This article will contain mild spoilers about Kill la Kill and will discuss sexuality and nudity and sexual abuse, but it WILL NOT describe any sexual content in detail.
(source)
First, what is sexual content? To give a definitive answer to this question would defeat the point of this article. Not only it depends on the person's culture and outlook, it almost always involve great double standards. But for the purposes of this article, anything might be sexual content if it is depiction of sex and genitals, including heavy euphemisms, nudity above midriff, underwear or anything with that function that only covers panty area. This description is good enough for us because it covers what general audience thinks when they say sexual content in Kill la Kill. However, it leaves us with a need of a criteria about when something becomes sexual, and for this article we will use following assumption:No part of story, event, phenomena, situation or depiction is inherently sexual.
This will be called asexual gaze, where lack-of-sexuality is the default. No one needs to agree with this view completely, in fact asking that would be quite unreasonable as sexual socialization is something learned early and only can be unlearned slowly and probably to a limited extent. This article is mostly interested in informing the reader that, such a perspective indeed exists. Also note that asexual gaze isn't purely developed for analysis, it is something I have realised in myself while discovering my asexuality.
Asexual gaze does not ignore the greater context which a particular depiction is surrounded by. In fact, this will be the metric we will use, sexual-coding. Sexual-coding is when a depiction is handled in a way underlying cultural context definitely points to sexuality. This is independent whether writers intend something to be viewed as sexual or not. It is also independent from audience reaction, whether a particular scene gets the viewer aroused or not is not very relevant. Sexual coding is not also a 0/1 switch, some depictions can be more heavily or lightly sexual than others.
A good example here is depiction of Quiet in Metal Gear Solid 5. Her partial nudity became so famous by to Hideo Kojima's infamous defense that this depiction makes sense by the lore of the character. The thing is accepting the lore about Quiet does not affect her sexual coding. The very model-like shape of her body, the contrast between the design of her attire and the setting she is in, the realistic graphics, all the lighting, water effects and camera shots utilized all communicate something with the viewer on a cultural level. Whether the audience finds Quiet titillating or not is not important. The developers might not have intended any sexual depiction for real, but that does not matter either. This is how coding works, no work can be isolated from the culture that created it. The elements that creates the depiction of Quiet can be overlooked on their own, but together they end up making her scenes very sexual, much more sexual than most scenes in Kill la Kill.
(just imagine bucket is Quiet)
Then, how should we analyze KLK? The show contains a large amount of scenes with nudity and uses its part of narrative; the usage of clothing as a stand in for fascism, for heterenormativity, for patriarchal expectations of women.. However, it would be also naive to claim that the show doesn't want the viewer indulge in nudity; at the end of the day it is a show aimed at teenagers. On the other hand, Kill la Kill was a show that definitely contributed to my realization that I am on asexual spectrum. For me, this anything else highlights there is something definitely more to this show.In mid-2000s, a certain art/animation style has gained popularity among anime. Very smooth looking visuals with bright colors, realistic proportions, facial animations aiming for a certain level of realism, objects are rarely distorted etc... It is what often people mean by "anime look"., which is very different from KLK's visuals. Chaotic and trippy animations, where things rarely stay in the same place, colors change widely, bodies change so much one can't be even sure of the actual height of characters. Most of the time it is not really pleasant, it gets almost sketchy where the drawn lines are deliberately made visible, objects generally have a very angular look but when things look round it gives the vibe of animation that is aimed at small children.
This visual style really lessens the sexual coding in the show. There is a reason why smooth-style is so popular, it makes producing "good-looking" anime rather easy, seasonal anime can hit at a certain aesthetic standard without much animation, a standard that is excellent for providing attractive anime girls to horny boys, with all the nice breast, legs, panty shots. For all its in-your-face sexuality, Kill la Kill avoids this for the most part. While yes, the transformations allow the audience enjoy the visuals somewhat, as I have said before this is not relevant to possibility of asexual gaze, they are mostly cartoonish and crude as most of the show itself. When characters have realistic bodies, they are either not depicted in revealing clothing or the scene is constructed as unsettling, like Satsuki being in captivity. (Contrast Ryuko in Senketsu vs Ryuko in casual clothing) Those who are not convinced of difference the visuals make can research the fan art about Kill la Kill, it makes the lack of sexual coding in the show quite clear.
(source)
That's not saying Kill la Kill is completely without sexual coding. And what there is often feels bad and cheap. There is the abuse of Satsuki by Ragyou, which is used as a quick and cheap way to establish Ragyou's alien and monstrous character, although the the show is geniunely sympathetic to Satsuki here and they don't go into much detail, the show still would be better without it. The other moments of major sexual tension are Ragyou and Rui forcing Jinketsu on Ryuko, which is both genious and although for a good end, really uncomfortable and a hypnotized Ryuko kissing Rui, also unsettling but it is mostly euphemism and they really emphasise the clothing symbolism, so I am giving it a pass. There is also Mankanshoku family, especially Barazou, peeping on Ryuko which is problematic and completely unneccessary, once again with the crude visuals the viewer isn't made to participate in it, so it is less annoying then it could be. And the fact that Ryuko is cannonically a teenager makes these worse, but once again if you conceptualize her as older, actually nothing changes in show, it exist because the silent "A shounen anime must contain a high school or teenagers rule". However, while they lower the quality of the show somewhat with their presense, the fact that they are unnecessary means it can be ignored without really taking away from the show none of this really breaks the asexual gaze overall.
There is a particular scene that solidifies the asexual gaze is the scene of Episode 24 before credits roll, where the whole cast finds themselves as a pile of nude bodies. It is hard to find a depiction which desexualizes nudity to this degree in all fiction. It absorbs all taboo, tension, intimacy, excitement, passion, awkwardness, creepiness and mystery from nudity; leaving nothing but a cold pile of meat, just as if one is looking at an anatomy book or a statue. It is so meaningful that the scene which symbolizes the triumph of nudity over clothing is where nudity becomes completely asexual. The show agrees with the asexual gaze and even goes as far as claiming that allosexual views nudity is a flaw that gets in the way of freedom.
(Tracking the source of a GIF is very difficult, but it's from the show itself)
On the whole, I find Kill la Kill very asexual, at least much more asexual than most anime, or even most fiction that involves sexual imagery; precisely because it wrestles with such imagery and reaches to an asexual conclusion. The show as a whole is more asexual than a random cleavage zoom-shot in most fiction because of this. The latter is much more sexual, it usually arises from context which is deliberately turned sexual, for audience participation. This is important because there is a nuance missing in calling nudity in KLK exploitative, which is probably even true to some extent. What makes nudity feel exploitative is that it being forcibly turned sexual in the first place. While the word is made meaningless and even used in bad faith, KLK is truly empowering to me because it fights back against exactly that. Of course this is not an easy fight, the show itself falls back to being quite problematic at times, neither the attitude of producers, marketing, nor the commodification of sexuality helps. However, this is exactly one of the reason I love Kill la Kill so much. It truly rises above its creators, it points out to a future that we don't have to be surrounded by so much sexual coding in our daily lives, which is invaluable for people on asexual spectrum. It also tells that such a future can't be achieved without getting over our collective reluctance. There needs to be more meaningful discussions that does not end up calling all nudity in media bad, at the very least the whether cis men will masturbate something or not should not be the center issue.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder