Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Babylon Has a Whore Complex
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Well, this convinced me to try it out. Accusations of pretension usually do it for me.
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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We can try to ignore the elephant in the room all we like, but the fact of the matter is that if someone can keep finding work writing great big piles of bigotry, it's because a lot of people agree with that worldview, or at least find it palatable. The only reason any anime company would hire him is because they think people will watch the end product. And if they bring him back for round two (or more), it's because they guessed correctly. Probably no one is watching it just for the misogyny, of course. But, well, not being bothered by something blatantly hateful is, to some degree, a political stance. |
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Hatless
Posts: 12 |
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VerQuality: I’m still mad Kado’s plot ran out of ideas halfway through
kotomikun: as you say, it was a great big pile of bigotry ???? (Asking politely as possible: kotomikun, have you watched either of these great big piles of bigotry?) |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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You know there is a ton of anime aimed at people easily describable as incels right. Not saying that means it's bigoted but... |
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Hatless
Posts: 12 |
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Have you watched Babylon? Because saying it’s aimed at incels is such a Martian observation that I suspect the answer is no, but I don’t want to leap to conclusions. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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While I appreciate the viewpoint of those who see this as unadulterated misogyny, I don't share that view (yet) and am unwilling to dig in on one side or the other until the series is over, as there are too many unanswered questions at this point, and still abundant opportunities for it to save itself (but if Kado is any indication, those may yet be squandered, and since I'm weighing in here mostly on Babylon's side, it almost certainly will go belly up by the end).
At the moment, rather than an indictment of women's sexuality being the root of all evil, this looks more to me like an indictment of men's inability to control themselves, projecting their desires onto the women they desire and faulting those women for their own lack of self-control. It reminds me a lot of Lolita, where the story is told entirely from Humbert's point of view, and so she becomes a seductress in his eyes because he was seduced by his own desire for her. Ai also seems to have more of the Sirens legend going for her than the Whore of Babylon, though she only needs to whisper rather than sing to lure men (and women) to their deaths. Even Ai's "shapeshifting" seems to either be directly or metaphorically about men projecting onto her what they want to see, rather than the reality of who she is. So until that's better explained, along with her power as the suicide whisperer, I've got to withhold judgement of what this is ultimately trying to say. I also keep getting a less refined Johan (Monster) vibe from her, but I can't tell at this point whether that's just low-key appropriation of the mood, or if there's going to be something larger behind the sense that she was created to be the damaged but supremely manipulative person she is. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Both ProbablyTomorrow and Commander Cluck are more or less right: a whore complex is a term used to describe issues with the idea of promiscuous women still having the same self-worth as, say, someone who doesn't have a lot of sex. You see this a lot in cultures that buy into purity culture, places like Texas schools that teach abstinence-only sex ed rather than encouraging safe sex and/or sexual exploration. You'll usually see this term paired with a Madonna complex as "Madonna-Whore Complex", which apparently has different usages in psychoanalytics, but for laymen purposes, it boils down to "virginal women = good; promiscuous women = bad" for a whole host of societal reasons that are usually aimed at clamping down on female sexuality--but not male sexuality because boys will be boys, and gotta' sow them wild oats, am I right? /s For our purposes, Babylon hardly has any women in the show to begin with, and we don't really have a sweet, pure Madonna character to juxtapose Megase with, so this show is all whore complex, no Madonna. |
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Panino Manino
 Posts: 734 |
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I need know no more. 
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Halko
Posts: 107 |
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This entire concept is silly and stupid. The problem isnt with why are women looked at poorly for sleeping around but rather why arent men. Some jackass that slips his dick in any wet hole is just as bad as a woman that does the same. The whole virginal at marriage is just as stupid though just like pretty much every single black and white decision is absolutely retarded. Its not about how many people someone has slept but rather the why they did it. If someone is gonna bang anyone anywhere for any reason they probably are not a person you can be in a healthy relationship in any sense of the word unless you really get off on them sleeping around. This goes for both sexes. Freedom to express sexuality is fine and all but when it comes to a -relationship- your sexual nature is as much your business as it is your partners and someone that is promiscuous is a hard stop to anything healthy. Its perfectly reasonable to not be okay with someone thats slept with the entire football team. Having relationships that were somewhat serious and fell through is fine. Its all a matter of is this person gonna be unfaithful. The issue is as much or more of an issue of toxic masculinity as it is anything else. Guys getting a free pass on sleeping around is stupid as hell and gives men a bad name. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
Posts: 2346 |
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Ok this show is a text book example instead of something like fire force which has terrible fan service, but the only intentionally sexy charcter is seen as a very positive charcter and is not darried for being sex positive.
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2245 |
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I don't disagree with you, I just didn't want to derail the conversation by talking about masculinity when the show is primarily focused on "the evils of feminine wiles". |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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Thank you, I thought the term sounded familiar. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I highly doubt the writers of This Week in Anime would want to hear any sort of counter-argument to whatever it is they're saying. This seems to be their soap box, so let 'em continue to preach.
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 501 Location: Poland |
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Those of the defenders of the show that won't post any defense of the show with their one-liner posts aren't to convincing with their critiques, you know? If you don't like the article, say why you like it if we are to take you seriously. For now, only Gina Szanboti posted interesting post that was somewhat supportive of the show, however while I also had hopes that the Ai character will prove to be interesting because her ability might have made her someone with unique worldview or maybe indeed molded by visions projected on her like Gina said, I no longer bother to "withhold judgement" after the fatal last episode, which also turned everybody on the good guy side on this supposedly "intellectual" show into total morons in addition to butchering Ai (as complicated character) as well as literally butchering only other female character of note.
I agree with "Hatless" in that I don't think this was made for incels, even if they may appreciate it, but I do think that it is mainly a pretentious show trying to be intellectual that had some interesting ideas it failed to execute, and it does have real problems with female characters, seeing as one ends up as merely like a "fridged girlfriend", and the other one turn out to be simply an evil hypnotizing succubus. |
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Vent
 Posts: 318 |
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I would love to see an attempt at an argument that this show's political and philosophical arguments aren't completely bananas,
Not because I think it'd be coherent or convincing, but because it'd at least be entertaining. On the other hand I'm far less interested in an argument defending the show's the weird-ass treatment of women (or I guess woman, singular) because I already know exactly how that'd play out from past experience with this forum. |
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