junglehead
The Galactic Federation's Strongest Soldier
This post reminds me: I have to come clean. Prior to this game's release?
I did not care for The Smiling Man.
And that would soon change. (In a good way)
I tend to give a lot of credit and thought to the ideas presented by game/film/lit/etc creators I enjoy when I see something from them. I do this for most works I consume but I grew up in an age of people discussing gentrified tropes and worn-out cliches to the point where the moments and works that inspired these idiosyncrasies have been degraded in value to the current media generation. People watch Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man and while those impacted the viewing public of their time (read: 90 years ago) when they had much more reduced expectations of what they would get from a film, to us today, who have seen everything, they don't tend to really land well. You need a buffer of consideration to sometimes come to terms with what an artist is trying to communicate, what they were thinking at the time. Honestly? It's eye-opening! Internet discourse does a lot to pollute your mind with strange concerns of what people do or don't think, and expectations shift with your own personal experience. To gain that perspective and allow yourself to have an earnest, knee-jerk reaction and rationalize those feelings is hard but worth it. It allows you to look at art across the board with such a vivid outlook. Thanks to all of this, I could understand the intent behind a lot of ideas creatives have had over the years, and it allowed me to separate what I thought worked well to what truly didn't.
I could not understand what was special about The Smiling Man.
On some level, the visual of a paper bag-wearing 6'7 (204cm where I'm from) murderer does have some clear level of fear factor attached but I couldn't bring myself to see what was special about it; what was scary about it. The crappily-drawn smile didn't really seal the deal, it was a very cheap way of representing a crude mind's interpretation of emotion, and all you could take away from it was that this guy who seems to think he can give people a smile forever is clearly mentally unstable (because he... can't draw faces well?) or he has a childish mind. If you think to what makes an urban legend truly gripping, I don't think he really does it, nor did the way the marketing painted that do it either. I don't think he was remotely unsalvageable either because I think the idea of the corpses with the paper bags on them is interesting, or the lack of a discreet figure, and I also think the idea of a paper bag motif being so universal has some elbow grease to be fascinating. I don't know, I think of how something like the Zodiac killer is genuinely scary because to be that elaborate and sadistic (to a point where we never got to any personal details of the supposed killer) is just objectively unnerving if you consider finding yourself in a vulnerable situation with him, and if you pare that to Emio, all you can say about him is that he gives people a smile forever because he kills them and they die and there's a paper bag with a crappy smile on it. I don't think they framed it well.
This epilogue though? Fuck man. FUCK, man. Emio was kind of interesting to track down over the course of the game, and I think it worked him better as an urban legend because you get unnerved thinking about the potential details as they're uncovered. But like... woof. That startling image of his father intimidating him, attempting to belittle his support for his sister, to break him down- an isolated child with no connection to the world around him being torn down by an apathetic monster- and then the ensuing tragedy. The paper bag visual is executed here a lot better because Minoru and Emiko are from a simpler life where they weren't really swept up in any sort of entertainment megaplex, so what they depict through art is as crude and real Human Emotion as it gets. It's really emotional because in that moment, you connect with how they entertain each other in simple ways. The story of Minoru and Emiko's connection is universal, because we all sympathize with what it's like to feel love so carnal and intuitive. That Minoru's abusive father is non-descript and perhaps generic, but provocative and horrendous nonetheless? It hits home with not just abusive familial relationships, but the horror you feel when those who hold hate in their heart excoriate and denigrate someone vulnerable; someone helpless to fight back.
What becomes of that excoriation is much more detailed. It does not hold back on telling you what becomes of a life where emotional apathy and pessimistic self-defensive instinct should take hold- to glamorize the hostility in society and propagate the view of some kind of rat race where vulnerability is not merely weakness, it is suicide, and salt must be rubbed in your wounds until they either don't ache or you die. Those who have this inflicted on them don't "adapt", they become corrupted. They shut themselves in until they become as poisoned as Minoru, who- even through the warm support of the Todoroki family- ultimately had his emotional development stunted and sense of self shrivel up until nothing was left. A monster was created. They were able to find Makoto at the end of the game, but Minoru died long ago, and in his place, a animalistic shell of a young boy took everyone in the same situation with him, wandering the streets and trying to make sense of whatever happened to him by chasing whatever glimmer of joy was left of what he had with Emiko and murdering a ton of children. Whoever "Minoru" was immolated so viscerally that he physically disfigured himself to a point where he wasn't even human anymore.
Just the visual on the Minoru title screen of the smile and the flower with the eye peering through the center is really irksome and invokes a sense of tragedy. It's a poignant visual because through the Junko/Makoto story, the source of the Minoru/Emiko tragedy comes through and disrupts their situation in much the same way. Junko is overcome with a need to act on her impulse, to uphold her dominance and to not just act, but specifically demonstrate her independence and command on her family. Her older, more experienced brother Makoto understands the good-natured intent behind this, and is able to look past it and understand who she is, because he knows what causes her aggression, and he knows it's meant well. When this is taken to a point where Junko exploits Makoto's goodwill and tears it down, they come face-to-face with the same tragedy, and so it spreads again.
I mentioned the Eisuke murder and how Minoru's involvement with it being a farce was kind of a letdown, but that was due to my expectations of the story coming together to make a point of a murderer like Emio suddenly coming back (and seemingly being more tact this time around by using wires. Perhaps a link between the visceral horror in a suicidal tragedy and the original murders? I mean, he did suffocate himself in a way that's more graphic than a noose when you think about it.) Instead, it took on a different angle, where the individual who lived through that breaking point made a decision to break from her shell, to exit her eternal modus operandi of scorching of others' missteps to feel like she could properly castigate hers. In a desperation move, she tries bringing some sense to the horror of why children in what should be optimistic lives with bright futures could end up in a murderous reality. It brings her, and us, through a trip of going through the carnally destructive and laborious feelings of loss are like.
TL;DR I mistook Emio for a character that would instill fear. While he could've, it was more important that this fear took a backseat to his most important mechanism: to depict tragedy. The story of The Smiling Man (within the context of the game more than the marketing tbh) instills fear, Minoru depicts tragedy.
It's not a perfect story and this isn't everything I wanted to go over but this is more-or-less a elaborate enough (you think so?) sampling of why this character makes this narrative so rich to think about.
I could not understand what was special about The Smiling Man.
On some level, the visual of a paper bag-wearing 6'7 (204cm where I'm from) murderer does have some clear level of fear factor attached but I couldn't bring myself to see what was special about it; what was scary about it. The crappily-drawn smile didn't really seal the deal, it was a very cheap way of representing a crude mind's interpretation of emotion, and all you could take away from it was that this guy who seems to think he can give people a smile forever is clearly mentally unstable (because he... can't draw faces well?) or he has a childish mind. If you think to what makes an urban legend truly gripping, I don't think he really does it, nor did the way the marketing painted that do it either. I don't think he was remotely unsalvageable either because I think the idea of the corpses with the paper bags on them is interesting, or the lack of a discreet figure, and I also think the idea of a paper bag motif being so universal has some elbow grease to be fascinating. I don't know, I think of how something like the Zodiac killer is genuinely scary because to be that elaborate and sadistic (to a point where we never got to any personal details of the supposed killer) is just objectively unnerving if you consider finding yourself in a vulnerable situation with him, and if you pare that to Emio, all you can say about him is that he gives people a smile forever because he kills them and they die and there's a paper bag with a crappy smile on it. I don't think they framed it well.
This epilogue though? Fuck man. FUCK, man. Emio was kind of interesting to track down over the course of the game, and I think it worked him better as an urban legend because you get unnerved thinking about the potential details as they're uncovered. But like... woof. That startling image of his father intimidating him, attempting to belittle his support for his sister, to break him down- an isolated child with no connection to the world around him being torn down by an apathetic monster- and then the ensuing tragedy. The paper bag visual is executed here a lot better because Minoru and Emiko are from a simpler life where they weren't really swept up in any sort of entertainment megaplex, so what they depict through art is as crude and real Human Emotion as it gets. It's really emotional because in that moment, you connect with how they entertain each other in simple ways. The story of Minoru and Emiko's connection is universal, because we all sympathize with what it's like to feel love so carnal and intuitive. That Minoru's abusive father is non-descript and perhaps generic, but provocative and horrendous nonetheless? It hits home with not just abusive familial relationships, but the horror you feel when those who hold hate in their heart excoriate and denigrate someone vulnerable; someone helpless to fight back.
What becomes of that excoriation is much more detailed. It does not hold back on telling you what becomes of a life where emotional apathy and pessimistic self-defensive instinct should take hold- to glamorize the hostility in society and propagate the view of some kind of rat race where vulnerability is not merely weakness, it is suicide, and salt must be rubbed in your wounds until they either don't ache or you die. Those who have this inflicted on them don't "adapt", they become corrupted. They shut themselves in until they become as poisoned as Minoru, who- even through the warm support of the Todoroki family- ultimately had his emotional development stunted and sense of self shrivel up until nothing was left. A monster was created. They were able to find Makoto at the end of the game, but Minoru died long ago, and in his place, a animalistic shell of a young boy took everyone in the same situation with him, wandering the streets and trying to make sense of whatever happened to him by chasing whatever glimmer of joy was left of what he had with Emiko and murdering a ton of children. Whoever "Minoru" was immolated so viscerally that he physically disfigured himself to a point where he wasn't even human anymore.
Just the visual on the Minoru title screen of the smile and the flower with the eye peering through the center is really irksome and invokes a sense of tragedy. It's a poignant visual because through the Junko/Makoto story, the source of the Minoru/Emiko tragedy comes through and disrupts their situation in much the same way. Junko is overcome with a need to act on her impulse, to uphold her dominance and to not just act, but specifically demonstrate her independence and command on her family. Her older, more experienced brother Makoto understands the good-natured intent behind this, and is able to look past it and understand who she is, because he knows what causes her aggression, and he knows it's meant well. When this is taken to a point where Junko exploits Makoto's goodwill and tears it down, they come face-to-face with the same tragedy, and so it spreads again.
I mentioned the Eisuke murder and how Minoru's involvement with it being a farce was kind of a letdown, but that was due to my expectations of the story coming together to make a point of a murderer like Emio suddenly coming back (and seemingly being more tact this time around by using wires. Perhaps a link between the visceral horror in a suicidal tragedy and the original murders? I mean, he did suffocate himself in a way that's more graphic than a noose when you think about it.) Instead, it took on a different angle, where the individual who lived through that breaking point made a decision to break from her shell, to exit her eternal modus operandi of scorching of others' missteps to feel like she could properly castigate hers. In a desperation move, she tries bringing some sense to the horror of why children in what should be optimistic lives with bright futures could end up in a murderous reality. It brings her, and us, through a trip of going through the carnally destructive and laborious feelings of loss are like.
TL;DR I mistook Emio for a character that would instill fear. While he could've, it was more important that this fear took a backseat to his most important mechanism: to depict tragedy. The story of The Smiling Man (within the context of the game more than the marketing tbh) instills fear, Minoru depicts tragedy.
It's not a perfect story and this isn't everything I wanted to go over but this is more-or-less a elaborate enough (you think so?) sampling of why this character makes this narrative so rich to think about.
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a smile that lasts forever"
