I was originally not going to write a conclusion for last week’s Komikusu discussion. But then I was chatting to Tucker Stone, and he mentioned that he’d enjoyed reading the roundtable.
This took me a little aback, because Tucker’s come out fairly strongly in the past against the “we must read more lit comics!” meme as it applies to Western comics. In an interview with Tom Spurgeon, for example, Tucker said:
There’s a temptation to label mainstream fans as being lazy for not caring about Swallow Me Whole or Blankets, to call them “bone-ignorant” — that’s just a bunch of horseshit. It’s an attempt by boring assholes to assign an overall meaning to a bunch of personal choices made by a group of people that those boring assholes don’t know anything about. On an individual level, I’ve heard a couple of people say they don’t want to read comics that focus on the mundanities of regular life, but I’m more often exposed to people who just like what they like because it’s what they fucking like.
I actually agree with that. Yet, at the same time, I’d like to see some more interesting manga titles succeed in the U.S. So…what’s my problem? Why does the push for more interesting comics make me itch in a Western context and not in a manga one?
Perhaps the answer is simply that I’m inconsistent. But, appealing as that solution is, I think there’s actually something else going on. Specifically, the way the debate is framed in a Western context tends to be different than the way the folks on this roundtable framed it. As an example, here’s Sean T. Collins discussing his wish that there was more discussion of western lit comics in the blogosphere.
I’ll tell you what my big question is: Why do superheroes dominate the online conversation the way they do? Last week saw the release of Jim Woodring’s Weathercraft and Tim Hensley’s Wally Gropius, two gorgeous and weird books that truly make use of the stuff of comics and contain the kind of material you can mentally gnaw on for days on end, but I guarantee you that no matter which comics blogs you read, you read more about Paul Levitz’s return to the Legion of Superheroes. And chances are good that if you’ve read about Daniel Clowes’s Wilson, what you read prominently featured that page where the character makes fun of The Dark Knight. What gives? If you want to make the argument that sheer numbers justify the choice of what bloggers and comics sites cover, I suppose that’s your prerogative. And don’t get me wrong — I read and enjoy multiple superhero comics every single week, and have lots to say about a lot of them. I also understand the need to make a living, which in Internet terms means unique pageviews.
But so much of the comics Internet consists of individual or group blogs where, presumably, there’s no editorial mandate to maximize hits. Indeed, the major selling point of the blogosphere is its lack of the traditional gatekeepers and incentive structures that bedevil mainstream journalism. Meanwhile, even the big group blogs owned by major communications corporations tend to be personality-driven, reflecting the interests and styles of their writers to a refreshing degree — and those writers tend to be interested in all sorts of comics, in their spare time at least. So yes, the nature of the coverage is often idiosyncratic, which is great. But why is that the comics being covered differ so little from what you’d read about on Marvel.com or The Source? Should those of us in the position to do so make an effort to broaden the scope of what we’re presenting to our readers as the comics worth buying, reading, and talking about?
And here’s Kate Dacey responding to Sean in that comments thread.
There’s a similar divide in the mangasphere as well: a lot of sites focus on mainstream shonen and shojo titles (the manga equivalent to tights and capes, I guess) while neglecting the quirkier stuff. To be sure, there are many sites that cover the full spectrum of titles, or focus on a niche, but the pressure to stay current with new releases and draw traffic discourages a lot of folks from waxing poetic about the stuff at the fringes. Looking at my own site stats, for example, a review of Black Bird or My Girlfriend’s A Geek will attract a much bigger readership than, say, The Times of Botchan.
Which brings me to the argument I’d like to see explored somewhere: how do we interest older readers in manga that’s written just for them? What kind of marketing support would, say, the VIZ Signature line need in order for some of those titles to crack the Bookscan Top 750 Graphic Novel list? Are there genres or artists we should be licensing for this readership, but aren’t?
Kate’s post there is what inspired me to organize this roundtable. And obviously there are close analogies between what she’s saying and what Sean is saying. But I think there are important differences as well. Mainly — Sean makes the dissemination of lit comics into a moral issue. “Should those of us in the position to do so make an effort to broaden the scope of what we’re presenting to our readers as the comics worth buying, reading, and talking about?” he asks, and the answer is obviously that yes, we should. The problem for Sean is that super-hero comics are taking up too much space because the people in the blogosphere aren’t doing their job in educating their readers about better fare.
Kate starts from the same place — how do we get more better manga out there? But she doesn’t bother with the moral question at all; instead she goes right to logistics. Not “you people should be doing more!” but, “presuming there are people who would like to read different kinds of manga out there, how do you reach them?”
Kate’s pragmatic approach was absolutely the one adopted by the roundtable. Erica Friedman tried to figure out how scanlations could be used legitimately to make more and different kinds of niche mangas available. Brigid Alverson, Deb Aoki and Kate herself talked about practical marketing steps that could be taken to reach new audiences. Peggy Burns pointed out some strategies that have worked for Drawn and Quarterly in the past. Ryan Sands and Ed Chavez tried to map out the historical lay of the land, explaining how manga has been categorized and sold in different ways at different times in both the U.S. and Japan. And Shaenon Garrity offered some more possible solutions, while also pointing out some possible pitfalls.
If you read through these pieces, though, what’s almost as noticeable as what is said is what isn’t. Nobody in the roundtable says that the problem is that readers’ tastes suck. Nobody says the problem is that bloggers aren’t doing enough to promote the right kind of manga. Both Shaenon and Deb mention Naruto in a “yep, the manga we’re talking about aren’t going to sell like that” kind of way — but they don’t seem resentful of Naruto’s success, the way Sean Collins seems resentful of superheroes (despite the fact that he reads them himself). In fact, unless I’m missing something, nobody in the roundtable says anything mean about mainstream, successful genre manga at all.
And why should they? The success of mainstream genre manga doesn’t hurt sales of To Terra or A Drifting Life or Travel or what have you. Because, as everybody in the roundtable seems to realize, the people who are buying Naruto — they aren’t the audience for Emma or Tramps Like Us. Not that nobody could possibly read or like all of those series, but simply that the demographic is different. If you want to increase sales of Oishinbo, the way you do that is not to go after readers of Gantz. The way to do it, as Shaenon says, is to get it into cooking stores.
Lit comics have had a lot of success in the U.S. precisely by finding different audiences. But the comics scene here is still so small, and still so defensive, that its vision still seems to be defined to a surprising degree by the mainstream. It’s not just Sean by any means — super-hero crap is, in general, seen as not just bad, but oppressive. There’s only room for so many comics, and the bad forces out the good. It therefore becomes every intellectuals duty to battle against the filth.
I don’t know that the manga scene in the U.S. is bigger than the Western comics scene. But it’s more demographically diverse, and it always has before it a pretty compelling vision of a possible world in which there are no mainstream comics, because comics themselves are mainstream. As a result, manga critics seem to have figured out what Western comics critics still have some trouble with. Namely, improved morals don’t sell comics; better marketing does.
Of course, just because manga folks have figured this out doesn’t mean that there will ever be more awesome manga available on these shores. But it seems like a good first step.
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The entire Komikusu roundtable is here.
What an interesting roundup, Noah! Of course I’m aware that there’s a resentment of superhero comics as somehow limiting the maturity potential of the comics-reading crowd, but speaking only for myself, I’m as likely to read potboiler crap as anything arty and/or niche.
I’ve noted this on Okazu – for many reasons, there is a prevailing “rare resource” mentality among fans. If I get this book, then you can’t have that book. There isn’t enough money to publish everything, not enough money and manpower to market everything and not enough shelf space to sell everything. But as you point out – the audience for Naruto probably isn’t the audience for A Drifting Life.
There’s no real reason to be resentful – and it won’t change things any way. What we need to focus on is not how to take away what the other guy has, but to create alternate ways of getting alternate titles out. It’s much less like spitting into the wind. :-)
Don’t racists dislike what they dislike, because it’s what they fucking dislike? That’s just a tautology everyone can agree on. What’s less agreeable is that thinking people would ever utter such a line as a defense of anything. Why do people like what they like? Does education have any role to play? Why are corporations so stupid as to pay all that money on advertising if people simply like what they like? etc.. So, Tucker begins that quote as some sort of fanboy apologist and ends it by basically agreeing with the hypothetical Blankets-loving snob (yeah, right) that the fanboy-type is too lazy and ignorant to think critically about what they’re consuming. With friends like these …
I suppose my solution to getting more people to like manga (crap and all) would be a typical corporate strategy: inundate the market, reduce competition, and it will “magically” be one of those things that people like because that’s just what they like.
Hey Charles. I don’t necessarily need to get into a huge defense of Tucker again…but I can tell you where I’m coming from.
I think the move to racism is fairly telling. You’re going to a moral example. But — and I would argue this quite strongly — being a racist is really, really different than reading (what I would consider bad) superhero comics. The first is (rightly) condemned because it’s immoral and has been historically destructive. The second is simply not a moral issue; it’s a consumer choice.
There is some overlap between consumer choices and moral choices — but it tends to be complicated. It’s certainly not just “you like Daredevil rather than Blankets! Go directly to hell!” Similarly, there isn’t actually a moral imperative to think critically about what you’re consuming. You don’t have to be lazy or ignorant just because you don’t want to think critically about Daredevil. More likely thinking critically about disposable reading matter just isn’t something you’re especially interested in. (And if you think that critical thought is some sort of antidote to fascism, I have pounds and pounds of Pound I’d like to sell you.)
You’re characterization of how marketing works also seems confused. You can’t just inundate the market with Moto Hagio, because Moto Hagio isn’t a pulp product with a mass audience. That sort of thing works for super-hero films (for example) where everybody knows/has affection for the icon, but literary fiction isn’t sold that way. If you try to sell it that way, you’ll lose your shirt. You need to figure out who your audience can be, how to reach them, and how they need to be approached in order to be interested in what you’ve got to offer. And even then it may not work (and, for that matter, selling lovable icons through saturation doesn’t always work either, to the constant frustration of megaconglomerates.)
In fact, Charles, you couldn’t have made my point better for me if you’d tried. You’re so committed to a moral view of the lit comics/genre divide that you end up unable to think rationally about marketing at all. You engage in a satisfying round of bile, and then come out of it deriding fans and bloggers and blaming the fact that people don’t read the right stuff on evil corporations and vague conspiracy theories. It’s entertaining prose, but as a strategy for actually selling more and more kinds of relatively high-brow comics, it’s just silliness.
As a kind of side note — I am very interested in why people like what they like, and, for that matter, why I like what I like. Those are really interesting questions which connect up to politics, gender, history — all sorts of things. At the same time, there is something really mysterious at the core of aesthetic preferences — which is a big part of why those preferences are so fascinating.
Partly it’s inertia, Noah. I mean, I’m posting this series here basically blasting Tintin (with reservations), so logically I should detest Tintin.
Yet I love Tintin deeply. (The strip, not the boy, damn your impudence.)
Nostalgia is often important for aesthetics, absolutely — but there are lots of reasons to like Tintin too (lovely design, memorable characters, good gags, etc.)
It’s a good point though that you can analyze something and decide it’s horrible but still like it despite (or even because) you’ve proven it’s no good.
I find that sort of thing fascinating, and even heartening in some ways. Who wants the world, or even individuals, to be explicable?
“I think the move to racism is fairly telling. You’re going to a moral example. But — and I would argue this quite strongly — being a racist is really, really different than reading (what I would consider bad) superhero comics.”
Well, you could always replace it with the analogy of food. For example, a twenty-five year old man called, Dick, has been taking Nestum (“Power-packed with all the important nutrients, especially protein, vitamins and iron, it’s the nutritious drink for the whole family”) for breakfast, lunch and dinner since he was a kid. His good friend tries to encourage him to try some fish and chips or maybe Wagyu beef with truffles but he says, no, Nestum is best – nutritious and not too fattening. There are no moral imperatives here to convince Dick to try the burger, but it’s not hard to imagine why some people would be moved to do so.
“…but they don’t seem resentful of Naruto’s success, the way Sean Collins seems resentful of superheroes (despite the fact that he reads them himself). In fact, unless I’m missing something, nobody in the roundtable says anything mean about mainstream, successful genre manga at all.”
Obviously, the main reason why nobody seems resentful on the manga side of things is because there’s a much wider buffet to choose from (and for all ages) as opposed to just superheroes. So there are Happy Meals, Lunchables, peanut butter cups and Oreos etc. Not just Nestum. If you went to your “favorite” supermarket and found most of the shelves filled with Nestum, I suppose the advice would be to switch supermarkets. If Nestle, Kraft, P&G and Hershey’s became convinced that everyone wanted Nestum because of its success in the U.S.A. and that was the only thing they would sell, I suppose you would have a right to feel slightly pissed.
Personally, I’m not too bothered nowadays since I’ll just patronize the small organic farms and import food from Europe, Japan and China.
As for the Tucker excerpt, I would much rather people read and enjoyed “Born Again” (Deluxe Nestum) or even “Elektra: Assassin” than “Blankets” or “Swallow Me Whole”.
Food is an extremely moral issue in our culture, Suat. Especially for women, but for men as well.
Beyond that — the food analogy works if you believe the Frankfurt School guys and think that not being cultured is actually bad for you. But, again, I point to guys like Pound and T.S. Eliot and Yeats — extremely cultured folks who backed absolutely poisonous ideologies, more or less (according to their ideologies) because they were cultured. There’s just precious little evidence that reading the “wrong” shit makes you either bad or unhealthy in any sense that matters.
I get that the issue for people is that they feel like the pond is so small that the superheroes are eating all the other fish. However, I think that responding to that by blaming superhero fans does not make the problem go away. If anything, it makes the problem worse, in that it centers the conversation even more around superheroes and the direct market and Diamond, all of which is extremely unhelpful if you want to get other kinds of comics out there.
That’s not quite the analogy I was trying to make. Nestum would probably give you bad teeth and diarrhea, and the Wagyu burger might give you a heart attack. The issue here is not whether eating Nestum or Wagyu burgers makes you more healthy or morally upright but whether eating Wagyu beef and assorted other delicacies is preferable to just eating Nestum (if only for more hedonistic purposes though there are other reasons). If you ran Tucker’s excerpted statement through a few distilling tubes, wouldn’t you just get back the old “everything is subjective” argument. As far as I’m concerned, there will be no resolution to this debate whichever route of inquiry one chooses to use (philosophical, scientific, religious etc.). It may not be Tucker’s position in reality but that’s the argument he is using here.
As for Sean’s statements above, he doesn’t appear to be blaming anyone, just ranting and cursing about the current situation.
Tucker is saying not that everything is subjective (morality, caloric intact, what have you), but that aesthetic choices are subjective. And there’s a fairly good argument to be made that they are.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about Sean. He doesn’t seem to be ranting and raving to me. He appears to be offering a practical solution — bloggers should spend more time focusing on better comics. The fact that that solution is actually nonsensical doesn’t change the fact that it is offered as practical, nor that there is a fairly explicit moral component to the advice.
If there is in fact a moral component to Sean’s advice, I imagine it must proceed from his non-subjective take on taste and aesthetics. I prefer Hume’s or Kant’s take on those matters myself.
I don’t know Hume or Kant’s aesthetics very well. For what it’s worth, I don’t actually think aesthetics are subjective, in the sense that they’re entirely individual. Aesthetics hook up to all sorts of public or group concerns. But “not subjective” doesn’t necessarily mean “moral”. I think in general people tend to conflate moral choices with consumer choices, which to me is problematic for any number of reasons.
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Hiya Noah, I’ve been sick, so it took me a few days to get back to this. My bilious attitude (coming out my nose these past few days) is always reserved for those telling people what they should or shouldn’t like based on some supposed model. I happen to believe that the masses might enjoy a great deal more than what they currently do if they were ever exposed to more things. I’m sort of a optimist in that way.
Aesthetic choices aren’t the same as moral choices, but there’s always a morality to such choices at work. Yeah, a lot of good artists are real bastards. Making or loving good art won’t necessarily make one a good person. But giving to the poor won’t necessarily make one a good person, either. What you skip over is that the one (at least) good thing about Elliot or Pound was the art they produced. That is, they were better people because of that; otherwise, they were mostly just bastards whom no one would otherwise care about. (I mean, isn’t the real dilemma in such well-worn examples how good art can come from bad people? The examples presume a morality to aesthetics.) The Frankfurt School didn’t posit that all of life’s ills would be cured by loving certain modernists, but that there’s a moral component to aesthetic choices, and that one should be concerned with the treatment of art, namely in the dialectical manner in which production, distribution and reception are intertwined. (And that ‘should’ makes it about morality, just as it does with the manga roundtable.) Instead of Daredevil vs. Blankets (I’d choose the former, btw), consider: If you had to eliminate one from cultural memory, would the world be better off without culture industrial favorite Diane Warren or fascist Ezra Pound? If it helps, a friend of mine used to work for Warren, and said she’s a real bitch.
As for my confused characterization of marketing, I tend to believe most people don’t much care about their moral relation with art. Instead, they mostly choose from whatever limited range they’ve been raised with. As Tucker and you say, they like what they like. I get this. My dad was a construction worker who had to bust his ass for a lower mid-class existence, too tired to pursue anything in art but the country music he was raised on. Now, he never heard Thai pop music, but wouldn’t have liked it, if he had. However, I’m pretty sure a hardworking Thai dad wouldn’t much care for Johnny Paycheck any more than Adorno would’ve. This situation is hardly subjective, but rather objective (or intersubjective, if you want to get phenomenological). Just because the outcome is statistical, with outliers (such as a son who listens to Xenakis and Paycheck), it doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a fairly predictable fat part to the bell curve of taste.
If all Texans had to hear on the radio for the past 50 years was Thai pop music, then you’d find a lot more of them listening to it, even liking it “just because.” This, of course, wouldn’t happen due to cultural tradition. The majority would resist it, making it commercial suicide for the radio stations as they initially switched formats. So, granted, this is an impossible hypothetical (just as limiting everyone’s comic book selections to manga aimed at teenaged girls would be), but it does point to the way an audience model is used in marketing art. What I find condescending is the audience model shared by the corporate producers of mass art and their apologists who resort to the “people just like what they like” defense. The masses are treated in a Pavlovian fashion: associate an aesthetic stimulus to some predetermined need in order to elicit the desired commercial response. That’s the capitalist view of art in a nutshell, a behavioristic reduction to exchange value. It’s also largely why we have distinctions like high versus low art, literature versus genre, etc.. There’s a whole lot of cultural and commercial horseshit that reinforces these distinctions, that keeps them objective. And it doesn’t all come from corporations as the division between snobs and fanboys demonstrates. Coming from redneck stock, I’ve learned that Mozart is just as catchy as Hank and Dostoevsky is just as much a page-turner as King. In other words, I don’t accept the divisions being administered to us, so I don’t believe anyone else has to, either.
Hey Charles. Glad to hear you’re feeling better.
I’m not sure I’m entirely getting where you’re coming from. I can say that I disagree that Pound was a better person because he happened to write good poetry. Giving to the poor does in fact make you a better person in most moral systems; it’s a moral act. Writing a good poem just means you’re a good poet; it’s like making a good widget, or being a good basketball player. In fact, you could argue that the fact that Pound was a great poet was the worst thing about him; if that weren’t the case, his opinions wouldn’t have been disseminated. Instead his poisonous philosophy influenced lots of people, and still does to some extent.
I don’t exactly agree with your other points either. First of all, cultural divisions aren’t necessarily administered from on high; as you note earlier, there are lots of cultural reasons why people listen to, say, country music or Thai music. These reasons include nostalgia, or because they address particular concerns that appeal to them. If folks wanted to turn the dial from country to classical, that’s a possibility in most places — more now than before with the internet.
You seem to feel that corporations brain-wash folks. I think that, on the contrary, most people just aren’t all that interested in being eclectic cultural consumers. That doesn’t make them dumb or immoral. It doesn’t even make them more dupes of capitalism than you or I are: consuming more and different stuff is still consuming, you know?
We’ll have to agree to disagree that reading poetry or literature doesn’t do anything more for a person than watching a basketball game. That’s not an argument I care to have, so suffice it to say that adding to the collective intelligence is a moral good in my world, not just making more stuff.
As for the possibility that Pound’s poetry was the worst thing about him, that only makes sense if you’re arguing that his poisonous views were intrinsic to his art. If you aren’t making that argument, then what you’re offering is something equivalent to claiming any good the Catholic Church has ever done is actually the worst thing about it, since it allows some pedophiles to have their way with little boys. That’s kind of screwy. Bad people can do good things. That doesn’t make the good things bad.
As for your view on cultural divisions, I get the impression that you’re kind of wedded to identity politics, which I’m inclined to reject. Good art can help bring the recipient out of such reductionistic constraints. I like Eco’s rebuttal (based on his notion of the textual intention) of Rorty’s readerly determinism, that if the text doesn’t have anything more to say than what the reader brings to it, how does he ever change his mind? The culture industry (I don’t mind using it) isn’t interested in art changing anyone’s mind, or having anyone engage with art, but in selling what it can based on a predictive model, the target demographic. To the degree that the cultural production side uses identity in its target demographics and the members so identified simply accept the goods being promoted through the demographic association, then the reduction is objective and limiting. I, however, don’t agree that there’s anything necessary, essential or ontological about these associations. People aren’t solely determined by their culture, their upbringing or reifying corporate structures. To say they just like what they like sounds a whole lot like you’re assuming they are, or that they’re just too stupid to break out of it.
And no, I don’t agree that all aesthetic engagement is nothing more than consuming stuff. I would agree that saying so makes one sound like a dupe of capitalism, though. But I don’t believe anyone who spends as much time writing about art as you do really believes such nonsense. Arguing about he merits of one writer over another isn’t the same as picking a cellphone. And I can’t imagine what your purpose with this manga roundtable was if it wasn’t a moral one, that more people ought to know about these comic. If there’s no merit to any of it other than what can be had with other stuff already available, what’s your point? Let the invisible hand give the people what they want.
Hey Charles.
To your first point, I’m not necessarily a huge fan of any sports in terms of watching them — but I think you’re misguided if you think that there’s a hard line between aesthetics and sports. In fact, I think a lot of people get from sports what I get from books or comics or what have you — geeky obsessive enjoyment of minutia, a sense of the sublime, a sense of community, etc. They differ in certain ways, sure, but not necessarily in any way I’d characterize as “moral” rather than “personal preference” or even “class preference.”
Pound and Eliot’s fascism and anti-semitism was really central to their poetic projects. The Wasteland and the Cantos have a specifically fascist loathing of modernity at their core. I think an individual vision like that is somewhat different than a continent spanning, centuries old institution like the Catholic Church, which has meant lots of different things to lots of different people.
I mean, I wouldn’t ban Pound or Eliot or censor their work — and I love some of Eliot’s poetry and criticism (and rather like some of Pound’s.) But if you’re wedded to the notion that great art is intrinsically moral, I think they present some pretty difficult counterarguments.
“Good art can help bring the recipient out of such reductionistic constraints…”
Good art can do various things. Some of it is eclectic and cosmopolitan. Some of it caters to specific demographics without really trying to break down those barriers.
I don’t think people are determined by their culture or by corporate dictat. People are mysterious, and culture is actually one of the most difficult things to market and sell with any degree of certainty — a fact which drives large conglomerates nuts. But I don’t think that people are limited or stupid because they happen to be interested in things that you’d expect them to be interested in. Somehow I’m more intelligent or less of a dupe than a rural Thai because I found Thai pop on my own and that person grew up with it? That’s just ridiculous.
Again, it doesn’t make you stupid to not be an eclectic hipster. It just doesn’t, no matter how you twist around or what angle you come at it from. You’re not better or more free or even more intelligent than anyone just because of the crap you read or watch or listen to. To say you are just seems really condescending to me.
“And no, I don’t agree that all aesthetic engagement is nothing more than consuming stuff. I would agree that saying so makes one sound like a dupe of capitalism, though. But I don’t believe anyone who spends as much time writing about art as you do really believes such nonsense. Arguing about he merits of one writer over another isn’t the same as picking a cellphone. ”
I think aesthetics links up to a lot of moral, political, and spiritual issues, as well as things ineffable, which is what makes it interesting to me to talk about it. That makes it different than talking about which cell phone to buy, certainly. On the other hand, just because someone doesn’t really care about aesthetics doesn’t mean they don’t care about all that other stuff, and just because I do care doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m more insightful or serious than somebody who doesn’t. Niebuhr has a nice formulation: he believes in Christianity, but is absolutely insistent that God is the God of everyone, which means that nonbelievers of every stripe have access to truth as well — perhaps more access in many cases. (I don’t believe in art the way he believes in Christianity, but you get the general idea.)
“And I can’t imagine what your purpose with this manga roundtable was if it wasn’t a moral one, that more people ought to know about these comic.”
Ummm…maybe that I personally wanted to know more about these comics? That I, personally, would like more of these comics available? That I was interested in what the contributors to the roundtable had to say? That I thought other people would be interested too? If I ask you for film recommendations, I’m not necessarily asking on behalf of everyone in the country, you know? Really, my motivations were pretty straightforwardly self-indulgent. Isn’t that what blogs are for?
Noah,
Here’s my belated response to this discussion, minus the fever:
I don’t have much knowledge of Elliot or Pound (the latter composed some okay music), so can’t argue about the degree of fascistic yearning expressed in their art. I can think of some philosophers who expressed dangerous ideas that were shared with some political totalitarians. This might’ve led some of them to an acceptance of totalitarianism, but maybe it didn’t. At least, many of their readers haven’t followed that path. My point here would be that we have a moral obligation to art (and why not include philosophy and criticism here), to allow for an open engagement with it, even if what’s said (depicted or whatnot) turns out immoral. Any imposed constraint on that engagement is immoral. So, my (philosophical) libertarianism doesn’t have anything to do with the intrinsic message of art.
Somehow I’m more intelligent or less of a dupe than a rural Thai because I found Thai pop on my own and that person grew up with it? That’s just ridiculous.
Again, it doesn’t make you stupid to not be an eclectic hipster. It just doesn’t, no matter how you twist around or what angle you come at it from. You’re not better or more free or even more intelligent than anyone just because of the crap you read or watch or listen to.
I agree, but dismissing the huge forces at work that serve to constrain people’s aesthetic engagement (they just like what they like) is equally ridiculous. Knowing some hipsters, the most common trait they share is a concern for not being a hipster. Generally, this mindset doesn’t really lead to any true relation to what they say they like or don’t like, but rather to the cultural capital gained in saying it. Commodity fetishism is a good enough term for this, and it, too, is a problem.
I enjoyed your Niebuhr paraphrase and get your intent, but it glosses over what I see as a truism: not all behaviors or knowledge bases are equally productive to getting at the truth, or even a fulfilled life. Chomsky once commented on how understanding politics is no more difficult than understanding football. When it comes to social responsibility, which is the more productive use of one’s time? Maybe you don’t see one as any more relevant, or that such responsibility is merely a matter of individual preference, or that art is just entertainment. For me (which I make into a universal), art, philosophy, science et al. are more relevant to this responsibility than watching soaps, reading People, or acquiring new sports cars. Capitalism would have it all be just subjective consuming, conditioned responses with no meaningful difference, but I find that debased.
Why I asked about the point of the manga roundtable was that it would seem like you have an interest in getting it into the hands of other people who might enjoy what you think is good. That sounds like a moral interest. I guess your reason could be solipsistic self-indulgence. However, I’m skeptical that anyone who spends a good amount of time on expressing one’s opinions holds them to be no better than anyone else’s. You might not believe that any of this will have any practical effects (as a blogger, I understand), but surely there’s some inkling that things would be better if it did?
Hey Charles. Glad again your fever is gone. I’m not going to respond at length…but just informationally — Pound’s anti-semitism and fascism especially were inseparable form his philosophy in a way that wasn’t the case for say, Nietzsche.
And as for me….I really don’t think the world would be a better place necessarily if everybody, or even a large number of people, read what I wanted them too or did what I wanted them too. I mean there’s some ambivalence there, obviously, especially with things like politics. But as far as reading art manga goes, I think I’m reasonably confident in saying that my interest is more about my personal desire to have more of it available, and not very much at all about my belief that the world would really benefit in any concrete way if more people wanted to read the stuff I do.