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I cannot say
that I have gone to hell
for your love
but often
found myself there
in your pursuit.
--William Carlos Williams, from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"

It was reading Hana no Kishi that got me thinking about Utena, which it shamelessly borrows from right down to one of the main characters – and the hugely wealthy and influential family she belongs to – having the name of Ohtori. And Utena got me thinking about Song of the Wind and Trees.



A lot has been made of what Utena borrowed from Oniisama E and Rose of Versailles, but there's a case to be made that it borrowed from Song of the Wind and Trees as well; I remember one scene in Utena, where Utena is lying in bed at night and the empty bed where Anthy should have been seems like the biggest thing in the room. It's powerlessness and hopelessness and wrestling with what you could have done differently, if any of this was in your power to change. It's a scene that shows up in SotWaT too, though I couldn't tell you if it's borrowing or convergent evolution.

Song of the Wind and Trees, published from 1976 to 1984 in Shojo Comic, is the story of Serge, a half-Roma French orphan, whose aunt sends him to Catholic boarding school after the death of his parents. He is shocked and disturbed to meet his new roommate Gilbert, who is languid and promiscuous and has been abused from a very young age by his uncle Auguste. Their relationship is prickly at first – Serge is too naïve and earnest to understand Gilbert, while Gilbert laughs at Serge's naivete and spurns any advances towards friendship – but turns close. Serge seems to understand that he's the only hope Gilbert has for getting out from under his uncle's control, the only person close to Gilbert who doesn't want to use him.

[Side note: I suspect that some of my emotional attachment to SotWaT comes from the year I spent at a French Catholic partly-boarding school when I was in second grade, and how much I hated it. Good times.]

Revolutionary Girl Utena is the story of Utena, an orphan whose aunt sends her to boarding school. [This is only from the manga, as far as I know, but I'll buy it; nevertheless I'm only talking about the anime here, not the manga, which isn't nearly as interesting as the anime in terms of structure and gender.] After unintentionally becoming embroiled in the student council's system of duels for control of Anthy, the Rose Bride, she finds herself in possession of Anthy – and is shocked and disturbed by her submissiveness. Anthy, like Gilbert, is being controlled by an abusive, incestuous relative; Utena is the only person close to her who doesn't want to use her. Where SotWaT has broody French romanticism, Utena has fairy tales and metaphysics, but the parallels are pretty clear.

They're also Orpheus stories.

That is to say, they're stories about going into hell to bring back the person you love, and what happens when you lose, or when you win.

Both of these stories are set at boarding schools.

(If you say that these are stories about going into hell, you can make an argument that the schools are hell. We've seen this before – Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and it makes sense logically both because of the egocentricity of children, and the reality that children in school have very little control over a bad situation. I attended a partially-boarding Catholic school in France for a single year, during which time I was picked on constantly, which perhaps accounts for my attachment to SotWaT.)

Schools are institutions of modernity; boarding schools, institutions of assimilation. The French boarding school in SotWaT is rural, reachable by horse-drawn carriage, but we do see students visiting the town nearby; the students leave for vacations, see their families. Even orphaned Serge spends a holiday at a friend’s house. Still, there’s a palpable sense of claustrophobia: your classmates are unbearable and when the school day is over you still don’t get to leave them. In Utena the school seems almost magically sealed away from the outside world. Does anyone at this school have a mother or father? Does anyone go home for the holidays? This isolation makes Serge and Utena not just outsiders, but absolute outsiders. For the other students, the school as a system is absolute; for them, it can be critiqued, taken apart, broken.

Serge is sincere where the school is hypocritical (in one of the first panels, we see the school’s headmaster having sex with Gilbert -- and we’re reminded, as Serge’s carriage pulls up to the school, that this is a Catholic school), natural where the school is institutional, kind where the school is cruel or indifferent; the school is mostly divided into those who are contemptuous of Gilbert and those who want to have sex with him (and are contemptuous of him), and Serge refuses that choice. He makes a point of refusing that choice long past the time it becomes clear to him that he’s in love with Gilbert.

In Utena the school is an institution of modernity, but perhaps more than anything an institution of patriarchy, and it’s in this that Utena is most an outsider. She wears a boy’s school uniform, but unlike other cross-dressing manga heroines it’s not a disguise for her; she doesn’t want to assimilate into the patriarchy (as you might argue that Juri does -- certainly she’s never as outraged by the dueling as Utena is), but to confound the notion of any stable gender boundaries. She can be a girl and a prince: why not? She can fall in love with boys and with girls: why not? She refuses to see herself as strange or abnormal, and because of that she can see the school as strange, abnormal, a broken and sick system.

But it’s not enough that Serge/Utena can see the institutions of the school for what they are and critique them. That only brings down criticisms -- legitimate criticisms -- of white knighting, if I can borrow that phrase. They’re both a little too proud, at first, a little too invested in the idea that they can swoop down and change things without themselves getting caught up in the system.

So these stories are about becoming a part of the system while resisting it. Becoming part of it, and accordingly becoming vulnerable to it. Like Utena, who falls for Touga and Akio despite her better instincts. Like Serge, whose friends tell him over and over that it's a bad idea to get too deeply involved with Gilbert, but who doesn't listen. (This is of course tinged with talk about "sin," but not only that, and I can't help but think Serge needs some responsible adult in his life to give him a cup of hot cocoa, a firm hug, and a stern conversation about how just because you love someone doesn't mean you're qualified to be their therapist or savior. – He wouldn't care, of course; he's brave and foolish as any teenager over their head with love.)

Towards the end of SotWaT, a long and peaceful summer when Serge and Gilbert bonded is interrupted by the return of classes, the return of vicious bullying, and the announcement of Gilbert's uncle Auguste's engagement. Auguste is a terribly abusive person, but Gilbert also can't imagine life without him: "If Auguste abandons me, who will love me? I won't have anyone." He doesn't trust the Serge who offers him only friendship, both because he's never had anyone care about him unconditionally, and because he realizes that's not what Serge wants – though Serge protests far too much on that point to anyone who'll listen. Dozens and dozens of pages of fighting and angst and protestations later:

"It's not good, there aren't any other words I can say! I just love you. That's the one true thing."
"It's a sin."
"I know."

That right there is Serge walking into hell, and it's as completely unselfish as a confession of love could ever be. Upright and innocent as he was at the beginning of the series, under any other circumstances I think he would keep quiet about it. It is, he believes, the one chance he has at saving Gilbert, keeping him from going back to Auguste. But it is also too honest and vulnerable to be the person he used to be, trying to help Gilbert without any cost to himself.

Afterwards they run away to the city, and some criminals get Gilbert addicted to drugs, and he throws himself under a carriage, and this all seems rather anti-climactic. I think Serge knew from the start that he didn't really have a chance at leading Gilbert out of hell; I think he just didn't have it in him to give up, ever.

In that last duel in Utena, after Utena is stabbed in the back, after she has completely failed, she opens the coffin and finds Anthy there: she's gone to hell and found Anthy there. Everything falls apart, and the next thing – no one even remembers Utena, nothing seems to have changed, but Anthy is leaving Ohtori academy, convinced that Utena is out there somewhere.

I always thought that she was wrong. Now I'm not so sure. But I'm not so sure it matters, either; Utena only wanted to bring Anthy back up out of hell, and she did it.

I once wrote an essay where I argued that Utena was post-modernity saving modernity from itself. (Not an idea I made up myself; my professor, Tom Lamarre, advanced the idea that Nausicaa was about pre-modernity saving modernity from itself). All the tropes of the school representing modernity – the uniforms, the hierarchy of the student council – are challenged and finally the school itself is abandoned in favor of a messier real world whose existence doesn't depend on repeating the same narratives over and over.

Maybe that, in the end, is why Serge can't save Gilbert. Modernity isn't just limited to a single boarding school, or boarding schools as an institution. The cities of the outside world seem to provide as few options as the school does; the families of Serge's friends provide as few options; it's easier to leave their school than to leave Ohtori Academy, but maybe there isn't really any outside to go to.

What got me thinking about all this in the first place was the manga Hana no Kishi, which tried to push all of my Utena buttons and just missed. What I was thinking, at the end of the first chapter, was: Her uniform is too clean. I don't want an Utena who is "more elegant than a butler, more gallant than a knight," as the promo copy says. I want an Utena who is bloody and weak and desperate and maybe armed only with a bamboo practice sword and an iron will that she will not let someone she cares about be taken from her.

Which is why I keep trying to write it, I guess.

(no subject)

4/12/10 02:54 (UTC)
umadoshi: (Witch (yumeiro))
Posted by [personal profile] umadoshi
This is a beautiful post. I'm entirely unfamiliar with Song of the Wind and Trees and (so far) Hana no Kishi, but your Utena analysis rings very true for me.

(no subject)

5/12/10 19:56 (UTC)
Posted by [personal profile] destinyislands
Came here from [community profile] animanga_news.

Excellent post. I've often heard that Utena borrows from SotWaT, but unlike with some of the other works it references, I've never seen anyone make such a thorough comparison.

(no subject)

1/1/11 03:24 (UTC)
salinea: (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] salinea
awesome essay

(no subject)

3/12/10 06:59 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] bnharrison.livejournal.com
I want to read this book. I'd also like to read your Utena essay.

(no subject)

3/12/10 14:53 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com
Re: Hana ni Kishi's reworking of Utena:

Utena is a nonesuch. There were very few Utena doujinshi, and those few simply reiterated stock yuri or yaoi tropes ad nauseam. Mary of Comic Box, whose job it was to read doujinshi, opined that the Japanese fans simply didn't know what to make of the series. Which surprised me, because there were a significant number of Haruka/ Michiru djs that mined their subtleties and ramifications very well. But then, watching Utena, I wasn't sure what to make of it myself, 'Is this really here or am I just seeing it?'-fashion.

I wonder if WindyTreeSong is the origin of the pure-hearted hero and the messily complexé love interest, or if it's an older trope. (She says, having just finished Yakumo Tatsu.) Do we have that trope at all over here? Pure hearted virgins saving byronic heroes from themselves, à la Jane and Mr. Rochester, but same-sex?

Schools in Bewdley

4/12/10 04:37 (UTC)
Posted by (Anonymous)
My experience of a school , back in the 1940s, was not so dreadful. The cane was seldom used and receiving it resulted in a kind of welcome notoriety! As older students at Boarding School, we even got to wield the dreaded implement. That probably doesn't happen any more now as schools have gone soft.Boarding School UK (http://www.moffats.co.uk/)

painter 11

17/1/11 09:16 (UTC)
Posted by (Anonymous)
This is the 2nd instance I have encountered your site in the last few weeks. Seems like I ought to take note of it.

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