Explosive Adolescence

Adolescence is a time of life that generates significant thought, writing, consternation, and celebration depending upon the topic being considered.  We have alternately considered it as a time of “storm and stress” and a time that fosters the creation and continuance of subculture groups meant to stretch, challenge, and redefine mainstream, majority culture.  This week, adolescence is presented to us as a time of explosive change, both in the physical appearance of the body and the power structures of society as experienced by the young people to whom this label is applied.  Without question, the anime that was featured this week – both in written critique and the original films – portrays this explosiveness in a vibrant and convincing manner.

While Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira viscerally portrays the body confusion and grotesqueness that Susan Napier argues it does (especially in the closing scenes when Tetsuo’s changing body not only becomes lost to him through the rapidity of changes, but does so is horrifying and explicit ways), it is her other assertion that adolescence is a time of exponential changes in youth power that is more compelling.  Tetsuo enters manhood as the film progresses, and while the storyline includes scenes of medical experimentation and physical manipulation, there is also a strong current of symbolic, less obvious physiological change as well.  Tetsuo is envious of the manlier Kaneda and covets his overt masculinity (often symbolized by Tetsuo’s pursuit of Kandea’s flashy red motorcycle).  As Tetsuo begins to realize his ever-increasing power – as he grows and matures, he relishes in his ability to lord it over not only his manlier friend, but also all male authority figures to the point where wanton death and destruction are perceived as his very entitlement.  In the end though, we as audience members seem to receive a warning from Akira that while adolescents begin to experience the power of the physical changes that accompany the ascension to adulthood, their experience of it can become explosively unrestrained in the confusion and heady excitement of this time of life.

In Ranma ½ and FLCL we see a more subtle form of explosive adolescence, but a more vivid representation of body confusion and the challenges posed to adolescents by unexpected and misunderstood changes to their physical form.  Ranma functions as a direct challenge to the notion of a straightforward and unquestioned progression from boy to grown man as he flits between adolescent boy and adolescent girl and the gender identities associated with each.  These explosive changes mirror the suddenness of physiological changes that teens and tweens experience (including first menstruation and erections, etc) and serve as metaphor for the struggle of gender and sexual identity formation in a lighter, more comical tone than Akira’s overt grotesqueness.  Without question, Ranma ½ features explosive changes and challenges to accepted power structures, but meets those changes where boy meets girl, instead of where boy meets man.

Where Akira and Ranma ½ (and Napier) present convincing arguments about the explosiveness of adolescence, FLCL captures the challenges of unexpected physical change, but presents a less convincing argument surrounding the cyborg-ness of contemporary human culture, as argued by Brian Ruh.  The character of Naota experiences several of the same moments of confusion or embarrassment as Ranma – including the unexpected “erections” that grow from his head and seem to not so subtly suggest virility – as he struggles to maintain a sense of wholeness in the face of the identity loss associated with adolescent maturation.  In this vein, Tsurumaki Kazuya presents a convincing argument in favor of explosive adolescence; and while Ruh presents convincing arguments surrounding youth and media culture, he seems to leave the reader doubting his assertion that “we have become cyborgs through the media…”  Adolescence is a time of many things – and while cyborgs may not be one of them – Japanese anime has clearly shown it to be one of explosive change.

Youth Culture

Lawrence Grossberg and Dick Hebdige both write about the creation of subcultures, the (primarily) young people who join the movements, and the signs and styles they use to present themselves in opposition to mainstream society.  While Hebdige delves into the subversive power of the style that subcultures create as an active form of protest against the establishment, both he and Grossberg shed considerable light onto the paradoxical nature of such movements.  This nature, which originates in stark contrast to either conscience or subconscious hegemonic power structures, often spells its own doom as it elicits tangible societal change.   As both authors clearly present, these subcultures will inevitably fade away as they achieve their desired ends, become a commodity, are naturalized into standing power structures, or turned into “meaningless exotica.”  This paradox challenges the validity of subcultural movements while simultaneously confirming their effectiveness as agents for social change.

To further consider what I perceive to be the paradoxical nature of subculture, an investigation into both the aberrant origins and ultimate absorption of these movements should prove illustrative.  To borrow Hebdige’s example of the Punk movement, these young people created a chaotic, nihilistic style, which stood in total opposition to the conservative ideology of mainstream culture.  This explosive and intentional middle finger to the hegemony of the establishment was done to illustrate the ridiculousness of accepted material objects when stripped of their contextual familiarity.  The Punk’s movement was initially quite effective at subverting the power of assumed social strata as every and any symbol was hijacked and displayed to the world as entirely constructed and meaningless without it’s accompanying ideology.

Likewise, the rock and roll movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s in the United States was born of a desire to stick it to the institutions that both defined and perpetuated the powerlessness of youth.  By creating a social medium that claimed residence strictly outside of the domesticity of home, the rigidity of school, and the sterility of the medical establishment, rock and roll provided a direct challenge to mainstream ideas of youth and the roles they played in society.  This challenge effectively deconstructed generally accepted roles within our culture, but in so doing muted the legitimacy of rock and roll as a subculture of youth – and sets the stage for the flip side of our paradoxical coin.

Both the Punk movement and the ascendency of rock and roll sowed the seeds of their own demise as the ideologies they protested began to change in response to their very presence.  As Punk’s became adopted into mainstream material society (through fashion, media, and industry) their brash and alarming style, and their attack on meaning, was minimized to the point of there really being no “other” against which Punks could rage.  Likewise for rock and roll, as the movement began to find success in challenging and eroding the hegemonic institutions that set parameters on the role of young people in society, rock music ultimately lost a “man” to damn.  In the end, it appears that while youth subculture burns with a brilliant intensity, the flames become self-consuming in the face of hegemonic break down, ideological change, societal adoption and a culture of incessant materialism and mass media connectivity.  While the youth subculture remains an effective tool for social change, it appears to remain forever paradoxical as well.