Posted 27 September 2008 - 06:26 PM
Chief said becuse this is so long I have to put it under a spoilet tag!
Anyway, within it you'll find,
First Squad - The preview, or rather, the random and ranting thoughts on a series that practically nothing has been revelled about yet!
[spoiler:3fk7q6n0]As chief mentioned I wanted to make 2-posts relating to both 'Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series' and 'First Squad.' Due to the fact that my review would in part be in response to chefs comments regarding 'Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series' I could not write it until after he had made his post and so for now you'll have to just settle for my 'preview' thoughts regarding First Squad.
While it is true that so far we only have a very short description and a trailer to go on, for me at least it's enough for me to make a few preliminary remarks on my feelings towards this, of course, due to the very limited nature of the information available I will reserve full judgement until later and admit I could well be proven very wrong in my assumptions and I will be the first to stand up and admit this if it comes to pass, I just don't happen to think it will.
First and foremost, this could not possibly come at a better time given that the world economy is currently going through it's worst finical crisis since the great crash of 1929. In the US itself, the citadel of the free-market, where the dollar is God, the government has been forced to put together its largest package of state intervention and nationalisers since the 30's.
For a derailed background to the crises written by the international committee of the CWI my party is a part of way back in in March, months before the recent chaos, while the majority of economic annalists were still burring their heads in the sand see here, while you can find more recent statements on the main page,
It's been amusing to say the least to see some of the previous idealogical champagnes of neo-liberalism reduced to a state of manic depression and despair at the complete and total failure of their system. In one particularity amusing interview, one of these free-market fundamentalists was shown video footage of themselves talking up on a platform just last year, ranting and raving about the markets ability to correct itself and how provided the sate stay out off all economic relations, their will never be another recession.
In a way seeing these ideologically shattered people reminds me...well not through personal experience, I was too young, but from what I've read and discussed with people, about the level of shock and disillusionment that sections of the far-left went through when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 80's and early 90's, it's nice to see them get a taste of it for a change!
So yeah, any medium that promotes, or rather showcases, promote being too strong a word, a rival social system, regardless of how fundamentally flawed said system was, in the current period when people will, in my opinion, go looking for ideas, is always a good thing. It may well provide a bridge to reach out to young, radical, people attracted by some of the undertones in the show, in much the same way some radical Marvel comics, political hip-hop or bands like my favourite 'Rage Against the Machine' have given people political ideas.
Of course, just how political 'First Squad' is going to be is the big mystery and for me and will be the dividing line between being something that I consider is merely fun and something more substantial. In either case I'll probably write a review of the series for my parties national newspaper 'The Socialist.' I'm sure some of you would find the idea of a 'political review' of the series, complete with screen shots from the show highly amusing and so I'll post it here so you can have a good laugh at it. Rest assumed though, due to the limited space it will be a short review and only a fraction of the much later review I'll write up for the topic itself.
So then, the concept, what do I think? Well obviously given my views (the dirty commie of FUS) I happen to find any film or series that features Soviet Russia interesting on some level, excluding of course the utter reactionary crap like 'Red Dawn' or 'Rambo 3' and while I never supported the USSR politically after 1923 and even before then, form 1917-1923 it never idealise it as some on the left do, deluding themselves and making out it was some kind of paradise, they were very brutal times, with much struggling and suffering, only made bearable due to the unity of purpose and vision that the then non-degenerated Russian communist party kept people in, that of a world revolution and the advanced workers of the West coming to their aid.
So having giving a quick reference to my general approval of it's production, lets get to details of the anime as shown in the trailer. Firstly I'd like to mention the visuals for a bit, from what I've seen it certainly looks impressive as far removed from the cheesy anime style I have no real time for, you know the one I mean, the sweat drops, arms flapping around and heads growing to 10-times their size when they get angry.
For me, this has always been the stumbling block that has prevented me from 'getting into anime,' I regard myself as being a bit of a pretentious barstard, I love to take things far more seriously than perhaps they are meant to be. It's for that reason that unless there is a good reason for it, I prefer realism and don't like immersion being broken, at least not in something that I have the potential to take seriously on some level, Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged is an example of something so ridiculous that, breaking the fourth wall on so many occasions, that I don't mind it one bit and even look forward to it.
That very strength though, the high quality animation that makes your jaw hit the floor, could well turn into it's biggest weakness. You see, when you have something that looks good, there is an almost irresistible temptation to show it off for all it's worth and what does that mean in practice? I'll tell you, action scene after action scene after bloody action scene, while other minor and trivial details like, oh I don't know, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT and PLOT get left by the wayside.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for action, just because I 'd be thrilled with a series that almost entirely involved talking does not mean everyone else would be, I'm not selfish and hope that it's something other people can enjoy...I'm just worried, especially from what I've seen we might end up with something like the anime 'Read or Die' with the show coming across as simply as a series of action set pieces.
I mean, in 'Read or Die' you were promised a great set up, real historical figures from the past coming into the present with these bizarre powers and what did they do with it? Sweet fuck all! Yeah it looked great and the main character The Paper is cute as Hell, but they had all this potential to explore these historical figures personalties and their differing world views and instead just opted for fight scene after fight scene, I was left wondering what the hell was the point in even having them be historical figures.
I think there are also somewhat shallow motives in the thinking behind this project, clearly they went looking for certain imagery and themes that would strike a cord with what anime fans expect, the most obvious examples coming to mind are the whole 'group of teenagers with powers in a secret government unit' and of course the 'kids in neck ties' that as you know is customary in Japan although blue rather than red in this case. I must confess that for a few years I too took to wearing a Soviet style red neck tie, I thought and up to a point still do, think it looks bloody cute. Unfortunately for me, my comrades were less than supportive and continually told me that I looked like a twat, with one comrade, Greg, saying “you look like a Stalinist boy scout” which trust me was a pretty nasty broadside for a Trotskyist to dish out to a fellow Trot.
Anyway, the thing is, whatever interest may come from the setting and I'll talk more about that later, one cannot escape the fact that in terms of set up, it is pretty standard anime fare with the whole team of teens with powers. It's not that it's something I myself object to, in spite of the overused and cliché of it, it's just that...it seems a little lazy you know? I'm sure with a little effort they could have come up with something better, heck even just doing something similar but without the powers, having a small group you Russian teenagers caught up in the war would have been more interesting in terms of story potential and realism.
I think the real problem I have with this, the worry I have that niggles like a splinter in my mind, is the supernatural element that appears to dominate the plot.
I don't know of any other Marxists like me at FUS although some of you share some of my views on particular issues, but most people know enough to understand the basics, that it is an ideology founded on a rejection of spirituality, that it is fundamentally opposed to religion or any notion of the soul.
While I do not believe this is the popper place for a lengthy rants on Marx's analysis of religion, in brief he describes religious beliefs as a product of human alienation from each other, society and their own creative labour and they find through religion an illusionary expression and fulfilment of their frustrated and stifled social being,
“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
From such a position, it inevitability flows that communists, while recognising unlike the 'rationalists' of then and now, like the great Richard Dawkins, that education alone is not sufficient to abolish it and that only changing the social conditions can do this. None the less, while striving for this and having no illusions about how far 'enlightenment' can go in a fundamentally 'unenlightened' society, communists have a duty to wage an unceasing war on religious ideas,
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
From this it is quite obvious as to how Marxists would react to the shock of magic, ghosts and supernatural elements, that of total incomprehension and mental paralysis and their reality is smashed before their eyes, but what about the Soviet government itself? For a long time by the time this point has been reached, the 40's, the Stalinist government of the Soviet Union has regarded ideology as merely political spin to justify whatever leaps and tuns in policy are required of it, beginning with the 'theory of socialism in one country' to justify abandoning the international revolution and continuing through theory that lead to the policy of the policy of the 'popular front' to assist the Stalinists position aboard winning favour with capitalist governments and holding back the socialist revolution for their own motives.
However, swings in policy aside, the fact is that every society needs a broad ideology and while it is true that following the consolidation of the Stalinist dictatorship, Marxism, as an actually practised, critical method of analysis was abolished and replayed with a dogmatic orthodoxy, none the less, owing to the new state and economic structure that issued from the revolution, a materialist and anti-religious, along with nationalist, ideology was needed or rather flowed dialecticley from it to promote social cohesion of this new economic structure and now bonapartist political superstructure.
As Marx himself wrote with Engles in 'The German Idelogy,'
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it."
The consequences of this was that throughout the war, the 'mysticism' of the Nazis was a key point of attack for the Stalinists in the 'battle of ideas' being fought for the minds and loyalties of the Russian populace between the two powers. The near total destruction of religion in the Soviet Union in the 30's and 40's, regrettably carried through with over handed and thug like savagery by the bureaucrats, is well documented and people who confessed to believing in the divine were ruthlessly persecuted but the paranoid state forces.
In short, the idea of them not only excepting the existence of such 'spiritual powers' but embracing it enough to set up their own fighting force of magic users....it just strikes too much against the grain for me to be able to stomach it. It is no exaggeration to say that, if the 'spirit word' was shown to be real, existing and able to influence our material world, then it would do nothing short of completely and utterly undermining the entire basis of the Soviet Union. It would be comparable to the republican founding fathers of America suddenly finding out that the British King WAS in fact chosen by God to rule and all the consequences that would mean.
Along with this basic unmountable contradiction, we also have the issue that, due to their own powers proving to each of them that Marxism is completely at utterly wrong, there is little chance for the potentially interesting exploring of the children's own political indoctrination and views.
As countless studies and accounts have shown, in the former Stalinist countries, it was among the youth where you could find the most loyalty and devotion to the ideals and totalitarian political regimes, totalitarian socialites by nature work consciously to subvert the and control the youth, brainwashing and conditioning them into fanatical servants.
Mao for example, famously mobilised the Chinese Communist Party youth as a battering ram against a rival faction of the ruling bureaucracy during the so-called 'cultural revolution' and they were only too egger to respond, seeing on the workers and peasants with their little red books like ravenous dogs. They proved so egger in fact, that only a year into the movement Mao called in army to disarm them as sections of the youth began to go much further in implementing his rhetoric than he wanted them to, in some places even attempting to impose genuine forms of democratic accountability and control, rather than just hand power form one set of bureaucrats to another as Mao intended. It is only in later years, as they are confronted with the hard reality of their situation that such conditioning can begin to lose it's impact.
I must admit that seeing them start out as fairly brainwashed and conditioned Stalinist youth but, over time as they encounter all this violence and no doubt seeing the corruption in the the Soviet state, that was endemic, they begin to start to question the 'all knowing wisdom of comrade Stalin' and see the flaws in their system would be really enjoyable for me. But sadly I don't think such a serious approach will be taken to the subject matter and more likely the series will be very non-political and only a vague pro-Russian nationalism remaining.
This brings us to the other main problem connected with this issue, the involvement of Russians in the production and the way the majority of modern Russians view the Great Patriotic War. To the majority of modern Russians, the war is looked back with a feeling of national pride that overrides all other feelings and also the desire or the will to view the conflict from the actually existing consciousness of the the Russians of that time that, If one were open to this, they would naturally see that there feelings were of a political as well as a national character.
Russian workers fought to defend the public ownership of their factories, collective farm workers fought to prevent the return of the landowners, to them it was a social as well as national struggle, in spite of all the disgust and apathy the Russian people and especially the workers felt towards the ruling elite, whose privileged existence and monopoly of power mocked the socialist values they held, when it came to 'defending the gains of the revolution' it was a battle cry they all understood. As the British bourgeois historian Antony Beevor (probably my favourite currently living bourgeois historian) was to put it in his stunning military history book 'Stalingrad,'
"Whatever one may think about Stalinism, there can be little doubt that its idealogical preparation, through deliberately manipulated alternatives, provided ruthlessly effective arguments for total warfare. All right-thinking people had to except that Fascism was bad and had to be destroyed by any means. The Communist Party should lead the struggle because Fascism was totally devoted to its destruction. This form of logic is captured in Visily Grossman's novel, 'Life and Fate.' "'The hatred Facism bears us,' declares Mostovskoy, an old Bolshevik who had fallen foul of Stalinism, 'is yet another proof – a far-reaching proof – of the justice of Lenin's cause.'"
This is the basic problem I'm sure we'll encounter, to the majority of Russians today, the political zeal, those motives, will be utterly incomprehensible to them, I'm sure it seems like the mad ravings of 'deluded people' who believed there was something worth protecting under Stalinism. Yet I believe that no matter how degenerate it became, no matter how much the economy stagnated and even retraced in later years, I still maintain that socially Stalinism was 'relevantly' more progressive than capitalism and that Trotskyists around the world at the time, while maintaining their call for a new revolution to oust Stalin and the bureaucrats, none the less also put forward the call for unconditional military defence of the Soviet Union.
So, in conclusion, I guess I am not optimistic, mildly excited, but I'm not expecting much. While it's true some people might say I'm making far too strong demands on an anime, the point I want to make is, if you are not going to take the time to explore the political issues setting the series in Soviet Russia throws up, why even bother? Why not just set it in another fantasy or science fiction world?
Still, I guess we'll wait and see.
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