The Brat With a Bat: Exploring the Dark Psychology of Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent
Cherrie Chang
Illustrations by Cherrie Chang
“It’s not me!” yells thirteen-year-old Ichi as he tries to escape the bullies accusing him of being the infamous “Bat Boy” [1]. It seems that all of Musashino, Tokyo, is being tormented by the thought of this cryptic attacker. On one side of the city, a middle school teacher has hallucinations of Bat Boy every night. On the other side, beneath hundreds of pink balloons lauding a cartoon dog [2], housewives gossip about the mysterious assailant in inconspicuous voices. Everyone wants to know:“have you heard about the baby born holding a bat?” [3]
These scenes from Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent demonstrate mass hysteria, a phenomenon in which a large group of individuals simultaneously express irrational anxiety and paranoia [4]. Paranoia Agent is an anime television series that follows the city of Musashino and its obsession with “Bat Boy,” a fictional assailant who attacks people with his bat. As the city’s gossip magnifies the threat of Bat Boy, the citizens of Musashino spiral into hysteria, becoming irrationally suspicious of each other and terrified of the fictional Bat Boy. To escape from their distressing reality, they fanatically worship Maromi, a cute cartoon dog. Both Bat Boy and Maromi are born from the imagination of Tsukiko Sagi, a character designer who accidentally killed her dog as a child. Unable to face her trauma, Tsukiko suppressed her memory and made up the fictional Bat Boy as the culprit in her place. She designs the cartoon character Maromi in her dog’s image to pretend it still lives [2]. As you watch Paranoia Agent unfold, you begin to see Bat Boy and Maromi rule over citizens’ minds with paranoia and fanaticism. But how is it possible that one woman’s suppression of a memory caused mass hysteria to spread across a city? Using Paranoia Agent as our guide, let’s explore the neuroscience underlying these phenomena and figure out what really goes on in the brain when we use fiction to escape our real-life troubles.
My Dog Ate My Memories: How Bad Memories Are Suppressed
To some degree, our brains are able to control what memories we recall, especially when it comes to negative memories we do not wish to remember. In Paranoia Agent, this is demonstrated by Tsukiko, who suppresses memories of the role she played in her dog’s death. Our brains’ ability to control memory retrieval allows us to reduce mental stress by consciously choosing which memories to recall [5]. This two-step process is characterized first by the direct suppression of the negative memory; then, the troubling recollection is substituted with a different, alternative memory [6, 7]. For example, not wishing to remember the guilt of killing her dog, Tsukiko suppresses her memory by refusing to acknowledge it. Instead, she substitutes it with a fabricated memory in which Bat Boy killed her dog. After years of suppression, Tsukiko genuinely believes she is not to blame for her dog’s death. But how was Tsukiko able to control her memory retrieval [8]?
Contrary to what you might know or expect of memory suppression, we actually do have some control over which memories we retrieve. Experiments following the Think/No Think (TNT) paradigm are prime examples of memory retrieval control [9]. If you were a participant in one of these experiments, you would first be given two sets of word pairs, like “AFRICA HIPPO” and “ALASKA PENGUIN.” The first set of words is the “Think” set. For this set, you should try to think about the second word in each pair after being prompted with the first. For example, if “AFRICA HIPPO” is in the “Think” set, “HIPPO” should come to mind when I say “AFRICA.” Then, you would be given the second set of words, which is the “No Think” set. For this set, you should try not to think about the second word in each pair after being prompted with the first. If “ALASKA PENGUIN” is in the “No Think” set, you should not think about “PENGUIN” when I say “ALASKA.” After many rounds of practice with each set, you will find yourself getting better at remembering and saying “HIPPO” when I say “AFRICA,” but getting worse at remembering and saying “PENGUIN” when I say “ALASKA'' [9]. It turns out you do have some conscious control over what memories you keep — the more you try to remember a memory, the faster you can do so when given a cue. Conversely, the more you actively suppress one, the slower you remember it.
Looking for Alaska: The Cognitive Mechanisms of Suppression
We know that we have some conscious control over what memories we retrieve, but what cognitive mechanisms do we actually employ to control what we remember? Inhibitory control is a mechanism where we consciously prevent activating our negative memories by blocking our access to them [10]. In general, a memory gets activated by external cues. Any stimulus — from visual cues like photographs to verbal cues like the sound of someone’s name — can activate and target specific memories for retrieval [8]. The more closely related a cue is to the memory, the more likely the memory is to be activated. In Paranoia Agent, each sentence in the investigator’s interrogation serves as a verbal retrieval cue for Tsukiko [2]: “There was never an attacker,” he accuses. “You got distracted and… Maromi ran into a passing car and died!” By forcing her to think about Maromi’s death, the investigator provides Tsukiko with stronger and stronger retrieval cues, shaking her faith in her fabricated memory. Eventually, the strength of these cues forces Tsukiko to remember killing Maromi.
As in the interrogation scene, there may be several cues that cause a memory to be retrieved. Likewise, a single cue can retrieve several different memories [9]. When I say “ALASKA,” you may remember its experimental partner “PENGUIN,” but you may also think of “SALMON,” or “ICE,” or “SNOW” [9, 10]. When given one cue, several memories may return at once — but you’ll only remember the one that is retrieved most quickly, which is the memory most strongly related to the given cue. As a result, memories "race" each other to be remembered first, with the fastest memory becoming the only one we recall consciously. In our Think/No Think experiment above, this is likely “PENGUIN” since you were very recently reintroduced to its relationship with “ALASKA.” To suppress memory in the long term, we put conscious effort into inhibiting the negative memory’s retrieval, even if it is the one most strongly associated with the given set of retrieval cues [9]. By discouraging yourself from thinking about “PENGUIN” after “ALASKA,” you inhibit your retrieval of “PENGUIN” [9,10]. Inhibitory control of memory retrieval thus allows us to exert some conscious control over what we remember by suppressing a negative memory.
Hippos or Hippocampus? The Neuroscience of Suppression
Like a biased referee pulling a fast runner off of a base, suppression pulls out the negative memory most strongly associated with the retrieval cue and prevents it from finishing the memory race. Where is this memory race taking place, and what parts of the brain play the role of this biased referee? To find out, we can use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to observe brain activity regions during memory recall tasks [12]. When a brain region is activated by a cognitive task, the increased neural activity in that region requires it to use more energy, which causes an increase in oxygen flow to the given brain region. As a result, the blood flow to that region also increases in order to supply oxygen in support of this uptick in activity [11]. Using fMRI to measure the blood flow in the brains of each Think/No-Think paradigm demonstrated that the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are the key players in memory retrieval and suppression, as increased blood flow during TNT studies was observed extensively in these two regions [12].
Seated near the center of our brains, the hippocampus is essential for forming declarative memory, or memories of things that can be stated explicitly, like names, dates, or events [13]. Increased activation in the hippocampus is associated with the experience of consciously remembering a declarative memory [14]. As such, the hippocampus is where the memory retrieval “race” occurs and determines which declarative memory is recalled. For Tsukiko, the declarative memory may have been that she accidentally let go of Maromi’s leash and caused her death. If Tsukiko consistently recalled this memory, there would be an increase in the activation of her hippocampus.
The hippocampus’s functioning is subject to interference from the prefrontal cortex, which is the “biased referee” lying right beneath our foreheads. The prefrontal cortex helps to override many of the brain’s tasks, like controlling extreme behavior caused by emotional fluctuation and, in this case, inhibiting retrieval of a negative memory [15]. Inhibitory control occurs when the prefrontal cortex (i.e., the biased referee) is recruited to override the hippocampus’s default activity and thereby suppress the retrieval of the negative memory [10]. By consciously willing herself not to think of her negative memory, Tsukiko used her prefrontal cortex’s executive control to interfere with the hippocampus’s memory retrieval process, stopping herself from recalling killing her dog. Similarly, as a hypothetical TNT participant, you override your hippocampus’s memory retrieval of “PENGUIN” following “ALASKA” by activating your prefrontal cortex. By leveraging the executive control of our prefrontal cortex, we gain conscious control over the memories that our hippocampus retrieves. We may then allow ourselves to retrieve a weaker activated memory like “SALMON” or, in Tsukiko’s case, fabricate an alternative one altogether. [2, 10].
Fake Bats and Fictional Bugs: How Individual Suppression Leads to Mass Hysteria
When a well-known individual substitutes their suppressed memory with a fabricated one that they later publicize, this fictional memory may become a widely believed story, causing their society to spiral into mass hysteria. After becoming a household name for creating the cartoon character Maromi, Tsukiko begins to face immense pressure from her employers to create the company’s next cash cow [16]. While walking home after a grueling day of work, Tsukiko trips and falls. As she breaks down and sobs into the ground, Bat Boy “appears” from behind and hits her with his bat. Word of Tsukiko’s violent “assault” quickly makes headline news, and the city, consumed by paranoia over the fictional assailant, descends into mass hysteria [16]. While a citywide descent into mass hysteria may seem like the stuff of fiction, similar phenomena have occurred in the real world: in the 1962 “June Bug” mass hysteria outbreak in a Montana mill, large swaths of the mill’s workers suddenly reported feeling nauseous and dizzy, some even fainting [17]. Many claimed their illnesses were caused by a bug bite, hence the name “June Bug,” but despite a team of entomologists’ best efforts, no one could find the responsible bug [17].
Your Smile is My Reflection: The Neural Correlates of Mass Hysteria
Unlike other epidemics, mass hysteria spreads rapidly through a group while lacking an obvious physical contagion [4]. Instead, mass hysteria is spread via emotional contagion, the process through which we observe others’ emotional states through their behavior and mirror them [18]. As humans, we are naturally inclined to share the emotional state of another person [18]. Each episode of Paranoia Agent demonstrates this in action: as visible fear and distress spread through Musashino’s residents, everyone becomes paranoid of Bat Boy one by one, and the city itself succumbs to mass hysteria.
But what neural processes in our brain are responsible for this “copycat” phenomenon? The answer to this is the aptly-named mirror neuron system, a group of specialized neurons that synchronize an individual’s actions and sensations with those observed in another person [19]. One group of mirror neurons spans both the brain’s parietal cortex — responsible for sensing touch — and the premotor cortex, which is responsible for integrating sensory and motor information. This group of mirror neurons is responsible for synchronizing actions between individuals. When four housewives stand in a circle to gossip about Bat Boy, their body language often appears synchronized: they all fearfully touch and cup their faces, covering their mouths in horror [3]. As the first housewife cups her face, the second housewife sees this and mirrors the first housewife by touching her cheek, immediately followed by the third doing the same. As the housewives’ mirror neuron systems are activated, they begin to unknowingly copy each other’s actions, and so the face-touching action “bounces” in a circle from one housewife to the next [20].
Emotional contagion is also enabled by the mirror neuron system in the somatosensory cortex of the brain, a region responsible for synchronizing physical sensations [21]. As the housewives touch their faces simultaneously, their sensations also become synchronized: they all feel their biceps contracting and their warm hands on their faces. Combined with the synchrony of their actions, their mirror neuron systems enable them to feel and share similar emotions. When the body performs an action that corresponds to a particular emotion, the brain assumes that the emotional state is actually being felt and sends signals to produce such a feeling. For example, if you smile, your brain can be tricked into thinking you’re happier [22]. So when the housewives mirror each others’ actions of concern (like the face-touching), their paranoia becomes contagious. As the threatening presence of Bat Boy looms large over Musashino, this emotional contagion effect snowballs to spread hysteria across the city [23]. Trading stories of Bat Boy becomes the norm in Musashino, allowing citizens to indulge in this urban horror fantasy instead of the troubles in their real lives.
From Bat Boy to Beatlemania: Comfort Fiction Fanaticism as Mass Hysteria
From fainting mill workers to exaggerated gossip, our understanding of mass hysteria is characterized by extreme behavior, isolating this phenomenon from the norms of daily life. But what if a form of mass hysteria is arguably happening right now, across every consumerist country? In Paranoia Agent, the cartoon dog Maromi appears as an adorable and harmless character, providing Musashino citizens with comfort as they live in paranoia under the threat of Bat Boy. However, Maromi’s fans slip into a dangerous and disruptive obsession: they report not being able to sleep “without it,” and news reports show the fandom’s behavior becoming extreme, from robberies of Maromi vendors to violent fights between fans. The report ends ominously: “Maromi is dangerous” [2]. The news reports argue that Bat Boy and Maromi are two sides of the same coin: much like how Bat Boy’s malicious presence provides the citizens of Musashino with an external threat to focus on, Maromi’s cuteness also provides an unrealistic fantasy used by its fans to escape from their real-life troubles.
In our consumerist society, viral cultural phenomena like Maromi are littered across every country. This makes Paranoia Agent a poignant warning for how mass hysteria could spread in our society: could a fandom’s fanatic behavior be a form of mass hysteria? When does a fan become a fanatic? A 1964 Beatles concert saw “Beatlemaniacs” excessively screaming and breaching police lines to reach the stage, and news reporters criticized the band for generating mass hysteria. In response, a study on the same concert compared the fans’ behavior against psychometric measures and concluded that they did not meet the mass hysteria criteria then [24]. However, when the study was revisited half a century later, the authors warned against our still-vague definition of mass hysteria and the lack of rigorous investigation [25]. A clear and deep understanding of mass hysteria has yet to be developed, but the possibility of fanaticism being a mutated form of mass hysteria takes the phenomenon further out of the screen and into real life.
As seen in Paranoia Agent, our high-stress and consumerist culture often pushes us to fantasize about suppressing our memory of real-life troubles, whether it is a sensational urban legend, like Bat Boy, or a comforting character, like Maromi [2]. As an increasing number of stressed individuals become over-reliant on the same fiction, fanatic behavior can quickly spread across our societies. By showing how the citizens of Musashino obsess over Bat Boy and Maromi, Paranoia Agent provides us with a cautionary tale of how one person’s suppression of a bad memory could have the capacity to send society into hysterics.
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