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final-fantasy-as-literature · 5 days ago

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The Bloomian Apophrades of Barret Wallace in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Heya, folk. SPOILERS ahead for FF7 Remake and Rebirth.

If you saw my last post about taking a basic Bloomian critical lens to Loveless, you might remember that I said I was going to write about reading the characters, locations, fiends, and events of Remake and Rebirth through the lens of adapting Xiyouji. This is one of those analyzing Barret Wallace as adaptation of Sha Wujing.

If you think even rudimentary literary analysis is academic hokum reading too far into things, this post is, as kindly as I can say, not meant for you. To the people who enjoy reading and leave kind words even on the posts I've deleted, thank you kindly again.

As this first bit cooks the goose on a silly introduction to what I've picked first, I'll dive right in by explaining why I picked Barret Wallace.

Why Barret Wallace?

Because of John Eric Bentley. I'm not sure I would have ever been confident about the lens if the voice of Remake and Rebirth's Barret Wallace wasn't the talented and kind Mr. Bentley. He's appeared in more things than I can recount, and I often don't even recognize his voice. More than that, he's got a heart for art and the way literature can become performance, and you can see his reborn desire to “value people” and to “love humanity�� come through in his voice work for Remake and Rebirth.

It doesn't hurt that he has apparently been in the world of performance since high school. From there, he went on to get a BA from the University of Minnesota before getting his MFA from the same. I'm not so familiar with that world, but I can't help but feel that his theater training comes through from his silly banter as Barret with Yuffie and Cloud to his campy, almost parodistic, Edmund-like (of King Lear), and dragon-ego-like (of Joseph Campbell) delivery as Varvados. He actually attributes his entry into acting to his education outside of school, though.

In the episode “John Eric Bentley aka Barret Wallace (FFVII Remake) is Inspiring AF” of Gaming and Gabbing by Dayeanne Hutton and Amber Plaster, you can find out that his mother was a teacher that taught him to read early on and instilled in him the idea that “reading opens the door for everything,” eventually countering his questions about things with, “I taught you how to read - look it up.” He explains, “...because of that, I got into Greek mythology - Greek and Roman mythology.” This love for reading, especially of mythology and comic books, made him an insatiable reader, but it also helped him build a powerful memory that resulted in him memorizing and delivering Martin Luther King Jr's I have a Dream Speech at his kindergarten graduation. From there, he elaborates on how his love for mythology and reading pushed him towards acting:

So, years and years go by of me just reading everything I could as far as Greek mythology, and fairy tales, and Grimms’ tales - Grimms’ fairy tales - and, you know, I'm like, ‘How do I find more…’ Then I found out, oh, comic books, you can get a trade paperback. You can get all those volumes in one. So that's how I started doing it in college… and then, as far as Greek mythology goes, I found out there's Greek mythology, there's Norse mythology, there's Roman mythology, there's African mythology. As a matter of fact, in the region of Africa there's different regions of mythology… so I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, Campbell!’ So, Campbell wrote these three volumes of different mythology from different cultures. So, I was like, ‘This is great! I can read for the rest of my life!’ But, because I could read, I was that one kid in class who could memorize stuff, and any time we had a performance, they were like, ‘Hey John, we've got this for you. Do this on stage.’

While he has mentioned Campbell in other interviews, it seems most of his mentions of a fundamental piece of Campbell's monomyth, the maternal or mother goddess figure primarily based on comparing East-Asian Buddhism’s Guanyin and the Christian Mary, are in videos that are now privated or removed. Unfortunately, I didn't save a copy of any of them, but, within those, he explained that his understanding of Final Fantasy VII changed when he became a part of the Remake trilogy and compared what he was doing to the works of Campbell. He went from seeing it as a game with a black man that reminded him of Mr. T to a game making more people and ideas feel seen than just one young black man from Chicago through a loud, shaky caricature.

I don't know the man, but his passion for reading and learning about the stories that make and describe us comes through to me. I don't enjoy auter-focus when discussing works made by teams, and John Eric Bentley helps remind me of the power less acknowledged members of a project can have in its direction and impact. I can feel the fire he uses to light up Barret's eyes when he talks about reading or about Remake and Rebirth when he can't stop gushing about how much these things mean to him and who he is.

Which, speaking of Barret's eyes,

A Pair of Bright Round Eyes and Visual Adaptation

If you couldn't tell, none of the main characters of Final Fantasy VII Remake or Rebirth look quite like Chinese demons or gods. In all, they're pretty human, but that's not at all uncommon in adaptations of Journey to the West, especially modern ones, and Sha Wujing is a character that often gets reduced to human appearance in a way that others don't. It can be easy to glue hair onto an actor's face to make him more like Stone Monkey, to stick a rubber or silicone nose on a character to make him more like Pigsy, or to just rent a white horse to take the place of White Dragon Horse, but Sha Wujing is an indigo hulk with a head of fiery red hair. It can be hard to find a huge man willing to walk around in deep blue body paint, and that would have been extremely expensive for much of history. Instead, Sha Wujing often ends up being like the Sha Wujing of CCTV's Journey to the West in 1986 or that of NTV's Monkey in 1978 - just a guy from China or Japan as is, sometimes with hair dyed red; though, in the case of Monkey, they gave him a bowl cut and a shaved scalp before he even met Tripitika.

Barret Wallace in Remake and Rebirth, though, comes closer to the appearance of Sha Wujing than most actors that have ever openly portrayed him, especially with the addition of John Eric Bentley's voice that can switch from a thunderous boom of righteous fury to a soothing rumble to comfort a found family. On page 422 of Volume 1 of Anthony C Yu's wonderful Revised Edition of Journey to the West, an English speaker can find a descriptive poem of Sha Wujing that says,

A head full of tousled and flame-like hair; / A pair of bright, round eyes which shone like lamps; / An indigo face, neither black nor green; / An old dragon's voice like thunderclap or drum. / He wore a cape of light yellow goose down. / Two strands of white reeds tied around his waist. / Beneath his chin nine skulls were strung and hung; / His hands held an awesome priestly staff (Wu & Yu, 2012, 1; 422).

Image of Barret Wallace retrieved from Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki.

If one reads Remake and Rebirth as an adaptation of Journey to the West, Barret appears fairly close to the Sandy Monk. His tousled and flame-like hair is worn on his shoulder, his eyes shine so bright with amber passion that he often wears sunglasses even in the dark of Midgar to hide his light, his skin stands in contrast to those he journeys with and is neither truly black nor green, he carries a draconic voice like a resounding thunderclap or battle drum, his vest rests in browns and faint yellows like a cape on his shoulders, his two white reeds have become pairs of belts in Remake, he bears the skulls of his past beneath his neck, and no other character has more dutifully carried a righteous weapon - his becoming a part of him.

That priestly, staff, by the way, is often called the Fiend-Routing Staff, and Sha Wujing wielded it as a fierce defender of the Throne of Heaven while he was known as the Curtain-Raising Captain (Wu & Yu, 2012, 1; 425). That leads into the next point of discussion,

Who is Sha Wujing and How is Barret Connected Narratively?

Sha Wujing goes by a few names, and they can change depending on the translator into a given language. Not uncommon for Sha Wujing are Sandy, the Sand Monk or Sha Monk, and Friar Sand. He also holds titles throughout the story, from the Curtain-Raising Captain or Curtain-Raising General before his banishment from Heaven to his position as Golden-Bodied Arhat at the end of the novel. This is not unusual for any important character in the text, as they all tend to have myriad names and titles that range from nicknames and religious titles to outright insults. Pigsy is called Idiot for much of Yu's translation, for example.

Much of the personality and history a reader of Journey to the West gets of Sha Wujing, however, is actually in a poem he gives recounting most of his own history up to his fight with Pigsy and Monkey that can be found on pages 424 to 425 of Yu's Revised Edition. In that poem, he recounts how he gallantly wandered the world in search of the Way until he met a true immortal who showed him the Great Path of the Golden Light.

After this in the poem, Sha Wujing reveals to the pilgrims that he was made the Curtian-Raising Captain by the Jade Emperor, guarding the Throne of Heaven as the chief of its guardians. When the Queen Mother hosted her Festival of the Peach, a festival in which her peaches of immortality are served in Heaven, Sha Wujing accidentally broke a Jade cup. As a result of the Jade Emperor's anger, he was banished to the Earth at Flowing-Sands River. Outside of the poem, the reader will realize that he is the same Curtain-Raising General that Bodhisattva Guanyin tasked with accompanying the Tang Monk when he arrived at Flowing-Sands River (Wu & Yu, 2012, 1; 250).

This, again, reflects in our Barret Wallace as adaptation. While not all adaptations of Journey to the West from 20th Century Japan detail the Bodhisattva Guanyin's visit to Sha Wujing (Such as in the case of Enix's Gensomaden Saiyuki, which will come up when I cover the Trio of Andrea, Madame M, and Sam in relation to the Three), they do usually detail his violent past and former allegiance to some ruling figure before catching their ire.

If Barret Wallace is to be read as Sha Wujing, the breaking of the jade cup that draws the ire of the Jade Emperor of Final Fantasy VII (President Shinra), then, is the destruction of the Corel Mako Reactor. Where Sha Wujing of the 1592 text accidentally breaks a Jade cup in his service to the heavenly bureaucracy, Barret Wallace accidentally breaks his community in his eagerness to welcome the bureaucracy of Shinra when the Mako Reactor Is destroyed. Like Sha Wujing, who is ejected down from his home in Heaven to the Flowing-Sands River, Barret Wallace falls from honor in his home in the mountains to the flowing sands of the Corel Desert, bounded by an impassable river.

There, Barret Wallace begins his own history of man-eating. Where Sha Wujing eats men to sustain his immortal body as a monster cast from heaven and pierced by the swords of the Jade Emperor every seventh day (seven is one of the numbers that appears often within Xiyouji's numerical symbolism, even appearing in adaptations, such as Universe 7 from Dragon Ball), Barret Wallace consumes men through his violent rage against the powers that sent him from their home.

This change in this reading, from eating of innocent human flesh to sustain oneself to killing of innocent people in a fight against the oppressive forces of an untouchable power, reflects to some degree a modern trend in adaptations of Xiyouji. As Hongmei Sun explains in Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Classic, modern adaptations of Journey to the West since the mid-20th century have tended to portray Sun Wukong and his companions as heroes fighting against oppressive forces, people, and beasts. On page 60, she says of her relationship to Sun Wukong and his story,

The contemporary images of Sun Wukong have been so overwhelmingly positive that to me— and to millions of other Chinese readers—the Monkey King is a hero, a role model, and one who is not only fearless and willing to challenge authorities but also loyal to his master Tripitaka and devoted to the goal of the band of pilgrims. Although he had been a trickster figure who embodied contradictory values as portrayed in Journey to the West, or a monkey who made funny moves and demonstrated opera skills in the late Qing dynasty, the Monkey King in the new China epitomizes positive and progressive values for the proletarian revolution and socialist construction.

However, this divergence is not complete, and Barret Wallace of Remake and Rebirth, in this reading, can represent a return to a more traditional perception of the novel while giving new life to the character, as Barret's righteous fight against Shinra is not an unchanging or morally unambiguous fight. Regularly, in the retelling of Remake and Rebirth, does Barret Wallace reflect on the lives he has taken and the consequences of his agreeing to work with Shinra. However, Barret's closeness to Sha Wujing even surpasses other adapted characters, such as Yamcha from Dragon Ball, who did nothing so extreme and bloodthirsty as eco-terrorism in his life as a desert bandit.

How is Barret as Sandy Expanded in Remake and Rebirth?

Easily, one can see his adopted daughter, Marlene, as emblematic of this embodiment of contradictory values expressed across much of Xiyouji. Sha Wujing, who did not have much character background beyond his time as the Curtain-Raising General, is humanized through Barret's adoptive daughter and forced to confront his desire to provide for a generation free of oppression while being willing to tear a city full of innocent people apart to do it. Marlene, then, allows a reader of the text as adaptation to see a side of Sha Wujing that doesn't just use the memory of his man-eating to pass a narrative roadblock.

Within Xiyouji, Guanyin tells Sha Wujing upon enfolding him in the Buddhist journey that he will find use of the eight skulls around his neck, his history of man-eating that Guanyin said was evidence of his sin against himself, when he encounters Tripitaka. When he does at Flowing-Sands River, after a bit of confused fighting with Zhu Bajie and Monkey and a few showcases of his excellent swimming ability, he is tasked by Tripitaka and Mokṣa with constructing an eight-skulled dharma vessel out of those and a gourd to ferry Tripitaka across. While this isn't a series of events with clear symbolism to most English-speaking readers, a reading of Rebirth as adaptation of Xiyouji can help decipher a possible reading of it.

The parallel episode for Barret Wallace in this reading of Rebirth would be in his arc during Corel, the Gold Saucer, and in the Corel Desert. Barret Wallace, whose dog tags in Remake and Rebirth bear his own name and history as an eco-terrorist, confronts his history of man-eating when he is falsely accused of murdering Shinra guards and innocent bystanders in the Musclehead Colosseum. In a confrontation with the actual murderer, Dyne, a mirror of Barret without Marlene to remind him of why he fights and what his limits are, Barret Wallace emerges victorious and reflects on having to continue his Journey for the sake of himself, Marlene, Tifa, and the other family he found along the way. As he pleads with Dyne to value his own life and continue on to see Marlene again, Dyne takes his own life as a victim to suicide-by-Shinra guards, leaving Barret literally and metaphorically broken into pieces, sobbing over his body.

Rather shockingly and abruptly to some people, Dio comes speeding in on an eight-wheeled buggy as Barret mourns his friend. A reading of the text as adaptation of Xiyouji, however, shows how crucial it is to have this moment come immediately as Barret accepts his past and decides to continue on for those around him. Dio becomes the Mokṣa that arrives to instruct Sha Wujing to turn his past, the skulls of his past, into a dharma vessel, an eight-wheeled buggy, in order to continue on the righteous journey for the sake of all sentient beings. Marlene, then, serves as a focal-point for the reader of Remake and Rebirth to understand the importance of limits on one's nature. Without Marlene to direct his fight against Shinra towards a future guaranteeing a better world, Barret Wallace might have become another Dyne, consuming the lives of others until his own was snuffed out in his blind fury. Instead, the reader of FF7 Rebirth as Xiyouji is left with a Barret Wallace as a tool of righteousness that can be turned towards a journey of bettering things for all sentient beings with the Monk, Tifa, at the wheel of the dharma vessel on the journey to enlightenment.

As a more limited parallel, the pilgrims lose this dharma vessel as soon as they cross Flowing-Sands River, with the gourd at the center being retrieved by Mokṣa. Similarly, the narrative use of the buggy in Rebirth is restricted to crossing into the Gongaga region over an otherwise impassable river. This is distinct from the 1997 game, in which AVALANCHE uses the buggy to navigate all the way to the place of Cloud's birth, but it more closely follows the text and symbolism of Xiyouji if Rebirth is read as having the apophrades of the work later in the original authors' lives.

While there are other aspects of the narrative and symbolism of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth that mirror Sha Wujing's presence in Xiyouji, such as when the pilgrims are lost in the black pine forest without Monkey to aid them mirroring the new telling of the events of the Sleeping Forest before Cloud returns to the journey in Rebirth, this is an event in Xiyouji that would have ended the journey without Sha Wujing's presence and history being a part of it. I could go on endlessly about his limited appearances in the novel and how the Remake trilogy expands that if read as adaptation, but I want to end it with that important beat.

In the Future and a Fun Coincidence

Thank you if you've read this far.

I probably won't focus so much on the voice actors of the characters as time goes on, as John Eric Bentley is a rather unique figure in his passion for what he does flowing into passion for what others do. He also seems to be uniquely informed about mythology in general.

Even more, tracking down and listening to or watching hours of interviews adds a lot of work to reading an unfinished game trilogy with hundreds of hours of content as an adaptation of a story with nearly two thousand pages of material (I'm using Anthony C Yu's translation in his 2012 Revised Edition of Xiyouji, as it is popular with English-speakers and contains useful footnotes for context) and countless adaptations from Japan alone before 2015. The only thing I mentioned taking place outside of the first volume of Yu's translation is the black pine forest. I'm also working on another project in relation to this idea, so these just serve as a way for me to get used to writing about these ideas in my free time.

I'm still going to be posting them, though. I'll be writing about Enix's adaptations of Xiyouji influencing the Remake trilogy as adaptation next by focusing on the Trio of Remake as use of the Three from Enix's Saiyuki. That will be a much shorter write and read, as neither set of three is crucial to the story because they are additions to the original story. I don't actually like the manga or anime Saiyuki, so I'm thankful its influence can be seen as limited lol

With that said, a neat little coincidence I found while looking into Japanese portrayals of Sha Wujing is that one of the most famous actors to portray Sha Wujing, Akira Emoto, also played a detective in a 1981 cult classic movie named Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (セーラー服と機関��) based on a novel by the same name. Other than in my reading of FF7 as adaptation of Xiyouji, the only incidence I can find of a Sha Wujing in Japan wearing a sailor suit is in the 2008 light novel series High School DxD in which Sha Wujing, a young girl descendant of the original Sha Wujing, wears a sailor suit dissimilar from much of the rest of the female characters.

Barret and the one Sha Wujing I was able to find wearing a sailor suit. Barret image from Final Fantasy VII State of Play and Sha Wujing from High School DxD Fan Wikia.

Considering that Sha Wujing is legendary for his swimming ability as a desert-dweller, able to outrun even Monkey in the water, I'm surprised more adaptations don't associate him with water. In any case, Remake as adaptation makes him a powerful swimmer in the Mythril Mines (with even John Eric Bentley highlighting his swimming on Twitter, saying, “Man that big dude sure can swim fast!!”) and plops him into a sailor suit so convincingly that a captain can't help but think he belongs on the water.

Again, thanks for reading if you did. Remember to, in the words of John Eric Bently, "love humanity" and that "reading opens the door for everything."

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