The Radiant Goat

Hey, friends! Recently I’ve been watching Radiant, the new Shounen anime series. On the surface, it seems like a pretty generic show, but under the hood there’s some neat things going on. Spoilers from here on out!

Background: In the world of Radiant, humans are threatened by magical monsters called Nemesis. Occasionally, a human will survive contact with a Nemesis, and will be changed as a result: They may undergo physical alteration, and typically gain some supernatural powers. These survivors are known as Sorcerers. Sorcerers being the only folks who can go toe-to-toe with Nemesis, you’d think they’d be pretty popular. In fact, however, they’re feared, ostracized, and even hunted by the so-called Inquisition. Our story follows a young Sorcerer named Seth and his guardian (also a Sorcerer) Alma.

In episode 3, we are given a flashback of Alma’s to when Seth was younger. Part of the flashback shows Seth getting bullied by some local kids.

First, they call him “infected”. Infected with what, exactly? Yeah, yeah, we know he’s had contact with a Nemesis, but where’s the evidence he has a disease? Actually, the term is used interchangeably with “cursed”—though, again, it’s unclear exactly what sort of ‘curse’ might be present, or how you recognize it. A bit later, Alma frightens off a would-be lynch mob by touching one of the men and saying, basically, “Ok, now you’re cursed!” His frightened companions run away from him, calling him a monster, though Alma makes clear that she hasn’t really done anything. (Apart from some shrewd psychological manipulation, that is. But nothing supernatural.)

Next the kids casually talk about genociding Seth and his people:

How do you deal with an infection? Why, wipe it out, naturally! And of course that means getting rid of the “vectors”, the sources of infection.

Seth, airing his quite legitimate grievance, demands to know where the justice is in throwing rocks at him, throwing him at rocks, and casually talking about killing him.

Suddenly I had an epiphany. “That’s Girard’s Scapegoat!” You see, the late French intellectual Rene Girard proposed that in order to maintain social stability in the face of humans’ violent tendencies, communities create “scapegoats”: classes of people who everyone else can focus their violence on together. Think of the Jews as the scapegoats of the Nazis—that’s pretty much the paradigmatic example. By taking out their violence on just one part of the community, the rest of the community achieves a kind of temporary equilibrium. And in Radiant, Sorcerers function as classic scapegoats.

Of course, as Seth’s complaint indicates, this violence is entirely unjustified. The “problem” for the community, then, is how to justify treating the unfortunate group-that-drew-the-short-straw with such violence. Typically this is done in a couple of ways:

1. Claim that they are infected with a disease or a curse. Or, in the case of Radiant, with both.
2. Blame them for natural disasters that affect the community—especially if there’s no natural link between them and the disaster, because then the cause must be supernatural. In other words, either their presence is directly threatening the wellbeing of the community, or God/the supernatural is displeased with them and so will punish the whole community if they are not expelled.

“Wow!” I thought. “The only way this could get more like Girard’s Scapegoat is if they blamed Seth for some natural disaster.”

Cue the very next line…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:

Girard’s Scapegoat: The Shounen Anime!!

 

---

Support Curiously Dead Cat by:

• Reading
• Commenting
• Following
• Checking out my recommendations
• Pitch a collab or guest post!