Week 11: Serial Experiments Lain and the Digital Flesh

Give some examples of cybernetic systems at play in specific visual texts. What metaphors of the body in contemporary society do they suggest?

Do we really need a body? what does a body represent?Lain is an anime directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, a visual text that is highly influenced by philosophical subjects such as reality, identity when the machine stops and the role of cybernetic system in contemporary society. The series focuses on the Lain Iwakura, an adolescent Japanese girl and her introduction to the Wired, a global communication network that is similar to the internet.Due to the intricate connection between culture and technology, it is imperative to attempt to comprehend the impact of electronic and technology on human social relations and self-identity

One of the main theme projected from the television series Serial Experiments Lain is that the physical body is not part of one’s identity and can constructed freely in the cybernetic system.This series captures the essence of a post modernist view of the world. A notion where one does not need a physical body and no one has control over the real or the fantasy world.

However, in Serial Experiments Lain, this identity can be constructed without physical body however a person is exist only with the existence of the embodied consciousness.

This ambiguous vision of human identity, technology and at the end of the world has appeared in more complex form in the years since Yamato. Nakamura presented an unforgettable vision in which the innocent such as small girls were grotesquely sacrificed (suicide?) to the vicious machinations of the Internet or the Wired.

So let me define what cybernetic systems are.
Cybernetic systems are the integrated networks of organic bodies with the technology and playing out of capitalism, under the current imperialism of the Christian ethic that relies on a sadomasochistic authorial control over its workers body. (Colman,2003)

The ideas and the principles of the cybernetics systems are in fact intended to be applicable to anything. The cybernetic system tends to focus on more complex systems, a hybrid of an entity such as organisms, ecologies, minds, societies that are integrated with the technology and machine. It regards these systems as complex, multi-dimensional networks of “cybernetic systems” (Joslyn: 1992).


"Lain without body-marilyn manson"

However, I would like to add that anything that is connected to techonology can be considered as a cyborg. For example, people today need basic technology in their everyday life such as handphones, their Ipods and their laptop, therefore they are already considered as a cyborg. People no longer use the stairs as they have the elevators and they no longer need animals as a form of trasport to travel to a certain place. All they need is the new improved tech

nologies that will make life easier. The question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

In Serial Experiment Lain’s context, it is a fusion/blend/ mutation of a cybernetic organism with the human body eventhough it is not as visible and can be seen with our eyes.

. Another way to define cyborg in a feminist view is as suggested by Haraway:

“A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, and a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements have constructed ‘women’s experience’, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.”(Haraway: 1991)

Thus, it can be argued that the virtual reality provides an illusion of control over the reality, nature, and especially over the unruly, gender- and race-marked, essentially mortal body.

In addition, we can see the evolution of the gaming industry and online games that imitates this behavior, such as the Second Life,where people get connected, find partners, engage in online courses from established university all within this online game.

Therefore, the physical body is no longer needed as technology can easily replace and helped the process of everyday life.In cyberspace, subjectivity is disseminated throughout the cybernetic circuit as the boundaries of self are defined less by the skin than by the feedback loops connecting body simulation in a techno bio-integrated circuit.

In Second Life, the users have their own avatar as a representation of themselves in the game. The basic human avatar has a basic human appearance, of either gender, with different kinds of physical attributes and clothing. Hence, anyone can practically create their own personal identity as suggested by Haraway in her Cyborg manifesto.

This cultural phenomenon have influenced many major Hollywood film. Another similar visual text that depicts the idea of cybernetic systems and the cyberpunk genre is the blockbuster The Matrix, a science fiction action film directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. The film describe a future in which reality perceived by humans created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies’ heat and electrical energy are used as an energy source. The film contains several references to the cyberpunk cultures, philosophical and religious ideas which are similar to many Japanese animations like Serial Experiments Lain.

Interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard’s philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the developed countries even in the United States

Additionally, in the blockbuster movie Iron Man, we can see the main character, Anthony Edward Stark reconstruct his physical body using super power armour and becomes a cyborg and rejects his weak human body in order to save the world. In the movie, we can see that there are possibilities of creating a new generation of sub humans that is invincible with the help of the innovation and the creation of perfecting the human body.

Therefore, Lain’s body is a perfect example of a cybernetic system at display. This is because she is reliant and needs to be connected to the Wired and becomes very curious about what kind of possibilities the Wired have to offer. Nakamura explores the idea of the emergence of a new kind of society that is heavily depended on a social and technological consumption. Her character represents the most obvious cybernetic system at play. Lain’s existence is blurred as the viewer are put in her view and constantly unsure wether she is in the state of reality of fantasy.

In the opening of each series of experiments lain, there is a foreshadow about the whole series. If we were to do a scene analysis,we are exposed with the elements of uncertainty and understanding the nature of reality. It begins with a blank screen and disembodied with the voice over of in English, "Present Day! Present Time!" followed a spurt of eerie laughter. The scene shifts to a shot of Lain walking alone in a bear costume through a crowded neon-lit urban streets in which the "Don't Walk Sign" seems constantly to be flashing. All the while a singer in English refrain "I am falling! I am falling!".

The line at the starting of each tv series seems be ironically suggestive. This is a obviously a form of defamiliarization of our present but the laughing voice hints that we might be mistaken-Is the Lain the present?

An example of a technology feautured in Serial Experiments Lain is the Navi.”NAVI” is most likely a contracted form of “Knowledge Navigator.”Besides that, we can also see Memex in the television series, a system of archiving and retrieving information that is analogous to human memory and therefore is designed mainly to aid it.Memex is a method by which the collective library can be tapped into and info canb be drawn from it efficiently.

Other technological items can be found here.

Lain series mirrors our society and predicts where it is heading towards, where people no longer require to socialize in the real world as they can be connected as easily as being on the Internet and at the comfort of their home.

In addition, we can see the evolution of the gaming industry and online games that imitates this behavior, such as the Second Life,where people get connected, find partners, engage in online courses from established university all within this online game.

Therefore, the physical body is no longer needed as technology can easily replace and helped the process of everyday life.In cyberspace, subjectivity is disseminated throughout the cybernetic circuit as the boundaries of self are defined less by the skin than by the feedback loops connecting body simulation in a techno bio-integrated circuit.

In Second Life, the users have their own avatar as a representation of themselves in the game. The basic human avatar has a basic human appearance, of either gender, with different kinds of physical attributes and clothing. Hence, anyone can practically create their own personal identity as suggested by Haraway in her Cyborg manifesto.

This cultural phenomenon have influenced many major Hollywood film. Another similar visual text that depicts the idea of cybernetic systems and the cyberpunk genre is the blockbuster The Matrix, a science fiction action film directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. The film describe a future in which reality perceived by humans created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies’ heat and electrical energy are used as an energy source. The film contains several references to the cyberpunk cultures, philosophical and religious ideas which are similar to many Japanese animations like Serial Experiments Lain.

Interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard’s philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the developed countries even in the United States

Additionally, in the blockbuster movie Iron Man, we can see the main character, Anthony Edward Stark reconstruct his physical body using super power armour and becomes a cyborg and rejects his weak human body in order to save the world. In the movie, we can see that there are possibilities of creating a new generation of sub humans that is invincible with the help of the innovation and the creation of perfecting the human body.

Lain texts explore the relationship between consciousness once it became Wired. It encapsulates and makes full use of the sensation of confusion and unease in the technological age. Serial Experiments Lain argues that people are becoming more and more isoated to one another. Lain’s family is not like the usual family; the uncaring mother, the annoying sister and etc. tells the viewer that it is not worth it to stay in the real world as the cyber world offers so much more. This famous quote from Lain Iwakura concludes the theme of the series: “No matter where you go, everyone’s connected”.

In Japan, this cultural crisis can be seen not only in terms of ambivalent attitudes towards the interface between humans and technology but also deeper questioning of what it is to be human in relation to the machine. The machine seems to dominate, to construct and ultimately interfere with the reality of human nature. This problematisation of human identity in the context of technology seems to be in the leading in increasingly apocalyptic directions. These apocalyptic visions are not limited to the destruction of the material world. To a certain extent, viewers are confronted with stories and narratives that appear to be growing senses of hopelessness in overwhelming forces that are both interior and exterior.






I would also like to discuss the idea of body in three other anime in this post.
1.Bubble Gum Crisis
2.Bubble Gum Crash(its sequel)
3.Neon Genesis Evangelion.

All this anime shares the similarity of having a dark mecha-genre eventhough they are different in style and tone.
They explore the body with having a fusion of the human pilot inside armoured machine. This leads to a bizzare combination of mechanical/organic violence which involves a lot of violence with a fantasty display of machinic agility

The Japanese stories often reveal a much bleaker world view than such Westerner fantasies as Star Wars or the Matrix in terms of how much one individual can actually accomplish. This maybe because of the emphasis of the interiority of the characters of the characters in the Western films.

Although many mecha characters are usually one dimentional, but the protagonist of all three anime above have complex emotional, from Sho's lonely suffering, to the hypersensitivity of the Evangelion antihero Shinji.

The very idea of having a 'body armour' as opposed to the conventional robotic body type in Western type science fiction film, emphasis more on the body than the armour.In much Western science fiction film even if there is a human body inside a machine, as in Robocop, the emphasis is much more on the protagonist's dehumanisation by alienating powers of technology. Theweleit and Springers argues that the armoured body is lacking body, therefore, the protagonists in mecha machine anime often have surprising amount of interiority.

In conclusion, we can see the similarity between all the media text above that suggest the body is no longer needed as technological and machines will replace them to create a utopian society in the cyberworld.

Bibliography

Colman, F. ‘The Sight of Your God Disturbs Me: questioning the post-Christian bodies of Buffy, Lain and George’. “Uncanny Spaces and Gods in the Multiverse”, in The Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media (Volume 3, 2003). Retrieved on 19 April, 2008. At: http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol3/colman.html

David Sanford Horner,(2001),'Cyborgs and Cyberspace:Personal Identity and Moral Agency'. In Technospaces:Inside the New Media. Ed. Sally R. Munt. London and New York: Continuum, p. 71-84.

Donna Haraway, (2001), 'A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century', in the Cybercultures Reader. Eds David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. London:Routledge, 291-324.

Jennifer Gonzalez, (2000),'Envisioning Cyborg Bodies: Notes from Current Research'. The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. Eds. Gill Kirkup, Linda James, Kath Woodward, Fiona Hovenden. London and New York: Routledge, p. 58-73.

Martin Under, (2007), 'Serial Experiment Lains,Retrived on 15 May, 2008:http://www.concretebadger.net/blog/2007/11/08/serial-experiments-lain/

Filmography
Ghost In The Shell (TV anime series) (dir. Masamune Shirow, 1989, TV Tokyo [Japan])

Princess Mononoke (TV anime series) (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1997, TV Tokyo [Japan])S

erial Experiments Lain (TV anime series) (dir. Ryutaro Nakamura, 1998, TV Tokyo [Japan])

The Matrix (dir. Larry and Andy Lachowski, 1999, Warner Bros. Village Roadshow Picture [USA]