CLARA
TEQUILA!
I really liked Psycho Pass’s take on the whole idea of privilege. It’s a pretty common term if you’ve ever gone to the social justice corners of the internet, particularly the ones that use the term ‘problematic’ as often as a teenager uses the word ‘like’. The general idea is that society gives you a headstart in life and provides fewer barriers to progressing because of some inherent traits you posses. A white person gets an automatic headstart in life simply because they are white. So do children born into rich families, or people with certain kinds of accents.
You could also suggest that society is automatically biased against murderers, thieves, sex offenders and so on. Which it is. They don’t get jobs and aren’t allowed take out bank loans and have to inform people they like to stare at children through the bushes. Bias is here because they are provably bad. You have to differentiate between people, or else those good at what they do won’t rise to the top. However sometimes the best people won’t rise to the top because they are victim of circumstances beyond their control. Such as, I don’t know, their skin colour. What if we could simply bypass all discrimination and instantly be able to assign people based on their ability without having to wait to see it demonstrated and acting later?
That’s what the Psycho Pass is. Cut out all that evidence and have a machine that can accurately predict how good they are at each area in life. Saves having a lot of useless people inexplicably rise to the top of big organisations and sending it all crashing to the ground. What this does though is eliminate the feeling that people have any control over their lives, and it shoots right back to privilege. This is why the dude with those dashing hairclips got so pissed off when moe~moe~kyun started complaining about her first world problems. Too much choice eh? Oh how I wish I had your problems.
What I don’t want Psycho Pass to do is reveal that there is a fundamental flaw in the Psycho Pass system and it turns out you can’t read how likely it is that someone will commit a crime. In doing so, it would rob the moral question the show is asking of any gravity. Let’s say in Death Note, it was revealed that Light was killing people who weren’t actually bad at all and were in jail because they were wrongly accused. It would seriously destroy the hard moral question on display, because you can simply fob off whether Light is right by saying that “oh he was wrong because not all of them were actually criminals”. If they did that, you wouldn’t have to face the real question of whether killing criminals and bad people is the right approach.
I don’t want to say “this is what Psycho Pass has to be about”, because I’m more than willing to let it tell its own story. But what they were focusing on in this episode is the importance of choice. While sending people to their best place to work might appear be better for that individual person, the removal of the choice for anyone to make that decision on their own damages the psyche of humanity as a whole. If the reveal by the end is “oh wait, turns out the guns have been measuring wrong all along and they aren’t actually bad people at all”, then I’m going to flip my table in frustration. I doubt it will do that. Butch Gen’s writing may be a little clunky in this episode at times, but I trust him to write a good underlying narrative.
22 Comments
Well, Light didn’t actually only kill criminals, he killed FBI agents and cops and stuff too. Hard Moral Questions are indeed very hard because the power of absolute judgment and corruption go hand-in-hand. The circumstances in the muddy world Urobochi & co. have constructed don’t allow for “pure” debates of philosophy.
Fair point, but they weren’t ‘innocent’. They weren’t accidents because his method was flawed. They were actively trying to get in the way of ‘justice’ so had to be killed
“What I don’t want Psycho Pass to do is reveal that there is a fundamental flaw in the Psycho Pass system”
They already did that. Did you completely miss it?
They showed that the system is disturbing, but that’s not the same thing as a fundamental flaw.
They are perfectly aware of it’s shortcomings, and they live with them.
Alter – think Anon is referring to the first episode, where the kidnapped woman’s status goes from ‘kill’ to ‘stun’. Obviously, the system misjudged things there, as by handling the situation correctly there WAS a chance to bring her back to a safe mental state.
Obviously, there *is* a chance to bring someone back to healthy levels, that’s the whole point of therapy, they even mentioned in this episode that hers is going well.
The numbers getting bigger only meant that she was even more likely to commit a violent crime at the moment (and obviously she was, just look at her on those scenes), so the system decided that arresting her isn’t worth the risk. The heroine just took that risk anyways.
The fuckedupness of the systems comes from the enforcers blindly following a machine’s judgement, without compassion, or without thinking about how the unarmed victim didn’t mean any real danger, no matter how shocked or violent she was atm psychologically.
Yup, the police force saw that there is judgement required in each situation. It’s just most people are blindly following it
THE KARL ROVE EFFECT
I agree that they shouldn’t back off on the guns working, but the Death Note analogy was a poor one.
We KNOW for certain that some convicts must be innocent, that is aready a major argument in death penalty debates. In Death Note, it was clear that Light is taking innocent victims along with criminals, the question was about whether The Greater Good negates that.
Psycho-Pass reminds me of a forum debate I am participating in right now, about a lolicon porn reader in Missouri getting sentenced to jail due to CP laws, and some people claiming that this is a good thing, because he was obviously a menace to society.
Light makes a clear point not to kill people who he deems are innocent in some form, or have cleared up their ways. The part in DN where he hands the notebook to someone else, he starts criticising them for killing people who had seen the error of their ways, saying the real Kira wouldn’t do that.
Death Note is not about the accidental killing of potentially innocent people with a death penalty at all. It’s about why that method has fundamental problems even when you’re killing bad people
You must like this show, Scamp. I think this was one of the most dead serious reviews I’ve ever seen you do.
“This is why the dude with those dashing hairclips got so pissed off when moe~moe~kyun started complaining about her first world problems”
dead serious :P
Isn’t that the inevitable question about death note? How many of the seemingly countless people Light or … his … associates kill are really that “bad”? Even in Light’s estimation. It’s all about perspective; death note, and seemingly, this.
See, I don’t agree with this. Death Note isn’t about perspective on whether the people they killed are bad. He starts off by going after only the most notorious criminals. Does that mean that’s OK and it’s only later on that it’s bad? No, it doesn’t.
“What I don’t want Psycho Pass to do is reveal that there is a fundamental flaw in the Psycho Pass system and it turns out you can’t read how likely it is that someone will commit a crime.”
As I see it, it seems to me they’re saying that there also needs to be a person who bases their judgement on the data provided by the system instead of blindly following what the system says. Or maybe they’re saying the system should include a judgement wheter the cloudiness of a psycho pass is temporary or permanent. Either way the system flawed, but not shot down completely.
Another thing I noticed, the decoration in her house seems to be some kind of holography with tactile feedback thing. Her clothes seem to run on the same technology. Does that mean she was actually naked all this time? Since the medical computer lady put on stockings the way it’s done today.
With regards to the holographic clothing, I don’t think so. Sure they show that she had her breakfast in the nude, but after that it’s shown that she wears her office clothes. Then she chose which outfit to ‘wear’ to meet her friends, before changing back to her office clothes. I think there must be some sort of ‘default’ suit, [theory out of ass] and maybe depending on the brand and quality of said default suit, it has a number of holographic design a user could choose from. [/theory out of ass]
Yeah, I think they’re wearing some kind of base clothing that they modify beyond that. Hence they still need to strip to have sex. It does beg the question of whether one needs to go into a room if they’re going to change. Do people change clothes on the street all the time?
Too few episodes to judge, but if we’re to guess, maybe it’s the norm. I mean, with that much convenience at your fingertips, why don’t you use it and just change on the street?
Something that I kind of expected, but not coming true: authoritarian grimdark cuberpunk setting. Too bad it’s kind of a utopian setting. But it makes sense considering the need to regulate the citizens’ mental state to be always “happy”.
Me, watching first ep of psycho Pass.
“Meh. This Kogami guy sure will be a spiteful arrogant emo guy. Hope he’s not boring.”
After ep 2:
“You are so understanding! You say such a sweet thing to the woman that shoot you. You even smile! I like you already.”
N.B: After lesbian, will we some gays? *cough*
The girl, what’s her name, she’s so cute and it really makes no sense. Why is she so cute?
She’s
SHE’S REALLY CUUUUTTTEEEEEE!!!
Hanawanakana magic.
Was it just me, or did that last conversation between Akane and Kougami seem a bit… abrupt? I dunno, but I found myself thinking “where the hell did this come from?”
I find it interesting that this episode was total turn in direction from the first, in terms of mood and atmosphere. It also slowed down to almost a halt, in favor of world building and character development. I’m glad you’re blogging this though, because this is the show I’ll be really looking forward to this season.