Violence, The Sculptor
Discussing the construction of patriarchy in "Revolutionary Girl Utena," and the violence inherent to the process.
Illustration: an image of Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
When society makes men, it starts with boys. Soft boys, gentle boys. Boys who like kittens, boys who cook, boys and their bikes. But these are not the appropriate actions of men, in our society or that of Ohtori Academy, and so must be punished. To become a man, you must be hard. You have your place, women have the other one, and each of you must enforce and maintain those places. Boys do not know all this naturally- boys must be taught by men, and that teaching often involves violence.
Touga, and to a lesser extent Saionji, must be taught by Akio what their place is in the system. When we see Touga shirtless in Akio's bed, and Touga and Saionji laid out on the hood of Akio's car as he takes pictures of their exposed flesh, we are told without telling one of his favorite methods of teaching. In general, the final arc of duels featuring each teenage duelist taking a car ride with a shirtless adult Akio has a certain implication. Later, He uses this tactic on Utena as well.
It is after Saionji meets Akio himself that, for the first time in a long string of episodes, he behaves with sexual aggression towards Anthy, and with a new aggression towards Miki for trying to defend her. He was, of course, aggressive towards Anthy before- part of why Utena gets involved in the duels, though she side steps admitting it, is Saionji's physical abuse of Anthy. However, after his meeting with Akio, his aggression is not only renewed after a long period of relative peace, it is worse than before.
Mikage seeks to challenge the system. His Rose Bride, Mamiya, is a teenage boy. He wants to replace Anthy with him. Mamiya, like Anthy, is South Asian. He is sickly, and he loves flowers. He does not bear a sword, and he does not duel. In short, Mamiya is not especially masculine, especially not by the ideal standards of men in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Even Saionji, with his frilly apron and exchange diary, is a duelist. Mamiya, the prospective Rose Bride, is effeminate, and there is homoerotic subtext to him and Mikage’s relationship- if nothing else, we see them getting dressed together, implying they were doing… something.
This very scene is the first time Mikage states his desire to make Mamiya the Rose Bride. In fact, when Mamiya suggests Groom would be correct, Mikage rebuffs him and says the title Bride suits Mamiya better. There are boys who can be made into men, and then there are gender failures. The latter, to the innovative mind, can still be useful, of course- as labor, as fonts of power, just like cis women. But, since they're failures, you can get away with even more abuses. To the innovative mind, you don't have to waste your time on the goal of beating them into shape, because there are methods to ensure they don't pose much of a threat. The revolution Mikage pictures is no revolution, for it only expands the idea of what an acceptable Bride is.
The Mamiya we see is also Anthy, taking the mantle of boy in service of Akio’s manipulation of Otohori. Even as a boy, even as the manipulative witch, Anthy is an object under the system.
Akio was a boy once too. Or Deos was. Either way, there was a young, hurting brown boy, and his sister, a brown girl, who tried to put her foot down and say, “ enough. He must rest. He cannot go on like a machine fixing all your problems. It will kill him.” And pale-skinned men taught them both what their places were.
In Hinduism, power, or Shakti, is feminine, and goddesses are the bearers of Shakti. In Shaktism, this force is identified as the Supreme power of the universe, as Brahman is in other forms of Hinduism. This is not a perfect comparison, as the power we see in the show from Anthy is called the power of Dios and presumably masculine, and the power of the other characters is their very soul.
In these other forms of Hinduism, while power is feminine, the one who wields it most of the time is a masculine figure- reflective of how they themselves center upon male forms of divine. In some religious tales, this is further discussed as Shakti being embodied by a goddess, Mahadevi, that allegedly does not know or care for morals, particularly the intersection of family and sexual morals, constrained by gods who take her power from her because she is unfit to use it- nature being constrained by culture, chaos ruled by order (The Book of Kali, “The Manifestations” by Seema Mohanty). The Rose Bride summons the sword, which is the power within her, given form. She is its master. She does not duel with it.
However, it’s not only the Rose Bride who summons the sword. In the Car Duel arc, the re-invigorated duelists have their own chosen “Rose brides”, with the attendant costume and all, whose power they draw from. But in the Black Rose arc the duelists selected by Mikage draw blades-and therefore power- from those they desire and wish to control, without being Rose brides.
Notably, however, this is a violent act, and those drawn from cry out in agony. As others have pointed out, this metaphorically reads as a form of sexual violence, especially in the case of Nanami. As Anthy and Utena grow intimate, and Utena looses the ability to summon the original sword, it shifts so that now, Anthy draws a sword from Utena's chest- though Utena still cannot draw it herself.
And the power that is drawn, naturally, in all cases, is a weapon. A sword has no other purpose than to fight. Unlike an axe, it cannot be used to chop wood. Unlike a gun or spear or bow, it can't be used for hunting. A sword is made for a specific purpose: the violence of one human being against another.
There's a post I really like on Tumblr by moistvonlipwig that's relevant to the point I'm making here, so I'll be quoting part of it, because I don't think I can really restate what it's getting at, just add on to it:
“one of rgu's best takes about rape and incest is that rape and incest are not deviant. they are exceedingly normal. they are, in fact, the logical extension of patriarchal romance and the patriarchal family -- the same logic that underpins those structures facilitates abuse, rape, incest, and csa.”1
In the pursuit of normal, there are people deemed abnormal, and there is a system which must be upheld and enforced, power that must be exercised to maintain it. The power, of course, is violence. Returning to that one story about subjugating Mahadevi a moment- It is notable, that while some mothers indeed abuse their sons incestuously, that this tale displaces the originator of sexual violence onto the female relative to justify her subjugation, and portrays sexual violence on the part of Mahadevi as an expression of chaotic desire rather than an exercise of power- the latter being the true motive of real life sexual violence.
Further, when Mahadevi creates three eggs to make husbands for herself, this is stated to be wrong, as in creating them they are her sons. When her sons destroy her and use her ashes to make wives, this, however, is perfectly fine. The ashes cease to be their mother, and the women they create somehow are not their daughters. They are, however, their sisters, and the three gods swap the sisters they have made between each other- as though they are not themselves brothers. This behavior truly is no different from the behavior that justified incinerating their mother.
The problem with Utena confronting Akio, and the problem Utena ran into as a duelist, has nothing to do with her gender nonconformity. The only times Utena cedes her masculinity are when men are trying to humiliate and own her. Touga in their duel. Akio after he rapes her. Akio, when he draws her sword from her chest and she is forcibly clad as a Rose Bride. The narrative only pushes Utena to femininity when she is being violated.
The very first time it happens, Utena acts like a dead person who happens to walk around- reacting to nothing. The shadow girls in that episode spell it out clearly: normal has nothing to do with Utena, even if on some level, she does cling to the idea that normal is aspirational. By “normal,” Utena means that she is heterosexual (or at least, she thinks she should want to be heterosexual), or that girls should be feminine, such as when Touga stripped her down and made her loose faith in herself.
Curiously, she also uses it to mean that girls shouldn't be treated like property, in regard to Anthy and the Rose Bride- but for centuries, that’s been the most normal thing in the world. It’s notable that, when she duels Touga again to reclaim her sense of self (symbolized by her masculinity), Juri, who is canonically and irrefutably a lesbian, and also often dresses masculinely, gives her her sword to fight with.
In this same duel, the sword of Dios is blatantly phallic. When Touga orders Anthy to kiss it in order to imbue it with power, it’s at the cost of her spirit abandoning her body, and Utena cringes. Touga does not wound Utena, but shreds her girl’s uniform, particularly her skirt. When Touga uses the sword to reinforce social norms, it is also being used as a tool of sexually charged violence against two women.
The problem for one who desires true revolution is that Utena is appropriating the signifiers and ideas of patriarchy because these are the signs and symbols of power, and of the ideals you are supposed to aspire to are, and what the system says you must do. The problem is, even as Utena is abnormal, she still tries to adhere to what normal is. The problem is, revolution requires the destruction of the world as we know it. The old world's trappings of power hobble revolution.
Utena becomes a duelist because she is told there is no other way to protect Anthy from Saionji. She encourages Anthy to speak her mind, then contradicts herself by telling Anthy to say she just wants to be a normal girl- not fully grasping how totally her control is as the current dueling champion. She confronts Akio to try and win her and Anthy’s freedom, and in her triumphant monologuing, casts Anthy once more as a passive object for her to protect as a prince. She refutes Akio’s victimization of her by trying to put them on equal footing by speaking his language- the very language that made her a victim, the language that requires a passive victim, a patronizing hero, and a reviled villain. To me, those lines in particular read as what triggers Anthy to betray Utena. I think she trusted her, was going to go along with her, but those lines…
It's the worse version of what Anthy must have felt being told to speak her mind, and then being given a script. Utena has good intentions, but she still hasn't broken out of the system of things she's been raised to believe in, even as they brutalized her. Her shell, as it were. As she verbally counters Akio- stating the desire to free Anthy from him, and her claim to princehood- the statue of Dios shatters. The floating castle crumbles.
And for Anthy- she's known Utena for a year, maybe? She doesn't truly know how Utena will act wearing the mantle of a prince. She has committed the same error as before. Utena wants to free Anthy from Akio. Not simply, free Anthy. There is a possessive subtext, bolstered by the claim to being a prince. We cut to her expression as Utena takes the mantle, see her wide eyes and parted mouth, and see rubble collapsing behind her. There is rubble, but the world is not ending. The door is still shut. The coffin is sealed. Her expression stays like that as Utena catches and holds her, sword pointed at Akio, until her face drops. She kisses Utena's shoulderblade and runs her through.
It's better the devil you know, right?
Touga makes a similar mistake. By the end, he cares for Utena, and is scared of what will happen to her, but the only way he can think to protect her is defeat her. Claim her. The only difference in that moment and the one before, where he beat Utena into a skirt and tried to keep her there to remind her of her role, is his internal monologue. To Utena, there is no difference. Outside his head, there is no difference. He is still seeking control.
It is notable, that in the end, Akio strikes at the door- the door that is revealed as Anthy’s coffin- with the sword he drew from Utena, until it breaks. His flippant demeanor says “I'll try again next year”, and you can tell, this is the only thing he's ever tried to do. He has only tried to force the door open by slashing at it with a blade. And it does not open for him. A sword could never open the door, because it is the coffin. It is a contradiction; the one whose soul could revolutionize the world cannot be used to accomplish it through more violence- certainly not more violence directed at a woman.
Utena scrabbles at the door with her hands. She's already bleeding. We don't get a close up on her wound, but I read this scene with the implication that she's bleeding out. Maybe the wound itself isn't fatal, but staying here will be. But she's scrabbling at the door with her hands, crying as she sees Anthy in pain. She just wants to extend her hand, to pull her away from this. She tried to fight their way out of Akio, and it didn't work. Violence goes round and round and round, but it doesn't ever really go anywhere else. So here, now, Utena has no sword. Just her hands, and her tears, and a promise she's held in her heart for years without knowing it, that there is a suffering girl, and she will help her.
And the door opens for her.
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