In proposing the congruent appropriateness regarding Shinya Tsukamoto’s ‘Tetsuo: Iron Man’ and the concept of postmodernism, discuss how the film reflects upon the ‘postmodern condition’
In asserting the objectives of my dissertation, I intend to firstly tackle the problematic theorizations and hypothesise surrounding the terming of ‘postmodernism’ itself. In relation to particular theorists within the field, it seems negotiated that ambiguity constantly precedes such elusive and belligerent concept. For Jean-Francois Lyotard postmodernism is rigorously defined as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Cited in Sim 1988 pg24), an intense distrust regarding totalizing discourses of legitimation (science, politics, religion). Jean Baudrillard remarks upon the concept of postmodernism as ‘the age of simulation’ (Cited in Murphy 1999 pg268), an implosion or dissolution between the realms of the real and the illusory signified by the emergence of mass media consumption and information technologies. Fredric Jameson proposes such concept in correlation to historicism, ‘Postmodernism as a period, but a period that no longer believes in history’ (Cited in Butler et al 2003 pg22), an epoch of deficient historicity. Charles Jencks refers to postmodernism as ‘a time of incessant choosing’ (Cited in Kumar 1995 pg126). Postmodernism is thus understood as a particularly eclectic term diagnosed as a condition, state, behaviour, mood, time, space, place - such polysemous classification accordingly defies certain legitimization, though irrefutably indicates constant social and cultural modification within contemporaneous society.
If to take into account the concept of modernism as a cultural shift or movement, then postmodernism can also be regarded as a similarly transcendent infrastructure, what can be coined as a condition, state or period that has surpassed the positivistic, technocratic and rationalistic features attributed to modernity. Though rather than to suggest that postmodernism signifies the completion of the modernization process ‘postmodernism can be understood as modernism in its nascent state, and this state is constant’ (Lyotard, cited in Sim pg163).
The term ‘postmodernism’ (or late capitalism) can be traced to the 1970’s, utilized to accommodate social developmental change, or what David Harvey refers to as the new ways in which time and space are experienced (‘time-space compression’, cited in Sarup pg100). In reminiscence of technocratic society or the regimental system of ‘Fordism’, Harvey recognizes that in response to the demise of the elitist (yet stable) rigidities of technical-scientific rationality in the 1960’s there has been a cultural shift offering what Harvey refers to as a flexible regime of accumulation. Postmodernism encapsulates such flexibility in celebrating difference, instability, fragmentation and ephemerality; a cultural shift that, first and foremost, is impelled to pluralize experience within a rapidly changing ethos. Such signified transgression celebrates what Christopher Nash calls ‘Universal pluralization’ (2001 pg 169) where individuality (heterogeneity) is offered predominantly through consumerism. In postmodernism, such issues of identity can be seen to be nullified largely due to the manifestation of cyberspace and new media (the internet, video games) where gender and heterogeneity hang in intermittence, distinctions between class have lost credulity and credibility – the prospective ‘individual’ has thus become a mythical ideology (though some theorists believe that such ideological myth never existed in the first place). Artistically the mass media enterprises have exhausted the notion of originality, a mass medium that strives for artistic diversity that consequently, and paradoxically, reaffirms a lack of diversity. The postmodern text, as argued by Jameson in his essay ‘The cultural logic of late capitalism’ signifies ‘a representation of a retreat from the need to supply a univocal narrative closure, predicated on the fragmentation of mass culture, the end of a rigidly fixed signifying system, a loosening of binary differences and the emergence of the individual consumer in relation to the reconfiguration of multinational capital’ (cited in Sim 1998 pg101).
In proclaiming ‘Tetsuo’ as a postmodern text, I wish to utilize Jameson’s intermediary model of deciphering the postmodern text as a skeletal basis for my assertions ‘Postmodern film = pastiche + nostalgia + blurring of high and low culture + depthlessness + schizophrenic experience’ (Wu, cited in Dear 2000 pg177). Upon such deconstructive analysis I believe it will be possible to attain a much more privileged inceptive understanding of the text and will reveal certain attitudes and views in relation to the postmodern condition.
In persevering with the substantiation of ‘Tetsuo’ as a postmodern text, it should be noted that the term ‘postmodernism’ is predominantly attributed to western democratic society. Consequently, such alleged corroboration might be regarded as invalid, and that such text can be considered to be confined to national/cultural specificity, its meanings symptomatic of Japan as a ‘nation state’, a distinct nationalism separate from the multinational influence of westernization. To acknowledge the constant synergetic proliferation of telecommunications, it can be contested as to whether ‘Nationalism’ actually exists within the epoch of the postmodern, ‘By way of networking – in the broadest and most multiform sense – of special-interest communities, world culture takes on a different contour, and one that in its very constitution leaves behind personal notions of national or geographic identity’ (Cited in Nash 2001, pg 169). Nash refers here to the Japanese coined expressionism ‘Glocalization’, in which remarks upon ‘the ability of a culture, when it encounters other strong cultures, to absorb influences that naturally fit into and can enrich that culture’ (Friedman 1999). Cultural demarcation is thus placed in flux, such cross-cultural syncretism confuses the notions of nationalism and traditionalism. This flux can be acknowledged within Japanese society in resultant to post-war Americanization and Europeanization, the formation of ‘Otaku’ culture or the ‘Japanization of American pop culture’ (Azuma 2001). Evidentially, the apparent Westernization of Japanese culture, particularly in the arts, situates the nation within the (multinational) state of postmodernity. Rather than to deny the cultural specificity of Tsukamoto’s film, in establishing contemporary Japanese culture as a product of (western) postmodernism it can be deemed that the themes, meanings and attitudes inherent in ‘Tetsuo’ can be symptomatically projected onto a multinational scale. To further establish the appeal of ‘Tetsuo’ within postmodernism (and the west), Tsukamoto remarks upon a prospective third instalment to his Tetsuo series in which he aims to create ‘a very detailed American movie feel’(Cited in Mes 2005 pg 208).
Shinya Tsukamoto’s ‘Tetsuo:Iron Man’ is an independently produced experimental text, of which is often categorized within the Cyberpunk genre in correlation to the ostensibly dystopian projection of technology and industrialism. To systematically rearrange the narrative into a relatively coherent chronology, the film principally focuses on a salaryman’s corporeal diminishment following a hit and run accident with a metal fetishist. As of consequence to the collision, both characters transform into hybridizations of flesh and metal in preparation for a grand battle in which sees the two metaphorically copulate, a mergence that produces a weapon of mass destruction. Upon the films finale such industrialized embodiment proposes to transform the world into metal.
In noting the similarities between ‘Tetsuo’ and the avant-garde production, the film maintains a particularly materialist and self-reflexive essence in endowing form with narrative function as opposed to content. For instance, Tsukamoto’s arguably superfluous utilization of stop-motion animation averts the viewer’s attention to the method of the film’s production (self-reflexivity) in preference to aiding the narrative or enhancing the redundantly incoherent syntax. Such concentration on style and surface ensues in suggesting a certain lack or ‘depthlessness’ (Jameson, cited in Sim 1998 pg101) in which the image, as signifier, assumes gratification upon its consumption ‘objects are depicted for their own sake, for the pleasure of their depiction, rather than for any purpose of revealing the nature of society or their historical context’ (Butler and Ford 2003 pg22). To take into account the exceptionally violent depictions inherent in ‘Tetsuo’, the film is arguably a pornographic experience (or as ‘an endurance test’, as proclaimed by numerous film critics) in which pleasure substitutes for meaning ‘watching the relentless streams of images in ‘Tetsuo’ is like being hammered on the head for an hour, and enjoying it’ (Geoff 1991, cited in McRoy 2005 pg 98).
The film also purports such lack of depth in drawing comparison to particular media practices within popular culture such as advertisements and music videos in which the aesthetic primarily ‘sells’ as a product. In positing the questionable meaningfulness of ‘Tetsuo’, the film can be regarded as an hour long music video by means of the amplification of non-diegetic sounds, the repetitive occurrence of the musical score, the subsidiary position of dialogue and the rapid cutting of which accompanies the musical orchestration.
In support of such theorists as Lyotard and Baudrillard, the utterance of dissolution besieging particular boundaries can be perceived as a common speculation of postmodernism. The resurgence of new media technologies (and the globalization of mass media commodification) has fashioned indiscernible peripheries concerning the dimensions of reality and fantasy (fact and fiction, the subject and the abject). Prominent within Tsukamoto’s text, the notion of reality is represented as an amalgamation of the veracious and the imaginary, the evisceration of certain reality conceived in ‘Tetsuo’ , purported via the effacement of what can be deemed as the seamless representational verisimilitude, can be recognized in accord to the manifestation of multiple realities resident within the text. Tsukamoto projects such imperceptible actuality predominantly by means of media saturation, whereby TV and virtual reality (video games) are rendered indistinguishable from reality – the ‘real’ is hence established as simulative, a reality in excess of itself or a ‘hyper – reality where things are being replayed ad infinitum’ (Baudrillard 1987, cited in Kumar 2005 pg 145) .
As a persistent motif in ‘Tetsuo’, (the) television is posited as a tenacious reality that irrevocably reconstitutes the authenticity of reality, exhibiting particular scenes that are both viewed and repeated in accompaniment to a television style aesthetic and the capricious inauguration of TV static (sound and image). The ontological presence of the television aesthetic and the television set in the salarymans apartment (which remains in the background of certain compositions perpetually ‘playing’ and ‘replaying’ events of the film itself) suggests a certain resilience regarding the dubious absolution of reality. The film also quite literally makes comment upon the postmodern idiosyncratic of ‘simulation’ when the salaryman is attacked with a television, the metal fetishist plunging the TV onto the salaryman’s cranium and proclaiming to ‘show something wonderful. A new world’. The technologically ubiquitous and nightmarish reality that the salaryman perceives inside the television is then followed by a series of edits reverting to the acknowledged motif of the television static, though the image differs in adjunction to the silhouette of the metal fetishist who is encased within a foreground and background of television static. Projecting the ever-present problematization in validating (and experiencing) realism/reality in postmodernism, the film demonstrates that ‘What is real is no longer our direct contact with the world, but what we are given on the TV screen: TV is the world. TV is dissolved into life, and life is dissolved into TV’ (Sarup 1993 pg 165). Such apparent conflation reflects upon a universal technologically induced paranoia, which is furthered via the notion of virtual reality. The ‘GAME OVER’ screen at the end of the film emphasizes this upon the realization of the implosion between the existent and the virtual, reality becomes mere ‘simulation’; the cast become game characters, spectators become players. The fear of technological assimilation, metamorphosis or transfiguration becomes increasingly evident, in that ‘false’ realities compensate for reality, technologies are purported to encompass the ability to possess. In reflecting upon the postmodern condition ‘Tetsuo’ evocates the perpetually socio-contemporaneous anxiety that reality is becoming (or has become) a far from totalizing discourse, ‘We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so “realistic” that they can live in them’ (Boorstin, cited in Dear 2000 pg 166).
The difficulty in establishing boundaries is not, on the contrary, confined to the notions of reality, as ‘Tetsuo’ makes apparent intangible conceptions regarding the constitution of the individual subject. In postmodernism, Jameson argues that ‘the individualistic subject is referred to as ‘dead’ or ‘decentred’ in the wake of the epoch of corporate capitalism and demographic explosion’ (cited in Foster 1985 pg 115) where, in retaliation to the homogeneous individual of the past, individualism is offered in its multiplicity and mobility. The postmodern ‘self’ thus becomes substantiated in its plurality, a solipsistic void whereby ‘We exist in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality. The centre fails to hold....’ (Gergen 1991, cited in Nash pg 4). Amidst the ascension of cyberspace and virtual reality the alluring feature of self-invention allows for the individual the ability for self-proliferation, and in resultant the sacrifice of the individual subject in exchange for the disseminated or decentred subject.
Tsukamoto’s protagonist parallels such indictment of the self through gradual bodily ‘metalmorphosis’ and mental disorder, an unsolicited revolt in which the character’s humanness becomes less and less distinct as the film progresses. The death of the individualist subject occurs in coincidence not only through patent metamorphosis of the corporeal but of the psyche, whereby the salaryman (as with the antagonist) inexorably operates within multiple realms (the hallucinatory, the television, the virtual). As with the clientele of cyberspace, the salaryman adopts a ‘Terminal identity; an unmistakably doubled articulation in which we find both the end of the subject and a new subjectivity constructed at the computer station or TV screen. The human is configured as a terminal of multiple networks’ (Bukatman 1993, cited in Brooker and Brooker 1997 pg 78). Further dissolution occurs subsequent to the conflicting culmination between the protagonist and antagonist, the two fusing together to form a frenzied mass of metallic parts that shape what can be conceived as a man-machine tank. Upon such consolidation, individuality is consequently submitted to the extreme; the self becomes the ‘selves’, demographics implode as the titles of ‘salaryman’ and ‘metal fetishist’ are revoked upon unification, heterogeneity is substituted for (prospective) homogeneity.
Such features of the self (permeability and malleability) mirror the facets of cyberspace and virtual space, the newly constituted amalgamation of the self in ‘Tetsuo’ sustains a certain parallelism (albeit metaphorical) to the internet in the way that both vessels propose drastic change, a change that is both anarchic and (in oscillation) cathartic. Through the process of cyborgification (in the technical and metaphoric sense) the decentred, or respectively abject self is represented in its duality; whilst ‘Tetsuo’s finite post-human configuration ultimately poses an apocalyptic threat via propagation and parasitic control (the fear that industrialization maintains supremacy within social and cultural spheres), such embodiment also presupposes solace in unification and stability (in its totality). In conjunction to the mythical ideology of individuality, it can be argued as to whether the characters actually maintained such essence in the first place. Given that the characters are nameless and are thus defined in terms of vocation or recreation (the salaryman, the metal fetishist - to which is translated in the Japanese as ‘Yatsu’ which means simply ‘Guy’) it is dubious to assume that there actually was an individuality to be revoked.
The revelation of the absence of the individual subject in ‘Tetsuo’ oscillates accordingly in conjunction to scepticism regarding authorship and spectatorship. Whereas the modernist text (often attributed to the auteur theory of the 1970’s) conveys a particularly unique or personal vision and achieves subjectivity in privileging content as opposed to formal style, the postmodern text exhibits a renunciation of such paradigmatic inferential upon the prioritization of spectacle opposed to narrative and the problematization of the individual artist.
It is pertinent to acknowledge that Tsukamoto’s film makes difficult for subjectivity by means of officious stylistic eclecticism - induced by particular editing strategies (rapid and arbitrary cutting, stop-motion animation), conscious cinematographic techniques (camerawork unrelentingly deficient of motionlessness, abstraction), expressionistic lighting and the unorthodox narrative syntax employed (nonlinear digression). Comparatively the substance or content inherent in the film lacks the complexity of its formal counterpart, exposed in its simplicity as the cause and effect of the collision between a salaryman and a metal fetishist. Such overt stylistic proclamation makes manifest a disposition in regards to the relationship between the text and the spectator which hence prohibits (to a degree) character alignment and emotional/ empathetic response. For example, it is tentative to assume that the spectator reacts accordingly to the death of the salaryman’s girlfriend atop his phallic drill given the expressionist imagery of the scene, where the girlfriend is lit (in high contrast) from below in accompaniment to being framed against a white background which becomes showered with blood. Likewise it is difficult to feel sympathy for the fetishist as he is hit by an oncoming car, whereby such unfortunate event becomes overshadowed by the manoeuvrability of the camera and the emergence of the contrapuntal musical score. In exerting a certain ‘waning of affect’ (Jameson 1991 pg 10), such aesthetics distance the viewer from the text and in resultant sedate effectual empathy.
Subsequent to such evidences, Tsukamoto’s style subjugates and governs (if any) emotional response, which is consequently voided in oscillation to the visibility of the text’s production. Such emotional detachment instigates the spectator’s resort to consuming the image as textual information devoid of meaning or significance - the affectively anesthetized constitution of the viewer (as subject) is thus analogously identifiable in affirming symptoms of automatism, affirming the prospect of dehumanization within postmodern society. The presupposition of the impassive interpretation of ‘Tetsuo’ also remarks upon the particularly carefree attitude exhibited within postmodern society; in awe of stylistics, it can be argued that the spectator disregards the specific symptomatic meanings inherent within the film (especially noting the self-reflexive and presumably fantastical nature of the text) in exchange for a mild euphoria. To consider the relevance of the alchemic transformation between flesh and metal within the socio-contemporaneous, in accord to rapid industrialization and cybernetics, the significance of spectacle ensures that such anxiety is suppressed (or controlled).
The prominence of style exerted in ‘Tetsuo’ also makes comment upon the fixation with aesthetics within the ethos of consumerism. Unceasingly self-conscious, the film recognizes and reflects upon the omnipotence of the image within the style centred culture of postmodernism in which the (compulsive) individual articulates their own identity through iconography, ‘Because we don’t have significant social structures to provide meaning and segmentation of our life, what we do is start from style, and we build from this stuff an identity and capacity to express ourselves’ (Polhemous, cited in Nash pg 144). Whilst a concentration on style and surface may aid in establishing the persona of the individual subject (the exterior expression of inner feelings) within the milieu of the heterogeneous, conversely the subject is rendered as a semiotic being in inadvertent celebration of commodification. In the recycling of fashions and the resurgence of past styles and commodities ‘the image has become the final form of commodity reification’ (Debord cited in Jameson 1991 pg 18).
As in consumer culture, Tsukamoto (as a supposedly individual artist or auteur) builds an identity via style, though upon investigation such alleged individualistic style ventroloquizes (and resurrects) deceased fashions. Upon the sheer replete of styles exhausted within the arts (to consider the array of numerous genres and hybrids) the autonomous aesthetic can no longer exist (but exists purely as a code) within the epoch of the postmodern, ‘In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum’ (Jameson, cited in Brooker and Brooker pg 23).
In renouncing claims to originality through the cannibalization or mimicry of other artists and styles, the postmodern style is thus recognized by its self-referential idiosyncratic or what Jameson refers to as ‘pastiche – a practice in which acknowledges the disappearance of the individual subject, along with its formal consequence, the increasing unavailability of the personal style’ (1991, pg). Pastiche is essentially blank parody, or parody devoid of laughter or satire (though not parody, as Jameson is careful to acknowledge), a style configured by imitation and intertextualities. Ubiquitous in ‘Tetsuo’, the notion of pastiche becomes ascertained in revealing Tsukamoto’s text as an amalgamation of (already) recognized forms and techniques. Upon the reception of ‘Tetsuo’, Ian Conrich observes the many integrations and influences inherent in the film, attributing a catalogue of artists to Tsukamoto’s thematic agenda and style ‘such as James Cameron (The Terminator 1984), Paul Verhoeven (Robocop), David Cronenberg (Videodrome and The Fly), Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jack Smith, Sam Raimi, Jan Svankmeyer, William S. Burroughs, David Lynch...’ (Cited in McRoy 2005 pg 97). The list continues (and probably could continue ad infinitum), and whilst Tsukamoto has not committed himself to such alleged influences, such parallelisms support the unattainable claim to originality in postmodernism. A more accurate account of qualifying said residential hybridization can be attained from Tsukamoto himself, who acknowledges myriad inspirations in manufacturing the film (supported by his authorized biography ‘Iron Man: The cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto’).
Even though Tsukamoto had vast control over his vision, (credited as director, actor, writer, editor and cinematographer) certain interpolation occurs through his employment of personal influences which are attributed to other artists and productions. Tsukamoto proclaims that the television series ‘Ultra Q’ (1966) and the ‘Kaiju eiga’ films (monster movies such as Godzilla and Gamera) had a particular impact upon his vision, in addition to the works of Akira Kurasawa (particular lighting techniques) H.R.Giger, (the alien design for Ridley Scott’s feature ‘Alien’, 1979) and Sogo Ishii (rapid cutting, jump cuts and variable rates of undercranking – ‘a visual equivalent to punk music’ (Mes 2005 pg 40). Of particular interest, Tsukamoto remarks upon ‘Tetsuo’ as ‘the child of Blade Runner and Videodrome’ (Tsukamoto, cited in Mes 2005 pg 60). Concurrently ‘Tetsuo’ cannot be attributed to a singular artist in ascertaining such prominent affiliations, the presence of the originator thus becomes expunged through propagation, ‘producing by severing a thing from one place and grafting it to another’ (Nash pg 150). Tsukamoto’s text is arguably a recombination of prior texts, sutured together in crafting a heterogeneous commodity. In endorsing Ridley Scott and David Cronenberg’s works as the parents of ‘Tetsuo’, Tsukamoto concedes that such text is unquestionably dependant upon such texts; a commodity of commodification (which also suggests the vogue of the multicultural within postmodernism, in that the Japanese product is informed by Western products). The notion of grafting inherent in ‘Tetsuo’ is symptomatic of the ‘pick and mix approach to life’ (Butler and Ford 2003, pg 19) celebrated within postmodernism, an arguable culture of quotations. For example; to consider the emergent frequency of film re-makes, or film adaptations of novels and video games, the availability of multicultural products, or how identity is constructed through the heterogeneous mode of consumerism - whilst postmodern culture offers diversity and emancipation in pluralizing experience, such lifestyle or standard of living paradoxically suggests the dependence upon commodity in attaining and achieving such heterogeneity.
In conclusion to the plagiarism of past styles, pastiche ensues in representing the postmodern crisis in authenticating history. ‘Tetsuo’ remarks upon such loss of historicity in echoing other films and a myriad of specific eras that confound references to the contemporaneous present. Whilst it is fact that the film was produced in Tokyo in 1988, ‘Tetsuo’ is arguably metonymic of other periods, and thus relinquishes the present in invoking the past. In appropriating such assertion, it is possible to conceive the film as a projection of the 1960’s (in particular) via the inherent evocation of reinventing the monster movie experience, the Kaiju Eiga, and through the text’s iconography. For example, the decrepit urbanity of Tokyo together with the symbols of hypertrophy (the posters of athletes) situates the narrative within the 1960’s where Tokyo was undergoing rapid transformation in accommodating for the Olympics in 1964. In addition, it is suggested that the film takes place within modernity in reference to specific indications of modern culture, the omnipresence of the machine age (such as the recurrent appearances of cars and trains) emphasizes retrospection. Upon such analysis, it is appropriate to deduce ‘Tetsuo’ as a nostalgic film (or la mode retro) subsequent to the text’s evident displacement of contemporaneous temporality. Though ‘Tetsuo’ is far from a credible invigoration or documentation of such obsolete time, the film posits ‘a desperate attempt to appropriate a missing past, refracted through the iron law of fashion change and the emergent ideology of the generation’ (Jameson p19). To contest that such reminiscence merely urges a hankering to return to the traditionalist values of modernism, ‘Tetsuo’s nostalgic invocation suggests a certain ‘separation anxiety’ in opposition to transgression. To consider the salaryman as a (symptomatic) metaphorical epitome of modernism (in his attempt to uphold traditions of the domestic and the vocational), in becoming infected by metal the protagonist demonstrates such separation anxiety in attempting to subjugate metamorphosis, concealing his transformation in maintaining repression. Nevertheless the protagonist fails to sustain perseverance with his past lifestyle and the capability to revert to a less tumultuous time. To propose that ‘The nostalgic impulse is an important agency in adjustment to crisis; it is a social emollient and reinforces identity when confidence is weakened or threatened’ (Sarup 1996 pg97), Tsukamoto’s text acts as a potent reminder or warning of the precocity of technology within the vogue of postmodernism,
‘Tetsuo’ also portrays the fragmentation of time in employing ‘schizophrenic ecriture’ whereby the contortion of time is represented through the substantiation of an irregular and equivocal narrative structure, ‘an experience of isolated, disconnected material signifiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence’ (Sarup, 1993 p147). The sequential order of the film becomes fragmented subsequent to the episodic form of the film (signified by the arbitrary use of fades (to black) and the recurrent interpolation of the television static) and in correlation to the film’s representation of the past and the future as a series of perpetual presents (identified through the text’s prevalence to resort to the modes of prolepsis and analepsis). The cannibalization of distinct temporalities reflects upon an ephemeral culture to which distinctions have become eroded, particularly in considering the conceptions of both high and low culture.
The film’s protagonist (as with the spectator) experiences such temporal fragmentation in reliving past events (such as the collision with the metal fetishist) and the prospective future as a present experience, but not of temporal continuity. The salaryman also experiences such ‘language disorder’ (in Lacanian terms) in his inability to process the appropriateness of actuality. In the scene where the salaryman feeds his girlfriend, the sounds that accompany such actions are increasingly amplified (and disconnected to the actual event) in suggesting that the character can no longer relate the signifier to the signified.
In conclusion it appears unambiguously pertinent to affirm ‘Tetsuo’ as a postmodern text, both in terms of context and content. In applying the concept of postmodernism to the text, it can be identified that the film offers an enhanced interpretation of the film that is otherwise particularly incoherent. I believe that such marriage allows for the film to be considered as symptomatic of postmodernism in revealing (and making comment upon) the pathological symptoms of the postmodern condition. Though I wish to deliberate further the text’s relationship to the condition of postmodernity in discussing whether the film maintains a regressive or progressive stance in reflecting upon such ethos.
In declaring the death of the individual subject, the dissolution of distinct boundaries between the real and the fantastic, the indictment of the morally vacuous, social abandonment in resultant to the absence of stable discourses, the obsession with techno-eroticism – it is particularly obvious that ‘Tetsuo’ remarks upon a chaotic culture in flux to which inevitably results in anarchy. Upon the film’s end, the characters proclaim to ‘mutate the whole world into metal’ and ‘rust the world into the dust of the universe’, the new world in which the characters conspire to create is unmistakably nihilistic and apocalyptic - the obstinate dystopia conjured in the film proposes the requirement for stability within society. Tsukamoto’s film also utters the inept preoccupation and concern with the definitive ‘human’ being in suggesting the withdrawal of humanness in exchange for a post-human articulation. As a cautionary tale, ‘Tetsuo’ insinuates that the human subject cannot survive in the postmodern epoch, and that the infectious nature of technology is seemingly impossible to resist (for example, in prolonging mortality). To consider that cyborgification is possible within postmodernism, both in the technical sense (artificial joints and skin) and the metaphorical sense (the virtual participant), the ‘mechatransformations’ in ‘Tetsuo’ are arguably configurations of a not so distant future. The film also portrays a deep sense of abandonment whereby characters maintain an absolute jurisdiction and authority over their own lives, ‘the endless struggle with the instability and fluidity of being is made manifest’ (pg 95 Nash). To remark upon the significance of the lack of communication between the characters, the dehumanized urbanity of Tokyo and the particularly aimless approach to life (for example, an accelerated lifestyle in which voids purposeful meaning), suggests a regressive lifestyle in which portrays alienation, loss, and the preoccupation with the notion of the self (and the self-conscious) within a heterogeneous milieu. The human concern with the self, and the status of the self within late capitalist society, is inarguably a feature of narcissism (which again re-iterates social isolation within postmodern culture).
Evidentially ‘Tetsuo’ posits the prospect of a regressive and tumultuous future within postmodernism, though I wish to argue that such regression is not without reward. In adapting to life within postmodernism, the subject can be seen to concede identity in exchange for the promise of immortality (to an extent). Though primarily, ‘Tetsuo’ can be considered as a post-apocalyptic warning in which humanity is doomed, and must be prepared to embrace technology in order to survive, and in creating a new totality for which stability can be re-instated.
Copyrighted by Mark Hale
Essay level: BA
Essay grade: 1st (74%)
Essay level: BA
Essay grade: 1st (74%)
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‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’ (1988) Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
‘Videodrome’ (1983) Directed by David Cronenberg
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