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A Glitch in the System: Alienation and Glitches in Psycho-Pass
Holthaus, Jasmine Krystina
Holthaus, Jasmine Krystina
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Abstract
This project looks at societal and cultural lessons that help prepare society for the future by analyzing the first season of the Japanese animation Psycho-Pass (titled Psycho-Pass I in this project). While the framework focuses mostly on Western theorists, historical and cultural contexts between Japan and America are noted to show how intertwined media artifacts between these two nations are. Pulling in cultural Marxism and glitch theory to explore how alienated glitches – people ousted by society – challenge societal expectations formed the main framework used for analyzing Psycho-Pass I as a case study. This overarching claim argues that being a glitch in society means to challenge the status quo, but this can also lead to alienation. This framework pulls from Karl Marx’s concepts of alienation; specifically framed by Melvin Seeman, Isidor Walliman, and Frank Weyher. By also incorporating Rosa Menkman’s Manifesto of Glitch Theory and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), the framework shows the interconnectivity of alienation, glitches, and actors, and how all of these, combined, show cracks in a system designed to be infallible. By pulling in Latour’s ANT with Menkman, this framing argues that glitches were designed from the start - that they are a necessary part of any working system, which plays into the “equal-importance” factor of ANT. Even though these glitches are important, the overarching system in power attempts to alienate those glitches because they represent imperfection in a seemingly perfect system. This analysis further expands to implications in the real world that argues and warns over humanity’s potential over-reliance on technology – specifically the type of technology that makes emotional decisions based on logical and mathematical equations.
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2023-05-31
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University of Kansas
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981086_1.pdf
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Rhetoric and Composition, Sociology, Literature, actor-network theory, alienation, anime studies, glitch theory, media analysis, science and technology studies