InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Jack Smash!"

Willow (the_willow) wrote,
@ 2009-11-03 01:21:00

Entry tags:

#social justice issues, thinky thoughts

C/Ping A Comment I Made Elsewhere
Haven't read all your comments, I am sure someone has pointed out that part of the reason the Japanese elements disappear is that the Japanese elements are seen, by a lot of those consuming the animan(ga/hwa/hua) as fantasy elements already; due to them seeing the characters as white.

So of course it's noteworthy when someone brings (back) the Japanese culture to fanworks. And of course they feel perfectly validated transferring the stories of the, in their minds, white characters to a (white) setting that is more comfortable and pleasing for them.

I just flat out do not read fanfic anymore, have cut it out of how I fan, because it tends to immediately drop the characters of colour into background flavour and/or erase the non white history of the piece completely.

Having intentionally thrown myself into anime this time around (as opposed to a more passive interaction as a child) I'm even more aware of how intentional the ignoring of the Japanese(and other Asian) cultures is; The Tale Of Gengii comes up as legend being quoted in other works via style or plot (sometimes even in the author notes). The various periods of Dynasty for each country in that region also come up - at least, in scanlations. I've observed that American English publishing rights via varied publishing houses, come with a white-washing and American culturalizing 'for a broader audience' or 'to make it more relevant' that neatly slots the Japanese culture that cannot be cut and Ameri-culture grafted on, into odd elements, leaving them to become aligned with whatever supernatural or fantastical elements also occur in the genre as a whole, if not in that specific work.

I've had it explained to me, that for the most part, voice work acting for dub is a chicken scratch industry where part of the Americanized voices is failure to act and part of it is bad direction in attempts to convey dialects and locality accents which ends up further giving the impression of whiteness; because of the underlying 'white is the default' alongside familiar Midwestern and East Coast, Surfer Californian & upper crust British accents. (And yes I know that a British accent doesn't automatically mean white. But I also know that Britain has more than one accent in the first place).

For my own part I've observed a difference in translation of intent in dialogue, such that character traits come across as American exceptionalism and NOT as traditional Japanese virtues. But I've done some reading lately that makes me think that while industry neglect or lack of talent and funds may well be a factor, a likelier or heavier factor is, again, intentional (and likely very much taking advantage of any neglect). Because anime and manga are brought to the US to be consumed, and marketers have determined and actually have a stake in perpetuating 'everyone in the world is just like the US, but with a few quirks'; because it makes things simple and the simpler a thing is, the more easily it can be consumed.

Thus essential Asianess, whether it is Japaneseness, Koreaness, Chineseness, and others, etc... is presented as similar to Midwesterness, East Coastness, Southerness etc... a geographic peculiarity with local legends and quirks that is essentially American.

This is not a new tactic. The British Empire thrived on this; women making saris into 'sari cloth' and having their very British dresses made from it. The spices of the region becoming a peculiarity of some British taste, vs it being the cooking hand of a completely different culture, etc. It is Colonialism plain and simple; though instead of the header 'We Will Make Them Just Like Us', it is put across as 'They Are Already Just Like Us'.

A Colonialism of the mind is much more palatable than occupation and enslavement of a native population. Let those thought of as 'Others' be seen to 'freely' give you their resources; via treaties, loan agreements, the building blocks of a global free market etc... Let those who are under your rule think of those resources as their right, thereby creating the market's need and sustaining your current practices.

All that is left, is to marginalize the voices who do not believe the creative endeavours of another culture are theirs to exploit as they will. Have them mocked as taking things too seriously, being too PC, being over sensitive.

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And now an aside: For those who will want to comment to me that I am being too oversensitive, too PC, taking things way too seriously, it's just anime and wow, look at how I'm claiming some kind of conspiracy - I say this. Capitalism does not need to be a conspiracy as it is already a well established THEORY (of economics), with several schools (and schools of thought), and many published works. It has fermented rebellion and overthrown dynasties. It has condoned slavery. It has started wars and prolonged occupations to. this. day. Why on earth would I claim such a thing was a SECRET?

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you have made my night with this post

aqrima.dreamwidth.org
2009-11-03 07:46 am UTC (link)

And, god, I wish I'd been able to convey it this eloquently and well to my friend Nicole this one day when I was trying to explain my dislike of animanga and fanfiction.

Thank you for writing this.

Because anime and manga are brought to the US to be consumed, and marketers have determined and actually have a stake in perpetuating 'everyone in the world is just like the US, but with a few quirks'; because it makes things simple and the simpler a thing is, the more easily it can be consumed.
yes! yesyesyesyes. I am so glad you brought up how (neo)colonialism, imperialism and capitalism are all interwoven so intricately to create this environment of frenzied consumption of anime/manga.

I find it very disillusioning how few people I know think about these things, so it makes me very grateful to come across posts like yours!

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the_rck
2009-11-03 02:24 pm UTC (link)

I love watching anime and reading manga, but I also work at remembering that what I'm perceiving-- even without translation issues-- is a distorted shadow of what the creators intended or of what the intended audience would perceive. I don't have the context for it.

I've maintained for a while that most white viewers/readers see anime/manga characters as white. Doing otherwise requires effort because we're used to seeing white as the default. That's why I've never counted those fandoms when the memes go around asking about characters of color in one's fandoms.

I suspect that fans would mentally whitewash things even without the alterations you're talking about in the translations, but the alterations make the assumptions and the appropriation easier. I think you're right that they're meant to flatten things into conformity with US culture and values.

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	dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org 2009-11-03 05:08 pm UTC (link)
	A world of yes to what you said so clearly. I have included it in a discussion round-up post (http://dark-agenda.dreamwidth.org/1741.html) over on dark_agenda (http://dark_agenda.dreamwidth.org), which is a comm I am still tweaking at, but is the place I'd like to centralise challenge resources. (Reply to this)

samidw
2009-11-04 10:14 am UTC (link)

In a bit of a rush, but: I think this is why I started really loving live-action shows like Kamen Rider Kabuto. (Although this isn't dubbed at all.)

Because it's live-action, nobody can pretend that these characters are white. They're Japanese; they LOOK Japanese. (Although one character is supposed to be at least part-British, but he's kind of weird. He's the one who thinks ramen must be French cuisine, because he hears it as la men. And he's still played by a Japanese guy.)

Part of what gets so appealing about it is that, because it's by Japanese people for a Japanese audience, *Japanese* culture is just taken for granted, but the ways in which different characters live it becomes noticable. Like, Kagami and Misaki-san go to a soba shop for lunch; since "soba shop" is taken for granted, the way Misaki-san inhales her food and then slams the money on the counter with decisiveness and precision becomes a thing about Misaki-san.

There are subtleties of body language and so on that you can't get in anime, I think, is why I love it so. It gives them room for characters to be odd in subtle ways - like, their behaviour is more-or-less in line with Japanese cultural norms, but you can have a character like Tendou, who does not follow Earth logic and frequently causes Kagami to make a face that says "I have a headache, and its name is Tendou Junior", while still being very Japanese.

Um. I'm finding it hard to express what I mean here. Kamen Rider Kabuto is awesome, and live-action shows are kind of a relief (for me) after following anime for a while because the fans can't pretend they're basically white? It rules.

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delfinnium.dreamwidth.org
2009-11-05 01:22 am UTC (link)

This is interestingly enough, somethign close to my heart. It's something I wrestle with, being mildly active in Fandom.

As someone whose first langauge is English, all fanfic and fandom stuff I look for is naturally in english, which results in my interacting with a huge amount of Americans and UKians.

(As an aside, I once remarked that almost everyone on the fandom are Americans, and my online fandom friends were surprised. It had never occured to them to realise that almost every single one of the fellow fans they interacted with were American, and almost all of them White Americans.)

I've had friends who had no problem with telling me that anime characters didn't look Asian to them at all (I suppose the Japanese clothing, the Japanese terms, the Japanese culture didn't count, and these were people who preferred, self-righteously, to watch the anime in the original Japanese with English subs), and that their favourite characters OBVIOUSLY had white features. So at the very least, they had to be Mixed (White and Asian, of course. not Asian and Native American, or Asian and Indian, or Asian and Black. White and Asian. Obviously).

Then these people would write fanfic, beautiful and detailed fanfic, about things like the characters OBVIOUSLY Getting a house and garden (whut??) ignoring the fact that the anime shows quite a bit of high rise buildings, with just about the only places with 'house and garden' being Clan families which are organised very differently from the American/Western ideal of House+Garden+picket-fence.

And these are the people who, they claim, to have some knowledge of Japanese culture.

It's no wonder that most fans find it perfectly natural to take Naruto characters (with their Japanese names and clan associations and everything else) and toss them into middle of America high school AU.

Oh, and screw with their names too. FirstName LastName.

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