Pretty much the entirety of this post will be spoilers, so read at your own risk!
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Last night I watched episode 40 of FMA. I found the death of Marta at the end of the episode particularly disturbing, and couldn’t get it out of my head all of today. I’d like to put forward a few ideas about the symbolic power of this particular death and why it seemed to stand out from the others in the series thus far and see what others think, and if anyone had a similar reaction.
First, the viewer does not see Marta die. For a moment, after Fuhrer Bradley withdraws his sword, she is like Schrödinger’s cat, neither alive nor dead, because we don’t really know what has happened. This uncertainty is disturbing and frightening. By contrast, the death of Hughes was clear and unambiguous.
Second, and perhaps most important, is the cluster of symbols surrounding the relationship between Alphonse and Marta at the time of her death. It is critical that Marta is physically inside Al at the time. The only normal situation in which one human being is completely within the body of another is during pregnancy, but here we see all the basic facts of such a situation inverted.
The primary binaries which are inverted here are age and gender. Marta is an adult woman, who is being physically carried within an ostensibly adolescent male. Yet, when we see Marta’s blood seeping from Al’s abdomen – the part of the body where a fetus would be – the image is very reminiscent of a forced abortion or induced miscarriage. Thus it evokes a whole slew of powerful emotions in the viewer. Moreover, Al’s response evokes that of a grieving mother. I don’t mean that this is what the show’s creators meant us to understand about Al’s mental state, but rather they treated his reaction in this way because they wanted the viewer to react to the symbolism of the mother who has lost a child, as it is typically shown in the vocabulary of modern cinema.
The confusing inversions conventional roles extends further to the bodies of those involved. As I said above, Marta is an adult woman, not a child, and the young male Al, is actually not a flesh-and-blood being at all, but rather a barren metal shell, an inversion of the symbol of the fertile mother.
The confusion and tension, as well as emotional turmoil stirred up by these symbolic inversions, and the inherent drama of the situation accomplish two things. They profoundly affect the viewer emotionally, and they brutally reinforce the series’ overall emphasis on the moral ambiguity of its characters. The ability of the supporting characters to confound the viewers’ expectations is one of the distinguishing features of this series, and it is events like this that make them credible.
Your thoughts?
[note: cross-posted to A.N.N. forums]
