Absolute Cinema: SEL as a masterpiece of media art.
Serial Experiments Lain wasn't an unknown underground piece of lost media when it first came out. Instead, it was the recipient of the excellence prize in the 1998 Japan media arts festival, one of the most well known new media art festivals in the world.
What makes SEL such an excellent work of cinematic art? In this essay we'll dive into some things I really like about SEL's cinematography and their art directional choices.
Light, Sound, Imperialism, Patriotism
The opening scene of Shibuya is excellent at subliminal messaging with its use of colour. We see green ambience bathing the entire frame
Spots of Red and White
A dark ominous blue paired with the equally ominous buzzing of the wired: The surge of electrical information
The frame is pumped with light bloom to the max, with the brightness bleeding into the edges of the other screen items
If you've already read Surveillance State, you'll know that Red, White and Blue represent America and its undergrowth within Japanese society. But what's interesting is how they use three additional colours to further communicate their ideas.
Green is a symbol for the pervasiveness of technology, since it's the colour of most circuit boards. An ambient green light absolutely dominating the screenspace is the subtle communication of cultural imperialism using technology. America creeps in through the electrical surge, listening intently. It's the purest representation of an Omnipresence lurking in the Wired.
"The quality we call beauty , however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows to beauty's ends.
And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows. It has nothing else "
-Junichiro Tanizaki, "In Praise of Shadows", textbook essay on Japanese Aesthetics
The cancerous growth of glaring white light then represents the mold of an alien culture seeping into the said walls of the Japanese mind. Not any light however, but white light.
White is a colour of purity, and both America as well as Japan are cultures obsessed with retaining that purity. Since the USA has hid it better however, people forget the fact that America was started by the Puritans, christian from Europe who left the church (read: exiled) for it not being Orthodox enough for their taste. Thus, the use of white is double-veiled critique: A stab at the purity obsessed culture of both America and Japan and the monstrous offspring birthed when the two meet. The culture of homogenous culture (Wa) post American reconstruction is something far too extreme, something that doesn't represent traditional Japan at all.
Top Left, Lain on the bridge at the end of L13. Top Right, Triptych of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of Japan and Chief Shinto Deity. Right, Hagia Sophia, or "holy wisdom" in gnosticism/christian mysticism, personified as the queen of heaven
In Japan, Orange is also the colour of love and Happiness, which is why the Arisu-Lain scene in L12 is also bathed with orange light, as well as the room with the knights in L5 when Arisu is worrying about Lain
The return of a rich orange then becomes a metaphor. Lain, as Japan, then rejects the white electric purity of Eiri (neoliberal American vassal Japan) , but also rejects Sundress Lain (animist feudal caste system Japan). Lain's exit from the platonic cave into the realm of an orange heaven is the answer to the question "Lain (Japan), what are you?": A new Japan free from its old values in a nitzschean style transvaluation and true to its origin as the Land of the Rising Sun. The death of Eiri is thus a rejection of the Deus of Artificial white light in favour of a return to the true Deus espousing the natural light that emanates from daybreak , a break from the misplaced Japanese pride towards true, egoless wisdom.
SEL then ends as a work of pure love for Japan and the Japanese way of life from the show's creators, and their desire for the liberation of their people from a prison slowly killing them.
I love the use of the Wired humming. It's pretty clear from the anime that SEL takes place during the summer, so when we hear the Wired's electric hum, this itself is an intentional direction choice. In Japan, the Higurashi, also known as the Japanese Cicada make a pretty loud buzz during the summer and it's a very popular anime trope. The Wired's hum then represents something: the displacement of natural fauna with a severely decadent artificial ecology. That's just great storytelling to me.
The use of light and sound to convey the sense of isolation and alienation is pretty well known to most of the fandom so I just wanted to put this out.
Controlling destiny: JNR and the art of the psyop
SEL begins its first episode with Lain Iwakura going to school using the subway system. But while this mise en scene may fly over the head of a western/non-Japanese viewer, the use of the train as the setting for first episode is very intentional.
Kenji Miyazawa's Night on the galactic Railroad (1927) is considered to be a Japanese classic novel, and heavily popular throughout the 60's in the country. While I can't spoil the story here, the main takeaway was the symbol of a train leading to the afterlife, and the destinies of their passengers being intertwined. The use of the train as a metaphor for destiny in many popular works of Japanese media can be attributed to the success of this novel.
Spoiler!!!
Evangelion uses this symbolism as well. Shinji cannot escape his destiny as the Eva pilot, which is why no matter how many times he uses the train, he goes back to the station of origin, the one of NERV headquarters
SEL then is making a very clear statement: Lain is unaware that her fate has already decided by nefarious actors outside the scope of the frame, and that the chain of events leading to that destiny has already been decided
"The train in that sequence however is a JR 209 series, and the train Lain takes to school seems to be a Keio Railway 6000 (although it's not a perfect match). With most pieces of media I would chalk this up to error, but knowing how much thought was put into every frame of Lain I'd say this was definitely intentional. Interestingly enough according to Layer 09 Eiri actually does off himself via train, specifically on the JR Yamanote Line between Harajuku and Yoyogi.
While the 209 series has never run on the Yamanote Line in regular service, it HAS run on the Chuo-Sobu line which runs parallel to the Yamanote line at Yoyogi, and if for whatever reason the Chuo-Sobu tracks are unavailable trains will often run on the Yamanote Line tracks."
- thank you to user @wisconsin_dachnik on reddit for this invaluable comment
This redditor makes a very interesting statement about how the Japanese National Railway system is very systematic and organized, with its perfect control of time.
But when we factor Eiri into this, it takes a much darker tone.
Notice how SEL doesn't hesitate to show the excruciating death of the girl in L1, but doesn't seem to afford Eiri the same treatment in L9. Eiri's body is simply stated to be found on the train line. This is very subtle, but important.
You naturally connect the dots towards the suicide hypothesis despite the fact that your only source of info is the old voice as the narrator
Layer 9 also has other significant uses of documentary montage. The first is Roswell, and the second is the MJ-12 document. Both these conspiracies are widely believed to be hoaxes that have only stayed so long in public memory due to how seemingly authentic they were perceived as.
The Rushkoff inclusion is significant, because Douglas Rushkoff isn't a scientist, he's a journalist documenting hippies in the 90's. But the mere inclusion of the American sounding name lends this crackpot theory a degree of authority regardless of how factual it is.
Notice how it's scientific documentary montage and that it's the only layer with a narrator?
This use of montage and narration is very significant, because while it's true that Eiri explicitly states that he had no need for a body in Layer 10, he never explicitly says that he killed himself.
Consider this: Eiri , head scientist of Tachibana (a literal orange in Japan) is obviously meant to parallel the egotism of Apple's Steve Jobs. Would Steve Jobs or any tech bro CEO kill himself? Or would he get others to do the dirty work for him?
The reason why I bring this up is because Eiri's death is meant to parallel the famous "Shimoyama incident", where Sadanori Shimoyama, the then president of the Japanese National railways died in a similar cover-up suicide. This incident was covered in a famous book by Seicho Matusmoto called "The Dark Mist over Japan", a compilation of the many mysterious incidents linked to government corruption that occurred during the American occupation of Japan. To this day, corruption in Japan is referred to as "Dark Mist".
The big twist? The JNR system was built by the Americans to implement quick transportation of American Military personnel across the island. The metaphor of hyper-controlling millions of destinies in the light of the Japanese "lost decades" then becomes very clearly obvious.
Did Eiri kill himself? Did he set himself up to be killed by the MJ-12? Did the MJ-12 just kill him without anything beforehand? There's no clear answer given by the series and there are strong arguments for both conclusions. The ambiguity however, while a great way to induce fear when pondering that question, is not the point. It's how easily you accepted the narrative when it's stuck out right in front of you.
The Layer title Protocol makes sense: The viewer, like Mika, is just a glorified meat-puppet waiting for instructions and is not all that different from a wifi router following the internet protocol. It's also a great way to showcase how the newly revealed Masami Eiri, no matter how the situation played out, remains in control of all the cards in the deck, and that deeply adds to his characterization as a manipulative supervillain.
Nam June Paik Screens
L: Lain at the end of Layer 8
R: Nam June Paik, "Art in Process, part one"
Considering the many subtle references to paintings made throughout the series, I would not consider it too out of the blue that the show lifted a lot of its multi-screen aesthetics and effects from the contemporary artist and 'father of video art', Nam June Paik.
Nam June Paik was also considered to be the first person to coin the term "Information Superhighway" and he predicted the rise of the internet well before it happened. Paik is considered to be one of the most influential, if not THE most influential, new media artist of all time.
The prominent use of blue is kind of interesting, in the light of the fact that the Blue LED was considered impossible until a Japanese engineer (Shuji Nakamura) figured it out.
The deconstructed Mahou Shojo
Tiqqun in Preliminary materials for the theory of the young-girl writes about how the adolescent girl , as the main audience of the media apparatus to fuel consumerism, is often pummeled by forces of inscribed desire, creating new identities in the process subservient to the market. However, this media process is then a weapon turned on everyone, turning all people into archtypal young-girl's, a form of bio-politics at its finest.
Lain is the young-girl pummeled by forces beyond her understanding or comprehension. In this respect, Lain iwakura and Lain of the Wired represent a 'deconstructed' Mahou Shojo just like how Evangelion is considered a "deconstructed" Mechanime. Lain then finally gains her control over her magical powers around L12, when Arisu breaks Eiri's spell. This is a dark take as opposed to popular representations like Sailor Moon.
The Maho shojo (Magic Witch girl) archtype was actually inspired by an American sitcom called Bewitched.
Real life references
First Row: Hodgson and Vladimir Vernadsky, the soviet coiner of 'Noosphere'
Second Row: Young steve jobs and Masami Eiri have the same psychopathic smirk
Not much to say here, but I also like the 4th wall breaks and the parallels made in character design. Very cool!
Font choice
SEL uses the font FF Trixie for their promotional posters, which also used by the hit American show "The X Files", a show about two detectives that investigate a variety of mysterious paranormal phenomena.