Anime's Status

Anime especially in Miyazaki’s films has a classical approach in terms of its appearance and contexts. This focus on historical elements and the way Miyazaki tries to make it relevant in the modern world definitely suggest Anime can be considered a highly conceptual medium. In Princess Mononoke he uses the history of Japan’s industrialization to try and get across messages about environmentalism which are very relevant in this day and age. He uses philosophical arguments that indulge in traditional spirituality to explore different viewpoints of the natural world. Many animated films don't have this much historical depth in 

In Japan, Anime has widespread appeal that is much more impactful than in the western world. It doesn't mean Anime hasn't enjoyed great commercial success overseas (Pokemon being the obvious example) but it normally has a ‘fan boy’ status outside of these more phenomena moments in the western world. 

I think in general Napier (2005) tends to consider Anime a high culture product which has a cross generational appeal. In contrast to more commercial animation like Disney, there is a genuine and constant effort to put out works that explore more high end concepts and visuals. There is also works that are targeted towards different interest groups and is much more fragmented in their approach in dealing with audiences. The advent of magna could be seen as a by-product of anime which caters to a large amount of people in Japan. Magna especially focuses more on adult themes and tend to be much darker in tone and shows how animation can be much more flexible in catering towards older audiences.

Week Six Anime: Miyazaki, messages for the young

And my conscience feels slightly stricken now after reading what J.A Lent and D Cavallaro had to say about anime. Until late I had completely turned a blind eye to this pop culture phenomenom that accounts for half the movie tickets sold in Japan. In the past I kept on chalking it off to a childrens genre, but I was utterly mistaken. I could not agree more with J.A Lent (2000) when he stated in his introduction: "Japanese animation merits serious consideration as a narrative art-form, and not simply for it's arresting visual style."
I now harbour, and rightfully so, a very high regard for the masterful Hayao Miyazaki.

I think what appealed most to me while watching a few of his films (Mononoke, Spirited away, Howls moving castle) was the depth of thought involved within the narration and the importance he places on the challenging underlying themes of the story that carry worldwide relevance.
These important and often neglected issues/themes include things like feminism (very inherent with Miyazaki's frequent use of a Shojou as a protaganist in his films), the fate of the eco-system, pacifism, the abscence of or ambiguity around villains, and also the feelings of discontent towards the foolishness of war etc - All of these are positive messages if recieved and interpreted correctly.
I think these undertones speak a stark truth to all children watching his films. Children are often sheltered from these realities in the world, and Miyazaki is telling them, showing them, through his narrative, that things aren't so black and white in real life, life is messy, you don't always get a happy ending, there isn't always a clear-cut bad guy, there is violence in the world; which is such a scorching contrast to the messages that a disneyesque or Western animated film would more than likely portray.
Cavallaro, D (2006) encapsulates it perfectly: "Miyazaki is eager to show that no ostensible resolution to the quest for self-fulfillment is ever likely to be conclusive. His endings, therefore, steer clear of consolatory, tidying-up messages, offering instead purely provisional closures which audiences can scarcely anticipate or presuppose. The plots themselves tend to follow life's own unpredictable flux more than the narrative and dramatic criteria codified by mainstream spectacle."

Miyazaki tries to offer children (and adults) a positive world view, a world view free from over simplified conventions of good and evil, and he does this in a way that the audience may not be accustomed to. His films show more transparancy towards life's sorrows and intricacies and truths. The issue is not that children should'nt be exposed to worldwide problems and violence - children know that there are problems and violence in the world - the real issue, I think, that comes across in his work is: How do we control these problems? How do we find a balance?
Miyazaki's films call upon self-examination, world-examination (as difficult a task as that may seem to prove), and cyclical harmony all throughout society and the environment.

Week 5/6: Shoujo and Femininity

I found the definition of shoujo a particularly interesting idea within anime and Princess Mononoke. When I Googled ‘shoujo’ it came up as a genre of anime targeted at girls aged about 11-18 years, however after doing a bit of further research it seems that it is much more than this and there is extensive comment and research on femininity and its representations within manga and anime. Napier (2005) notes that anima is an appropriate art form for the turn of the millennium particularly due to uits fascination with gender roles and gender transgression  (p.11) highlighted in romantic comedy anime, narratives aimed at young girls and in pornographic anime – all while characterising a world in which women’s roles are rapidly changing. As seen in Princess Mononoke ,where Miyazaki focuses on the changing historical identity and traditional roles in relation to fast-changing modern world.   

Anime conventions and, particularly Miyazaki’s work, tend to redefine feminine physiognomies (Cavallaro, 2006). Heroines are wide eyes, lipless and with seemingly Caucasian features at a young adolescent age and therefore cannot dismissed as plastic dolls or the ‘hero’s accessory’. Cavallaro goes on to explain that Miyazaki’s heroines are undeniable shoujo in that they are active independent, courageous and curious – which are characteristics that in Western or more traditional genres would be attributed to a male protagonist (like Tintin).

This being my first andonly experience of feminist themes within anime, I was tempted to praise the modern views and non-sexualisation of female figures. However, upon further investigation I found that this is not true of all anime genres. And this particular anime blog (http://angrogynousfemales.blogspot.co.nz/)  with the post titled The New Feminism in Anime in which she raises the point as to why these heroines have their female sexuality minimalised to the point that they could be pre-adolescent boys. So, they are given modern day female characteristics but then have their breasts and womanly figures downplayed. As the blogger, who goes by the name Sennac, states: 'This (the erasure of femininity) is due to the imbalance of characteristically feminine and masculine qualities in dominant female characters' - however, she focuses quite specifically on post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk anime. It appears that more independent heroines radiate more subtle feminine features while the more passive female characters are drawn to embody their gender. However, interestingly, Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke is an undoubtedly feminine figure. She cares for the sick and 'rescues' girls from brothels and is an overseeing mother figure within Iron Town, however, she simultaneously embodies masculine qualities with ruthless actions towards the forest and a very keen interest in warfare and its weapons. And then contrasting this is the character of San.

San's body is physically represented as female without being overly sexualised (as seen in other anime genres where the female heroines appear to resemble animated Playboy Girls). Her demeanor is no doubt feminine but is contrasted by her bestial behaviour and dominance and steadfast opinions. However, aligning San to a more feminine character is that she is very much akin to Mother Nature and her care for the forest which hold reference to more traditional female values. 

Having said this, not being a particular fan of Western comics and superheroes nor anime and manga, I still prefer the Japanese representations of femininity within shoujo and Miyazaki's texts in comparison to the overly sexualised representations of women through the likes of Superwoman in her knee length boots and mini skirt or Catwoman in her skin tight catsuit or even the role of Lois Lane and her never-ending dependency on Superman for survival.

Week Four; Fantasy

Lost in Translation
As Megan stated in her earlier post, Le Guin was frequently disappointed with the film adaptations of the Earthsea series. This was mostly in part to her feeling as though the films where untrue to her vision. In 2004, the TV mini-series (that we had the "pleasure" of watching in class) was made, and was disappointing to both Le Guin and longtime fans of the franchise. For the purposes of you the reader, this is the film adaptation I will be referring to for the remainder of this post. While the story was changed for the film, this does tend to happen in adaptations of books all the time; mostly because movies and books rely on different storytelling devices. The main problems with the 2004 adaptation is that it was cast poorly (with the possible exception of Danny MF Glover, who seemed to be mailing it in anyway), the role of Ged being given to a Hollywood prettyboy who portrayed none of the depth that Le Guin gave Ged in the novel. Additionally, the dialogue was weak and the special effects were ridiculous (using the same CGI sequences repetetively just seems like a cheap, bad idea). It seems to me that what makes works of the fantasy genre so enticing are the fictional worlds in which they take place. Reading a book, which is descriptive up to a point, allows the reader to envision the fictional world in the thier own way, sibconsciously adding parts of themselves to it. By adapting it, the imagination of the reader becomes moot, as all parts of the world, great or small, are created based on the film-maker's vision or interpretation of the writer's vision. While the film version followed a loose version of the original novel, perhaps it would've been better recieved if it were good in itself, rather than "a good adaptation." However, as this isn't the case here, it's no wonder Le Guin wanted nothing to do with it.

Race in Earthsea
Considering the novel "A Wizard of Earthsea" was published by a white author in 1968, the same year as Martin Luther King's assassination, in a country where a civil rights movement was in full-swing, perhaps it is at least marginally surprising that the protagonist of the story is a black man. Admittedly, I feel like the color of the main character is inconsequential, the story stands up on it's own regardless. Le Guin has been quoted as saying "I have received letters that broke my heart, from adolescents of color in this country and in England, telling me that when they realized that Ged and the other Archipelagans in the Earthsea books are not white people, they felt included in the world of literary and movie fantasy for the first time" (Speech to the Book Expo America children's literature breakfast, June, 4, 2004). As far as I'm concerned, this is excellent. I've found myself reading books from all over the world, written by authors of varying race and ethnic backgrounds, and I have never personally felt that I need the protagonist to be white (as I am) in order to relate to them and feel included. However, I can appreciate how this would've been for young black fantasy readers during embarrassingly recent periods of tremulous race-relations. There was some controversy surrounding Le Guin's comments on the 2004 film adaptation. During her comments regarding the "butchering" of her work, she mentioned the casting of white actors to play characters who were not white in the novel. Several people (all white as far as my research shows) commented that race is irrelevant to the story. This may be true, as the novel takes place in an imaginary land, where the colors might be the same as they are in our real world, but the applicable cultures and backgrounds of said colors are not the same as we have in the real world. Personally, I feel that if it is important to Le Guin that certain characters have certain skin color, then it is important to the work; she is, after all, it's creator.

What I find particularly interesting is that the only case of controversy I could find surrounding the issue of race in Earthsea arose from the 2004 adaptation, not from the time of publishing in 1968 when you would expect people to be more narrow minded and judgmental about such things.

Week 5/6: Anime: is it a genre or a media?

After having read both Napier (2005) and Cavallaro’s (2006) texts on Anime and the associated genres as well as the social and cultural contexts, I have come to appreciate it and move beyond the predominantly Western view of it ‘just being cartoons’ – which I used to associate with the likes of Pokemon and Digimon.  

Coming to a conclusion as to whether it is a genre or a media proves to be a difficult as there are many perspectives from which it can be argued and it holds elements of both and also varies as to whether it is being evaluated from a Western or Eastern stance. Within a Japanese context I feel that it more a media with associated subgenres. As both Napier and Cavallaro acknowledge, manga and anime are cultural staples in Japan that are appreciated by both children and adults alike – with different genres being projected at different age groups or sometimes, albeit less frequently it seems, with a universal target audience embodied by works like Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki Hayao).   

Another interesting aspect when arguing whether it is a genre or a media is the context from which anime has emerged. Japan is a largely pictocentric culture (Napier, p.7) with anime drawing influence from  Kabuki and woodblock prints, so the value placed on drawn mediums would be much more than in the West where cartoons and animation are largely regarded for children – or the more nonsensical shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy and Beavis and Butthead. When compared to shows such as these, I come to regard anime as more of a high-culture media and art form while the West and Hollywood cast themselves in a more low-culture and consumable context. In fact, from what I have read, by stereotyping anime and associated manga into a category aimed largely at children and drawing comparisons to Disney insult and trivialise the art form and in doing so, exposes one’s ignorance (which, ashamedly, I will admit to having done so previously).

Napier sums up the art of anime on page 8: ‘…it is a richly fascinating contemporary Japanes art form with a distinctive narrative and visual aesthetic that both harks back to traditional Japanese culture and moves forward to the cutting edge of art and media’.

I think that trying to classify anime is like trying to classify fiction. Yes, fiction is a genre and so is anime. But the scope and reach within both categories is so far stretched, it is pretty much impossible to label anime as ‘just anime’ – or fiction as ‘just fiction’. It seems to me that anime and manga have become more a literature in Japan and hold far more social and cultural significance than comics and cartoons do in the west. Perhaps, in the case of Princess Mononoke and its message specifically, one can compare Miyazaki to James Cameron and Avatar and should be held in as high regard (if not higher).  

Week 4: Earthsea/Harry Potter/Archetypes

After watching the EarthSea movie in class I must say I was rather disenchanted by it. It was hard to pick up the book and start reading it because of the impression the movie left. The book itself was nowhere near as bad as the movie, but still did not send shivers of wonder down my spine. This may be because I've never read a novel with such high fantasy content in it before.

One thing I couldn't get out of my head while reading it was how similar it is to Harry Potter. The comparisons between the two are plentiful and uncanny at times.
Both protaganists are on the cusp of adolesence and pre-disposed to a superlative power for magic, both go to a school for wizards and have an arch nemesis (Earthsea - Jasper, Harry Potter - Draco), and both have some 'shadow' or 'evil' entity (The shadow - Voldemort) burdening them throughout their journey. The list goes on.
Something I will say, that totally differentiates the two, is that EarthSea lacks depth of character and focuses more on Ged's journey rather than building his character up in the reader's mind. I felt as though I never really knew Ged all that well. He was somewhat of an enigma to me, he was hard to like, has a serious nature about him and maintains an air of arrogance (which slightly diminishes upon trying to summon the dead on the Roke Knoll). Whereas Harry Potter focuses much more on character as well as the journey.
Most of the similarities between the two books are generally thought of as common archetypes.
Good vs evil, (which is portrayed as rather black and white). The coming of age. The slightly comedic friend (EarthSea - Vetch, Harry Potter - Ron Weasley). The old wise men/mentors. And the Increasing of responsibility and wisdom that occurs as time goes on. etc. 
Both books follow very closely to Voglers 'The Writers Journey'. Starts off in the Ordinary world (or roundabout) - the call - the refusal - meeting mentor - crossing first threshold - tests - approach, so on and so forth.

J.K Rowling seems to have taken credit for alot of ideas Le Guin presents. In response to the Harry Potter books, Ursala K. Le Guin states that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors", she does not feel Rowling has "ripped her off", but feels she was overpraised for her supposed originality.
So, really, Rowling has layed her conceptual model on top of Le Guin's, and in turn, taken it to another level. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, and kudos to Rowling on her work. But, In my opinion, Le Guin deserves more notable recognition for some of her original ideas, ideas that gave her book, a Wizard of Earthsea, a spot in the 33 best all-time fantasy novels.
Just sayin......

Defining Fantasy

How does Attebery (1980)define Fantasy? Find at least five definitions.

Atteberry (1980) firstly discusses how the genre of fantasy revels in creating a violation of the natural world. In Earth Sea their is still a presence of the natural world in the sea and in the islands, however this seeming naturalness is contrasted by the world of magic that the characters live in. The natural world in a sense is our connection the world, it gives viewers something familiar to latch onto. But as Atteberry goes onto argue our sense of the familiar is made to feel new and strange, and in the opposite the impossible is seen to be the norm. In Earthsea magic spells, dragons and demonic shadows aren't ever made to feel out of place, but their presence is felt until the very end of the story. These elements help to re-imagine the presence of this new physical and natural world. 

This leads into another one of Atteberry definitions of the fantasy genre. Their is no need to contextualize the fantasy world with our intellectual understandings of the world. Fantasy tries to make viewers discards their own sense of logic because it will not truly equate with the logic of the fantasy narrative. The fantasy narrative is not trying to give more meaning to the physical world, but a lot of the times it is trying to give adherence to real-life issues and as Atteberry explains it can help to give better comprehension to these issues. In Earth Sea one could simply look at the main character of Ged. His journey is one that is filled with danger, dragons and thrills but the more important lessons learned are the philosophical ones. He is trying to deal with being at peace with himself and the whole story is eventually leads to Ged finding peace with the shadow that had been in pursuit of him. 

One of the other defining elements of fantasy is that it needs viewers to believe 100% in what is being presented and according to Atteberry, "pay something extra''to accept convictions of fiction plus its  implausibilities as well. Again this relates to the idea of readers truly believing in the worlds that have been created. It suggest that viewers are willing to believe anything and I guess it places responsibility on writers to push the envelope. 

One of the more important aspects of the fantasy genre is that it remains consistent. This seems to grate somewhat against the notion that 'anything goes' in the realm of fantasy. But again it alludes to the fact that if you enter one realm of fantasy and magic you try and stick to it. If Earthsea suddenly started talking about UFO's and Zombies it would feel dislocated and dis-ingenue to the setting and guidelines that had already been outlined. 

But I feel the most important aspect of the fantasy genre as Atteberry states is the focus on the marvelous aspects of our world. It points to the fact that perhaps we only see what is front of us and don't question the things we don't understand. The genre of fantasy is about exploring those elements in which we feel don't offer much substance, and finding that their is deeper understanding encrypted within the fantastical. 

Week Four: How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn?

Week Four: How is science fiction different from fantasy?

According to J.R. Tolkien, 'the secondary creation must be entire and self consistent.' This is to say, a creation of fantasy must be self sufficient and coherent in its entirety. 

The main difference between science fiction and fantasy is plausibility. Ursula Le Guin argues plausibility in fantasy is peripheral, that fantasy fiction deliberately violates plausibility using realistic details to ground a story otherwise too improbable. 

Science fiction in contrast, fictionalises the past or future. Rather than inventing a parallel fictional world like Le Guin's Earthsea, science fiction employs traditional standards of fiction writing by creating an imaginary world within a world. In Philip Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle,' Germany and Japan win the Second World War, the fictional outcome of a historical event presenting itself as criterion of plausible science fiction writing. 

The unspoken contract between reader and writer is altered across genres. In general, the reader agrees to suspend disbelief and be absorbed into a world that is not his own. It is generally agreed upon and reinforced by Le Guin that science fiction meets conventional standards of modern human behaviour and follows a structure typical of fiction works. While Fantasy follows the same structure, the conventional standards of modern human behaviour are largely disregarded. The characters convey exaggerated human emotion (Ged's tenacity and heroism in Earthsea) but are not necessarily human, be the character an enthusiastic wizard or a brooding vampire. This is a classic example of applying realistic elements to an improbable story to connect the reader with an entirely imaginary world. 

Le Guin, U.K. (2005). Plausibility revisited: What hoppen and what didn't. Retrieved from http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html on 08/08/12

Week 3/4: Le Guin's feeling about the adaptation of Earthsea.

So I didn't realise there was questions to base this on until it was half written, so I finished it.

The first novel in Ursula K. Le Guin's series Earthsea was published in 1968. In the early 1980s, Le Guin was approached by animator and director Hayao Miyazaki with an offer to create a film adaptation of the series. However at the time Le Guin was unsure because she did not know any of Miyazaki's work or in fact anime as a genre. After seeing Miyazaki's film - My Neighbour Totoro - she decided that if anyone should adapt the Earthsea series it should be him. However when the adaption - Tales from Earthsea - was made it was directed by Miyasaki's son Goro rather than Hayao Miyasaki himself. This disappointed Le Guin.
While Le Guin was positive about the aesthetics of the film claiming "much of it was beautiful," she took great issue with its re-imagining of the moral sense of the books and greater focus on physical violence. "...evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain," Le Guin writes, "the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."

There were 2 adaptations of another of her works - The Lathe of Heaven which was published in 1971. The first adaption was created in 1980 by thirteen/WNET New York, with contribution from Le Guin herself. The second was made in 2002 by the A&E Network.
In 2008, Le Guin said that she considers the 1980 adaptation as "the only good adaptation to film" of her work to date.

Racism shown in Tintin

An image, whether it be a place, a culture or an idea, stays with us. Anne marie Seward Barry advocates that "It is images, not words, that communicate most deeply".
Words are easily forgotten, but an image can latch on to us like a leech, stow away in the back of the mind. Whether or not this image is stored consciesly or subconsciesly, it has the potential to open the gate and recreate in the readers mind certain political viewpoints, attitudes, prejudices and racism. It in this way that Herge' is able to convey his politcal and racial agendas, his (at times) stereotypical presumptions and his whole cultural value system to the masses that read Tintin. He utilizes the power of image and text combined, and he uses it in a very clever way.

After reading the Blue Lotus, it is inherent that Herge' has attempted to create a character that holds culturally nuetral ideals, and we can see in certain scenarios throughout the comic that Tintin opposes typical western stereotypes (of the time).
On page 6 and 7 of The Blue Lotus there is an instance where Tintin's rickshaw driver accidentaly runs into a westerner. The westerner is outraged and blurts out, "Dirty little China-man! To barge into a white man!". Tintin interferes and shouts back in defence of the China-man, "Brute!". The indignant and fat-headed westerner then heads into the 'occidental club' and tells his peers about the incident and refers to the China-man as a "yellow rabble", and sees it as the westerner's duty to "civilise the savages" and then goes on to say "soon we won't have any control at all, and look what we've done for them, all the benefits....of our superb western civilisation".
These frames in the comic represent the westerner's belief that they are of a superior race. Correct or not this belief is quashed in the readers' mind when Tintin shows his utter contempt  towards the westerner's actions. And because the reader perhaps associates Tintins beliefs and actions as correct and wholesome, it influences the readers viewpoint and encourages them to think that cultural superiority is something to be frowned upon, a positive message for the younger readers.
The downside is that he depicts the Chinese as helpless and in need of aid, unable to fend for themselves, a theme that is common in the Blue Lotus. So it seems, at times, Herge's will to portray the Chinese as accurately and stereotypically free as possible, sometimes contradicts itself.
Another example of this (as Mike Johnson pointed out in class) is when Tintin makes a remark about European misconceptions of Chinese people having pigtails, eating rotten eggs and swallows' nests, when in fact they are part of the Chinese history and culture.    

Although Herge' attempts to portray the chinese in a most objective point of view as possible, with historically correct events, concise research and rigorous documentation, (which he only starts doing upon meeting Chang) there is still an element of racism and cultural ignorance going on; only the perspective has simply morphed into a different form. Herge' has merely switched his spurious stereotypes from the Chinese to the Japanese. The Japanese are now the ones that get a bad reputation, but then again, the westerner's are given a bad reputation in the comic too. Is the racism more or less evenly distributed?