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What Penguindrum Can Teach Us About Extremism


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Piglet the Grate



Joined: 25 May 2021
Posts: 520
Location: North America
PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:38 am Reply with quote
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For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm.


What is baffling about people reacting to being told that most everything they and their ancestors within memory believed in is both wrong and immoral? Of course they will flock to someone that contradicts that narrative.

As to who is right and wrong in that debate (or more likely the real world both being partially right and partially wrong), that needs to be in a different forum than an anime/manga/gaming website.

Regarding what Mawaru-Penguindrum can teach us about extremism, I have a problem with that question since three episodes in* my interest stalled out (for reasons that cannot really be verbalized**).

*What I have watched, since of course the series has been complete for over a decade.
**Similar to some finding Koguma in Super Cub eating breakfast while preparing her lunch in the morning boring to tears, while others (Me, Me, Me!) love watching such scenes.
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varmintx



Joined: 31 Jul 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:01 am Reply with quote
A global pandemic isn't exactly helping find that middle ground.

I also have to say, reading this reminded me that Zac was going to do an essay on Penguindrum, but never did. And now I am sad.
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ANN_Lynzee
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:10 pm Reply with quote
Piglet the Grate wrote:
Quote:
For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm.


What is baffling about people reacting to being told that most everything they and their ancestors within memory believed in is both wrong and immoral?


There's a lot to unpack and some assumptions in this statement that I don't agree with. First, it appears you're operating from a different understanding of what "alt-right" beliefs represent. Regardless of how it may be misused/ casually used in social media (personally I don't often see this happen but let's just get that goalpost shift out of the way), the term is professionally used (as in this article) to refer to white nationalism. For that to be applicable to your statement, you'd have to believe that the tenants of white, male, Christian, heterosexuality superiority are commonly taught for generations and facing any kind of resistance to those beliefs leads to further radicalization. The "superiority" is the hinge here and any acceptance of views that don't conform, or any consideration that won't allow them to actively deny others (protection from discrimination) are treated as active threats to their personal life.
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VORTIA
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Joined: 26 Jul 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:25 pm Reply with quote
ANN_Lynzee wrote:
Piglet the Grate wrote:
Quote:
For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm.


What is baffling about people reacting to being told that most everything they and their ancestors within memory believed in is both wrong and immoral?


For that to be applicable to your statement, you'd have to believe that the tenants of white, male, Christian, heterosexuality superiority are commonly taught for generations and facing any kind of resistance to those beliefs leads to further radicalization.


Surely, you can acknowledge that there are those who are sloppy in equating differing economic, social, and cultural views with ideological white supremacy, and that actual white supremacists actively encourage this because it alienates those they'd like to recruit. The concept is right there in the article - extremism stims from loneliness that stems from ostracism. You can't prevent loneliness, and thus extremism, by ostracizing people.
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ANN_Lynzee
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:42 pm Reply with quote
I'm extremely aware of what the article says and that what it proposes is a need to find a way to reach people who are targeted by alt-right groups because of their feelings of isolation. Cults and radical ideologies target loners and outcasts intentionally and it's a multi-faceted issue beyond things like "why do people not want me around when I say mean things about minorities?"

The argument I'm responding to is that white supremacy is baked in for generations of family and cultural beliefs and it's a normal outcome for someone to turn to when faced with opposition. There might be inklings of it and it's certainly more casually prevalent NOW thanks to certain popular media personalities, but most people can accept "you believe in something I disagree with" and not put on a polo shirt, light a tiki torch, and yell about Jewish conspiracy theories. The pipeline is more complicated than that.
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Piglet the Grate



Joined: 25 May 2021
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:37 pm Reply with quote
ANN_Lynzee wrote:
...For that to be applicable to your statement, you'd have to believe that the tenants of white, male, Christian, heterosexuality superiority are commonly taught for generations...


Persons that have gone as I did to elementary school in a Midwest farming community in the 1970s where the "minorities" were European descent Christians who did not have great-grandparents in the local cemetery, and the closest synagogues and mosques were more than 100 miles away, would understand. At least half the jokes told on the school bus or during recess involved racial or ethnic slurs, and as example a common item such as a comb with a handle was called a "N*****-beater" in front of the teachers with no reprimand. A popular recess game where the person with the ball group tackled was called "Smear the Queer". Most of the children had never seen a racial minority outside of a field to to one of the large cities, nor had most ever met someone who was openly non-Christian or non-heterosexual. I did not hold those views having come from a cosmopolitan Canadian city, but I knew to keep my mouth shut unless I wanted to get a beating from the other children (likely the teachers would have looked the other way at said beating once they discerned the cause).

Many people growing up in the above environment feel threatened by mere legalization of racial equality and non-persecution of different (from conservative Christian approved) sexuality, much less any type of promotion of multiculturalism, etc. But most will not see this, since they have learned to keep their mouths shut unless they are with their own kind (or someone such as myself who can pass for one if I choose due to spending half my childhood in such an environment).
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moony_badger



Joined: 17 Feb 2021
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 3:29 pm Reply with quote
Really great article. Penguindrum's always been one of my favorite shows and while I knew that the gas attacks in Tokyo were a major influence on it, seeing how you laid it out really made me appreciate a lot of the creative decisions in the show even more (like the parallel between Momoka and the real-life schoolgirl).

I love how much heavy lifting the penguin metaphor is doing all throughout the show, not just with the iceberg/seal connection but also how the three siblings are compared to them; in that penguins are sea birds that can't fly and can't stay underwater forever, so they don't really have any one place they belong.
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nobahn
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 4:05 pm Reply with quote
VORTIA & Lynzee--

I never thought that I would be bringing up this topic in the ANN forums; but, to quote a line from "The Winslow Boy": "Will wonders never cease?"

There are two graduate-level books that neatly bookend each other.
  1. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

  2. Escape From Freedom ("The Fear of Freedom") by Erich Fromm.

These are graduate-level texts because the reader must be knowledgeable about world events that were common knowledge when they were respectively published.
Columbus School for Girls wrote:
Some see the world as essentially progressive, that over time we grow more advanced technologically, more confident in our abilities to control our destinies, more sure of our moral and ethical ascendence.
[...]
Others see human society as essentially governed by chance, by capricious and arbitrary
rulers who evoke hope, but govern through fear and the steel fingers of coercion.
[...]
Eric Hoffer, in his seminal work, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), viewed the post-war world at mid-century with trepidation. He found it difficult to explain the forces that had channeled the disillusion of trench warfare and poison gas, had established the foundation of Nazi fascist excess, perpetuated the prison of Soviet totalitarianism, painted the Red Sun of the People’s Revolution in Maoist China, launched nuclear destruction, or assembled the factories of death during the Holocaust. So much had depended on the creation of mass movements, coalitions of the willing, led by fanatics who preached a glorious future, yet preyed on the vulnerabilities of the frustrated and disengaged. This remains a controversial book, because Hoffer did not limit himself to political or nationalist movements, but also examined religious and social organizations that were subject to the same principles of mass identity. For Hoffer, those lost souls on earth, the poor, the sinners, the misfits, who listened to the witching song of an eternal future in a thousand-year Reich, a life after death in heaven, a jihadist martyrdom, who subordinated their individuality into the communal grey of a mass movement,* they themselves became the essential force for change.
Daily Philosophy wrote:
What is alienation?
The philosophy of Karl Marx (1818-1883) has been hugely influential throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. One of his best known concepts is the idea of “alienation” that describes how, in capitalist societies, human beings get estranged from their work and from themselves because of the way the production of goods is organised.

In the industrialised West, we now enjoy more freedom and more material wealth than ever before. But are we therefore happier?
This is the question that Fromm uses as his starting point. Think about it for a moment. If suddenly a genie came out of an Arabian lamp and granted you total freedom from all restrictions that society imposes upon you, how would this feel? Would this only be a source of happiness?

No, says Fromm. Freedom comes with another, often overlooked side. Being free also means having to take responsibility. It also means being more isolated and alienated from others. There is comfort in being unfree. Think of a small child, having no possessions, no own dwelling, not even the ability to make its own food or to decide how to spend its time. Every hour of its life is planned and managed by parents, schools, uncles and aunties, by the needs of its body, by the incomprehensible rules of a world that the child cannot even begin to understand. Still, as long as they are not suffering from extreme deprivation or poor health, small children are generally some of the happiest human beings: cheerful, relaxed, entirely free from anxiety and stress. How can this be?

Being embedded in a bigger world that takes away our decisions from us gives security and peace to our lives, says Fromm. The less we have to decide, the less we are to blame if things go wrong. Often, the low-paid employees in a company are the most cheerful and friendly people, while its managers are plagued by fear of failure, by stress, heart attacks, anxiety and sleeplessness.
[...]
More and more, we realise that freedom is not only a blessing but also a heavy burden. And if we cannot handle it, we might wish to “escape from freedom,” which is the title of one of Erich Fromm’s books.
[...]
Ways of escape
Fromm identifies three ways in which many people try to escape from that unwanted and threatening freedom.

One is authoritarianism, the attempt to give up one’s individuality and to become part of a collective, an authoritarian system that will tell us what to do. This can happen in two ways: we can either submit to the power of others, becoming passive like children and following the instructions that we are given. Or we can ourselves become authorities in such a system, the people who will lead others. In both cases, we would escape our own, separate identity and we would become part of a larger group that would either dictate or validate our choices.

The second way is what Fromm calls destructiveness. Being afraid of what the world might do to harm them, some will strike out against it, in order to destroy it first. We see examples of that all around us: in everyday brutality, vandalism, humiliation, crime and terrorism, says Fromm. Of course, we should probably not judge every kind of terrorism and crime in the same way. A father who steals food from a supermarket in order to feed his children is not a destructive vandal. And neither is a terrorist who is attacking a military installation in order to free his country from foreign occupation. But we all know the kinds of people Fromm has in mind here.

The third way of escaping from freedom is automaton conformity, as Fromm calls it. “Automaton” here means “robot”. This kind of escape is particularly suited to our modern, Western societies, which don’t offer many authoritarian hierarchies in which one could hide. So we hide in our mass culture instead. This is the same observation that we already saw in Richard Taylor’s book chapter: that for some people, life consists only in dressing like others do, in watching the same TV programs (Breaking Bad?), reading the same books (Harry Potter) and consuming the same culture as everyone else.

“If I look like, talk like, think like, feel like… everyone else in my society, then I disappear into the crowd, and I don’t need to acknowledge my freedom or take responsibility,” writes Fromm.

*Ghost in the Shell, anyone?
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Takkun4343



Joined: 19 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:35 pm Reply with quote
I watched all of Penguindrum over the course of my high school's Christmas break at the end of 2011, wrote down comments for it and everything, and the Aum Shinrikyo allegory went wayyyyy over my teenaged head, as did much of the rest of the symbolism the show had to offer. One could say that because I missed that commentary, my first experience watching the series was as pure as it gets.
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earl.m





PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:44 pm Reply with quote
nobahn wrote:
He found it difficult to explain the forces that had channeled the disillusion of trench warfare and poison gas, had established the foundation of Nazi fascist excess, perpetuated the prison of Soviet totalitarianism, painted the Red Sun of the People’s Revolution in Maoist China, launched nuclear destruction, or assembled the factories of death during the Holocaust.

Ghost in the Shell anyone?


Two points.

1. In that list, several of those things are not like the other. Trench warfare was merely an evolution due to changes in technology and tactics. And napalm raids on Tokyo alone actually killed more people than the atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

2. The Mamoru Oshii films? Maybe. Standalone Complex? Definitely. The original Masamune Shirow manga? Not so much.
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dm
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 6:06 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Kanba and Shoma suffer a similar fate when they give their lives to save Himari and Ringo. The anime ends with a shot of the boys discussing the meaning of Campanella's actions.


"The boys" implies that the two boys at the end are Kanba and Shoma (which I was tempted to do the last time I went through Penguindrum --- and the illustrations on the back cover and final pages of the final Japanese tankubon volume of the manga is pretty explicit in tying Shoma and Kanba to Giovanni and Campanella). This interpretation is complicated by the fact that we also see them, also discussing Night on the Galactic Railroad walking past the Takakura house at the very beginning of the series as well.

Very nice to bring up the Scorpion's fire. I did not know about that, and I think it fits well (perhaps it is worth noting that an image of the Scorpio constellation appears on the first page of the Penguindrum manga).

I don't remember the "first penguin" notion being mentioned in Penguindrum --- it was new to me when I encountered it in Aquatope on white sand.
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varmintx



Joined: 31 Jul 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 12:17 am Reply with quote
If you'd like some episode-by-episode interpretations, I remembered this now long-defunct blog's excellent write-ups that came out as each episode did. Helped a tremendous amount with decoding all the symbolism.
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BonusStage



Joined: 24 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:28 am Reply with quote
I'm not intimately familiar with Aum Shinrikyo, but from what I know of them they were founded by a guy who considered himself the reincarnation of Buddha who was very anti-American and felt America was going to bring about destruction to Japan. I'm not sure if isolation is what led him and the other members down that path, though. From what I've read there highly social people in that cult like doctors and other professions and not just outcasted loners. The leader was a Yoga instructor from what I've read.

Isolation can certain lead people down routes they normally wouldn't go down, though. Especially in the social media age where it's a lot easier for lonely, rejected individuals to find comradery in online communities. And when you're so ingrained into a certain group you generally start adapting to their beliefs. If you see your new group saying all their woes in life are because of the government or a certain groups of people, they start believing it, even if it's something farfetched like being told the reason you're not happy in life is because Jeff Bezos went into space on a rocket and it morphs into becoming a dogmatic ideal and rallying cry for people to get behind: whether they start to genuinely believe that stuff or they go along with it out of fear of being kicked out of the group and isolated again.

Another aspect I see getting a lot more common these days is parasocial relationships with streamers and other online content creators happening because individuals feel they have no friends or bonds, and the only human interaction they regularly see are the streamers and hosts. This doesn't always lead to extremism, though. Sometimes people just want to play games with them and will do anything for attention and to get noticed. But in cases of political creators and streamers, it can certainly lead down that path. There's some fairly big political streamers on Twitch out there who no doubt have attracted people to their audience and cause out of a longing to find a group to belong in.

As it's been said, a lot of middle ground has been lost in this day and age, at least in online spheres. I'm thankful I've never really encountered anyone in real life who acts the way a lot of people do online when it comes to politics or beliefs. It never really comes up at work, social gatherings, and or even family reunions despite the supposed stereotype of people being at each others throats every Thanksgiving or Christmas. I have a bunch of family members with various ideologies existing in my family that act perfectly fine multiple times every year we all get together. I did grow up in the "no politics or religion at the dinner table" era though. I suppose at the end of the day my advise would be to try to find friends and connections in-person rather than in online spheres. Most people you'll meet in real life do not act the way a lot of online radicals do. Or at the very least, seek online communities that don't obsess over politics that it becomes their entire identity.
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Acinom



Joined: 04 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:54 am Reply with quote
varmintx wrote:

I also have to say, reading this reminded me that Zac was going to do an essay on Penguindrum, but never did. And now I am sad.

Same. I would have loved to hear Zac's thoughts. But I'm glad this essay exists.

Quote:
If you'd like some episode-by-episode interpretations, I remembered this now long-defunct blog's excellent write-ups that came out as each episode did. Helped a tremendous amount with decoding all the symbolism.

Thanks for this! I definitely want to revisit Penguindrum now Anime smile
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dm
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 9:29 am Reply with quote
varmintx wrote:
If you'd like some episode-by-episode interpretations, I remembered this now long-defunct blog's excellent write-ups that came out as each episode did. Helped a tremendous amount with decoding all the symbolism.


Seconded. That was a great blog thread.
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