Textual Poaching

            First, I made a mistake. I forgot that the text we poached needed to be older than us. Princess Mononoke came out in ’97. Miyazaki is, however, an old man kind of guy and Princess Mononoke is a movie shaped by Japanese history that is much older than I am. It feels old, so at least there’s that.

            The identity I negotiated in my textual poaching comic is “boy” and “activist.” “Boy activist.” I’m a boy, so is Prince Ashitaka. He is struck with a curse and told that there is “evil at work in the land to the west” that he must confront with “eyes unclouded by hate.” In the modern world I feel struck with many curses. Depression, anxiety, alienation, eczema, maladjustment, addiction, etc. And lots of things tell me that there is evil at work in the west. Capitalism, consumerism, celebritism, hegemony, domination. I feel like I have some sort of call similar to Prince Ashitaka’s, a much vaguer call, to become an activist who does good in the world beyond my comfortable/understood home.

            But, where Prince Ashitaka immediately receives the call to act departing the very night he hears it, I get sidetracked by all the “things” I like and end up stopping before I ever really get started. I like, video games, candy, looking stuff up, buying cool stuff, thinking about what I’m going to do someday, etc. I like a bunch of gluttonous, selfish, consumerist stuff that I’ve liked since I was little, and I very often occupy a very traditional male role in which I forgot to do my part in my household because I’m absorbed in a game. I’m actively changing this role for myself, but it’s been a significant part of my identity my whole life until now.

            I negotiated the text by delaying Prince Ashitaka from his journey. He didn’t quite hear what the village priestess asked him to do. If she asked him what she said, he could probably repeat it, almost word for word, but he didn’t really internalize it. He’ll leave eventually, and when he does, he’ll probably do a good job. Delaying and playing videogames for too long will make him feel embarrassed though, so he might not be very polite when he leave. He’ll also need to rush and hurry which won’t necessarily stop him from getting the job done. It will, however, increase his stress and anxiety making him a pain to live with.

            I tried to do what Henry Jenkins described, performing “home improvement” on the text. I don’t usually do that, I think I feel pretty separate from texts. But it was a fun and productive exercise. In my case, it let me wrestle with what I feel is holding me back from developing my identity into what it could be. I’ve been thinking a lot about Early Cartoons, and Early Animation as well as Jan Svankmajer’s animation and Norman McLaren’s. They all operate on principles of transformation and metamorphosis, a principle which so seldom applies to people who are rather inert and dead. I don’t want to avoid facing a world that needs changing forever, pursuing consumerist pleasures that stick me to the same spot. I want to unstick myself and because active, an activist like Prince Ashitaka.