Maxim of Man: Our Natural Order
Great stories go beyond entertaining people. Stories can be used for encouraging people to think for themselves and provide insight to how people think. Parasyte-The Maxim provides insight on how people act as an individual and as a collective. This series can be watched passively and absorbed as an action series. However, the true meaning of the show is a psychological thriller that constantly reminds you of humanity. We are all under the influence of media. Everyone is networked in ways that public messages stretch across the country and change our behaviors. Othering groups is a way that people have united. The humans and the parasites in the series view each other as the inherit opposition because they are different and do not understand the thoughts of the opposing species. Fantasy stories are open-minded and do not follow a straight line of any ideology. Parasyte shows viewpoints from an omnipotent view. You are forced into the minds of different characters with different motives. There is a left-wing politician who is a bit overboard in his conservationist ideology. Although he seemed borderline psychotic, there were a few points in his last speech that had a nugget of truth to it. We are all familiar with being human and acting as what we perceive to be normal. Deviance from our social dogma is infringement on a social contract. We have all signed this contract with our first breath and this contract is applicable to the day we die. There is an underlying duty for all of humanity to behave in ways that validate what it means to be human in terms of ethical behavior especially.
Everyone knows that that there is an invisible code of conduct that we must abide to. Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, PhD in sociology, says that this creed is created by the “[s]ocial institutions such as the law, the media, education, religion and so on hold the balance of power through their representation of what is accepted as “normal” and what is considered Other.” (“Defining Otherness”). Parasyte-The Maxim covers power of both the media and law. People often think about how the media refers to music and movies and how these sources of entertainment shape our culture. People overlook the power of the news and how information is processed and given to the public. Lies and distortions of news has caused numerous deaths. Captain Carl Otis Schuster, NAVY intelligence officer during Vietnam, wrote an article in Vietnam Magazine regarding the Tonkin Gulf incident. Capt. Schuster wrote, “There were 122 additional relevant SIGNIT products that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the warnings…These mistakes led U.S. destroyers to open fire on spurious radar contacts, misinterpret their own propeller noises as incoming torpedoes, and ultimately report an attack that never occurred” (Case Closed: The Tonkin Gulf Incident). It took forty-four years for this information to come into the public view. This “incident” was a lie that got the USA involved in the Vietnam War. This war led to the deaths of over one million people. Parasyte covers how the media is guided by the government, and they are allowed to release censored content that is government approved. When the parasites first landed on Earth they were embedding themselves in humans. If these parasites took control by fusing with the brain, they would become the human and the life that inhabited the body before the hosting is no more. The parasites were cannibalistic. There was a sudden flux of humans killing other humans and eating them. The media was not allowed to cover the subject until there were too many murders to overlook. The murders were then said to be committed by a serial killer. Understandably, some people were paranoid by these deaths that they chose to stay inside and parents kept tighter surveillance on their children. It was intriguing to see how the supposed actions of one person, according to the media, would terrify people to the point of living in fear. The media had an element of control over people and when they left their houses. The media then made it further into everyday life when they learned the nature of the parasite. The government allowed the media to tell people about the parasites. If the parasite took control of the brain, it would have complete control over the host and every piece of the host was an extension of the parasite. There was a silly public trend that was encouraged by the media by having people walk up to their friends and pulling out a single strand of hair as a part of a greeting. If you happened to pull the hair of a parasite, the hair would shrivel up and die. This greeting was a way of finding out who has been infested. We can look around today and see dumb things people are doing because it is popular. Twerking is a public trend that has worked its way into the dictionary. On a darker note, people have died taking selfies. The media is as strong as the law when it comes to social forces. Laws define what is acceptable behavior and differ depending on which borders you stand within. Laws are in place to make sure that people follow a social construct that is beneficial to themselves and to the government.
Electing representatives that believe in similar philosophies is one way of pulling the societal norms towards your beliefs. If you have enough representatives in a country that believe a certain way, you can relieve the stress of the “Otherness.” Dr. Zevallos said, “Dichotomies of otherness are set up as being natural and so often times in everyday life they are taken for granted and presumed to be natural. But social identities are not natural – they represent an established social order” (quoted in “Defining Otherness”). Otherness is clearly seen in gay rights of the British Isles. The battle for gay rights in Great Britain has worked in steps because the people elected representatives that leaned in their social views, away from wanting to govern homosexuality. Homosexuality was punishable by death in England from 1533-1861. The Buggery Act of 1533 was passed under the rule of King Henry VIII and was a civil sodomy law that grouped homosexuality and bestiality in the same group. Even though the act was repealed in 1828 they continued to hang people for homosexuality for another three and a half decades. Doctor Rictor Norton believes this medieval law to be a basis for modern law. (The Medieval Basis of Modern Law). It took until 1967 for homosexuality to be decriminalized to a mental disease and homosexuality was legal for people aged 21 and up. Homosexuality was equalized with the age of consent, 16, in 2001. There is still a bit of a stigma of homosexuality and residual thoughts that still lie in modern Britons. The kingdom has evolved towards being more open as a whole. These changes happened because people wanted these social standards to change. In the universe that Parasyte took place in, humans saw the parasites as the others and wanted a complete eradication of the species. They did not think for one moment about how the parasites may be able to benefit mankind. The parasites were an alien race that saw only logic and had no feelings. They saw eating one type of food to be far less barbaric than eating a variety of lives to sustain their own life. The humans and the parasites shared a similar goal because they were the only two races to seek evolution that were known about. They could have worked together but reactionaries saw this as an immediate threat to humanity and wanted to kill the aliens without hesitation. Upon finding out that there were parasites that had taken politicians as hosts, the government had launched an attack on the parliamentary building and faked a mad shooter. The military created a scenario where they were able to lockdown the entire building and scan every person as they left the building in a controlled manner. They corralled the hosts off in corridors and killed them and blamed the gunshots on the supposed shooter. The commander of the operation had shown an irrational amount of hate when he saw the first parasite die. He smiled as he rambled on about how these aliens were not life forms, but machines operated by demons. He led a zealous crusade within parliament to gleefully kill every alien he could find. The aliens mutually saw humans as a threat because humans are recognized as the dominant species of Earth that wanted to protect their own way of living. The parasites did things in their own interests of preserving their own lives and saw humans as the others. The parasites had created a caste among themselves where they held themselves above humans and deemed them as expendable because they were an inferior species.
During the raid on parliament there was an esteemed environmentalist who saw similarities with the parasites and made an alliance. Sasha Simic, a progressive writer, states the obvious but misconstrued notion that “Superheroes can be reactionary – but they don’t automatically have to be. In any case stories that treat superheroes as reactionary can also tell progressive tales. Genre does not dictate quality, nor profundity, nor politics.” (Sasha Simic’s A Critique of the Gotham Programme). Parasyte covers a few progressive topics. There is a a mayor named Takeshi Hirokawa. He was a sympathizer of the parasites and worked with the parasites in power. This man was a bit crazy, but made some progressive statements with his final speech that even the most anti-authoritarian members of society understand. People are toxic to this world and we are killing this planet. There are too many people, we will hit a ceiling in terms of sustainability. He raised questions about value in predators. Hirokawa was a populist and created safe havens for the parasites to feed on humans in abandoned buildings and underground parking lots. The mayor saw nothing wrong with there being a creature that was above humans in the food chain. He thought it was a healthy occurrence that the aliens came to Earth and controlled the human population. One quote that is hard to dispute is “Enviro-conservation measures are all skewed in favor of benefiting the human race!” Saving the Earth is synonymous for prolonging humanity. The politician would see the recent one-child policy of China as a smart move towards bettering the Earth. There is a finite amount of resources available to us and we need to decide how to use them. Is there a way all of humanity can pull together and decrease our need for resources? There are many ways of saving resources; some are more humane than others. China had an infamous one-child policy is one way of making our resources last longer. There are alternatives to such radical ideas of population control. Norman Borlaug, known as “The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives,” is a good example. This American saved a projected billion lives by engineering high-yield wheat crops (Norman Borlaug – Biographical). These crops took less water and produced more food. There may be some truth to the words of Hirokawa, but humanity is adaptive and we will survive for as long as we can. Change is the essential process of all existence. Humanity pulled together to make us what we are today; the best this world has to offer. It is a pleasant thought that humans will live forever and spread across the galaxy like in Doctor Who, but we will likely end on this planet. Earth will keep spinning long after we are gone as it did before we cropped up. An inevitable end to humans is nothing to stop us from being altruistic.
Reiko Tamura was an alien that had experimented with her body and had a baby to understand the stages of childbirth. She had the original intention of dissecting the child after it was born, but grew fond of her baby and developed human instincts. Chris Yogerst, a professor of film and communication, makes a point that “[stories] themselves come from a good place. The belief that people are capable of real altruism is inescapable, human, and the farthest thing from inherently fascistic.” (Stop Calling Superheroes Fascist). She started to love humans. The aliens felt a level of betrayal and felt it may undermine their existence. Her fellow parasites who had caught wind of her appreciation of human life attempted to kill her because she was the other. After bonding with her child she grew an animalistic love and need to protect her child. She was the first parasite to have a real laugh and feel what she believed to be love. She underwent the most otherness in this anime. She was hated by her own kind because she sympathized with the humans and started to behave like a human. She had turned back on cannibalism and started to eat human food. She was hated by the humans because she was an alien. There was no safe place for her in this world. When the government discovered her secret, the detective sought what he believed to be a necessary investigation. The human detective tried to take her baby away from her and she stabbed him with an appendage she turned into steel. This proof of her being a parasite was enough for her to be executed in the park while protecting her child. She was one of the stronger parasites and she could have fought back or fled, but she chose to use her body to save her baby. She talked about starting off as a parasite and ended human as she could get. She thought it was poetic that she began to love humans and her baby was worth her life. She knew her human baby would be better raised by the protagonist Shinichi because he understands humans and parasites. Shinichi has a parasite named Migi that lives in his right hand and Shinichi is in control of his body. The actions of Tamura are seen as heroic to the audience. Human selflessness is in every story that I have read because it is a characteristic that people admire. People see altruism as heroic. It is the recognized duty of a hero to be serving.
Parasyte – The Maxim tells a beautiful story with many lessons to take home. Otherness has led to not only ostracization, but to death. People feel exile in their own land. Social constructs dictated by government and media contort the way people think. When people control the way people think, they have control of an entire society. We are also reminded that entertainment isn’t intrinsic of its genre. Trends are not concrete truths in the same way how correlations are not causations. We see more than our share of bad days on the news. There is rarely a story about the Borlaugs of this Earth. There are people who care about the wellbeing of our future and innovate the way we live without radical ideas. Believing in heroic characteristics and loving characters for them can lead to a better place to live. Entertainment is supposed to go beyond asking if someone has seen it and then ending with a casual agreement about it being cool. The best stories I have ever come across ask me to think about myself and about this world. Both the manga and the anime of Parasyte has exceeded most stories and it creates an instant stimulating conversation between anyone that has enjoyed it.
Works Cited
"Norman Borlaug - Biographical." Norman Borlaug - Biographical. Nobel Prize, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2015. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-bio.html>.
Norton, Rictor. "The Medieval Basis of Modern Law." Rictor Norton - Gay History & Literature. Rictor Norton, 15 Apr. 2002. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Schuster, Carl Otis. "Case Closed: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident." History Net Where History Comes Alive World US History Online. History Net, 8 July 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Simic, Sasha. "A Critique of the Gotham Programme: Marxism and Superheroes." Dream Deferred RSS. Dream Deferred, 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Yogerst, Chris. "Stop Calling Superheroes 'Fascist'" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 03 Dec. 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Zevallos, Zuleyka. "What Is Otherness?" The Other Sociologist Analysis of Difference By Dr Zuleyka Zevallos. Other Sociologist, 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
