, in which Leon shoots blade runner Holden, no blood is shown. The other two central characters deaths, those of Dr. Eldon Tyrell and J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), respectively, show minimal amounts of blood. As Roy crushes Tyrell’s head blood is briefly shown flowing across Roy’s hands. The death of J.F. Sebastian occurs off-screen and none of his blood is shown. Deckard himself is never shot or stabbed, he is simply punched, kicked, and the sort, all injuries that result in a minimal amount of Deckard’s blood being spilled. When Roy later attacks Deckard he choses to break his fingers, a bloodless injury.

     The fight between Deckard and Roy is the most interesting confrontation in the entire film. Instead of choosing to kill Deckard outright, Roy, realizing that his own life is about to end, choses to give Deckard a fighting chance. He beings by breaking Deckard’s fingers and giving him back his gun. He then gives Deckard a head start as proceeds to hardly take his pursuit with Deckard seriously. This is mostly due to Roy’s fading life and his preoccupation with it. As he stands in the window and he loses feeling in his right hand, Roy drives a nail through it in order to maintain feeling, control, and to prolong his life. As he does this blood flows from the wound. Shortly after pushing a nail through his hand, Roy uses the same hand to grab Deckard and save him from falling to his death. As Roy lifts Deckard back on to the building rooftop the nail is still present in his hand with blood still flowing from the wound. In this, Roy has demonstrated the ability to not only take life, but to save it as well.

     Roy’s saving of Deckard’s life is significant in that he has performed an action that Deckard himself never performs. Roy has saved the life of a human being, something that Deckard never does. Throughout the film Deckard is simply a killer. He almost the entirety of the film hunting the replicants and he never deviates from this activity. His single-minded nature does not allow his to pursue any other path than to kill the synthetic human as quickly as possible. The same can be said for all of the other human characters in the film. They simply perform their assigned tasks. Hannibal Chow makes eyes, J.F. Sebastian designs the genetics, and Rick Deckard hunts to kill. The replicants, however, perform many different tasks, from interrogation, to making friends, to finding jobs, and gathering information. And by using these skills they are able to manipulate humans to gain what they want and need. In this way, the replicants, not the humans, are the more versatile of the two.

     “Humans are greater than the machines they create.” This at first appears to be the thesis of Blade Runner. What the film demonstrates, however, is a meditation on the failure of humanity. The creations of humanity are murderous creatures that long to be like their creators. But, it is this longing that gives way to the replicants gaining their humanity. They fear their own premature deaths and they are willing to go to any lengths to extend their own lives. The fear of death that drives them grants them emotions, an essential trait of humans. As these emotions are played out, they develop the ability to pass for normal humans in practically every single way. And still death looms over them. When death is revealed to be inevitable, these synthetic humans first respond with violence, but this eventually gives way to a meditation on living and dying, and finally, acceptance. Death comes to the replicants and grants them their wish: to be human. Zhora and Pris die, and through the blood they spill, appear to be human as they die. Roy choses to give life to another before accepting his death, and in doing so achieves something none of the human characters could. Death unifies the two groups, but it is the replicants who show acceptance for the fate of all living things.