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Saturday Link of Interest
Shaenon K. Garrity on CLAMP, the roots of moe culture, and why Chobits is really freakin' disturbing.
I remember reading Chobits in high school and being really disturbed by how Hideki's love for Chi was framed as "pure" both despite of and because she was a) an artificially perfect being and b) had a vagina that could never be penetrated. But this essay really lays out exactly what's disturbing about all of that in a way that I didn't have the vocabulary to do back then.
Come to think of it, the whole "putting Chi's reset switch in her vagina as a test of the 'purity' of her future boyfriend" thing is REALLY disturbing on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the way that it frames vaginal penetration as the only type of sex that matters. The whole point of the "test" was that Chi was supposed to end up with a man who would love her despite never being able to have sex with her, and this is incredibly stupid because vaginal penetration isn't the only way to have sex. Except that in Chobits it clearly is. The whole thing is just another way in which the series as a whole embraces an extremely infantile, immature concept of sexuality: Not once do any of the characters ever consider that physical sex could ever be anything other than "penis goes into vagina." Heck, even that one time that Hideki had to stick his fingers inside of Chi to flip her switch was later hand-waved by the text as being not-actual-sex. Because if it ain't a penis in the vagina it just doesn't count, I guess.
I also kind of love Garrity's essay for calling out Deppey on his asinine assertion that men never fantasize about "sexless love." Clearly Deppey has never met any male otaku. Or any of the freakier male My Little Pony fans, either. (You know, the runs who run around the internet posting "FLUTTERSHY IS MY WAIFU" everywhere yet act horribly offended at the very idea that ponies might have sex or that people actually post pony-porn on the internet.) Or any of the male fans that flipped their shit over the Kannagi scandle. Etc, etc.
I remember reading Chobits in high school and being really disturbed by how Hideki's love for Chi was framed as "pure" both despite of and because she was a) an artificially perfect being and b) had a vagina that could never be penetrated. But this essay really lays out exactly what's disturbing about all of that in a way that I didn't have the vocabulary to do back then.
Come to think of it, the whole "putting Chi's reset switch in her vagina as a test of the 'purity' of her future boyfriend" thing is REALLY disturbing on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the way that it frames vaginal penetration as the only type of sex that matters. The whole point of the "test" was that Chi was supposed to end up with a man who would love her despite never being able to have sex with her, and this is incredibly stupid because vaginal penetration isn't the only way to have sex. Except that in Chobits it clearly is. The whole thing is just another way in which the series as a whole embraces an extremely infantile, immature concept of sexuality: Not once do any of the characters ever consider that physical sex could ever be anything other than "penis goes into vagina." Heck, even that one time that Hideki had to stick his fingers inside of Chi to flip her switch was later hand-waved by the text as being not-actual-sex. Because if it ain't a penis in the vagina it just doesn't count, I guess.
I also kind of love Garrity's essay for calling out Deppey on his asinine assertion that men never fantasize about "sexless love." Clearly Deppey has never met any male otaku. Or any of the freakier male My Little Pony fans, either. (You know, the runs who run around the internet posting "FLUTTERSHY IS MY WAIFU" everywhere yet act horribly offended at the very idea that ponies might have sex or that people actually post pony-porn on the internet.) Or any of the male fans that flipped their shit over the Kannagi scandle. Etc, etc.
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And the "can't have anything stuck up your vagina = can't have sex EVER" trope has shown up in multiple works including Chobits (I can't remember other examples at the moment, but I know they exist) and it never fails to make me bang my head against the nearest solid object. It just serves to make the characters look incredibly stupid and have them angsting over something that has an absurdly simple solution.
You know, the ones who run around the internet posting "FLUTTERSHY IS MY WAIFU" everywhere yet act horribly offended at the very idea that ponies might have sex or that people actually post pony-porn on the internet.
LOLOLOLOL oh fandom. And I think it's hilarious that that male reviewer thought Chobits was girl-aimed because of the moe aspects.
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It just serves to make the characters look incredibly stupid and have them angsting over something that has an absurdly simple solution.
Yup, pretty much this.
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I'm thinking there was another show with a similar premise, but it's slipping my mind at the moment.
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As for Chobits, it was actually the first fansub I ever watched, and I remember buying burned CDROMS from ebay with all the episodes on them cause I was stupid and didn't know any better at that point in my life. The on-switch gimmick didn't cause me to have deep ponderings on sexual ideologies to be honest, I just saw it as a cheap stunt.
I'll read the article later when I'm not at work.
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FTR it got so bad that the manga-ka even received death threats from angry fanboys. It's disgusting.
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(Anonymous) 2011-11-21 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)That's why I forgive CLAMP for Chobits, because how the universe was constructed step by step to fully illustrate their point. Every time characters decide that women relationships are too mysterious, too complicated, and too unfulfilling as opposed to persocoms, it becomes more and more apparent how far away from constructive reality anyone who actually believes that is.
Time has passed since then, but I'm beginning to wonder, between sales figures, marginalization of customers, and stuff like Toshio Okada's books, could we be seeing the beginning of a backlash against the whole moe movement, if you call it that?
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Mmm, you're giving CLAMP a lot more credit than I do. Even IF that's what CLAMP was trying to do with Chobits, I don't see how they succeeded in getting that message across. The fan reaction to the series, if nothing else, shows that failure.
could we be seeing the beginning of a backlash against the whole moe movement, if you call it that?
"Beginning"? There's been backlash against moe since the 80s.