The Technodrome, Giant Robots, and the Collective Unconscious

On most Mondays during the Summer (and some Mondays during other times of the year) some of the Sports Quiz staff can be found at Cosgrove's--a nice, dark little pub on the edge of Green Ridge. Monday night is Quizzo night, which is fun for the whole family if your little ones enjoy hits of the 80's and 90's played at maximum volume, lonely old men, the occasional hip young twenty-something with nothing to do, and a host with a nearly supernatural inability to ask a direct question in less than fifty words.

I was there a few Mondays ago with my long-time friend and brother-in-arms, the playwright Robert John Parry, IV. As he steadily made disappear two white russians followed by a forgotten number of four horsemen (which would be enough to kill or at least induce considerable vomiting in mortal men), the questions became more and more sports-oriented--which is an area embarrassingly far outside of my expertise, while RJP4 is unmoved by our human proclivities for organized sport. Naturally, the conversation moved to a common topic of ours: namely, what in the crimson April fuck is wrong with Japan.

Well, to be fair, the conversation started out with Ninja Turtles. I am fascinated by the Technodrome, the lair/vehicle of the Shredder. From Wiki:

fig. 1.1: "The Technodrome at Sunset."

Even in this dramatic image, the Technodrome shows itself as an imposing and fearsomely ridiculous piece of equipment. The name comes from the German technodrommen, which means "big metal sphere with tank treads and an eyeball on top." Or, perhaps, is a portmanteau of technology and aerodrome. Which would make the Technodrome a really fancy airport. Or maybe they picked drome because it sounds cool, or because it sounds like dome and the whole contraption is kind of dome-like in a retarded way. The mystery continues.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Technodrome was that it was always spoken about as if it were some hugely important and powerful weapon, but always ambiguously. One got the sense that even those that lived inside the Technodrome were uncertain of what, exactly, it did. Perhaps its greatest weapon was the confusion it would most likely cause upon arrival on the battlefield--its mysterious power being its complete inscrutability. And what, exactly, is the purpose of the gigantic eyeball? The Technodrome spent most of its time underground. The giant eyeball seems like more of a hindrance than an advantage in that situation. I imagine it was constantly getting stuck on rock formations. Or perhaps it was just a functionless hood ornament.

Furthermore, one can clearly understand the advantages of an underground lair. One can also clearly understand the advantages of a mobile liar. However, the combination of mobile-ness and underground-ness mitigates the advantages of both. An underground liar is difficult to get to while a mobile liar could be anywhere. If an underground liar is mobile, you are basically constructing a massive tunnel right up to your doorstep--and it can't really "be anywhere" because all one would have to do to find it is travel in one of two directions: follow the tunnel that goes this way, or follow the tunnel that goes that way. Also, cave-ins would naturally be an issue. I doubt the Shredder was some kind of rock doctor.

Aaanyway, RJP4 brought up that in the Japanese version of the Turtles they have the prerequisite Giant Robot which the Turtles drive or pilot or operate or transform into or whatever (I believe I found some evidence here: wait for the credits for the weird robots to start appearing). I also recalled that the Japanese version of Spider-man has this same confusing and unnecessary addition as well. This naturally brings about the question: why does Japan feel the need to insert the Giant Robot into everything--even places where it would be narratively inconvenient for a Giant Robot to be? If Japan does a production of Hamlet, does he scream into a wristwatch at the end, calling forth an enormous robotic version of himself, garbed in gunmetal with its trademark "ray of metaphysical doubt" weapon? And yet, here is Peter Parker, humble freelance photographer struggling to pay the rent--and also endowed with a robot the size of a skyscraper. With which to fight...gang members? Ah, like opening a can of peaches with a shotgun.

Because of the Giant Robots omnipresence not only in Japan's homegrown cultural artifacts but also being shoehorned into their imports and transliterations--regardless of the appropriateness--it becomes clear that the Giant Robot is some kind of Japo-Jungian archetype. Kind of like how all American heroes are basically cowboys in different wardrobes and situations...which is representative of our unconscious love of gay men.

RJP4 and I then spent the next hour or so trying to decipher what the Giant Robot may mean as a cultural symbol. I think most of Japan's fucked-uppedness in the eyes of the West can be traced back to the whole we dropped the World's most devastating weapon on them--twice. Unfathomable violence and destruction has the tendency to make people a little weird. Is it any wonder that the Japanese culture fetishizes innocence to a degree that would embarrass Holden Caufield? I mean, we disintegrated their children.

But that is really a separate and more disturbing discussion. I think that the Giant Robot fetish can also be traced back to that whole atomic business. It makes sense that a people that affected by devastating technology would in turn attempt to anthropomorphize and redirect that technology as some kind of protector. And who is it that almost always pilots or controls these Giant Robots? At least, in the original Japanese TV shows, it's most often children. Done and done. Another culture psychoanalyzed by Canada Jackson and RJP4, Existential Detectives.

The West has their own cultural warnings against nuclear warfare: post-apocalyptic visions of the future where the land is afire and Mel Gibson wanders in the midst of murder machines or vampires or zombies or vampire-zombies. But all of these are insufficient caveats. The strongest reason why we should never use nuclear arms is Japan. Japan shows us that the atomic bomb is more of a pervert bomb than anything else, and we would only surive through fondling each other on subways and showing hardcore animated sex on Saturday mornings.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty..."

But then, perhaps a couple of 20-something Japanese losers are examining our precious Technodrome and proclaiming how it clearly shows our obscene American obsession with small-to-moderate-sized robots and of-age, consenting human sexual partners. Is there nothing that relativism cannot fix?