World Peace! I had originally posted this in my other blog (the boring one?) but it really does fit in here more than there (although I was sure to get some discussion over there!)
I have added said discussion at the end of the post.

I opened up one of my newly aquired anime DVDs to be greated with the phrase "World Peace Through Shared Popular Culture" (trademarked, no less). The DVD in question is Slayers Try and was released in the US by an affiliate of Central Park Media. I could find no reference to the phrase on their site or Software Sculptures, the affiliate. So what to do with this prophetic wordplay? Why, Google it of course! Here's the result.

Such a noble phrase is positive indeed, but while some of the items popularly sold by J-List indicate a cultural exchange, others indicate the universal idea that "sex sells", which in no way promotes world peace.

Here's a quote from Natsume Goushin Ryu:

I've sometimes wondered about CPM/CPM Manga's motto of "World peace through shared popular culture". A noble if completely fanciful ideal for such a media company. Somehow, I don't think distributing "popular culture" such as Kawarajima Kou's hentai manga "Immoral Angel" is going to contribute to world peace. Misogyny - maybe. World peace - I don't think so :P

My sentiments exactly.

These guys apparently have no scrupples, ripping off the CPM motto. A lawsuit in the making???

This guy apparently needs to buy a clue in general (love that exploding head thing, yeah.):

After a break for lunch, CPMedia’s Chris Couch gave a presentation. CPMedia is a company that specializes in Anima [anime!]. The company motto is ‘world peace through shared popular culture’ and he explained that to mean that one doesn’t go to war with someone they know and the best way to get to know someone is to share ideas and have something in common. Couch talked about several of the Manga books and gave an informative introduction to the types of stories the company publishes, to the benefit of some people like me who aren’t that familiar with the genre. As he put it, they produce comics that retailers can sell to anyone that comes into the store [he neglected to mention that they also publish manga that will get you arrested in Canada!]. They’re particularly proud of what they call Sho Ujo [Shoujo - which means girl], which are manga comics particularly geared towards women. There was a great deal of discussion about how to bring more women and children into comic shops and he seemed to have a lot of the answers, at least in terms of content.

Here's an older copy of CPM's manga catalog (I couldn't find a current one). CHeck out the 'very graphic novels' section on page four. At the bottom is their lovely motto.

Honestly, I think this is a noble idea but not so noble a motto for an anime distribution company that doesn't appear to be very picky about the cultural aspects they are exchanging. Anime still has to overcome the stigma of a certain genre (hentai in particular, which is basically anime porn, although there are a few titles that pack quite a story) mainly of the 'tits and tentacle' kind.

I know that anime is much more, but there are still aspects which clash greatly with American culture. There are alot of 'harem' comedies where many females flock around an almost universally inept male character, the 'master' type anime, where said harem inevitably calls the male "master", and plenty of 'fanservice', aspects of a story which don't nescessarily add to the storyline, but are added to please the fan-base. Most often fanservice entails female nudity, usually in a 'vacation' episode.

Add the Japanese reputation for implied misogyny, male dominance in society, and extreme fetishes. You get a rather unpeaceful impression of society over there. Don't get me wrong, there is an outstanding amount of great anime out there; America just needs to find it. As for the sharing of popular culture, I have no desire to be exporting french fries and hip-hop to Japan...

Update: I realize that french fries and hip-hop have already infiltrated Japanese culture. I only mentioned them because they are examples of what some would find 'bad influences', while others may not.

Comments:

At 12:35 AM, Sheryl said...
Not to be gross, but this reminds me of a year or two ago, I was joking with this guy in Australia online and the subject of the James Bond movie Octopussy came up. Anyway, he did a search on Goggle for tenticle sex or something like that, and all this weird japanese anime sites came up with the most bizarre pictures of females and tenticles; It was very weird.


We were just being silly with no expectation of actually finding anything from such a search.

Is it my imagination or do the sexually progressive cultures have more mysogyny in their escapism? I only say that because it is possible that when women progress in some ways, the result is that men have to cope with it in their escapism.

Naturally I would prefer that art not be misogynist, but if it's a reaction to women getting power, then I would rather see women get the power and leave men needing to daydream of taming us.


At 11:26 AM, gecko said...
I guess you have a point; i'm certainly no expert on sexula progress in other cultures.

Do you mean that due to women getting more power (i.e. coming closer to equality, to maybe our level some time soon) the men develope more misogynistic fantasies?

If so I agree. Keep in mind tentacles are just a portion of the worst of their hentai (perverted) anime. They have a great deal of master/servant, bondage, and even rape in a few.

That's where anime get's a black eye, but there are many, many quite good (normal anime) ones to cancel them out.

Unfortunately, here and overseas, the shorter running time (usually one episode of 30 mins compaired to the general 26 eps) and easy market (more gets imported) for hentai anime gives the whole genre a bad name.


At 10:11 PM, Sheryl said...
Rape scenes would certainly bother me a lot more than tentacle sex pics. Maybe I just have a warped sense of humor, but I just laughed at the tentacle pictures I saw. They were so ludicrous.

But I do have problems with romanticizing any forms of pain or torture (including, but not limited to rape.) In other words, the tenticle pictures should show a happy women. The root pictures are also just amusing.

In terms of bondage. Don't get me wrong (I'm certainly not promoting bondage), but I think an important part of sex is the loss of control, so I can see how some people might enjoy experimenting with it. Especially in their fantasies.

A little like the way blind people can hear better. If you don't have control of certain parts of your body, then the focus on what's happening to other parts could be more intense.

And like I say, I'm not advocating any of it. It just doesn't bother me the way some things I have seen on the internet do. And anything disturbing is better if it's just cartoons.

But I can appreciate how you might consider it to be soiling the art form. I probably felt the same way that time when I got a fortune cookie that ONLY had a lotto number in it. No fortune, no philosophy. Just a bloody lotto number. It seemed sacriligious to me.


At 12:10 AM, gecko said...
That's strange because the idea of the tentacles (usually involving a demon/monster/alien) is the violation of the victim. Perhaps it's due to fact that the tentacles don't nescessarily know they're doing wrong, where as rape is human on human. Humans know better?

I really don't have a view on bondage other than I wouldn't want it done on me!

Odd that you mention the cartoon form of it; here is a discussion of possibly one of those disturbing things. There is an aspect to the discussion where it was brought up that if it's a drawing/animation there is no victim.

Did you play the numbers?

Thanks to Sheryl for this enjoyable discussion. Anybody else have a view?  ¶ 6/03/2005 12:30:00 PM 0 comments