Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Part Three & Conclusion

Part One
Part Two


History’s Unmarked Grave – Divergent Responses to the End of Normativity

Database Animals: MRAs vs. Otaku

I have previously mentioned the work of Azuma as a major influence, and I still believe that it provides the most accurate model for the development of the otaku subculture in Japan. Azuma traces the development and change of consumer tastes in narratives from modern realism based in a Grand Narrative (normativity), to hybrid fictional Grand Narratives which provided a replacement for the Grand Narratives lost in society as a whole, to complete postmodern rejection of Grand Narratives in favor of a “database” of affective elements with no Grand Narrative at all.
Much of Azuma’s model cannot be applied to Western MRAs, if only because the historical turning points he uses to define the era shifts do not hold much weight outside of Japan. The 1970 Red Army Incident, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attacks, the end of Evangelion; these are not turning points in the lives of our Western MRAs.

Although some of Azuma’s historical signposts are international in nature (such as the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall), they have different implications for different societies. The fall of the Berlin Wall may have been an alienating, normativity-destabilizing event for Socialists but it was a normativity-strengthening event for Capitalists, a concrete demonstration that “we are right and they are wrong.” 

Azuma himself says that the fall of the Berlin Wall was not as important in Japan as the Aum Shinrikyo attacks. Similarly, while the fallout of WWII shook the underpinnings of Japanese normativity, it tended to reinforce the inherent “rightness” of Americanism for Americans.
To get to the point, both otaku and Western men experienced the death of a post-sittlichkeit normativity, but they experienced it in very different times and in very different ways. For otaku, it was the collapse of the fictional narrative as shown in the 1995 end of Evangelion. An entire generation experienced “Eva Shock” as director Hideaki Anno’s narrative normativity collapsed around them.

However, Japanese narrative normativity had already been decoupled from actual historicity. The end of WWII, the collapse of the 1980s bubble economy, the loss of lifetime employment and the death of the middle class had already reduced otaku narrative to clichéd apings of history. Narratives such as Gundam were not meant to be commentaries on “the real world” so much as pastiches for pleasurable consumption.

By focusing in on the technical details of fictional giant robots and the timeline of the “Universal Century,” otaku were able to assuage their feelings of alienation from “real” society by engaging in a fictional world which still held a sense of normativity. Evangelion merely tipped over a fictional edifice which was already rotten and on the verge of collapse.
Western “nice guys” started out with a fictional normativity (the Monomyth) which still had some semblance of reality. Although Western society saw a similar shaking of normativity in the 1960s and 70s, its effects were not nearly as destabilizing as events in Japan.

America in particular was still driven by an evangelion of progress and free markets, which strengthened normativity in the 1980s with the return of normative narratives – the fight against the “Evil Empire.” While Japan’s economy plummeted in the 1990s, America’s took off. Our narratives were proven right, not wrong.

While Western normativity (particularly American normativity) has weathered history better than Japanese normativity, it seems that no culture can fend off the creeping advance of alienation forever. The long survival of Monomyth-esque normativity, with its emphasis on moral virtue and the triumph of good (nice guys) over evil (jerks) makes it particularly painful for Western men because it is at odds with the sexual revolution. Men who attempt to cling to traditional morality by clinging to traditional gender roles are left exhausted, depressed, and desperate for meaning.

This is the main point of divergence between otaku and MRAs. While otaku have largely moved beyond the need for traditional normativity and Grand Narratives (though there are right-wing elements within otaku circles), MRAs insist on developing alternate models to replace the old.

Ex-nice guys have not continued to the next stage of history, in which mutual recognition becomes the basis for a new sittlichkeit, they have instead developed new Grand Narratives which keep the Other at a distance. PUAs embrace a new social contract which maintains women as objects, MRAs divide the world into “us” and “them,” and the fully alienated who have lost all normative compass lash out with threats of death and rape like the wounded animals they are.
It is perhaps no coincidence that these tendencies are so prevalent in Western fandom, the equivalents of Japanese otaku. From complaints about “fake geek girls” who do not properly conform to male fan normativity to internet crusades against female video game critics, male geek culture is a breeding ground for male alienation.

Like their Japanese predecessors, Western male fans have retreated into the fortress of geek culture and are defending its peculiar normative institutions to the death. For these men, fictional worlds are the last place where men are still active agents and women are still objects, where the hero still gets the girl and the villains still get their comeuppance.

Engaging in prophecy is always a crapshoot, but I feel justified in thinking that an Eva Shock equivalent is coming to the West. The rotten edifice of Western male-driven geek culture normativity cannot stand forever. It is teetering, and headed for the inevitable crash. I do not wish to downplay the negative effects of Gamergate, but it looks very much like The Last Stand of the Monomyth. The very extremes to which these MRAs have resorted, their death threats and organized terrorist actions, show the extent to which they have been driven against the wall. The point is not that we can sit back and let history take its course, the point is that we be confident in standing against the agents of a discredited normativity.

As for MRAs and so on outside of geek culture, they have even less of a supporting edifice. “Nice Guys” are the products of a transitional age, and once the transition is complete (or more advanced), there will be no source to spawn them. When the pool of alienated “nice guys” dries up, so will the candidate pool of potential MRAs and PUAs. The male-entitlement crowd, like the poor, will always be with us, but their days as a culturally relevant force are numbered.

Conclusions

To be honest, I don’t really have much left to say, other than a few words of caution. First, this is perhaps the least academic paper I have ever written (appropriate, since I am not currently in academia). Tracking down and critically analyzing, say, a particular “nice guy” rant or MRA webpage frankly seemed like more effort than it was worth for the current moment. My goal was not to absolutely demonstrate the rightness of my interpretation, but to build a tentative infrastructure for future analysis. I have painted with a very broad brush, caveat lector.

Second, this paper was written as part of a much longer ongoing effort to test the applicability of Azuma’s model outside of Japanese contexts. I have retread a lot of ground, feeling out the space ahead of me carefully before moving forward. I am still figuring out what I’m doing and how to do it, so please pardon the mess.

Third, for all of the respect I have for Azuma, I approach his model from a less Kojevian and more Hegelian angle. The biggest difference, as mentioned, is in the definition of modernity. Azuma (and Kojeve) see the modern as still having normativity; for Hegel the modern is defined by the death of normativity. If anything, what Azuma labels as “modern” should be labeled either “pre-modern” or “pre-modern to modern transitional.”

However, I would agree that contemporary otaku culture is legitimately post-modern, in that moe elements provide a post-enlightenment normative structure which is not subject to alienation. While otaku may still suffer alienation in reference to society as a whole, they do not suffer it within their mutually recognized normative subculture. If anything, their powerful emotional responses to narratives constructed within this mutual framework demonstrate just how de-alienated otaku culture has become.

Last, I would encourage readers not to paint with these broad strokes when dealing with individual MRAs. The main shortcomings of Hegelian criticism manifest themselves when it is over-applied. Just as Newtonian physics break down when applied to sub-atomic particles, broad Hegelian eras can break down when applied to individuals. Transitions between eras are not total “once and for all” events but rather ebbs and flows in a very gradual process. History may have “ended” in 1806 at the Battle of Jena, but not everyone has gotten the memo.

It is under this last point that I understand the Gamergate crowd. As culture becomes more modern and less central, we will all start to move through history at different speeds. It is easier than ever for a subculture bubble to remove itself from society and evolve separately. Social Justice Warriors and Men’s Rights Activists exist in the same time and place, but not in the same Era of History. The current struggle is like two previously separate tectonic plates crashing together.

This is, perhaps, why both sides cast themselves as victims. Some great external force has shaken their way of life. Neither side asked for this conflict, but conflict is inevitable as the two plates grind into each other and shake the people living on them.

Sometimes the mere existence of other normative frameworks is enough to drive humans to threaten, persecute, and even murder each other. We have seen this before. We will see it again. The goal is to truly understand what is happening, why it is happening, and to reconcile with each other – not to defeat the “Other.”

Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Part Two

Part One

Dead Knights, Dull Armor – Discredited Normativity and Male Rage

This is the second reason I brought up otaku at the start of this article: thanks to the works of Hiroki Azuma, most research on otaku in Japan has focused on a very Hegelian (via Kojeve) theory of the death of normativity in Japanese society.

In a nutshell: the evolution of the otaku subculture neatly demonstrates a parallel development in post-war Japanese society as a whole, namely, the move from pre-modern normativity to modern industrial rationalist normativity to postmodern ‘database’ animalist non-normativity. While I have my gripes with Azuma (not the least of which is his portrayal of modernity as normative), I cannot help but draw parallels between the death of social normativity in post-modern Japan and the broken social contract which motivates MRAs.
I won’t spend too much time explaining database animalism in this section. The critical point for the moment is isolating the reason why the rhetoric of entitlement resonates so powerfully with male-power groups. It is not enough to simply say that they are wrong, not when the message travels from host to host so easily. And in a sense, they are right. The social contract has been violated, it has been rewritten – not by devious women, but by the conditions of modern society. Much like the study of cults and racist organizations, the point of interest is not the ideology in itself, but rather how it can motivate rational beings.

Hegel’s Three Stages of History

I just did a summary on Hegel’s three stages of history in this post, and he hasn’t written anything new on the subject since then. Let’s move on.

The White Knights: “Nice Guys” vs. Hegel

I would place the “nice guys” into the transitional period between the pre-modern and modern periods because of the sense of betrayal they feel at not being rewarded for following what they see as the social contract. Indeed, on the internet, individuals of this type are often referred to as “white knights,” acting out a misplaced sense of chivalry on forums and in online games. While these individuals may not belong to the late pre-modern/early modern period in other facets of their life and worldview, in the area of sexual politics, they are either relics of an earlier age or intentionally affecting as such.

The White Knight in his natural environment

Certainly, the internet posts and forum rants of this type express a longing for gentler times, unaware (through genuine ignorance or intentional ignorance) of how rose-tinted their glasses are. The image of the white knight swooping in to the rescue is appropriate, for “nice guys” seem to model their relationships less on reality than on fairy tales. They exhibit a version what Azuma refers to as “fictional realism,” applying the normativities of fiction (white knights and princesses, gentlemen and ladies) to reality. They are not interested in returning to the realities of pre-feminist gender relations, but to an idealized fictional version which rewards moral virtue with romantic satisfaction.
When this fails to materialize, “nice guys” feel betrayed. They have done everything right, and yet other men (who are less virtuous) are rewarded with the princess. They are gallant knights, and yet women choose the cur. There is no reward to virtue, no “fairy-tale ending,” no proper output to the proper input. Hence the common lament that “women love jerks.”

“Style,” one of the most popular PUA gurus, comments on this very same phenomena. He tells a story about a friend who courted a woman for years, while attempting to live up to the ideal of the gentleman. He bought her flowers, asked her father for permission to marry her, took her to the best restaurants, refused to have sex before marriage, etc. – only to walk in on her in bed with a “jerk.”

This story may very well be apocryphal, but it gets the point across. The social contract which “nice guys” are operating under simply does not exist. Or rather, if it does exist, it exists only on the side of the “nice guys” who profess it, not those whom they expect to receive a reward from.

As silly as this may seem, consider it from the nice guys' position. They see this gallant normativity as a form of self-sacrificial love, as a willingness to expose themselves to the ridicule of a crass and unromantic world for the sake of another person. There is a truly pre-modern element to this, an understanding that they are operating according to a higher truth than that of our crass modern world.

After all, this is how the movie plays out, is it not? Particularly the part about clinging to belief in “true love” in a world that have given up on it. The hero is called out of the emotionally dead modern world to a higher mission, overcoming obstacles and facing opposition. He is rejected, mocked, and taken advantage of, but in the end love overcomes all opposition. The crass, the craven and lowly “jerks” are given their just desserts and the hero is paired with the perfect other.

This Monomyth-esque blueprint is fine for story-telling, but when we make it a blueprint for our lives, disaster follows. Women are not the prize at the end of a story, but active moral agents. For all of the nobility and self-sacrifice of heroes in stories, when we try to force someone else (female or male) into becoming our prize, we are not the hero but rather the evil sorcerer trying to trap the princess in our tower. Self-sacrifice does not count as noble if it is sacrifice for ourselves.

But take a moment to shed a tear for the noble “nice guy,” who strives so hard to give women what he thinks they want – no matter how little they want it.

I lead with the “nice guy” because MRAs and PUAs pick up from where the “nice guy” drops off. Both PUAs and MRAs recruit aggressively from the pool of disaffected self-proclaimed “nice guys.” This is how most of them started out; trying to scrape together meaning for their lives once the dream collapsed. Once the Monomyth fails, alternate normativities arise to take its place.
Social Animals: PUAs vs. Hegel

Moving on to PUAs, I would position them firmly within Hegel’s modern period, somewhere between the “moral valet” and Azuma’s “alienated normativity.” Much like the moral valet, they have seen the inherent silliness of the “nice guy” normative system and reject it. And just like that cynic, they paradoxically find moral superiority in rejecting a morality based on nothing more than human prejudice. It is the last moral stand of those without morals, a refusal to accept a system of morality that has no true basis.

However, PUAs are not pure moral valets, for they do operate according to a normative understanding of the world. Their ideology is not built around mere nihilism, but rather on a system of techniques for bringing order to that most “other” of the others: women. They construct elaborate timelines from initial meeting to sex, with detailed phases, shifts, checks, balances, and so on which purport to offer a fail-proof method not just for seduction, but for controlling female mind. This, more than sex, is the draw of PUA systems. Any person with a will and a weapon can physically force another person into sex. The desired goal is not forced sex, but to control a woman’s perceptions.

For example, one common PUA technique is “value-building.” Value-building consists of presenting oneself as an object worthy of a woman’s attention without overt bragging. It consists of little things – intentionally ignoring a conversation partner, “reluctantly” telling interesting life stories, and a thousand other little methods of establishing social dominance. They key is not forcing a woman into sex, but manipulating the social atmosphere so that you appear as a person worth knowing. By explaining tricks and tips of this nature, PUA guides claim to unravel the mysteries of the female mind.

Style’s mentor “Mystery” begins The Mystery Method with a rather telling introduction which situates his perspective on “The Game.” In his mind, PUAs are nothing less than the next step of evolution. Whereas the Darwinian goal of sex is to produce offspring, the advent of contraception and sexual liberation has changed the nature of success. PUAs are clever social animals, intent not on reproduction but satisfaction, running circles around the clumsy dinosaurs that still operate under the obsolete model of marriage and childbirth.
This model may be pure drivel, but Mystery sets it at the beginning of what is perhaps the most influential PUA guide ever written in order to provide context. While neophyte PUAs make be initially attracted to the idea of limitless sex, they are hooked by the idea of unraveling the mysteries of the Other, and then indoctrinated into a new normative system which provides meaning to life.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the PUA movement’s main driving force is not sexual conquest, but rather a total life system for bringing order and meaning to the lives of disaffected men. It is a structure which provides meaning, order, and even a sense of enlightenment; a sense that one has surpassed their previous, limited self. As Style later said, “The point was women; the result was men.”

As I said, it is best to position PUA ideology as a product of the modern period. It is not seen as part of an eternal order of the heavens (as in Antigone), but as one of many normative systems which atomized individuals can freely choose between. PUAs may consider their system the best and most true, but it is not an eternal, unchangeable dogma. Mystery presents it as a part of evolutionary theory, a step in a system of change. It is, however, difficult to say whether this new normativity is genuinely held by its practitioners (and is thus a hybrid modern-pre-modern ‘transitional’ normativity) or is held in a detached, ironic fashion (and is thus an ‘alienated’ normativity). I suppose it all comes down to the individual practitioner. All that can be said for sure is that it is not a truly sittlichkeit normativity.

 
Social Justice Warriors: MRAs vs. Hegel

It is no coincidence that the MRA movement has also arisen in the modern world. A pre-modern individual would not be able to conceive of rebelling against the existing order, but a modern individual can attack it as unfair human innovation which can (and should) be changed. While there have been what we might term “proto-MRAs” in the past, fighting against first-and-second-wave feminism, they largely took the role of protectors of what they considered to be the natural order. It was natural for the man to be the head of the household, it was natural for the man to work and the woman to raise the children. These were not seen as the most convenient order, but as the only possible moral order.
Conversely, MRAs do not generally position themselves as upholders of a lost moral order, but as subversives, as rebels fighting against a woman-made social order which is unfair to men. In an attempt to sound reasonable and impartial, many will even admit that the previous patriarchal society was unfair to women (although the more vitriolic consider women to be worth less than animals). The rhetoric is not that we must restore the natural order, but that we must restore the rights of men to a changing, mutable order.

Many MRAs do not consider themselves to be enemies of women, just enemies of those evil, scheming women who wish to dictate the behavior of men. The tired term “Femi-Nazis” is tossed around and the lunatic fringe of feminism is claimed to be normative. Gynocratic conspiracies are seen lurking behind the most mundane issues. Around dyed hair, beware indeed.

Oh, I get it!

I mentioned racist groups earlier, and MRAs resemble nothing so much as white-pride activists (as distinct from white-power activists). White-pride activists do not (publicly) claim that the white race is superior or that whites are destined to dominate and control all other races. They claim they only want the same dignity that other races are afforded; after all, if we can talk about “Black pride” or “Asian pride,” why not “White pride?”

MRAs and white-pride activists both see themselves as correctives against civil rights movements gone too far. In their minds, the civil rights push for equality has reversed itself, and a once-dominant group has become persecuted on the basis of their gender or skin color. By recognizing (begrudgingly, but still) the legitimacy of previous civil-rights movements, they seek to establish the legitimacy of their own complaints. More importantly, by not positioning themselves as “haters” and mimicking the language of egalitarianism, they feel justified in attacking their perceived enemies. After all, they don’t hate women, just those women. They don’t hate minorities, just those minorities.

In a bizarre twist on Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, these groups claim to judge their enemies, not on the color of their skin or gender, but on the content of their character. Of course, the “content of their character” is here defined as “whether or not they agree with our ideology.” By claiming they are fighting for equality, they are able to position anyone who opposes them as enemies of equality. Simply denying the validity of the group’s more bizarre claims or even defending a target of their abuse is seen as ample proof that an individual is the enemy of true egalitarianism.

Turning back to MRAs exclusively, it is not unusual to see MRAs lambasting their opponents for not upholding the values of feminism. For example, they may engage in “slut shaming,” claiming that a woman has slept their way to the top, and thus provides a poor example for other women. Alternately, they may attack anyone seeking increased representation for women in media where they are traditionally underrepresented (or represented as giggling nymphs). By treating calls for equal representation as calls for extraordinary representation, they position themselves as resisting “inequality.” This of course echoes white-pride resistance to affirmative action policies or teaching non-European-male history in classrooms as “unequal” representation.

For MRAs, the “real” issue is not whether or not women are underrepresented in, say, video games. Even if they are underrepresented, any corrective action or public statement in support of better representation is seen as a demand for extraordinary representation. In their minds, “Women should be better represented in video games” and “Your main character must be a independent womyn or we will use our female sorcery to cut off your dick while you sleep” are equivalent statements.

MRAs are without a doubt cynical, in that they view normativity as a battleground which is up for grabs. However, it is difficult to portray them as fully alienated, in that they still operate according to an overarching normativity and still display moral outrage. This outrage, this bubbling anger over the disparity between the real world and ideal world positions MRAs at the middle of the modern era, not at its end.

Next Time: History’s Unmarked Grave – Divergent Responses to the End of Normativity

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Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Introduction & Part One

[Let's set a new land speed record for shark-jumping.]

Introduction

In this series, I will compare Japanese otaku with another subculture that at first glance may seem worlds apart: Western Men’s Rights Activists (MRA). I will also discuss two related male power groups, generic “nice guys” and Pick-Up Artists (PUA), due to the fact that all three groups seem to stem from the same stream of male dissatisfaction with modern life.[1]

Note that all of these groups are highly decentralized and have no formal requirements for claiming their respective titles other than self-identification. As such, I will treat them less as formal groups and more as trends.

There are two motivations for this project. First is my ongoing efforts to expand on the critical apparatus of Hiroki Azuma into non-Japanese contexts. Second, there has been a recent rash of debate on misogyny in Western geek culture (particularly the video game industry).

While I will focus more on MRAs in general than geek culture in particular, given that the video game controversy is being portrayed as a clash between pro-feminist “Social Justice Warriors” and pro-masculine “Men’s Rights Activists,” the applicability should be clear.

While my main goal is to get to the normative root of the issue, I think that there is no better demonstration of this issue than the ongoing “Gamergate” controversy. While Western geek culture is generally seen as transgressive and anti-establishment, Gamergate has revealed a strong undercurrent of rightism. This has provide a prime example of the fact that “anti-establishment” and “leftist” are by no means synonyms. 

My goal is not to demonize the right or Western geek culture as regressive or discriminatory. It is to build a critical apparatus for understanding where this trend is coming from without succumbing to the Middle Ground fallacy (i.e., everyone is equally wrong). The goal is to understand, not to excuse or accuse.

There are two points of similarity and one point of divergence with otaku that I would like to explore: Non-Traditional Marginalization, Discredited Normativity, and Divergent Responses to Alienation.

Non-Traditional Marginalization

So, I did my graduate thesis on otaku studies. This should tell you two things: I clearly had nothing better to do with my time and money, and I'm used to critically interpreting social groups that have been non-traditionally marginalized.

What do I mean by non-traditional marginalization? Otaku do not represent an oppressed social class on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or even financial status. Otaku are one of the few social subcategories with relative financial stability in post-bubble Japan.
Despite the stereotype of the hikikomori shut away from society in their parent’s house, Japanese otaku earn more on average than their non-otaku peers and are no more likely to be “parasite singles” than their peers. While anything approaching a true demographic study of “otaku-ness” would be difficult, our average out-of-the-closet otaku would be a male, politically conservative, heterosexual, relatively financially stable member of the predominant racial group of Japanese society.

If we are to speak about discrimination against otaku, we are not talking about social class but social status; a group discriminated against because of their chosen consumption patterns, not because of an oppressive social structure.

MRAs and Japanese otaku share the distinction of being a non-traditionally marginalized group whose members become marginalized by voluntary association. While it would take the stretchiest of stretches to claim that Western heterosexual males represent a discriminated-against group (though this is in fact the claim MRAs make), identifying oneself as an MRA carries a level of stigma which lies somewhere in the neighborhood of declaring oneself a hipster, otaku, or Nazi.

While we may safely dismiss many of the claims made by MRAs, there is still a legitimate point of interest in the existence of MRAs. To describe oneself as an MRA drives a wedge between oneself and society. Why would a person chose to do this?
Just as otaku are often assumed to be psycho-sexual deviants or Peter Pans who refuse to graduate into legitimate adulthood, there is a tendency to assume that MRAs are MRAs simply and only because they are spoiled, entitled misogynists jealous of the attention paid to minority issues. After all, being a western male CIS gender heterosexual is about as far from being an oppressed group that you can get without also being a multi-billionaire (and we might as well throw in being a white Protestant aristocrat – so basically, the King of Sweden).

Of all of the labels that get thrown at MRAs and related male power groups, I think the term that most legitimately applies is “entitled.” Whether we look at the rantings of MRAs, self-proclaimed “nice guys,” or PUA guides, a base-line theme emerges: I am entitled to something I am not getting.
This is most easily seen in your garden variety “nice guy rant.” “My behavior (niceness) entitles me to an expected reward (romantic fulfillment), but society (/women/liberals/the gynocratic conspiracy) has failed to fulfill its end of the bargain. The problem is not on my end (I am nice); therefore, the problem must lie somewhere else.” MRAs and PUAs come in to explain the failure of the social contract. In the case of MRAs, the problem lies with feminists, political correctness in general, or simply with those deceitful Delilahs, women.

PUAs have a (surprisingly) more nuanced approach: for PUAs, the problem does in fact lie in the “nice guy’s” understanding of the social contract. In PUA ideology, nice guys (or AFCs, “Average Frustrated Chumps”) are living in a fantasy world. Women do not “owe” sex or romance to nice guys, but rather to those who have manipulative social skills – those who give women what they “really” want. Until nice guys discard their obsolete social contract and change into PUAs, they will remain unworthy of the attention of women.

Now, I hope no one will to take the above to mean that I support PUA ideology. What I want to point out is that they are simply replacing one social contract with another, one way to “deserve” sex with another. Sex is still seen as the inevitable output of the proper inputs, of the proper application of a skill set, instead of a mutual activity in which women are equal participants.

MRAs represent the opposite end of the spectrum. Simply put, the motivating fear is not that women have become equals (or, God forbid, were equals the entire time), but rather that women have become dominant. MRAs position men on the passive side of relationships, as objects and not as agents. Men are outputs, not inputs, who are pinned and struggling under the power of women.

Despite the threats of murder and rape breathed by the more extreme MRAs, the ultimate goal of your average frustrated MRA is not the domination of women, but to avoid becoming women themselves – objects, outputs, means instead of ends. This is why MRAs can un-ironically claim they are fighting for equal rights. In their minds, this is exactly what they are fighting for.

This then is the situation as I understand it:

	Perceived Social Contract	Perceived Problem
“Nice Guy”	Nice men receive romance	Women do not uphold the social contract
PUA	Cunning men receive sex	AFCs do not understand the social contract
MRA	Women control men	The social contract is unfair to men

This is why I have emphasized the concept of “entitlement.” In all three cases, there is an assumption that a normative social structure dictates interactions between men and women. In two cases (Nice Guys and MRAs), women are perceived as the source of the problem, breaching normativity/the social contract or enforcing an unfair social contract. In one case (PUAs), the majority of men (AFCs) have failed to uphold their end of the social contract and have only themselves to blame. But in all cases, men are in some way entitled to women.

Naturally, when speaking about phenomena as diverse and decentralized as male power groups, we will have to deal in generalizations. Your mileage with this rubric may vary when dealing with the writings or the mindset of a particular individual, but I feel comfortable enough with it as an overall snapshot to push forward to the next point: where did the “nice guy” social contract come from, and why is it such a powerful motivator of male behavior in contemporary society?

[For the record, I consider myself slightly to the right of Hitler. That socialist ninny.]

Part Two: Dead Knights, Dull Armor - Discredited Normativity and Male Rage

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[1]I will be using the terms “pre-modern,” “modern,” and “post-modern” in line with their original Hegelian sense of “pre-enlightenment non-alienation,” “post-enlightenment alienation,” and “post-enlightenment non-alienation.”  These definitions differ from the common historiographical and social science definitions, which style our contemporary world as “post-modern." Not that there's anything wrong with that usage of the terms, they just have different definitions in Hegel.

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Eight/Conclusion)

Part Seven

[Alright folks, that's enough video games for now. Less Jung, more Hegel!]

This brings us to the second definition of Mickey Mouse, that is, Mickey Mouse as an artificial self-consciousness. As a fictional character defined by his artificial network of social relations and personal affective elements such as cheerfulness, Mickey Mouse does not just have the appearance of outer life, but of inner.

This self consciousness does not, of course, have any grounding in physical reality. The ink and paper drawings and binary code, the physical material of which depictions of Mickey Mouse are composed, do not have the capability of independent thought. The imitation of internal life is created by the artists and voice actors who recreate the logic of Mickey Mouse's network of affective elements into individual depictions.

But this form of artificial self consciousness has tangible effects on true self consciousnesses. Consumers are able to form a functional mutual recognition with this virtual self consciousness. This affective bond is portrayed as mutual, as if Mickey Mouse were an actual self consciousness capable of forming recognitive bonds not just with other cartoon characters, but with living human beings. As the Mickey Mouse Club March claims:

“Who's the leader of the club
That's made for you and me?
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
...Come along and sing a song
And join the jamboree”

At risk of stating the obvious, this song portrays Mickey Mouse as an active agent, capable of fulfilling a leadership role in a community which includes the viewer among its members. Just as cartoon characters sometimes “break the fourth wall” to address the audience directly, the audience is encouraged to enter the fictional network of mutual recognition which Mickey Mouse “leads.”

Even if we try to dismiss this as a crass marketing strategy intended to encourage economic consumption of Mickey Mouse products, the fact remains that it worked quite effectively. The same network of affective elements that allows consumers to recognize Mickey from film to film also allows them to recognize him as part of their own environment. This can only be achieved by presenting Mickey as a legitimate actor with an internal life capable of forming mutual recognitive bonds. Mickey Mouse is presented as a legitimate dancer in the Bacchanalian jamboree.

Last, I would like to discuss Mickey Mouse as an object of self-consciousness. As referenced at the beginning of this section, Geist truly begins with the transformation “of the object of consciousness into an object of self-consciousness.” Our experience with Mickey Mouse is itself a form of content, an object of consciousness which arises from our self-consciousness.

What appears at first as an “Other,” the artificial self-consciousness known as Mickey Mouse, becomes revealed as part of the Self. The affective elements, whose “determinateness seems at first to be due entirely to the fact that it is related to an other, and its movement seems imposed on it by an alien power; but having its otherness within itself, and being self-moving, is just what is involved in the simplicity of thinking itself; for this simple thinking is the self-moving and self-differentiating thought. It is its own inwardness, it is the pure Notion” (55).

This content, as a "function of self-consciousness,“shows that its determinateness is not received from something else, nor externally attached to it, but that it determines itself, and ranges itself as a moment having its own place in the whole” (53). The content which is Mickey Mouse is not the physical ink and paper or the affective elements (i.e. the object which presents itself to consciousness), but rather what Mickey Mouse is to self-consciousness.

The content which is “Mickey Mouse” is “the process in which Spirit becomes what it is in itself,” the motion of an object of consciousness which is transformed by self-consciousness into an object of self-consciousness. As an object of consciousness, Mickey Mouse is affective elements and ink and paper, but as content, Mickey Mouse is a function of human self-consciousness.

The ability of the human mind to experience and recognize Mickey Mouse is not dependent on the otherness of Mickey Mouse. It is not “imposed on it by an alien power,” but is self-generated. This perhaps explains why sequential art evolved in terms of the Three Stages. The production of sequential art was limited, not by the alien power of the medium, but by the internal self-limitations of the artists and the conditions of self-consciousness in the times they lived.

Perhaps this is why it is so easy to take the existence of cartoon characters for granted while ignoring the ramifications of their existence. The existence of Mickey Mouse feels natural, so simple that a child can understand it without explanation.

And yet what is natural about a round-eared sentient mouse that transverses time periods, societies, and social roles as easily as we change our clothing? What is natural about a being that transcends space and time, acknowledges his own existence as a fictional character and yet forms recognitive bonds with living human beings?

Quite simply, it feels natural because Mickey could only exist on the basis of mutual recognitive determinateness, i.e. the boundary conditions of our current self-consciousness. And it is because he could only exist under these conditions that no one feels the need to object to Mickey Mouse in the same way they object to Altruism or Justice. Justice was possible under the boundary conditions of the First Stage, and so moral valets can always object to it on the basis that the First Stage was found wanting.

Mickey Mouse was not possible under the boundary conditions of the First Stage. Lack of an actual physical existence as part of the architecture of the universe is one of the preconditions of his existence, not a proof that he does not exist. If he had a physical, biological existence, he could not fulfill the functions of a Third Stage cartoon character – it would be a detriment to his ability to fulfill contradictory roles in space and time.

So if Mickey Mouse could only exist under the conditions of the Third Stage, he is a “living” example that Third Stage mutual recognitive determinateness can actually work. By recognizing the ontology of cartoon characters, we have taken a critical step forward in understanding just what post-enlightenment sittlichkeit looks like in the real world and how other concepts may be established by mutually recognitive communal normativity.

Conclusion: The Measure of a Mouse

What is a cartoon character? In this series, I have argued that cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse exist in four forms:

-As objects of consciousness composed of affective elements
-As individual manifestations of a network of affective elements (i.e. pen and ink drawings)
-As artificial self-consciousness with which living beings can form mutually recognitive bonds
-As a function of human self-consciousness, determined by the boundary conditions of that very same self-consciousness and not by the “alien other”

Perhaps more than anything else, cartoon characters are a part of the Bacchanalian Jamboree, dancers in the revel of truth that drop in and out as they become useful, much as any other concept. As such, they deserve our attention as legitimate objects of study as much as any other of their “more respectable” fellow dancers. Though Hegel does not discuss cartoon characters in Phenomenology of Spirit, their evolution provides an case study for his Three Stages of History and as an indicator of the future development of the Third Stage.

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Six)

Part Five

Section Three: Mickey Geist - The Ontology of Mickey Mouse

“For experience is just this, that the content - which is Spirit - is in itself substance, and therefore an object of consciousness. But this substance which is Spirit is the process which Spirit becomes what it is in itself; and it is only as this process of reflecting itself into itself that it is in itself truly Spirit...the transforming of that in-itself into that which is for itself...of the object of consciousness into an object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is just as much superseded, or into the Notion”

(Phenomenology 802).

When we speak of the ontology of Mickey Mouse, we are of course not discuss a living, self-conscious organic being. But simply saying that Mickey Mouse is not an organic being does not tell us just exactly Mickey Mouse is, only what he is not. In this section, I will discuss Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness, as an artificial self-consciousness, and as a function of self-consciousness.
At first glance, the question of Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness seems like a simple one. Wouldn't the object of consciousness be the ink and paper of which a drawing of Mickey is made up? After all, Steamboat Willie is composed of a series of paper and ink drawings which have an actual physical existence.

However, while we could legitimately point to a particular ink and paper drawing as an object of consciousness that makes up Mickey Mouse, there are any number of other physical objects that could just as easily and just as validly described as “Mickey Mouse.” Moreover, these disparate physical objects have contradictory elements which make basing our definition of Mickey Mouse on them as invalid as defining both a solid which conducts electricity and a solid which does not as “Copper” invalid.

We could use the definition of “ink and paper,” but a Steamboat Willie is not simply a series of ink drawings on paper, but also a series of ink and paper drawings converted into film cells. Even then, consumers do not view the films cells directly, but rather as light filtered through the cells and projected on a screen. The majority of people who have seen Steamboat Willie have never seen the unprojected film cells, let alone the original ink and paper drawings. Furthermore, we can just as validly refer to a digital stream of binary code which shows the same sequence of images as Steamboat Willie.

Furthermore, not all depictions of Mickey Mouse were originally executed in ink and paper. Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts both use computer-generated polygons to depict Mickey, electronically stored zeroes and ones which consumers never see. Instead, they see an interpretation of the zeroes and ones projected onto a television screen, which is just as much of a trick of the light as Steamboat Willie. Even if a consumer were to read the series of zeroes and ones which define Mickey in these video games, they would be unable to interpret them as “Mickey” without the extremely rare ability to read binary code.

In all these cases, the majority of consumers at no point interact with what we originally considered to be the “object of consciousness,” but with a trick of projected light. How then should we understand Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness? Is he the ink and paper? The electronic code? The illusion of form and movement created by projection?

What becomes clear is that the “object of consciousness” is not a physical object, and in fact has very little relation to any physical object. Whereas “copper” exists as a physical object which our concept of copper can be compared against, “Mickey Mouse” does not. We can test the validity of our concept of copper by comparing it with the physical object. It does not matter if we use “Lump of Copper A” or “Lump of Copper B” (assuming they are both of sufficient purity); either one will have identical physical properties that can be used to test our concept of copper.

However, we cannot test the validity of “Mickey Mouse” in the same way. “Ink Drawing of Mickey A” and “Binary Code Model of Mickey A” would naturally have massively conflicting physical properties, and yet can both be reasonably said to be “Mickey Mouse.” Ink drawings and computer renderings are manifestations of Mickey Mouse, not the object of consciousness itself.

(Continued in Part Seven)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Five)

Part Four

Early sequential art used the same normative framework as pre-enlightenment societies. Egyptian and pre-Columbian sequential art (comics, if we use McCloud's definition) both import the normative models of the societies that created them. They portray sittlichkeit individuals defined by the “eternal” laws of society, which are the laws of nature. 

These pre-enlightenment forms of art are as much bound by the “eternal, immutable” laws of society as pre-enlightenment individuals. We might even speculate that the artists who created them were incapable of conceiving of an alternate normative framework, much as Antigone is incapable of seeing a true conflict between the law of the polis and the law of the family. To conceive of an alternate normative framework is to put oneself “above the law.”

In any event, what sequential art survives seems to reproduce authoritative social normativity rather than re-imagine it. Even the gods and other non-physical imaginary (from our perspective) beings are either bound by the laws or actively enforce them.
Modern sequential art was also bound by the normative considerations of the time - or as we might say, unbound by them. It is here that we first see creative attempts to re-imagine society in new forms. Unlike the authoritarian normativity of pre-modern sequential art, modern comic artists recognized social roles and norms as human-made.

I would argue that Winsor McCay was able to set Little Nemo in a world distinct from his own precisely because of the Enlightenment. If the social roles and norms of 1910s America are recognized as human creations, it becomes much easier for an artist to invent his own quasi-historical world. However, we do not see a completely alienated normativity. Little Nemo retains the form of a historic, normative world. Time flows from past to present to future, and individuals occupy particular places in space and time.
Azuma Hiroki, whose work I will refer to later, suggests that these modern quasi-historical narratives come into existence precisely because the greater, authoritarian normativity has broken down. Little Nemo takes place in a fictionalized world which mimics earlier social narratives, even though it was created in an alienated, post-enlightenment world because consumers still crave the lost sittlichkeit. Alienated consumers seek refuge in fictional normativity.
But this fictional normativity is still subject to alienation and the very same ironic detachment that plagues all post-Enlightenment individuals. Though the world of Little Nemo may provide temporary relief for a post-Enlightenment consumer, accepting its normative constraints as binding, accepting its quasi-historical world as true, would be unthinkable. It is no more relevant to alienated “reality” than the world of the Pharaohs. To take it a step further, the world of Nemo is no more real to the alienated consumer than his own society. Both are mere subjective products of human creativity, not a part of objective scientific reality.
We see a further weakening of traditional authoritarian normativity in the world of Mickey Mouse. Whereas in Little Nemo there is a single quasi-historical normative framework, Mickey Mouse cartoons exchange quasi-historical normativity for social recognitive normativity. Mickey Mouse can exist in any time and any place, so long as his physical design and social relations remain intact. 

Conflicting attempts to place Mickey in a quasi-historical framework such as the Mickey Mouse comic strip or Epic Mickey only serve to highlight the relative unimportance of quasi-historical normativity. Quasi-historical narratives of Mickey can be swapped out at will or exist in parallel with each other without a feeling of conflict on the part of the consumer.
In other words, the world of Mickey is given meaning not by a social narrative or by objective physical existence, but by social recognition. Consumers recognize Mickey as an individual because he exists in a fictional network of mutual recognition. By recognizing the validity of these fictional social relations, consumers create a space for Mickey Mouse in their own recognitive networks. What matters is not the physical reality (or lack thereof) of a being called Mickey Mouse, but the social recognitive reality that Mickey Mouse is recognized by consumers as a particular individual with particular traits.

This is precisely how norms of all kinds are recognized in Hegel's Third Stage. Mickey Mouse can be said to have a normative existence precisely because human individuals act as if he does. By consuming media, by recognizing Mickey Mouse in both Steamboat Willie and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as the same individual, we bind ourselves to a normative structure which accepts as normative the fictional mutual recognition of cartoon characters.
Mickey Mouse no more of an objective physical existence as a real being than concepts such as Justice or Good. At the same time, he also has as much potential to be communally recognized as any other concept which joins in the Bacchanalian revel of the truth. Although the concept of Mickey Mouse may change, become worn out, and eventually fall out of the revel, this in no way impinges upon his current socially normative existence.
This is a form of normative recognition which could not take place under the conditions of pre-Enlightenment sittlichkeit or Modern alienation. Pre-Enlightenment sittlichkeit would not allow for alternative societal models. Modern alienation would be unable to recognize a non-physical normative existence as binding. In recognizing Mickey Mouse, we have implicitly bound ourselves to the idea that human-made normative structures are valid.
At risk of taking this argument too far, we might also say that the existence of a globally recognized concept such as Mickey Mouse which exists solely by virtue of communal recognition is a real-world example of the validity of Hegel's third stage of history. After all, the moral valet can easily criticize Justice as a mere abstraction which individuals only adhere to for particular, selfish reasons it is difficult to deny the existence of a concept such as Mickey Mouse. 

The existence of a concept like Mickey Mouse, which can only be explained by communal normative behavior and has an undeniable impact on the socio-economic behavior of such a wide range of individual humans, is a surprisingly effective counterargument against pure alienation.

(Continued in Part Six)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Four)

Part Three

Section Two: Sittlichkeit Mouse - Toward a Hegelian Model of Cartoon Recognition

[Short post today, might put up another part later this week.]

Having briefly outlined a history of cartoons, I would now like to briefly review Hegel's Three Stages of History. The First Stage is pre-enlightenment sittlichkeit (roughly, 'non-alienation'), where social roles and norms are seen as part of the “architecture of the universe,” that is to say, they are as much a part of the natural world as gravity. Human individuals recognize each other by these laws, and do not suffer alienation. Hegel quotes from Sophocles' Antigone to show the relationship between individual self-consciousnesses and these eternal laws:

“'They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting,
Though where they came from, none of us can tell.'

"They are. If I inquire after their origin and confine them to the point whence they arose, then I have transcended them; for now it is I who am the universal, and they are the conditioned and limited. If they are supposed to be validated by my insight, then I have already denied their unshakable, intrinsic being, and regard them as something which, for me, is perhaps true, but also is perhaps not true...” (Phenomenology 437).

Problems arise when these eternal, perfect laws come into conflict, particularly the self-consciousness-dissolving law of the community and the individualistic law of the family. The community “creates an internal enemy for itself in what it suppresses and what is at the same time essential to it (femininity in general)” (ibid 475). The two “natural” laws come in conflict, exposing their human-made nature. This conflict paves the way for the Second Stage.

The Second Stage is the Modern, where the Enlightenment reveals social rules and norms to be entirely man-made. Modernity is making a contrast between things that physically exist and moral attitudes, which are created by humans. Although Hegel views this as an overall positive development, it also results in alienation and cynicism. Hegel gives us the picture of the “moral valet” who can only see the disparity between handlung (intention) and tat (actuality) that all action involves.

This niedertkiet individual sees nothing but invalid man-made normative attitudes all the way down. It is in this stage that Hegel frames the tension between Faith and Reason. In his formulation, Reason rightly criticizes Faith's ontology, while failing to recognize the value of the communally recognized normative structures that Faith allows.

The Third Stage is the Post-Modern, in which Enlightenment is recombined with sittlichkeit. Social roles and norms are recognized as valid and binding, not in spite of the fact that they are the products of the human mind, but rather precisely because of mutually binding social recognition. In other words, norms really exist and people's normative attitudes are sometimes right. By a process of repentance and forgiveness, all of history is made meaningful and the inherent meaningfulness of communally-recognized norms is established.

This is, of course, an extremely truncated version of Hegel's model, but it will serve for the purpose of comparison with the evolution of comics and cartoons.

(Continued in Part Five)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Three)

Part Two

But before jumping into the more detailed argument, I think it is important to establish that this ahistorical, meta-narrative recognition of cartoon characters is indeed the primary form by which consumers recognize third-phase cartoon individuals such as Mickey Mouse. After all, there have been attempts to put Mickey Mouse into an over-arching narrative framework that would give a pseudo-historical context to his adventures.

The earliest was the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip which debuted in 1930 and made use of events from films such as Plane Crazy. The newspaper comic, unlike the cartoons, had a continuity and timeline. It eventually diverged from the film version of Mickey by focusing less of comedy and more on adventure-based extended story lines. These two versions of Mickey Mouse (ahistorical films and narrative comics) were consumed side-by-side by fans with no perceived contradiction. While it is possible to be a fan of both film-Mickey and comic-Mickey (or one of the two, or neither), the character is equally recognizable as the same conceptual individual in both a pseudo-historic and an a-historic settings.

Human Director Confronts Cartoon Actors in Who Framed Roger Rabbit

This was far from the last attempt to rationalize the disparate, ahistorical adventures of Mickey Mouse (and other cartoon individuals) into a pseudo-historical narrative. 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit posits a world in which cartoon individuals coexist alongside humans in the real world, acting as characters in “live-action” films much as a human actor takes on a role.

For example, “Baby” Herman is a middle-aged, cigar smoking cartoon who appears in films as an infant. Here, a crucial distinction is made between the cartoon individual as “character” and the cartoon individual as “actor.” By creating a fictitious behind-the-scenes world, the narrative discrepancies between Mickey as steamboat worker and Mickey as sorcerer's apprentice are neatly explained away. Many famous cartoon characters make cameos in the film, such as Mickey Mouse and long-time real world rival Bugs Bunny.

This narrative device of cartoon-as-actor goes a long way toward both illustrating and explaining the nature of third-wave cartoons. Their identity does not consist explicitly in a historical narrative (whether a real one like President Jackson or a fake one like Nemo), but rather “behind the scenes.” Mickey Mouse is not perceived as existing solely inside his films and comics, but as a individual concept distinct from them. The box-office success of Roger Rabbit shows that this framework was at the very least palatable to audiences.

Other attempts to place Mickey Mouse in a quasi-historical setting linking the mythos of Disney films have been made, particularly the Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey video game franchises. While the details of these quasi-historical settings are perhaps not worth detailed analysis at this point, it is worth mentioning that both franchises attempt to re-imagine Mickey's ahistorical cartoons adventures into a single personal narrative. The narratives posited in these franchises are mutually incompatible, but they share certain features. Steamboat Willie is brought up in both franchises as an episode of Mickey's early life, while Yen Sid from Fantasia appears as Mickey's mentor.

Perhaps the most interesting point of these franchises is that they are contemporaries. Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002 and since has spawned ten sequels and prequels set in the same quasi-historical narrative, with an eleventh installment planned for 2014. Epic Mickey was released in 2010, the same year as Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Both series have enjoyed commercial success in international markets, despite having conflicting “histories.”

Audiences are able to move fluidly between the two contradictory quasi-historical settings without confusion, precisely because what makes Mickey Mouse “Mickey Mouse” is not his place in a socio-historic order, but his physical appearance and relation to other characters. Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey both ring true with audiences for the same reason Steamboat Willie and The Sorcerer's Apprentice ring true - because Minnie is Mickey's romantic interest, Yen Sid is his mentor, and Pete is his antagonist.

This, then, is an overview of the history of cartoon characters. In the next section, I will discuss how this history relates to Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel, of course, does not talk about cartoon characters in Phenomenology. However, he does provide a three-stage model for the historical development of recognition. It is my argument that the evolution of comics falls in with this three-stage model; moreover, that contemporary recognition of cartoon characters falls squarely into the third stage of the model.

(Continued in Part Four)