Adaptational Anguish in New Mutants

Spoilers follow.

New Mutants, in the immediate collective response to its release, has been plagued by one thing above all. Not the oft associated delays, but instead with the question of adaptation. Adaptation is a difficult topic to discuss. Personally, I find that adaptation is a futile lens through which to analyse a film. More often than not, we should look to the meaning of the film as its own text and take it on its own merits. However, especially in the superhero genre, adaptation is also a site which creates meaning. This is not only a film that has caused controversy with its adaptation of the source material, but also one whose meaning lies in this very adaptation.

Trailer for New Mutants.

First, to address the elephant in the room, the films adaptation of race is galling. Discussions surrounding whitewashing in this film are fair, accurate and necessary: Two characters, Dr. Cecilia Reyes and Roberto DaCosta, who are both traditionally depicted as black characters in the source material were portrayed by two decisively non-black actors: Alice Braga and Henry Zaga, respectively. The director, Josh Boone, attempted to address these questions of whitewashing, and chose to opt for the strange strategy of doubling-down on his colorblind casting approach. Boone has since deleted his Instagram account in response to the backlash.

In my view, what makes this whitewashing so necessary to acknowledge and engage with is not merely the erasure of black identities, but that it informs the wider lens from which the film was produced. When we look to Boone's comments, where he suggests that a non-black actor could better deliver a portrayal of a privileged upbringing, we can see that it is in fact little to no different to what presidential candidate Joe Biden has also said. I do not bring Biden up without reason- that their comments are similar matters because it informs us on the film's ideology. It is the post-racial view of the liberal who believes, with so much time removed from the Civil Rights Movement and the election of President Obama, that racial conflict and injustice is a thing of the past. Importantly, the director's post-racial lens seems to have influenced not only casting decisions, but the depiction of mutancy itself.

In New Mutants, mutancy is alternatively the condition or gift of superhuman powers. An offshoot of the X-Men franchise, where mutants are a deviant minority who are taught to use their powers at superhero school, the New Mutants shifts the locale from that school to a mental institution instead; focusing primarily on Dani Moonstar, a Native American mutant whose powers bring nightmares to life. Horror genre antics ensue. With regard to adaptation, as it is an adaptation of the New Mutants comic book series, it's worth looking at the film's own perspective on this. When we do so, I think we see that this the loosest of adaptations, one that prioritizes re-imagination and re-invention to create its meaning. Re-imagination, that is, of not just of the New Mutants characters and story, but of the X-Men franchise on the whole. If there is a compelling idea in this movie, it draws itself from this.

One such re-imagining is when we see the comic book Sam Guthrie, whose powers famously made him nigh invulnerable when blastin', inverted in the film- becoming a character who instead knows only hurt. An emotional hurt, sustained from childhood, but repeated, self-inflicted physical pain also. That invulnerability is stripped away as part of the character's journey from page to screen.

Left: Sam Guthrie in New Mutants (1983) Right: Sam Guthrie in New Mutants (2020).

It is indicative of the re-imaginings on the whole. Where Sam is re-imagined as self-destructive, Roberto is re-imagined as an insecure boy fronting as a jock and Rahne Sinclair is re-imagined as a lesbian, facing conflict between her sexuality and fundamentalist Christian beliefs. One rumor that set social media and fan communities aflame was the notion of Storm being originally cast in this film as a jailer role. Whilst that never manifested, the design ethos is clear: gone are the trappings and moralism of traditional superhero fictions. These are not X-Men, mutants hated and feared by humans, but rather teenagers who hate and fear themselves. 

The most significant of these imaginings, however, is both the thematic core of the film and something deeply alienating to the fan audience. Rather than take place in the iconic school for mutants most associated with the franchise, this film relocates its cast of characters to a mental institution. A jarring change, for sure, but one vital to the film's meaning. By moving the traditional X-Men coming-of-age story out of a school and into a mental institution, what we actually have is merely the exchange of disciplinary institutions. This change serves to highlight not the differences between the story of the New Mutants and the X-Men characters, but rather the similarities. They are repressed, traumatized individuals, sequestered away from the public, supposedly for their own good. The student is treated to the same institution as the patient or the prisoner; in this film, Dr. Reyes keeps her subjects all under constant, panoptic surveillance. It is a re-imagining of the school setting, a haunted hospital, an asylum and a prison all at once. That the film chooses to reveal that Reyes does not, in fact, work for the X-Men, perhaps helps the film go down easier with hardcore fans, but weakens the text as a whole. 

Nevertheless, the school/hospital exists as a site of the return of the repressed, where deviant sexuality and identities inform the condition of mutancy. So far I have neglected to discuss the film's constant delays and unfortunate production cycle. Too easy would it be to fall into the trap of maligning the 'New' in the ever-delayed New Mutants. A witty critique, to appease the readers who look to a film review for a good pun and a reaffirmation of their own opinion. To do so would miss the mark of meaning: the title 'New Mutants' is a reference to two things. The first, Marvel's original name for the X-Men franchise 'The Merry Mutants', and herein we can make whatever joke we like about them not being so new anymore, but the second is all the more compelling and informative. 'New Mutants' was how literary critic Leslie Fielder, in 1965, referred to the new generation of Americans engaging in counter-cultural practice. He lambasted and feared the turn of the new generation from the values of the old, feared the perversion of conservative social norms and could not abide what he referred to as the 'irrationalists'. 

The title New Mutants carries with it this weight, twisting it on its head, but retaining that particular association with a thematic generational conflict that has its roots in even the earliest of X-Men comics. Realized in this movie, the rebel youth have to break away from the authority of an older generation who can offer them nothing, but abandonment and abuse. Boone's mutancy no longer possesses a racial or genetic element, present in both source material and the film franchise at large. That this mutancy develops at puberty is highlighted, as is the sexual relationships between the youths. It is not to say that there is an inherent danger to sexuality, be it divergent or normative, but rather professes to explore the dangerous effects that surplus repression can have. 

For the men, it is the manifestation of their failure to perform the masculine function. Whilst Roberto embodies a direct, physical emasculation, his powers causing him to become "Too hot" in sexual situations, leaving him unable to adequately perform, Sam's character imperils the social function: not only committing patricide, but collapsing his very source of labor and income also. He has killed his father, but cannot replace him. In both of these cases, the masculine role in the nuclear family model threatens to fall apart. The feminine role in that structure threatens to fall away also, as depicted in Dani and Rahne's relationship with subversive sexuality. It is a lot more pronounced and the relationship that forms between them is depicted quite clearly.

In the background of two scenes, we can see the youths watching episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Apparently the only entertainment afforded to the facilities patients. This inclusion echoes back to the comic book mutants relationship to television (then it was 'Cowboy vs Indian' Westerns distressing Dani, and Magnum P.I. enamoring Roberto). You can also feel the inspiration of Buffy throughout, but this is not only a nod to a preceding, influential text. It serves a narrative purpose, giving Rahne exposure to one of popular cultures most recognized and resonant lesbian relationships. Rahne's sexuality becomes entwined with the abuse she faced from the fundamentalist Reverend Craig, who dealt upon her lasting physical abuse and called the emergence of her mutancy-qua-deviant sexuality that of a witch. Her struggle is then one between the side of her that feels free and the side that feels shame. The re-emergence of Rahne's traumatic upbringing, as Dani's nightmare powers bring the ghost of Rahne's abuser back to brand her as a witch once more, doesn't actually factor into this, however. Rahne is just as happy to explore her newfound relationship with Dani. So whilst Dani's powers, throughout this film, perform a literal return of the repressed, it is only Dani and Illyana who face their returned fears head on, fighting to once more repress their nightmares. The rest of the patients are quite content to allow Dani to vanquish her own fears and perform their repression for them.

Dani and Rahne's relationship as seen in the film.

Where 2019's X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a not-so-subtle depiction of the dangers of surplus repression and the necessity of dealing with your trauma, New Mutants follows this legacy, albeit never in such a clear cut manner. Whilst it is the dominant theme throughout the film, the re-imagining of one character particularly dives into this question of repression and living with trauma. Many criticisms have been levied at a sequence of scenes having Illyana Rasputin, perhaps the closest this film has to a conventional action movie protagonist, espouse prejudice against the Native American lead. To many fans, transforming this character into what appears to be a racist bully is the far greater adaptational sin than the whitewashing of other characters. In my view, these criticisms come across as commentators either not fully engaging with the text or expecting these characters to adhere to some traditional superhero morality: something the film simply is not interested in. The comments that Illyana makes, being dismissive of Dani's Native American identity, bringing up crude, childish stereotypes and especially referring to Dani as 'Pocahontas', a preferred insult of not the most mature man in the world, are not simply to characterize her as a dominant, mean girl, but instead are part of this wider thematic exploration of repressed trauma.

Vital here is that Dani herself recognizes and calls out these insults and attempts at dominance for what they are. She specifically mentions that she heard them as a schoolgirl. It is a turning point in the film for Illyana, the deliverer of these petty, racial insults, who is then subsequently shown to be an eternal child; trapped in her traumatic past and incapable of moving forwards. Her coping methods are an abrasive personality and a puppet dragon named Lockheed, who doubles up as an imaginary friend. It is not to say that the cycle of abuse will inevitably turn us into racists, but illuminates instead the film's view of racism; that prejudice such as this is petty, childish, and a flaw in someone's individualized personality, rather than relating to any kind of structural oppression. 

Recounting her story, Illyana talks about the abuse she suffered as a child, under what she refers to as the Smiling Men. She would later kill these men, 'one by one'. During the abuse, however, the child would recede into an imaginary world called Limbo- a 'special place' where the Smiling Men could not harm her. In concert with her mutant abilities, this place became real. No longer merely receding to Limbo, she would physically go there and can do so at will. Dani's power to return the repressed has a distinctly opposite effect to Illyana's own power. Where Illyana's 'special place' is made real, what Dani makes real are Illyana's nightmares; the abuse she created Limbo to escape from. As Dani receives a story-line about making peace with her repressed fears, Illyana too finds her source of power from repression itself. Both characters have engaged with their nightmares and resolved to once more push them out of view. The fight that ensues is then one against a child's horrific imaginings of her abusers. Disappearing into her Limbo world once more, Illyana will soon triumphantly emerge, empowered with sword in hand and an actual, realized dragon replacing her puppet. She slays these monstrous imaginings, going on to fight alongside Dani against the manifestation of her own repressed fear: the demon bear. 

Their earlier clash, the scene that sparked such controversy, when seen in full and taken in the context of the film is in fact an important connection between the two. A relationship that may not adhere to conventional morality, but nevertheless is mutually beneficial. In true coming-of-age story fashion, their very exposure to new identities better equip them for the trials ahead. For that reason, I can't get behind the outrage at the mere depiction of bigotry. Certainly, it seems strange to watch a film that purports to have horror elements and influences, to only shirk away when the film dares to make you feel uncomfortable.

Importantly, there is a far more egregious instance of Dani's indigenous portrayal, that the proverb oft referred to in the film has more Christian roots than Native American, which demonstrates that Native American identity was poorly researched in the writing of the script. Manifesting on screen in a less than satisfactory way, the identity is nevertheless present and the portrayal of bigotry is not gratuitous, but informative. This is a sticking point, because I would argue that the depiction of Illyana's bigotry is simply not rooted in the same kind of racism that the casting of Reyes and Roberto was. I think it is crass to make such a comparison. If we are to be clear, I don't think this movie is blanket racist so much as it is specifically anti-black in its racism. There is a view, it seems, that the very presence of blackness will impede or supersede the story being told. Because, of course, there are no black stories to be told about trauma, repression or disciplinary institutions. 

The New Mutants look to a future that will never come.

In this film, the New Mutants franchise has been re-imagined through the lens of post-racialism; where casting is colorblind, prejudice is a personal character flaw and indigenous belief systems are fictional sources to be adapted as if they were a comic book. The wider X-Men franchise has also been re-imagined to not only explore repression, but to highlight the roles that speciously beneficial disciplinary institutions, like schools and hospitals, play in said repression. But by never diving fully into its horror influences, it gives us a flaccid ending, wherein which the nightmares pull back, our characters neatly repress their fears once more and promptly walk off into a new day.

It's An Angel Beats! World, I Just Live In It

My last two blog posts have both tackled some heady subjects with regard to the anime series Angel Beats!. Perhaps the fact that I have elected to write a third lends some hint towards my fondness for the story, its characters and its fascinating setting. Still, after two quite heavy, theoretical posts I felt like I needed to do some clarification. Angel Beats! is currently streaming on Netflix and Crunchyroll, two of the most prominent streaming services if you're looking into anime, so it is not exactly an obscure series that I've plucked out because it is some perfectly crafted philosophical thesis disguised as a cartoon. It's funny. Really funny. Those last two posts probably make it seem like it isn't, that it's some morose depiction of Sartrean existentialism that you are required to do dense theoretical reading to fully appreciate, but that is absolutely not the case. Fundamentally, it is a cartoon with a YA demographic, and best enjoyed as such; no matter what the indulgences of a blogger might indicate.

I have to confess that my recent rewatch was plagued with fears, and I had often put off my return to this series because of them. Something that I watched so long ago, and so early in my exploration of the medium, would surely reveal itself to have been rife with crass humour, bland characters and would be nowhere near as pretty as I remembered it being. So is the case for most people, let alone someone with as notoriously poor taste as I have. Yet from that first episode I was immediately drawn back in with its frantic pacing and unique style. What brings me back to it, ten years later, is this excellency in production values. Its design and animation quality holds up, the English dub is surprisingly effective, but it is the music which is on another level entirely. Unsurprisingly, Jun Maeda, the writer for the series, is a composer first and foremost. Sequences depicting the convergence of score and animation are imbued with an artisans touch and consideration. But the soundtrack shines particularly with the 'fictional' band from the series, Girls Dead Monster, who actually, seriously rule.

A live-action performance of 'Crow Song' pushes the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Still, there was nevertheless one significant change between these viewings: me. I'm a much different consumer than I was the first time around (though I must confess that much of the same idiosyncratic taste persists). This is what motivated me to write these posts and immerse myself more into Angel Beats! as a text, and to treat it with a level of seriousness and sincerity that I just wasn't capable of all those years ago. Still, as a transmedia project, Angel Beats! proves a challenging set of texts to interrogate in this way: its story is told across multiple mediums, each providing additive information to its core setting and cast of characters, but developmental mishaps have plagued much of the production of this project.

One of the first things you'll notice is that the series itself feels rushed, often feeling like it's going to rupture under the constraints of its 13 episode run. It's commonly believed that at least twice as many episodes were originally planned. But, more than this, few of its ancillary works have actually managed to make it to the West intact. The past ten years since the initial release of Angel Beats! has been defined by fan labour: translations, fanworks, guides, DRM workarounds and pirate distribution have become the lifeblood of an ever-dwindling community. As with the most interesting fan cultures, questions of legality arise. It remains a fact that in the West you cannot read the Angel Beats! Heaven's Door prequel manga, beyond its first two volumes, by any legitimate means. Likewise, there remains an episode of the anime itself (released some time after the original series concluded), as well as an alternate ending, which find themselves not only without English dubbing, but without any Western release whatsoever. 

Nor is there an English version of Angel Beats! 1st beat, the visual novel adaptation of the series. Whilst the translation from AlkaTranslations is a stellar piece of work, nigh indistinguishable from an official release, there remains a serious barrier of entry for all but the most passionate fans. Truly a shame, as the 'Iwasawa' route, whilst taking the series' inherent absurdity to new heights, drew from me an undeniably visceral, emotional reaction. In fairness, on that front even Japanese fans find themselves not much better off. The Angel Beats! visual novel project was envisioned to be a sprawling, comprehensive experience, retelling and reimagining the original series through six instalments, of which 1st beat was, unsurprisingly, the first. Since the release of that first instalment, there has been no word whatsoever on the rest of the story. No further releases, no acknowledgment of delay, not even an admission of cancellation. It just seems to have disappeared.

And yet, in spite of this, Angel Beats! has developed into a very rewarding transmedia universe. The work one has to put in is strenuous, but rewarded with real, meaningful content. Throwaway, one-dimensional characters, utilised either for single gags or to usher characters between locations in the main series are transformed into compelling storytellers in their own right. You may find that the character of Yusa, a glorified walkie-talkie in the original series, was, in fact, a misandrist serial murderer or that Chaa, no more than an underground factory worker originally, rages against an unjust afterlife which separates him from eternal paradise with his wife. I often found myself looking forward to scenes and stories concerning Fujimaki, a character whose presence in the series accounts for little more than a couple of lines, or the supporting members of the in-universe band, Girls Dead Monster, who couldn't even manage that. Surrounding these expanded character stories are also further explorations into the nuances and details of the setting: how long can characters exist in it, how long has it already existed for, what is the difference between a full character and an 'NPC', or, more pertinently, is there a meaningful distinction at all?  

What I'm saying is, if there was ever a time for a grand 10th anniversary event then it is now. Announce a comprehensive physical media re-release, announce the completion and translation of the visual novel, the translation and release of its manga prequel. Hell, announce a whole series reboot. And maybe that's all a pipe dream and maybe no one in their right mind would sink so much money into a franchise that has mostly lay dormant for a decade. A franchise so messy and incomplete. Yet still Angel Beats! is one of those rare worlds of originality which can simultaneously feed the critical soul and provide a true escapist joy: Angel Beats! makes me wish I was dead.

Purgatorial Prisons in Angel Beats!

Angel Beats!, the 2010 animated series, is, like many anime, set in a high school. Albeit, not a high school that is necessarily recognisable. The monotony is rarely on display, the teachers hold no power over their students and no one ever seems to do any studying. Instead this is a fantastical environment. Specifically it is a secondary fantasy world where the unfulfilled dead are given what appears to be a second-chance to resolve their regrets before moving onto their new lives. The question of course remains: what if you don't want to move on? 

This encapsulates the struggle that the main characters face; the Afterlife Battlefront are a band of subversive malcontents who desire to fight against obliteration from Angel, the agent of corrections who would see them move onto the next world. That their rehabilitation would play out in a school setting is not coincidental. This secondary world is one wherein which survival (or, at least, persistence) is explicitly tied to subversive individuality and denials of conformity culture. The Battlefront, ostensibly students, mark themselves as different to the rest of the school. They rarely attend class, holding guerilla concerts and activities out of an impromptu base set up in what was formerly the Principal's office. They deem the students unlike them 'NPC's and, alongside taking on a distinct uniform, employ outlandish physical appearances; from adornments, such as tails and halberds, to hair of varying colour and styles. These eye-catching designs play off of the notion of Main Character Syndrome; a jovial attitude that is reflected in the characters themselves, who too are most often seen at play. Toying with the rules of this world, the day to day structure of the Afterlife High School seems to concern pushing the boundaries of the school, and Angel, as much as possible before returning to normality.

But, of course, high schools aren't fantasy playgrounds. Rather, they are prisons. It is a dramatic comparison, but one which gains veracity when the timespan of the Afterlife High School is taken into consideration. What may seem a fun romp on a cursory glance may actually amount to something more sinister. One of the series' recurring gags is that the main character often misinterprets the melodramatic language of the Battlefront and their conflict when the subject matter of conversation is something benign; for example, "Angel's Rampage" refers to the school's testing period and "Angel's Domain" refers to her dorm room. Through ancillary materials, such as the two special episodes released after the series' initial run and the prequel manga, Angel Beats! Heaven's Door, it is implied that many of the speciously teenage characters of the main cast have, in fact, inhabited this world for decades. They do not age, they do not grow older, but instead they persist endlessly in the bodies that they died in. In this circumstance, even the mundane would seem that much more disconcerting, that much more unsettling and that much more calamitous. With this ageless quality, it is as if the very institution of the Afterlife High School polices the bodies of its inhabitants. All the more important then, to rage against the purgatorial culture of conformity.

In perhaps the quote most wheeled out by Foucauldians, we see a similarity in the very structure of disciplinary institutions, specifically the similarity between the Afterlife High School and the model of the prison:

“Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Foucault, 1995: 227-228)

The Afterlife Battlefront specifically defies these facets of the school-qua-prison: it flouts the regulated chronologies, as none dare attend class, lest they succumb to the dread appeal of a happy school life. Forced labour, or studying, is a similar route to obliteration. The transition of the school from a site of learning to a site of examination saw surveillance/registration disguised as education and, appropriately, the fifth episode of the series makes it clear that sincere engagement with testing is another surefire route to passing onto the next world. And it should also be stated that the Battlefront goes out of its way to incorporate neurodivergent characters, those perhaps processing trauma related to their death (T.K.), to the length of their imprisonment (Shiina) or perhaps not related to anything at all (Noda). In doing so, they are again resisting the normalising function of the prison.

Yet, for all these similarities between purgatorial school and prison, there is no clear authority governing these subjects. As previously mentioned, the teachers hold only a perfunctory power- one easily dismissed by the rebel students. Angel herself holds no centralised authority, and it is precisely this lack of knowledge-power which allows her to become erroneously known as an Angel: she is, after all, merely the student body president and a prisoner like anyone else. Yet, by series end, the characters have all resolved to put an end to their struggle, to embrace the absurd, Sisyphean proposal of being reborn into an abstract, unknowable next life and thus commit themselves fully to their rehabilitation.

If the Afterlife High School is a prison, there is no prison guard: only the phantom of one, and yet that proves to be enough. Herein lies the nature of the Afterlife High School-qua-Prison. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1995) deploys the model of the panopticon to elucidate on the disciplinary society. In both the model and its real life counterpart, the layout is thus: that cells line a wall facing a central guard tower. Importantly, at any time the prisoners cannot see into the guard tower. They do not know if they are being watched and, therefore, find themselves under constant surveillance (whether they are actually being watched or not). In each cell, the collective prisoners have been turned into separate individualities, capable of threatening no collaboration, subterfuge or attempts at escape. The prisoners will not only behave themselves accordingly, but each will become a penal agent themselves: they will take it upon themselves to enforce the authority of the guard tower on the bodies of their fellow prisoners and their own.

A 'panoptic' style prison. 

In so far as the true state of the afterlife is an unknown quantity, and that, if he exists at all, God is entirely absent, then the point of authority in Angel Beats! is always abstract and delocalised: the guard tower is always empty. 

By series' end, the students no longer engage in avenues of resistance, no longer rage against their unjust fates or the cruelty of God. The students of the Afterlife Battlefront are all subversive malcontents: sympathetic, perhaps, for the unjust lives that they have lead, yet undesirable nevertheless. Their anti-theistic, nihilism ill befits a society of conformism and must be rectified in a location away from the public eye. Yet to simply correct these youths into idealised behaviours is not adequate: they would move on from their rehabilitation and, in the new world, break once more when faced again with the abject cruelty of life. So this is the true purpose of the Afterlife High School: to create docile subjects who, in the new world, will police and correct themselves. Having learned to suitably repress their morose tendencies, they will re-emerge into a new, inevitably unjust life, and face it with dutiful poise. 

A happy ending, albeit one delivered on bittersweet terms, is evidence enough that this correction is successful, proving beneficial to the series' protagonists, or at least that is the myth propagated by the after-credits scene of the original series. With that being said, there was another, alternate ending that suggests something different:

Angel Beats! Another Epilogue

Whilst the original ending serves fans of the series' characters and the genre as a whole more favourably, featuring the tease of a romantic reunion and a promise that love can conquer even the boundaries of life and death, it is this alternate imagining that I find to be the far more compelling one. The difference between these post-series endings is vital: each one transforms the work into either a peddler of myth (particularly, the myth of rehabilitation) or into something more critical. For one, the former ending is far more considerate to 'God' as an abstract, higher power, whose movements in mysterious ways are fundamentally benevolent. The rehabilitation will not only decisively work, but it will lead to a new world where the struggles of old are gone and only hope remains; vindicating the process as a whole and offering comfort in the notion that we all grow out of our rebellious phase- and that that is for the best.

Yet it is the alternate ending which shows us the true apotheosis of the Angel Beats! school's mission, taking it to its full, logical conclusion: at the end of the story, the site of rehabilitation becomes again a centre of discipline and corrections as the main character of the preceding story takes on the antagonistic 'Angel' role. Attempting to rehabilitate his dissatisfied subjects, the main character becomes as much a prisoner as any of them: only now he is all the more aware of his disciplinary role. He is an arbiter of surveillance, a figure fearsome to his fellow students, yet one also in fear himself; who can only ever hope to be an arm of the abstract authority and never the authority itself. Here, the success of the school as a correctional facility is left ambiguous. But he is a truly institutionalised figure now, a character who persists in the world not because he has rejected the purpose of it, but because he believes in it thoroughly. Perhaps the willingness for fans of the series to invent and believe in a theory that the main character is, in fact, the root cause/grand designer of the afterlife is tribute to how this idea of surveillance and self-policing was effectively communicated through the series. 

But, if there is one idea given more prominence, then it may well be that of divine punishment. The world itself, as fantasy, may seem fun, even desirable, but beneath that veneer it is callous and cruel. As established, this is a world of corrections, to transform the subversive, nihilist subject into an inoffensive consumer, functioning on the operative to merely 'Enjoy!', posing no risk to the grand narratives. Yet, rehabilitation, the disciplinary, is all too often only the sanitisation of the archaic punishment: the deviant must pay for their transgressions, yet we recoil from the idea of them being dealt physical pain, or even receiving their sentence in the public sphere. We erect these correctional facilities not to adequately care for and rehabilitate their inhabitants, but to absolve ourselves from any societal obligation to the condemned. That goes not only for prisons and prisoners, but for hospitals and the ill, for asylums and the insane, for factories and the workers and, of course, for schools and young people. That is why the story of Angel Beats! must take place in the afterlife; it is the one point most removed from all other gazes. So long as these miserable people are dead, we no longer have to witness their miserable lives.

Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House.

The Existential High of Angel Beats!

To ask what happens when we die is a fundamentally narcissistic question. It is this moment, often disguising itself as philosophical query, that we are engaging directly with our inherent existential dread, with the abject fear of ceasing to be and with the futility of interpreting an unintelligible universe. "What happens when we die?" is almost always "What happens when I die? Will the self that exists now persist, in some form?" and so on. It certainly doesn't help that the best medication to prescribe for death anxiety is just basic repression. It is, after all, the one most logical fear. So, try your best not to think about it (Try it out now! Try not to think about dying). And once we retreat from our questions of death, we inevitably switch over to its counterpart, asking "Well, what's the point of life then?", which, of course is always also "What's the point of my life?"

That the anime Angel Beats! leans so heavily into comedic territory makes this all a peculiar segue yet, in its 13 episode run, the series nevertheless sets about confronting these questions; arriving at answers that are, at first, comforting, that subsequently grow more unsettling as the story unfolds, before finally reaching its conclusion. Angel Beats! is an 'isekai' series; one which concerns the transport of characters from 'our' world into a secondary fantasy world. Here, the answer to "What happens when you die?" is that you are transported to the aforementioned secondary world: a world where this particular afterlife takes the form of a purgatorial high school. If your youth was an unhappy one, you may find yourself here. Attend classes, score well in tests and appropriately exhaust yourself with extracurricular activities and you will be able to find contentment in the quotidian nature of an idealised school life. Upon finding this satisfaction, you will then 'move on' from this barrier between worlds, completing the journey from primary world, to secondary world, to the abstract, unknowable next.

That is unless you happen to be a particular kind of student, a student unwilling to fade away, who instead seeks recompense from the cruel, malevolent higher being who foisted an unjust life upon you. Such a group of (un)dead students are the main characters of the series, the "Afterlife Battlefront", and are united by common purpose: to invoke the presence of God and seek their revenge. In doing so, they also desire not to be 'obliterated', as resolving their issues would mean a pass onto the next world and the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Together they defy that which seems the very purpose of this school for the dead. 

The setting is an absurd one, a world of no meaning or consequence, which often manifests itself with the invocation of features and terminology from video games: in this world, non-main characters are NPCs, hit counters tally acts of violence and people don't die, they just respawn. From here derives much of the humour, where undying teenagers wage war with increasingly sophisticated weaponry crafted from dirt. But the absurd ultraviolence is not the premier nihilism of such a setting. Rather the series' true villain, beyond angels, shadows and malevolent student body presidents is in fact the inherent lack of a higher purpose. The search for God is always a failure: the students cannot kill God, because he is already dead.

In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus retells the eponymous Sisyphean myth as a parable for human existence. In the original myth, Sisyphus is cursed to perennially rolling a rock up a hill. Once reaching the summit, the rock would always return to its starting point, and Sisyphus would have to take up his endeavour once again. It is Camus' existentialist declaration, that "One must imagine Sisyphus happy!", that hits at the core of our shared experience. Our lives are too often monotonous, at times they are capricious and cruel, and as such we look to higher authorities for the reassurance that there is some greater plan, or inherent meaning to the universe. And, of course, there is none. There is instead only the struggle to look for meaning.

Imagining Sisyphus happy.

There is much in common between Sisyphus and the cast of Angel Beats! as characters, particularly in their respective denials of death. Sisyphus, whose guile afforded him to cheat death twice over, in one story is said to have kidnapped the very personification of Death itself. So, for a while, humans lived as immortal. With their constant revivals, it would not be a far cry to believe that Angel Beats! took place in such a world where Sisyphus had done precisely that. However, there is one specific aspect of the myth that Angel Beats! places itself in. This purgatory setting is exactly Sisyphus atop the mountain, watching the rock tumble back down, and anticipating his descent. This is someone who, having finished living a life of abstract, unjust pain is being told to get back to the bottom of the hill and start pushing again. 

The premier example of this is the case of Yui: the cat-girl singer who makes up for a life confined to bed, reliant on care, with effervescent energy in the afterlife. At four years old, this character was left paralysed after a car accident, the kind of random, injury that is so abstractly cruel we can only call it an "act of God". Yet, in the end, Yui doesn't resolve any lingering emotion by performing those things she couldn't do whilst alive (her post-life bucket list containing playing in a band, performing wrestling moves and sporting feats, alongside getting married). It is instead the fantasy, the capacity to imagine a meaningful life for herself, which allows her to find peace and the resolve to live out a new life. That new life may well consist of the exact same trauma as before, but she will face it regardless. The lesson is not that their lives secretly had meaning all along, nor was it that they were given a space wherein which meaning could be inscribed for them, instead each of these characters required to find meaning for themselves. 

Yui resolves to push her rock up the hill once more.

What is important is that, the student-rebels against God did in fact succeed in their purpose: in the Nietzschean sense, God is dead and they killed him. There is no higher power with which they must live their lives genuflecting towards, there is no ethereal mandate to live in accordance to. But the anti-theist trend of Angel Beats!, and the student's mantra of "There is no God, Buddha or Angel", is only the first half of the equation: after the battle is won, and the shackles of a higher power cast off, we are then burdened with absolute, terrifying freedom. In a world where no sense or purpose is given to us, the onus is on us to find whatever sense we can in the abstract. In friendship, in art or in love. In the tiny facets of life that seems so petty in the face of total cosmic annihilation. It is a bloodcurdling prospect, but it needn't be. Because, is it not true that however scary the thought of succumbing to the void is, it is that much worse to have lived a life unfulfilled? It is only ever we, ourselves, who can delineate our own reason for being, and even though we may never quite figure it out, we can find meaning in the very struggle for it. 

Camus, A. (2013). "The Myth of Sisyphus" in The Myth Of Sisyphus. New York: Random House.

Team Tifa or Team Aerith? Final Fantasy VII Remake Changed My Mind

*Spoilers follow for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake and possibly, maybe future instalments of the Final Fantasy VII Remake. I don’t know, I’m not a psychic.*

Aerith dies. Told you there’d be spoilers. 

Still, Aerith dies. It is perhaps gaming’s most infamous spoiler. You will still find people today talking about what a formative experience this was: how it proved the potential of games to tell emotive stories, how it transformed Sephiroth into one of the greatest villains of all time and how you can definitely bring her back, bro, trust me bro, you just have to play her theme on the piano and talk to her ghost in the church and level everyone up past 99, bro it’s true an employee at Squaresoft told me, this method actually works for sure.

The death that once shocked the gaming world simply no longer reverberates for the vast majority of newcomers to Final Fantasy VII. Everyone who has attempted to play the game since 1997 has heard that spoiler by now, and, boy, does it loom heavy over the experience. Experiencing this classic for the first time, Aerith's death comes as more of a relief than anything else: “Finally, now I can get on with the rest of the game!"

In my first playthrough (of many), I had no emotional investment in Aerith. She seemed to fit too easily into that idyllic maiden stereotype which seems to haunt Final Fantasy’s White Mages at their every step: Rosa from IV, Garnet from IX, Yuna from X, Luna from XV and Aerith all seem cut from the same cloth. They’re sacred, morally pure, exalted from birth. Chaste, virginal, bland, uninteresting, bleh.

So, already, you have to question why anyone would put any effort into seeing more of that character. As soon as I was able she was relegated to the back-benches. Practically speaking, this was in favour of transforming Barret into my personal heal slave as quickly as possible. (And, if we're being honest, how much of the emotional weight of her death has more to do with the fact you just lost your best healer?)

But, substantially, this was in order to prioritise the game’s other love interest, Aerith’s rival: Tifa. Now, she rarely left my party. She was treated to my best Materia, she got to go on the Gold Saucer date and you best believe I was getting her that scene under the Highwind. Tifa was the childhood friend. The merciless monk. Sabin suplexed a train, sure, but Tifa suplexed Godzilla. Most importantly, she is cemented in the game’s central character story, that of Cloud’s identity crisis, far more than Aerith is, who represents the more fantastical side of things; the Ancients and the Lifestream and Jenova and all the stuff that went over your head that first time around.

In Cloud’s story, Aerith’s primary function is simply to die. Her secondary function is then a link to Zack, where Aerith likes Cloud because she liked Zack. Cloud likes Aerith because Zack liked Aerith. And then she serves a tertiary function of, maybe, saving the world in a final eco-warrior Hail Mary. Tifa, on the other hand, is the connection between Cloud’s faux Ex-Soldier persona, and his true identity. Far and away, she seemed the more endearing character. And for years I held my head high, wearing my Team Tifa shirt proudly, knowing that I had made the enlightened decision.

That was half a decade ago, and Final Fantasy VII looks decisively shinier now. For one, they’ve added a few more polygons. And Tifa has never looked better. A fantastic design with a real weighty, “punch”y (heh) playstyle. But Aerith’s character is revised too: Flower power Madonna is out, grunge-y manic pixie slum girl is in.

With all due respect to Mena Suvari, herself an institution in the pantheon of teen moviedom, Aerith’s new voice actress Brianna White is a massive factor in bringing about this new, more compelling version of the character. She works within the structure of the original content, where Aerith’s most damsel-y moments are kept intact, but lends them all an ironic flair. Throughout, you do get this feeling that Aerith doesn’t really need Cloud as her bodyguard and, for all the humour, incessant joy and strange anime grunting, there is a bittersweet undercurrent to it all. A sadness that lies just beneath the surface.

Perhaps, this version of the character was there in the original, but such nuance is hard to convey through poorly translated textboxes and minimal emoting. It’s even harder to remember. Remake Aerith has an aura of clarity, certainty and purpose. You’re going to struggle not to remember her personality, and you’re going to struggle not to fall in love with her.

I can’t lie, it helps that she plays like a god. There’s not a video game character more endearing than the one who’s actually fun to play and there are few things more satisfying than finishing off some bandit creep with the aptly divine-named Ray of Judgment; Aerith is responsible for many of the combat’s *Chef’s Kiss* moments.

But it is that iconic death, conspicuously absent from this first instalment, which has changed Aerith the most. For a long time, her death has been a bit of a ‘Women in Refrigerators' moment, motivating Cloud and the player forwards at the expense of her own character. Not any longer.  This new imagining lends her far more agency than she was ever granted before, as certain scenes seem to hint that she knows at least the broad strokes of destiny (IE the original game’s plot) and, as such, is aware of her ultimate fate; alternatively going towards it willingly or attempting to avoid it entirely, depending on how the ‘Unknown Journey’ pans out.

So, there’s a case to be made that Remake Aerith has taken over from Tifa, claiming her rightful place as new ‘best girl’. But that doesn’t really hold up either. Because one of the truly great reinterpretations of the Remake is how it drains away the jealousy and competition between these two characters in order to break away from the confines of their love triangle. Much to the contention of warring shipper factions, this reimagining casts the characters as close friends from the get go, foregoing any pretence of rivalry or jealousy, and they often have more chemistry together than either of them do with Cloud. According to Tifa’s voice actress, Britt Baron, this interpretation of their friendship specifically shows that “women don't have to tear other women down”, but, more than that, it reads as a denial of the love triangle’s foundational status in the legacy of Final Fantasy VII: these characters are bigger than Cloud now. They have lives that do not completely hinge around his existence.

The Tifa/Aerith rivalry is then rendered a relic from a bygone era of internet fandom, sat perhaps alongside anonymity and CreepyPasta, and whilst I have some sympathy for those brave soldiers trapped in the unending shipping wars for upwards of twenty years, the Remake has breathed new life into these women.

Rather than needlessly relitigating old arguments over which female character is better (which curiously all inevitably descend into gratuitous comments on cup size), we can perhaps look forward to some more fruitful discussions about what makes both of these characters so enduring, twenty years after their debut.

Oh, but Jessie is definitely ‘best girl’. Just saying. 

Twenty Years On, 'Battle Royale' (2000) Still Screams OK Boomer The Loudest

Kinji Fukasaku's swan song, the cult classic Battle Royale (2000), will be twenty years old this December. Its former controversy has been neatly forgotten, now existing to most as little more than a Hunger Games prequel or Fortnite: The Movie. It seems pithy to even summarise the film, it has so successfully embedded itself in the popular conscious, but, for the uninitiated, it concerns a class of upstart schoolchildren who, after being trapped on an abandoned island, are forced to kill each other off until only one remains. And it's bloody fantastic.

It has an unrelenting pace that promptly sets about delivering exciting action sequences and compelling character vignettes and, of course, the camp, B-Movie gore and gratuitous violence is undoubtedly great fun for genre aficionados. Nevertheless, the film has always held more value than Asia Extreme-style fetishism would have you believe.

Based off of Koushun Takami's similarly controversial novel, the film adaptation skewed loyal, keeping the vast skeleton of the story and making very few deviations from its source material. Yet it is these small changes, the barely noticeable additions and omissions, that I find most interesting when comparing the two texts. These are differences that most commentators seem to have written off as the mere side-effects of adapting a story from one medium to another, yet these minor changes nevertheless set in motion a butterfly effect that significantly shifts the film's meaning, even as it rigorously adheres to all of the original's sweeping narrative beats. To take this further, I see these changes as a very conscious shift from one set of meanings to another; from the anti-authoritarian satire of Takami's novel towards a more specific examination of generational conflict from Fukasaku. Particularly, the film version concerns itself with the bitter lashing out of failed masculinities unto a scapegoated juvenile underclass.

We see as such in the divergence of meaning in the different Programs, as the titular contests are known. As written by Takami, the Program is an abstract evil that persists automatically through the state apparatus. It's true meaning and purpose is unknown, potentially forgotten, and only exists because no one dares to challenge the dominant ideology. So, no one believes in the program, but all feel that they must act as if they do, since everyone else does. As it is later revealed, the Program is in fact a vital part of the authoritarian infrastructure and a truly educational exercise; it serves as a transformation of the community into individuals, teaching the nation's populace that there can be no class solidarity. It is perhaps not the most subtle of political parody.

Drawing on his own experience as a young person in the waning days of World War II, director Fukasaku channelled instead the nihilistic violence which the older generations inflict unto their children. The satirical elements of the novel are pushed into the background in favour of a different meaning to the Program: spite. Adults fear the spectre of juvenile delinquency and see this act of total violence not just as discipline or punishment, but as karmic justice. In their eyes, it may be harsh, but certainly not cruel: it is a reactionary model, incurred by the transgression of rebellious children themselves.

This manifests itself most notably in the focal antagonist played by the enigmatic "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, the ex-teacher and current taskmaster similarly named Kitano (In the original novel, he was Sakamochi). Kitano, who was an old, disgruntled teacher of the class, bursts onto the scene with a military entourage, killing, displacing and denigrating the class's then-current, now previous, teacher, Hayashida, as a failure of an adult.

Kitano is perhaps the character who sees the most changes in the transition from the novel to the film, since his reign of terror is far more personal and far more vindictive than Sakomochi's. Originally, Sakomochi was a mere government agent and no teacher at all, though he effected the mannerisms of a particularly sadistic one. In addition to this, there was no personal connection between the 'teacher' and his class. Kitano, meanwhile, is indivisible from his torrid relationship with his former pupils. Where in the original novel the first killings are done so out of indifference (they score too low on the governments in-office betting pool), the film adaptation baptises the Program with two instances of revenge killing. First, a student undermines Kitano's authority by continuing to whisper, even as he had disciplined the class not to. She receives not detention, but a knife through her forehead. Subsequently, Kitano, who had taken a knife to his rear in his days as a school teacher, pays the offending student back with an identical slash, before detonating the explosive in his collar and killing him. Only after these personal killings are exorcised from his system does the game begin.

The teacher, Kitano, and his class.

The Program then unfolds as a realisation of his obscene, total power as an authority figure: both in a governmental sense and in the educational. One fascinating scene depicting the exercise of his absurdist teacher-patriarchal powers occurs when the female lead, Noriko Nakagawa, is ambushed by Mitsuko Souma, a merciless fellow student playing for keeps. Whilst the novel and other ancillary materials draw her as a far more haunting character, depicting her backstory as the tragic victim of the cyclical natures of violence and abuse, the film shows us a sinister, unsympathetic villain. She exerts her power indiscriminately and with a certain Machiavellian ingenuity; capable of dropping crocodile tears at any cynical moment. When she appears in front of Nakagawa, armed with weapons salvaged from her previous kills, the implication is clear: Nakagawa is the next to die.

However, Mitsuko's dreadful image is shattered on the sudden appearance of Kitano, who, armed only with an umbrella, swiftly sends her fleeing. Now that he is running the Program, even the most hardened killer will succumb to his abstract authority.

Kitano appears with his umbrella.

The ethereal, dreamlike quality of this scene is precipitated by the actual dream sequence- one where both Kitano and Nakagawa resemble children, eating ice cream and jumping by the riverside. In this moment, they are equalised and placed on the same infantile standing. In one sense, it works as a simple flashback which serves to establish the relationship between Kitano and Nakagawa, something set up by Nakagawa being the sole student not to disrespect him and that is paid off when Kitano reveals his perverse fondness for his student. But there is a definite notion that this is not just a shared memory, but a connected psychic experience endured by both Noriko and Kitano simultaneously. These disparate characters are allowed into each others intimate spheres, seeing each other in a state that social convention prohibits.

It is here where Nakagawa uncovers the central lie of Kitano's character, something that Nakagawa understands, but the other students fail to: Kitano is totally pathetic. His authority is totally abstract, as meaningless in a militarised death game as it was in the classroom and the man is as much a failure of an adult as Hayashida was. He's a bitter, capricious man, but also a pitiable one: a child trapped in a man's body.

Kitano, like the other figures of authority in the film, are emasculated, not so much by the insurgent youth who they place the blame, but by the denigration of their material conditions under their own watch (Significant, then, that the film shows us no female figures of authority). The film's opening exposition tells us as much, tapping into cultural concerns regarding the transition from capitalist boom into a new era of economic uncertainty, Japan's 'Lost Decade':

At the dawn of the millennium, the nation collapsed. At 15% unemployment, 10 million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted the schools. The adults lost confidence and, fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act, AKA the BR Act...

It is not the children who have failed the adults, but instead the adults, their generational masculinity and their institutions who have failed their children. The addition of new backstory regarding Nanahara's father is testament to this: his self-loathing and masculine anxiety simmer in the precarious economy, until they bubble over and Nanahara comes upon the site of his father's undignified suicide.

On the other side of their shared dream, Kitano fails to reciprocate Nakagawa's truthful sight: provided with this rare moment of connection, he instead fetishises his student as an angelic emblem of perfect youth, the exception who justifies his hatred for the rest of her generation. She could perhaps play the role of surrogate daughter, considering how frayed his relationship is with his own: she repeatedly calls him up throughout the film to undermine him and remind him what a failure he is, both as adult and man, specifically. Alternatively, given how concerned the film is with its depictions of young love, at times playing out like a send up of school-based dramedy, their relationship could be seen as an addition to that: the unrequited love of one youthful spirit to another.

By the film's climax, Kitano has realised that merely killing the children that he despises will never grant him the satisfaction he seeks. He is consumed by bitterness, by hatred and by his own masculine failings, eventually giving himself up to suicide by cop. He threatens to shoot Nakagawa, getting himself shot down before the gun he was holding was shown to only fire water and, in his dying moments, he tells his daughter: "If you hate someone then you have to live with the consequences." He, of course, has no intention of living at all.

Exhausted from his own implacable rage, incapable of living with his own ineptitude, Kitano's involvement with the Program, his relationship with his students and his death mirrors the suicide of Nanahara's father: both are faced with challenges to their generational authority which each refuse to take responsibility for, instead shunting said responsibility onto the shoulders of the young. Here, Fukusaka's final film provides a critique of the elders, the entrenched and the empowered, who demand that their children either act out an idyllic fantasy of youth, or die. They who perform this masquerade to obscure their own failings. And are these not the same people today who, lording over economic decline and a nigh-terminal housing crisis condemn that excessive luxury, avocado toast? Twenty years on, no film screams 'OK Boomer' like this one.

If the film has staying power, it is in how much it lends itself to rewatchability. Only once you get past that first encounter with its camp violence and black humour can you begin to embrace its rich tapestry of meaning and the deep humanity at its core. On my latest rewatch, combined with the Making of Battle Royale feature accompanying the Arrow Film release, I noticed something threaded throughout the film that I had previously missed: an ongoing critique on the romanticising power of distance. There is a puzzling moment at the end of the film, where Nakagawa looks back on the island she's escaped saying, "It's beautiful... Even though it's where everyone died". It is the encapsulation of a subplot well hidden in the film's fabric, one mostly told through the language of the film. Shots are taken from across the island, with locations that saw scenes of tragedy and death (such as the infamous Lighthouse) rendered as picturesque snapshots of an island in serene peace.

The most telling instance of this occurs when a slow zoom out transforms a death scene into what could easily pass for a romantic one. That the preceding deathbed conversation left one participant disappointed at the platonic nature of their relationship marks ever more clearly a dissonance between action and meaning.

Chigusa dies beside Sugimura.

After his biting critique of the older generation, here, it would seem, is Fukusaka's message to the youth: Be wary of memory, and how easily repression can transform the harrowing and unimaginable into something effable, even desirable. Rather than a patronising commentary to denigrate those who have not lived through war, it is instead a warning against how a glamourising, romanticisation of violence belies the true nature of living through it; a sentiment made all the more pertinent in the age difference between the director and his cast.

Twenty years later, the cult film's legacy has endured: Quentin Tarantino considers it the best movie he's seen since he began making films and the one he most wishes he was responsible for; casting one of the film's actresses, Chiaki Kuriyama, in Kill Bill.  Of its litany of imitators, there's the obvious, and aforementioned, Hunger Games franchise and a wave of multiplayer video game experiences, but also a surprisingly pleasing run of superhero comics in Dennis "Hopeless" Hallum's Avengers Arena.  Arena, admittedly, has a far lower bodycount than Battle Royale, instead honing in on what makes its predecessor an enduring triumph: not the indulgence in violence, but the exploration of character and the failure of generational masculinity.

On a personal note, I have to say that favourite films are always hard to pin down, since we often have preferred films for a variety of different moods and purposes. Whilst I don't know whether Battle Royale is my favourite film, it is also never not my favourite film.

Now Departing

I had this dream last night. And the night before that. In it, I’m standing alone, in the city at sunset. The air is thick and warm. And when it starts to rain everything folds into tender flame. The water forms little lakes in the concrete vista, which blaze alight as she walks towards me. Something pushes down on my chest and there’s a whisper in my ear.

“You worry too much”.

I dream it again and again. But I never turn my head quick enough to see her face. She walks away and I can’t keep up. The rain starts to come harder. Harsher. Each drop starts to bruise and my feet sink deeper into each puddle on the floor. Until I see the air aflame again, reach out and leap forwards. Only then, after I have fallen and submerged myself entirely, do I wake up.

Julija wiped the water off her face and looked up to the mirror. In it she saw a cramped bathroom, almost medicinally clean, but, where she should have seen her own face, she saw only the cruel decay of time. Her real face was hidden somewhere beneath that haggard mask. She slapped it, pulled on it, perhaps hoping to finally tear it off, and noticed that even the bags under the bags under her eyes were tired. Her body, too, was near breaking point. The weight of two decades of overwritten texts, obnoxious students and the mind-numbing bureaucracy of Academia was pushing down on her shoulders. She cracked her back and finished washing her hands, where the skin between her fingers burned and peeled. She had ignored the inflammation for the past two months and did not intend to stop doing so now.

When she exited out of the bathroom, she inadvertently bumped into a tray of drinks and the attendant who was pushing them along. She apologised instinctively and moved past, without even thinking to look back. It would be easy to blame it on her post-nap drowsiness, but really she simply didn’t care to look. A moustached man pulled a bag out of the overhead, cursing as it fell and she did not turn to see. A raucous young boy ran straight at her, arms stretched out for his wingspan, but her eyeline never once took notice. She did prefer to imagine herself as a busy person, rather than a misanthropic one, yet it remained that the lives of the people around her held nothing to spike her interest. The chaos of everyday human life abounded, yet for all of it the flight itself was unnaturally smooth. It seemed to calmly slice through the clouds. You could barely even hear the engines. It may have been a nicer flight than Julija had ever been on, if it wasn’t for all the other people.

Once she had reclaimed her aisle seat, she took some time to readjust to it. Regardless of whatever material it was once made out of, it now mostly consisted of her own back sweat. Some slight fidgeting aside, she fit back into the grooves her in-flight nap had left behind. The old woman next to her had drifted off before she did, but was still sleeping, undeterred. She seemed serene. Peaceful. Her appearance belied quite a rancid body odour, but Julija was not displeased with this travelling companion. Idle chit chat and small talk could only frustrate esteemed academics like herself. She always had something more important to think about and the slightest distraction risked making her lose her train of thought. And, really, what was the point of talking anyway? If Julija wanted to get to know somebody, she’d read their book and, if they didn’t have a book about them, they couldn’t really be all that much worth knowing, could they? She remembered the last time someone tried to speak to her on a plane. An older man; leering and lecherous. She was well into her forties at the time, but he still seemed oddly concerned with her youth, vitality and virility. He had spouted all those vacuous sentiments about how, compared to him, she was still young. That she had to seize the world, or the day, or whatever it was that needed seizing. That she needed to smell the roses, or that she should smile more. After that, she felt that she had served her small-talk duty for a lifetime.

Still, she didn’t know how much time she had left on this flight. So, with no idle chit chat on offer and no world-changing idea coming to mind, she started to fiddle. First with the brochures affixed to the seat in front. Quickly passing through the company propaganda, (although the allure of in-flight alcohol drew her attention for marginally longer), she soon put the material back where she found it. Next she looked through her backpack. There was her research paper encased in a plastic folder, a book she regretted committing to review, a stick of roll-on deodorant and her boarding pass. She looked at the ticket:

From: Brussels                          FLIGHT SN502                             TERMINAL 1

To: New York                                Vanitas Air                                      SEAT 24D

But its content wasn’t likely to change anytime soon, so she put it away again. She considered looking over the paper she was presenting in two days time. A pity, then, that even she found that work boring. Doing her Political Science BA, she thought she was going to change the world. Doing her Social and Political Theory MA, she thought she was going to change Academia. It was somewhere between writing her PhD and her third book, On The Viability Of An Ethnographic Study Of Bureaucracy, that she gave up on change altogether. She’d written for hours a day, every day, for the past twenty-three years. Sometimes she liked to think about how many words that actually added up to and how not a single one of those had resulted in any material change. So now she visits conferences, manages dissertations, holds classes, all without the hope that any of her work is actually worthwhile. The nature of work, though, doesn’t particularly care if you like it or not. It always seems to multiply regardless.

Further down the plane sat another passenger, similarly concerned with the mundanity of his work. For the past decade, Scott had languished in pathetic, emasculating middle-management work and it was only now that he was reclaiming the passion of his youth: writing science-fiction stories. A writing holiday of course sounded like a good idea at the time, but sat here now he started to wonder why he was even bothering. He suspected that he would reach his destination, unshackle himself from the yoke of work, and find himself wholly unable to start. His imagination had grown rusted, stale and he doubted that even the heat of a Summer’s beach could restore him to what he once had been. But, when it happened, it happened so suddenly that Scott was wholly unprepared. Out of nothingness came an idea. A good idea. He had yet to reach his destination, but already he was scrambling in his hand luggage, desperate to grant the fleeting thought a safe refuge in his mostly empty notebook. He put pen to paper, and realised he had run out of ink.

Julija could feel herself drifting off again. When your work goes beyond the constraints of work hours and starts to seep into every moment of your day-to-day life, this almost seems like an occupational hazard. She longed for the sleep, to go peacefully into a world where her imagination was not to be curtailed by a list of references, but she knew well enough that she’d slept too much already. Still, when the heavy eyelids set in, it's very hard to resist. Her eyes started to shut, but they didn’t make it all the way; as any of the professionally sleep-deprived will tell you, that moment between the eyelid starting to come down and when it finally shuts is when your brain decides to play tricks on you.

When it came, it flitted across her line of sight so suddenly and so briefly that she was convinced it was such a trick. If not a trick of the mind, then a trick of the light. She thought it could be something to do with the plane being that much closer to the sun, perhaps. After all, she had studied a social science, not a hard one. But, whatever the cause, for the briefest second she saw a fire walk by. Not a real fire, of course, but flame made hair. Something straight out of a dream. Or a memory. But it couldn’t have been. Because it was twenty-three years later now. And she was long-gone. And yet...

The nearest flight attendant was now trying to convince the young boy to stop making his laps of the plane and to return to his seat. She wasn’t doing a very good job. As soon as she would corner him he would run around her legs, continuing unimpeded, and the attendant would have to start over. Julija waited for him to make another pass and, once the aisle was clear, she took this moment of furor as an opportunity to investigate. She traced where the apparitious woman had walked and found where she was sitting. They were mere rows apart. She wondered if she could have been here all along, right under her nose. And how wonderful that would be. Then she reminded herself how ridiculous and impossible a thought like that was. It was hardly as ridiculous or impossible as the apparent reality, since there she was. Sitting, on a plane seat. As if she was just some normal person. She was there. Not some tepid simulacrum of a figure from her dreams and memories, but a perfect replica of the woman she was once so madly in love with. She had her eyes covered with a black sleeping mask but Julija could tell that every half-forgotten memory was present, from the way her red hair fell to the tattoo on her shoulder and the birthmark on her left cheek.

Julija had loved that birthmark and said so frequently, talking often about how it made her stand-out from everybody else, how it perfectly summed up her determination to be meaningfully different. My Lina, you were the one who could have changed things, she’d often thought, only you died and left me in this world alone. Julija wasn’t ready to see it all again. Because, somehow, it was her, Julija knew it. Not a mind trick or illusion or some Hitchcockian lookalike. Her skin didn’t just look soft. It looked as soft, as soft as it ever was. Her lips likewise, though perhaps they looked even more enticing now. It wasn’t the skin of a dead girl. Just by reaching out, Julija could change everything. But she didn’t. Despite everything, or because of everything, she just stood, in the aisle, agape, to no response, left to wonder whether this was a miracle or some new form of cosmic torture. She wondered if she ever did wake up from her nap.

Emily, a neophytic woman freshly emerged from schooling, was seated in between two other passengers: on her right, a man of similar age was staring out of the plane window, headphones affixed. But her neighbour to the left, having only returned to her seat moments ago, was now beset by what Emily could only presume was unwanted company. Even as her neighbour attempted to sleep, there was a strange woman just staring at her. It made Emily feel uncomfortable, like an unwilling voyeur or a witness to some event about to turn ugly, but she had previously been in such tremendously high spirits that she looked instead to her right and attempted to push all else out of her mind. She was recently married and now, as she felt she was finally properly entering adulthood, wanted to reconnect with the Jewish heritage and history that as a teenager she had attempted to leave behind. Her trip was equal parts pilgrimage and honeymoon. She thought happy thoughts. She thought of the vow her now-husband had made. She thought of their love story, the official one that they had told their parents and the unofficial one that only they knew. And it made her feel warm inside. Even as she explored and experimented with her identity, he was never anything short of supportive. With no prompt from her, seemingly from nowhere, it was he that suggested they honeymoon in Israel. It was the happiest Emily had ever been. But, however much she tried to ignore what was going on in the corner of her eye, however much she tried to think on all those reasons to be happy and excited, that strange woman remained. Staring. Not moving. The attendant who was previously shepherding some overly energetic child now came to the strange, staring woman and, whilst clearly exasperated, was imploring her to return to her seat. The woman never looked away, but after wiping a tear from her eye, obliged nonetheless. The attendant turned to Emily next.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but we’re expecting a little excitement up ahead, so could you please ensure that your tray is placed upright and ensure your seatbelt is fastened. Thank you.”
Emily hadn’t felt any change in the flight, it was as calm as it had been, but she did as she was told.
“Yeah, sure…”, she responded, but stopped midway. She had made eye contact with the attendant and felt a shiver of dread run down her spine. She suddenly had the funniest feeling that she wouldn’t be making it to Israel after all.
“Could you tell your partner also?”, the dread attendant said, signalling the man to Emily’s left.
The honeymooner turned, furrowed her brow and gave the only response she could muster, “That’s not my partner, I’ve never met this man in my life.”

By the time Julija had returned to her seat, her elderly flight companion had awoken from her rest.
“Is everything alright, dear?” she asked when Julija sat back down, but Julija was still too transfixed to avert her gaze. She never once moved her head from the direction where she had found her lost Lina. Is lost really the right word for a thing that you’ve just found again? She started to rub her fingers together, scratching the skin between them. It was all wrong. It was all so impossible. How could she be here? What’s she been doing for twenty-three years? Why does she look the same as then, when I’ve had to grow so old? And…
“Where the fuck is my backpack?”
At her expression, Julija’s elderly neighbour stirred. “I’m sorry?”, she exclaimed.
“My backpack. It’s gone”, Julija snapped, whilst furiously and frantically searching around her seat. She checked again and again. But the truth was that, somehow, her bag had totally, inexplicably disappeared. Julija wanted to die.
“Oh, well. These things happen”, the old woman said.
Julija’s eyes narrowed, “No, they don’t.” You old hag, she wanted to say.
“No? Well, I suppose not.” And Julija’s neighbour gently nodded back to sleep. She couldn’t understand. No one could. No one else would be as stupid, as myopic, to store so much of their life in a fucking carryon. Christ. What would she present in New York now? She didn’t have the time to rewrite it, and even if she did, Julija knew she could never write like that again. The recreation would never be perfect. She felt panic setting in. She needed it back. Desperately. Fuck everything else in there. Fuck the review book and her boarding pass or even the bag itself. Julija just wanted her life back. And maybe the stick of roll-on too.

Perhaps, she thought, perhaps I am just losing my mind. It was here, I left it here, I know I did. Did someone take it? No one looks suspicious. Maybe. Maybe I’ve finally pushed myself too far. She sought out the nearest flight attendant and wondered what exactly she would ask them, going over the conversation in her head, have you seen a bag? Did you see anyone take something from here? Oh yeah, and why is my dead girlfriend sitting a few rows over?

“Excuse me? Excuse me?” she asked on her response, though no response came. She tapped the attendant’s shoulder. When no reply came, she tugged on their shirt. Only then did the attendant turn around. Now Julija wished she hadn’t. It was the first time that she truly looked upon the flight attendant’s face. It was human enough, except for the eyes. The eyes were featureless. Each one seemed eternal; no iris, no pupil, just an abyss to stare into. You can imagine that the poetics of it were lost on Julija. Her relative composure belied a fear that ran deep, one that upset her in the spaces between her bones.
“Oh God. What the hell are you?”, Julija said.
“Please take your seat, ma’am,” the attendant said to her, in a voice sweet as honey and as cold as ice. What could she do but as she was told? Still, if she hadn’t figured out that something was deeply wrong from the apparition of Lina, long lost to her, or the disappearance of a year’s worth of research, then she knew now. She had to get off this plane. The immediate problem being, of course, that the plane still happened to be thirty-six-thousand feet in the air.

She tried to think about it all, but her head was fried, working overtime in an attempt to reconcile the information surrounding her. There were too many parts, and none of them seemed to fit together. She couldn’t organise what was going on in any kind of rational way. But she needed to get to her conference and she knew deep down that this plane wasn’t landing in New York. So she just started moving. To the rest of the plane, it would have just looked like she was returning to the bathroom. But she just kept moving, past the lavatory and right up to one of the plane’s doors.

Near it, Julija rummaged throughout the space around, but she couldn’t find much of anything, let alone the parachute she would need to make her daring escape. Would she even know how to operate it? It couldn’t be too hard, surely. But such an escape was mitigated by the fact that she simply didn’t know where planes kept parachutes. Would there even be one here? One on the plane at all? Julija knew a lot about a lot of things, but she didn’t know about planes and she really didn’t know anything about this particular plane. She thought there might be a parachute in the cockpit but, when she looked to walk in that direction, she saw a small group of those eyeless, soulless flight attendants striding to her location. She knew she couldn’t hesitate. This was her one chance to escape. She had to keep moving. And, sure, she’d probably plummet into oblivion. But why shouldn’t she? She lived, now, only from conference to conference, from project to project. Without that, what did she have? She thought she had known- thought she had been- lost before; without her Lina she lived for the work and the work alone. Now that she was returned, and her work lost, the certainties of Julija’s world crumbled around her. Beyond the plane door, there was at least some certainty. She had no idea what the plane’s crew had in mind for her. She had no intention of finding out. She looked at the door and its small window, from which you could see the sky outside. The clouds were thick and endlessly white; you couldn’t even see through to the blue. She felt sick. But she knew she had to keep moving. She pulled the handle to “Open” and pushed and pushed.

But the door wouldn’t budge. I mean, sure she wasn’t the strongest, but she should at the very least be able to open a door, right? She didn’t care what was on the other side at this point. She just kept pushing. Her hands tore as her skin rubbed against the metal, oozing pus and blood as she pushed. Still, she never let up. She’d have pushed until her arms broke, and then kept going, if the attendants hadn’t finally surrounded her. And even though they grabbed her from both sides, she resisted, perhaps not realising that she had already blown her one chance.

“Stop it! Get off of me!” she shouted to no avail.
She was still attempting to wrest the door open. It was a futile attempt. There were three of them, she was but one, and they soon managed to pull Julija away. Her screams adapted to that futility.
“I want to know where you’re taking me!” she shouted instead. Then, as the attendants pulled her down the plane aisle she swapped her demand for a plea, “Where’s this plane going?”
There was a sound of plastic whirring against itself, as Julija felt her hands restrained behind her back. She was really causing quite a fuss. Even the passengers who had first ignored the commotion in favour of their own business, felt compelled to look as the attendants forcefully escorted the hysteric back to her seat. Julija could hear the rest of the flights passengers as they made a series of sounds expressing their serious, collective disgruntlement. They huffed, heaved and tutted at the idea of someone trying to escape.

Paul fidgeted in his seat. He was one of the many older passengers who were jilted awake from their naps by the one-woman revolt. His trip, particularly, was very important. He should have made it a long time ago, but he had put it off time and time again. At first, he resented his son for leaving. He cared little for the wife he had found and thought that his move away from Philadelphia was some petulant sign of rebellion against the father. It was sometime after the birth of his first child that he softened, and longed to visit, but felt too anxious to take the plunge and do so. He could not bear the thought of a grandson who resented him for his absence, or worse one who loved him in spite of his distance. Finally, in his twilight years, he felt wholly embarrassed of his past feelings. Ashamed that he took the actions of his own son as a slight. Even more ashamed that he had let his own fears stand between him and his family. He didn’t know what in him had changed, what had allowed him to finally make the trip, but, as you can tell, he was wholly concerned with a lot more than the emotional meltdown of some strangely accented woman. See, he too had noticed that there was something deeply wrong going on. There was not only no sound from turbulence or the engines, but seemingly no wind at all. He had noticed also, some time ago now, that the passengers all seemed to be heading in different directions. All this was stewing in his head and, whilst he didn’t quite know what was going on, he knew one thing: it was not yet the time for crying and screaming. There would be a time to act, eventually, an opportunity would no doubt arise. So he would not help the woman. Certainly at this point to be on her side would simply alienate the other passengers. And, of course, the screaming woman was already dead. She just hadn’t realised it yet. Paul flagged a passing attendant, who was rushing to aid her crewmates in their attempts to defuse the chaos and restore normalcy. He caught her cold gaze, looked into those featureless eyes and said:
“You don’t have any more of these peanuts back there, do you?”

“Ma’am, please calm down.”
Julija’s kicks and screams remained ineffective as she was dragged down the aisle and pushed back into her seat. Her face smacked against the overhead as she was pushed forwards; she had acted impolitely and was treated so in return. The world had seemed muddled even before she was hit. Now there was a ringing in it too. Through it, she could barely hear the attendants instructing her, or the other passengers jeering at her. When the restraints were applied, Julija no longer fought- it was taking all her strength just to stay conscious. Julija, who was being tied down by an assortment of attendants, cared little what they thought. Though she would admit that the disdain in the eyes of a woman she had once loved stung. She could see her now. Lina’s looking right at me, she thought, she can see me. She wondered if she was disappointed. Leather belts kept her from moving her body, or kicking her legs, or lifting her arms, and whenever she moved, it became harder for her to breathe. She sat in those restraints (she had no other choice really) resigned but still distressed. Tears ran down her face.
“Tell me,” she cried, “Please tell me where this plane is going.”
“Don’t worry ma’am,” the attendant said. When the voice came, it poured into her ears like thick oil and was punctuated by a tightening of one of Julija’s belts, “We’ll make sure that you get there.”

At this point, Julija no longer had control of her breathing. Short, sharp breaths were all that she could muster and she felt her heart beating harder and faster to compensate. Adrenaline pushed throughout her body and rushed back again and her face was hot, so incredibly hot. Her insides were tearing themselves apart.

Oh God, Julija thought, and the colour of the world began to fade away, but I still have so much more to do. The plane started to shake and all that she saw turned to white.