Broken Zipper

At the reception for the 2013 Gender Matters Conference, my colleague scanned the room as I warm-heartedly ridiculed the only question we were asked about our paper. I had imbibed some free wine and my inhibitions were dampened. In retrospect, I hope that sweet little man did not hear me or was not offended. Asking questions is often an odd and tedious ritual that I find myself unable to do.

I rarely have questions. I rarely try to be persuasive because the truth is inconsequential to me. I am only interested in possibilities. I only want to hold some small aspect of the human experience before it collapses into oblivion.

A tender attention to small things may be our last defense before we are lost to the excess of the industry of academic thought.

Does anyone in living memory remember it fall?

The slow descent of the vast white carcass could not have darkened our heavens. What light have we ever had from them? Those who need light must rely on rare bioluminescent fish to open the crushing murk of our world. Yet the white carcass festooned with harpoons and long sodden ropes obviously fell.

The first generation must have read the grey scars and scarlet wounds as awful hieroglyphs—ineffable wisdom we claim to inherit.

Our generations have explored the rancid cathedral. Each new chamber, a world we declare discrete. There was never anything there except the armor that once protected a living creature.

But as we scuttle on the silt and long masticated gore— we live in half-time. We are at heart bivalved. Beat one-consume. Beat two-excrete. There is no grandeur but the carcass. Most of us keep to the axiom we are what we eat and claim to be whales as we scurry blindly through labyrinthine bowels.

The wisest know we eat leftover filth and can at best shit fine silt for the growths to come.

Walking down a narrow hallway, I was flanked by first semester college freshmen. Normally, this translates to a combination of unjustified arrogance and irrational timidity. Since it was Halloween, a third of the population wore costumes. I had become so unfamiliar with the young adult insistence on being juvenilized that I winced as I passed.

A few of the girls had attempted sexy outfits. They were successful, I suppose, since, the heteronormative bucks were boisterous in their harassment-cum-flirtation. One fay man wore snug yellow sweat pants, a T-shirt, and a headband with large yellow ears with black tips. He had painted red circles on his cheeks. His Pikachu costume was not essentially sexualized. But his infantilized attention seeking and his sinuous movements imbued the character with erotic coyness not inherent to the show.

Pokémon (or the delightfully suggestive Pocket Monsters) was a cultural phenomenon that began during my adolescence when I made the conscious decision to turn my back on childish things. I watched kids who were born in the decades after me fall into the addictive play. I assumed much like Tamagotchi it would fade into pop cultural obscurity.

It did not.

I am still apathetic about the phenomenon. But a suggestive Tumblr thread showing a nude Ash Ketchum (the cartoon’s protagonist) caught my attention. The first images seemed to be stills from the show. They depicted prepubescent bodies. He was naked but desexualized. Some people posted comments on the images questioning them inquiring on their authenticity. This activity suggests their potential realness—and an uncensored Pokémon that exists out of reach of most fans. This potential parallel authenticity creates an interesting paradox in which it delegitimizes the presumably censored American show. Most of the serious aficionados indicate that these images are fraudulent but humorous.

The frequency of the reposts suggests a combination of popular and prurient interests in such images. The novelty of a beloved character becomes conflated with the titillation of a pederastic suggestion. A quick Google search reveals a whole genre of Yaoi and Slash images devoted to a sexualized Ash. He is cast as a twink pin-up or an insatiable lothario. In one case, green vines violate the Pokémon trainer in cliché tentacle porn fashion. In another, he is submissive to the passions of his beloved Pikachu. Instead of a counterfeit plane, these images knowingly riff on the series. Some even include fanfic devoted to fleshing out particular images.

The sexualization of cartoon images is nothing new. Tijuana Bibles perverted many famous characters including Betty Boop, Popeye, Donald Duck and Charlie McCarthy. The use of these characters that goes against copyright defies any corporate attempt to control pop culture. However, the sexualization not only acts to liberate the figures from their corporate masters.  It, also, transforms nostalgic object into ironic totem. These totems no longer allow Poké enthusiasts access to a simple illusion of childhood. They are displaced into the adult realm of pornography. 

Casual libidinal forces erode the impotent attempts to retain true immaturity.