THESE PRECIOUS THINGS
A Feminist Critique of the Magical Girl Archetype as Seen in
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
The Empty Shell
Once the wish is made, each magical girl has this moment when a light comes from her body. It enters a small case, referred to as a Soul Gem. All Soul Gems are unique to the owner. They are proof of her status as a magical girl and the source of her power. They give her the ability manifest her Magical Girl form and to create weapons. In many cases, they also manifest a special power. Sayaka has healing magic. Homura has magical that can manipulate time.
Each time the Soul Gem is used, it begins to darken. The more magic that is used, the more darkness that enters it. When witches are defeated, they drop what Mami and Kyubey call a Grief Seed. These Seeds can be used to remove the taint from the Soul Gem. It's understood that each time this happens, it becomes a little more difficult to remove the taint the next time. When a magical girl's Soul Gem is destroyed, she dies. Of course, Kyubey leaves that part out for a while.
He also leaves out the fact that once a Soul Gem becomes completely darkened, it turns into a Grief Seed . . . meaning, of course, the magical girl turns into a witch. Once the reality of this begins to sink in, it's devastating to the girls. For one thing, it means all of them are facing this eventual doom. Life past becoming a magical girl means either death or witch. It also means that every witch they have fought has, at one time, been a magical girl. They did not become so destructive and deadly because they were evil . . . they became so because they grew overwhelmed by the darkness in their Soul Gems.
How is this possible? Well, Kyubey leaves that part out as well. The Soul Gems are called so because they truly contain the soul, and, really, ALL of who the girl is now. Their bodies are just shells, moved by and controlled by their essence that now resides inside of the Gem. Everything they are has been detached from the physical world and contained in one small place. For all intents and purposes, their bodies are dead. If at any time their Soul Gem is taken too far away from their bodies, the body will fall and be lifeless.
Again we see a very strong metaphor for the life of the teen (and, really, a lot of people). A lot of people, for whatever reason, live with this sense of a separation between body and mind. They detach emotionally or intellectually from the body they inhabit. Sometimes this means they live most of their lives inside their own head (kind of like how I do). Other times, it means becoming so separated from what is going on with their bodies so they can emotionally survive abuse. For humans, detachment is often a method of self-defense.
Many young girls often find they are asked to compromise themselves. Again, I don't just speak of virginity here. Many girls enter adolescence with a firm grip on who they are. Day by day, that grip begins to crumble, as they are pushed and sometimes bullied into fitting into the acceptable molds for what a young woman can be. In the same way that the Magical Girls in Madoka have their souls locked away in a Gem, many young women find they have to lock away their true selves. Like the Gems, quite often these locked away selves get tainted and warped, eventually losing all semblance to their origins.
When Madoka eventually confronts Kyubey about this, he tells her that every girl has entered the contract willingly, as if to imply free will is enough to justify his actions. To his mind, it was a Buyer Beware situation and the girls' ignorance or inability to predict the unforeseen consequences is really not his problem. As always, the mark's ignorance is the chief weapon of the manipulator.
No comments:
Post a Comment