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bthump · 6 months

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What are your thoughts or analyses on the phallic imagery in berserk? Less so the more obvious ones like seen in Casca’s nightmares which are obviously pointing to her sexual trauma, but like we see with the vagina-esque monsters and how Guts’ sword is alluded to being like a penis in some cases. Sorry if it’s a weird question lol

Sorry for the wait on this lol, I was on vacation for a while, and it's also a topic I wanted to spend some time on because I love it and I wanted to be relatively thorough. Thanks for the ask!

So yeah, disclaimers out of the way, Freudian analytical theory is very silly, very gender essentialist in ways that can often be transphobic and misogynist, and as far as I'm aware pretty much wholly unrelated to real psychology. Back in the 70s and 80s you had film theorists who took it seriously as a genuine glimpse into the subconsciousness of humanity or whatever, but now it's pretty much just a readily available source of sex and gender related symbolism that's easy to understand.

And in Berserk I do genuinely think it's a valid lens to view the story through because Miura is often quite heavy handed in utilizing it as symbolism. I mean, Guts literally gives someone an orgasm by stabbing her at one point. Some of this can definitely be a stretch, taking established symbols and running with them, but some of it is also almost certainly purposeful. I'll leave it to you to decide what you see as legit and what you see as stretching believability here.

This is very long lol

So yeah, it starts off strong in Berserk with Guts' oversized sword. Swords are dicks, ie sources of masculine power, especially in Berserk

and in the context of the story the dragonslayer is Guts overcompensating imo. And it's not compensating for a small dick lol, which would be more the purview of comedy, but for a loss of masculinity, ie Guts' childhood abuse from Gambino, and rape trauma. It's about his need to prove himself because he was made to feel like he had to, imo.

And it's not just the size of his sword, his obsession with it is also a major factor. He has a grandiose speech about how his sword is like a part of his body (hmm) and that it's been at his side through everything and he's always relied on it. The dream he lands on is to be the best and strongest sword fighter ever. He's currently having a breakdown over not being able to hit someone with his sword. He has a recurring tendency to break other guy's swords lol. At one point Casca screams at him that he essentially cares about his sword more than her. etc etc.

In the story dreams are at odds with emotionally healing human relationships, and dreams are represented by swords (Guts' sword obviously, Casca becoming Griffith's sword, Griffith calling the throne a sword while taunting the king in the dungeon as well as his vision of himself throwing him a sword and pointing to the castle in chapter 72).

So through a Freudian lens, Guts' sword can also be said to represent emotional isolation, positioning masculinity as emotionally isolating. Which, yk, fits with Griffith also equating dreams and masculinity in his Promrose Hall speech (a man must achieve a dream before he can have a family or lover) and, I suppose lol, Casca getting "softer" and more feminine as she falls for Guts, as femininity is therefore the opposite: emotional reliance on and support of others.

So if swords are dicks, then it follows that wounds are vaginas, ie yonic symbols. Also pretty obvious when you read some of the lines during the Guts and Casca sex scene lol. "I too want a wound I can say you gave me." These can represent weakness and victimization (I did warn for misogyny lol) and/or (often sexual) relationships and emotional openness.

So you have the relationships - "licking wounds" with Casca; Guts letting Casca stab him when he thinks about abandoning Griffith; the Beast of Darkness calling Casca the wound Griffith left so Guts can keep feeling the pain Griffith caused; Griffith scratching his own shoulder where Guts' sword pointedly didn't wound him; Griffith being out of reach of Guts' sword post-Eclipse; "let's give him a heap of raw iron;" and Farnese grinding on Guts' sword while possessed and Slan directly treating being stabbed as sexual penetration for the most obvious examples...

Also I'd argue that any time Guts gets his ass kicked in a fight it functions as an echo of his rape trauma symbolically and subconsciously to Guts. Both kinda obviously at times, like eg when Slan overpowers him and tears off his shirt while wounding his chest, and kisses him after the stabbing, causing Guts to feel a burst of fear

or when Rosine stabs Guts through the mouth as another enemy who flirts with Guts mid-fight. And of course the first duel with Griffith in which Guts unilaterally sets the stakes to sex slavery because he's projecting.

But also a little more subtlely, such as when Zodd is given the same position as Nightmare Donovan in Guts' concussion nightmare after he kills Adonis, or all this consistent imagery that rapists and apostles tend to get.

Or, interestingly, the way the Berserk armour functions as self-harm as Guts fights by penetrating Guts to "heal" him.

Something that solidifies its hold over Guts and makes him lose more and more of his positive humanity to his urge to kill.

So yeah, from a Freudian angle I'd suggest that Guts is driven to fight to reclaim the sense of masculine power he was stripped of when he was raped, and every fight can be said to be a repetition of his rape trauma in which he (usually) successfully fights back, but also continuously retraumatizes himself rather than healing.

I'm going to delve a little deeper into how phallic and yonic symbols intersect with the characters' relationships now that we've outlined some of the preliminary symbolism, starting from the Golden Age.

The first duel between Guts and Griffith is rife with Freudian symbolism, very overtly. Griffith stabs Guts and then Guts proceeds to have a nightmare about his rape trauma. Then he projects that trauma onto Griffith when he assumes Griffith wants to fuck him and adds sexual stakes to their duel. Then, yk, he takes Griffith's sword into his mouth lol.

Griffith winning by dislocating Guts' arm can be easily taken as a symbolic unmanning/castration, nicely introducing us into Guts' three years of growth towards prioritizing relationships instead of aimless sword-swinging to prove himself. It's also suggestive of penetration when you're primed to look for sexual symbolism (and if Guts offering Griffith his ass and then biting a sword doesn't prime you for it, what does?):

And the two of them losing their swords in the course of the fight and resorting to unarmed combat can also be taken as a telling symbol of the conflict between dreams and their relationship with each other. They lose the symbols of their dreams and contend only with each other, in a more positive contrast to the second duel that ends their relationship, in which they fight only with swords and never touch each other.

Wounds come into it when Griffith nearly gets killed rushing in against Zodd to save Guts, leading to the most impactful moment of their relationship, where Griffith admits he did it solely for Guts' sake and had no other reason. Griffith also points out how wounded Guts is after that fight, in what I'd call a nearly flirtatious way:

And if you follow these symbols completely strictly this scene suggests Guts retreating into his defensive masculinity in his sword exercises after being defeated/emasculated by Zodd and accused of not valuing his personal relationships by Casca, and finally finding a new, more constructive purpose for his sword after Griffith essentially confesses his devotion to him.

Dedicating his sword to Griffith in return for the wounds Griffith suffered for his sake, with, it has to be noted when the topic is freudian symbolism, his sword held at exactly crotch level.

In the second duel Guts destroys Griffith's sword before leaving, a symbolic castration which is most likely intended to represent and foreshadow Griffith's subsequent loss of power when he throws his life away and ends up tortured in a dungeon for a year. More interestingly imo, is Griffith tracing scratch-markes on his shoulder after sleeping with Charlotte and while crying over Guts - the same shoulder Guts' sword didn't quite hit when he won the duel, drawing attention to the lack of a wound by Guts' hand, a wound he created himself and traces in his devastation.

You have a nice... I don't know what the comic terminology is lol so I'm just going to call it a match-cut here, with Griffith and Casca both getting penetrated by the same number of arrows/skewers, to signify Griffith and the Hawks' fall from power, in contrast to Guts' growing phallic power as he pursues his sword swinging. Power which he demonstrates when he returns and saves the Hawks and Casca and Griffith by swinging his sword a lot and defeating a lot of powerful enemies and, if I'm gonna be crass, healing Casca's suicidal despair with his dick lol.

Interestingly though, before he does that he lets Casca stab him while experiencing the guilt of having driven Griffith into a torture chamber by leaving. It's a wound that highlights his emotional connection to Griffith and vulnerability to those emotions, even as he tries to deny them. He then manages to successfully deny them for a little while longer after having sex with Casca.

In this Freudian context, Guts and Casca's sex scene is an affirmation of a relationship, but one which is emotionally uneven, with Casca ready and willing to emotionally rely on and support Guts, but Guts still dedicated to his sword-swinging dream, inviting Casca with him but only as long as she doesn't get in the way of what he wants to do. This does fit with phallic symbols being associated with emotional distance and yonic symbols being associated with emotional closeness lol. (Also fittingly, the one way he does open up to her is about his rape trauma after a flashback.)

It's worth noting that in this disconnect Casca erroneously assumes Guts fought the hundred men and "bled" for her, making her want "a wound" from him in return. Guts fighting those hundred men is much more reminiscent of his fights against apostles, the fights that revolve around replaying his rape trauma to make himself feel better. Casca assumes they already have an emotional bond due to Guts' wounds, but she's wrong - Guts specifically thinks to himself during the hundred man fight that he's not doing it for Casca.

This is reflected in the Wyald fight when Guts insists on fighting Wyald, again as part of the whole reaffirmation of masculinity thing I outlined at the start of this, when Casca just wants him to run away. The Wyald fight is pretty overt about being about Guts' rape trauma imo, moreso than most fights in the story. Wyald's rapiness is made a point of from Guts' point of view when he sees him wielding the torso of a woman sexually impaled on a pike and gets extra angry, and when he literally cuts off Wyald's dick when he's about to rape Casca, and then has his pointed line about needing to "settle the score with him... with them... by his own sword."

SO ESSENTIALLY to sum up this subsection, I think you can argue that what prevents Guts and Casca from being an equal relationship is Guts stlil being hung up over needing to prove his masculine power through sword-swinging, rather than embracing his emasculation (which, remember, tends to signify positive relationships in this context) and coming to terms with it ("immersing himself in sorrow" as Godo says much later.)

Like, to return to Griffith, it's fitting that after Guts destroys his sword and he goes through a year of torture and is thoroughly emasculated, he's able to recognize his feelings for Guts and understand that Guts is more important to him than the dream, the "sword called the throne."

But he doesn't quite come to terms with his emasculation either. This symbolism is one explanation for the wagon scene where he propositions Casca - a desperate bid for some form of power. Not the strongest explanation imo, but since we're currently in the business of actively looking for this symbolism, it definitely fits. Casca's rejection and pity reinforce Griffith's emasculation, and overhearing her tell Guts to leave again is the final straw. Relationships are a bust, swords are now his only recourse, as we see when he has a vision of himself throwing him a sword and pointing to the castle.

You could take the nightmarish vision he has of a life with Casca as Griffith rejecting emasculation, but an alternate way of taking it is Griffith regaining a form of phallic power, and the emotional isolation that goes with it. After all, it's implied that he has a child with Casca, while totally withdrawn and emotionally isolated.

I once said in a different silly essay that Griffith choosing the dream is, in a way, Griffith choosing another version that nightmare, and that take also fits here.

And hey, it's another reason for Femto to rape Casca lol, if we want to ascribe meaning there, and of course we must in this kind of analysis. In the wagon Griffith essentially offers sex to Casca for the faint vestige of masculine power it could give him (emotional isolation and a child); in his nightmare he imagines that life and it drives him to suicide; and after becoming Femto he forces sex onto Casca and then continues on to embody emotional distance and masculine power.

This power is painfully demonstrated through the rape of Casca, but also subsequently through his pure untouchability (often in pointedly sexualized contexts); through his phony relationship with Charlotte and ascending to the ultimate patriarchal role of king/emperor and taking that sword called the throne; and I guess also through his actual sword lol which he still uses.

An example of sexualized untouchability - check out the positioning of that third thought bubble, in this scene where Griffith lords his invulnerability over Ganishka.

And look at all those pillars, I'm js.

And I'd be remiss not to point out the most recent confrontation with Guts where Guts tries many times to hit his naked body with his giant sword, completely fails, and then Griffith kidnaps Casca. More very on-point emasculation symbolism, it might as well be Guts trying to fuck him but unable to get hard lol. His breakdown afterwards doesn't do much to disabuse you of that notion either.

Anyway, back to post-Eclipse Guts. There's not much else to add that I didn't cover at the start, but in brief:

Guts has lost his arm during the Eclipse, which is an emasculation - he loses it while watching Femto rape ~his woman~ so it's like the most traditional symbolic castration there is lol. And of course he replaces it with a bigger, better, and more overt phallic symbol: a canon. And like the first thing we see him do with it is shove it into the mouth of a monster he's banging and blow her head off. So yk, there's that.

And there's Puck, who exists to help bridge Guts' emotional distance and essentially serves as the feminine counterpart to Guts' masculinity for a while. From his magical empathy, to his tiny size, to his lack of genitalia (note that in Freudian theory the lack of a penis is an indicator of femininity rather than specifically the presence of a vagina), to his connections with female characters Theresia and Jill, even arguably to his introduction where Guts saves him from a bunch of men throwing phallic knives at him by skewering them with his own (bigger) projectiles, this is consistent during the Black Swordsman/Conviction arc era.

Chestnut Puck is a lot more boyish, with his particular humour, his cameraderie with an annoying teenage boy, and now having his own feminine counterpart in Ivalera, but that's fine because his thematic job as a feminine influence on Guts is over after Guts starts collecting more friends.

And as far as the RPG group goes, there are a few notable instances of phallic symbolism for them too. Farnese and Serpico are an obvious example, with Farnese sexualizing the wounds Serpico voluntarily suffers for her, when she demands he duel for her honour a bunch of times.

Farnese brandishing the end of her whip at him doesn't hurt the freudian power dynamic symbolism either lol.

In the Conviction arc Farnese wielded a sword she was incapable of using, suggestive of her true femininity under a brash masculine surface, and when she softens in the Millenium Falcon arc she becomes a caretaker with only a small dagger for self-defense. That said, she does get that epic moment of stabbing a tiger in the eye with a long silver pole (candlestick) when she rejoins Guts' crew rather than becoming a housewife, so she still gets some badass phallic weapon imagery lol.

Serpico wields a thin rapier in the Conviction Arc, which Guts easily grabs in his hand, and in the Millenium Falcon arc he switches to a... limp feather duster lol. Serpico is very feminized compared to Guts and his weapons fit as part of that, but they're still effective weapons. You could maybe argue, within this Freudian lens, that this is indicative of Serpico's healthier relationship with masculinity. He's not compensating for anything, he's at peace with himself.

And god I gotta say something about Guts and Serpico's duels. In the first one you have Serpico delaying Guts while Farnese steals Casca from him, and part of that delay is to force Guts into a fight where he can't wield his sword, a parallel emasculation to Casca being kidnapped.

Then you have their confrontation after Farnese's no good very bad night, which is just incredibly suggestive lol.

You cannot tell me this isn't Guts getting blueballed when Serpico leaves after one quick exchange. Particularly coming in the same chapter featuring possessed Farnese grinding on Guts' sword (which Guts was much less interested in, incidentally). Also: wounds as sexual imagery again. Guts licking the blood off his cheek? Come on.

And finally you have their fight in Farnese's basement, in which Serpico attempts to hinder Guts by surrounding him with giant pillars, which Guts smashes through as he dodges around them. Another neat illustration of Guts' pure phallic power and Serpico's much more effeminate style.

One final note to address part of your ask, which didn't naturally fit into the rest of this lol: I would interpret vaginal imagery in monsters as mainly castration anxiety, yk, vagina dentata vibes, the fear of sticking your dick in a hole you can't see into. There's actually a lot of interesting stuff to consider in terms of the feminine as the unknowable other when it comes to Freudian theory, but that's like, not something I would expect Miura to lean into first of all, and also it would take another essay of explanation. If you're interested in that kind of Freudian analysis though I'd recommend the books Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover and The Dread of Difference, edited by Barry Keith Grant. I took a course on women and horror films ages ago and read chunks of those, and it was very fun, and iirc both address Freudian imagery in horror.

Okay! So that's the rundown of like, all the examples of Freudian imagery that interest me at least lol. This isn't exhaustive ofc, Berserk is long and not stingy with this stuff, but this response is already so long and meandering lol, so I'm going to wrap it up here.

To sum up, phallic imagery often represents masculine power as well as masculine flaws (like emotional isolation) in Berserk, while yonic/vaginal imagery tends to represent feminine weakness as well as feminine virtues (like emotional connection and vulnerability). As a general rule, the more phallic imagery someone violently swings around, the more fucked up they are. Phallic violence is used to compensate for past trauma, but it only continues the cycle of violence. The way to break that violence is to accept one's wounds and focus on them, to heal, rather than trying to distract from them.

I don't think this is always the best way to interpret Berserk lol, but it adds another dimension that very often complements the surface meaning and thematic resonance of the story, sometimes purposefully, sometimes likely incidental. And either way it's a lot of fun to read into!

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