OhHiRenan wrote:Zephyr wrote:ekrolo2 wrote:
It's still a case of the series annoyingly flip flopping it's stance on things. It's okay to be a selfish battle junkie until it arbitrarily isn't anymore and vice versa, it really starts with this arc hard and nothing that follows manages to remedy the problem.
The Goku who was angry at #20 for blasting innocent people is still a selfish battle junkie. People aren't just one thing or another. Things aren't black and white. You can want a good fight, but still prefer people not to die as a result, if possible. You can be confident in your ability to prevent bloodshed entirely, and be upset when you turn out to be wrong, and try to put a stop to it. People can value multiple things, juggle those values, and have one take overall priority without entirely abandoning the others. Making a big decision in accordance with the more fundamental value, while still acting in accordance with your other values (when doing so wouldn't wholly undermine said prior big decision), is coherent human behavior. That's not flip-flopping, that's...how people think, rationalize, and act. Flip-flopping would be if Goku immediately stopped wanting to fight them altogether.
And, again, the more detached one is from violence and death, the less visceral and emotionally-stimulating it is, and thus the less it compels one to immediate action. It's why, in the "Runaway Trolley" moral dilemma, people tend to be more willing to pull a lever to trade one life for five, but tend to be less willing to physically push another person to trade one life for five (this discrepancy in willingness is commonly rationalized by subjects as the latter involving a violation of personal autonomy, but brain scans, in tandem with some other clever twists, suggest that this is nothing more than a post-hoc rationalization, rather than an actual motive that makes one instance more ethically attractive than the other). Some guy saying "people die in the future" and actually seeing people die in front of you are on complete opposite ends, in terms of abstraction and immediacy.
I feel this is something incredibly important that often gets lost in character analysis within the series. Characters have different reaction for different scenarios, but it seems like many people want to find one common motivator and recontextualize every action to fit through that lens when that is virtually never the case.
Seconding this. Zephyr brilliantly summarized the core crux of much of what I was trying to get across to Gaffer in two simple paragraphs: just because Goku doesn't think far enough ahead and is reckless, doesn't make him a monster who doesn't care when innocent people suffer and die. What it makes him is human, and believably human at that. Whether intentional or not (I'd likely say not of course, but I think Toriyama's gut intuition and instincts here are at least very much sound) Toriyama's depiction of Goku in arcs like this strikes me as more, for lack of a better word, "realistic" and genuine than in a VAST majority of later, DB-derivative Shonen protagonists. It doesn't make Goku RIGHT from a moral or ethical standpoint, nor does it make him thoughtful (Goku? Lacking in thought? Get out.): it makes him flawed, and it does so using both characteristics innate to many martial arts protagonists of his particular type as well as just a simple, and all too commonly overlooked logistical lapse in human psychology that's very much a real thing.
This is what I was also trying to get at whenever I tell people that they're approaching both this series and the characters' from the wrong angle. Whether its conscious or not (and for some folks even who are full-on Japanese version-centric in their fandom, its many times not), there's a LOT of Western fandom who on SOME level approach this series on a gut level as some variation of a superhero narrative where the characters all hold to an innate responsibility to protect others from external threats at all costs as their main motivating priority, as opposed to what it ACTUALLY is, which it not only a martial arts narrative where the characters all hold to an innate drive to improve and test their fighting skills above all else (and only sometimes in some circumstances using them to protect or help others), but furthermore one that's populated with characters that are familiar to fans of Toriyama's other works: weird, selfish, vaguely dickheaded fuckups whose hearts are at least generally in the right place.
But yes, I tend to find that Goku's attitude toward the devastation caused by #20 to ring perfectly true and in line not only with his character, but also with just baseline human psychology (which seemed obvious to me even back in the day as a kid) when it comes to how many people in real life often fail to process the gravity of various life or death dangers unless we're right then and there directly confronted with them face to face.
We see this occur every day in countless people, including right now with current events: not to rope real life politics into this too much, but note the EXTREME disparity in how vast swathes of people will react when confronted with topics ranging from climate change to war in the middle east to racial discrimination in law enforcement: hardly everyone processes the life and death pain and suffering of others in ways that might strike an altruistic mind as logical or moral when that pain and suffering is far enough removed or detached from their personal periphery.
Goku's hardly a very bright thinker (outside of in-the-moment martial arts fighting strategy and techniques) anyway: you expect him to be able to deal with the kinds of moral and ethical dilemmas involving the lives of BILLIONS of people that often completely elude even people with far, far, FAR greater intellects than him? People in real life with PhD's would make similarly wrong and immoral calls when faced with similar kinds of situations that Goku faces in the early Cell arc (i.e. prioritizing the far-off, intangible lives of a faceless mass of people over their own immediate interests and gratification).
I think that a lot of the issue here, again not to sound like a broken record, is baked deeply into how people who read or watch a lot of mainstream nerd media (most of which is either superheroic in nature, or skews relatively close-ish to it) are "trained" over time, both consciously and subconsciously, to process and rationalize character actions in narratives, and looking for a certain moral and ethical "consistency" that matches up with a vague, idealized "heroic" type of character that's often relied upon in fiction in countless zillions of stories (and yes, based on his writing and words, I think that Gaffer's fallen prey to this type of unconscious narrative expectation himself, which is what's fueling his frustrations with the decisions made in this arc: he's more than welcome to by all means correct me there if I'm wrong). Dragon Ball throws people a curve ball in being not only of an Eastern fantasy genre with a baked-in set of archaic and foreign morals that have very little to do with those found in most Western media, but also with very Toriyama-esque characters who are both "quirky" and sometimes too-close-to-reality in terms of some of the basic natures of human selfishness that they often embody.
Of course I don't think that Toriyama had all or any of this at the forefront of his mind when he wrote any of this, and I've no doubt that he was simply writing himself out of a corner here: I just think that his own natural instincts in how he crafts his characters lends themselves to these kinds of more "realistic" depictions of people acting in more self-centered ways rather than always reliably stepping up to the plate and being a perfect, noble, stalwart hero when the chips are down. Because Toriyama is a reclusive weirdo himself who doesn't particularly care about making his characters "likable" in some universal manner: thus, in particularly strange and unexpected ways like this, they often come across as more closer to unflattering reality in terms of their own instincts and behavior than most "idealized" fictional fantasy heroes tend to.
People in both real life, as well as in some forms of fiction, aren't just "one thing" like Zeph said: they're complicated, inconsistent, and make sometimes incredibly gross errors in judgement. I think that Goku's decisions here fall MUCH closer (not exactly the same 1 to 1 obviously, but within the same general ballpark of poorly rationalized and selfish decision making) to the kind of thinking we see in real life where an Exxon CEO circa 1980 will be confronted with a scientific report that fossil fuel emissions are slowly killing the ecosystem and is a long-term threat to all life on Earth as we know it, and instead of taking that warning with the necessary dire seriousness they'll opt to instead sweep that info under the rug and continue to collect his profits and let the future ramifications be someone else's problem decades down the road, as opposed to the "Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor stop and play Skee-Ball in the middle of being chased by the Terminator" example that Gaffer tried to draw a comparison to earlier.
The latter example that Gaffer used wouldn't work for the Terminator's narrative not only because its illogical on its face, but also because it doesn't at all ring true to VERY basic human survival instincts and behavior that we see every day. We're hard wired to treat any IMMEDIATE threat to our safety with the utmost and paramount priority. We're NOT very well wired psychologically when it comes to processing threats that are less immediate and more abstract in nature. That doesn't make that lack of forethought either moral or intelligent mind you: it's just an all too common and tragic flaw and failing in human instincts that's FAR more common and widespread than most are generally willing to realize or admit.
None of this justifies Goku's decisions from an intellectual or ethical perspective, nor does it make him more likable: quite the opposite of course. But it DOES make him, in my eyes anyway, MUCH more believable as a flesh and blood person, and thus more interesting and even - to a certain extent - relatable. And its more than emotionally and psychologically sound and sensible to me that Goku (like most people) would still react in abject horror and outrage when he sees innocent lives violently taken directly the fuck in front of him: despite his own lack of foresight and giving into his slefish desires years earlier helping to directly lead to those lives being endangered in the first place. Again, this is how human minds are generally wired: to react big to immediate problems or threats facing us in the immediate moment, and much less so to far off distant, abstract, potential problems that we can't put a face to.
No, it isn't "logical" nor is it "consistent": but what it is is VERY much human (i.e. beings who are oftentimes
anything but logical or consistent), and all too real of a thing that many people do, whether they understand it consciously or not.
Within the specific context of the specific circumstances that Trunks presents within this story, most people today wouldn't face the temptation to
not react with logical foresight like Goku does here, because most people today aren't fundamentally driven at their core by pushing their martial arts prowess to its absolute limits and beyond. Goku however is a protagonist in a Chinese-derived (and whimsically off-kilter) martial arts fantasy epic, so the call of a great challenge to his skills and an opportunity to further better them will be of a MUCH more enticing clarion call than it would be for character types outside his particular genre neck of the woods, where it might be something more like money, power, status, or love/sex or something along those lines that might tempt them away from reacting with logically sound moral judgement. Thus, the specifics of the details here might be unique or different due to both the genre/character-type and their cultural origins: but the overall basic psychology inherent is plenty universal and timeless to simple and prominant foibles in human nature.
Its VERY easy, as an audience member, to read fiction where characters are faced with over the top levels of danger, threats, risks, and consequences, and say to oneself "that's not how
I would've handled it: if it were ME, I certainly would've done X, Y, or Z which makes MUCH more sense and is MUCH more heroic." But unfortunately, I think that there's FAR more Goku's out there in the day to day real world than there are Supermen or Batmen: people who when faced with overwhelmingly dire stakes and incredibly massive responsibility for the lives of others over a vast amount of time, would place themselves and their own immediate selfish interests above the far-reaching altruistic well being of a faceless, and incalculable mass of "others", while rationalizing to themselves all the while that "It'll all be ok, it'll all work itself out in the end somehow".
Thinking that everyone, or even
most people, would be able to see the obviousness of reacting to a warning like Trunks' with full morally and ethically consistent altruism and foresight, is not only a MASSIVE misunderstanding of fundamentally basic human psychology, it also on some level smacks of thoroughly wishful thinking and rose-tinted idealism.
Yeah, that's a LOT of heady shit to unpack from a dumb, silly, and ridiculous "cyborgs and time traveling insect men from the future terrorize martial artists" wuxia children's comic from the early 90s: but I would think that when an otherwise dumb piece of genre pulp does something in a way that fosters this kind of discussion and thought, even ACCIDENTALLY as the case is here, then that's something that ought to be looked to as a GOOD and POSITIVE aspect of it, rather than shat on because "Boo, I want my genre heroes to be more predictably simplistic, idealized, and "consistent" in their every action and decision, without tangentially reminding me of how horribly broken most people's moral compasses are!"
All the more so in this case, because I don't think that the story necessarily
takes Goku's side in how he behaves: I think that characters like Bulma are much more meant to be the audience surrogate here (the "non-martial artist, normal person's POV" if you will: which is also partly why I'm more than fine with docking points for not having Bulma go off on her own and try to use the knowledge from the future to undo Gero's plans ahead of time without any help from Goku and co. - not only is it indeed out of character for her to not take any action, it's also just a colossal missed opportunity for good drama and storytelling any way you slice it or dice it). Goku isn't at all glorified by the narrative for how he handles any of this: it just is what it is, and Goku's personality and actions are presented in a very matter-of-fact, take-it-for-what-it-is type of manner.
I don't think that DB is thus making some kind of warped argument for thinking and acting like a lunkheaded hayseed kung fu fanatic like Goku does in scenarios like this, so I don't think that this falls under the same heading of "problematic" in the same way that other morally iffy unintentional (or intentional) undertones in other stories (or even a few in DB itself earlier on) often tend to. Its just the character's nature reacting to its logical extreme, and you either go along with it while understanding that its not being either condoned or condemned by the narrative, or you don't.