The Cyborg Body in Serial Experiments Lain

Give some examples of cybernetic systems at play in specific visual texts. What metaphors of the body in contemporary society do they suggest? And to what commodity ends are they marketed?

 The influx of technology within the public sphere illuminates the inherent complicity between the body and machine. The Christian standpoint of a soul and the Cartesian self that is conceived “in terms of a whole, centred, stable and completed Ego or autonomous, rational” consciousness gives way to the idea of the self “as more fragmented and incomplete, composed of multiple ’selves’ or identities in relation to the different social worlds we inhabit” (Hall, 1996, p. 226). Within cybernetics, such fragmentation of the self is viewed through the complex channels of network communication. In analysing Serial Experiments Lain (Nakamura, 1998), I aim to examine how the series constructs a metaphorical reflection of the mutation of human consciousness and the fate of the material body as conceived within a cybernetic network. The culturally specific social space and time that this essay will address is Japan within the immense proliferation of the Internet in the 90s. Firstly, I shall explore the ontological dimensions of the cyborg, the quintessential cybernetic being, mapping out the flows of its consciousness and the parameters of its body within contemporary network society. Secondly, I will explore the specific commodity ends Serial Experiments Lain caters to, in which I will determine if it poses a metaphorical paradigm that strengthens or subverts the machinic process of capitalism. To conclude, I will assert that the cybernetic system at play in Serial Experiments Lain is a utopian metaphor of the cyborg body that functions as a fetishistic commodity within capitalism.

The Cyborg: Death of the Body and the Extension of Consciousness

Serial Experiments Lain poses an explicit example of the intangibility of the borders governing cybernetic systems and material reality. Its fragmented narrative follows Lain, a reclusive schoolgirl, who enters the Wired, a computer network that mirrors the Internet, with the intention of investigating the presence of a classmate who committed suicide but retains her consciousness within the network. Lain’s subjectivity is continuously altered as she becomes more immersed within the Wired. As the series, in which episodes are presented as ‘Layers’, gradually expose the essence and workings of the Wired, Lain concurrently transforms into the paradigm of the cyborg. She discovers the complicity of her existence with the mechanics of the computer network.

Haraway states that the “cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (2000, p. 291). The cyborg appears in contemporary space during “moments of radical social and cultural change,” in which “a hybrid model of existence is required to encompass a new, complex and contradictory lived experience” (Gonzalez, 2000, p. 61). The particular shift towards flux and uncertainty in lived experience that Lain refers to is contingent to how “the Japanese structure their universe and order their emotions within the proliferation and disorder of machines, while hanging on to their archaic references” (Guattari, 1996, p. 101).  Thus, Lain is a metaphorical construct of the contemporary body amidst Japan’s rapid proliferation of network technologies. Colman states that, similar to many serial narratives, Lain attempts to achieve what Derrida deems as the logocentric ideal, the “perfect self-presence, of the immediate possession of meaning” (2003 par. 36; 1972, p. 247). However, to address the spiritual specificity of Japan would be to acknowledge its Buddhist ideal of emptiness. Thus, the logocentrism that Lain strives towards can be conceived, not as a complete body or self, but as what Zen master Soho describes as “abiding place;” the “place where the mind stops” (2003, p. 223). If emptiness were taken as Japan’s archaic reference, the cyborg body in Lain would be a metaphor, illustrated by the mechanisms of the cybernetic network, of a utopian form of empty being that renders materiality redundant. Thus, the chaotic landscape of network society is used to metaphorically imagine an archaic and utopian space of emptiness.

Firstly, the parameters of the body are made problematic through the presence of mechanical hardwiring. Lain’s body that exists within the figuration of the material reality that she transverses in is that of an individualistic adolescent schoolgirl. This body that is constituted biologically is separate from the hardwiring of the Wired. The boundary is neatly constructed with screen images of Lain utilising the Navi, the access station into the network, through the interface of the keyboard and screen. Hence, the biological nature of Lain that is constructed through her adolescent body exists separately from the mechanical wiring of the Wired. This setup is made problematic as Lain explores, modifies and assembles her Navi. The space of her archetypical bedroom transforms into a space that resembles the inner-workings of the computer. Lain’s body is fragmented through the excessive presence of wires, cables and various computer parts that attach to her at multiple points. This constructs a visual image of the body that is “vanishing, irrelevant” and “interfaced with the machine” (Muri, 2003, p. 73). Lain’s body appears as a vessel similar to that of wiring, existing only to facilitate the informational flows that circulated within the Navi/human communicative assemblage.

Within such a framework, the consciousness that is coupled with the body must be understood through its extension into the communicative dynamics of the network.  As Gargett states, “the body needs to be repositioned from the psycho realm of the biological to the cyber zone of the interface and extension—from genetic containment to electronic extrusion” (2002, p. 302). Lain’s material body is made redundant as its ontological dimensions are mapped out within the network as bits and flows of information.

It is useful here to draw a parallel between the network and the neuro-physiological mechanism of the mind as the building block of identity formation through the articulation of the body. Mountcastle argues that subjectivity can only be understood through the workings of the brain that projects “millions of fragile sensory nerve fibers,” in which any addition to that is “logical inference”  (Cited in Sekuler & Blake, 1994, p. 2). Damasio states that the body is a reference point “for the neural processes that we experience as the mind; that our very organism rather than some absolute experiential reality is used as the ground of reference for the constructions we make of the world” (1994, p. xvi). Thus, Lain’s cyborg body within the network that can be taken as a mechanical extension of the brain’s mechanism. Her subjectivity is measured through its communicative medium of wires that function like nerve fibres. The body continues to be a reference point within the brain and network, in a symbolical linguistic gesture. But this body is a meta-interpersonal communicative machine that is mapped according to the flow of information. This is illustrated the Lain’s effortless travels within the undefined space of the Wired that allows a computerised image of her body to exists in multiple junctures. Deleuze and Guattarti say, “the existence of synaptic microfissures, the leap each message makes across these fissures, make the brain a multiplicity immersed in its plane of consistency or neuroglia, a whole uncertain, probabilistic system” (2008, p. 17). The cyborg brain, the means of conceiving the cyborg body, is a complex assemblage that rejects order and continuity. Therefore, the body of the cyborg, used as a reference to understand the workings of the network, becomes perversely fragmented.

The cyborg body is envisioned through the process of simulation. Firstly, there is the simulation of the corporeal self within the virtual network through the avatar which functions as a medium for “experiencing the computer-generated environment rather than the actual physical locale” (Witmer & Singer, 1998, pg. 225). Early in the series, Lain’s avatar, referred to as ‘Lain in the Wired’, is constructed as an alter ego that enables the projection of her desires. While similar in terms of its visual dimensions, Lain’s avatar that infused with agency and power is marked with its difference in behavioral patterns from the ‘real’ fragile and adolescent Lain. Thus, Lain’s singular body is doubled and the identity attributes of the original are made problematic with the avatar that is viewed within the similar body but coupled by a totally different identity. Individual consciousness is flushed out of the material body that is “deserted and condemned” as “behavior is crystalli[ses] on certain screens and operational terminals” (Baudrillard, 1983, p. 128-129). Things takes a more problematic turn later in the series in a particular scene in which Lain transverses an infinite assembly line of her avatars. She becomes aware that her avatar is a floating signifier with no true reference point. The ‘God’ of the Wired informs her that these empty bodies, which are vibrating as if stuck within a feedback loop, are all real Lains. Thus, taken as copies of a copy, the significance of Lain’s physical body as a reference point is made redundant.

Napier states that “animation challenges our expectations of what is ‘normal’ or ‘real,’ bringing up material that may seem more appropriately housed in dreams or the unconscious, and this can be a deeply disconcerting” (2005, p. 73). As the cyborg body in Lain is illustrated through animation, it moves away from a realist depiction into a framework this is inherently artificial. The segregation between digetic reality and the Wired network is problematic in the way both spaces are constructed within the same cinematographic style. For example, spaces and materiality such as Lain’s school, the street outside her house and even seaweed are illuminated with an organic glow, a similar lighting that is used to illustrate scenes within the Wired. Similarly, Lain’s body transgresses the boundaries between the real and the cyber network as feedback, static and floating fragmented body parts are used to illustrate her presence. Lain’s body is presented as a fragile signifier that can be tweaked and adjusted according to the animator’s wishes. It is Nakamura’s intent to question materiality, to illuminate the consequences that network society has on the way we understand ourselves. Therefore, he presents the animated metaphor of the intangible and fragmented body that function more like an undetermined set of floating signifiers than that of a whole and determined self.

The cyborg body is separated from biological notions of procreative sex as sexual desire is displaced within the realms of communicative channels and its flows of information. Garget sees this as “a process which abandons the model of a unified and centralized organism, the organic body” for “a diagram of fluid sex” (2002, p. 306). Baudrillard states that bodily functions that were related to “organic, visceral, carnal promiscuity” are replaced by “cold and communicational, contractual and motivational obscenity of today (1983, p. 131). Consciousness projects away from the material body and becomes a sexualised virtual organ that facilitates informational flow. This is illustrated in Lain through its use of the term ‘infornography’ as a means of linking pornography with flows of information. The communicative channels of the Wired are envisioned as a sexual mechanism that enables a form of sexual stimulation through the accumulation and exchange of information. Within this framework, the biological body is restructured through the machinic process of the network. The cyborg body receives sexual gratification as information through its interface. Colman understands ‘infornography’ as the process in which “the body that is used as vehicle for data flows appears as obscene to the ‘normal’ channels of information” (2003, par. 35). In this case, the cyborg body draws a parallel with the excesses of pornography that detotalises the boundaries of corporeal sex. The metaphor of the cyborg body conjures the sexual act of procreation in a non-biological sense, replicating the model of connection and stimulation as a mechanical means of sustaining itself.

Such rejection of biological necessity and the diffusion of dualities in the cyborg body endows agency to the minority. Haraway envisions the cyborg as “a creature in a post-gender world” because it rejects any “seductions to organic wholeness” (2000, p. 392). The cyborg body is positively articulated in feminist discourse because it moves away from biological necessity and rejects any predetermined social functions coupled with the gendered body. However, while Lain does offer this utopian imaginary, it does so in a reductive way by constructing its discourse through the figuration of Lain’s female body. The series observes the dynamics of the female cyborg body through a male gaze. Lain’s body is amplified in the narrative and subject to malfunction in contrast to the spectres of minor male characters whose absence excludes them from cybernetic discourse and its breaking down of the body.

In aborting the worldly and profane body for a form of cybernetic transcendence, cyborg consciousness ultimately leads to nihilism. It recycles the Christian dichotomy of the sacred and profane. Nietzsche states that Christianity is inherently nihilistic with its life-negating model of positing value towards the afterlife through the belief of the divine father, the “spider of finality and morality which is supposed to exist behind the great net and web of causality” (Nietzsche, 1996, p. 92). Within Christianity, the material body is devalued through the projection of the soul that metaphysically connects with a higher order. Lain’s model of rejecting her adolescent body in relation to the real word for transcendental agency within the Wired resembles such nihilism.

However, the series is self-reflexive about this parallel through the figuration of the God of the Wired (GodW). The differences between the Christian God and the post-Christian GodW are apparent through mapping the power relations between Lain and GodW. The presence of GodW is perceptible within Lain’s gradual integration into the Wired through non-digetic voice-overs and an actual figuration of a male body later in the series. As representative of the creationary aspects of the Wired, GodW is infused with knowledge of the Wired’s essence. He claims that he is the one that created Lain, giving her an ego in the real world and her omnipresence in the Wired. In their final confrontation, Lain forms a resistance against the GodW by questioning his ontology, in which she claims that she is no different from him within the workings of the Wired. GodW’s spirituality and individual transcendence gives way to an ontological framework understood in terms of “a problem of coding,” a “technical basis of simulacra” that reduces “the difference between machine and organism,” and with it, creator and created (Haraway, 2000, p. 302-303). As GodW realises that he does not hold the power he once attributed to himself, his male body transforms into a grotesque and non-productive body-without-organs before dissipating into the network. Deleuze and Guattari state that “the theological system” is “the operation of he who makes an organism” that imposes forms, “functions, bond, dominant and hierarchized organizations” and “organized transcendences” on the BwO (2008, p. 176). This power structure as imposed by GodW is detotalised and he metaphorically manifests in his desire inhibiting form. The utopian metaphor of the cyborg that is illuminated by Lian’s non-hierarchical existence in the Wired corresponds to the rhiozome: a non-hierarchal communicative metaphor in which the molar and binary systems gives way to a diagonal line that “passes between things, between points” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2008, p. 557). In the cyborg metaphor, the material body is rejected as an unproductive structure as consciousness extends into the utopian and unregimented flows of the rhiozomic network. Thus, the cyborg practices a dispersed will to power within the virtual realm through the absence of God.

Marketing the Cyborg as a Commodity

Lain was designed as a television series that was first broadcasted at 1.15am in Japan, an off-peak timing and irregular commodity channel that positions the series as a commodity catered to a niche and presumably adult demographic. The intended commodity end that it is exposed to is inherent to the television medium. In describing the intangibility of the medium, Derrida states:

“While we remain attentive, fascinated, glued to what presents itself we are unable to see presence as such, since presence does not present itself, no more than does the visibility of the visble, the audibility of the audible, the medium or ‘air’ which disappears in the act of allowing to appear” (1981, p. 314).

The phenomenological effects of the television medium draw a parallel and signify towards that of the Internet and virtual. The screen images of Lain’s body that flicker on the television screen become a paradigm of disembodiment, a simulacra that is fleeting and fragmented. At the start of each episode, Lain self-reflexively stares directly at the spectator while she verbally questions her identity. Effects that mimic television static illustrate this sequence. To observe a feedbacking image of a cyborg body attempting to communicate to her audience at such and odd nocturnal timing from one’s television set must be a surreal experience. Furthermore, an aura of connectivity conjured from the broadcast illustrates the interconnectivity of Lain’s Wired. Therefore, Lain can be considered a progressive text that aims at illuminating the consequences of the body and materiality through a self-reflexive use of its communicative medium. Within this framework, it is hardly a commodity packaged with popular entertainment value that is marketed to the masses. Rather, it is targeted to the chance consumer, the television viewer browsing through channels late at night who might stumble upon the bizarre information on screen that is Lain.

However, as an anime product screened on television and repackaged into dvd format, Lain ultimately corresponds to that of a commodity within capitalism. In conceiving new moods of perception within the digital age, it can be considered a text that aims at deterritorialisation. But the fascistic borders that are symbolically present in the physical commodity of the Lain dvd boxset, represents a process of reterritorialisation by the capitalistic industry. The randomness of its consumption associated with its television broadcast gives way to a more targeted commodity end.

Adorno and Horkheimer state that the commodities churned out by the culture industry, “depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers” (1993, p. 32). This is evident in the consumer demographic of the anime enthusiast commonly referred to as the Otaku. With its cyber aesthetic and motifs, Lain is a commodity that would also appeal to the cyberpunk subculture. However, as a product that is released within a period in which the deviant and anarchic elements of cyberpunk exist only in residual form, Lain becomes a product that encapsulates the revolutionary ideals of cyberpunk into a convenient commodity. Tatsumi says that cyberpunk “caught the eyes of so many people that it rapidly transgressed the boundaries of any generic categories, and came to refer to anything having to do with dead-tech environment, hypermedia activity, and outlaw technologists” (1991, p. 370). Thus, received within the mainstream, cyberpunk loses its visionary political edge and becomes a loose term used to describe texts that contain such motifs.  Arthur and Kroker mourn the death of cyberpunk culture with the release of Johnny Mnemonic, a mainstream feature that has been “normalized, rationalized, chopped down to image-consumer size, drained of its charisma and recuperated as a museum-piece of lost cybernetic possibilities” (1995, par. 3). Similarly, the boundaries inherently within the Lain dvd release signify towards such standardisation as it loses the aura of the broadcast that corresponds more to the pirate ideals of cyberpunk.

Lain also functions as a targeted commodity for the Japanese adolescent schoolgirl. Lain the protagonist is a site of identification for this particular consumer demographic. Mainstream anime in Japan tend to emphasis “prepubescent female cuteness” (Schodt, 1996, p. 279). This is apparent in Lain’s character. But Lain does present such cuteness within a schizophrenic framework. The cute prepubescent Lain is only one of her multiple identities. Anne Allison states that a “greater feminist consciousness in Japanese society,” resulted in “increase in female manga artists in recent years as well as to the large consumer audience of girls who read, watch, and even write their own, fantasy stories” (2000, p. 268). With its narrative of an alienated schoolgirl finding agency within the Wired, Lain can be taken as a series that takes part in such popular teenage feminist discourse.

In a more positive note, the metaphor of the cyborg body that transverses the rhiozomic Wired in Serial Experiments Lain does correspond to fan practices within the Internet. After the consumption of the standardised product, fans have carried on to circulate information and speculations about the philosophical significance of Lain through the open channels of the Internet. An understanding of its relatively open text is facilitated through such a consumer discourse. Furthermore, fans have fragmented the text and edited their own collages of Lain in networking sites such as YouTube. However, such practice does contribute to an exchange value in Lain as a commodity. But the utopian possibilities offered by Lain does correspond to the free exchange of the product within the Internet that enables the consumer to consume and discuss the series without paying for it as a material commodity. The material body of the commodity is chopped up, rearranged, feedbacked and circulated much like Lain’s body in the Wired.

Conclusion

In this essay, I have examined the cybernetic system at work in Serial Experiments Lain. Firstly, I explored the metaphor of the cyborg body within the rhiozomic (de)structuring of the Wired. I have asserted that this utopian cyborg metaphor fragments and devalues the material body through a parallel with the chaotic neurophysiological informational links in the brain, the mechanisms of simulation and departure from biological reproduction for the sexualised exchange of data. I also explained how it resembles the nihilistic aspects of Christianity but subverts theological authority of the spiritual realm by enabling the cyborg to diffuse the power structure of a higher transcendental being. Secondly, I analysed the commodity ends Lain is marketed to, asserting that the television broadcast is more in line with its progressiveness as compared to the dvd release. I went on to pinpoint the Otaku, cyberpunk and the pseudo-feministic adolescent girl demographic as particular targeted consumer end, before ending of with the assertion that internet fan based discourse and bricolage parallels that of the utopian metaphor offered by Lain. Perhaps, the main motif in Lain is it’s utopian impulse that draws from the culturally specific notion of Buddhist emptiness in Japan. As Jameson has stated:

“A Marxist negative hermeneutic, a Marxist practice of ideological analysis proper, must in the practical work of reading and interpretation be exercised simultaneously with a Marxist positive hermeneutic, or a decipherment of the Utopian impulses of these same still ideological cultural texts” (2002, p. 286)

Lain is hardly a Marxist text. But it does offer an avenue out of capitalistic deadlock through the disembodied cyborg metaphor. This is a utopian metaphor that utilises cybernetic flows and connections to illustrate an alternate spiritual realm that is absolute in its mechanisms. The Wired is a virtual space paralleling that of an underlying empty space that facilitates multiple possibilities. In following Jameson’s methodology in critiquing Lain as a capitalistic commodity, one must acknowledge that such a utopian appeal exists within the series within its contextualision as a progressive text and commodity. The utopianism of the cyborg metaphor plays a major part in inscribing the commodity with its exchange value. But at the same time, such exchange value contains metaphorical elements that subvert a structural conception of capitalism. Ultimately, this illustrates that capitalism is a machinic process that can reterritorialise on subversive metaphors to redirect its desire flow towards the production of commodities. As a product that is marketed within the turbulent cultural change during the integration of the Internet into Japan’s popular consciousness, Lain offers a utopian framework to envision the body that references its own spiritual culture. By rejecting materiality and facilitating a suicidal rejection of the body for an emancipated virtual realm, it fails to address concrete issues of class, gender and race that are rooted in our reality. In order to productively utilise the subversive potential of the cyborg, one has to acknowledge that it is a utopian metaphor. This will enable one to translate symbolic lines of flights into politically contingent spaces within the public sphere.

 

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Filmography

Serial Experiments Lain, Ryutaro Nakamura, 1998