Japanese Animation and New Media

Lecture Three: Chapter Four: Merely Technological Behavior

Martin Heidegger’s critique of techno-scientific modernity has had a profound impact on modern thinking about technology.  Heidegger’s thought also proved very influential in Japan. So it is not necessarily surprising or farfetched to draw parallels between Heidegger and Miyazaki Hayao.

My goal, however, is not to show how Heidegger’s thought influenced Japanese philosophy and to trace these lines of influence to Miyazaki.  That would be an interesting project.  But, in this context, what is important is that Heidegger’s manner of thinking technology has become so much a part of modern thought that is it is generally available to us, even in popular culture.

Initially, as Hubert Dreyfus points out in the essay in our reader, Heidegger’s stance may just seem technophobic and deterministic.  Technophobia: Heidegger seems to hate modern techno-science and to call for a return to an older and simpler relation to nature.  Determinism: Heidegger also seems to think that modern techno-science has become so powerful and entrenched that we cannot easily stop it or escape from it.  Dreyfus makes clear, however, that Heidegger’s critique of technology is not merely technophobic or deterministic.

Two insights are especially important here. 

First, Heidegger does not think that we should look at modern technology in terms of a problem with a solution.  He thinks that trying to exert greater control over technology won’t work.  This gesture simply increases the hold of technology over our lives, by posing technological solutions to technological problems.  The solution is then always more technology.  Nor does he think that we can eliminate technology altogether and return to an earlier or simpler stage of ‘development.’  Such a strategy would demand tremendous social control, even a totalitarian control over how people use technology.  We’d end up with another kind of technological control over human life, such as surveillance systems that would track and report on everything that happens with technology.  This is what he calls merely technological behavior.

Second, in response to the dead end that comes of thinking technology as a problem with a solution, Heidegger proposes that we think in terms of a technological condition due to a technological ordering of the world. Once we understand modern technology as a condition, we’ll stop thinking that we can get a handle on technology by coming up with technological solutions.  We won’t aim to add more and more control. Instead, we’ll start changing our relation to technology altogether.  This is what he calls gaining a free relation to technology, which promises to release us or save us from the technological condition in which we can only imagine more and more technological solutions.

Initially, Castle in the Sky, like many of other Miyazaki animations, feels technophobic and deterministic.  At one level the film seems to tell us that technology is bad, and we must eliminate it and return to a simpler and more natural relation to the world. When we look closer, we will see that Miyazaki’s animated films are not really technophobic or deterministic, and Heidegger’s discussion of the modern technological condition can help us understand how Miyazaki’s animations pose the question of technology.  But let’s begin by looking at what makes Castle in the Sky feel technophobic and deterministic. The title sequence is a good place to start because it tells the back-story for the film.

The title sequence shows us a cycle of technological development that ultimately led to global destruction.  If this ‘post-apocalyptic’ scenario feels deterministic and technophobic, it is first of all because it makes it seem as if technological development inevitably leads to exploitation, domination, and destruction.

Second, because the period look of the film situates us in an age of enthusiastic technological development (late 19th or early 20th century), we have the feeling that the cycle of technological development and destruction is repeating. Indeed it is gaining momentum.

Third, technology is largely associated with a sort of military-industrial complex, which makes war and destruction feel inevitable. 

Fourth, the ancient power source (hikôseki or flying stone, called ‘volucite’ in the subtitles) defies our current understanding.  How can we deal with something so powerful and beyond our comprehension?

The question of Castle in the Sky is, ‘Is it possible to break this cycle, and if so, how?’

At one level the response of the animation seems to be purely technophobic: ‘Destroy technology!’  And yet, along the way, the children encounter a number of delightful and even endearing technologies: flaptors, kind robots, gliders, and even the ‘flying stone’ when its powers of levitation save lives.  As such, the film is not merely technophobic.  After all, technophobia is merely technological behavior.  The film is trying to change our relation to technology, much as Heidegger proposes gaining a free relation to technology that will release or save us.

But, unlike Heidegger who is a philosopher, Miyazaki is an animator.  If his animations are going to change our relation to technology, it will happen through animation.  This is where the wind and technologies of flight become important.

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