Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - What the Hell is Happening in Darling in the FRANXX?
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Scherzo
Posts: 149 |
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Just claiming that something is objective over and over again doesn't make it so. Our definitions of what makes good plot structure, good character writing, good coherency; all of that is socially constructed, and contingent on sociocultural values.You can't take a knife and go 'this is objective and this is subjective'. It's all subjective. If you don't like that they discuss the political ramifications of a work, that's fine, but then... don't read the reviews then? There's nothing wrong with addressing a piece of work's politics, and a lot of the time works demand to be viewed in a political context. DITF is making claims about what is the proper ordering of human society, this is CLASSIC politics, like Plato and Socrates level. Arguing that it is not making claims about it is to completely ignore the text. |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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The opposition to ANN's coverage of DiTF has not been solely from the far right. It has also come from the center, slightly right of center, and slightly left of center. Those in between the far right and far left have consistently stated that the show is not promoting far right politics. So for every single one of the ANN reviewers who has reviewed DiTF to maintain that it is and attack the show as such displays a drastic failure of the site to consider the merits of any argument that doesn't match their own personal political ideology. A gay trans man can look at the show from a moderate left of center or centrist viewpoint without subjecting himself to personal degradation. His insistence to use only a far left political ideology as a metric for evaluating the show, and the insistence of all the other ANN reviewers who have reviewed the show to do so as well is what is unprofessional and deeply biased. Moderates in general are moderate because they consider various viewpoints, so if anything that would be a much better framework for evaluating the show. |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5528 Location: Mexico |
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See, if you skim through this thread, you'll see a variety of diverging opinions about whether the character development in Franxx was "good" or "bad", both from people who are demanding an "objective apolitical review" and people who agree with the comments by Steve and Nick
Nowhere in this column is the notion that "the show promotes far-right politics" ever mentioned. Nor has James ever said so. Only Jake ever expressed that specific opinion, and he did so more on his personal twitter rather than in his coverage of the show on the podcast |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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Yes, determining whether the degree to which the series developed its side characters is successful or not is where subjectivity comes in, as I mentioned. That's why there is a wide range of opinions in the thread about it. However, nobody is arguing that the show did not devote any time at all to Futoshi's character development. They can't, because the claim is objectively false. The show did develop him in some ways. That's objectively true. An analysis based on objectivity would first bring up what the show did for his character development, and only then state whether or not they found that adequate to flesh him out as a character or leave him as a character with insufficient depth and complexity, and why. As far as reviewers including the notion that the show promotes far right politics, I was responding to a poster who was claiming that the reviewers were all doing so and thus were right in the way they approached their criticism. In addition, several of the attributes that James and other reviewers have assigned to the show and have criticized in the articles and podcasts are ones traditionally attributed to the far right. Last edited by Mojave on Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:45 am; edited 2 times in total |
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MiiyoSon
Posts: 69 |
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So is everyone who likes/loves this show latching on to one thing in order to dismiss the other things they thought was wrong with the show? I could have sworn there were other hetero romance shows ANN reviewers praised in the last two years but whatever.
Political or not, I find FRANXX to be wwwaaaayyyyy too stupid to clearly deliver any type of "deep or profound" message in may have at this point. |
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jenthehen
Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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The fertility rate in is so low in japan due to their workaholic culture and sexism resulting in no support for mothers in the workplace (they still expect women to quit working to have kids - if not legally then socially, for sure). |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar Posts: 16961 |
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So there are 18 reports coming from 7 different users. Time to lock this up for some massive cleanup.
Last edited by Redbeard 101 on Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:09 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar Posts: 16961 |
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A plethora of posts, and responses to posts that were removed, have been edited and/or removed for trolling, insults, social/political soap boxing, and just general rude belligerence. The show is the popular hot button show currently. That means it's getting more discussion then other shows. The does not mean people should just go from thread to thread making the same rude posts. If they're not acceptable in 1 thread for being rude/trollish they're not acceptable in any thread for the same reason. Any further personally insulting or soapboxing posts will be removed. We've all had enough by this point.
No, that's what some users are trying to make it about because at the end of the day they simply don't like the review. So they have to come up with some sort of excuse to justify their internet rage instead of simply disagreeing civilly.
A million times this. Let's get off the heteronomativity topic please. It was barely mentioned in this column, and many of you are just rehashing posts from other Franxxx discussions. So let's just drop that particular topic in this thread. There's enough of it in the Review thread. |
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James S.
Posts: 94 |
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It's been a while since I've been on ANN due to real life, but no one cares about that.
Instead I'll comment on this, which is something that I've been fiinding incredibly annoying.
See, comments like this that generalize the situation are the reason why we have a portion of vocal posters complaining about how all the ANN reviewers are inserting their political views into the shows reviews. I'll be the first to admit that I have issues with Mr. Beckett in regards to how much of his political views are in his reviews, but it's an issue of how much and not an issue of it being there that bothers me. All art is not political. There is art that is intended to be political, for example political cartoons. There is art that is not intended to be political, for example a landscape of your backyard or one of those family photos that you can doodle on before it's printed. Then there is art that certain people assume to be one or the other when it's actually not. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have the classic example of the college professor telling a class that a painting of blue curtains represents an artist's depression while the artist themselves tells the class that he just liked the color blue and painted the curtains blue because of it. People forget that the literal definitions of art is (in this context) a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. Notice that it says the author's imaginative OR technical skill. Notice that it says intended to be appreciated for their beauty OR emotional power. Based purely on the definition, it is impossible for art to be 100% political and as a result is a generalization equal to the generalizations some posters on the thread have discussed about the ANN reviewers. The sooner people stop generalizing things, the better, but that in itself is already impossible for a significant portion of the population. |
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Ashabel
Posts: 351 |
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Yes, that was pretty much the entire point of that post. I was just being sassy about it. I've been in the game industry for years, so I have mountains of hands-on experience with people using buzzwords like "ethics," "objective" and "apolitical" to conduct harassment against viewpoints they disagree with. I'm sorry if that point didn't carry through, my sass hasn't been in top form lately. I do find it baffling how many demands to stop making the discussion political come almost exclusively from people who try to derail the discussion into being political whenever people attempts to discuss the actual content of the show. I think the political undercurrents of Darling in the FRANXX come up in the article all of once, and only in the context of the writing being so poor that it doesn't seem to know what it's trying to say most of the time.
The thing is that you don't get to decide whether the landscape of my backyard is political art or not. I was the one who landscaped that yard and whether I intentionally put a political message or not, it was created based on my personal biases and will therefore carry a certain amount of my aesthetic and political values. Furthermore, there is always a chance that someone else will disagree with how I approached landscaping my yard, therefore creating a conflict in ideology and once again making my art political. Ultimately while you're right that the author's intention must be considered and respected while studying a work, a thorough critical analysis must consider all alternative interpretations. As an analyst, I don't get to reject the political interpretations of my work just because the original creator dislikes them or didn't intend for them to be read that way. I am expected to be thorough in my approach. So no, your post doesn't actually prove that apolitical art exists. What it proves is that there is art that was created with intention of being political and art created without said intention. It doesn't change the fact that both works will ultimately develop political undertones as they are analyzed by different people from multiple angles. |
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Scherzo
Posts: 149 |
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I guess to play the devil's advocate though, are those readings actually intrinsic to the work, or are they just a certain form of contextualization of the work? Like I won't challenge that all art is the product of the political, but I feel for a work to be intrinsically political, it has to articulate a concept of how society is (or should be) ordered, in some way. Which, for the record, DITF totally does. |
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James S.
Posts: 94 |
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That's just it. Not all artwork develops a political undertone. Paintings of various reptiles placed into a book clearly labeled as "Reptiles of the World" that contains illustrations and factual information on some of the reptiles of the world would not be considered political as it's clearly illustrations of animals that exist at the time and a simple Google search would be able to validate that those are indeed pictures of said animals, in this case reptiles. You forget that not all artwork is an individual piece of medium. They can be interspersed through various other media such as books or movies. How many fictional and nonfictional movies take place in a museum. How many novels of both fictional and nonfictional nature have illustrations of animals, plants, and the various environments in which they inhabit. Just from those, you can already find images that have no relation to politics as it's obvious from the get go that far left and far right policies have nothing to do with how reptile are cold-blooded animals, the process for a jellyfish to develop from a polyp, and how many kittens a feral cat will typically have in a litter. You can argue all you want when it comes to fictional pieces, after all critics have been doing that for ages, but you are sorely mistaken if you believe that art pieces used for nonfictional purposes can ALL be described as political. |
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Gan_HOPE326
Posts: 34 |
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Concerning the objectivity/subjectivity debate I am for what I'd call a form of "soft" objectivity. I think ultimately it's true, everything is subjective; but there are certain things that happen to work for a great majority of human beings, regardless of culture or background, because they harken back to the way our own brains are constructed, by default. This includes stuff like the build-up of tension followed by a release of some kind. Nothing is going to be liked by EVERYONE, but some things are going to be liked by a lot of people because they will satisfy their senses and intellects at a fundamental level, before even getting into the more complex stuff like themes or messages. We can see how stories from all around the world, even from ancient cultures that never talked among themselves, share common traits and mechanisms. That kind of evolutionary convergence happens because there's something in common, something fundamental about the human mind. So in that sense, there are different layers, moving from closer to objectivity to purely subjective.
Then again, my biggest issue with the political criticism (as someone who DOES disagree with the politics of DitF!) is indeed how it's worded. They make it sound like not only it's not subjective, but like it's the most objective criticism of it all. If I see a beautifully crafted work that champions politics I disagree with I usually still manage to enjoy it, though I end up admitting "too bad it was pushing such shit ideas". Sometimes it actually helps me understand better how and why people from the opposing side think that way (e.g.: Starship Troopers, the novel). So there is something that constitutes "quality" that is distinct from political alignment, and more inherent to a work's ability to elicit empathy, to sweep me into its world and worldview, to the point of giving me a glimpse into the author's mind. DitF definitely lacks that. But not because it pushes heteronormativity. A good version of DitF would make me understand more why people might want to push heteronormativity, or why they think it's important in defining our humanity. Here this is not actually explained. We're just told it's there, and also something something aliens and a bunch of other irrelevant shit. |
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TexZero
Posts: 587 |
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I guess this is where it's hard to take your word on it given the overwhelmingly negative critiques. I'm not saying you guys are a hivemind but with each article the echo chamber just gets louder and louder. Part of that most definitely is FranXX's direction/writing itself, however is there no one inside the staff that writes/edits that could give an alternative vantage point ? Not asking for any sort of censoring but a more diverse discourse featuring other points from people within the company if that's possible, a fresh take if you will. |
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HeatherA
Posts: 1 |
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Okay I am so confused why you people hate this show so much. I've been watching anime ever since I can remember. I've encountered a lot of shows I found pointless, boring and just plain dumb. However, Darling in the Franxx is one of my all time favorites. Have you guys even watched the extra episode with the interview with the creator of the show? He seems extremely humble and genuine. He's just trying to share his creativity with the world, not sway your political opinions or even state that the show expresses his opinions. Art I believe is beautiful in that way. You can create anything you can imagine. It's kind of nostalgic for me when I immerse myself in art...in a sense I go back to the way I saw the world as a child (untainted and candid)
For me watching anime is like reading a book. I like to throw myself into the story's world. Why can't you just wholeheartedly enjoy a story without letting all the real world nonsense in? Just forget about everything to do with our world and try to imagine the one portrayed in the story. Politics/gender/any other social constructs don't matter because it's NOT OUR world; it's a completely different universe. Also, I think the love story is a great one. I've never been a fan of romances until I started reading manga like Fruits Basket. Since then I've watched many romance animes. The love between Hiro and Zero Two is definitely significant. Hiro accepted/loved Zero Two from the very beginning. He was the only person who actually saw her for who she truly was. Together they have overcome great odds and become even closer. I also really like the whole theme about the birds that can't fly alone but if they lean on each other they can fly. Like Hiro and Zero Two, each one isn't complete without the other but together they can make miracles happen. I understand the whole issue over Dr.Franxx. Yes, he did plenty of terrible things but he realized his mistakes in the end. Just like Darth Vader, Darth Malak, and plenty of other villains at the end they regret all that they did and admit they should have done things differently. It's because they became obsessed with power, perfection, etc. and lost sight of things that are worth living for (like love). Also, Dr. Franxx did get what he deserved/desired in the end, death. Say what you will and having opinions are good but try to have an open mind when watching these shows. It's very sad that people get discouraged or turned off by one thing in the show. I will continue to love this show and can't wait to see what the creator does with the end of the story! |
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