https://blacknerdproblems.com/media-for-mental-health-samurai-jack-seppuku/

“I didn’t come this far to sink so low” – Slipknot

Mad years ago, in another life, I was talking with my friend Connor. Connor mentioned something and I instantly asked him if he’d seen a particular movie (Be Kind Rewind) because there’s a scene that correlated with what he was talking about. He hadn’t seen the movie so I began to describe the scene to him. I’ll never forget how playfully fed up Connor was as he threw his hands up and asked, “why do you always do this? Whenever we’re talking about something, you always think of a movie or a comic book (that you know I haven’t read) to compare it to!” I thought about it but didn’t have an answer – I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. Finding a piece of media to juxtapose with real topics or events is just something I did naturally. If I had to answer the question now (sixteen years later, in this life), I’d say that media, or pop culture specifically, provides a compass to help navigate life. There’s no road map for life; we all doing this shit raw.

Lifehacker editor-in-chief and BNP staff member Jordan Calhoun wrote a whole memoir (Piccolo is Black) talking about how key moments in pop culture from tv shows and movies helped him navigate through his teen years. Much like someone looking through a Bible for a verse to find inspiration, advice, solace or comfort – it’s the same thing for me but instead of a verse, it might be a comic book panel, or a scene from a movie, maybe a line from a tv show. When I’m going through something, or facing something so much bigger than me, I tend to become obsessed with scenes that reflect what I’m dealing with. I’m saying I become obsessed with it but honestly, it feels like the scene haunts me until I either talk about it or write about it. Which brings us to Samurai Jack‘s final season where Jack’s struggle with survivor’s guilt and shame had him contemplating – then committing himself to – the act of seppuku. This act of taking one’s own life was considered honored among the samurai class.

Trigger Warning: Suicide

I come from a long line of “I don’t wanna talk about it,” which is a difficult thing when you’re also a writer. So this is the part of the essay where I’ll talk about something I was going through. I’ll make jokes about it because it’s my nature and how I deal with things, but what it is specifically isn’t necessary for you to know. All you as a reader need to know is the feeling, and the feeling is grief. The feeling is loss. Frank Ocean put it perfectly as I was trying to “swim from somethin’ bigger than me.” Problem is I suck at swimming. Bad. My breaststroke? Trash. Me treading water? Laughable.

The last time I had felt grief to this level was when my mother had passed. When it happened… it felt as though the grief had given me a few thoughts. The first was a thought based in anger that the wrong parent was taken. Then came a thought based in survivor’s guilt – that I was still here and she wasn’t, which is how any parent would want it but name me a child that did everything their parents wanted. I then thought but what if I wasn’t here? I could feel her anger from the further side as she pushed the thought out of my mind. The second time, grief brought the gift of shame and I could only think of how much easier things would be if I wasn’t part of the equation anymore. How I didn’t want to be here anymore. A selfish thought some would say but I thought it selfless cause it’d also make things easier for others, not only myself. The thought entered my mind and this time, I didn’t feel my mother’s hand reaching over to push it away. This one was on me, and my mind did what it always does, find the media to correlate this feeling with. Which brings us to Samurai Jack

I Was Gone, But How Was I To Know?

When Samurai Jack returned for his swan song in 2016, 12 years after the final episode of the original series aired, this wasn’t the same samurai we knew before. My man was on Cartoon Network fighting Aku in the future where Aku ruled. Jack was showing up to call Aku out for all the smoke. When we meet Jack it’s been 50 years. 50 years where he hasn’t aged and hasn’t put a dent in Aku’s reign. We come to find out that Aku destroyed the last time portal, Jack’s lost his sword, and is feeling like all hope is gone. Jack’s got intrusive thoughts pulling at him every which way. His survivor’s guilt is cranked all the way up as he envisions his father’s disappointment in him – scolding him that while he’s there in the future, he and everyone else Jack left behind are stuck suffering under Aku. Jack sees his mother in the fallen leaves asking why he hasn’t saved them yet. He sees all the citizens and people suffering floating in the river in front of him.

The constant voice in Jack’s mind is saying that he has failed his task, that he’s brought dishonor upon himself and his family, and that they’re in the endgame and lost. Continuing on is only prolonging the torment. The thoughts tell Jack that he wants this to end and the only honorable thing to do now would be committing seppuku. Jack fights these thoughts, but all the while the manifestation of death is in the distance, wearing samurai gear and sitting on top of a black horse. The figure is called The Omen and not only is he in agreement with Jack’s intrusive thoughts, but he’s ready to take Jack to the cross streets of the crossroads Bone Thugs N Harmony were talking about.

Jack ain’t thinking about the countless good he’s done, all he sees is the failure. Never mind that he managed to undo the brainwashing that Aishi, one of the Daughters of Aku (assassins raised to hunt and kill Jack) was under. Jack managed to show her that the benevolence of Aku (that she was raised to believe in) was all a lie of Aku’s own doing. Aishi turned to Jack’s side, but when they tried to save some kids under Aku’s influence Jack and Aishi split up. Aishi stopped the transmission of the frequency making the kids feral but Jack, who was with the kids and doing his best to restrain them in their wild attacks, saw them all pass out and die from being freed of their brainwashing. This was the final straw for Jack.

The grief, the shame, the hurt, and the hopelessness took over. When Jack sees the kids die, he gets them 808s & Heartbreak beats ready cause he now has the resolve to do what needs to be done: Jack is going to end his own life through the act of seppuku in order to silence the shame, guilt and regret. The irony of all this is that while Jack makes his way towards his end, Aishi finds the children laid out with no sign of Jack.

She takes a child’s lifeless body in her arms and is then surprised to find life springing from them. The child is alive. All the children are alive. Aishi then rushes to find Jack and along the way she meets countless people that Jack has helped, freed, and given the power to fight back against Aku’s tyranny throughout the years. Each person watching Samurai Jack’s back, each person ready to ride for the nicest samurai rocking the meanest white gi. Where Jack feels he’s been stuck in 50 years of failure, Aishi sees 50 years of hope that Jack has given people. Listen, they don’t throw up statues for oppressors here in this world. It’s liberators only round these parts.

It’s rare to see a protagonist experience what Jack is going through. Sure, Aku is the Big Bad to defeat here and the main problem to punch but the grief Jack is dealing with isn’t something he can simply hit his way out of. Therein lies the problem. 

Human Resources, the spin-off of Netflix’s Big Mouth, has a character called Keith from Grief. He’s a grief sweater that helps people get through their rough patches and he constantly lets his clients know, “the only way out is through.” That being said, the most interesting stories come from how a character reacts to conflict. When Samurai Jack made the decision to kill the Daughters of Aku (as there was no other way), he reflected on the words of his father, who said, “the decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are. You cannot hide from yourself.” That shit hits entirely differently as Jack was now no longer contemplating having to take another human life, but instead having the resolve to commit seppuku to take his own.

Now me, I only had the thought and then the desire of not being here. When friends would ask how I’m doing, I’d answer honestly and say, “feels like I got a Nerf gun to my head and I’m ‘bout to squeeze that trigger – but I don’t.” Obviously, I emphasize a Nerf gun to let friends know that my humor is still functioning and running as a coping mechanism. A friend had told me not to joke like that and my response was, “it’s worse if I don’t.” Again, I wouldn’t have done anything, but to not at least joke about it would’ve meant that I had no way of trying to make this feeling smaller or into something that I could handle. Days later when I was with my brother in a Walmart, I walked up to his cart holding a knock-off Nerf gun. He asked me what I needed a toy gun for and I told him that I’d use it as a prop for a future TikTok video. Then I told him, “I mean, I might also put it to my head, contemplate pulling the trigger, and then pull it away from my head like, ‘not today.’ I’m too much of a punk to use a real gun so..” 

My brother looked at me and let out a slight chuckle. I then tossed the toy gun into his cart and when it landed, it let off a sound effect unexpectedly. “Ughhh, I didn’t want it to make an actual noise. That’s a bit much,” I said. Then I looked at my brother, holding onto the cart with one hand, and holding his stomach while doubled over in laughter with the other. I looked at him in confusion for a moment, then laughed with him as if joining him at a table. Then I put the toy gun back on the shelf. Much like our sister, my brother understood that I was dealing with something, but trying my best to joke my way through it – it’s something the three of us do often and recognize with one another. A friend told me that when they had thoughts of no longer being here, they thought of who they’d be leaving behind.

Aishi arrives in time to see Samurai Jack preparing himself for seppuku in a graveyard, surrounded by great warriors from the past and The Omen acting as his second (in seppuku, a second is a person who assists by cutting the head off the subject so as not to prolong the suffering). The Omen tells Aishi that she can witness but she can not interfere. In shock, Aishi abides, but once she recognizes what Jack is about to do, she does what anyone that calls themselves a friend would do if they saw someone they care about dwelling in a hollow: Aishi intervenes

I’ll Never Kill Myself To Save My Soul

Aishi tries to reach out to Samurai Jack and pull him back from the brink but Jack’s in a mental space that she can’t break through yet. Jack’s resolve is set and as he struggles to invite the blade inside himself, Aishi does not stop trying to reach him. The Omen, this manifestation of death that’s been haunting Jack begins to fight Aishi. There’s something symbolic in that. A friend tries to provide a light in order to pull another friend out of the darkness, but then that darkness lashes out and tries to consume the person helping. The Omen now not only represents Jack’s longing for an end in death, but the guilt and shame he feels upon himself. Jack is in this state of torment and simply put, he’s stuck in “a prison of his own mind, problem he don’t mind.”

Samurai Jack has always been a person of great resolve. When he steels himself to do something, he commits. Jack is putting his father’s words to action and in his grief, Jack has made his decision; what we’re seeing are the actions that follow. However, Aishi’s presence isn’t allowing Jack’s actions to follow through. She is literally fighting The Omen, Jack’s intrusive thoughts, all while in the eye of the perfect storm of grief, shame, and guilt that’s so much bigger than Jack. Aishi tells Jack that she’s seen all the good he’s done over the years. All the people that rep Jack because of the decision he made to fight Aku. 

The actions that Jack followed through with for the past 50 years have built a community. Aishi then tells Jack those kids he thought dead are alive and now part of that same community that he built. This is what snaps Jack back to life and back to the reality of the situation. That reality being that Jack hasn’t come all this way just to say he got this far.

I’m Finally Holding On To Letting Go

We then see Jack come to the aid of Aishi, holding back The Omen. But this is not Samurai Jack cheating death, laughing in the face of death, or bargaining with death – this is Samurai Jack facing death, grief, shame, and all the actions that follow. Aishi was able to bring Jack out of the darkness with community. Community is what stopped Jack from taking his own life and what gave him the strength to face something so much bigger than him. Jack spent his life doing good and trying to do good. He is connected to so many people, those that he has helped and those that have come to his aid as well. Jack was suffering by himself, trying to keep so much inside him, until he reached a breaking point.

Jack adheres to the code of Bushido that governs the samurai class, and in this moment we see him put the shame and feelings of dishonor aside in order to choose life. I wonder if that’s what made my mind drift to this scene to obsess over. Seeing Jack go from compliant to non-defiant and then seeing all the people that cared about him. I can’t tell you why this is the piece of media I go to in times of grief but what I can tell you is that it helps pull me out of the hollow. 

So here’s where I’ll reveal the prestige of the magic trick behind how I write an essay. Whenever I do a write-up that I’m passionate about or that’s personal to me, I find specific lyrics of a song to use as headers. The lyrics reflect an aspect of what I’ll be talking about in each paragraph. It’s rare that I’ll use lyrics from the same song all the way throughout, however, that was the case for this essay. The lyrics are from Slipknot’s song “Unsainted”. I said all that to say this: the most important line of the song for me is hearing frontman Corey Taylor say, “I’m finally holding on to letting go.” I love the way that line is set up, as there’s something to be said about freeing yourself of all weight of guilt and shame.

At the heart of the matter, that’s what we see Samurai Jack do. In cutting down the Omen, this manifestation of death, Jack is now surrounded by warriors of the past that at first came to witness his end and now witness his rebirth. There’s something to be said about the way grief has us hold onto shame and guilt as if it is a penance, this weight that feels like it must be carried in acknowledgment of the measure of sorrow. There’s also something to be said about letting that weight go. Seeing Samurai Jack choosing to hold onto letting go of grief instead of letting go of his life is a simple but meaningful reminder that I can choose to do the same

If you also come from also come from a long line of “I don’t wanna talk about it”,
you should still talk about it. Here are some resources to do so:
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline + Black Mental Helath

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The post Media For Mental Health: How Samurai Jack Overcame Suicide appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.