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>>Folken Lacour de Fanel>>Equal & Opposite Most of this particular page was not written by me at all, but by my good friend, the guy who introduced me to Escaflowne, K.A. Pezzano. I'm quoting chunks of a post of his to a newsgroup (it may have been rec.arts.anime, but then again it may not - he sent me a copy of what he said because he thought I might be interested) in which he said essentially what I believe about Folken, Dornkirk, what they believe and what they do about it. Kevin was replying to someone else's comments about why the end of Escaflowne, and the end of Folken in particular, disappointed him. (Frankly, I think this person was bats, as he wanted Van to kill Allen and Serena, but that's neither here nor there.) I am doing this partly because I am lazy and partly because Kevin has never gotten around to making his own Escaflowne site (though he always swears he's going to start work on a Hitomi shrine 'next week'), but I think his writing on the subject is too insightful not to be shared with a wider audience. This page is a kind of patchwork of his ideas and mine. So here's Kevin. 'To
me, one of the strengths of
Escaflowne was the
three-dimensional nature
of
the "villains." Unlike in Fushigi
Yuugi, for example, where the
Seiryuu forces
and especially Nakago were just evil cause
they were the Bad Guys,
and
total bastards as a result,
Escaflowne followed the cardinal
rule for creating
sympathetic, GOOD "villains." Folken,
Dornkirk, and company didn't
THINK
of themselves as villains...they were
HELPING humanity. They just felt
that
you couldn't make an omelet without
breaking a few eggs, and their goal
HAD
to be achieved no matter the cost or the
opposition from the other
nations
of Gaea. Dornkirk felt he was doing the
Right Thing all along, and
even
Folken, in the 4th or 5th episode,
explains to Van that he's trying to
eliminate
war through his efforts. 'This
is the same sort of theme that the seminal
anime war story Gundam
expressed...that
there is no black and white. [Kevin's
correspondent complained that 'everyone
turning out good' meant that
Escaflowne did not give a realistic
portrayal of war, death, etc] Did
Char's "turning good" in
Gundam
mean that Gundam didn't take death,
destruction, and war seriously?
Far
from it...it became much more
three-dimensional as a result. 'This, to me, also made Escaflowne three-dimensional. Dornkirk wasn't the villain just 'cause he was EEEEVIL! He was the villain because the protagonists disagreed with his methods...for them, the end DIDN'T justify the means, even if they might have AGREED with the end. Van certainly did, when he "retired" Escaflowne. '...[The
foreshadowing of Folken's death] was
necessary, to make a point about Fate and
how the whole idea of
"control"
is foolish and destructive. It fits in
perfectly with Dorkirk's
eerie
control of fate during the rest of the
series, and is all the more
tragic
because we see it coming, and we see it's
inevitable. FOLKEN sees it
coming,
and he goes anyways, thus strengthening
his character. [The correspondent felt
that Dornkirk should have somehow cleverly
eliminated Folken before he could kill
him.] ...The way it was handled, it
was far more subtle and consistent...
Dornkirk allowed
himself to die because he KNEW there was
nothing Folken could do to
stop
him. Dornkirk's death at that point was
irrelevant... the Atlantis
Machine
had been activated, Dornkirk could achieve
his goal. Remember, he
didn't
want to conquer the world at ALL. He just
needed to seize certain
things,
which unfortunately happened to be in
sovereign countries. Dornkirk
just
wanted to make everyone happy! THAT's what
made him cool... can you
really
fight against a guy who has the best of
intentions? 'Dornkirk also knew that fate would react (the equal and opposite reaction part that Folken finally understands as he dies), killing Folken if Dornkirk himself were killed by his rebellious general. So, in a way, Dornkirk did come up with a way to kill Folken even as he himself died, but in a way that was consistent with both the idea of fate established throughout the rest of the series AND his own non-evil-bastard motivations. And it was good. IMO. 'Dornkirk did what he needed to do, his death didn't matter. He wasn't dedicated to power, like a generic villain-type...he had a Plan, and a Goal, and he carried them out. In Escaflowne, the Bad Guy WON! He started his machine, his Master Plan came to fruition! How many times does THAT happen in drama? 'Of course, things didn't work out the way Dornkirk wanted (which was the main POINT of Escaflowne), but he still managed to "win", which was another cool, unexpected, and clever touch in that show that appealed to me.' After I read what Kevin said about this, I wrote back to him: 'I would suggest, in addition to your comments about Dornkirk, that he is a somewhat chilling figure because his drive is not so much for the good of everyone, as the scientist's ultimate drive to prove his theories, to test his hypothesis, in this case with the fate of a world. To a scientist that can be right, and for everyone's good (especially to a scientist of the Enlightenment, who said things like 'If I seem to see further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants,' seeing himself as part of an unstoppable continuum of ever-greater understanding and control), but it is different from Folken's more emotional perspective. Dornkirk just couldn't stand to die without knowing how everything would turn out, without following the whole thing through to its logical conclusion, without, in fact, knowing what happened after.' Gosh, this page is fun. It makes it sound like Kevin and I sit around having really intellectual debates in which we slightly misquote Sir Isaac Newton all the time, and disguises the amount of time we really spend discussing issues like whether All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku is Y2K compliant. (I'm betting she is, and Eimi isn't. See Nuku Nuku Punch!, another of my sites, for more information on a character I think Folken might have a soft spot for.) Going back through my old files of email conversations with Kevin, I find evidence of another time when we actually said something sensible, this time about Folken's relationship with Nariya and Eriya and how it finally ended his fanatical loyalty to Dornkirk. Kevin: I don't think he let himself understand, since he felt he couldn't return their love. He gave the twins the emotional nourishment they needed, but even they felt it was hollow. He also had no compunctions about using them as part of his plan, even though he was unwilling to risk them needlessly. It wasn't until the very end, when Dornkirk's callousness finally ended his "for the good of everyone" hold on Folken, and Folken realized he couldn't throw away Nariya's and Eriya's lives. Perhaps he didn't LOVE them then, but he realized he was still human, and all emotion wasn't stripped from him to be replaced by cold logical weighing of options. Of course, there's also that final scene of him happily in the arms of the Twins... Me: I believe he did love them, but he had gotten too used to not thinking of his personal attachments as important compared to the Big Giant Plan. I think, up to a point, he would have risked himself just as much as the twins, if it had been expedient. Kevin: He knew that sacrifices had to be made on the road to that (like all of Fanelia!!), but he either reached a breaking point, or couldn't bear to have such a loss so close to him, when Dornkirk ordered him to abandon Nariya and Eriya. Me: I wouldn't interpret this as Folken deciding 'okay, we can kill whole armies and that's okay, but I don't want my kitties to get hurt,' but rather as him seeing the issue on a new level. Perhaps what really made the difference in the end was not merely that Folken still had people in the world that he loved, but that he finally fully understood that there were people who loved him. Through a lifespan of over 200 years, Dornkirk has left the world of human attachments. No-one can reach him in this way. He is pure science, and frankly, pure science is scary. This is why there are stories like Frankenstein. People are rightly unnerved by the thought of what someone might do who is motivated purely by scientific curiosity and not constrained by emotion and humanity. So Folken dies; he dies in a way that is melodramatic, utterly romantic, and possibly quite pointless. This is in itself redemptive. It reminds me of one of the central themes of my favourite books, the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett: 'Personal isn't the same as important.' Whether or not characters believe in this maxim is one of the series' major ways of defining them as sympathetic or unsympathetic. The three most complex and powerful characters of the series, the anthropomorphic personification of Death, nightwatchman Samuel Vimes and archwitch Granny Weatherwax, all wrestle with this concept in one way or another in all their major stories, and the fact that they are never able to reconcile themselves entirely to one side or the other of it is both what limits their actions and what allows them to be effective, instead of becoming self-destructive. Both Granny and Death would tell you immediately that they believe it, while Vimes sort of thinks it ought to be true, but their actions betray that this is not the whole truth. Actually, one way they all get around the problem is by taking important things personally. I can tell you one thing. They would all, immediately, by instinct as well as by reason, be opposed to Dornkirk. (One suspects Death would object to him on professional grounds, since he's always annoyed by people who elude him by underhanded means, and more than 200 years is pushing it a bit.) Folken pursues a belief that personal is not the same as important until the consequences of his own actions show him that in his deepest heart, he doesn't believe that at all. By that stage of his own story, it is too late and things have gone too far for him to find any way to keep going, even with the ambivalence that Death, Vimes and Granny live with. His death is a dramatic necessity, both tragic and redemptive. *sigh* As Death always says (and he always says it in all caps), THERE'S NO JUSTICE. JUST ME. Another thing he's been known to say is TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF EVEN ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD. So, no, he wouldn't like Dornkirk one little bit. |
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