Author Topic: Pseudopod 326: Bunraku  (Read 18283 times)

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Reply #25 on: April 25, 2013, 01:53:01 PM
Uuuughghh, this one was creeepy!  I think I liked it though.  It's one of those that I'm not entirely sure.  Definitely plenty to think about here, which is definitely good.  To me, I never really believed that there was an emergent personality from the puppet, and so it was a story about 3 people who are completely F-ing nuts all interacting with each other in a way based on their shared delusion that the puppet is alive, no doubt in part due to the mastery of the puppeteer's craftsmanship.

I thought it was really interesting how the puppeteers faded into the background for long portions of the story as they faded from the protagonist's mind, only to arise to the forefront when something incongruous happened.  I found it really interesting that the young puppeteer could not make her love him but could make her kill her husband.  Very cool, very creepy, very fun.  It would indeed work very well for Drabblecast's audience too, but it fit perfectly here as well--there's no reason it can't run over there too, I'd listen again.

I won't go on at length, but I did find the narration style very distracting.


So am I the only one who was skeeved out that the protagonist repeatedly had sex with a wooden doll whose every action was controlled by either an old man or a 10 year old boy?

No, you're not the only one at all.  But, um, that was what made the story fit this podcast so well, that WTF-is-wrong-with-you creepy factor.  That reminded me in a small way of the Southpark episode where Cartman makes his hand act as a Latina pop-musician Jennifer Lopez to face off against the real pop-star Jennifer Lopez, and along the way his hand ends up sleeping with Ben Afflec.

Quote
And wasn't this story done better by Lars and the Real Girl (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/)?

Other than the passing similarity in the premise of a man who appears to be in love with an artificial woman, they have very little in common.   

Lars and the Real Girl was about a man with crippling social anxiety using a doll as a coping mechanism to help him relate to his friends and family, and to understand that they care about him very deeply.  Although he acts as though the girl is real, I never felt that he really had a delusion that she was real.  While, yes, the image is creepy, the story is not about sex, nor does he aim to have a lifelong relationship with the doll, because by the end of the movie he has become comfortable enough in the company of others to begin dating.  Although he

The people in this story, on the other hand, are all just plain demented and delusional.  The protagonist has no compunctions about another spending his entire life animating his supposed wife, or having sex with her as the other is animating him, and so on.  And neither of the puppeteers is any more sane.  If anything, it opposed Lars and the Real Girl by using the fake woman not as a tool to help the person become more well-balanced, but as a crutch that causes them all to spiral down into insanity.



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Reply #26 on: July 16, 2013, 01:00:26 PM
I agree that there were some issues with the narration -- mostly that it sounded like he was yelling whenever the old man was speaking.

The story was interesting enough.

There were also some times when he kept doing the old man voice when he switched to Shizuo's lines.

When I see a story having to do with Japan or China (or Korea if it it ever happened, I expect) coming up on Escape Artists (or anywhere) I'm usually like "Oh, god, here it comes/fuck this shit not again."  This is because I speak the languages.  The pronunciation here was better than usual.  As a semi-fluent Japanese speaker, the narration didn't bother me very much on the language front, which is high praise:  narrators, even some good ones, really bone up the pronunciation in Asian languages (and judging from some comments, more obscure non-Asian ones) a lot.  And authors often mess up on usage, which can really screw with my suspension of disbelief (though it'd sail past most people). 

The problem I had with it was the characterization.  Shizuo and the old man were a little too similar, I think.  I could buy the old man talking that way...one crazy old obsessive dude who is clearly as socially awkward as you'd expect sounding like he just had a stroke and was having his first real conversation in a decade, I buy that entirely.  The self-centered student sounding almost the same (or when the narrator got confused for a moment, exactly the same), I'm not sure I buy that. 


As for the story, again, I'm usually like "oh god, what is it this time," when it comes to Asian-themed sci-fi/horror.  I was pleasantly surprised.  First of all with what seemed to me as a non-expert, but passingly familiar with the subject to be a pretty reasonable treatment of Bunraku, not going overly MYSTERIOUS ORIENT with it and not getting bogged down in the details.  Second, there was that moment where it just went from "okay, this is a rather charming moment between a couple of weirdos" to "uhh, what?" which led inevitably to "welp, that sure is a thing." 

Here is my "this story is REALLY about" analysis:

Shizuo represents modern Japanese otaku culture, particularly the last decade or so of it.  Take a walk in Akihabara, and go into the most unsettling crypto-pedo shops you come across and you'll see what I'm talking about.   Large numbers of mostly young Japanese men cannot relate to women (or life in general in many cases) in any meaningful way.  They construct their mental ideal of femininity and project it onto fictional characters, toys, and dolls.  Some of the more extreme cases have fantasy dates or marriages with their anime-character pillows, and they DEFINITELY copulate with them.  They celebrate fictional characters' birthdays.  They have the same level of devotion that Shizuo had for Kinoko. 

And behind mentally-predefined as perfect, utterly unattainable in reality 2D loves are armies of other hopeless men like themselves.  The images of their ideals of femininity are created by other men, animated by other men.  The only place where actual women enter this world is in providing the voices; and with Hatsune Miku even that involvement has been more or less removed.  No real woman could ever satisfy a man so obsessed with ideals of femininity utterly unconstrained by actual physical femininity. 

And like Shizuo, it's going to...if not kill them, at least ruin their lives.  It isn't an obsession that one can lose oneself in and come away intact.


I've also kind of been contemplating the idea for the last few years that there is more than one version of a person.  There is the you as perceived by you.  There's the you as perceived by others...they have mental models of you, more or less detailed depending on how intimately they know you (or think they know you) that they use to anticipate your behavior and reactions.  Among those who share their opinions of you there is a consensus you...the common aspects of others mental models of you.  There can be completely fictitious personas attached to physically real people.  And fictional characters have individual and consensus mental versions hanging around just like you do. 

Anyhow, Shizuo and Aoki's conflict was fascinating, because of this.  The character they're obsessing over does not exist except in their heads.  They should have complete control over it, but they don't.  The consensus version is stronger than their desired version.  I suppose that's the difference between fantasy fiction and just fantasy, like personal fantasy.  Neither Shizuo nor Aoki could make Kinoko be the latter.  They, particularly Aoki, had to let Kinoko be as Kinoko would be if she were real, and as the character had been described to them; rather than as they wished she would be.

Great...fucking...story.



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Reply #27 on: July 16, 2013, 10:38:47 PM

Here is my "this story is REALLY about" analysis:

Shizuo represents modern Japanese otaku culture, particularly the last decade or so of it.  Take a walk in Akihabara, and go into the most unsettling crypto-pedo shops you come across and you'll see what I'm talking about.   Large numbers of mostly young Japanese men cannot relate to women (or life in general in many cases) in any meaningful way.  They construct their mental ideal of femininity and project it onto fictional characters, toys, and dolls.  Some of the more extreme cases have fantasy dates or marriages with their anime-character pillows, and they DEFINITELY copulate with them.  They celebrate fictional characters' birthdays.  They have the same level of devotion that Shizuo had for Kinoko. 

And behind mentally-predefined as perfect, utterly unattainable in reality 2D loves are armies of other hopeless men like themselves.  The images of their ideals of femininity are created by other men, animated by other men.  The only place where actual women enter this world is in providing the voices; and with Hatsune Miku even that involvement has been more or less removed.  No real woman could ever satisfy a man so obsessed with ideals of femininity utterly unconstrained by actual physical femininity. 

And like Shizuo, it's going to...if not kill them, at least ruin their lives.  It isn't an obsession that one can lose oneself in and come away intact.


I've also kind of been contemplating the idea for the last few years that there is more than one version of a person.  There is the you as perceived by you.  There's the you as perceived by others...they have mental models of you, more or less detailed depending on how intimately they know you (or think they know you) that they use to anticipate your behavior and reactions.  Among those who share their opinions of you there is a consensus you...the common aspects of others mental models of you.  There can be completely fictitious personas attached to physically real people.  And fictional characters have individual and consensus mental versions hanging around just like you do. 

Anyhow, Shizuo and Aoki's conflict was fascinating, because of this.  The character they're obsessing over does not exist except in their heads.  They should have complete control over it, but they don't.  The consensus version is stronger than their desired version.  I suppose that's the difference between fantasy fiction and just fantasy, like personal fantasy.  Neither Shizuo nor Aoki could make Kinoko be the latter.  They, particularly Aoki, had to let Kinoko be as Kinoko would be if she were real, and as the character had been described to them; rather than as they wished she would be.

Great...fucking...story.

As if this story wasn't creepy enough. Thanks for the nightmare fuel.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


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Reply #28 on: July 17, 2013, 12:29:19 PM
Wow, thanks for posting SonofSpermCube.  That totally makes sense as a parallel for this story.



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Reply #29 on: July 17, 2013, 08:53:22 PM
To me, the narration seemed as if he had been translating as he read. I felt it added a theatrical atmosphere.
The story was great!



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Reply #30 on: September 03, 2013, 07:14:15 AM
So am I the only one who was skeeved out that the protagonist repeatedly had sex with a wooden doll whose every action was controlled by either an old man or a 10 year old boy?

No. No, you are not. And I imagine that was one of the factors that put it into Pseudopod. =P

Are you sure?


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Reply #31 on: August 21, 2014, 01:18:23 PM
I named this my #7 favorite Pseudopod episode:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/08/podcast-spotlight-pseudopod/