Penny Arcade! – Universal Themes

That link right there got me to thinking about something just a few moments ago, and I thought I would pop open Scribefire and let you fine people know — or, more accurately, peek in on my thought processes, as I haven’t really cogitated fully; this may be a bit like swallowing steak whole, instead of chewing, but we shall see how it goes.

The quick version of things is as so: the fellows from Penny Arcade received a Nintendo DS from a game company, along with a promo of their new game. They played the game, enjoyed it, and ended up sending the DS to a contest winner. Only later did they read the letter send alongside and found it was signed by a famous game creator, for use in PA’s charity, Child’s Play. They have since, as that newspost says, righted things, but something fascinating came up.

One might ask why they even did that, but Tycho explains well enough.

There are people in the games industry whose job it is, literally, to befriend you – and you must constantly correct for it. I don’t apologize for this process. If one wishes to write about videogames, they must constantly bat away sucking, vile tendrils. On this topic, you will find wide agreement.

So, as you might guess from context clues, I wondered what other blogs and media outlets have to worry about. Anime blogging doesn’t really have much to contend with, I think. Sure, there are examples — like a video blog I will not mention which is basically comprised of clips followed by an anime merchandise site’s shill attempting to convince everyone that cheap shirts and miracle Nippon food are must-haves. But overall the most popular English-language anime blogs have little to worry about — the creators of the subject matter are hardly going to court us, over here in America. The big names among us are not (so far as I know) receiving DVDs and mobile phone charms from KyoAni.

And I think that explains some of the mysterious hold anime exerts on us. It is nearly impossible to to watch something while it airs in America and escape the context it creates for itself — the same is true for video games and comics. Books largely come holding themselves up, with no media frenzy coloring our thoughts. The exception, of course, is Harry Potter (and I haven’t read the seventh book yet, so shut the hell up) — I have never been comfortable with Rowling’s media whore tendencies. When Dumblegate hit the net my thought wasn’t slotted into the basic camps: I wasn’t gleeful that gay sexuality had made it into the books (possibly one of the most-heavily slashed Western entertainment on the Webs); I wasn’t angry that gay sexuality had made it in, either; I didn’t even make it into the camp where the coziest-looking fire had been laid, that of the people who think that it shouldn’t have mattered at all, as it hadn’t been in the books. Certainly there’s still meat on Barthes and Foucault — that is, to paraphrase their work, that “the author is dead.”

I hope you will forgive me for A: digressing and B: lumping these two fine writers together, but I’ve always taken them as a pair and it’s difficult to separate who said what. Anyway, the basic idea is that reading is an activity, just like writing, in that it creates meaning. So the author loses control of his or her text after the writing process. Once the book is published, the author can’t really go from house to house, contriving reasons why complaints aren’t accurate or ginning up excuses to keep people from their personal interpretations.

So I don’t quite believe Rowling should have never said anything unless it was in a book. I felt that way for a bit, but holding the writer to such a thing is a bit difficult — there’s always background material. If she genuinely wrote Dumbledore as gay but never got around to him having mad sex with a dude, then that’s fine (I have some doubt about whether she meant that to be true, though, until she realized it would give her final Potter book a great shot of adrenaline in the shops, but I am an asshole).

I do think she should shut the hell up, though, and let the writing stand on its own, in general. This isn’t her Dumbledore announcement I’m referring to now, because she did that at a signing, but all the media presence, interviews, and out-of-book information, like “two people will die in this book” and “one person will die in every book from now on” is both unfair and stupid. Just write the books, lady.

Anyway, sorry. I upset myself a little there. So, like I said, as folks in our country of origin most media is served to us with a context ready-made. We may balk, and even take entirely the opposite line — but I feel that, at least in part, that response is part of the context. If it were not present we would not feel the urge to buck its trend, to prove we aren’t sheep. It’s a bit like the argument (famous from that episode of South Park) that a totally dry alcoholic is still being controlled by alcohol, because it exerts a pressure on life. In the same way, if we vehemently disagree with a line of thought, even partly because it was provided by the businessmen, then we are being altered by their plan.

Also as I said, anime doesn’t really do this very much to us outside Japan. We can’t fall easy prey to their media machines. Of course we do, sometimes. There are loads of people who read Japanese websites or magazines and get this stuff as it’s released — but a good deal of fans are people like me, who are lucky enough to cherry-pick what looks good. Zombie-Loan hasn’t done very well at all among internet circles, from what I can tell. But I saw mention of a series about two zombie hunters and grabbed it, because that’s in line with what I enjoy. And I love that show. I consumed it more quickly (and during school time, mind) than I am currently going through Shakugan no Shana.

It’s a simple idea behind this essay, frankly. Anime seems awesome to us — in part — because we can move through it cleanly, without having to argue about everything with giant corporations.

There are two obvious caveats here. One is that the internet anime culture can act as a problem factor. Indeed, it was the fans and the way of discussing anime that I saw, taking things too seriously, that made me stop watching for several years. The second problem is that we escape the great, big-eyed gaze of anime business no longer. CLAMP is making their mangette stuff, which will simultaneously release in Japan and America, and it may not be much longer before the same is true.

There’s a whole second essay in this point, but I should have included it earlier: manga and anime creators don’t have to cater to us. They’re catering to someone, but we feel as though we’re getting a pure, uncut product, because we can’t see the little cogs and mouse-wheels turning in the heads of Madhouse or KyoAni like we can Warner Brothers’ or Miramax’s figurative heads.