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rushthatspeaksFrom Tuesday.
Thrud has a piece in this; unsurprisingly, it is about Osamu Tezuka. I recuse myself from saying what I think of it on the grounds that I proofread the thing.
The rest of it-- hm. Uneven, is the word I would use here. The good pieces can be quite good, but there is at least one piece so terrible that I have been having fantasies about hitting the author with a piece of rolled-up newspaper while just saying NO over and over again. The balance is tipped more towards the not-quite side of things, I'm afraid, but while I cannot necessarily recommend buying this, if you're interested in manga it would be worth checking out of a library. I'm not sure what to tell you if you're primarily interested in philosophy.
This book is one of a long-running series on popular culture and philosophy; its publisher has done volumes on everything from Bruce Springsteen to the iPod (Facebook and Philosophy is listed as in preparation). There is a companion volume on anime which I have not read. The series is an attempt at explanation and discussion of philosophy through the lens of whatever thing is the title of each book, and I would imagine that the success of this depends somewhat on how broad a thing that happens to be. Manga, of course, is an entire medium, which helps everything along a bit. The essays here fall into several categories: one, essays which analyze one or several manga by examining different philosophical viewpoints found in the work; two, essays which explain a philosophy (or several) by drawing examples from manga; three, essays which are perfectly reasonable manga criticism and have nothing particularly to do with philosophy; and four, essays which are sufficiently confusing or unrelated that I have no idea what they are doing here. The first two categories are clearly what the book is trying to do, the third is understandable and not only forgivable but happy-making, and the existence of the fourth troubles me.
Unfortunately, there's more than one in category four, and while I do have an explanation for the existence of one of them, sadly it is that it was written by one of the editors. Adam Barkman's essay on mythology and manga is the one that has been giving me those fantasies about the rolled-up newspaper. His hypothesis, insofar as there is one, is that mythology reflects some facet of Ultimate Reality (i.e. God), and that the efficaciousness of mythological referents in fiction depends on their capacity to provoke spiritual yearning for this Ultimate Reality. Also, because the Ultimate Reality must be the Highest Good (all capitalization not mine), things relating to it must of necessity be ethical, wise, pure, true, etc., which means that the essay comes down against, among other practices, sympathizing with the Norse god Loki and depicting many mythological figures in comedic contexts.
Uh.
This is not how to write either respectable philosophy or respectable literary criticism, people. Apart from saying vaguely that Plato might have talked some about Ultimate Reality, Barkman does not cite any sources for his philosophical framework, does not explain why he equates his Ultimate Reality with God, and judges the question of whether a work provokes 'spiritual longing' by whether he personally felt that way about it, which both leads one to muse about whether he has ever heard the words 'sense of wonder' and to facepalm over realizing that basically the entire essay is a moral justification of things he likes as being spiritually awesome because he likes them. Which. I'm not saying that something provoking liking in a person is not a spiritually good thing. I'm saying that this essay is generalizing shamelessly and without apparently bothering to consider that different human beings find different things relevant; it is so subjective as to become completely useless. If there is one thing that is common between criticism and philosophy as communications praxes, it is that they are both at least vaguely intended, at their best, to go somewhere other than 'you should like what I like because I like it'.
Sigh. At least this is as bad as it gets, though one of the essays on imagination and Osamu Tezuka is sufficiently confusing that I actually have no idea what it was trying to convey, and there is a perfectly respectable essay on the band the Flaming Lips that as far as I can tell has no connection to either manga or philosophy whatever.
However. The good stuff is both good and varied. The other editor's essay, Josef Steiff on the ethical framework behind the yaoi manga Hero Heel, both neatly explored questions of identity and behavior and what makes a person grow morally and made me want to read the manga, of which I had never heard. Sara Livingston's contribution is something I can only call Gunslinger Girl fanfic, but it's really good fanfic-- I could follow it despite not having seen the series, I could tell what was happening to the characters and why, I could grasp the larger argument about the nature of terrorism, and I was consistently entertained. More people should do this sort of thing.
And, coming closer to things that are important to me personally, there's a great piece here by Jonathan Clements on josei manga and the demographic that reads josei and what the content is of magazines that run it-- circulation numbers and analysis of covers and theories about why this genre doesn't get translated as much and I have not seen other work like this in English and I want more of this sort of thing desperately because I am writing a book on it, thank you Mr. Clements, this is awesome and I could care less that there is no philosophy.
There's also a piece on Shinto metaphysics as perceptible in Death Note which made me feel marginally better about the second half of Death Note, which I hadn't thought was possible. And there's a piece which takes three major philosophical frameworks-- utilitarianism, Kantian categorical imperative, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics-- and throws them at Gundam Wing to see which faction applies which philosophy and what moral framework can be considered to be endorsed by the series as a whole. If you are fond of Gundam Wing you want to read this. And there's a piece which comes damn close to making me think that Keiko Takemiya was consciously applying Lacan in Terra E, because it is eerie how well Lacanian theory explains everything about that series. And there's a great essay which asks the question of whether Alphonse Elric is still Edward's brother, or whether he's actually dead, and what various systems of thought would say about that-- it's really a pretty complex question, with a lot of nuances, if considered closely. And there's an examination of Angel Sanctuary and Vampire Knight, close-read against each other as incest dramas, which I'd like very much to see expanded.
Oh, and the essay about why Westerners keep reading manga characters as looking white summarizes the entire situation in the most concise terms I've ever heard it stated: to Western comics readers, white is an unmarked state, so they expect markers if the characters are Japanese; to Japanese readers, Japanese is an unmarked state, so they expect markers if the characters are anything else. It behooves the Western reader to be aware of this-- that 'they look white to me' argument basically means 'I expect Japanese people to look different from the usual'.
... I am keeping that summary for endless future use.
Even the mediocre pieces can be kind of interesting. I mean, the essay about Miyazaki and environmentalism is exactly the same sort of essay about Miyazaki and environmentalism everyone has seen fifty million times at this point, but it's not like I'm absolutely sick of reading it yet; I will still give that a bit of attention.
Honestly, I'd probably be telling you all you should buy this if it weren't that the bad pieces are so bad, and also that the entire thing, as far as I can tell, was not copy-edited. It is full of small typos, grammar that isn't quite correct, verbs that are one part of speech away from where they ought to be and so on. This does not make it easy to read and does not come across as terribly professional, and I have an element of personal annoyance about this, because as I said I proofread Thrud's essay, and there are typos in the printed version that were not in the version we sent them.
But there's enough of this that is original and thoughtful and scholarly and interesting that I do think it's worth a library request, if you're a manga person. (If you aren't a manga person, this isn't written in your language, but honestly, it wasn't meant to be.)
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
Thrud has a piece in this; unsurprisingly, it is about Osamu Tezuka. I recuse myself from saying what I think of it on the grounds that I proofread the thing.
The rest of it-- hm. Uneven, is the word I would use here. The good pieces can be quite good, but there is at least one piece so terrible that I have been having fantasies about hitting the author with a piece of rolled-up newspaper while just saying NO over and over again. The balance is tipped more towards the not-quite side of things, I'm afraid, but while I cannot necessarily recommend buying this, if you're interested in manga it would be worth checking out of a library. I'm not sure what to tell you if you're primarily interested in philosophy.
This book is one of a long-running series on popular culture and philosophy; its publisher has done volumes on everything from Bruce Springsteen to the iPod (Facebook and Philosophy is listed as in preparation). There is a companion volume on anime which I have not read. The series is an attempt at explanation and discussion of philosophy through the lens of whatever thing is the title of each book, and I would imagine that the success of this depends somewhat on how broad a thing that happens to be. Manga, of course, is an entire medium, which helps everything along a bit. The essays here fall into several categories: one, essays which analyze one or several manga by examining different philosophical viewpoints found in the work; two, essays which explain a philosophy (or several) by drawing examples from manga; three, essays which are perfectly reasonable manga criticism and have nothing particularly to do with philosophy; and four, essays which are sufficiently confusing or unrelated that I have no idea what they are doing here. The first two categories are clearly what the book is trying to do, the third is understandable and not only forgivable but happy-making, and the existence of the fourth troubles me.
Unfortunately, there's more than one in category four, and while I do have an explanation for the existence of one of them, sadly it is that it was written by one of the editors. Adam Barkman's essay on mythology and manga is the one that has been giving me those fantasies about the rolled-up newspaper. His hypothesis, insofar as there is one, is that mythology reflects some facet of Ultimate Reality (i.e. God), and that the efficaciousness of mythological referents in fiction depends on their capacity to provoke spiritual yearning for this Ultimate Reality. Also, because the Ultimate Reality must be the Highest Good (all capitalization not mine), things relating to it must of necessity be ethical, wise, pure, true, etc., which means that the essay comes down against, among other practices, sympathizing with the Norse god Loki and depicting many mythological figures in comedic contexts.
Uh.
This is not how to write either respectable philosophy or respectable literary criticism, people. Apart from saying vaguely that Plato might have talked some about Ultimate Reality, Barkman does not cite any sources for his philosophical framework, does not explain why he equates his Ultimate Reality with God, and judges the question of whether a work provokes 'spiritual longing' by whether he personally felt that way about it, which both leads one to muse about whether he has ever heard the words 'sense of wonder' and to facepalm over realizing that basically the entire essay is a moral justification of things he likes as being spiritually awesome because he likes them. Which. I'm not saying that something provoking liking in a person is not a spiritually good thing. I'm saying that this essay is generalizing shamelessly and without apparently bothering to consider that different human beings find different things relevant; it is so subjective as to become completely useless. If there is one thing that is common between criticism and philosophy as communications praxes, it is that they are both at least vaguely intended, at their best, to go somewhere other than 'you should like what I like because I like it'.
Sigh. At least this is as bad as it gets, though one of the essays on imagination and Osamu Tezuka is sufficiently confusing that I actually have no idea what it was trying to convey, and there is a perfectly respectable essay on the band the Flaming Lips that as far as I can tell has no connection to either manga or philosophy whatever.
However. The good stuff is both good and varied. The other editor's essay, Josef Steiff on the ethical framework behind the yaoi manga Hero Heel, both neatly explored questions of identity and behavior and what makes a person grow morally and made me want to read the manga, of which I had never heard. Sara Livingston's contribution is something I can only call Gunslinger Girl fanfic, but it's really good fanfic-- I could follow it despite not having seen the series, I could tell what was happening to the characters and why, I could grasp the larger argument about the nature of terrorism, and I was consistently entertained. More people should do this sort of thing.
And, coming closer to things that are important to me personally, there's a great piece here by Jonathan Clements on josei manga and the demographic that reads josei and what the content is of magazines that run it-- circulation numbers and analysis of covers and theories about why this genre doesn't get translated as much and I have not seen other work like this in English and I want more of this sort of thing desperately because I am writing a book on it, thank you Mr. Clements, this is awesome and I could care less that there is no philosophy.
There's also a piece on Shinto metaphysics as perceptible in Death Note which made me feel marginally better about the second half of Death Note, which I hadn't thought was possible. And there's a piece which takes three major philosophical frameworks-- utilitarianism, Kantian categorical imperative, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics-- and throws them at Gundam Wing to see which faction applies which philosophy and what moral framework can be considered to be endorsed by the series as a whole. If you are fond of Gundam Wing you want to read this. And there's a piece which comes damn close to making me think that Keiko Takemiya was consciously applying Lacan in Terra E, because it is eerie how well Lacanian theory explains everything about that series. And there's a great essay which asks the question of whether Alphonse Elric is still Edward's brother, or whether he's actually dead, and what various systems of thought would say about that-- it's really a pretty complex question, with a lot of nuances, if considered closely. And there's an examination of Angel Sanctuary and Vampire Knight, close-read against each other as incest dramas, which I'd like very much to see expanded.
Oh, and the essay about why Westerners keep reading manga characters as looking white summarizes the entire situation in the most concise terms I've ever heard it stated: to Western comics readers, white is an unmarked state, so they expect markers if the characters are Japanese; to Japanese readers, Japanese is an unmarked state, so they expect markers if the characters are anything else. It behooves the Western reader to be aware of this-- that 'they look white to me' argument basically means 'I expect Japanese people to look different from the usual'.
... I am keeping that summary for endless future use.
Even the mediocre pieces can be kind of interesting. I mean, the essay about Miyazaki and environmentalism is exactly the same sort of essay about Miyazaki and environmentalism everyone has seen fifty million times at this point, but it's not like I'm absolutely sick of reading it yet; I will still give that a bit of attention.
Honestly, I'd probably be telling you all you should buy this if it weren't that the bad pieces are so bad, and also that the entire thing, as far as I can tell, was not copy-edited. It is full of small typos, grammar that isn't quite correct, verbs that are one part of speech away from where they ought to be and so on. This does not make it easy to read and does not come across as terribly professional, and I have an element of personal annoyance about this, because as I said I proofread Thrud's essay, and there are typos in the printed version that were not in the version we sent them.
But there's enough of this that is original and thoughtful and scholarly and interesting that I do think it's worth a library request, if you're a manga person. (If you aren't a manga person, this isn't written in your language, but honestly, it wasn't meant to be.)
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
