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Forum - View topicREVIEW: From Impressionism to Anime
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minakichan
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I...
I severely dislike Napier's writings. It's bad enough that she goes all super-Freud in her literary analysis (San's fur costume is a metaphor for female genitalia? REALLY?), but she thinks she can just watch one or two big-name (and generally very OLD) series and make sweeping generalizations about entire genres as if all of anime can be represented by 10 series. But I haven't read this one yet. Don't know if it's worth it to give it my time... |
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Some Guy
 Posts: 135 |
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As someone who is in a cultural studies class right now I can feel I can say this with some degree of authority. Just about all books involving cultural studies make broad sweeping generalizations, its just the nature of the beast.
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BrianRuh
Posts: 162 Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA |
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Re: the cover
It's a little hard to tell since the cover is in black and white, but my wife (who does art and graphic design) told me it looked like the Inu Yasha cosplay photo had been run through a Photoshop filter called "impressionism" (or something along those lines). See - impressionism and anime right there. I don't think it's particularly effective, though; it might have worked a bit better had it been in color. But, as noted in the review, you should probably not dwell too long on the cover. Generally speaking, the publisher (not the author) gets the final say on the look and layout of the book. |
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FanFicGuru
Posts: 159 |
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I'm an East Asian History major at UC Santa Cruz, and I think that this book looks very interesting. I can definitely see a lot of evidence for her thesis since Commodore Perry's arrival to Japan in 1853. I will probably be buying this book to add to my library, though I may give it a skim-over before committing.
Regarding the "broad, sweeping generalizations", I think that her main point in discussing the general purpose and/or impact of anime in the United States is that it ties back into her thesis of Japan's impact on western culture. So, she can watch Princess Mononoke and Akira (and my guess is she's watched more than just those two movies) and say "Ok, what sort of impact did this have in America? Oh, look at that, there are many other series and movies that have a similar effect on popular culture. Hmmm..." It's not like she's saying that every anime is trying to communicate a certain philosophical point, just that every anime is a contributor to her theory. Oh and Freudian comparisons are always lots of fun. Look up his essay on "The Medusa's Head". It's really short, but really REALLY interesting. Stuff involving why men turn to stone and how stiffness refers to the male genitalia, etc. |
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aluria
 Posts: 367 Location: New Westminster, B.C., Canada |
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I believe there is a grammar error under description:
"Napier's main argument is that since ever since the middle of the 19th century, ..." |
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albanian
 Posts: 133 Location: UK |
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I can honestly say that the cover of this book is the single, dullest, most unimaginative cover of any book I have bought in the last ten years - and I buy a lot of books!
On the other hand, the art historian in me responded to the first half of the book, even though it didn't tell me all that much that I didn't know already. Van Gogh and Gauguin were both notable Japanophiles in their early careers, and I hadn't realised until the other day just how many Japanese-inspired paintings American Impressionists like Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase managed to churn out. I thought that the book as a whole was well written, and once it reached its anime point it had something worthwhile to say. Yes, generalisation is the name of the game in this sort of work - as has already been pointed out - but she made a number of cogent points about the nature of anime fandom and the mindset of a particular section of that fandom. But then - as is always the case with this sort of thing - more research and a longer book would be needed to cover the ground adequately. I'm glad I read the book, and it will be a useful resource to be going on with until something heavier turns up. |
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petran79
 Posts: 122 |
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Though certainly the West had some cultural ties with Japan in the 19th century, that occured only to those few interested in art or those working in the ship trade. Eg Japan's national poet Lafkadio Hearn was born in Greece by a British father and Greek mother and changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo when he moved to Japan
But regarding how anime turned popular, it was occuring mainly in the 70s when TV broadcasters with limited budget tried to import cheap shows from abroad so as to have high ratings and advertisements. read here how anime turned popular in Italy and how series often changed the meaning in the dub eg by making Captain Harlock or Lupin III more altruists than they really were. http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=257 |
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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Wow, I can't believe you beat me to this, and the first post as well  (though mine will be harsher). I'm a relatively new anime fan and just bought Napier's first book, along with several others on anime including Samurai from Outer Space. Her book was pretty good all the way through the introduction, if overly pretentious in its academic-ese. And then came chapter one, and it was non-stop vaginas, anuses and homoeroticism for another 50 pages until I tossed it aside forever. I'm so sure that Rumiko Takahashi was thinking about all this as she wrote Ranma 1/2. Yeah, right. Or better yet, I'm sure that subconsciously she was, which is unprovable and means that our little theory can't be argued.
I frankly considered it false advertising and being cheated, as the body of the book was all pseudoscientific sexual pscyho-babble, and barely anything about the actual anime (another example: the "big hole" in Akira was "obviously a vagina and an anus"!). Then I picked up Samurai from Outer Space, which is an intelligent, well-written and quite accessible book that is actually about anime in the context of Japanese culture. I so wish the author would have updated and republished that book. The connection between impressionist painters and Japanese art was even mentioned in Samurai Champloo, and the cultural exchange is pretty well documented otherwise. Not sure if this book would add anything to that aspect, since it doesn't sound like she did any original research. But already the babble begins with "fandom is a form of resistance to the disappointing outer world". I wonder what evidence she presents for that opinion? And I wonder how many other unsupported evaluative claims she pulls out of her... thin air  . I fully realize a lot of people like reading someone's intricate musings over a subject, and that there will even be a few interesting facts and observations in there. But I would not expect the book to actually be about anime, or even history to any great extent, based on her previous work.
I'm sorry about the rant, but my opinion is that she is just scamming money off anime fans with a tangential work. If you want to write socio-psycho treatises, then fine. Just don't package it as about anime. Her first book is a psychology book, not a book about the art form that is anime. You could lift her comments up, replace the anime references with any other form of art or entertainment, put her comments back, and not even notice the substitution. She obviously sees vaginas and anuses everywhere, so it's not going to make a difference. |
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Celeste20XX
Posts: 5 |
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The comment about the disappointment in the "outer world" actually rings true to me. It is that idea of escapism. Certainly, anime draws me in because it does a lot of bold things that American pop culture is afraid to. It's the same reason I read fiction. To escape.
The Japanese don't treat animation as a child's thing. Take American comics. There are plenty of story arcs in X-Men that are hyperviolent and deal with mature subject matter, but these arcs will never get animated because cartoons are "for children". The Japanese don't think that way, so we get a lot of adaptations of things like "Death Note". If Death Note was an American comic, it would have been an obscure niche title that never got animated. |
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pparker
Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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Well, anyone who partakes of canned entertainment can be accused of escapism, especially in social or economic bad times--we've all done it. What interests me about anime are the complex stories and characters based on a foreign culture that uniquely combine centuries of a rich animistic spiritual heritage with an almost hyper-modern materialistic, electronic present day. Because it is animation and because many of the Puritan taboos are missing from Japanese culture, creators are free to re-imagine and recombine their own stories and elements with all that the West has to offer into fascinating and original entertainment. The best of them end up creating exceptional literature. This is what Napier's work entirely misses or avoids, in my opinion. Anime is an art form completely aside from any potential Freudian motivations or symbolism, sex being only one of many motivations for behavior and a lesser one in terms of social accomplishment. You can say that Tokyo tower is a phallic symbol, but it is first just an example of a highly efficient form in terms of physics (compare the Eiffel Tower). I seriously doubt that the architects and engineers involved with its design had penises in mind at the time--in any of their minds . Again, if her perceived or projected sexual motivation and symbolism of the Japanese people in their popular entertainment media is all she intends to discuss, then fine, just reveal that on page one. Or better yet, in the title. I highly doubt her works would sell nearly as many copies without anime being so prominent on the cover.
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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The review made me somewhat curious but this talkback has convinced me that my impressions about this being some kind of pretentious, trying-too-hard exercise in trying to point everything back to sex weren't off base. I might check out her books if I feel like I need to be annoyed, but that probably won't happen. I've done plenty of musing and some writing on analyzing anime and the fandom, but that's something you really need to be part of to understand enough to do so. Outside opinions have their uses, but you can look at anything from the outside and say "I see X which indicates to me why you like Y" when X may not even be a consideration for that person, conscious or subconscious. You can guess at creator's intent all day long but unless you hear it from them yourself all you're doing is, well, guessing. |
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LondinCalling
Posts: 122 |
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I have that book but I never really read it....her older one.
I cannot believe she would insinuate that san's clothing is a reference to a vagina. Unless Miyazaki said this himself, this is one of the most envigoratingly preposturous statements I have ever heard. Regardless of whether or not I spelled those words right, I cannot believe someone in her position would make statements like these. Could you imagine someone not familiar with anime reading this book and thinking, I'm going to watch Mononke now and look for Freudian references....like how San is a vagina. This sounds like crack psychology to me. It got the attention it requested, let's hope it doesn't get the sales. How insulting. At some point the anime fan community is going to have to commission its own writer so some psychoanalytical quack doesn't misrepresent an entire culture just so she can recieve tenure. When Tippi Hedrin wears an animal fur coat is she representing female genitalia in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? What a load.... 
Let us see how she likes it. "Psychologists over analyze things because they are too afraid to analyze themselves. From the perspective of an educated anime fan, it would only seem that someone like this author is really just an overpaid seatwarmer that needs to have a piece of work published so she can feel like she has accomplished SOMETHING in her life. I guess she cannot truly be a man until she gets something published, no matter how ludicrous it may be. |
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