Reblogging So It Doesn't Die - Tumblr Posts
A little meta/rant about Charles ahead, related to probably one of the more uncomfortable scenes in Innocent.
The one, where Anne-Marthe gives him a massage on the night before Damiens’ execution. Oh boy is this scene unsettling. I’m not going to even comment on the fact, that a grown ass woman is staring at the naked body of a teenager, with some focus on his butt, and making comments on how well trained he is. While this is creepy to me, I doubt the scene is meant to be taken sexually (even if it easily could be, I have a friend who truly freaked out during that scene, because she was afraid something sexual could come any second). I believe Anne-Marthe is objectifying him there though - she views him as the result of her parenting, as a product. Charles is well-built, because she has forced him to train. In a way, he is treated a bit like cattle there - the way a person would stare at a cow to check if it’s well-fed.
What I find truly unsettling is Charles’ reactions to the whole thing. Up to this point, the manga is told solely from his perspective, so the reader knows he is scared. She is the person, who has “taught his body pain” like Marie says, and his body has known nothing else but pain until then. He is conditioned to not disobey her, to a point she has become the “moral compass” he resorts to whenever he feels lost, even as an old man of 50+ years. He is conditioned to believe he has done something wrong, so when she tells him to undress and lie down on the bed, he doesn’t even question it. You see that he is frightened, but he doesn’t even ask why. He is hesitant, because he fears the punishment, but he doesn’t put up a fight, he simply looks at her with fear.
And I would like to point out he isn’t a child. He is a young man of 18 years in that scene, who would let her do as she pleases with him, because he has been taught, that he deserves whatever is to come. And what is worse, the very last straw in this scene, which makes is to unsettling to me, is that he is naked, because it makes him so much more vulnerable, than he would be if he had clothes on. And I don’t mean vulnerable only to physical pain. He is defenceless, bared. It’s so uncomfortable, I think Sakamoto Shinichi deserves a praise for conveying so much in 1-2 pages.
I’m really careful when I use this word, because I don’t want to water down its meaning, but Charles is a person, who has been abused almost beyond repair. I don’t think he has an identity at all. He has beliefs, but he doesn’t know who he is to have the confidence to defend them to the very end, because he has been taught that he is wrong by default. And yes, I believe it makes perfect sense, that he’d eventually copy his father and become him the very moment he finds the littlest thing they have in common, but this could be a meta on its own and I might write it some day (if I’m not too lazy to).