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I am an Anime Feminist. Ask Me Anything

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Hunter x Hunter may not fall into that exact trap but it has tons of issues of its own, one of which is that the core team is entirely male. Excluding women is not better than including them but badly. We have a really great article (I didn't write it, I just love it) about why shonen manga should be more inclusive to non-male readers and characters

<Removed> Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter are popular with women because they focus on almost exclusively male characters, not in spite of it. Ditto for those sports series like Haikyu and Kuroko. Replacing half those casts with women isn't going to attract more women to the series, it'll more than likely turn a lot of the current women reading them off.

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

All art is political. All of it.

So you're telling me that Bob Ross and his happy little trees was political? How about Thomas Kincaid paintings? How about my neighbor growing up who made hand carved water bird sculptures out of driftwood because he liked birds? How is liking waterfowl political? How about my friend who does metal working? Or how about my own resin model kits I've made in the past. Those were political too? I simply didn't like the character and thought the figure was cute? I mean you said ALL ART is political and those are all examples of art in my book. I sure don't remember anything political going through my head when I was putting together my favorite resin Urd figure years ago. What "lens" are any of these examples seeing through?

Psycho 101 wrote:

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote: All art is political. All of it. So you're telling me that Bob Ross and his happy little trees was political? How about Thomas Kincaid paintings? How about my neighbor growing up who made hand carved water bird sculptures out of driftwood because he liked birds? How is liking waterfowl political? How about my friend who does metal working? Or how about my own resin model kits I've made in the past. Those were political too? I simply didn't like the character and thought the figure was cute? I mean you said ALL ART is political and those are all examples of art in my book. I sure don't remember anything political going through my head when I was putting together my favorite resin Urd figure years ago. What "lens" are any of these examples seeing through?

Thank God someone said it. I genuinely thought that this statement "All Art is Political, All of it," was one of the most narrow-minded things I've seen a supposed intellectual say on the field of debating art. It's okay to interpret what you interpret, but the instant you insist that all art is universally a certain way, you've failed to understand art.

“All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Morrison laughs derisively. “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.”

All art is part of its political context, and this is particularly true in times of social transformation and crisis. However, not all art is so clearly politically motivated, and not all artists are committed to seeing their art as part of a political system. Furthermore, not all political art is about resistance, revolution, or change; some political art is about maintaining the status quo. Art and architecture are often demonstrations of control and power, whether the iconography is clearly polemical or not.

Media convey ideological messages about values, power and authority. In media literacy, what or who is absent may be more important than what or who is included. These messages may be the result of conscious decisions, but more often they are the result of unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions – and they can have a significant influence on what we think and believe.

As a result, media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. TV news coverage and advertising can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image; representations of world issues, both in journalism and fiction, can affect how much attention they receive; and society’s views towards different groups can be directly influenced by how – and how often – they appear in media.

My apologies for saying that the original poster didn't understand anything about art. I meant that it was a narrow-minded view to perceive every piece of art in existence as somehow political. Pardon me if it seemed like I was attacking an individual's character.

louis6578 wrote:

My apologies for saying that the original poster didn't understand anything about art. I meant that it was a narrow-minded view to perceive every piece of art in existence as somehow political. Pardon me if it seemed like I was attacking an individual's character.

If I may ask, what exactly is it that you feel is narrowminded about the idea? At its foundation the concept is just that art is inherently political in some capacity or another because it's created by people, and people are inherently political as products of the various societal and communal systems we live and participate in. It's not an assertion on the quality or specific nature of a piece of art, but rather an acknowledgement that art is the result of human action.

lossthief wrote:

louis6578 wrote: My apologies for saying that the original poster didn't understand anything about art. I meant that it was a narrow-minded view to perceive every piece of art in existence as somehow political. Pardon me if it seemed like I was attacking an individual's character. If I may ask, what exactly is it that you feel is narrowminded about the idea? At its foundation the concept is just that art is inherently political in some capacity or another because it's created by people, and people are inherently political as products of the various societal and communal systems we live and participate in. It's not an assertion on the quality or specific nature of a piece of art, but rather an acknowledgement that art is the result of human action.

I'm glad you brought this up. My issue is the implication that all art is trying to push an agenda about how society is/should be. In truth, I'd say that art about rebelling against an establishment or dealing with unreasonable superiors can be seen as political (One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, Code Geass, and even Aggretsuko). However, she didn't say "all art where sociology is a focus." She said "All art." No exceptions. No wiggle room. This is implying that, say, something as innocent as a child's drawing of a stick figure or music without lyrics is political.

Believe it or not, if the post was just a bit different, I'd accept it even if I disagreed. For example "All narratives are political" wouldn't exactly have the same level of push back from me.

(I suppose I should moderate myself now for going so off-topic).