All the Advantages are All the Disadvantages
Seeking a smaller, safer life misses the point - and isn't safe
A Link
Here is a link to the article that I refer to below. This Man Married a Fictional Character outlines both the real story of a actual person and a trend away from the real.
A View
There is a phrase in French that describes a truth that transcends time and culture: O la vie est dure, Mais Dieu est bon si bon. I am going to assume you don’t speak or read French. I don’t - I really hope what I copied and pasted above is correct. If you know French, feel free to let me know if I have made a mistake. The translation is: “Life is hard, but God is good.”
Anyone who has been married for any length of time can tell you that marriage can be hard. Anyone who has children can tell you that parenthood can be hard. Anyone who has had a job for any length of time can tell you that employment can be hard. The list could continue - you know what I mean. Life, real life, can be difficult and challenging and painful. We have good days and bad days, we fall short, we are disappointed and we disappoint. That isn’t all of this great big real story we are in - but I think we all can agree it is part of it. If you sign up for the full experience, if you step into your calling, your mission, your purpose and live life - you will have difficulty and pain alongside joy and accomplishment.
Jesus told his followers,
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Here we are called into living out our full story - and we are assured that we will have trouble, promised that we will personally experience it (though we often seem surprised when it comes), and that He, both part of our story and transcending it, has overcome the world. Trouble will not (or need not) have the final word. But trouble will get some of the words along the way.
This came to mind as I read the story in the link above - This Man Married a Fictional Character. We meet Akihiko Kondo, who, at least partly because of the trouble and pain he had experienced in his story, married (in a formal ceremony with a pledge of lifelong loyalty) a fictional character. He is betrothed to
“Hatsune Miku, is a turquoise-haired, computer-synthesized pop singer who has toured with Lady Gaga and starred in video games.” (NYT)
This relationship came out of, in Akihiko’s telling, many things - including previous romantic rejections, bullying at his job, and a rejection of cultural norms. He says she makes him smile, so, in that sense, she is real to him. This, while his real family and co-workers that he invited to the ‘wedding’ ceremony all failed to attend.
Mr. Kondo, who “sees himself as part of a growing movement of people who identify as “fictosexuals”, says that
“life with Miku … has advantages over being with a human partner: She’s always there for him, she’ll never betray him, and he’ll never have to see her get ill or die.” (NYT)
Of course those are advantages. But all of those advantages are also all of the disadvantages, the fatal flaws, proving ‘she’ isn’t real. She isn’t really living out her own story arc that has become a part of his story arc. She isn’t really living. In avoiding all the pain, Akihiko also avoids the real. And we are made for the real - even though we will find trouble there. Maybe because how we live in and respond to the trouble is one of the most real aspects of a full life. We don’t usually go to the movies to watch a depiction of an uneventful day in a serene life - as nice as that may be to live. The interesting parts are when something happens that causes some sort of trouble. If the goal of life is to miss all the trouble, I think we will end up missing all the interesting parts - all of the parts that have meaning. We will miss the real.
There are a number of fictional portrayals of relationships like Mr. Kondo’s. Spike Jonze’s science-fiction romantic drama Her portrays a relationship between a man (played by Joaquin Pheonix) and his virtual digital assistant (voiced by Scarlett Johansenn). Ridley Scott gives us a relationship between a replicant (who comes to hope he may be human - played by Ryan Gosling) and a hologram (who tries to give him as real a relationship as possible - played by Ana de Armas). The Black Mirror episode Be Right Back (Season 2, Episode 1) shows a grieving widow purchasing a lifelike robot of her recently deceased husband. One of the earliest of these depictions comes from Ovid’s story Pygmalion, where a man seeks to bring a statue to life.
But it is the wonderful little 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl that might give us the best insight here. In Lars, Ryan Gosling’s character (Lars) develops a relationship with a full size, lifelike doll named Bianca. Like Akihiko Kondo, Lars comes to this place in response to the pain and trouble he has experienced in his life. I won’t spoil the movie, because you should watch it for yourself, except to note that Lars' story is redemptive and that Bianca serves as a doorway back to the real life from which he had already withdrawn. Redemption is not retreat, it is engagement with a life that can be very hard.
While relationships with fictional characters may be a growing trend, at least in Japan, there are avenues of retreat from the real, potentially painful, world that many more people choose both all over the world. While there are those who find a community of friends among those they play online games with - gaming is for many a retreat into a world of fictional characters, story arcs, battles, and romances. A little retreat can be fun - a full retreat leaves you outside of your real story. Pornography is a retreat into pretend intimacy with fictionalized images. Some have asked me where the harm is. I think there is lots of harm to be found in the real production of these fictionalized images to name just one. Still, some may say, using the words of Akihiko Kondo toward his fictionalized partner, that porn “has advantages over being with a human partner: She’s always there for him, she’ll never betray him …”. And, as before, those are the disadvantages. There is other harm, but the retreat is the harm I am thinking of at the moment. It isn’t real. We were made for the real.
Perhaps more subtle avenues of retreat are taken by many - work, social media outrage, cable news outrage, sports fandom (and outrage), online shopping. All sorts of things that, unlike marrying fictional characters, might be fine in small doses or perhaps in moderation (although some of those I avoid completely). But these things can be leaned on too heavily to form a path away from a life anchored in the real. All of us, to some degree, may find our way down some of these paths at points.
“Moe” is a Japanese word (transliterated into English, of course) that describes something that people find viscerally adorable. In Japan, there is an entire moe market, as it is called. But an attachment to a character isn’t unique to Japan, all of us can perhaps identify with a character in a fictional work. There is a certain appropriate identification that helps us understand our own story, perhaps. But as C.S. Lewis explained 80 years ago, when we try to give a secondary good a primary place, we don’t get the primary good we should (because the secondary thing can’t provide it) and we lose the ordinary and appropriate enjoyment of the secondary good.
The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping.
(C.S. Lewis, First and Second Things)
Trying to seek the real in what isn’t proves to be the ultimate disappointment - another hard thing in a life designed to avoid them. Mr. Kondo has in some sense discovered this truth regarding the hologram version of his bride.
As with any marriage, there have been challenges. The hardest moment came during the pandemic, when Gatebox announced that it was discontinuing service for Miku.
On the day the company turned her off, Mr. Kondo said goodbye for the last time and left for work. When he went home that night, Miku’s image had been replaced by the words “network error.”
Someday, he hopes, they will be reunited. Maybe she’ll take on new life as an android, or they will meet in the metaverse.
Either way, Mr. Kondo said, he plans to be faithful to her until he dies. (NYT)
As with any marriage? Faithful until he dies? I think a big part of him is in danger of doing just that. I hope he follows Lars' path back to the real, hard, interesting, and meaningful life we are made for.
O la vie est dure, Mais Dieu est bon si bon.
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Mike do you think we (Christians) do something similar on a cultural level? We have our own movies and music and language etc and typically interact with like minded people in a Christian sub culture that’s outside the rest of the world. In doing so, we often don’t face into the hard work of building meaningful relationships with people not like ourselves. But it doesn’t seem as strange as Akihiko’s actions because we all do it. Yes/no?
Fascinating and challenging, Mike. I saw the Lars movie a few years ago and thought it was brilliant. On the surface, the scenario seems ridiculous, but I can see how a “relationship” with a constant would seem like a safer choice for people who have been damaged by others.