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Otaku Movement
So the spy-bots at Amazon that track my every purchase have sent me a message. They want me to know that Thomas Lamarre has a new book coming out on October 16th, called The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Thanks, spy-bots! You know me so well. Too well...
Seriously, though, I'm excited to read this book. Along with anime, I'm also a bit of a philosophy/lit theory geek, and Lamarre knows his theory. So today, instead of posting an anime review, I'll post some notes I took on one of his articles, "Otaku Movement" (2006), as a primer to the book. If this kind of stuff interests you, you might want to get the book -or get a library to order it, it costs many dollars. Would Lamarre endorse scanning and uploading it as a form of theory-otaku labour, I wonder? ^_^
Book is here (Canadian link)
Notes are
"Otaku Movement." In Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Lamarre’s essay “Otaku Movement” is, as usual, incredibly useful and raises some potentially paradigm-setting issues. He argues that otaku practices like collecting and trading manga and anime, translating, filesharing, and so on are a kind of “communicative labor,” a “nonquantifiable work” that “poses a challenge to received organizations of labor” (362) –namely, big corporations, who call otaku thieves and pirates. Otaku movement is a sort of paradoxical work that is also a “strategy of refusal” of work. It’s more like what Antonio Negri calls “constituent power,” a power that is “immanent to the community,” rather than the “constitutive power” of “centralized forces of command that come from above, that are imposed on a community” (359).
To elaborate this idea, Lamarre looks at how the major Japanese discourse on otaku –the “Gainax discourse” promoted by cultural theorists and artists like Murakami Takashi, Azuma Hiroki and Okada Toshio- leans towards this plane of immanence on an aesthetic level, but falls short of envisioning it historically and politically. He gives an invaluable overview of the ideas about anime and otaku that Murakami, Azuma and Okada all have in common. These include:
1) a canon or genealogy of anime that begins with Tezuka and spans early series like Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam and Superdimensional Fortress Macross. (365)
2) an “anime aesthetics” of “dense, nonhierarchized visual space” (366) that generates a mode of obsessive re-viewing or watching for details besides the central focus.
3) a “breakdown in the hierarchy of producers” (367) in which otaku follow particular mechanical designers or animators as well as directors or screenwriters, and recognize anime as multiply-authored.
4) a breakdown in the hierarchy of producers and viewers, so that “Producers are, above all, fans; and fans are budding producers” (367).
5) “a radical break with definable subject position” (367) in which “Anime breaks out of its television frame, and the distance between viewer and images collapses into a moment of affect” (368).
Many of these things sound practically revolutionary, what with the “radical breaks” and all, but Lamarre is careful to point out their conservative aspects. He argues that there is “a general bias toward thinking otaku as boys or men,” so much so that even works by women, like CLAMP’s Chobits, only reaffirm the male otaku who seeks fantasy images of women and refuses to make contact with real women (375-6; 381). He also criticizes the extreme postmodern attitude Azuma takes when he sees anime otaku as “posthistorical.” This is a problem, because “Dispensing with origins altogether results in a sense of historical transcendence and overcoming” (387). The result is that Azuma et al. foreclose some of the potential for constituent power Lamarre finds in anime otaku. In the end, though, he still sees Azuma et al. as providing a good start.
Of these authors, I’ve only read Murakami before, so I find this a really useful introduction to the Japanese discourse on anime otaku. My only problem with the essay is that even in criticizing how women are overlooked or turned into images in male-centered discourse, Lamarre still doesn’t get at female otaku experience, embodied or virtual. Female otaku may be a minority in Japanese representations, but they're never completely overlooked. There’s the female doujin artist in Otaku no Video, and the two women -cosplayer and yaoi artist- in Genshiken (which I still have to read/see…). If we are really thinking non-hierarchically, being a manga-ka or doujin artist should be no “worse” than being an anime producer, though Lamarre’s footnote on pg. 394 figures manga as mere “materials for anime transformation”, implicitly passive (because female?). I know he’s being critical of this attitude, but when you criticize without giving alternatives, you can end up just recentring the already central discourse. Of course I understand –do I ever!- that you can’t pack everything into one article. But he could’ve at least listed a few shoujo titles as examples of what should be in the anime genealogy, like Rose of Versailles. There’s an entire alternate shoujo genealogy out there: we female fans know it well, even if the Gainax guys don’t. Is this a limit of Lamarre’s male otaku pov as much as Okada’s? Or just a limit of academic publishing?
On that note, what I’d really like to read is an article about how the figure of the fujoshi –the “rotten girl”, the yaoi fangirl- is making it into a lot of anime and manga lately, like Ouran High School Host Club (Renge), Axis Powers Hetalia (Hungary) and Tonari no 801-chan (801-chan). Do these characters replicate the male otaku discourse in seeking phantasmic, objectified bishounen? What does it mean for women to like female anime characters? I’d write it, but it would get so personal so fast…I’m not ready to make my academic work an activity in self-disclosure, not about this, not yet.
Oh, and also, I’m not quite comfortable with Negri’s ideas (though admittedly, I’ve only read Empire, not Insurgencies, which is what Lamarre’s working with). For all the subtle interdependencies between constitutive/constituent power he traces, I still worry that this two-term model will end up being practically used just like every other dichotomous top/bottom spatialized schema, like the strategies/tactics model of first-wave fan studies, or globalization from above/below. Unless I’m really misunderstanding something here…?
Still, I think Lamarre’s essay is great for politicizing a lot of the more aesthetic-focused work on anime. It could become a key reference!
Seriously, though, I'm excited to read this book. Along with anime, I'm also a bit of a philosophy/lit theory geek, and Lamarre knows his theory. So today, instead of posting an anime review, I'll post some notes I took on one of his articles, "Otaku Movement" (2006), as a primer to the book. If this kind of stuff interests you, you might want to get the book -or get a library to order it, it costs many dollars. Would Lamarre endorse scanning and uploading it as a form of theory-otaku labour, I wonder? ^_^
Book is here (Canadian link)
Notes are
"Otaku Movement." In Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Lamarre’s essay “Otaku Movement” is, as usual, incredibly useful and raises some potentially paradigm-setting issues. He argues that otaku practices like collecting and trading manga and anime, translating, filesharing, and so on are a kind of “communicative labor,” a “nonquantifiable work” that “poses a challenge to received organizations of labor” (362) –namely, big corporations, who call otaku thieves and pirates. Otaku movement is a sort of paradoxical work that is also a “strategy of refusal” of work. It’s more like what Antonio Negri calls “constituent power,” a power that is “immanent to the community,” rather than the “constitutive power” of “centralized forces of command that come from above, that are imposed on a community” (359).
To elaborate this idea, Lamarre looks at how the major Japanese discourse on otaku –the “Gainax discourse” promoted by cultural theorists and artists like Murakami Takashi, Azuma Hiroki and Okada Toshio- leans towards this plane of immanence on an aesthetic level, but falls short of envisioning it historically and politically. He gives an invaluable overview of the ideas about anime and otaku that Murakami, Azuma and Okada all have in common. These include:
1) a canon or genealogy of anime that begins with Tezuka and spans early series like Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam and Superdimensional Fortress Macross. (365)
2) an “anime aesthetics” of “dense, nonhierarchized visual space” (366) that generates a mode of obsessive re-viewing or watching for details besides the central focus.
3) a “breakdown in the hierarchy of producers” (367) in which otaku follow particular mechanical designers or animators as well as directors or screenwriters, and recognize anime as multiply-authored.
4) a breakdown in the hierarchy of producers and viewers, so that “Producers are, above all, fans; and fans are budding producers” (367).
5) “a radical break with definable subject position” (367) in which “Anime breaks out of its television frame, and the distance between viewer and images collapses into a moment of affect” (368).
Many of these things sound practically revolutionary, what with the “radical breaks” and all, but Lamarre is careful to point out their conservative aspects. He argues that there is “a general bias toward thinking otaku as boys or men,” so much so that even works by women, like CLAMP’s Chobits, only reaffirm the male otaku who seeks fantasy images of women and refuses to make contact with real women (375-6; 381). He also criticizes the extreme postmodern attitude Azuma takes when he sees anime otaku as “posthistorical.” This is a problem, because “Dispensing with origins altogether results in a sense of historical transcendence and overcoming” (387). The result is that Azuma et al. foreclose some of the potential for constituent power Lamarre finds in anime otaku. In the end, though, he still sees Azuma et al. as providing a good start.
Of these authors, I’ve only read Murakami before, so I find this a really useful introduction to the Japanese discourse on anime otaku. My only problem with the essay is that even in criticizing how women are overlooked or turned into images in male-centered discourse, Lamarre still doesn’t get at female otaku experience, embodied or virtual. Female otaku may be a minority in Japanese representations, but they're never completely overlooked. There’s the female doujin artist in Otaku no Video, and the two women -cosplayer and yaoi artist- in Genshiken (which I still have to read/see…). If we are really thinking non-hierarchically, being a manga-ka or doujin artist should be no “worse” than being an anime producer, though Lamarre’s footnote on pg. 394 figures manga as mere “materials for anime transformation”, implicitly passive (because female?). I know he’s being critical of this attitude, but when you criticize without giving alternatives, you can end up just recentring the already central discourse. Of course I understand –do I ever!- that you can’t pack everything into one article. But he could’ve at least listed a few shoujo titles as examples of what should be in the anime genealogy, like Rose of Versailles. There’s an entire alternate shoujo genealogy out there: we female fans know it well, even if the Gainax guys don’t. Is this a limit of Lamarre’s male otaku pov as much as Okada’s? Or just a limit of academic publishing?
On that note, what I’d really like to read is an article about how the figure of the fujoshi –the “rotten girl”, the yaoi fangirl- is making it into a lot of anime and manga lately, like Ouran High School Host Club (Renge), Axis Powers Hetalia (Hungary) and Tonari no 801-chan (801-chan). Do these characters replicate the male otaku discourse in seeking phantasmic, objectified bishounen? What does it mean for women to like female anime characters? I’d write it, but it would get so personal so fast…I’m not ready to make my academic work an activity in self-disclosure, not about this, not yet.
Oh, and also, I’m not quite comfortable with Negri’s ideas (though admittedly, I’ve only read Empire, not Insurgencies, which is what Lamarre’s working with). For all the subtle interdependencies between constitutive/constituent power he traces, I still worry that this two-term model will end up being practically used just like every other dichotomous top/bottom spatialized schema, like the strategies/tactics model of first-wave fan studies, or globalization from above/below. Unless I’m really misunderstanding something here…?
Still, I think Lamarre’s essay is great for politicizing a lot of the more aesthetic-focused work on anime. It could become a key reference!
no subject
I guess it depends on what you consider "otaku" and "fujoshi". I tend to think of (typically male) otaku as being more into trivia, information gathering, competition (especially video gaming), and collecting (especially figurines), with a focus on fighting shows, sci fi epics, and bishoujo/harem fare. I tend to think of the (typically female) fujoshi style as being more about characters, emotional connection, collaboration (doujin circles), and doujin/fanfic production, with a focus on fantasy, some sci fi (Gundam Wing!), romance/drama and bishounen/reverse harem shows.
BUT: in practice, I like hard sci-fi, while my (straight) male friend adores Ouran High School Host Club. He writes fanfic, I don't. All of these practices have gendered associations, not essential gendered restrictions. So I think there may be female otaku -if you define otaku as a set of practices, not a gendered identity. (And I guess there are "fudanshi" too!)
I also really, really wish there were cross-cultural (trans-national?) studies of fandom
This is my thesis topic. ^_^ I'm translating the survey I posted here into Japanese right now, and looking for a place to host it. (I was really, really hoping to go to Japan on a Monbusho scholarship, but it fell through. >.<) If I can get this thing off the ground, it'll be interesting to see how the gender breakdown and reported interests compare between English- and Japanese-speakers. I think #s 3, 4 and 5 from above apply globally too, but we shall see!
And, ah, I don't have much to say about Chobits, sorry! I didn't make it all the way to the end...*shame*
no subject
I tend to think of the (typically female) fujoshi style as being more about characters, emotional connection, collaboration (doujin circles), and doujin/fanfic production, with a focus on fantasy, some sci fi (Gundam Wing!), romance/drama and bishounen/reverse harem shows.
See, to me this (with a few word changes) could be used to describe down to a T fandom as it's experienced outside of anime and manga/Japan (or, well, the fandom that goes to Dragon*Con--TV, books, movies, with a dash of manga in translation).
I was really, really hoping to go to Japan on a Monbusho scholarship, but it fell through.
You're not the only (qualified) person I know to not get a MEXT scholarship for fan studies. I don't think MEXT is terribly interested in having it excavated, whether by foreigners or by anyone else.
Translating your survey into Japanese you say...Can I ask how long you've studied Japanese?
no subject
(Anonymous) 2009-10-14 10:26 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, I have to say, this is based on my experiences here in North America, which do cross over outside of anime fandom into general media fandom (And on that note, Star Wars icon love! ^^) I'm thinking of Japanese characters like Ouran's Renge, too, who sells doujin and is an expert on male character types, but I guess these depictions are probably exaggerated for comedy. Do you have any sense of what lived female fandom is like in Japan from your time there?
Translating your survey into Japanese you say...Can I ask how long you've studied Japanese?
Three years in university, though I'd been teaching myself hiragana, katakana and some basic kanji and grammar for about a year before that. I took the undergrad courses in my uni's Asian Studies dept. on the side while doing grad courses for my PhD. I hope my former profs will help me out with this translation. The consent form needs to be written in a much more professional style than I'm used to.
no subject
Not terribly--I met a lot of people who professed to liking manga, including some fairly serious otaku, but I never got to Comiket *smacks self* or joined any circles, so I definitely didn't meet the serious female fans.
I'm sure you're pretty busy, but we've been looking for a beta Japanese translation volunteer on the OTW translation committee. If you'd be interested, let me know. ^_^
no subject
I'm so super busy I shouldn't even ask this, but what kinds of things do they need beta'ed?
no subject
Anyway, give it a look-see if you like, and by all means, if you have any reservations on any account, feel free to say no. ^_^ But people at the intersection of fandom + advanced Japanese are rare, so I figured it was better to ask than not.
no subject
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And I still say that if one wants to look at the female side of things (especially multiple flavors thereof--not just fujoshi doing doujinshi of shounen anime series that are currently airing), one needs to start with manga, not anime.
I'm beginning to get that impression. Manga is a whole 'nother fandom unto itself, isn't it? But animation is really my first love, and as a female anime fan, I'm interested in how women do engage with anime when it isn't a primary practice of "female" fandom. Hence, the fujoshi. Someday I hope I'll find time to read all those manga classics I'm missing out on...
no subject
The only reason I bring up manga over and over is that for me, anime is just an adaptation of the True Canon. (And if you're a fan of realistic shoujo romance stuff, I think live action drama adaptations may be just as likely as anime adaptations... or am I totally off there?) I wonder how many other fans feel the same way, especially Japanese ones who can actually get their hands on the manga series a given anime is based on (and who have most likely been reading the manga series for years before the anime even starts). You see the same thing a bit with American comics, at least that's my impression, though maybe it's more like LOTR where a zillion times more people got into it through the movies than through the books, so while you do have a small group of people who regard the books as primary, that's probably not the norm numerically speaking.
Blah blah blah. Anyway, none of that is actually relevant if your area of interest is animation specifically. :D