“If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention
to everything you see and hear no matter how unusual it may seem. But please,
be warned, if you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I
tell you, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish”
- Kubo
The history of animation is short in breadth and
yet full of depth. It is often thought that the beginning of this history rests
with Walt Disney’s 1939 ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, laying
acclaim to the title of the first animated feature. Although this topic is
widely debated, and mostly orbiting around the contentious feat of defining
‘feature film’, it is oft forgotten or neglected that there existed a rich
tradition of forging ‘feature-length’ animated films for over two decades
before Disney produced its masterpiece. In most part, these films have been
forgotten because they do not conform to the Disney format, which seems to have
become the standard for animation.1 Indeed, this is to de
facto neglect the entire history of animation prior to its emergence
as a Hollywood art form in the late 1930s, and as such, pioneers like Quirino
Cristiani, Ladislav Starevich, or Lotte Reiniger and their non-Americanised
style of animation.
With this in mind, it is important to remember that
today, where the Disney formula has become the central paradigm of animation,
there are number of studios and productions that remind us of the sheer
critical and pensive brilliance that rest outside the walls of the Magic
Kingdom. One of these is LAIKA Studios, whose creative output has formed a cult
following of eager fans since their first feature-film, Coraline,
in 2009, following their contracted work on Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.
Since then, LAIKA have produced a number of outstanding films: ParaNorman (2012),
The Boxtrolls (2014), Missing Link (2019), and, of
course, Kubo and The Two Strings (2016).
For many, animation is an art form indistinct from
cartoons, and as such has developed a dubious consensus amongst many that the
art of animation is restricted to the entertainment of children. Indeed,
perhaps this tells us more about ourselves and how we understand Art, in
addition to how the medium of art is bound with certain notions of prejudice
and prejudgement, than animation itself. Although the widespread assumption that
animation is exclusively for children may have arisen because of the paradigm
forged by Disney, it is the purpose of this piece to dispel such a myth by
focussing on a single work of animation as a case study to the contrary. The
case I have chosen to utilise is LAIKA’s Kubo and The Two Strings.
Kubo and The Two Strings (Kubo)
is anything but a children’s film. Although its central protagonist is a child,
and in many ways was marketed as children’s film – reflecting and even
interpellating the common misconception that animation must be understood and
understand itself as a commercial art form for children – Kubo is
marked by a number of themes central to the discourses of contemporary
philosophy and political theory. In this manner, therefore, this piece will
claim that films like Kubo can be a source for consideration
when contemplating, illustrating and even adding to the predicates of such
academic dialogues. These brief, and somewhat rudimentary, reflections are
directed to laying out the themes and practices embedded within Kubo in
order to tease out their relevance to our discursive milieu. I have chosen to
dedicate a small numeric section to each rudimentary notion, but before we get
to analysing Kubo, how are we to understand animation?
—–
PART ONE
REFLECTIONS ON ANIMATION AND STOP-MOTION
I.
What is Animation?
As with any inquiry, before a central claim can be
addressed – here that (a) animated cinema is fundamentally not a restricted
art-form for children, and (b) that animated films can add to academic
discourse – primary conceptualisations need to be formulated. For us, this
concerns ‘animation’ itself, because through conceptualisation more may be
revealed about the art-form at the centre of this piece. So, when we utter the
term ‘animation’, what are we linguistically referencing?
Let’s begin with etymology. At its root, the term
animation arises with the Latin noun of action from the past-participle stem
of animare ‘give breath to’, insinuating ‘to endow with a
particular spirit, to give courage to, or enliven’ from anima,
as ‘life’ or ‘breath’ (from the root ane– ‘to
breathe’). What does this tell us?
‘Animation’, in a linguistic sense, is connected to
the very notion of creation, but not just the bringing of an object into the
world, but of breathing life into an object so that it becomes a ‘living’
entity in some manner. Animation is innately tied to our creative imaginary; we
must imagine an object or material being brought to life in becoming an
existing, living, entity before it is creatively given the breath of life
through some medium. Consequently, whether we are discussing a group of toys
that come to life when their owner is not present (Toy Story: 1995), a
spa-resort for legendary spirits to remove themselves from humanity (Spirited
Away: 2001), a scientist who wishes to resuscitate a collection of dead
body parts to life (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: 1818), or even a
mechanical child with a programmed capability for love (A.I. Artificial
Intelligence: 2001) – we are firmly within a discourse concerning the very
concept of animation; i.e. the breathing of life into an object. Nevertheless,
how does this relate to the artistic practice of what we
commonly refer to as ‘animation’?
In order to answer this question, I would like to
draw on a number of thinkers who have addressed precisely this query. The
general consensus is that animation, in an artistic sense, is not the animation
of matter to life, at least in a biological approach. Animation as we broadly
understand it refers to a mode of cinema-making where visuals are created by
means other than recorded in the conventional sense. The term ‘cinema’,
etymologically, stems from the name of the original projector of images – the
French ‘cinématograph’. There are two halves to this term ‘cinémato-’ and
‘-graph’, flowing from two Greek terms: ‘kinemat’, denoting
‘movement’, and, ‘graphein’, indicating ‘writing’. Interestingly, this
illuminates why the term ‘Cinema’ is in German signified as ‘Kino’, recalling
the Greek origins of the etymology behind ‘cinema’. With this in mind, the
cinématograph, as a projector of images, is the drawer of movement – something
that the job description of cinematographers directly entails today. The
projector that makes the cinema itself casts movement onto a screen before our
very eyes, and it is this observed illusion of movement that we call ‘film’.
If we marry this with the etymological origins of
‘animation’, we see that ‘animated cinema’ would be the bringing of life to
drawn movement. The essential component of animation is thus the illusion
the medium forges in the process of breathing life into movement.2 I
do however have a minor issue with this particular mode of conceptualising
‘animation’. This is so, as it perhaps does not take into account the recent
technological leaps and bounds in the field. This general pinning down of
animation certainly applies to earlier means, such as the flip-book, Phenakistiscope,
Electrotachyscope, or even the traditional ‘Celluloid’ method, but excludes those
kinds of modern techniques that do not centre around the notion of ‘the drawn’
movement. How can this be rectified?
One of animation’s acknowledged masters was the
abstract animator Norman McLaren. McLaren’s work questioned the very essence of
animation’s potentiality – for example, his 1948 ‘Boogie Doodle’, the
1952 ‘Neighbours’, or my personal favourite, the awe inspiring 1949
‘Begone Dull Care’, which combined with music provided by the Oscar
Peterson Trio confuses the spectator as to whether they are an observer to pure
music or listening to pure colour. McLaren points out that animation is more
than just the illusion of bringing life to movement. He stated that: “Animation
is not the art of drawings that move, but rather the art of movements that are
drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than
what happens on each frame”.3 McLaren, in
this, therefore de-centres animation by shifting emphasis from ‘the drawing’ to
‘the movement’, which is done through the skill and technique employed by the
animator outside of that which is drawn.
In his exceptionally illuminating ‘Understanding
Animation’ Paul Wells explains how McClaren’s decentring shift of emphasis
permits new techniques of animation to be included as such. Here, Wells argues
that: “McLaren reinforces the notion that the true essence of animation is in
the creation of movement on paper, the manipulation of clay, the adjustment of
the model, etc., before the act of photographing the image,
i.e. the activity of what has taken place between what has become the final
frames of film”.4 It is the activity that takes place between
the acts of drawing, moulding or designing that makes animation what it is for
McLaren. Keeping this in mind, McLaren’s conceptualisation of animation opens
itself to any art form or medium that generates the illusion of movement by the
practice of some technique between the forming of individual frames to be
photographed, whatever medium through which this may be achieved.
My only point of contention with the manner in
which Wells explains McLaren’s grasp of animation in this statement is a purely
linguistic, and perhaps somewhat a pedantic, one. Wells claims that McClaren
reinforces a notion of some ‘true essence’ of animation, whereas I do not think
that that this is the case. In this statement alone, McLaren connects the basis
of describing the phenomenon of animation not to a metaphysics of nature – i.e.
what animation definitively is – but to how it is experienced
both by the spectator and the animator – i.e. the technique employed between
frames that produces the experience of movement that is drawn. This is where
the decentring of McLaren’s emphasis is concentrated, in countenance to an
essentialist claim of what animation is but, rather, how its
experience is produced. This places animation at the perceptive intersection of
the organic viewer, as a body, spectator, interpreter, and hence bodied
interlocutor, and the apparatus of animation utilised with the creativity of
the animator at the helm. 5
Thus, in order to answer the answer ‘what is
animation?’, I shall take McLaren as my benchmark in conjuncture with the
term’s etymological roots. This is to state that animation is the giving of
life to the illusion of movement in some manner. Animation concerns the study
and art of giving life to the illusion of movement itself. This implies two
halves of a single whole: (a) giving life to movement, and (b) the creation of
some illusion. Animators do not bring drawing to life, they present the
illusion of life through the fabrication of movement. It is our role, as the
spectator-interlocutor, to be deceived by the illusion. If there is no
deception of illusion then there is no Art; it sits in the surrealism of
fabricating movement. In this, therefore, animation is the deceptive
fabrication of movement in order to create the illusion of life.
II.
Stop-Motion and The Illusion of Time
How do these simple remarks about animation relate
to Kubo? Kubo and The Two Strings is a story
brought to life through what is known as ‘Stop-Motion’ animation. Broadly
speaking: “stop motion could be generally defined as manipulating, between
sequentially exposed frames of film or video, usually directly by hand, some
tangible object, whether it be a complex puppet, a paper cut out, sand, a
discarded piece of junk or furniture. When played back the object gives the
appearance of movement, performance and independent life, though this ‘life’ is
‘lifeless’ – an illusion”.6 Here, Barry Purves identities the
basic features of stop-motion animation (SMA), emphasising the kernel of
animation that was identified in the previous section, namely, the deceptive
fabrication of movement in order to present the illusion of
life. What makes SMA different from other techniques of animation is its
process, i.e. the very spirit that McLaren identifies with animation, as that
which takes place between frames. The in-between-ness of SMA
is what gives the breath of life itself.
If you are wondering what some examples of SMA are,
think of the manipulation of modelling clay to make the beautifully comedic
narratives of Aardman Animation (the creators of the Wallace and
Gromit series: 1989; 1993; 1995; 2005, Chicken Run:
2000, Flushed Away: 2006, Early Man: 2018, and so on).
Or, rather, you could think of Wes Anderson’s existential adventures into
puppetry in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Isle of
Dogs (2018); or the British television series’ The Clangers (1969), Bagpuss (1974),
and so the list of works that use SMA could go on. The technique has a history
as old as modern cinematic animation, with films like Vitagrpah Studio’s 1898 ‘The
Humpty Dumpty Circus’, Willis O’Brien’s ‘The Lost World’ (1925) and
the ever so famously satirised and replicated 1933 ‘King Kong’,
pioneering the art-form from the earliest days of cinema as we know it.
What interests me about SMA is not just the
meticulous technique of manipulating an object frame by frame, but how this
effects our grasp of time. When watching a film, we – the spectator – sit
outside of linear time. In order to express this, I would like to utilise the
remarks made by the semiotician Roland Barthes in his final work ‘Camera
Lucida: Reflections on Photography’.
Amongst a number of compelling sections on the
concept of photography, one that I find particularly captivating and relevant
to animation is his fifth reflection, entitled ‘He Who is Photographed’.
Barthes reflects on posing to have one’s picture taken, and how one reacts in
doing so by transforming oneself into an image ready for the moment to be
commemorated, baptised by light. ‘The Pose’ preordains the photograph before it
has come into the world, forging the image we wish to become an object for
viewing. Towards the end of the section, Barthes reveals to us to that in
this ‘operation’:
“What I see is
that I have become Total Image, which is to say, Death in person; others – the
Other – do not dispossess me of myself, they turn me, ferociously, into an
object, they put me at their mercy, at their disposal, classified in a file,
ready for the subtlest deceptions”.7
The
utilisation of the camera for its purpose memorialises any given moment by its
slaughter of the life caught in the frame, reduced to an objectified state that
is lifeless. In taking a picture, the very moment one is memorialising is
butchered through its reduction to the object-image form. Although some may
emphasise the somewhat melodramatic style that Barthes emphasises the
relationship between the photographic image and death, the only manner in which
any given moment can be encapsulated is by rendering it lifeless and frozen to
its object form. This we know when we gaze at the photos we keep of our
deceased loved ones, recalling life beyond the death of the subject in both
material and image form. This notion famously leads Barthes to his claim that “Deathis
the eidos [εἶδος; ‘essence’] of the photograph”.8 A
photograph reduces a moment of life to an objectified state and mummifies it
for the gaze of the onlooker.
With these reflections in mind, the eidos of ‘the
film’, as a series of photographs in quick succession, must be slaughter or
massacre. If a film was to be recorded at 24 frames a second (a standard
measurement), a ninety minute film would entail the taking of 129,600 frames of
photography – at bare minimum. Thus, with Barthes in mind, although this is not
a reflection that he pondered, a film of this sort would entail the minimum
death of 129,600 moments of life and time, reduced to an object form and
crystallised for our viewing. Indeed, in a somewhat poetic manner, Barthes
makes the connection between the death of the moment and the crystallisation of
a moment in time after declaring the essence of the photograph. He claims:
“For me, the
photographer’s organ is not his eye (which terrifies me) but his finger: what
is linked to the trigger of the lens, to the metallic shifting of the plates
(when the camera still had such things). I love these mechanical sounds in an
almost voluptuous way, as if, in the Photograph, they were the very thing – and
the only thing – to which my desire clings, their abrupt click breaking through
the mortiferous layer of the Pose. For me, the noise of Time is not sad: I love
bells, clocks, watches – and I recall that at first photographic implements
were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras,
in short, were clocks for seeing”.9
Barthes’ utterance demonstrates his grasp of
photography as connected to the very fabric of time. Time, as any single given
moment in temporal space, is recorded through the crystallisation in its death via
the camera, a ‘clock for seeing’ in permitting us to view a past moment in time
in object form.
When the photographer’s finger triggers this
process, the space before the machine is captured and surrendered onto film for
development; all life in frame is reduced, objectified, including the life of
the very temporal space in which the still was taken. This means, by extension,
that when we gaze upon a film in the same manner we do the single photo, we
engage interpretively with that which has died through its objectification for
our viewing. The interpretation of film is therefore to interpret the slaughter
of isolated yet connected moments of temporality, to find meaning in a parade
of successive deaths. With this in mind, the spectator of a film is not just an
onlooker, interpreter or interlocutor – but all of these at once as the
necromancer of temporal space.
All films we have ever gazed upon are the same in
this respect. What we observe is only a few hours of presentation that takes
far longer to create than it does to view. Amnesia is so often the spell of the
cinematic film that we seem to continuously believe we are peering at the
momentum of some events occurring in succession, which we forget may have been
shot over the course of days, weeks, months, or even years. To view a film is
to view a succession of objectified, dead, moments in time out of any sort of
temporal order. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that all films are
presented in a concertina fashion to give the illusion of linearity, even where
film narratives are not presented through a linear time-frame (Pulp Fiction:
1994, Arrival: 2016) or given the illusion of one long continuous
shot (Birdman: 2014, 1917: 2019).
The only mode of film that inverts this mass-death
of momentary time is SMA. SMA is the only form of film whereby the temporal
space captured by the camera is reduced to its object form (its death) in order
to give life to the object in frame (its resurrection). Although all modes of
animation concern the deceptive fabrication of movement in order to create the
illusion of life, as discussed above, only SMA inverts the objectification of
time and the object in frame to resurrect it somehow, to bestow a tangible
object in a temporal space of the past with a life of its own. The death of the
moment and the concertinaing of time is not therefore reduced to an absolute
object, but the reverse; the death of the moment and the distortion of time is
to give an object life. In all forms of photography time and life are reduced to
an object for observation, and this reduction is equitable to its death (pace
Barthes). SMA holds a second character however. It undergoes the death of the
moment so that the object in frame, present in the moment the photo is taken,
can be resurrected as a living entity in motion.
All film is the successive observation of ‘dead’
time in moments soldered together to present the illusion of life from that
which is no more. All SMA is the observation of ‘dead’ time in moments soldered
together to present the illusion of life from that which has never lived to
begin with. It is to grant life to the banal objects of our world that never
truly lived, and thus to engage with SMA is to imitate the creation life ex
nihilo in one’s own image as a god. It is in this that the creative
beauty of SMA is revealed.
Let me use an example – Kubo. Every
frame you watch of Kubo has been meticulously manipulated to
look the way it does. Every blade of grass, lock of hair or plume of feathers
you see is being moved by animators in-between frames. Every expression you
bear witness to, behind the illusion, is a 3D printed face attached to a
figurine before its manipulation and being photographed. The oceans and
monsters Kubo encounters in the story are equally made with
physical contraptions to capture the motion of waves or the magic of a giant
skeleton. With every movement, every slight adaptation, caught on camera and
soldered together so to give a breath of life to the object. Unlike the motion
created by computer generated or cellular animation, where the design begins as
the depiction of life, SMA takes inanimate, material, tangible
objects and reduces these objects in time so their successive reductions may
present the illusion of life itself. Only here does film become the art of
resurrection.
These first two sections formed the first part of
this piece. Its purpose was to simply lay out some simple and brief reflections
on the experience of animation so to offer a grounds from which a specific
piece of animation may undergo interpretation. With this in mind, to summarise,
this segment claimed that: (a) Animation is the deceptive fabrication of
movement in order to create the illusion of life, and, (b) Stop-Motion
animation is unique as the only form of cinematic film concerned with the art
of resurrection, bringing to life that which has never lived by resuscitating
and successively displaying the dead moments of its capture. Now this has been
discussed, the following segment will begin to delve deeper into Kubo,
revealing the manner in which it may be utilised as a source to add to the
philosophical and political discursive milieu of the contemporary epoch.
PART TWO
KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS
III.
What is Kubo and The Two Strings?
In this third section, I would like to give a brief
plot summary of Kubo for those who have not seen the film;
although I would stress that you watch the movie before reading these
reflections, purely as it will make more sense. If the reader has seen the film
and can recall its contents easily, please feel free to skip this section.
However, for those who have yet had the pleasure of seeing Kubo,
below is an expanded summary of the film.10
Kubo begins with a child narrator summoning the
concentration of the spectator with the phrase “If you must blink do it now”.
In the dead of night a furious ocean tries to sink a small fishing boat on
which a woman with a bundle tied to her back strikes a shamisen, an instrument,
to control the waves and safely make her way to shore. Meanwhile, the narrator
pleads with the spectator to pay attention “no matter how unusual it may seem”
or else “our hero will surely perish”. A large wave throws the woman out of the
boat onto the shore, where she is rendered unconscious and at which point the
bundle begins to cry. The woman gains consciousness with the sound of the
crying and pulls down the Beetle embroidered fabric to reveal a baby with one
eye. The narrator tells us “he is called Kubo” and that his grandfather stole
something from him, eluding to his eye. The title appears.
The first face we see is of a monkey, a tiny carved
wooden charm. Kubo is now a mature child and lives in a cave with his mother,
who appears older and feeble. At the mouth of the cave Kubo sits with his
mother and folds one of the many sheets of paper lying on the ground into a red
origami samurai, all the while his mother sits still and neutral. A bell chimes
in the distance as the sun rises, Kubo gathers the coloured paper around him
and heads to town with the shamisen on his back. Kubo heads to a small town at
the base of the cliff at the top of which his cave rests. Here we are
introduced to Kameyo, an elderly homeless woman, who befriends Kubo. We see a
lively market full of people whilst Kubo and Kameyo comically discuss their
precarity. Kubo stands in the middle of the market place and captures the
townspeople’s attention with a story full of magic, beginning his tale with his
call: “If you must blink, do it now!” and striking his shamisen. The wrinkled
paper he keeps begins to transform into folding and unfolding origami figures
in his story of Hanzo, a legendary samurai on a quest to fight the evil Moon
King. In the story, Hanzo can only defeat the Moon King with a magical suit of
armour with a tripartite constitution: the Sword Unbreakable, The Breastplate
Impenetrable, and the Helmet Invulnerable. The story is played out with the
townspeople enthralled by the tale until a gong sounds and the sun begins to
set. Kubo stops without finishing the story and hurries back to the cave.
As Kubo and his mother have dinner in the cave she
tells him the same story of Hanzo, but through a personal lens. It is revealed
to the spectator the truth of the story; we learn that Hanzo was Kubo’s father
and the Moon King is his maternal grandfather, the one who stole Kubo’s eye.
His mother warns him to be cautious, asking him to promise her that he will
never venture out of the cave at night and keep his father’s robes on at all
times – the beetle embroidered material he was wrapped in as a baby. His mother
quickly forgets the conversation and returns to the frail and lost state she
displayed at breakfast.
Whilst in the town the next day, Kubo learns from
Kameyo that the townspeople are celebrating a festival. Part of this, she
reveals, is a ritual where deceased ancestors and relatives are contacted in
the cemetery. Kubo heads to the cemetery and creates an origami lantern for his
father to light, if he comes, as instructed by Kameyo. He waits for his father
to answer, but to no avail. Suddenly, whilst waiting, Kubo does not realise
that the light of the moon casts over the cemetery as night falls.
Suddenly, Kubo hears an eerie voice call his name.
His aunts, known as ‘the sisters’, are twins who wear identical porcelain Noh
masks painted with a frozen smile, black wide-brimmed Kasa hats, feathered
capes and hold dark magical powers. His aunts chase Kubo through the town,
wanting to take from him his other eye on request of his grandfather. He calls
for help and they burn the town to the ground. He races back to his cave, but
before he can make it he trips and the sisters are upon him, surrounding him
with demons cast in shadow. Swiftly, his mother appears, pulls out his shamisen
and strikes the strings, scaring off the demons. She strikes the beetle crest
embroidered on the back of his robe and wings emerge, carrying him from danger
as he observes his mother engage with the sisters before the robe covers his
eyes.
Kubo awakes in a blizzard with the face of a monkey
staring at him, she looks curiously like his monkey charm from before and tells
him they must leave before the Sisters return. She places Kubo on her back and
races through the snow to find shelter. The duo make a shelter out of a whale
carcass for the night and Kubo has questions. ‘Monkey’ only allows him three
and reveals that she is in fact the monkey charm, telling him that his mother
was very powerful and used the last of her magic to save him and bring the
charm to life. Whilst Kubo sleeps, he calls out to his father and one of the
paper sheets he keeps folds itself into another origami samurai. The origami
figure frantically, and without voice, convinces Monkey and Kubo to leave the
whale carcass and follow its lead.
As the trio come across colossal statues on a
Cliffside, Kubo abruptly disappears into one of the statutes eyes. Monkey
follows as it transpires that Kubo has been dragged away by a giant beetle that
is part human and part insect. Monkey wants to kill it but Kubo stops her,
telling Monkey that “It just wanted Hanzo” at which point ‘Beetle’ reveals that
Hanzo used to be his master but he was cursed and lost his memory. Beetle
pledges his life to help Kubo find the Sword Unbreakable and promises he’ll be
useful after Kubo reveals his paternal lineage. Needless to say, Monkey is
unimpressed. As they explore the labyrinth of tunnels the origami samurai slips
through a crack in the wall, leading to Kubo investigating a carving and
releasing a trapdoor. The group fall into a huge chamber full of old bones in
the middle of which a giant disembodied skeletal hand holds the legendary sword
unbreakable. Kubo runs to retrieve it but Monkey holds him back, allowing
Beetle to snatch the sword, causing the bones around them to transform into a
behemoth of a skeleton. The group figure out that the sword unbreakable is
actually lodged in the mammoth skeleton’s skull, which they retrieve, leaving
the skeleton crumbled. Beetle is hurt in the process but flies them all to
safety with the sword in hand.
Monkey tends to Beetle’s wounds as they argue about
what to do next. While they argue, Kubo forges an origami boat out of beach
combed detritus, allowing them to cross a wide lake before them. Whilst
sailing, Beetle teaches Kubo how to shoot and Kubo discusses how he cared for
his mother and the stories they told one another. A crack of thunder interrupts
the moment and a storm appears, at which point the origami samurai points into
the dark water where the breastplate impenetrable rests in the murky depths.
Kubo stops Beetle from simply jumping in, telling him there is a Garden of Eyes
in Long Lake that stare into your soul and cause you to drown. Beetle jumps in
anyway, ignoring Kubo’s warning.
As the rain pours down, Kubo is worried about the
yet resurfaced Beetle and decides to dive in after him. Determined to help
Kubo, Monkey grabs the swords and gets ready to follow, but something snatches
her back on deck. One of the sisters has snagged her ankle with a chain and the
two begin their fight. Underwater, as Kubo searches for Beetle, a golden light
shines through thick kelp. Kubo swims toward it and finds the Breastplate. He
slides into it and it shrinks to fit his body. He swims for the surface but a
giant eye transfixes him, causing his body to go slack as he stares directly
into it. Monkey fights for her life on the deck of the boat, locked in a fierce
battle with the Sister. Just as the sister gets the upper hand, Beetle jumps
back on to the boat and Monkey orders him to find Kubo. Deep in the lake, the
creature drags Kubo further towards a giant mouth with razor sharp teeth
surrounded by dozens of eyes. Unexpectedly, an arrow punctures the eye and
breaks Kubo’s trance. Meanwhile on the boat, Monkey and the Sister are still
locked in a battle. Monkey manages a final shred of strength and deals a
killing blow to the Sister with the sword unbreakable, at which point Beetle
surfaces with Kubo and finds Monkey floating on a piece of boat wreckage,
destroyed by the fierce storm. Kubo gains consciousness and reveals that the
creature showed him that Monkey was his mother.
After this, the group finds shelter in a cave and
Monkey tells them the story of how she and his father met. As she tells the
story, the objects in the cave come alive and illustrate her story, just like
Kubo’s origami paper sheets. She and her sisters were sent by the Moon King to
kill any noble warrior who found the magical armour. The amour would make any
one individual powerful enough to defeat the gods, and so once Hanzo found the
set, she and her sisters were sent to eradicate the threat. Kubo’s mother
fought Hanzo, but when he looked into her eyes he said “You are my quest”. She
spared his life, they fell in love, and they had Kubo. However, the Moon King
found them and was outraged at her betrayal. After Kubo falls asleep, Monkey
tells Beetle that the magic keeping her here as Monkey is fading and she’ll be
gone soon. As before, Beetle pledges his life to keeping Kubo safe and
reassures Monkey her story doesn’t end here; it will always be told through
Kubo and his descendants.
That night, Kubo dreams he is by a river when he
meets a kind old man playing a shamisen. The landscape shifts to show his
father’s fortress and the last piece of armour, the helmet invulnerable. The
group locate the fortress to find it empty and crumbling with remnants from the
past scattered across the floor. Smoke seeps from shattered armour on the
ground, encircles the group like a boa-constrictor and hoists them into the
air. The smoke is coming from the pipe of the other Sister, who has been
hiding, waiting for them. The Sister chastises Beetle for ripping apart their
family by stealing her sister from her. She laughs as Monkey and Beetle realize
that Beetle is the real Hanzo, but with a wiped memory and magically combined
with a beetle as punishment. The Sister turns her attention to Kubo, who
manages to slash her mask with his bachi pick, cracking it in half and breaking
the pipe. The smoke disappears and the Sister throws Kubo across the courtyard
in anger. His mother and father move to protect him, and the Sister drives her
sword deep into Beetle’s back, killing him. In a final attempt to save his
mother, Kubo reaches for his shamisen, striking it so hard that two strings
break and a blinding white light of sound swallows everything in the vicinity.
Kubo opens his eye to find he is in the courtyard
alone. His tears fall on the single string of his shamisen, causing the
shredded paper around him to form a tattered, flimsy origami samurai that is
pointing its sword behind Kubo. Kubo turns to see an illustration of the helmet
impenetrable, only it clearly appears to look like the bell in the village at
the start of the story. Kubo packs his things and wraps Beetle’s bow string
around his wrist alongside a lock of his mother’s hair that he has fashioned into
a bracelet. He strikes a single note on his last string as hard as he can and
the beetle crested banners flutter violently, twist, and intertwine in Kubo’s
robes forming a magnificent pair of wings that lift him up and fly him out of
the ruins.
Kubo’s wings fly him to the destroyed village,
landing him next to the bell tower on the central avenue. Kubo strikes the
crumbling tower until it falls, freeing the helmet. At this point the villagers
appear and Kubo tells them to flee. Once the villagers have fled, Kubo yells to
the moon for his grandfather to appear. When he does so, it transpired that he
is the old man from Kubo’s dream, dressed in a robe glowing in the moonlight.
Kubo accuses him of wanting to steal his other eye and the Moon King admits that
his plan is to make Kubo blind to the faults of humanity, and as such, making
him an immortal that can live in the heavens with him. Kubo refuses and
declares he will end this story by killing his Grandfather.
The skin of the Moon King begins to change into a
milky coloured shell and his face cracks like glass. He spreads his arms and
breaks apart like a bursting cocoon, becoming a serpent like, centipede-esque
monster. Kubo fights bravely, blinding the moon king in one eye, but he is
unable to defend himself and is thrown by the Moon King into the cemetery. As
his grandfather races towards him, Kubo reaches for his sword but glances at
the bow string and the bracelet made of his mother’s hair. At this moment, he
sheds himself of the legendary armour and restrings his shamisen using the
bracelet made of his mother’s hair, Beetle’s bow string, and a hair that he
pulls from his own head. He plucks the first string, the sound of which
stops the Moon Beast in its tracks and ignites all the lanterns in the vicinity.
Kubo knows why the Moon Beast wants his eye – ‘so he cannot look into another’s
eyes and see their souls or their love’. The beast taunts Kubo about taking
away everything he loved, but Kubo is still defiant, stating: “No. It’s in my
memories. The most powerful kind of magic there is”. He plucks the second
string and the villagers emerge from behind the trees and headstones. Their
lanterns begin to glow as they stand beside Kubo. He strikes the final string
and creates a sound that echoes boundlessly as the spirits of the dead appear.
The Moon Beast rears back to attack Kubo, but is deflected by the light
surrounding the dead. At last, Kubo strums all three strings at once. The glow
around the spirits bursts into a blinding white light.
When the light dissipates, the sweet old man from
Kubo’s dream stands before them. He’s confused and has no memory of who he is
or what has happened, saying: “I’ve seemed to have forgotten my story”. Kameyo
offers to tell him everything he needs to know, stating that he is “the
kindest, sweetest man to ever live in the village” and the villagers offer
fragments of his new story. As night falls, the last of the villagers leave the
cemetery and Kubo offers a prayer to his parents, thanking them for their
wisdom, kindness and love. As he speaks the paper lanterns around him light and
begin refolding themselves into glowing blue herons as they rise up into the
sky. Down on the riverbank below we see Kubo standing between the spirits of
Hanzo and his Mother, before the screen fades to black. The child-narrator
simply says: “The End”.
Kubo exposes the spectator to a number of themes and
questions that are equally significant to the philosophical school of
continental phenomenology. Questions such as: ‘What is it to live in a temporally
bound life?’, ‘How does remembrance play a role in giving life to that which
has passed into nothingness?’, ‘How do the stories we tell influence the
material world?’, and ‘What is it to accept our contingent humanity and
mortality?’ are but just a few examples. Indeed, Kubo taps
into contemporary philosophical discussion through the disguise of a so-called
children’s film, so let us now turn to this notion with open arms.
IV.
The Folding and Unfolding of ‘The Story’ As The
Magic of Kubo
The first reflection that I would like to engage
with about Kubo concerns the film’s relationship with the
concept of ‘the story’. At its heart, Kubo is a film about one
child’s story – the story of Kubo and his two strings. If the narrative can be
said to hold a single message to the spectator, it is that the telling of
stories is an exceptionally powerful form of human interpretive action. Here, I
will attempt to flesh out this claim.
Stories are significant as they provide an
understanding of the present grounded in the past. This we can see with the
etymological origins of ‘story’ itself. Here, the term ‘story’ is derived from
the same root as ‘history’. In the Latin and Greek, historia (ἱστορία)
implied ‘inquiry’, ‘research’ or ‘judgement’ of the past, and this stemmed
from hístōr (ἵστωρ), as signalling a ‘knowing or learned, wise
person’. Interestingly, the English term is drawn from the old French
expression ‘estorie’ – the point at which ‘history’ and ‘story’ are
non-differentiated terms to describe ‘narrative’, and come to include the
denotation of ‘storey’, a term we still utilise today to signify ‘the floor of
a building’[11]. In this, three
key linguistic terms converge to reveal that the concept of ‘the story’ is more
than just a narrative, but convergence of inquiry into past events, the
procuring of knowledge, and the construction of a grounds from which to build.
It is from this grasp of ‘the story’ as interrelated with ‘history’ and
‘storey’ that the concept ascertains its significance.
The stories that we tell one another are always
incarnations of this formula. If I were to recount what I ate for breakfast
this morning, I would be at one and the same time conjuring a knowledge of past
events whilst, in passing this story on, providing a grounds for its
continuance beyond my own grasp. When we tell one another of ancestors, or the
roles they played in those watershed moments of our collective historical past,
we are summoning a formulated judgement of past events in narrative form. In
many cases, these stories are not told directly to us by the individual in
question, but by those who have received this story in some manner themselves,
building with every new generation that passes this story on. ‘The story’ thus
represents a mode of practice in which we can place ourselves between past and
future, building on the past to summon its memory with every re-telling.
In her work, the political thinker Hannah Arendt
touches on the importance of storytelling and history as a mode of
epistemological orientation – i.e. how we ground what we know. In ‘The Human
Condition’ Arendt, amongst a number of other more significant claims,
contends that the very cornerstone of our public life, of our politics, is the
capacity to appear in public and engage in the activity of speech. Political
action is grounded in the capability to debate, discuss, address grievances and
ponder alternative modes of civil collaboration to that which is experienced –
all steeped in the act of speaking. When humans come together in the public
realm they forge something new out of their political condition of
interconnectedness, a condition that arises out of the intangible web of human
relationships we hold. Arendt affirms that:
“It is because
of this already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable,
conflicting wills and intentions that action almost never achieves its purpose;
but it is also because of this medium, in which action alone is real, that it
‘produces’ stories with or without intention…These stories may then be recorded
into documents and monuments, they may be visible in use objects or art works,
they may be told and retold and reworked into all kinds of material”.12
Arendt thus claims that action and appearance are
bound together by their crystallisation in ‘the story’. Our history, the
history of a world into which we were thrown, is preserved by remembering human
actions of the past; i.e. past instances where humans appeared together and
engaged in their capacity to bring something new into the world by acting. This
memory is revealed through ‘the story’.
It is important to note that, for Arendt, we always
reside in a world of plurality. Simply put, we are never alone: “men, not Man,
live on the earth and inhabit the world”.13 The same goes
temporally, and not just spatially. Our collective existence is one of a
constant overlap of members. Our ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit) is but one moment
in the grand story of our species, and through recounting the actions of our
ancestors, of our history, we recall the world they erected that we still
inhabit somehow. Our individual and collective stories are therefore a somewhat
rhizomatic interconnection, with no finite beginning and definitive ending,
interconnecting by multiplicity. 14
The stories we tell and pass down through
generations are the deposits of identity that we imprint on the world. When we
act, when we engage in something genuinely new, we add to the world in which we
reside – and the stories we tell are always the recounting of such moments. In
this, the identity of the acting agent is disclosed, like examining the residue
of a fingerprint. These stories fully actualise after the death of the agent,
Arendt claims, preserving their contribution to the world in which we still
live. This is the magic of the story – at least in a historical frame. Arendt
maintains that:
“This
unchangeable identity of the person though disclosing itself intangibly in act
and speech, becomes tangible only in the story of the actor’s and speaker’s
life; but as such it can be known, that is, grasped as a palpable entity only
after it has come to its end. In other words, human essence – not human nature
in general (which does not exist) nor the sum total of qualities and
shortcomings in the individual, but the essence of who somebody is – can come
into being only when life departs, leaving behind nothing but a story”15.
By divulging our stories to others in speech, we
reveal our identity by exposing certain experiences of the world and,
therefore, our place in adding to it. It is the moment at which life has left
our bodily existence that we as individuals dissolve into the very fabric of
the grand human story, and in this, become part of the foundation of thought we
call ‘history’.
The stories we tell crystallise the world around
us; they gift an appreciation and understanding of our shared feats, ventures
and existence as a grounds for understanding our collective condition. In this
manner, stories, as history, become a grounds of authority for future action –
a grounds for understanding the world we as a species have created between us.
Like all groundings of authority, stories provide a sense of permanence and
reliability in which the human capacity for building, preserving and caring for
a world is retained for those who follow after our own stories are complete.16
This is the central theme of Kubo –
that our love for the world around us is manifested in the stories we tell one
another. If we can say that Kubo has a central meaning at all,
it is the importance of stories. Stories remind us of those who have passed
onto a plane of memory, but in this become embedded into the fabric of the past
and thus the world they helped fashion in which we still reside. Kubo reminds
us that when we recall stories of those whose material existence is past, they
gain a full sense of immortality, or rather, as Beetle puts it to Monkey: “your
story will never end. It will be told be him [Kubo] and the people he shares it
with, and by the people they share it with, and by the people they share it
with, and by the people they share it with”.
Another interesting point that Kubo shares with the
thought of Hannah Arendt is the idea that we are always in the middle of some
story. The narrative begins in its middle, mirroring the way that we are always
thrown into the world in the middle of another’s story – and Kubo is no
exception. As we learn, Kubo’s mother was the daughter of the Moon King, and his
father the warrior Hanzo. The initial part of Kubo’s story is not exposed until
the middle of the film itself, when Monkey reveals that she is Kubo’s Mother,
how she fell in love with his Father, and why they had to run from the Moon
King – the point at which the film begins. This reflects and illustrates,
knowingly or not, the existential undertones of Arendt’s political thought,
that we exist in a world of plurality, where the world is passed like baton in
a relay race between individuals and groups across the fabric of time. Just
like those who do not begin a relay race, we are always responsible for but one
tiny part of the chase, but no matter how small our part we always have a hand
in passing the baton, of preserving the world of those that came before us and
their achievements, for those to come after us.
Ultimately, this notion of ‘the story’ as the
meaning-giving mechanism of the world, through our fleeting temporality within
it, culminates in the final moments of the film. Here, Kubo realises that in
order to defeat his grandfather it is not the armour that he requires, but the
magic of ‘the story’ as memory. In the final scene, Kubo stands before the Moon
King with the villagers around him, summoning their ancestors. At this moment,
the Moon King is confused as to how Kubo maintains spirit, how he maintains his
love of humanity, stating that he has taken everything and everybody that Kubo
loves away from him: “Everything you love is gone. Everything you knew has been
taken from you”. To this, Kubo responds with: “No. It’s in my memories, the
most powerful kind of magic there is. It makes us stronger than you’ll ever be.
These are the memories of those we have loved and lost, and if we hold their
stories deep in our hearts, then you will never take them away from us. And
that really is the least of it”.
‘The Story’ as a constant process of folding and
unfolding, Kubo reveals, is a magic manifest in memory – and it is this
capacity to remember the stories of those before us, and consequently the gift
of the world they have left, that is the beauty of simply being human. This is
a gift that Kubo and the villagers then impart on the moon king when in his
state of forgetfulness, i.e. the Moon King becomes human in the loss of his
material immortality through the actuality of his human capacity for finitude,
and as such, the immorality that all humans hold – their part in ‘the story’.
Part of this notion concerns repetition and
transformation by reoccurrence. Stories are retold and in this retelling are repeated
and expressed in a new way to new listeners every time. Through the power of
memory, the foundations of the past are reinforced and yet transformed through
their repetition. As a brief tangent, what is employed very well in Kubo is
the manner in which the cinematography and narrative capture such a notion of
memory and the power of transformative repetition. Of course, in the narrative,
there are a number of moments that reoccur, such as the utterance of the
narrator and their primary directive: ‘If you must blink do it now’. Or, even,
the story of the armour, told through Kubo’s own explorations, but before this
in the story he tells of his father to the villagers.
This being said, the themes of reoccurrence and
transformative repetition are wholly captured in the cinematography and
direction of the animation. Each act begins and ends the same way. They end
with a fight between Kubo and an antagonist, with the antagonist faced
transforming with every act – beginning with The Sisters, then one sister and
then The Moon King. The beginning of every act, excluding the prologue,
perhaps, is some shot of Monkey. In the cave at the beginning of the first act,
our first shot is of the monkey charm. The beginning of the second frames the
sight of Monkey come to life in the blizzard, calling for Kubo. And, lastly,
the beginning of the third sees the monkey charm split into two, with Kubo
mourning the death of his mother in monkey form. In all three acts we get some
essential repetition that undergoes a transformation, reaffirming the central
notion behind the power of stories and their relationship with memory,
mortality and potentiality. This we can equally see in the reoccurrence of
magic in Kubo.
Magic is used consistently throughout the film,
embodied by the tune of the Shamisen. The power of the shamisen is intricately
tied to the power of the folding and unfolding of ‘the story’ as a
world-building and world-preserving tool of remembrance. The magic that the
shamisen produces is almost always circuitously connected to the safeguarding
of the past, through the present, for the future. For example, when Kubo
engages in the act of storytelling for the villagers at the beginning of the
film, interestingly, the story he tells is between past and future – it is of
the past, recounting the actions of his father, and is to be his own. The magic
is not the tune of the shamisen, but, rather, the very act of remembrance and
impartment that Kubo has shared with the villagers. The shamisen, therefore, is
a sign not of magic, but the magic of ‘the story’ itself – it is the stories
that the characters tell that bring the world to life around them.
Speaking of this, before I draw this section to a
close, the origami conjured by the shamisen is equally the embodiment of the
magic grounding ‘the story’ portrayed in the film. As the tales around Kubo
unfold, refold and repeat, so too do the sheets of paper that Kubo tells
stories with. Symbolically, the origami magic that sits in collusion with the
music of the shamisen are not necessarily in a causal relation – i.e. Kubo’s
playing may not necessarily cause the paper to fold in any specific or given
manner. We can see this in the red origami Samurai that travels with Kubo
throughout the film. Indeed, an often forgotten point to be made here is that
the origami Samurai folds and refolds even when Kubo is not playing
the instrument. This tells us that the magic bringing the paper to life is not
the music of the shamisen, but what the shamisen represents – the magic of ‘the
story’. The samurai comes to life when Kubo asks for his father. In removed
memory of his father through the past stories told by his mother, Hanzo is
folded into origami form. The story, as memory, imparts life. That is the magic
of the narrative.
The magic we experience in Kubo is
not the magic of Merlin, The Wicked Witch of The West, or Harry Potter, but the
kind of magic we all as humans partake in and recall: the memorialisation of
the past, and as such, the immortalisation of those who acted to create its
world – the world we all now inhabit. This is the magic we bear witness to in
Kubo – the magic of our own finite and mortal humanity as a grand folding,
unfolding and refolding train of active lives lived by world creators and
preservers. Kubo cites our debt to them, and our
responsibility to pass the baton as humans. Our magic is existence, and Kubo lays
this bare for us to see.
V.
Kubo as a Self-Reflective Story on ‘The Story’
The question I would like to address here is the
extent which Kubo is a self-reflective story. Over the top of
the first scene, the narrator plays a decisive role in their instruction to the
spectator. The narrator tells us that:
“If you must
blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear no
matter how unusual it may seem. But please, be warned, if you fidget, if you
look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you, even for an instant, then
our hero will surely perish”.
As the scene continues Kubo’s mother is washed to a
shoreline with her crying child. At this moment the narrator divulges that:
“His name is Kubo. His grandfather stole something from him. And that really is
the least of it”. Although we may not realise it at such an early moment in the
feature, this is decisive. The narrator is voiced by Art Parkinson, the voice
actor for Kubo, adding depth to the narrative from its opening seconds.
What fascinates me about this concerns the
utterance of the narrator’s speech, in conjunction with the decision to have
the narrator speak with the voice of Kubo. There are two parts to my intrigue
(a) the imperative of the initial plea to the audience, and (b) the signalling
of the protagonist. Let’s take a look at each.
From the initial moment of the feature, the
spectator is directly referenced by the film itself, with a plea for
concentration and remembrance. This plea is an existential one. If one breaks
the command of the narrator, by fidgeting, blinking, or forgetting, then you as
the spectator have a hand in the downfall of the protagonist – whom the
spectator is yet to meet. The consequences of this are that the spectator is
immediately transformed into a participant of the narrative. This means that
the plea made by the narrator is a strict performative speech act,
able to adapt the world on our side of the screen. This requires further
exploration.
In his 1955 William James Lectures, the Ordinary
Language Philosopher John L. Austin developed his theory of ‘speech acts’,
transcribed in his ‘How To Do Things With Words’. Here, Austin shook the
very ground of the philosophy of language by claiming that statements can be
more than merely descriptive, ‘constative’, utterances of fact or falsity. In
doing so, he asserted that utterances can function as an act to reap an effect
on the world in which it is uttered in itself – a speech act.
Austin emphasises that speech acts can be
‘performative’, stressing that such utterances: (a) do not describe, report or
constate anything at all, are not ‘true’ or ‘false’, and (b) is, or is a part
of, the doing of an action, which would not normally be described as, or
‘just’, saying something.17 Performative speech acts hold three
forces: Locutionary (in the linguistic meaning of the language), Illocutionary
(the performative function as the linguistic action of the speaker – these
being: representatives, expressives, directives, commissives, and declarations18),
and the Perlocutionary (as the perceived effect through the linguistic
inference of the utterance’s locutionary and illocutionary force by the
addressee).
The perlocutionary force of the performative speech
act is external to the utterance itself, as the effect of the illocutionary
force via the locutionary. As Austin explains in reference to the
perlocutionary force of the performative speech act, being beyond that of a
mere statement:
“Saying
something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects
upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or
of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of
producing them”.19
Thus, the performative speech act concerns
linguistic utterances that form actions in themselves and change the very
milieu of the world in which they are uttered. It is in the combination of the
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary forces that the performative
speech act retains the temperament that it does.
The best illustration of a performative
speech act are the vowels spoken at a wedding. There are three important
performative speech acts here: two ‘I do’s’ and one ‘I now pronounce you
married’. The ‘I do’s’ hold all three forces of the performative speech act:
the locutionary (in the meaning of the terms linguistically – ‘I’ as the
singular first person pronoun, and ‘do’ as the main verb of action),
illocutionary (in the performative function of the utterance at this ceremonial
moment as agreement to the vows of marriage), and the perlocutionary (in the
effect of the utterance, as the open declaration of the wish to be legally
united with another). Arguably, ‘I now pronounce you married’ is the greater
performative speech act, equally encapsulating all three forces. It holds a
locutionary force (in the linguistic meaning of the utterance), an
illocutionary force (through the action of its utterance by this figure at this
moment) and a perlocutionary force (in that the utterance has the effect of
marrying a couple together – without the locutionary and illocutionary forces
together, a couple is not wed – the utterance adapts the world in which it is
spoken by creating a new married couple).
In a purely political frame, performative speech
acts are intricately connected to the manner in which sovereignty functions.
Without delving too far into this notion, in any respect, we can see this in
the illustration of the sovereign declaration. When the sovereign entity of a
state utters a declaration on a given subject, this declaration becomes a
performative speech act. For example, when a sovereign legislature or head of state
declares in favour of a legislative proposal (x), the sovereign agent
that utters the adoption of such a proposal into law is effectively stating
that ‘I declare x adopted within the legal body of the state’.
The perlocutionary force of this declaratory speech act thus adapts the manner
in which the state engages with its citizens, in light of x’s
adoption. As follows, performative speech acts are not just an academic or
linguistic point of debate and intrigue, but formulate part of the
socio-political fabric of the sovereign state and its functioning.
Back to Kubo. In the opening narration
– the plea to the spectator contains the three forces of a performative speech
act. Its Locutionary force is in the language of the plea, its Illocutionary in
the linguistic command directed to the spectator, and most importantly, its
Perlocutionary force in the effect on the world to which the utterance is made.
The effect, all in all, is to conjure a sense of performed concentration in the
spectator, reaffirming that their lack of compliance with the utterance aids
the downfall of the protagonist.20 In this, the spectator
becomes more than the spectator, once again, by performing back to the screen
with concentration permitted. The narrator through their declaratory utterance
and directive pulls the spectator into the film in more than concentration, but
makes them an agent of the narrative itself. The utterance turns the onlooker into
a spectator-agent.
Interestingly, the utterance we hear from the
narrator is not isolated at this moment of the film. As has already been
stated, Kubo repeats the statement of the narrator when in the village at the
beginning of the film. He strikes his shamisen and makes the utterance, drawing
in the crowd to his storytelling. This projects the layered nature of ‘the
story’ buried within the narrative of Kubo. In much the same vain
as films like ‘Inception’ (2010) – a dream within a dream – Kubo presents
itself as a story within a story. The performative utterance of the narrator
indicates the beginning of the storytelling process. In this manner, Kubo’s
use of the performative utterance at the beginning of the film holds a dual
function – (a) signalling the self-reflective nature of the story as on ‘the
story’, and secondly, (b) by turning the spectator into a performative agent
whose retroactive agency holds an effect on the narrative it arises from.
The two do combine however, ultimately, in
reaffirming the importance of ‘the story’. As examined above, the importance of
stories rests in their world building and preserving character. The
performative utterance equally stresses this point, via an alternative
Perlocutionary force it holds – that by not heeding the
directive of the narrator, Kubo’s story fades from memory, and as such, the
immortality we ascertain in death is castrated of its effect. By not complying
with the directive of the narrator, Kubo and his story are wiped from
existence; reaffirming the existential importance of ‘the story’ and
storytelling.
The second question I wish to ask in relation to
the narrator’s performative utterance concerns the signalling of the
protagonist, as a question of intrigue more than anything. In the utterance,
after the directive, the narrator suggest that the spectator-agent infers the
identity of the protagonist – “His name is Kubo…”. As stated above, the
narrator is voiced by Art Parkinson, who also voices Kubo. Why the distinction?
Surely, if this inference were the case, the grammatical character of the
sentence would be in the first person, i.e. ‘My name is Kubo…’. The utterance
is in the third person however, indicating to us that the narrator is not Kubo,
but that they merely share the same voice.
If we can cast a doubt over the identity of the
narrator, we can do so too about the protagonist. At the moment the narrator
states “his name is Kubo”, the baby wrapped in bundles appears on screen. The
grammatical choices in the utterance are far more ambiguous therefore, when
taken into consideration with the image before the spectator-agent. This term
‘his name is Kubo’ reveals, firstly, the distinction between the narrator and
Kubo, as briefly sketched out above, secondly, the name of the character the
spectator-agents are witnessing on screen, and lastly, the identity of the
protagonist.
This third revelation is the location of ambiguity.
We infer that Kubo is the protagonist because the performative, declarative
utterance is before this statement; its final clause being “…or our hero may
surely perish”. Followed by “his name is Kubo”, the spectator-agent infers the
mutual coexistence of the two utterances. This is a fallacious syllogism of
logic that the spectator-agent makes, assuming certain premises (P) and
conclusions (C):
P1 – There is a hero
stated as existing.
P2 – A figure is
on screen during this statement.
P3 – The figure
is called Kubo.
C1 – Kubo
is the Hero stated.
The second premise (P2) is
verifiable, of course, but its contribution to the train of logic is no more
than a leap of faith. We, as the spectator-agent must make this leap to affirm
that Kubo is the hero the narrator is referring to in their performative
utterance. The declaratory performative utterance, through its grammatical
inclination, does not necessarily have to correlate to the statement of
clarification that the figure on screen is Kubo.
If we factor this linguistic ambiguity into
consideration, the identity of the protagonist, as the ‘hero’, becomes
questionable; the location of the hero is thus broken open into a
classification of inclusivity. Indeed, thought this way, the narrative could
encompass any of the characters (bar the obvious antagonists) as our hero, or indeed
all of them – together. This is my interpretation of such an ambiguity – that
it references not Kubo as the hero of the narrative (the most
obvious interpretation), but ‘the story’ itself. If we were to grasp the
interpretive meaning of this performative utterance in conjunction with the
existential significance of ‘the story’, we arrive at a grander protagonist
of Kubo and The Two Strings, namely, ourselves – humanity.
If we are to forget the stories of the past and
their heroes, if we are to forget the processual train by which our history
becomes a grounding for our own action, for even an instant, we remove the most
significant grounds for understanding ourselves. By forgetting our own stories,
we, as humanity, will surely perish.
In this manner, through all these reflections, we
can see that from the first utterance alone, Kubo is a
self-reflective story about ‘the story’ and its existential significance.
Humanity is indeed a central theme of Kubo, and this will be the
subject of discussion in my next reflection, concerning Kubo as a promethean
character – reinforcing my interpretation of the central hero as ourselves.
VI.
Promethean Revolt and Kubo
The final reflection that I would like to discuss
concerns the notion of the underlying theology buried within the narrative
of Kubo, specifically in its relation to the Greek Promethean myth.
In the literature on the film, it is often forgotten that Kubo is in fact not
strictly human, at least in the mythological sense. In a similar vein to the
likes of Heracles, Orpheus, Perseus, Karna, Romulus and Remus, or even Percy
Jackson and Diana Prince (Wonder Woman), Kubo is a demigod. Simply put, a
‘demigod’ is the progeny of a god and a human, paradigmatically proving
themselves as worthy of being a god by some feat of ‘heroisation’, such as the
twelve labours of Heracles. In Kubo’s case, he is the child of Hanzo (a mortal,
human warrior) and Sariatu (the goddess daughter of the Moon King). Although
this may seem somewhat trivial, it has significant interpretive consequences
for understanding Kubo.
Throughout Kubo, the central characters
journey to locate armour that can be used to defeat the Moon King. The Moon
King, voiced by Ralph Fiennes, seeks to remove Kubo’s sight in order to make
him blind to his humanity, to make him ‘beyond stories’ as an immortal –
refolding the importance of ‘the story’ back into frame. During the final
scenes, The Moon King contends that Kubo’s place is with him as an immortal,
blind to the humanity and love of others, resting infinitely with ‘his family’.
Interestingly, in response to Kubo’s retort, The Moon King states that his
parents chose their mortal fate, attempting to disturb his divine order. Here
the significance of Kubo’s status as a demigod holds its importance.
The claims of Gods in both mythology and theology
to uphold some divine order are numerous. Equally, so are those who wish to
rebel against the will of major gods, who disrupt the order of things for some
purpose. Kubo, like almost all demigods, is faced with a choice – (a) to join
his grandfather as an immortal, which would entail his compliance with the
divine order of The Moon King, or (b) to rebel against the godly order. In
Kubo’s case, at the close of the story, he chooses the latter and overturns the
order of The Moon King, not by killing him, as he states is his intention, but
by transforming him into the very thing that he considers to be worthless, a
human. As opposed to mythological figures like Heracles, who chooses to join
Zeus at Olympus and be a part of his divine order, Kubo sheds the armour he has
spent the film searching for and engages in the most powerful magic of all –
that of humanity.
First of all, the beauty of this scene is
astonishing. Unlike other tales of demigods, Kubo’s choice to remain mortal is
out of love for humanity itself. Left with nothing but friends and stories of
loved ones, Kubo removes the enchanted armour to transform the Moon King. This
moment locates its significance in that it symbolises Kubo shedding his
divinity as he removes the enchanted armour. It is at this instant Kubo has
made his choice, to be no more than any other human, and to use that humanity
to existentially disrupt the divine order of The Moon King. Interestingly, Kubo
justifies this in almost aesthetic terms, stating: “for every horrible thing
down here, there is something more beautiful. My mother saw it, so did my
father; I see it. Even with just one eye”. Kubo, ultimately, acts so not as to
defeat The Moon King, per se, but to defend humanity from his order, to defend
its beauty. This form of revolt is therefore promethean in its defence of
humanity. Perhaps some elucidation of this is required.
For those who are unaware, Prometheus (Προμηθεύς)
is a central figure of Greek mythology. The son of the Titans Iapetus (Ἰαπετός)
– The god of craftsmanship and mortality – and Clymene (Κλυμένη) – the goddess
of fame and renown, Prometheus is often thought to be the god of forethought
and whose story has been replicated across cultures throughout history. There
are three parts to the Prometheus myth, these I will call: (a) creation, (b)
the fire, and (c) punishment. Let’s take each in turn.
The first part of the Prometheus myth concerns
creation. In Greek Mythology, Prometheus created mortal men in the likeness of
gods using clay and water from Panopeus in Phocis with the consent of Athena
(Αθηνά), the goddess of wisdom, who breathed life into his creation.21 Prometheus
is the creator-god of humanity, and as such has been used to symbolise the
defence and promotion of his creation, ourselves, across cultures.22 In
this sense, humanity is the product of Prometheus, something that the
mythological figure holds dear.
The second part of the promethean myth concerns
‘the fire’.23 During a sacrificial meal marking the ‘settling
of accounts’ between humans and gods, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus,
placing two offerings before the Olympian: a selection of meat hidden
inside an ox’s stomach, and bull’s bones wrapped in ‘glistening fat’. Zeus
chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices, and thus humans
would keep meat for themselves and burn bones wrapped in fat as an offering to
the gods. This infuriated Zeus, who hid fire from humans in retribution,
disenabling them from consuming cooked food, manufacturing tools, or even
seeing in darkness. Prometheus subsequently stole the fire back from Zeus and
restored it to humanity. In this, we see that Prometheus is more than just a
mythological creator figure, but one that defends his creation against the
divine whim of other gods, and in doing so, Prometheus restores to humanity its
capacity to overcome nature, signified by the Olympian fire. This is often
referred to as ‘promethean revolt’, whereby an agent revolts against the will
of the gods and nature, accordingly, for the sake of humanity as a whole.
The final part of the Promethean myth concerns the
punishment for such crimes against Zeus.24 For adorning
humanity with fire, wholly undermining the divine order of Zeus, Prometheus is
bound to a mountain in the Caucasus, whereby an eagle was sent to gorge on
Prometheus’ immortal liver every day, growing back by night – at least until he
is released by Heracles. Without a doubt, Prometheus suffers for his crimes.
This tells us that when engaging in Promethean revolt against the gods, one may
achieve one’s aims of bettering humanity, but this does not excuse the
divergence from the divine order. Prometheus suffers for his creation, for
humanity. How does this relate to Kubo however? Kubo relates
to all three parts of the promethean myth, culminating in his devotion to
humanity and rebellion against the gods.
In relation to the first, Kubo is not the
creator of humanity, à la Prometheus. One would have to go through an
extraordinary process of eisegesis in order to read into the narrative of the
film such an interpretation. However, this being said, Kubo is a creator.
Although this notion could have been a reflection in and of itself, as it is so
self-referential and introspective, I have chosen to include it here because of
its theological underpinning. Kubo, remarkably, is an animator.
If we recall back to the first section of this
paper, one will remember that animation is the deceptive fabrication of
movement in order to create the illusion of life. Whilst Kubo engages in
storytelling, on multiple levels no doubt, some form on animation always occurs
with the utterance of his performative speech act. The first time we see this
occur is in the village. After uttering “if you must blink..” (etc.), he
strikes his shamisen and the paper begins to fold and unfold before him. Whilst
enchanting the townspeople of his father’s ventures, the magic of ‘the story’
that Kubo harnesses brings the paper to life, in order to display the
fabrication of motion and the illusion of life. This happens again in the final
scene, where Kubo summons the spirits of ancestors, once again animating by
providing the illusion of life through movement via his human magic of
storytelling. Seen in this manner, the narrator, equally, at the beginning summons
the narrative of the film to life through the same means.
Indeed, just as McLaren contends, animation
is the art of movements that are drawn; and as opposed to the technical magic
of SMA or celluloid animation, Kubo’s magic sits with the human capacity to
transform finite mortality into immortal life. Kubo’s capacity to animate
connects him to Prometheus in the first count this way – he too is a figure of
creation, expressed in his capacity to animate.
In relation to the third count of prometheanism,
circling back to the second momentarily, Kubo does indeed suffer a punishment
for his rebellion. Although Kubo’s crime is promethean rebellion against a
divine order, his punishment is not as severe as Prometheus’. However, Kubo
does not escape ‘punishment’ for want a better term, but does in fact
experience a sense of recurring loss. In the transformation of his family into
the mortal-immortal state, crystallised in story modality, his retelling of
their existence is equitable to the eagle feasting on Prometheus’ liver day
upon day – anybody who has lost loved ones, let alone all of their loved ones,
will testify to this fact. Alongside this, Kubo’s punishment manifests in the
shape of material loss – for a brief moment he is reunited with the incarnations
of his mother and father to form the nuclear family unit, only to have those he
loves killed before him, so he can achieve the goal of his prometheanism. Kubo
is indeed punished through suffering some loss, however, this is a punishment
accumulated throughout the film. As he disturbs the divine order, so too is his
own order disturbed; ending in the fact of his material loneliness and becoming
an orphan at the close of the film. But, the defence of humanity is worth the
price, as Kubo himself comes to admit.
Lastly, the revolt itself. Prometheus tricks Zeus
and steals his fire. Kubo is neither a trickster nor a thief, so why the
comparison? The comparison comes to the surface of interpretation when we take
into account the act of rebellion. Both Kubo and Prometheus are of divine
character in some manner. Both chose to defend humanity and suffer for its
defence. In both cases, the divine order is disturbed for the sake of humanity
and its potentiality to something greater than the insect-like pathology designated
by the gods. This mysterious quality is the beauty that Kubo references his
mother and father recognising, and that he can see with only one eye. This is
the symbol of ‘the fire’ that Prometheus steals back for humanity. Kubo
reclaims the human existence as more than meagre and inferior beings from the
divine order of The Moon King, and in doing so breaks it to rubble.
Indeed, Kubo displays all three of the traits
associated with the Promethean myth, as a somewhat divine figure that choses to
rebel against the divine in order to aid humanity. For Prometheus, this occurs
due to the admiration of humanity as its creator; for Kubo this occurs in order
to immortalise the human through their mortality, reclaiming the status of
humanity as that concerning ‘mere mortals’, but as creators and immortals in
their very being.
This reflection sought to elucidate something of
the theological undertones of Kubo. It noted that at the heart of Kubo is a
story about a promethean figure who rebels against a divine order so to promote
the interests of humanity and it’s potential. Kubo is not necessarily
Prometheus reincarnate, I would not wish to suggest this as such a claim would
consist of the greatest ‘overreaching’. However the parallels between the two
characters are beyond ignorance. The story of Prometheus always returns to some
central notion about the capacity for humanity to overcome some divine order,
and in this way rebel against their so-called pre-ordained status in such a
structured cosmic system. As Kubo taps into these themes, it too may cast a
commentary on the theological status of man as a whole. We are not divine, but
our stories have the power to divinize through memory, and that is the beauty
of being human.
—–
In Conclusion
In conclusion, the purpose of this piece was to
reflect on animation broadly, and to interpret Kubo and the Two Strings in
order to illustrate that animated films may provide a source for academic
illustration and contemplation. Before I leave the reader with some final
thoughts, let us retrace our steps.
On the first count to reflect on ‘animation’
broadly, I claimed that by delving into the etymology of the term, we see its
connection to breathing life into a non-living entity. From here, I used the
discourse around the thought of the animator Norman McLaren to elucidate the
basis of animation in conjunction with the linguistic term’s etymological
origins, ascertainin a working conceptualisation of ‘animation’ itself.
Subsequently, I claimed that animation is the deceptive fabrication of movement
in order to create the illusion of life.
Moving from this, the second reflection of the
first part concerned stop-motion animation (SMA) and its association to the
illusion of time. Through an interpretive analysis of the kind of animation
that LAIKA employs, this reflection utilised the latter work of the semiologist
Roland Barthes to rethink the relationship between philosophical reflections on
‘the photograph’, mortality, and animation. This section found that SMA is
unique as the only modality of cinematic film concerned with the art of
resurrection, bringing to life that which has never lived by resuscitating and
successively displaying the dead moments of its capture.
The second part of this piece moved its attention
to Kubo and The Two Strings. What it broadly located was that the
notion of ‘the story’ is central to the narrative of Kubo. ‘The
Story’ is what ties the film together, relating it to a number of academic and
intellectual discourses from the topic of human finitude, to immortality,
performative speech acts and so on. Within each section, some different
reflection is laid bare for the reader to ponder. The first concerned ‘the
story’ broadly, and its connection to the thought of Hannah Arendt. The second
engaged with the question of Kubo’s self-reflective character on
the topic of ‘the story’, utilising the thought of the ordinary language
philosopher John Austin to analyse the opening plea by the narrator. Together,
these sections found that the film is more than just a narrative but a
commentary in which the spectator becomes an agent partaking in a story about
the magic of ‘the story’ itself.
What makes this fascinating is that Kubo is
not just another children’s story therefore, but a reflective exercise in
humanity. The question of humanity was addressed in the third and final
reflection, through a mythic-theological lens. Here Kubo was paralleled to
Prometheus, allowing us to bear witness to the essence of Kubo’s drive to shed
his divinity for the sake of humanity in revolt against the gods. Kubo is
indeed a promethean figure who intends to disrupt the divine order of The Moon
King. He does this so to promote the creative potential and beauty of humanity,
posited in his admiration and magical capability behind ‘the story’,
illuminating the film’s humanism.
Nevertheless, how should we take these three
reflections together? All-in-all Kubo is a reflective work in
which we become the spectator-agent witnessing the beauty of our own humanity
as if in a mirror. Kubo is a reinforcement of our existential
finitude, tapping into those existential themes discussed in both continental
and analytic philosophy throughout the past century. This shows us that
animation, on both first and second counts of this exploration, can be more
than just an art form for entertainment or the depiction of narrative, but
provide a rich source for those essential questions that rest at the heart of
both political and philosophical discourses.
There were a number of quasi-reflections that I chose
not to include in this work, mostly in order to spare the reader. A few themes
I chose not to discuss concerned the roles of: family, the redemptive and
healing power of music, or even the notion of ‘the cave’ that is a continually
recurring theme. On the first, that of ‘family’, it seems somewhat obvious to
me that it is a central theme of the film, considering that the adventure Kubo
trails is one of the hero’s journey, finding himself closer to his family as he
believes to be farther from them in actuality. The title ‘Kubo and The Two
Strings’ is often questioned as the shamisen that Kubo plays has three
strings – so why the title? Simply put, the film is dedicated to the parents of
Travis Knight, the director and producer. After the credits, a short dedication
appears in which the basis of the ‘two strings’ concept is revealed – they
refer to parents. Kubo’s two strings are his mother and father, with whom the
adventure of the film takes place, whether Kubo realises this or not. This
being said, although this is interesting, and obviously central to the intended
themes of the narrative by the creators, it speaks for itself – i.e. that
family is important and that through family we remember the stories of our
ancestors. As this theme, like the others not reflected upon, are somewhat
overt, I chose to reflect on those that hid beneath the surface of the film. I
hope this is not held against me.
Throughout this piece, we have travelled across a
number of themes and illuminated the praise of humanity that LAIKA’s work
explicates in Kubo, whilst prefacing this discussion with an almost
phenomenological grasp of animation itself. This therefore made the claim that
animation should be thought of in the same vein as the art that hangs in our
galleries, the poetry we cherish, the plays we often recount, or the music that
brings us to tears. Animation is so much more than just drawing movement, but
in the act of being movement that is drawn, giving life between frames, we see
that we humans are constantly capable of granting life in an illusory form to
the stories those before us have lived and that we create.
Finally, at its heart, animation really is the most
human of all cinematic art forms. In this manner, tapping into the existential
character and finitude of the human capability and capacity to fabricate our
world. Animation creates something with life that is genuinely as yet unseen
and unique, adding to the basis of the world in-between us humans, the world of
human artifice, in the same way that life is given to objects in between the
frames of an animated film. As McLaren states, it is the in-between-ness of the
animating process that adorns the inanimate with the breath of life; thus so
too can animation itself add to the creative actuality and potential of the
world we forge in-between ourselves as social beings.
Indeed, films like Kubo are far
more than movies to entertain, but are movies that reveal to us, with our
performative compliance, the beauty of our own existence and finitude in a
life-affirming temperament. For this, such works of animated brilliance should
be cherished as just that – works of brilliance. To reduce such works to the
status of ‘children’s entertainment’ and the artist to the ‘children’s
entertainer’ therefore would be a crime of the highest order. And, quite
frankly, that really is the least of it.
NOTES
1 For more
information on the so-called Disney format and style of animation, see: Esther
Leslie (2004) Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and The
Avant-Garde, London: Verso; Johnson Cheu (Ed.) (2013) Diversity in
Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and
Disability, Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers;
Lauren Dundes (Ed.) (2019) The Psychosocial Implications of Disney
Movies, Basel: MDPT; Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
(1995) The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, New York: Hyperion
Books.
2 Paul
Wells (2003) “Animation: Forms and Meanings”, in Jill Nelmes (Ed.), An
Introduction to Film Studies, Third Edition, London: Routledge, pp.
213-235, p. 214.
3 Charles
Solomon (1987) The Art of The Animated Image: An Anthology – Volume I,
Los Angeles, CA: American Film Institute, p. 11.
4 Paul
Wells (1998) Understanding Animation, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 10.
5 Sylvie
Bissonnette (2019) Affect and Embodied Meaning in Animation:
Becoming-Animated, New York: Routledge, p. 3.
6 Barry J.C.
Purves (2014) Stop-motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-making with
Puppets and Models, Second Edition, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., p.
8.
7 Roland Barthes
(2000) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage,
p.14.
8 Barthes
(2000), p. 15.
9 Ibid,
emphasis added.
10 The
Scene-by-scene Script analysis of Kubo by Scott Myers was used
as a helpful guide to structuring this section, see: Scott Myers (April 24th 2017)
‘Script Analysis: “Kubo and the Two Strings” — Part 1: Scene By Scene
Breakdown’, Go Into The Story, https://gointothestory.blcklst .com/script-analysis-kubo-and-the-two-strings-part-1-scene-by-scene-breakdown-ee5a8a8932
(Accessed 23rd April 2020).
11 For this
etymological connection, see: Brian Joseph and Richard Janda (2003) “On
Language, Change and Language Change – Or, Of History, Linguistics, and
Historical Linguistics”, in Brian Joseph and Richard Janda (Eds.), The
Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp.
3-182, p. 163; Walter W. Skeat (1993) The Concise Dictionary of
English Etymology, Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., pp.473-474.
12 Hannah
Arendt (1998) The Human Condition, Second Edition, Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, p. 184.
13 Hannah
Arendt (1998) The Human Condition, p.7.
14 I do not
intend to evoke a strictly postmodern notion of rhizomatics (from Deleuze and
Guattari’s ‘A Thousand Plateaus’) with this utterance, as this would be
to rupture with the scope and focus of this piece. Rather, I wish only to
invoke the notion of the rhizome in its most descriptive form.
15 Hannah
Arendt (1998) The Human Condition, p. 193.
16 Hannah
Arendt (1993) Between Past and Future, London: Penguin Books Ltd.,
p. 95.
17 J.L.
Austin (1975) How To Do Things With Words, Second Edition,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 5.
18 John R.
Searle (1976) ‘A Classification of Illocutionary Acts’, Language in
Society, 5 (1), pp. 1-23. I have chosen to utilise Searle’s taxonomy as
opposed to that of Austin because Searle builds from Austin in order to clarify
the illocutionary act and rectify some issues with Austin’s taxonomy of
illocutionary speech acts.
19 J.L.
Austin (1975) How To Do Things With Words, p. 6.
20 Austin
refers to such an event as an ‘infelicity’, as one of the “things that can be
and go wrong on the occasion of such utterances”; J. L. Austin (1975) How
To Do Things With Words, p. 14.
21 Hesiod, Theogony:
211-232; Robert Graves (1955) Greek Myths, London: Cassell Ltd., p.
34.
22 A Really
good example of this is in our epoch is with the release of the 2012 film ‘Prometheus’.
As part of the popular fictional ‘Alien’ series, this film dealt with
the extra-terrestrial origins of human life on earth and the seizing of
‘eternal life’ itself; culminating in the not so subtle signifier of Prometheus
as the name of the ship the characters’ venture takes place on.
23 Hesiod, Theogony:
507-566.
24 Hesiod, Theogony:
521-529.
Acknowledgements
I would like to begin by thanking Mr. Cameron
Maltwood, who is no doubt tired of reading my drafts by this point. Thanks
again for your discussion and thoughts, as always. A very special thanks must
be given to the animator Rebecca Moritz for her immensely helpful and
insightful conversations on the topics above. This piece would have been
impossible without an animator to bounce ideas around with. Please find
the work of Rebecca Moritz on her website at the following address: https://www.rebeccamoritz.co.uk/. You
may not know it, but I am forever grateful for your discussion and friendship.
Thank You.