I’m batting cleanup. & I think Tom, Miriam, & Noah are perfect just as they are. So no suggestions for what they just have to read (outside every manga column I’ve ever written for TCJ).
Just three bunts, written listening to Animetal Lady:
The Point of Manga Is…
…to cocoon. Not just in shelves & shelves of 40, 50, 100 volume series– in character goods, posters, costumes, movies, soundtracks. Pencil boards, cel phones, cow catchers. You can use the new Kramers Ergot as a pup tent, but all of Dragonball could build the Great Wall.
The rest of it could fill the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
On land, people cocooned in manga cafes, even living them. Hikikomori, humorously presaged in Otaku no Video, who fear the sun. It’s all rather urban, where life’s a series of little boxes. Like the model-builder in Otomo’s Domu, the best comic on Brutalist architecture.
Also like the great wall of Mao’s Little Red Books in La Chinoise. But for fantasists, not ideologues. Otaku don’t conceal & carry.…to Globalize the Youngsters (aka “The Daihatsu and the Olive Tree”).
If the 21st Century City is Asian, at least 20th Century Pop was American.
Every other country just imitates our pop culture, or at least they did. (I’m sure someone will comment me down. Knock yourself out, but give specific examples of a non-American pop scene that has spread worldwide like syphillis. What’ve you got, Godard? Scandinavian metal? Okay, Brits have a point if the Beatles leapt whole from Chuck Berry’s skull.)
The few robust pop pockets– Bollywood– usually traveled only with the diaspora. Anime & manga, though, had precious few immigrants to spread them. So foreigners stepped up.
They did well: you can find manga-style pop everywhere from Kuala Lumpur to Krakow.
I don’t know what the next non-American All-World pop culture phenom will be. My money’s not on Eurovision. I do know that there will be one. If it’s like manga, following it will take a big commitment– it’s two full-time jobs keeping up with translations and nobody’s hiring. It will have its own language and rules that make it seem exclusive. It will be modern but not Western, just like Japan.
And it will be some kind of sexy.
All of which explain part of Western manga/anime fandom. I always thought the point was to get all the non-prom kids to dress in notional wisps of spandex and pack them in steamy hotels at the height of summer. Good for them!
The only problem is, they’ll teach their kids to like Japan better than the US of A, so when Taro Aso shows up and peels off his skin to reveal the Reaper, we’re doomed. Unless we got a new president yesterday and our foreign policy’s changed.
Finally: the point of manga is best explained by Asian Steve.
He’s subtle Yin to blackasthenight‘s husky Yang. He has a radio show on a college station somewhere in the sticks. He plays K-Pop, though I doubt he’s from Incheon.
I caught it in the car, not long after a stint working on farm in Kurume with a trio of Korean college kids who belted songs at the pears all day. They spoke of Boa, so I called the station.
"This is Asian Steve."
"Hi, Asian Steve. Do you take requests?"
"YES! YES! What do you want to hear?"
"Boa?"
"Which album?"
"I don't know!"
Then Asian Steve and I rocked to Boa as I drove into the sun. You weren’t invited, but we preferred it that way. Soon I arrived at the gent’s club, where I toasted in High Latin as we all tried to forget we’re surrounded by tobacco fields planted with crystal-meth users.
Conclusion: manga breeds Asian Steves. Great explainers, evangelists. But their chief should have the Christian name of Ron. “Manga Ron.” Get it?
???! I’m hilarious.
Anyway, that’s part of the point, right? Finding your own private ecosystem and then explaining the biodiversity within is a joy. Of course, that perspective dates me. Many readers younger than me don’t see the divisions, I think. And a handful of cartoonists, like Hilary Florido and Laura Park, effortlessly mix influences. They both lift from manga stuff that suits them, ditch the rest, and draw with a sense of Western cartoon history in their lines.
Sweet. Global culture, here we come.
Damn. You make me laugh and at the same time impress upon me there’s very little that I know.
And in case you’re clicking over from Journalista…this post is by Bill, not me.
Sorry, it’s been fixed.
– Dirk
Thanks Dirk! I must admit, I liked being Bill, if only for a moment….
Bill, If you’re looking for a global pop-culture phenom that isn’t American, British reality programming dominates the world. Shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Pop Idol, The Weakest Link and Big Brother all started in Britain and are now worldwide franchises. A quick look at wikipedia shows dozens of countries producing local versions of all of these programs. I’d bet there are others as well. Looking at this list, I hope you’re right about the next big thing.
Bryan, I’d counter that they’re local versions. It’s not like they’re watching UK Idol in KL. Or like thousands of Malay kids are learning English so they can grok Eastenders bootlegs.
Also, what you describe is top-down: companies franchising popular shows. Anime/manga's been bottom-up, scanlations preceding Naruto books.
(Top-down anime & manga decisions have given us Speed Racer and Mark Hammill as the Guyver. Hmmm.)
Noah, thanks for doing my taxes while you were me.
I guess I wasn’t thinking of non-American pop scene in terms of an underground global movement, but more along the lines of general cultural trends, even if it is a lousy trend being shoved down the throats of a mass audience more than willing to eat it. Can I still get my prize? How about having Noah do my taxes too?
Anyway, aren’t the local variations of these shows just cookie cutter versions, down to using the same format, sets, and music as the original? Having watched some of the American shows, it isn’t really about the questions being asked or what songs are being sung by the contestants. It’s more about using a very structured and proven formula to create drama.
I think the local versions of these reality programs are more like translations than original local works, done so everyone in Malay can consume the show without having to bother to learn English. The form and pacing is more important than the dialog, kind of like a lot of manga.
I’m with you Bryan; I think it’s a pretty solid counter-example…though obviously different in some ways from manga.
Japan’s been exporting it’s culture for a long, long time though. A lot of modern art comes from there in one way or another, for example….
um, cocoon’s spelled wrong when you make the first point, in the first sentence. not the biggest deal but…
Yeah, I’m just going to agree with the above poster here because-and I’m sorry-I did not understand this post at all.
Thanks, Anon. Fixed. Now you can double-check my taxes.
Oliver, if it’s worth your time to suss out, I’m game.
Bryan, I still don’t quite agree. (But Noah will do your taxes, so you get the prize!) Your discussion of form, though, is really interesting. It’s like what I said about franchising– you get a structure and apply it here and there. McDonald’s USA = McDonald’s India, except for the flavors, ingredients, and language. The same technique applies to pop media, like The Ring vs Ringu.
But what's happened with anime/manga is that local audiences have preferred the original. That's unusual. And I don't know that it's explainable in formal terms– lots of locals try to ape the look & feel of manga and fail. A lot of it is about the stuff around the books & movies, the joy of getting entracing by the Other, of running away from yourself a bit.
(& I probably should have included Brit pop and called it "Anglo-American." I mean, I read Scary-Go-Round and listen to the Who.)
And Noah, you're right about Japanese culture being exported: “Japonisme” hit France in the late 1800s. But– and this applies to manga/anime– the French fell for the packing paper stuffed in the box. It was a Hokusai print, which had been thought of as scrap paper. So too with Ozu Yasujiro’s movies, not seen in the West until the 70s for being “too Japanese.” And manga/anime has become officially recognized as export culture just in the last 3 or so years. Actually, that’s one reason there’s an anime/manga industry at all– back in the 70s and 80s foreign rights could be had for a song.
Is manga really an escape from the self to the other?—Isn’t manga originally derived from U. S. comics brought to Japan during WWII and the post-WWII occupation. Isn’t this part of the reason why so many manga have Western-looking characters/eyes? Obviously manga and American comics parted ways long ago (only to be re-united somewhat less long ago), but since manga is basically transmuted American “comics,” it’s not really that “other,” is it? It’s more like an encounter with the uncanny…a “self” we have repressed and now only vaguely recognize AS the self.
“Since manga is basically transmuted American ‘comics,’ it’s not really that ‘other,’ is it?”
Well, it’s pretty darn transmuted. Way more different than the Beatles were from Little Richard and Brian Wilson.
Eric, I think it’s a stretch to say it’s solely transmuted western comics…basically because the tradition of cartooning can be traced back to Japan itself. The kind of stylization Disney was using basically comes from Japanese prints.
Comics is a tradition that has been traded back and forth between the U.S. and Japan for a long time. Locating the original influence is probably pointless…but if you have to do it, Japan probably has the better claim.
“The kind of stylization Disney was using basically comes from Japanese prints.”
Seriously? Where’d you find that out?
Well, I may be stretching things slightly, but the cartooning tradition does more or less begin with Japanese prints as far as I can tell. Folks like Van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec were inspired by Hokusai and his cohorts to move away from anatomical correctness and stiff poses and towards a more cartoony style. That stuff trickled down, I think — Disney got it from people like Winsor McCay who got it from Art Nouveau, who got it form the first generation of modernists, who got it from Japan. More or less.
I’ve been reading this awesome book about Japanisme. He doesn’t talk explicitly about cartooning or comics, but I don’t think it’s too far of a leap given the evidence he presents.
What about The Yellow Kid and the other pre-McKay comic strips? I mean, that would be cartooning, right? Were Outcault and those guys being influenced by the French artists who were being influenced by Japan?
Come to think of it, Western caricature goes back at least to the 18th century. How is caricature different from cartooning? Gillray, Cruikshank, etc., certainly weren’t “stiff and anatomically correct.”
BTW blogger Katherine Farmar says manga “iconography is ultimately derived from Walt Disney.” Talk about trading influence back and forth. I think the iconography she has in mind is the google-eyed stuff I was complaining about.
Can’t do links here, but her post’s url is:
http://puritybrown.blogspot.com/2009/01/explaining-appeal-of-manga-what-is.html
Yeah, obviously I’ve crawled out onto something of a limb. Still, I think most of the early comic strips were pretty influenced by art nouveau. McCay unquestionably was, and I think there’s little question that animation was pretty indebted to McCay….
Cruikshank’s 19th century. though. And he’s a lot stiffer than the more cartoony stuff from later in that century, I think….
You leave out Gillray and the question of “anatomically correct.”
That there’s some Japanese influence on cartooning seems like a tenable proposition. But what it is and how big it is appear hard to pin down.
Yeah, I’d say claiming cartooning’s roots in Japan is as big a stretch as calling manga transmuted Western comics.
Protocomics glaze my eyes, but I do know that Charles Wirgman published an edition of Punch from 1862 in Yokohama. Aimed at foreigners, but still a cross-pollinator.
The books to read are probably Brigitte Koyama-Richard’s 1000 Years of Manga, along with those David Kunzle tomes.
it was this discussion that i had come across when i did a search for: "winsor mccay" "japanese prints".
interesting discussion. thanks.
lily
tom said: "Western caricature goes back at least to the 18th century. How is caricature different from cartooning?"
they're real different. the simplicity of the japanese prints, the outline, the flat expanses of color or even blacks. it was as though the impulse to caricaturize was suddenly given a new venue, because its superiority for that message was obvious at once.
though it took a while to be seen in the graphic arts (stylistically as opposed to being lampooned), anything after about 1865 has to be viewed with an eye towards japan.
bill– (and please forgive me for going on so….) — check out this comic called the story of the TONGUE-CUT SPARROW from the edo period, which ended in 1868.
Hey Lotus. Thanks for backing me up…even at such a late date! Not sure Bill is following this thread…but thank you for that link. I love the Japanese long-necked demon monsters.
well, ya know, when you're right, you're right.
it's obvious once you really start looking, or should i say seeing.
people who read my blog regularly often say how they had never noticed any of this before, and of course there are those who think i'm all wrong, despite the very words of the folks from the time in question.
i really like finding corrilatives (sp?) between, like, dave sheridan (and yes, i still have the originals that i bought when they were new– except i seem to have mis-places one of the 'mother's oats comix' i know i had) and like yoshitoshi.
it's a cool blog–i used to be so into comics and i dated this french guy for a while who worked at last gasp and had a GIGANTIC comix collection.
but it's neat that it is being taken seriously now. just like the woodblock prints and the art nouveau posters before them, at the time they were produced they weren't regarded as art at all.
(sorry for being so long-winded!)