Fairly recently I read a few articles about anime and escapism. Since I’m far from being satisfied with the current state of some of my posts, here’s some quick filler
I see what you did there!
Anime is and always will be an escape for its occidental viewers. I can only speak for America, but western cartoons are primarily aimed strictly at children. America has always had this godawful habit of denying true philosophical ideas, and any maturity (sexual or otherwise) as “difficult” or “unmanly”. So we dumb down our children and teach them that patriotism and blindly feeding off the teat of America go hand in hand. Children are never taught to actively think themselves. They are taught that TV is good and reading esoteric books are bad. Get a job and fund the american economy. Marry a woman and have as many damn kids as you want. Tithe! Pay your taxes! Vote Republican! America has become an obscene joke upon itself.
However, there is a small cadre of believers who attempt to learn and attempt to teach. It’s almost a war between those that preach enlightenment and those that shove patriotic propaganda down our throats. It is through this friction(synthesis) between knowledge(thesis) and stupidity(anti-thesis) we arrive at our escapist nature.
Yeah I threw in a little Hegelian dialectic..for funsies
Hobbies are the escape between this ensuing feud. We try to avoid both learning and being stupid by doing a relatively mindless thing to ourselves that helps release the stress put on us by both sides. Some fish, some become trekkies, and some watch anime. Blame it on the cartoons we watched in our youth, blame it on America idolizing Japan for its technology, something inside some of us just ignore the world we live in and get lost in whatever anime we happen to be watching. The people that fish probably had parents that idealized the outside ie camping, swimming, or exercise. The people that become trekkies probably had absentee parents and took to watching fantastic space adventures to escape from the pressures of school and the pressures of an american government successfully getting them addicted to whatever they can tax heavily.
So we escape. We avoid reality. What’s that you’re thinking? what about slice-of-life shows? No matter how neatly defined how to the letter how perfectly real any given show may be, thats all it is. A show. There’s one thing that separates the real from the realistic….how the thing being viewed is viewed. If I go outside and watch two squirrels humping I am watching and living in the real. If I download a porn with two squirrels humping no matter how realistic, no matter how good the graphics are, it is still only realistic. Not real.
So why bother escaping when you already lead a slice of life life anyways? Because real life is not interesting enough. We feel this constant pressure on us from both sides of intellect and stupidity so we feel the need to get out of our own heads for a while. We may lead a life like in Lucky Star exactly to the letter. But we as humans feel that constant struggle to escape.
This still doesn’t explain mecha series though. Perhaps due to the phallic nature of the weapons and the ships, or the regressed need to exhibit male dominance through oversized gundams.
In the future expect an actual philosophy book review since I am about to finish Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature have been thoroughly mindfucked by it. In the mean time here’s a Hume joke I’m fairly certain only Michael and Daniel will get.
Clearly he didn’t understand the necessary connection betwixt overeating and being overweight.
June 29, 2008 at 9:36 am
But all we see is that being overweight consistently follows overeating. How do we know there’s a connection? Also, throat cancer.
I read the Enquiry at school, and I remember it being pretty brainstretching stuff, in a good way. Since that was the abridge version, I guess the Treatise is more in the same vein?
July 2, 2008 at 7:35 pm
lol and thats what most of those who disagreed with hume said(although reading through the treatise it’s hard to imagine too many people with brains enough to hold their own against hume…Kant was the only one i suppose?)
I’ve yet to read the Enquiry although I suppose it will be required of me if I am to get my degree in philosophy. surely by the time I go after my doctorate I’ll have read it though.
The Treatise wasn’t so much brainstretching as it was essential in creating that “hey I always thought that but never spoke up about it”. I myself only began reading Hume at 17, but I had a fair idea of the Is-ought problem by the time i was 12 or 13. This is not to brag, but to show that no matter how original you think you are, it’s already been done.
July 3, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Heh. To hear my teachers tell it, Kant was probably the only one, yes. I know what you mean about discovering someone else got there first – it’s how I feel about Barthes and the whole Death of the Author thing (different sphere of academia, I suppose).
I thought one of the fun things about Hume in particular is how his writing seems to clarify things we already know. It’s always good if an empiricist’s arguments actually match my own experience.