The Worst Thing
Sep. 2nd, 2022 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI’ve been enjoying listening to the Dark Souls podcast (this one right here), as the two hosts share my taste in horror and humor. They’re also respectful of real-world differences both in terms of how they talk about stories and how they treat actual people, which I appreciate. Just because you make dick jokes doesn’t mean you have to be gross.
I find the banter between the hosts and their guests to be a lot of fun and super relaxing to listen to when I’m working in Photoshop, and I also like learning about the stories of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, both of which cater to my niche interests but are unfortunately too difficult for me to play. (I mean, I’m trying! I’m just very bad and very slow.)
Anyway, I skipped ahead in the podcast to listen to their episode about the manga Berserk (here), and one of the hosts said something interesting about horror and how it works.
Berserk, which is one of the primary influences of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, is just about as grimdark as you can get. Although I watched the three recent(ish) anime movie adaptations of Berserk, the original manga isn’t for me. There’s a great deal of sexual violence, most of which is pedophilic or borderline-pedophilic in nature. Although I don’t think the rape scenes are exploitative, they’re extremely explicit.
The guiding principle of these scenes seems to be: Let’s think of the most innocent thing we can, and then violate it in the most horrible manner possible. This theme is expressed in multiple ways throughout the story, but a lot of the major beats are accented by rape, at least in the first half of the series (which is all I’m familiar with). Narratively speaking, I think Berserk earns its rape scenes, which are consistently horrifying and necessary to drive the plot.
Still, the way I feel about this – and the way that one of the podcast hosts seems to feel about this – is that prolonged and detailed scenes of violent sexual assault are difficult to read, and the inclusion of multiple such scenes can be a dealbreaker. One or perhaps two might make sense, especially in a “perpetuating a cycle of violence” sort of way, but there’s just way too much rape for my taste, and it’s way too explicit. The battle-based violence in Berserk is so over-the-top that you can enjoy it without taking it seriously, but the sexual assault is something else entirely, especially when it concerns children.
The other host – who I swear is a good and decent person – understands and agrees with this view, but he justifies the sexual violence in a narrative sense, arguing that the story needs to earn the concept of “evil” that it’s trying to set up in order for its themes to have resonance.
The primary theme of Berserk is “the corrupted hero”; or, more specifically: What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve a worthy and noble goal? Is it possible to achieve anything meaningful without becoming corrupted by the very power you need realize your goals? In the end, can the social destruction and self-annihilation necessary to realize your goals truly balance the benefits of what you hope to achieve?
Without setting up “evil” and “corruption” as legitimately upsetting and terrible things, however, you can’t really do justice to these questions.
And I totally get that! I just think it’s a bit uncreative to fall back on rape as the default “worst thing that can happen to a person.”
What I admire about the Soulsbourne games is that they find all sorts of interesting ways to express the concept of “absolute, undeniable evil” without a single mention of sexual assault. I mean, they get really creative with cannibalism, and that’s just the tip of a horrible iceberg made of the worst things that human imagination can conceive of.
I find the banter between the hosts and their guests to be a lot of fun and super relaxing to listen to when I’m working in Photoshop, and I also like learning about the stories of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, both of which cater to my niche interests but are unfortunately too difficult for me to play. (I mean, I’m trying! I’m just very bad and very slow.)
Anyway, I skipped ahead in the podcast to listen to their episode about the manga Berserk (here), and one of the hosts said something interesting about horror and how it works.
Berserk, which is one of the primary influences of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, is just about as grimdark as you can get. Although I watched the three recent(ish) anime movie adaptations of Berserk, the original manga isn’t for me. There’s a great deal of sexual violence, most of which is pedophilic or borderline-pedophilic in nature. Although I don’t think the rape scenes are exploitative, they’re extremely explicit.
The guiding principle of these scenes seems to be: Let’s think of the most innocent thing we can, and then violate it in the most horrible manner possible. This theme is expressed in multiple ways throughout the story, but a lot of the major beats are accented by rape, at least in the first half of the series (which is all I’m familiar with). Narratively speaking, I think Berserk earns its rape scenes, which are consistently horrifying and necessary to drive the plot.
Still, the way I feel about this – and the way that one of the podcast hosts seems to feel about this – is that prolonged and detailed scenes of violent sexual assault are difficult to read, and the inclusion of multiple such scenes can be a dealbreaker. One or perhaps two might make sense, especially in a “perpetuating a cycle of violence” sort of way, but there’s just way too much rape for my taste, and it’s way too explicit. The battle-based violence in Berserk is so over-the-top that you can enjoy it without taking it seriously, but the sexual assault is something else entirely, especially when it concerns children.
The other host – who I swear is a good and decent person – understands and agrees with this view, but he justifies the sexual violence in a narrative sense, arguing that the story needs to earn the concept of “evil” that it’s trying to set up in order for its themes to have resonance.
The primary theme of Berserk is “the corrupted hero”; or, more specifically: What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve a worthy and noble goal? Is it possible to achieve anything meaningful without becoming corrupted by the very power you need realize your goals? In the end, can the social destruction and self-annihilation necessary to realize your goals truly balance the benefits of what you hope to achieve?
Without setting up “evil” and “corruption” as legitimately upsetting and terrible things, however, you can’t really do justice to these questions.
And I totally get that! I just think it’s a bit uncreative to fall back on rape as the default “worst thing that can happen to a person.”
What I admire about the Soulsbourne games is that they find all sorts of interesting ways to express the concept of “absolute, undeniable evil” without a single mention of sexual assault. I mean, they get really creative with cannibalism, and that’s just the tip of a horrible iceberg made of the worst things that human imagination can conceive of.
