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Dec. 20th, 2006 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cardoperatedboyThe Replica and his Oedipal Complex
Okay, let's face it. The replica's inherently Oedipal. Loves his mother -- too much? Wants to kill his father? Yes okay.
Riku as the replica's father is a pretty obvious jump here; whether or not it was something he knew at the time or wanted, he had his 'data' -- something of his essence -- taken and used to create a new creature who shared physical features and abilities with him. (By this logic, Vexen was the original mother, which is kind of disturbing, but we're not going there.) Riku's father to replica twice over; first with the base blueprints he unintentionally provides; and second, for the replica's 'second birth', through the pattern of his memories as assumed via the Destiny Islands card, which "contains memories of Sora and Riku's home), and then shaped and reformed by Namine.
The first-birth replica's father-hate is Oedipal in the Freudian sense -- ie, there's a sense of competition with. He's embarrassed to be compared to a "coward" who's "afraid of the dark". He doesn't think of himself in relation to Riku at that point, per se, but he struggles against Riku nevertheless as a point of competition. The Freudian-Oedipal implications of this only grow with the replica after the falseness of his memories have been returned; Freud's Oedipal complex is often misinterpreted, but is essentially a response to authority and fear of loss of love in that the 'child' struggles against the 'father' (any authority/disciplinary figure) to try to acheive independance without receiving punishment and without losing the love of the nurturing figure. By the time the replica returns to face Riku again, broken and terrified of being swallowed by the overwhelming Riku 'shadow' in him, he's fighting both against the physical Riku and against the Riku inside him he can't get rid of, trying to achieve a separate identity again.
Perhaps the most interesting in regards to Oedipus's relationship to his father in the myth, too, is the middle stage -- the one where the replica has been made to believe he is Riku. Just as Oedipus came to Thebes and became King, marrying the Queen and performing the duties of the King identity, only to find that the original King had been his father who he had killed at the crossroads on the way to Thebes, the replica 'becomes' Riku, protecting and loving 'the girl from Destiny Islands' with all the sense of rightness of a past between them that had never happened, only to find that he was playing his originator's role without any knowledge of that assumption of identity. And the Queen here, Jocasta-Namine, had known it before he did.
Namine as the mother to the replica, Jocasta-Namine, is an interesting figure. I mean, I don't think we can deny that she was definitely the mother of the replica's second birth (taking over from Vexen AGAIN, NOT GOING THERE); even if it is implied to be coerced in some sense, it's her power that shapes the replica and creates him anew as 'Riku'. It's her power which makes him fall in love with her through the role he's been put into as his own father -- ie, she writes memories to support the fact that he is Riku, his own originator, by making him remember loving her, and by doing this both achieves satisfaction and makes him become more his own father. He performs this falsely-based love with both intensity and passion, like the original Oedipus, unaware of the reason for the discord around him (with Oedipus, the plague on Thebes; with the replica, the identical memories she had also written into Sora). As mentioned before, Jocasta and Namine both knew who Oedipus/the replica really is before they do; Jocasta realizes it along the way and doesn't vocalize her fears until it's too late, while Namine knows from the start and doesn't explain to anyone until it's too late to save the replica. And while Jocasta cannot bear her own sin and hangs herself, Namine can't bear her own sin -- ie, the replica trying to fight Sora to protect her from what he THINKS is the fake -- and kills him.
Interesting that these are both -- for Jocasta and Namine -- results of guilt and the awareness of their own role; Namine cares genuinely for Sora, and perhaps what makes the confrontation between him and the replica worst for her, I would assume, is that she knows the replica wouldn't be confronting him in this manner if she hadn't affected him. We see her guilt-attachment after; she stays by his body. Like Jocasta, the twisted/abomination love is far overshadowed by guilt.
On a final Oedipal note, on Freud's interpretation of the maternal side of the equation -- while the replica is more than willing to overthrow his father's authority out of an impulse to survive and prove himself a separate being (the paternal side of the Oedipal complex to a T), the replica also doesn't want to lose the love/protection relationship with Namine. Even when denying and struggling against the false identities as a part of himself and a part of Riku, the replica holds to the only thing he says he has: his promise to protect Namine. Freud's Oedipal complex is about maneuvering the complicated path of an individual trying to prove their individuality without being crushed by the father, and yet maintaining the original child-mother bond in revised form.
So in short: Uh killin' his father, lovin' his mother: Oedipus Replica. Lulz?
Okay, let's face it. The replica's inherently Oedipal. Loves his mother -- too much? Wants to kill his father? Yes okay.
Riku as the replica's father is a pretty obvious jump here; whether or not it was something he knew at the time or wanted, he had his 'data' -- something of his essence -- taken and used to create a new creature who shared physical features and abilities with him. (By this logic, Vexen was the original mother, which is kind of disturbing, but we're not going there.) Riku's father to replica twice over; first with the base blueprints he unintentionally provides; and second, for the replica's 'second birth', through the pattern of his memories as assumed via the Destiny Islands card, which "contains memories of Sora and Riku's home), and then shaped and reformed by Namine.
The first-birth replica's father-hate is Oedipal in the Freudian sense -- ie, there's a sense of competition with. He's embarrassed to be compared to a "coward" who's "afraid of the dark". He doesn't think of himself in relation to Riku at that point, per se, but he struggles against Riku nevertheless as a point of competition. The Freudian-Oedipal implications of this only grow with the replica after the falseness of his memories have been returned; Freud's Oedipal complex is often misinterpreted, but is essentially a response to authority and fear of loss of love in that the 'child' struggles against the 'father' (any authority/disciplinary figure) to try to acheive independance without receiving punishment and without losing the love of the nurturing figure. By the time the replica returns to face Riku again, broken and terrified of being swallowed by the overwhelming Riku 'shadow' in him, he's fighting both against the physical Riku and against the Riku inside him he can't get rid of, trying to achieve a separate identity again.
Perhaps the most interesting in regards to Oedipus's relationship to his father in the myth, too, is the middle stage -- the one where the replica has been made to believe he is Riku. Just as Oedipus came to Thebes and became King, marrying the Queen and performing the duties of the King identity, only to find that the original King had been his father who he had killed at the crossroads on the way to Thebes, the replica 'becomes' Riku, protecting and loving 'the girl from Destiny Islands' with all the sense of rightness of a past between them that had never happened, only to find that he was playing his originator's role without any knowledge of that assumption of identity. And the Queen here, Jocasta-Namine, had known it before he did.
Namine as the mother to the replica, Jocasta-Namine, is an interesting figure. I mean, I don't think we can deny that she was definitely the mother of the replica's second birth (taking over from Vexen AGAIN, NOT GOING THERE); even if it is implied to be coerced in some sense, it's her power that shapes the replica and creates him anew as 'Riku'. It's her power which makes him fall in love with her through the role he's been put into as his own father -- ie, she writes memories to support the fact that he is Riku, his own originator, by making him remember loving her, and by doing this both achieves satisfaction and makes him become more his own father. He performs this falsely-based love with both intensity and passion, like the original Oedipus, unaware of the reason for the discord around him (with Oedipus, the plague on Thebes; with the replica, the identical memories she had also written into Sora). As mentioned before, Jocasta and Namine both knew who Oedipus/the replica really is before they do; Jocasta realizes it along the way and doesn't vocalize her fears until it's too late, while Namine knows from the start and doesn't explain to anyone until it's too late to save the replica. And while Jocasta cannot bear her own sin and hangs herself, Namine can't bear her own sin -- ie, the replica trying to fight Sora to protect her from what he THINKS is the fake -- and kills him.
Interesting that these are both -- for Jocasta and Namine -- results of guilt and the awareness of their own role; Namine cares genuinely for Sora, and perhaps what makes the confrontation between him and the replica worst for her, I would assume, is that she knows the replica wouldn't be confronting him in this manner if she hadn't affected him. We see her guilt-attachment after; she stays by his body. Like Jocasta, the twisted/abomination love is far overshadowed by guilt.
On a final Oedipal note, on Freud's interpretation of the maternal side of the equation -- while the replica is more than willing to overthrow his father's authority out of an impulse to survive and prove himself a separate being (the paternal side of the Oedipal complex to a T), the replica also doesn't want to lose the love/protection relationship with Namine. Even when denying and struggling against the false identities as a part of himself and a part of Riku, the replica holds to the only thing he says he has: his promise to protect Namine. Freud's Oedipal complex is about maneuvering the complicated path of an individual trying to prove their individuality without being crushed by the father, and yet maintaining the original child-mother bond in revised form.
So in short: Uh killin' his father, lovin' his mother: Oedipus Replica. Lulz?
