Fathers and Sons: Star Blazers - PART 2

The trouble with me is that I can't just let a story be a good story. I have to pick it apart, analyze it, look under the hood, kick the tires, and then dismantle the manifold just so I can put it back together again. It's a frustrating habit, one born out of years of teaching students to do the same, and as much as I value this archeological approach to literary understanding, I sometimes wish I could just turn it off.

My family feels the same way.

We downloaded the first season of Star Blazers from iTunes last September. "This is so cool," I told my wife while I was forcing her to watch the first episode. "It's a show that both repudiates and celebrates Japan's imperialist heritage. By rebuilding the Yamato they are reforging their collective identity, one based on global, not national, interests."

She yawned.

"No, think about it," I continued, bouncing up and down a little bit in my excitement. "This came out 30 years after WWII ended. It's a new generation of Japanese, their equivalent of the baby boom. They've inherited their parents' pain and disappointment, and yet it's been tempered with the optimism of youth and a technology-based economy that's just beginning to thrive. It reminds me of this poem by...."

She grabbed my arm. "Did you get the mail?"

I hadn't. She sighed and got up without hitting pause.

The kids, I decided, wouldn't get off so easy.

"There are a few things you need to notice about this first episode," I told them a few days later when I'd managed to bribe them into submission. "First, notice the sense of loss permeating the narrative. Both Captain Avatar and Derek Wildstar are haunted by the loss of the son and brother, respectively. This is probably a reflection of the animators' own losses, or more likely, their parents' losses. If you look closely, the battle in which Derek's brother dies bears a striking resemblance to the final Japanese offensive at Iwo Jima, suggesting that...yes, Maggie?" Her hand was up.

"I want more popcorn."

"Just hold on," I said. She put her hand down and pouted. "Where was I? Oh yeah. The second thing you should look at is the soundtrack. While the theme song is reminiscent of a John Williams style fanfare, a style which actually dates back to the early adventure movies of the 1940s and the classic scores of Korngold, the Star Blazers theme actually predates Williams' most noted scores. Furthermore, the underscore of the show itself is a mix of disco and Wagnerian leit-motif. This is fascinating, because 1) it shows us just how much Western idioms had begun to influence Japanese art, and 2) it's all diatonic, which means that the composers rejected traditional Japanese harmonies in favor of a European chordal palette. This is especially important when considering the overall narrative similarities between Star Blazers and the Ring cycle. Specifically, the scene in which...Conor, where are you going?

He was hopping up and down, legs crossed. "I really have to go. Don't start it without me."

He ran off.

We waited. 45 minutes later I put in a Spongebob DVD for the little ones. By the time Conor emerged from the bathroom Maggie and Lucas were thoroughly engrossed in Spongebob and I was online, trying to find chat thread about non-linear narrative and its implications in post-colonial criticism.

It's a disease, I tell you.

So here's what I've learned about myself:

You know that dad who tries to live his football dreams through his kids? That's me. The mom who pushes her shy daughter into trying out for the cheerleading squad because that's what her mom did to her? Yeah, that's me, too.

I want so badly for my children to see the interconnections between art and culture. I want them to recognize that the creative act does not take place in a vacuum, that all art is bound by place and history, although great art transcends those bounds. I forgot, though, that what drew me to Star Blazers in the first place was the story. It's fun. Imagine that: a story can be fun. It doesn't have to be analyzed or dissected. It can just be enjoyed.

We did eventually watch Star Blazers. And you know what? They loved it. Absolutely loved it. Once their father stopped hitting pause to remind them that the clothes worn by the female characters both contributed to their objectification and served as emancipatory agents by freeing them from the bondage of 1950's gender roles, that is.