[EVA] Gendou - man or monster?

[once at ix.netcom.com]

Definitely a track with relevance to Eva; just in case you've never heard one of the greatest songs ever written:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yTIpcwBTTs

(If this were the quartet from Death & Rebirth--Shinji: vocals and guitar, Asuka: bass, Kaworu: synth, Rei: drums ^_^)

9/11 made me start thinking about Evangelion in a new way, considering the concept of a small, secretive group who plots to transform the world based on their reading of ancient scriptures, regardless of the human cost. Whether in reality or fiction, one should be suspicious of any "inevitable" or "foreordained" act carried out in God's name, that somehow still needs human beings to make it happen. The irony is that divine will better fit the cover story of the Second Impact than what actually caused it. 

But what was a "new" way of thinking about Eva to me as an American was likely less so to its original Japanese audience--Evangelion was itself made in the media frenzy that followed the Aum Shinrikyo terror attack, which happened seven months before the show's premiere. Part of the reason Eva captured the public imagination in Japan was that it could be seen as a commentary on the times. 

Anno is not exactly a Hasid, but the series does nevertheless famously make use of Kabbalistic symbology, and its notion of the Instrumentality is not so different from the Kabbalah concept of comprehending and restoring the unity of the human and the divine. But there are different ideas in Kabbalah of how this is to be achieved--one, that this restoration needs to be done first and foremost within the heart, and the other, that it is to be done through gaining esoteric knowledge. 

You can see this conflict in the Instrumentality. Even if one uses science and the occult to trigger the process and drop our A.T. Fields, it doesn't follow that humanity is ready to make it work; after all, armor is used to protect what is weak, not what is strong. This is the importance of Misato and Kaji as characters, who are weak, but who have heart--not only compassion, but courage. If a monster is a person or thing that operates outside the societal norm, one could argue that the greatest monster of all must be God, and that in Evangelion, it is those who are most like God whom are most monstrous.

--C.


>
>(Puts on Joy Division "Love Will Tear Us Apart")
>
>I for one consider Gendo a monster.  To me a monster is a person or a thing
>which operates outside the societal norm.  The magnitude of monster can be
>defined by just how far someone operates beyond what the group or
>individuals baseline view of "acceptable" is.
>
>Is Gendo a monster?  Yes.  Hell yes.  Both in how he treated Shinji, and how
>he treated humanity in his attempt to reunite with Yui.
>
>I'd be interested in hearing peoples thoughts about Instrumentality.  I
>consider it to be monstrous in that it wasn't an action which was
>universally accepted by humankind.  I do however marvel at the fact that
>there was a group of people who considered this to be a sound move forward
>for the benefit of humanity - and in doing so they created their own
>baseline, and to them are no longer monstrous.  That fascinates me.
>
>