V The Man

Take a good look at these young men and women. They are staring back in defiance against the Man. In this case, the unsympathetic authority is a teacher who is about to give them perhaps the biggest life lesson possible. This is a screenshot from the Japanese film called Battle Royale, which plunges the viewer into a horrifying scenario with 40 students who are forced to fight each other to the death. In this alternate reality, education officials and the government have come to loathe all things "childish," and so instituted an annual ritual of sending a select group of students to an island for this graduation rite of passage. Three days after being turned loose, it is expected that only one survivor will remain. If not, everyone remaining will be executed by remote-controlled explosives in their fitted collars.
Such a bloodcurdling theme turns most audiences away, but I think those who remain seated do so because of morbid fascination with the truth. Much like in the "Saw" films, these situations push the protagonists to face themselves on such an extreme level that by the end, they have matured decades beyond where they were in the beginning. So what can we learn from this situation, and what could it ever have to do with gender? In a survival situation, some core traits of the self often surface. So, in gendered terms, what sorts of things surface in Battle Royale?

There are themes of love and true friendship, but it's also the stereotypical dynamics of how it works: for one, that the man is nothing but a goal-constructing devotee to beauty who finds weapons, and secures a territorial perimeter around his damsel. Meanwhile, the damsel is always nurturing herself and guarding her womb, at least metaphorically, loving a man for either his protection or the places he will take her. The idea is that men are the standard of work because there is nothing else they are good for, while being a woman is a full time job. But the same goes for men in other cases. A man similarly loves a woman who pats his ego and bears children that carry on his legacy, but he also wants a gorgeous prize, someone sacred enough to deserve his hard work and give it meaning.

On the island, two veteran alumni students are sent to join the survival game, to stir things up. One tells his story of how he and his girlfriend ended up being the last two survivors. Since it's only one or neither of them who will be allowed to win, they are forced to stab at each other. Out of chance, the girl is the one to receive a mortal wound, but she dies with a smile on her face, in her beau's arms. By the end of the film, he comes to the conclusion that her smile was of gratitude to have been so in love with someone, to have gone through so much together and to merely be the first one to take the plunge into the other side. Was she sacrificing herself to him? Was he not a proper gentleman, or does "ladies first" apply in all situations? Perhaps the more pressing subject is the effect that outside forces had on their relationship--did they grow stronger together because of it? In the end of the film, the three remaining survivors are this veteran, and a boy and girl. Over the course of the three days, the young boy receives several injuries, but accumulates a lot of weapons. He finally finds the girl he has always tried to impress, but admits he is rather useless besides the weapons he can give her. I saw this as a touching metaphor for the common theme of a man acknowledging his imperfections but promising security. In the end, they become close, and the trio finds a way to break the rules, survive, and kill the schoolmaster.

No specific guidelines can be drawn on what natural gender binary is supposed to be like. The ways that cultures approach the division varies as much as religious customs. But it seems to me that the constructions a society creates are equally dependent on the environment they are adapting to, as much as the extent of their imagination or taste in customs. Institutions are built to make these customs solid, so that we can focus on higher goals beyond survival: a domesticating reality with paradigms that are at least easier to adapt to than the wild. But the original institution we are all trying to adapt to and rationalize is nature. Authorities in this film reach such a totalitarian level that it begins to look like nothing more than a cruel synecdoche for life and evolution. It's something we are supposed to have put behind us, yet it will be around long after we go extinct. In whatever situation of pressure, life will find diverse ways to adapt.

So in survivalist/capitalist mentality, people react in different ways--mainly to either fend for oneself and protect what one has, or to band together. In the Arab world, this context has led to rigid institutionalization of a certain survivalism in the desert world, where deviance is historically viewed as dangerously wandering away from the tried and true values of conquerors who worked hard to carve out a living (as detailed in the writings of Ibn Kaldun). For example, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly declared in response to the Iranian election protests that, “Anybody who drives the society toward insecurity and disorder is a hated person in the view of the Iranian nation, whoever he is.” This is still an isolationist and individualistic survival strategy, but in a more collective group sense. The idea is to protect the dynasty and stay loyal to our customs, but be skeptical of all others. This is one reason women are treated as they are in Islam, because it has become accepted that this is the way to survive here, and men will do what works, and the women will go along or die (by execution mostly now, but the executions are a product of neurotic prevention of death—taboos leading to anarchy). It’s a way of protecting the metaphorical oasis of society, the extracted cup of water that must not be spilled. Purity and preservation are the chief values, even preserving by masking the fact you have anything to boast of. So women are kept pure and sacred by refusing to celebrate their beauty publicly.

I feel the best way to undermine a harmful institution is to understand where it is coming from, and then to demonstrate why its methods are ultimately not as productive as they think. But institutions have kept the peace and order in situations where it may have been more costly to lose. We must learn the rules before we can break them, instead of relying on groups in a game where everybody has to face death alone anyway. By refusing to accept fear, by facing reality ourselves and learning to play the game without help, we can be more tolerant and more true to ourselves.