Destroy All Podcasts DX Episode 93 Side B - Angel's Egg: Critical Analysis

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here.

I'm not TALKING about religion in this podcast, I'm talking about history, art history, and semiotics.

First off, I'm not defending or decrying Christianity either way in this podcast, and in fact, I didn't even bring it up. Jesus was a real person. This is historical fact. He was a rabbi who wanted to reform Judaism and came to be regarded by the Roman Empire as a dissident who was destabilizing things in some areas of their empire, so they executed him. Again, this is historical fact.

I was also not suggesting we could read words actually written by Jesus and I'm aware that much of what became Christianity was created by Paul and others after his death, but Jesus was still a real human being that actually lived. Whether you believe he was in some way divine or not, he was an actual historical person.

The reason I was talking about this and the reason I mentioned the Crusades was to point out that Jesus is not responsible for everything people have done in his name. The Inquisition is another great example of this. Oshii's film makes no distinction between Jesus, Christianity, JAPANESE Christianity, or radical mideval Christianity or anything like that. In fact, all we have are a few SYMBOLS of Jesus or Christianity.

This is also why I brought up medieval and renaissance religious art. Even though they are depicting Jesus completely differently than he probably looked, there are a few symbols that represent Jesus in almost all of his appearances in art. There's the stigmata, there's the cross, there's the beard, and frequently there's a halo of some type. Oshii has the cross and MAYBE the stigmata.

This Christ figure has very very few of the signifiers of Jesus as portrayed in 2,000 years of art. If semiotics is failing us because there's only one or two of the common symbols of Jesus in this movie, we have to move on to the text, where the Christ-like character does not act in any way shape or form like Christ. So the question is, is this really intended to represent Christ? This is one of the reasons I suggest there is no deeper meaning to this movie. If this is a criticism of Christianity, it's a very unfocused, unclear criticism of Christianity. This is not a satire like Dogma or Monty Python's Life of Brian or even Religulous. If it's critical, I'm not sure what it is critical OF. What aspects of Christianity does this film take issue with? What is the argument? I have no idea and I don't think Oshii does either.

As for the "Jews killed Jesus" thing, by the time Constantine ended the persecution of Christians, the Roman empire had been throwing Christians to the lions for three hundred years. The Romans had a long history of treating Christians like crap. Now, my mother is the one who is deeply interested in the actual historical Jesus (as opposed to the Biblical one), not me, so I'm only going off my memories of what I've heard her say about the many, many books she's read on the subject, so maybe I'm wrong about the point in history that this came to pass, but it's still pretty clear that there was some rewriting of the story to make the Romans look better, regardless of when that rewriting happened.

Now, maybe it has nothing to do with Jesus as a person and is just using Jesus as a symbol for Christianity, which is fair enough, but my point is that there are a ton of signs that mean Jesus, both icons and philosophies, and Oshii has only selected the cross, which MEANS suffering, dying for someone else, and being stalwart in your beliefs. If he was so big on Christianity, he would KNOW this. I don't think he understands it that well. If he's just using it as a blunt symbol of Christianity as a whole, then he is being almost as bad as Anno in Evangelion, because that's not what it has meant in 2,000 years of art. There are definite connotations to the cross and if he chose to ignore them, that's bad form on his part.

This would be like using other well-known symbols without understanding their connotations, like using the Japanese sun icon that is all over flags and such to represent China. I mean, you can use a symbol any way you want, but these symbols have a LONG tradition of meaning behind them. You cannot just ignore that, or you end up with Evangelion.

If your goal as a creator is to ironically use a symbol in another context, that is certainly your right. However, that's not what Oshii is doing here. You can argue on the artistic merits of a work like the infamous Piss Christ all you want, but there's a definite ironic recontextualization of Christ happening in that work that is not happening here. Place the traditional symbolic version of Jesus (bearded, on the cross, stigmata, INRI written on a piece of "paper") in a new context (urine), and you are making a statement. It's unclear if the statement is that Jesus is human or that Jesus/Christianity are waste products/excrement, or that contemporary mankind has metaphorically urinated on the teachings of Jesus, or some other interpretation, but you can read several arguments from it. Human urine is a charged context.

Oshii, on the other hand, places a gothy steampunk pretty boy with a cross (maybe Jesus, maybe not) in a post-apocalyptic world full of living statues and ghost fish. A post-apocalyptic world full of living statues and ghost fish is not a charged context. The post-apocalyptic world is a sci-fi cliché that long ago lost all meaning through overuse, thanks to its massive overexposure from the 1950s on. What does egg-smashing post-apocalyptic Jesus MEAN? There is no inherent meaning in this post-apocalyptic environment and as I've previously mentioned, the fish don't appear to have any connection to the 2,000 years of fish symbolism that religious art has connected to Jesus.

I listened to Daryl's review on AWO and I don't believe his reading is at all anchored in the text. He says the fish are representative of people trying to "catch" something that they can never catch and doing collateral damage in the process. This ignores the fact that the people throwing the spears trying to catch the fish are ghostly statue-people. What the hell does that mean? Who are the ghostly statue people? Shouldn't it be the little girl who is trying and failing to "catch religion"?

I can also offer a completely contradictory reading that is just as based on the text. The faceless statue people represent the enemies of Jesus/Christianity and no matter how hard they try to ruin and spear Jesus/Christianity, they can never hit him. Becayse they do not believe, they can't even perceive Jesus completely. They will never destroy Jesus and his words. How about that? Now it's a pro-Christianity movie.

Again, this movie has no inherent meaning and uses these Christian symbols without regard for 2,000 years of meaning and without offering a new meaning. It's like Robot Bastard/Mike said: Oshii is just offering up an image, going, "Hey look, aren't I deep?"

"'I don't have to do anything with this, I just have to say it.' Oshii figures that he doesn't have to explain why the guy's Mighty Weapon is cross-shaped; he's just all 'Oh, Christians have a cross, this guy has a cross-shaped thing, it's symbolism and therefore intellectually worthy.'"

I agree with that statement.

Oshii is "hard to read" on purpose, because if you are excessively ambiguous, you don't actually have to say anything and other people will invent meaning where none exists, and hey, suddenly you're a visionary.

-Jeremy

Oh Foucault! Good to see you here! I've been enjoying your pendulum for years!

-Jeremy

If you prefer, we can talk about The Game.

-Jeremy

gamera67, you've been a member of this site for 10 hours.

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Consider this your only warning. I have no qualms about banning your IP.

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--
Sanjeev

Love you too, honey.

-Jeremy

No you're not....NOT if you're about to walk on a bag of flaming Loli-Poop when you're skimming on Wikipedia as a source of information for your debate....I'm just saying...beware of your arch-nemesis.

-R78