Blather on Narrative, Archetype, Modes, Friendship, Enneagram
Rambles in which Gungrave and the Iliad are a central examples for thinky thoughts on the nature of narrative, archetype, modal displacement, history, and personality typing.
Now that I've lost all my readers...
Gungrave has made a whole lot more sense to me since I figured out that its theme can be summed up as Achilles and Patroclus if they broke up. Of course, Achilles and Patroclus don't break up. Why? This begs comparison between ancient Greek epic and contemporary seinen anime.
[Spoilers for Gungrave]
Personality Profiles
I've argued elsewhere that Akira resembles the Iliad in some respects, but the relationship between Harry and Brandon is far closer to that between Achilles and Patroclus than the relationship between Kaneda and Tetsuo is. In fact, H/B and A/P reflect very similar interpersonal dynamics, a fact![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sixish shed light on the other day when introducing me to the Enneagram.
The Enneagram is a personality typing heuristic that identifies nine types based on "fixations," defensive tendencies that can lead to social problems if not understood and addressed. (Yes, it's a slightly negative approach to personality.) Each of these types, moreover, can lean in the direction of the type to either side. The direction of lean is referred to as a "wing." For example, a 2w3, is a type 2 who leans toward the characteristics of a 3.
sixish posits that Harry is an 8w7 and Brandon a 9w1, and I think she's undeniably correct. A very brief précis:
Eight: fixation = fear of being controlled. Take charge types.
Seven: fixation = being unconstrained. Active, energetic.
Nine: fixation = maintaining peace, avoiding conflict. Seekers of harmony.
One: fixation = idealism. They want to fix the ills of the world.
Now, this puts Harry and Brandon, at 8 and 9, right next to each other in the sequence, and while I agree with sixish that Harry leans toward 7, I think he can also swing toward 9. He also wants peace among this circle; he also feels most at home when things are harmonious. It may be this common 9 tendency that draws Harry and Brandon together: they are united in placing a high value on the harmony of their social group.
Achilles and Patroclus map out very close to the same. Patroclus is undoubtedly a 9w1, a person whose central fixation is his social role as maintainer of the peace in Achilles' sometimes fractious life. He also leans toward 1, having a strong sense of justice and concern for his fallen comrades and beleaguered compatriots. Achilles is less an 8 than Harry is. A strong controller would not exit the battle (and more or less abandon his army) to sulk in his tent. Yet I think Achilles is an 8: he does not want to be fucked with, even by the King. He may lean a bit more heavily 7 than Harry, having something of the free spirit who just wants to do his thing (dependent, of course, on which version of him you're looking at; I think he's more 7 in some tales of his pre-Trojan War life).
I can only conclude that this is a powerful combination of personalities for a hierarchical friendship: leader and seeker of harmony. The balancing effect of these two positions is obvious. So why do Harry and Brandon crash and Achilles and Patroclus don't?
Modal Displacement
I will be forever grateful for Northrop Frye's wheel of narrative modes, which--incomplete as it is--is a very useful concept for tracing the transformation of archetypes of across cultures. The Iliad, of course, is an epic (high mimetic).
Gungrave, a tragic anime based on a video game about the mafia in a fantasy 20th century America with zombies, was not something Frye accounted for. But here's my best shot at placing it modally: Gungrave is really two stories: the video game, which is about a guy shooting zombies, and the anime, which is about the tragic fall of a friendship. The zombies (and associated superpowers, etc.) would probably place the story in the mythic-ironic realm: the place where satire and silliness begin to lean toward the momentous supernatural tale again. However, in the anime, the zombies are fairly incidental. One could, for example, place the story in real-life 20th century America and nothing of any structural importance would be different. The tragedy of Gungrave, thus, falls into the naturalist genre: contemporary realism with an emphasis on its seedier side: it's a low-mimetic tragedy.
A crucial difference between the low-mimetic and high-mimetic forms of epic/tragedy (at least where the low mimetic is modern) is that the high form assumes a positive world order as the baseline from which narrative conflict deviates, while the low/modern form makes no such assumption. Both the Iliad and Gungrave (and for a third comparator Akira) take place in a war-torn world where life is often hell. But the Iliad assumes this as a temporary state. Before Helen's abduction, all was well. Once the war is over, the survivors will go home and, again, all will be well (not for the slaves, of course, but they don't really count). Achilles and Patroclus were raised in this "good" world order. They both come from privileged backgrounds as princes, children of loving parents, well cared for, well educated, always respected. It is not surprising, therefore, that their behavior reflects this. Crises aside, they are polite, hospitable, honorable, and generally well adjusted. No wonder they always treat each other well.
Our seinen anime, in contrast, offer no hope of a "right order" from which the narrative is a deviation. Akira is a frank dystopia, and Kaneda and Tetsuo juvenile delinquents who have never had social respect or security. Gungrave is not quite this bleak, but the pattern is similar. Harry and Brandon--like Kaneda and Tetsuo--meet as abused children in an orphanage and proceed to raise themselves on the mean streets. This the "healthiest" world order the series offers: the city overseen by Big Daddy's Millennion. Now, in contrast to Harry's zombie-enforced dictatorship, Big Daddy's Millennion may look like "the good old days," but let us not forget it, too, was a world of rampant crime, poverty, rape, lone sharks, and mafia protectionism. Harry and Brandon were raised in this world under tremendous psychological stress, which tells on both of them, especially Harry.
Both Achilles and Harry are Enneagram 8's. But only one of them becomes a mass murdering overlord. Achilles was raised to have power; he is well adjusted to handling it. Harry was raised powerless, parentless, poor, beaten as a child, living hand-to-mouth under constant threat of violence as an adolescent. His desire for "freedom," as he puts it--his 8's need not to be controlled--responds directly to his fear of the powerlessness that defined his formative years. He is so afraid of losing his power that he won't be content till he controls his whole world.
The scarring doesn't show so prominently in Brandon, but here too, his lack of positive adult role models clearly informs a moral confusion exacerbated by his native tendency as a 9 to place group cohesion above moral rectitude. Thus, he traps himself in a cycle of guilt over his own murderousness without being able to break away from the murderous world that defines his social relationships. Patroclus kills a lot of people too, but he simply doesn't have the same conflict between social cohesion and moral behavior. In his world, his killing is not criminal; it is simply a function of belonging to a warrior caste. He, in essence, functions according to appropriate adult role modeling, which Brandon lacked.
So while Achilles and Patroclus have no basis for significant interpersonal conflict, Harry and Brandon do. Harry's obsession with power clashes with Brandon's loyalties to people Harry wants to conquer and, less, with Brandon's persistent but confused sense of morality. Their conflict is generated by the broken world, which left them without proper instincts for consistently healthy social functioning.
This is the Friendship Story displaced along the wheel from classic epic to low-mimetic naturalism. It is the same archetype reimagined for the fallen world.
I have an in-joke with myself that Tori Amos has no Iliad songs, despite my turning to her for just about everything else. But she has a healthy contingent of Gungrave songs (I've mapped the story onto "Space Dog" and "Cloud on My Tongue," sometimes "Cornflake Girl"--yes, it's all Under the Pink: go figure). But because the archetype of the stories' core relationships is essentially the same, the gap that makes her discourse amenable to Gungrave but not the Iliad seems logically to correspond to modal displacement. Tori writes for the fallen world. Her songs express the confusion and complexity of lives and relationships that don't properly fit into one order. They express the unending yearning for a harmony that slips away.
Yet Gungrave ends in harmony. For that matter, so does Akira. The friendships triumph, and the order restored is not of the society but of the love between the individuals. I wonder if this is the essence of the Friendship archetype. Can it not finally be broken? Is that its meaning?
Now that I've lost all my readers...
Gungrave has made a whole lot more sense to me since I figured out that its theme can be summed up as Achilles and Patroclus if they broke up. Of course, Achilles and Patroclus don't break up. Why? This begs comparison between ancient Greek epic and contemporary seinen anime.
[Spoilers for Gungrave]
Personality Profiles
I've argued elsewhere that Akira resembles the Iliad in some respects, but the relationship between Harry and Brandon is far closer to that between Achilles and Patroclus than the relationship between Kaneda and Tetsuo is. In fact, H/B and A/P reflect very similar interpersonal dynamics, a fact
sixish shed light on the other day when introducing me to the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a personality typing heuristic that identifies nine types based on "fixations," defensive tendencies that can lead to social problems if not understood and addressed. (Yes, it's a slightly negative approach to personality.) Each of these types, moreover, can lean in the direction of the type to either side. The direction of lean is referred to as a "wing." For example, a 2w3, is a type 2 who leans toward the characteristics of a 3.
sixish posits that Harry is an 8w7 and Brandon a 9w1, and I think she's undeniably correct. A very brief précis:Eight: fixation = fear of being controlled. Take charge types.
Seven: fixation = being unconstrained. Active, energetic.
Nine: fixation = maintaining peace, avoiding conflict. Seekers of harmony.
One: fixation = idealism. They want to fix the ills of the world.
Now, this puts Harry and Brandon, at 8 and 9, right next to each other in the sequence, and while I agree with sixish that Harry leans toward 7, I think he can also swing toward 9. He also wants peace among this circle; he also feels most at home when things are harmonious. It may be this common 9 tendency that draws Harry and Brandon together: they are united in placing a high value on the harmony of their social group.
Achilles and Patroclus map out very close to the same. Patroclus is undoubtedly a 9w1, a person whose central fixation is his social role as maintainer of the peace in Achilles' sometimes fractious life. He also leans toward 1, having a strong sense of justice and concern for his fallen comrades and beleaguered compatriots. Achilles is less an 8 than Harry is. A strong controller would not exit the battle (and more or less abandon his army) to sulk in his tent. Yet I think Achilles is an 8: he does not want to be fucked with, even by the King. He may lean a bit more heavily 7 than Harry, having something of the free spirit who just wants to do his thing (dependent, of course, on which version of him you're looking at; I think he's more 7 in some tales of his pre-Trojan War life).
I can only conclude that this is a powerful combination of personalities for a hierarchical friendship: leader and seeker of harmony. The balancing effect of these two positions is obvious. So why do Harry and Brandon crash and Achilles and Patroclus don't?
Modal Displacement
I will be forever grateful for Northrop Frye's wheel of narrative modes, which--incomplete as it is--is a very useful concept for tracing the transformation of archetypes of across cultures. The Iliad, of course, is an epic (high mimetic).
Gungrave, a tragic anime based on a video game about the mafia in a fantasy 20th century America with zombies, was not something Frye accounted for. But here's my best shot at placing it modally: Gungrave is really two stories: the video game, which is about a guy shooting zombies, and the anime, which is about the tragic fall of a friendship. The zombies (and associated superpowers, etc.) would probably place the story in the mythic-ironic realm: the place where satire and silliness begin to lean toward the momentous supernatural tale again. However, in the anime, the zombies are fairly incidental. One could, for example, place the story in real-life 20th century America and nothing of any structural importance would be different. The tragedy of Gungrave, thus, falls into the naturalist genre: contemporary realism with an emphasis on its seedier side: it's a low-mimetic tragedy.
A crucial difference between the low-mimetic and high-mimetic forms of epic/tragedy (at least where the low mimetic is modern) is that the high form assumes a positive world order as the baseline from which narrative conflict deviates, while the low/modern form makes no such assumption. Both the Iliad and Gungrave (and for a third comparator Akira) take place in a war-torn world where life is often hell. But the Iliad assumes this as a temporary state. Before Helen's abduction, all was well. Once the war is over, the survivors will go home and, again, all will be well (not for the slaves, of course, but they don't really count). Achilles and Patroclus were raised in this "good" world order. They both come from privileged backgrounds as princes, children of loving parents, well cared for, well educated, always respected. It is not surprising, therefore, that their behavior reflects this. Crises aside, they are polite, hospitable, honorable, and generally well adjusted. No wonder they always treat each other well.
Our seinen anime, in contrast, offer no hope of a "right order" from which the narrative is a deviation. Akira is a frank dystopia, and Kaneda and Tetsuo juvenile delinquents who have never had social respect or security. Gungrave is not quite this bleak, but the pattern is similar. Harry and Brandon--like Kaneda and Tetsuo--meet as abused children in an orphanage and proceed to raise themselves on the mean streets. This the "healthiest" world order the series offers: the city overseen by Big Daddy's Millennion. Now, in contrast to Harry's zombie-enforced dictatorship, Big Daddy's Millennion may look like "the good old days," but let us not forget it, too, was a world of rampant crime, poverty, rape, lone sharks, and mafia protectionism. Harry and Brandon were raised in this world under tremendous psychological stress, which tells on both of them, especially Harry.
Both Achilles and Harry are Enneagram 8's. But only one of them becomes a mass murdering overlord. Achilles was raised to have power; he is well adjusted to handling it. Harry was raised powerless, parentless, poor, beaten as a child, living hand-to-mouth under constant threat of violence as an adolescent. His desire for "freedom," as he puts it--his 8's need not to be controlled--responds directly to his fear of the powerlessness that defined his formative years. He is so afraid of losing his power that he won't be content till he controls his whole world.
The scarring doesn't show so prominently in Brandon, but here too, his lack of positive adult role models clearly informs a moral confusion exacerbated by his native tendency as a 9 to place group cohesion above moral rectitude. Thus, he traps himself in a cycle of guilt over his own murderousness without being able to break away from the murderous world that defines his social relationships. Patroclus kills a lot of people too, but he simply doesn't have the same conflict between social cohesion and moral behavior. In his world, his killing is not criminal; it is simply a function of belonging to a warrior caste. He, in essence, functions according to appropriate adult role modeling, which Brandon lacked.
So while Achilles and Patroclus have no basis for significant interpersonal conflict, Harry and Brandon do. Harry's obsession with power clashes with Brandon's loyalties to people Harry wants to conquer and, less, with Brandon's persistent but confused sense of morality. Their conflict is generated by the broken world, which left them without proper instincts for consistently healthy social functioning.
This is the Friendship Story displaced along the wheel from classic epic to low-mimetic naturalism. It is the same archetype reimagined for the fallen world.
I have an in-joke with myself that Tori Amos has no Iliad songs, despite my turning to her for just about everything else. But she has a healthy contingent of Gungrave songs (I've mapped the story onto "Space Dog" and "Cloud on My Tongue," sometimes "Cornflake Girl"--yes, it's all Under the Pink: go figure). But because the archetype of the stories' core relationships is essentially the same, the gap that makes her discourse amenable to Gungrave but not the Iliad seems logically to correspond to modal displacement. Tori writes for the fallen world. Her songs express the confusion and complexity of lives and relationships that don't properly fit into one order. They express the unending yearning for a harmony that slips away.
Yet Gungrave ends in harmony. For that matter, so does Akira. The friendships triumph, and the order restored is not of the society but of the love between the individuals. I wonder if this is the essence of the Friendship archetype. Can it not finally be broken? Is that its meaning?