This seemed relevant

[starlady]

Ohtsuka Eiji, an editor, critic, and writer, poses the question bluntly: why do so many Americans see Miyazaki's films as distinctively Japanese, as receptacles of Japanese values, when they are so clearly globally targeted entertainments? The answer is Orientalist habits of thought whereby the identity of the subject is formed by projecting unitary difference onto the Other, which Ueno Toshiya has referred to as techno-orientalism in the context of anime reception.

--Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation

I'm particularly appreciating Lamarre's insistence that manga and anime studies stop investigating works for what they say about Japan, which quickly becomes tautological, but instead look at how they say it, look at what they say about living in the world, period. It's definitely something I know that I need to bear in mind.

Also, I like that that one sentence gets at what's wrong, period, with Orientalism in general and "Victorientalism" in particular--flattening differences that a) exist and b) ought not be flattened so as to, essentially, puff up the ego of the orientalist by furnishing them an entirely false sense of the world's simplicity and their superiority. At the same time it renders people and cultures into things, objects to be consumed, which is equally wrong, wrong, wrong.

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Comments

[merin-chan.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is exactly right! I've been re-reading some of the earlier books published in English about anime lately (Antonia Levi's "Samurai From Outer Space" and even Patrick Drazen's more recent work), and I've been finding that they tend to go about saying "Anime was never intended for export, and watching it is like a peek into the unique cultural unconscious of Japan." Which is not totally true (Tezuka explicitly designed his shows for export) and also tends to create monolithic dichotomoies: "In Japan, they think this, so anime is like this. In America, we think this, so we are shocked and/or enlightened by anime." It's a problematic depiction not only of Japan, but also of the assumed American "we." Lamarre's insistence on avoiding this kind of "culturalism" -whether it's directed at the Orient or not- is definitely worth promoting!

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Patrick Drazen really should know better. Except...well, he does go to TouDai, which I think explains why that attitude lingers in his works.

they tend to go about saying "Anime was never intended for export, and watching it is like a peek into the unique cultural unconscious of Japan." Which is not totally true

And which also reinscribes a sort of voyeuristic relation of the non-Japanese viewer to Japan, I think? which, quite frankly, smacks to me of Orientalism past and present.

[merin-chan.livejournal.com]

Yep, Levi says outright that anime offers "a peeping Tom glimpse into the Japanese psyche" (16)! Drazen is a bit better, but even he says that "most of the anime you are about to meet were not intended to be seen by non-Japanese eyes" (Anime Explosion viii), implying voyeurism. It's amazing that these tropes are still circulating!

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason I won't be reading Drazen's book. Fair warning, I'm going to indulge in some aca-snobbery right here: I'm not surprised to see that in a book by a guy who leads tourists through Akihabara for cash on the weekends.