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Uncensored "Is Berserk Sexist?" Audio and Script
🕑 Added 2022-05-14 02:44:26 +0000 UTCThis audio contains descriptions of sexual abuse.
SCRIPT [Note: Script is not 100% Accurate to Audio]
Is Berserk sexist?
This question, I'll admit is a little disingenuous. For my money, it's very difficult to call any peice of media on its own any one thing, especially a work as expansive and varied as Berserk. A better question might be- "Does Berserk have sexist moments?" or maybe even "Does Berserk attempt to advance sexism as a movement?" Even these questions are a little ridiculous and inherently inflammatory.
The more accurate and less silly question I want to ask today is what does Berserk have to say about gender and sex? I don't really give a shit about how woke it is or how much it adheres to any social movement because such questions are, as we all know: Gay as hell.
Before we start though, this video contains graphic depictions of sex-related violence and as such will be heavily censored for YouTube. Please enjoy the full version on Patreon.
PART 1: Sexism
I want to say to begin with that this discussion won't include whatever nonsense went on with Twitter a few months ago. I only got into Berserk recently and I don't look at anything but fanart, so I'm not going to address any specific critiques here.
The question in specific I'm going to ask in Part 1 is this: Does Berserk depict women negatively in any way?
In the interest of clarity, I'll state up top that the short answer is No, but the long answer is Soooooooorrrrrtttt oooooooof.
Many pieces of media that are of a grim and/or dark persuasion tend to use sexual violence against women as shorthand for evil, Berserk included. Game of Thrones is the example closest to Berserk that I can think of.
Game of Thrones had a lot of critics cite the excessive use of sexual violence as a turnoff for them, which I think is an accusation that is worth examining. What does it say about your female characters that they constantly fear sexual abuse?
And certainly, a theme of sexual violence would certainly make specific people not desire to engage in a work- Especially victims of sexual violence. This of course, is different than critique. "This has something I don't like in it, therefore I won't watch it" is different than "This thing is bad."
Game of Thrones and Berserk are very different, however, in one specific sense. Game of Thrones's sexual violence is uniformly against women, but Berserk actually features men being sexually abused, too. The main character Guts, in particular, was sold by his own adoptive father to another man for sex, an event which led Guts to have intense PTSD.
Griffith, too, the main antagonist, is preyed upon as a young man by a much older man.
In the instances of women's sexual abuse, namely Casca, the subject is not treated as shorthand, either. In Casca's case, surmounting her own sexual abuse at the hand of a nobleman she was given to is the central reason she is such a powerful warrior. Later, when she is raped by Griffith, her trauma is so intense that she regresses into a childlike state. Even when she is cured of this state, she is wracked with unstable flashbacks due to this event.
These are charitable interpretations, ones that inspire a deep degree of hope into people. In fact, the culmination of Guts's own struggle with rape is growing close enough to Casca to have sex with her, even though his PTSD triggers a response such that he strangles Casca, believing himself to be acting in self-defense.
Through Casca's understanding and shared pain, Guts is able to overcome his trauma outright. Though perhaps not realistic, it inspires hope and is a healthy way to portray such things.
Casca, too, who is so often they prey to unwanted advances by enemy fighters and even some allies, hell, even Guts after the Eclipse, is treated as a peer by her male allies. There's only one time where Guts chastises her for her gender, and this is only to try to misguidedly convince her to give up on being a mercenary to be safe.
Casca's incessant, unrelenting victimization reads as exahusting. The reader is put in Casca's shoes, given a glimpse into what it must be like to be a woman in this universe: A piece of prey. Meat. Casca is forced to push down her menstuation cramps to fight in a battle, she has to risk much more than her male peers. It's not played for a laugh and it's not played for misery porn. It's played so that we the audience can empathize.
This is all admirable, but at the same time, Berserk does portray some unsavory moments of sexual abuse. The story regresses somewhat, in fact, in later arcs there are two separate plot points that hinge around women being forcibly impregnated by demons, once with Trolls and once with Emperor Ganishka's Daka soldiers. This falls back into the Game of Thrones issue, but at the same time, these instances are treated as horrific. Need I bring up the infamous rape horse?
What is Berserk trying to SAY about sexual abuse, though? What is the reader's impression of sexual assault that comes through these depictions?
Berserk says, essentially, "sexual abuse is deeply traumatic, but it is surmountable by anyone willing to come to terms with it. Anyone who performs sexual violence is deeply evil."
You'd have to try quite hard to twist Berserk into a story where sexual abuse is somehow glorified and calling it sexist would be in bad faith to say the least.
There is a potential issue with people who enjoy the moments of sexual violence as-depicted in some gratifying way, but the idea of blaming Berserk for this is laughable. You can't blame a piece of media for every uncharitable reading that is made of it.
There is nothing wrong with depicting sexual violence within the pages of a piece of media that everyone is on-board with the contents of. Sure, sexual violence is a barrier of entry for some people, and that's a shame, because Berserk is a beautiful work of fiction, but that is up to their own autonomy. In fact, in some ways, Berserk is laudable for including such a frankly daring depiction of one of the darkest, most disquieting parts of humanity. Berserk has always excelled at pulling comfort out of the most staggering, bleak circumstances, and its depiction of sexual violence is no difference. It takes an author writing with a vast amount of care to thoughtfully pull off depicting these things, especially in such a stark, unfiltered way as Berserk does.
At the end of the day, Berserk is a piece of media that doesn't hide nor discard those people who have been abused, which is so often the case in discussions like this. Miura puts Guts front and center and makes him a survivor. This is more than can be said for any piece of media I've ever personally seen.
Too often, when people shy away from depicting sexual violence, they shy away from its victims, too. By marginalizing the acts, they marginalize those who have been acted upon. It's a shame, and it's heartening to see Berserk quietly fight against this, even if its depictions aren't always spot-on.
So is Berserk sexist? No. It could be better. It could be worse. It was written by a flawed man, about flawed people, for flawed people to read who Miura trusted to understand what he was trying to say.
Part 3: Homosexuality
Unfortunately, Homosexuality is not given as much careful concern as gender in Berserk. Like I said in the first part, there's a specific question at play. In this case the question is "what does Berserk have to say about gay people?"
Most of the discussion of homosexuality in Berserk stems from the earlier portions of the story and around Griffith. Griffith is heavily implied to be bisexual, don't let reddit fans tell you otherwise, and this framing is intentional.
Griffith's main homosexual run-in is with Gennon, who Griffith has sex with to get money to avoid fighting in as many battles when the Hawk was beginning their life as a mercenary band. Other people interpret Griffith's unique affection for Guts as homosexual, which makes sense. Griffith has never connected with anyone else in a way that he did with Guts and it isn't far-fetched to think this might be romantic.
Griffith tends to view most sex as transactional- As with Gennon but also with Charlotte. His seduction and courting of Charlotte begins because he very transparently wants to become king. Even his daydream after his year-long torture when he is married to Casca is startlingly domestic, and when he later rapes Casca in the form of Femto, he is only doing so out of explicit spite for Guts.
The relationship with sexuality here, of course, is monstrously toxic. Even with Guts, who Griffith can be read to be in love with, is treated like an item. Griffith's fall into grief is only because Guts leaves him.
The only other implied gay character, of course, is Guts's rapist. Which... Yeah. Not ideal.
This all leads to that question: "What does Berserk have to say about gay people?" The answer being "homosexuality is the cause of sexual abuse."
The three implied-gay characters in Berserk are, uniformly, rapists, particularly if you remove Griffith from that equation. This notion is pervasive and quite poisonous, and it makes me sad to see it in a piece of media I enjoy quite a bit, but it's worth bringing up.
I could see an argument to this perspective being "well, sure, gay relationships are depicted as abusive, but there's plenty of heterosexual abuse, too." That's true, there are many instances of men preying on women, as discussed, but the critical difference is that there are positive heterosexual relationships, too. There's nuance enough to not color heterosexuality at-large as bad. Guts and Casca's love, in fact is the driving force for arguably all of the comic.
This isn't to say I think Miura is a bad person or that I think we should cancel Berserk, of course. No piece of media is free of critique and I would argue bringing up this point and discussing it shows more love to Berserk as a piece than trying to paint Berserk as a paragon of virtue.
PART 3: Gender
Berserk has basically nothing to say about Gender. Lol. Part 4... Just kidding.
Honestly, I don't have much to say, here. Berserk features, as far as we know, only cisgendered characters. That's fine, actually, given how some Japanese media can be about this topic.
Griffith is often said to have the beauty of a woman, which is kind of cool because it's presented as a positive trait. That's nice I guess.
Let's make one character trans for fun, though. Let's say, uhhhh. Judeau. Judeau can be trans. Good for her.
PART 4: That's It, Actually
So, full disclosure, I have kind of a chip on my shoulder about this stuff. I got into Berserk basically on the recommendation of a trans friend and ANOTHER trans woman's video essay on it, and when I finally finished the manga, I got a really coherent sense of clarity from Berserk about sex shit that I usually never see in Manga. It was great.
Imagine my shock, then, when I discovered that most online Berserk fans are essentially weird reactionaries with loli avatars. Kind of cringe.
This video is just my desire to express nuance with this piece of media, since it really does seem like so many people read these weird totalitarian things into Berserk. I joked in my last video about the "Griffith did nothing wrong" thing, but I found more than a few pieces about how people actually argued this position.
I think there's a massive sect of people who, for lack of a better term, read Berserk wrong. They think it's this grimdark dream and they don't like when the manga develops past that. For those of you who've read the manga I'll put it like this:
If you read Lost Children and thought Guts was cool for taking down all those fairies like a badass- You're reading Berserk wrong.
But anyway, that's me giving away my bias.
Like I said, this video had to be censored for YouTube. I didn't include any graphics for this reason, but I also had to cut sections of the script. If you'd like to hear the FULL version of this essay, it's on my Patreon, link's in the description.
Thanks again.
BYE.
