lavenderchedder asked:
I feel like all the Sasuke hate is misplaced. Either they don't truly understand his character or they HC him into something he's not. It's infuriating. It was my first time looking at that Holofernes bit and just...wow.
Sasuke hate being misplaced is putting it lightly. Frankly, it’s hard to pin-point the reasons behind it without some elaboration, but I’d do my best and try and keep this as concise as possible. The main problem with the lack of understanding is the lack of empathy; and by empathy I don’t mean emotional empathy but cognitive empathy. That’s the kind of empathy that’s required for the true understanding of various actors, real or fictional.
This argument’s fairly well-represented by Robert Wright in his fantastic piece “Suleimani’s assassination and the muddled moralism behind it”:
“My larger argument was that the authors of the Times piece suffered from a failure of “cognitive empathy”—a failure to put themselves in the shoes of the world’s various actors and see how the world looks to them. It apparently hadn’t occurred to these reporters that maybe American troops in Iraq, or American proxies fighting in Syria, look to Iran the way Soviet troops occupying Mexico, or Soviet proxies in El Salvador, would have looked to the US during the Cold War.
One of the surest ways to shut down cognitive empathy is to depict someone as an evil, implacable enemy. So, from the point of view of warmongers, depicting a country’s leaders that way is a twofer: it makes violence against them seem justified, and it makes exploring their perspective—an exercise that might undermine that justification—unlikely.American elites—politicians, commentators, think tankers—have been remarkably cooperative in sustaining the image of Iran as almost uniquely evil. Iran is “the most destabilizing country in the Middle East”—even though, by any objective reckoning, the United States is in the running for that title. Iran is the world’s “leading sponsor of terrorism,” even though settling on a single winner of that trophy, too, can get complicated, especially once you acknowledge that, as the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
The various kinds of moral disclaimers that critics of Trump’s killing of Suleimani engage in—he has blood on his hands, but; the world is better off without him, but; the killing was morally justified, but—also, in some small way, help sustain the image of Iran that has brought us to the brink of war. I realize that as a matter of rhetorical strategy, these kinds of disclaimers sometimes make sense. I’ve used them myself. I guess I’m just saying that, even though such tactics may sometimes be necessary, we should deploy them discerningly, mindful that they bring collateral damage.” Source
Here, “but” plays a very important role as it muddles the “morality”, casts doubt over the intentions of one actor, and presents a single side as the righteous one. Once that’s achieved, the other side’s painted in a single color, vilified as a singular source of evil, and its interpretation suffers similar consequences. It isn’t all that surprising that the same argumentation is used in the fictional discourse to not only interpret the narratives but also to create them:
“Sasuke’s a victim of genocide, but his clan was in the wrong. He suffered trauma, but others (?) suffered more. He wants to bring change, but he’s selfish. He experienced severe mental and physical torment, but Itachi (and others?) experienced worse. He’s somewhat sympathizable, but he’s abusive. He wants to change the system, but his methods are wrong. His clan was murdered, but they were involved in illegal operations. Etc.”
Like the whole “what versus why” problem (which I wrote about here), “but”, too, moves the argument away from the nature of the character. In that regard, it creates a rift between what the character’s meant to represent and what’s interpreted by the reader. As a result, Sasuke’s character assumes whatever comes after “but”. Whatever comes before it is ignored, distorted, and discarded in favor of deep-seated bias that’s based on many factors. As I’ve already highlighted in the previous post, “Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic” by Alister MacQuarrie” (here) pin-points the issue with the greatest accuracy: “the characters are made villainous when their ideologies take shape, not before it.”
That highlights an issue that’s mostly rooted in “projection” of all sorts, not just of non-political identity: we like what reflects us, not challenges us. Ai Weiwei’s documentary “Never Sorry” shows how intertwined one’s political beliefs are with one’s art:
Hence, if political beliefs are reflected by art, they aren’t simply reflective of the creator’s art but of the reader’s interpretations of art, as well, as elaborated on in Alister MacQuarrie’s article: Sasuke’s political philosophy simply doesn’t align with that of the readers, which is why the reactions to his character, along with his beliefs, range from apathy to outright hostility. There isn’t any reason to beat about the bush here. Many people are averse to the political doctrines that veer too far left of their own. As I explained here, it isn’t unsurprising to find striking similarities between centrist doctrines (that veer to the right and far-right fairly easily) and that of many Naruto readers.
The issue mainly exists in the method of reading itself. The reader, I’m afraid, is far more culpable here than the writer regardless of the framing he’s used; and how the reader interprets the work is largely a matter of hyper-consumerism these days. In order to elaborate on this, I’d use the fantastic work Franzen and the “Open-Minded but Essentially Untrained Fiction Reader” by Seth Studer and Ichiro Takayoshi (Source).
The essay takes the work The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and looks into the authenticity of the statement he made: “open-minded but essentially untrained fiction reader.” But what is the untrained or uncritical reader? The essay uses several parameters and uses Amazon reviews on the aforementioned work to elaborate on the concept:
“ … the consumers with a keen sense of entitlement, namely those readers who view purchasing and reading of literary works as part of an economic transaction … ”
You’d find many such examples on Naruto or other fiction works that center on the idea of “time as a commodity” in the interpretations from these readers: “I wasted 15 years!”, “Kishimoto didn’t respect my time!”, “I wasn’t respected as a reader”, etc., are often over-used to highlight this bizarre consumerist phenomenon in which the text itself becomes an economic transaction. This evokes a sense of entitlement in the readers: “I entered into a contract with the work, therefore, its content should satisfy my reasons for purchasing the said work.” This makes it less about criticism and more about the nature of readers’ preconceived biases that are based on the “expectations” they’ve created about the text regardless of the aims of the text itself. It isn’t about the text but what’s read into the text.
The essay highlights the go-to responses of the negative reviewers that are emblematic of the “contract-minded society”: “Negative reviewers react exactly as the contract-minded society expects them to react: as cheated consumers. Bitterly disappointed reviewers typically issue a ‘buyer beware’ warning, and this is where these reader reviews most resemble product reviews we find in other Amazon.com departments, like home electronics: ‘I’ve given up—halfway through the book. My advice—save your money. Luckily, I borrowed it from a fellow book club member’; 42 ‘I HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS I WANT TO READ TO WASTE TIME FORCING MYSELF TO READ THIS. DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY’; 43 ‘Trust me when I advise you not to use your hard earned money on this one. Borrow the book from a library or a friend (she’ll probably be happy to fish it out of the recycle box)’; 44 ‘Don’t waste your money or time’; 45 ‘I’ve put this one down smack dab in the middle. I cannot fathom wasting another moment of my life on this ill-conceived, unfocused piece of trash.’ ”
A lot of Western, especially American readers, have learned to bypass this whole thing as they don’t pay a cent for the manga volumes, but they enjoy this “nose turned up” contract-mindedness to the fullest; however, what’s this mindset based on? Identifying with aspects of content. You’d find many aspects of this term: relatable, likeable, identifiable, etc.; however, all of them are about the same aspect. Let’s look at some motifs that use this concept as a tool to craft an interpretation on grounds of realism and character development (the most cherished terms of many a self-proclaimed internet-critics):
“There are three at least: verisimilitude, recognizability, and care. First, verisimilitude: characters and, to a lesser extent, the plot must follow the basic canons of plausibility and probability. Stated otherwise, for a character to qualify as “realistic,” the readers must be able to agree that someone may plausibly think and act like the fictional character they are reading about given the situation furnished by the plot. And verisimilitude in this sense gives the story an attribute that many readers vaguely call ‘believable’.
Second, recognizability: characters’ traits, behaviors, and inner lives have to evince some degree of familiarity. For many readers commenting on the realism of character development, that these characters obey certain basic laws of physics, psychology, and physiology is necessary but not sufficient. These readers demand to be given representations of mental states and outward behaviors that they can recognize as their own.
This reviewer essentially equates the entire alchemy of “characterization” with the crafting of care-worthy characters.”
All right, does Sasuke fit these criteria that are quite fuzzy in the way in which they develop the boundaries? Verisimilitude is subject to many things. Not all plots are the same, not all situations are the same, and not all contexts are the same. Hence, what constitutes as verisimilitude for one character in one situation might not for the same in another. The recognizability and care make the argument even fuzzier. What makes up as “basic laws” in regard to the character in question? Is one basic law applicable to all basic situations? If so, then how does it account for complicated laws and complicated situations? Are complicated laws more suitable for basic situations and vice versa? Since the whole argument of verisimilitude is limited to one’s own perceptions, the concept of “projection” becomes the only tool for interpretation and the subsequent care: “I don’t find genocide relatable, therefore, I can’t imagine why Sasuke wouldn’t choose X instead of Y”; “I don’t find filial piety relatable, therefore, I can’t imagine why Sasuke wouldn’t choose X instead of Y”; “I don’t find betrayal of state to be relatable, therefore, I can’t imagine why Sasuke wouldn’t choose X instead of Y”; etc.; “and since I find none of his choices relatable, I don’t or can’t care about the character; and since I don’t or can’t care about the character, I don’t like the character; and since I don’t or can’t like the character, it lacks verisimilitude and is therefore poorly written.”
This is the sort of “elementary school child’s analytical” pattern you’d see repeated across many narratives, fictional or real. Readers in general lack the critical tools and the needed intellectual capacity to ascertain, understand, and absorb the aspects of “cognitive empathy”. As their source is their own highly skewed perception, they choose not to tread too far into the familiar as they don’t want any challenge posed to the said perception; they want affirmation that’s rooted in validation through recognizability. What isn’t recognizable isn’t written well; what’s recognizable is written well. In the end, the whole context hinges about the interpretations of “me, myself, and I”, not context. Once you look at it from this angle, Sasuke’s entire characterization becomes a source of constant scrutiny.
The other factors that determine recognizability are “likeability” and “dislikeability”:
“Literary scholars have also passed over these common readerly reactions that, for the critical reader, are perhaps the most galling characteristic of uncritical reading. Even James Wood, at whose practical criticism more academy-oriented scholars often look askance, cannot quite contain his disdain for amateur appraisers of literary excellence: ‘A glance at the thousands of foolish ‘reader reviews’ on Amazon.com, with their complaints about 'dislikeable characters,’ confirms a contagion of moralizing niceness.’ ”
The essay goes on further to add: “Yet, this initial agreement on the unlikeability of characters bifurcates into two contrasting judgments: 1) disapproving reviewers who find the characters dislikeable, which ruins the “pleasure of reading” (a concept that we will examine shortly) and 2) favorable reviewers who enjoy the novel despite the fact they find the characters dislikeable.”
As these two factors are closely linked with recognizability, Sasuke’s character again gets hurled into the war-zone of likeable versus unlikeable, and the “critical reading” is forgotten in the quagmire of what’s recognizble with the reader himself, not the character: “I find the anti-State stance to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke’s unlikeable”; “I find treason to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke’s unlikeable”; “I find vicious anger to be unlikeable, therefore, Sasuke’s unlikeable”; etc. In order to reach the perfect recognizability, the very characterization itself becomes a topic of contention.
The essay highlights this well through various examples:
“Again and again, aggravated reviewers deplore and protest Franzen’s perverse fascination with ugly feelings, abnormal behaviors, irresponsible life choices, and dark themes. The Lamberts are dislikeable because they are ‘dysfunctional,’ ‘self-destructive,’ or ‘gross.’ 61 The believability and even the recognizability of their pathologies are not contested. Their very negativity is in fact amplified by their lifelike verisimilitude and repels these readers even more … the untrained readers enjoy well-adjusted and positive-thinking people, uplifting stories, and happy endings.”
And still more:
“The first group of reviewers—those who claim that empathy alone is not sufficient, that sympathy for likeable characters is necessary for fun and pleasure—roughly divide themselves into two groups: A) those who moralistically upbraid the author and the characters and B) those who view their liking or disliking the characters as an accident of personal taste, a reaction for which the reader alone is responsible … A considerable number, we found, write about the enjoyability of the novel in the same way that some moralistic reviewers write about the likeability of characters, that is, as though these pleasures are a fluke, a result of the serendipitous encounter of a right commodity with a right customer.”
As you can see, the arguments are quite perfectly similar across these wildly different topics (political and fictional): Sasuke’s character isn’t wholesome as he’s self-destructive, selfish, and makes terrible choices; his lifelike verisimilitude is the very reason why he repels this brand of readers that look for positive-thinking people who don’t think too far from what they think; look for uplifting stories, not constant conflicts; and look for happy endings, not tragedies (another reason why, despite Kishimoto’s own disagreements with the ending, Sasuke was made to settle down with a woman he never held any feelings for and abide by the very system that he held nothing but contempt for). It’s the kind of reversal that people expect, desire, and wish for … in their own lives; hence, as the essay rightfully points out: “It is quite logical to posit that the untrained reader’s consumerist rationality, contract-mindedness, fascination with “realistic” and “believable” characters … ”
The concept of relatability is more simple than most would like to believe. Beneath the idea of “untrained reader’s consumerist rationality, contract-mindedness, fascination with ‘realistic’ and ‘believable’ characters” is the simplicity of a incredibly stupid, profoundly ugly, and comically aristocratic sense of entitlement. The Scourge of “Relatability” by Rebecca Mead (Source) elaborates on this quite well:
“But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual’s solipsism.To appreciate ‘King Lear’—or even ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ or ‘The Fault in Our Stars’—only to the extent that the work functions as one’s mirror would make for a hopelessly reductive experience. But to reject any work because we feel that it does not reflect us in a shape that we can easily recognize—because it does not exempt us from the active exercise of imagination or the effortful summoning of empathy—is our own failure. It’s a failure that has been dispiritingly sanctioned by the rise of ‘relatable’. In creating a new word and embracing its self-involved implications, we have circumscribed our own critical capacities. That’s what sucks, not Shakespeare.”
The whole thing repeatedly keeps spinning on the same axis that can be, for the lack of the better word, termed as nothing more than “Selfie Fad”: “what isn’t recognizable to me isn’t of value”. As Sasuke’s character demands a kind of hypothetical leap of faith, a different kind of (cognitive) empathy, and an out-of-box thinking that hinges upon reading between the lines, not reading into the lines, the issue becomes largely binary: “what’s black is black; what’s white is white; Leaf is white; Sasuke is black; Sasuke is evil; Leaf is good; I relate to Leaf; I don’t relate to Sasuke.”
It isn’t surprising that you’ve got a generation of complete fucking lunatics that can’t seem to get past a work that’s written in the plainest English (aimed at middle-school readers) as they can’t see themselves in Sasuke’s character. Couple that with the “en vogue” fad of Cinema-Sins level of criticism that’s centered on “plot-holes”, and you’ve got yourself a great combination that’s pretty much peak modern consumerist stupidity that’s utterly insidious in the manner in which it revels in its own arrogance while simultaneously denouncing it:
It isn’t all that surprising, either, that the painter of that distasteful Holofernes painting enjoys that dreadful Star wars pairing despite the male character in question being the killer of billions of people; again, that’s recognizable to her as that’s what she hopes for in a romantic fantasy (a génocidaire who’s bleeding his heart out over one woman while mercilessly butchering billion other women); Sasuke isn’t as he doesn’t align with the sort of accommodation he was supposed to provide for Sakura, this painter’s (and many other similar female readers’) avatar inside the narrative.
Women find it misogynistic when it’s pointed out to them that they obsess over romance to a degree that goes beyond the concept of “infantile adults”; it’s just ghastly; but it’s true. Sasuke’s character becomes a subject of over-analysis here, too, as it doesn’t fall into the romantic tropes that they’ve come to cherish. Illouz discloses that Romance novels are a billion-dollar-a-year industry and make up 46 percent of all mass-market paperbacks sold in America; the publishing company Harlequin claims that half of its customers buys 30 of its novels every month; it also claims to sell more than four books per second (Source).
These female readers read his character with many expectations in mind that centered on his “coming around”, “coming to his senses”, “coming to her rescue”, “coming to a realization”, “coming to acknowledging her”, etc. These are the kind of expectations they have when they read a romance work or look for romance or fantasize about it. As they find Sakura deeply recognizable, they’re appalled by Sasuke’s tendency to stray from these expectations: he doesn’t come around; he doesn’t come to his senses; he doesn’t rescue her; he doesn’t come to any realization; he doesn’t acknowledge her; etc. As he does all of these things that fall inside the “un-recognizable” domain rather than the “recognizable” domain, he becomes an easy target for attacks again on shallow, self-serving, and cheap “niceties” that they’ve always come to expect from the romantic partners in fictions (real life or fantasies).
Here, the metaphors a characters like Sasuke (change, mono no aware, honour, conflict, etc.) is meant to display are thrown aside in the quest to see “mirror images of Self” in the narrative. There’s a method to decoding the narrative that’s presented to you. Sasuke requires a different approach. Another character might require another. That approach determines what we gather from the narrative, not what we expect from the narrative:
Annihilation is a rather peculiar narrative as it presents the metaphors in a very straight-forward manner (the above analysis is too concise in my view as it misses many things, but I thought it was appropriate for this argument). Sasuke is no different. In fact, Naruto’s no different: it’s simple and straight-forward and the required interpretation hinges on the said simplicity. You can make an argument on the missteps the manga makes on structural aspects and the framing; however, to reduce a brilliantly variegated characterization like Sasuke’s to few markers that are deeply uncritical by nature and obsessively leeching on the reader’s own arrogance is quite … appallingly douchey in my eyes. It exhibits the sort of nauseating narcissism among the internet armchair critics that’s the very definition of faux intellectualism and self-parody these so-called “deep” thinkers decry.
Orwell wasn’t wrong when he wrote this: “What people always demand of a popular novelist is that he shall write the same book over and over again, forgetting that a man who would write the same book twice could not even write it once (Source).”
People, technically, ask for a “cheer-up writer” that accommodates their expectations, validates their identities, values their political philosophies in the narrative while playing the “this story’s so fucking deep!” game of pretension (what’s deep is basically what represents the reader, nothing more). What they don’t want is the narrative to tread too far from leaving their sense of identities behind. What I want to know is this: where does this arrogance end and where does stupidity begin? Maybe the line doesn’t even exist.
FIN
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