the politics of this fucking show
just chattin shit since i didn't have a great week.
idk why i like this show bc half of it i'm genuinely like WHAT ARE YOU TALKINGGGGG ABOUUUUTTTTT "i'm doing this for my country" vomit "i'm doing this for my family" vomit (bc of aforementioned country; so country = family; nation = family....vomit)
the idea of the nuclear/hetero family
but then ! the assumption of that nuclear/het family isn't consistent through the show (obviously) and it's true that the lack of "family" (man, woman, child/children) could put women and people in danger. they mess with a lot of these foundations and that i get. yes theyre conflicted on their job. but it's still...thinking too much about this lil anime but this problem is actually distracting me lmao
the concept of people in the background watching over your "country" instead of a group effort to secure liberation will always grate. but that's fine; i can theorize as to why that is. this is the cultural landscape we are in. ok. a lot of leftists have been talking about narrative wrt assata shakur and her passing. how her legacy and what she did, her clear understanding of what needs to be done for freedom, what plagues black people, the world she wants; her being a radical black activist in the black liberation army and evading the police. the pride in the term terrorism if you are a pro liberation, pro black, anti colonial anti fascist and the time specificity...how that will be captured by liberals and media to sanitize, lie, confuse. and then i start this show. which, again, is cute and i ship yor and loid a lot. anya is the best and theyre good about kids.
BUT TO BE CLEAR: THE COLD WAR WAS ABOUT CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM(/ANARCHISM) and it has a lot to do with anti-blackness. it also "absents" or rather morphs, conflates, elides something huge ANTI COLONIALISM and LEFT POLITICS IN GENERAL. oh also there is no different between spies, the military, and the police.
if any1 complains abt taking it too seriously:
too bad it's a piece of work and everything is political and i feel like it but more importantly
JUSTIFIED BC the work can't decide that it's going to mire itself in politics and the family and then ask me to turn that part of my brain off. i can't and won't. but it's like..................dude come on.
So this is where my issues with the show begin. WHAT WAR WAS IT? WHAT WARS? WHY? WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD AT THIS TIME? No historicizing? OK! I guess I shall guess.
sss = stasi so gdr? or is it the fucking GESTAPO? because boy oh boy is that crazy. just so we all know, it was russia that defeated the nazis. and japan was also the nazis.
garden = ?
WISE = ?
and so if we're talking opposition to authority: there are plenty of radical left groups in both east and west germany. obviously internationally; japan had their own red army faction and had a japanese red army. the show (and probs the manga) completely take that out. there was deep international solidarity; there were revolutionary cells; black radicals were talking to japanese radicals, palestinian radicals, german radicals of all tendencies. i'm getting all my dates and history mixed up but there's so much radical fervor happening, so much linkage, and a lot of arguing and splits. this is under "decolonization" and an intense level of surveillance.
so whatever people feel about these groups there is real opposition to existing structures and what people feel they are being targeted by. i know WISE and Garden are not supposed to be communist and anarchist groups. even though the show predates (?) RAF, it messes with time so it doesn't matter. again these tendencies had been growing all over the world! especially given germany (and japan, since japanese ppl are making this work) desire to conquer based off of nothing but white violence.
so the clashes between ostania and westalis, and the (let's be charitable and say:) clever positioning of eastern and western bloc-as-countries, is obscured because what is the basis for it? what are the tenets that they abide by? you gonna say the 'c' word? the 'd' word?
all this results in is a mess of ideology and conflating wildly different beliefs to make the viewer think that there always has to be people working to control countries from falling apart without questioning country/nation itself. hell even your past, what you're doing, who you are. that moderation is what is needed for freedom. the viewer comes with their limited knowledge and worldview. they kinda know what the stasi, gestapo, kgb (bc lbr that's what they are gonna get from this too) is, they kinda know about east and west germany, and they know that communism is bad? maybe? i doubt very much many know about the eastern and western bloc, the mechanisms, the opposition, the point. but what we are taught is that things can get bad if you don't have the "well meaning" people behind the scenes regulating ideology and action. and that's market logic.
i don't think spy x family really is worrying about the politics and specificity. idk enough about the mangaka, writers, or artists who work on the animanga. i do know that all of us have been trained since birth to submit to the logic of imperial colonial domination—especially if we reside in places that have shown their drive to dominate. unfortunately it doesn't matter as much if you are a victim like i am or not; the state has found a way to capture your mind via culture and action and it takes time and work to undo it. this show meshes with a public that is meant to think of things a certain way or accept scraps when they can find some light in a work that clashes with their values. it is a balm for people who can't think too much right now.
but personally it's distracting to me. to be fair i havent paid as much attn bc i'm just trying to focus on the cute. sometimes i get so irritated that i have to ff the political stuff which is mercifully fewer and far between. but i doubt i lost much of what the "politics" are, what PEACE MEANS anyway, and the true struggles and impediments. reading what people have to say about the politics is worrisome.
the gdr was problematic as was the ussr. however socialism+communism are not bad. they don't cause poverty. i have my own critiques of its formulations but that isnt because of the idea itself. and it's because i know what the idea is. and i know the truth. [racial] capitalism IS evil and it IS NOT PROSPEROUS. it fundamentally needs a group on the bottom. people who take up heads of state are going to be ones we are taught to follow—white (or closer to white), bourgeoisie, ascendant, authoratitive, probably straight; in line with the white supremacist patriarchal system that is necessary for imperial colonial domination—dominion over others. exploitation is evil.
i identify as a black anarchist(-communist), i am not into states (though i believe that's up to people to decide ie palestine), i think we should have dominion over our lives and be an individual in service to a larger group.
i believe we can live in a new world where the old world, and all its tendencies and establishments, its structures, are gone. where we solve our own problems which is what many were trying to do. but in spy x family the past cannot contend with that; nor the ideas that gdr purported; nor the antagonizers who had allegiance to freedom, not bound by borders their country's people made up to kill and exploit the darker people of the world. there were people fundamentally antagonistic to everyone at the top, who were anti colonial, subversive, counter, international when doing so. (for ex: the japanese red army worked with the popular front for the liberation of palestine! even gdr was anti-israel which, their flaws and problems many, and it being a very selfish and failed (imo) type of support, is a step above anything others aligned with the US would do)
the failures and even horrors (propagandized as they are for red/black scare btw) to obtain what one sets out to do does not mean that it is the failure of an ideology that stems from the desire of a world without exploitation, a free world. how i feel about it is independent on how it was carried out. but to take these ideas stemming from the cold war, which was a deeply ideological and culling one, mash them together and ask an audience to identify a good and bad guy but have the ideology unknown and based off of vague signifiers and our personal life experience is fucking reckless and all too common in this ~day and age~. this is also training, this is also propaganda. all political economy is vacated and things just are. they just are fighting.
and again if someone gets frustrated bc i'm tagging this: think of the time and effort you go through to write meta and fanfiction, make fanart, the scrolling you do, the things you save and then compare it to my questions and thoughts and ask me what the difference is besides effusive praise. same amount (probably way less) of time and effort but in a different direction. so clearly it is that serious to everyone involved.
anyway the conclusion to this story: don't be a ~radical~ artist and watch shit with your brain on in 2025 i guess. i mean i'm not gonna do that but help
