#the manga cap will make sense to people who have read the recent jake and dirk post

[mmmmalo]

FMA: Symbols of Desire

Rereading Fullmetal Alchemist recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the story functions on a dream logic similar to Homestuck (or Berserk or Armageddon) -- the world and its events are shaped largely by the fears and desires of the protagonists, up to and including the actions of the Homunculi, who seem to serve as agents of the aforementioned fears/desires in much the same way that Homestuck’s imps and trolls manifest in response to emotional triggers. For example: Mustang talks about his wish to usurp King Bradley, and suddenly Gluttony is on the roof. Another point: one of Mustang’s subordinates seeks to acquire Dr Marco for questioning on the philosopher’s stone, but Envy steps in to claim the doctor while wearing the subordinate’s face -- wish granted, but the wish is revealed to work against you.

The symbols of desire are manifold: the eye (fixated upon the object of its wish), the mouth (it hungers), and the ouroboros (the eternal glutton and brand of the homunculi, desire incarnate). This is part of why Gluttony’s stomach has a huge eye in the middle of it,why the original homunculus looks like an eyeball in its flask, why the mouth and eyes dotting Pride’s shadowy form have an identical crescent moon shape -- all are interwoven with the central motif of the wish. Based on Pride, we might conclude that the moon itself becomes a fourth symbol of desire, especially since the eclipse turns into a giant eye in the sky as some sort of gesture toward the grand, terrible scope of Father’s wish. (Berserk did the same thing by having an eclipse coincide with Griffith’s big wish!)

Yet a fifth symbol here is the Gate of Truth itself, yet another mouth filled with grabbing hands and a great eye -- for Edward to trade his gate for Alphonse’s body becomes a very Buddhist gesture, as though this story about battling the twisted desires driving the world to ruin culminates in the renunciation of desire itself. 

Or at least that’s my present take -- there’s a great deal of symbolism in the story that still escapes me. For example, state alchemists seem to function as symbolic extensions of the Elric brothers, but in a way that differs somewhat from the homunculi. For example, when Ed loses his (mechanical) right arm, he is escorted to his repairs by the “Strong Arm Alchemist” Major Armstrong, who emphatically flexes his right arm throughout the chapter to assert that his entire character embodies the lost arm. Or again, consider how the false religion Ed topples in chapter 1 is specifically devoted to a /sun/ god, linking the burning star to patriarchal authority -- would Ed’s aggression towards the “Flame Alchemist” Mustang then be linked to a general pattern of aggression towards God/Sun/Father figures?

Which leads us to some weird loose speculation.

The Sun and Moon represent the Masculine and the Feminine, respectively -- this is implicit in some of the points above, but made explicit in chapter 105 in a flashback about Ed and Al pondering the creation of a “perfect being”. This in turn feminizes the various symbols of desire listed above -- or rather brings out some the yonic subtext. Gluttony’s rib-toothed bloody maw has hints of vagina dentata -- and the inside (an endless field of blood) has more in common with a womb that a stomach. The question becomes then, what is the purpose of all sexual imagery? To what end does the fantasy take place?

The specifics in this case still elude me, but the basic idea is that the Elric brothers’ united wish to bring back their dead mother disguised two distinct wishes: Al wishes to /be/ a mother I think, while Ed gets the more standard Oedipus complex.

Al hides a person in his iron belly, and when King Bradley kills them, Alphonse’s memories of trauma come flooding back to him. It’s not just the blood getting splashed on the sigil -- the event itself is a metaphor for miscarriage, as though the Wrath of Father God himself has interceded and said no, you are not allowed to have a child, know your place. The event nearly repeats itself later when Al hides May in his armor and Bradley gives him a good stab just in case -- but fortunately May was able to come to term that time?

There’s also a one-off gag where Al hides an Xingese alchemical circle of creation in his loincloth -- creation being the feminine complement to masculine destruction. (A paradigm established by Scar’s destruction/creation arms, which match up with Kimbley’s sun/moon arms in right/left alignment) So for Alphonse at least, the failed transmutation of his mother was experienced as a failed childbirth...?

Edward I’m less sure about, if only because the symbolism of arms confuses me. If Arakawa is actually using Freudian motifs, then the loss of leg/arm could function as symbolic castrations that are the archetypal punishment for boning the mother... buuuut unlike Alphonse, I was never able to find anything to support Ed’s case besides “aggression toward the Father”. Still, given Arakawa’s interest in combining western and eastern esoteric tradition (expressed via the overlay of transmutation circles), I think it would be interesting if she was proposing Buddhist enlightenment as a route to transcend the Oedipus complex.

(And as a final note, this would explain the disparities between Ed and Al’s punishments -- Ed wanted to be “in” the lost mother and thus lost a piece of himself, while Al wanted to “be” the lost mother and thus lost everything?)