Hannah Nguyen

W12

Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?

The original of the TV show is a complicated history of hybrid programming they associate with reality TV (Hill, 2005). It is not accessible to categories and developing within an account and culturally specific environment (Hill, 2005). Reality TV are overlapping each other through a different kind of genre, and production shows such as documentary television, an entertainment show, journalism increased during the 1980s (Hill, 2005). The hybrid format focuses on telling real stories from people and events that happen to them that they are willing to say in front of the audience that can be entertaining style, foregrounding visuals, characterisation and narrative about all else (Hill, 2005).

The hybridity has organised in one particular program rather than exploring it in quantitative variations (Wood, 2004). Hybridity analysis needs to possess the difference between categories to defining overstep content (Wood, 2004). Hybridised television is more focus on the mixing together of styles of fiction and non-fiction to change the status of reality (Wood, 2004).

In NZ reality TV shows such as Rescue 1, a famous New Zealand program (Lorenzo-Dus & Blitvich, 2013). In the first decade of the 21st century, “Reality TV” programme is mainly in Western network’s television schedule and developed into a global media phenomenon.

Reality gameshows have become an international sell since the day it arrives in 2000 (Hill, 2005). The cost of reality TV has increased in the production such as drama, sitcom and it becomes an optional number of economic during 199s when the networks were looking for a quick fix to financial problem (Hill, 2005). “They were successful in the 1990s and early 2000s because they drew on existing popular genres, such as soap opera or gameshows, to create hybrid programmes” (Hill, 2005, p. 39). The mixed-gender of different genre of reality that creates a hybrid program which helps the economic problem of that period. “Reality TV has its roots in tabloid journalism and popular entertainment, but it owns its greatest debt to documentary television, which has mostly disappeared from the television screen in the wake of has popular factual programming” (Hill, 2005, p.39). I think the documentary had nearly disappeared before the reality TV show actually arrived in the audience. The documentary is a mixed genre reality together with the different genre such as gameshows to make it more fun to the way they tell factual stories rather a traditional documentary.

“Given that the hybrid mixes what is customarily distinguished, this charge no doubt seems misplaced. However, hybridity is often treated not just as a complex of conventional modes but also as simple in its complexity” (Wood, 2004). Reality shows may be the hybrid mixes, but it is also simplification and it creates its genre. It also shows its colour.

References:

Hill, A. (2005) The rise of reality TV. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 15 – 40). Oxon: Routledge.

Lorenzo-Dus, N., & Blitvich, P. G. C. (Eds.). (2013). Real talk: Reality television and discourse analysis in action. Basingstoke: Palgrave macmillan.

Wood, B. (2004). A world in retreat: the reconfiguration of hybridity in 20th-century New Zealand television. Media, Culture & Society, 26(1), 45-62.

Lou, W. (2006). Te Kura Kete Aronui Graduate and postgraduate E-journal – Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. ‘Reality’ in new documentary hybrids. A case of PBS’s frontier house(volume 2). https://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/149252/WeiLuo.pdf

W11

How real is Reality TV?

Reality Television is how the images, formats of genres of Reality TV fix themselves into the way television, its schedules, structures and viewing cultures conferences (Holmes & Jermyn, 2004). Reality TV is aware of what kind of show they will do to attract broadcasters are seeking to draw audiences in particular ways (Holmes & Jermyn, 2004). The practices relate to their cultural power and multimedia experiences; the ways can resonate so extensively in the culture sphere (Holmes & Jermyn, 2004). Therefore,

A reality show is the broader context in which showing the difference between the performance and the celebrity culture in every day has not evident (Escoffery, 2014). “Reality TV where the discursive environment has fostered roles which are in part interchangeable: academics and public intellectuals can become contestants/participants, contestants can become media commentators, ad producers can mingle with academics (e.g. Carter)” (Escoffery, 2014). Reality Tv programs can be low living in the house such as the employed urban on housing estates (Dahlgreen, 2013). Some of them can be labelled as “stressing the viewing’s distance from the scenes represented and by facilitating an unethical passivity before representations which are framed and marketed as entertainment” (Hester, 2014). Reality television genre dominate schedules now. It is observed in different ways. Many different types of reality TV nowadays can relate to “politics of identity” or a group power (Biressi and Nunn, 2005).

For the show Big brother, there is a discussion of the program may be an argument for a different format of the construction of fame. In reality, TV is concerned (Escoffery, 2014). It can pinpoint that the term “Reality TV” gains more comprehensive from this point to another point in areas such as the press, television trade press and TV viewing guides (Escoffery, 2014). Defining things happen in “Reality TV” shows that the importance of a focus on “real life” and “real people” as the primary point in the show through the subject matter in the front. However, whether all the reality show is real, that is still a question to people. The show can capture the real-life, but it doesn’t mean celebrities are showing their life. Reality TV is combined with very self- reflexive and self- conscious connected to create a different form of genres in a reality show (Holmes & Jermyn, 2004). Roscoes’ research how this marks the program of a reality show and Big Brother is not as a real game but as a “reality-life soap”, because of its editing and construction from the perspective of production.

Reality TV can manipulate the realities that the audience may not be aware of. Reality TV has a prominent link to market the program of reality TV, and it can be stimulated. Reality TV can be in many areas such as marketing, promotion to make a reality show but it can be a “cheap TV” that tend to conflate the “event” or show with other areas of Reality programming. Therefore, that is up to the audience what they think of the reality show on their point of view. Reality show can be real or not depending on how they set the programme to show the audience. How they want to commerce and make fun in reality TV can be rethinking of whether it is real or not. Often some reality shows tend to create fun and combine genre in their performance to attract more audience in their presentation.

References:

Holmes, S., & Jermyn, D. (Eds.). (2004). Understanding reality television. Psychology Press.

Escoffery, D. S. (Ed.). (2014). How real is reality TV?: Essays on representation and truth. McFarland.

Dahlgreen, W. (2013, May 31) Poverty-Porn TV in Bad Taste? You Gov. Retrieve October 22, 2020, from https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/05/31/poverty-porn-tv-bad-taste/ 

Biressi, A., & Nunn, H. (2005). Reality TV: realism and revelation. London: Wallflower Press.

W10

2. What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres?

Paul K.Alkon defines “essay or narratives exploring the consequences of an imagined divergence from specific historical events”(Alternate” 68). Mountford (2016) grieves “postmodern form of alternative history”.

High Castle’s setting up a kind of play between the author and his protagonist. Although the acknowledgement of this different part of technique and patterning device in the novel. “Critics have praised High Castel as a landmark example of the uchronie or alternative history genre” (Mountford, 2016). Uchronie is the French term for alternative histories genre. It is “emphasizes less a causal or diachronic notion of history and more a synchronic or polyphonous one” (Mountford, 2016). “the postmodern alternate history tends to foreground historical chaos” Ramson (2010. Alternative history, postmodern alternative and uchronie are all the same under the specific literature. The genre alternative is seen over different of time through history. “all historical” is focused as an analysis of many scholarly or as a formative example of alternative history, in France it is called as uchronie. Uchronie is “less a casual of diachronic notion of history and more a synchronic or polyphnous one” (Mountfort, 2016). “Amy Ransom argues that critics discussing alternate history (AH) have often neglected to distinguish among the more conventional forms, which are underpinned by a linear, causal, or diachronic view of time, and the more synchronic view implicit in the French term for the genre, uchronie”(Mountfort,2016). Amy Ransom believed that alternative history (AH) have often forgotten to recognise among the form of conversation, which is underpinned casual, view of time “diachronic”, “synchronic” perspective implicit in the French term for the genre, uchronie (Mountfort, 2016).

I Ching provide the different between the synchronic and diachronic notion of simultaneity or “meaning coincidence” is contrary to the western views of causality. Uchrnie emphasizes the diachronic idea of history and a synchronic or polyphonously one.

I Ching is an element of chance and is existed in different realities (Mountford. 2016). There is a hypothesis that other universities exist. Therefore, “The Man in the High Castle” I Ching device literally figure the stylistic and philosophical dimension of it. Oracle discuss a core around which novel is real or fake world binary. “This scenario represents an identified subgenre within the uchronie genre” (Mountfort, 2016). I Ching inspired and write The Man in the High Castle was in ancient time. Dick’s novel wrote it from the main plot and explored more to the readers a postmodern fiction of the texts.

Alternative history, postmodern alternative history and uchronie genre are in a different alternative world where the fate of characters in the text are possible in multiple scenarios. I Ching based on the belief that other possibilities can happen in an alternative existence world, and characters can be different in the different text depending on the world of novel scenarios, and it can change overtimes. The many share some the same definition or meaning, but they can be different through time and in alternative world theory.

References:

Ransom, A. J. (2010). Warping time: alternate history, historical fantasy, and the postmodern uchronie quebecoise. Extrapolation, 51(2), 258+

Mountfort , P. (2016) The I Ching and Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle SF-TH Inc

W9

2. In what ways can cosphotography be understood as a form of “fan capital”?

Photography plays a big part in cosplay. Photographs and video record people cosplay as a character in anime or manga performance. They are cosplaying, as a character takes time and money. Photography will be a useful resource for fans to look at and refer to someone who already cosplays their favourite character. Cosphotography helps cosplayers exchange their costume in an online network in the cosphere (Mountfort et al., 2019).

According to Elena Dorfman describe in her portraits of cosplayers that the photo of cosplayers represent in the image will show the way it communicates with fandom. Therefore the photo display should be peeled apart (or collapsed together) for the fandom viewed it (Lamerichs, 2011). Cosplayers motivate themselves to cosplay at a character they like in a fan convention. The most common is shown in the fashion delivered where cosplay photos have been taken from the camera.

Fashion show photograph will be an excellent source for fandom because fashion shows are organised for fashion culture with catwalk or stage where cosplayers can show their outfits from various angles (Lamerichs, 2011). Fashion shows where fandom can involve in the costume of the character they are based on or interested in (Lamerichs, 2011).

The photograph will promote the costume as a central role. The fans model for the photographers can use the pictures to promote their costume activities to other fandoms. Cosplay conveys “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1986) to other fans with the same exciting areas such as comic book convention (Ramirez, 2017). The convention allows fans to gather and demonstrate their cultural knowledge of the same culture and exciting regions to express them in the same topic or culture that they know.

Not the only photograph will be a source online for fandom, but their communities help fandom gain more knowledge and express their interesting over the internet. They can show their experience, their cultural capital to each other’s on the internet through their photos (Ramirez, 2017). Through the activities of cosplay can help cosplayers escape from reality and enter into their imaginative world. They can transform from an “ordinary person” to a “superhero”, from a game player” to a “performer”, and from adulthood to childhood (Rahman et al., 2012)

Photographed and videoed are not only taken on private value but fan capital as well in wider, mainly online networks (Mountfort et al., 2019). Understanding the subculture or fan capital photograph will help fandom understand more the frame, the issue surrounds cosphotography (Mountfort et al., 2019). Cosphotography has been updated in many platforms but cosers images of their body shaming to advertise or commercial cosplay has a bad outcome and destructive influence on the internet. Online galleries for pictures of cosphotography are in many platforms, and it is essential to commercial cosplay, they still have a cosplay music video in television shows. Cosplay requires time and money; also, it can connect in many particular ways, such as mash-up and parody. This means cosplay is not just fan-based consumerism but also a critical practice (Mountfort et al., 2019). Many cons of commercial media assist cosplayers market online fan cultures.

Cosphotography changes its form to fix with the setting and existence into a broader economy of desire to let fandom see the change of cosphotography in the cosphere that has a vast example of embodying a specific character.

References:

Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. (2019). Planet Cosplay: Costume Play, Identity and Global Fandom. Intellect Books.

Lamerichs, N. (2011). Stranger than fiction: Fan identity in cosplay. Transformative Works and Cultures, 7(3), 56-72.

Ramirez, M. A. (2017). From the panels to the margins: Identity, marginalization, and subversion in cosplay.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002 [1986]. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 280-291 in Readings in Economic Sociology, edited by Nicole Woolsey Biggart. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub

Rahman, O., Wing-Sun, L., & Cheung, B. H. M. (2012). “Cosplay”: Imaginative self and performing identity. Fashion Theory, 16(3), 317-341.

W8

1. Referring to Mountfort et al. (2018), in what ways is cosplay analogous to citation.

Cosplay is people who wear their costumes inspired by fiction characters (Lamerichs, 2011). They will reference follow four elements: “a narrative, a set of clothing, a play or performance before spectators, and a subject or player” (Lamerichs, 2011). These references can be used as an analysis of cosplay (Lamerichs, 2011). People choose who they want to be as a source that they can dress up and imitate their character as references. Cosplay is a source of citation for people who use this source to transform their body into the characters from popular media texts (Mountfort et al., 2019).

Cosplay is a fan-based, who performed a character in a manga, or anime character in a parodic performance by Mari Kotani in Japan in 1978 (Lunning, 2012). Western imitates Cosplay from Japan with their popular culture sources such as mange, anime, otaku and idol culture but in Western and it is quite common source texts with mix and mashup their influence (Mountfort et al., 2019). Cosplay is considering as a form of citation, which cosplayers will dress themselves follow a source of citation called “citation acts” (Mountfort et al., 2019). Cosplayers dress into a character in manga or anime or movie that they want to be. The manga or anime is their source use of references to change themselves into a character in theirs. When others dress up as a character in anime or mange, people are implicitly known as a citation in a source text that cosplayers use in their costumes (Mountfort et al., 2019). The costumes do not only imitate the character’s look but including pose and gesture (Mountfort et al., 2019). For the references or citation help the audience know what the character that cosplayers dress up and acting out (Mountfort et al., 2019) is. The fan not only wears and make up the same as the characters but they try to use the source text or story world to get closer to the audiences. Cosplayers not only play around with the character but use the source for “parody, pastiche, satire, burlesque, and caricature” (Mountfort et al., 2019). Cosplay is not only cited materials from the source but they change it more creative or change to a new version with their citation. They not only simple imitate to become a character or just only for acting out but they are mixing and mashing practices for fanfiction or anime music videos.

Cosplay reference can be seen as a source text of translation and adaptation where people use their body to “embodied translation” to citational act (Mountfort et al., 2019). Cosplay is not only imitated but they try their best to look as much as the same character as possible. That will make them successful in cosplay their characters. People also follow their gender and race to dress and imitate their character in cosplay. Still, many people dress differently from their gender; for example, a woman dressed up like a Spiderman or a superhero who is opposite her gender.

Cosplay likes an entertainment game or a way for others want to dress in a character that they love in an anime or manga. They use their favourite anime or mange as their citation to dress same as a character in the story.

Reference:

Lamerichs, N. (2011). Stranger than fiction: Fan identity in cosplay. Transformative Works and Cultures, 7(3), 56-72.

Lunning, F. (2012). Cosplay and the Performance of Identity. Retrieved from http://www. quodlibetica. com/cosplay-and-the-performance-of-identity/(tarkastettu: maaliskuu 2016).

Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. (2019). Planet Cosplay: Costume Play, Identity and Global Fandom. Intellect Books.

W7

Carroll (2003) and King (2010) discuss how the “monster” is a defining feature of a horror story. Using references, explain in your own words how a monster in horror differentiates from monsters in other popular genres.

According to Carrol 1987, horror and science fiction are not really in the same genres. For them, science fiction explores in many different technologies of the theme of horror but in the horror genre is a matter of scary monsters. According to Carroll, 1987 said that ‘should not be assumed that all genres can be analysed in the same way’. She gives some example such as in Westerns; they use a monster in horror in novels, films, plays, paintings, and other works are group under the label of ‘horror’ which has monsters there to scare people. Some people can say that horror novels, stories, films, plays, and so on can be marked by the presence of monsters (Carroll, 1987). But in Carroll purpose, the monsters not just only in horror but it can be either a supernatural or a sci-fi origin.

Some of the horror in fairy stories, myths and odysseys can’t be told as a horror genre, it can be distinguished the horror genre from mere words and in other genres such as fairy tales. What is the difference between monster in horror and different genres is that rarity in horror can be a monster appear as an extraordinary character in an ordinary world. In contrast, in other genres such as fairy tales, monsters appear like a familiar creature in an incredible world. The monster in horror fiction creates some utmost significance and also disgusting to people who loves and what monster in fictions. Therefore, in the context of a horror narrative, the anomalies are identified as impure and unclean (Carroll, 1987). The art of horror is that the creator of the genre keep doing it until the audience can feel of the horror in the movie to make them feel the scare and horror of the monsters in the film. Monsters in horror make the audience’s emotional reaction is scared to the monsters in the movie. Another kind of horror in the movie is that alien, who comes from another galaxy, who can manipulate people by control or rot people’s psychology and physical. Whether these aliens can be called monsters or not, it is still horrifying in the context of fiction. And some monsters can be only threatening rather than terrifying some audiences, and some audience feels opposite way, but whether their feeling is threatening or horrifying, the movie is still thriving in a genre to make people scared of monsters in the film. The monster can be contradictory in many forms such as ghosts, zombies, vampires, mummies, the Frankenstein monster, Melmoth the Wanderer, and so on and whether they are in terms of being both living and dead.

Monster in horror can be a horror-comedy in movies such as Beetlejuice; it gets audiences laughing when some of them may be screaming (Carroll, 1999). The purpose of this movie is making audience alternative between laughing and crying throughout the duration of the film (Carroll, 1999). This genre aims to shift moods rapidly to turn horror to humour or vice verve, on time (Carroll, 1999). Horror-comedy is one of the well-known genres in the film that everyone may know and like it exists (Carroll, 1999). Vampires can seem like a monster in a horror movie, but vampires have in many different genres such as horror, comedy, or even romantic genre such as vampires fall in love with a human and protect human.

Some other popular genres turn to psychoanalysis in search of enlightenment. In some part of the genre itself invokes psychoanalytic considerations. “It’s imagery from symbolic apparatus of dream interpretation as well as allowing fictional characters to advance pseud- Freudian accounts on their own and other’s motivations. Some monster has been compulsive murders, the genre’s common presumption rooted in the psychosexual dynamics of childhood.” (Tudor, 1997). A monster can be different form in horror and popular genre. A superhero can be a monster as well in another form of transfer the characters to the audiences.

Reference:

Tudor, A. (1997). Why horror? The peculiar pleasures of a popular genre. Cultural studies, 11(3), 443-463.

Carroll, N. (1999). Horror and humor. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57(2), 145-160.

Carroll, N. (1987). The nature of horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 46(1), 51-59.

W6

What is the philosophy of cosmicism and how is it used to convey a sense of dread in both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space?

Philosophy of comicism is a Lovecraft’s fiction provide some contempt for nascent medium. His works often relating to an imaginary world such as mysterious objects, forbidden secrets, adventures desert, the discovery of horrors in a city, metaphases, shocking revelations, dream and reality, alien beings, cosmic monsters, etc (Menegaldo, 2019).

In that cosmic perspective, man has a dire consequence of losing his mind if he fails to get the messages or cannot understand the mysteries of the universe (Menegaldo, 2019) (Joshi, 2006). In Cthulhu Mythos that Lovecraft was the ancient Philistine god Dagon in “Dagon” (1917), it was only in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) that the Cthulhu Mythos have come into genuine existence and the four subsidiary icons such as typography, occult love, gods and cosmicism that are conjoined into a coherent whole (Joshi, 2006). “A professor unearths evidence that a race of extraterrestrial entities, led by a creature called Cthulhu, came to earth from the depths of space millions of years ago, building a geometrically bizarre city called R’lyeh” (Joshi, 2006). Lovecraft’s stories up to this point had exemplified as his signature conception with all of the element of cosmicism that is evident only in a small number of tales.

‘The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931) showed the comic to the mundane; the comic’s elements are presented under the surface to show their power. A bereft protagonist name Robert Olmstead (never named in the story but name in Lovecraft’s story notes) (Joshi, 2006), is a great great grandson of Obded Marsh and a Deep One; he soon will become one of the amphibious monsters whom miscegenation between alien fish-frogs like he witness in the decaying Massachusetts city of Innsmouth. In ‘the Innsmouth look” is a sign the tell them for something is happening in their place, something is big and profound physiological and psychological change that will come and haunt them in virtually immortal and dwell forever in their undersea cities (Joshi, 2006). Same for ‘The Colour out of Space’ when something falls into their backyard with an intense colour that is a sign for them whether they believe or not. Some of the characters in the movie believe that it is an unlucky sign, and they need to get out of there before it is too late, but some people do not believe in it. They keep staying in the house and many horrible happen; they cannot leave that area anymore. One thing in common in ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ and “The Colour out of space” is that they have dwell where the alien use to hide there before they haunt and make people lose their mind.

Philosophy of comics is where the existence of two or more galaxies, alien from different galaxies and humans in the earth where we are living now accidentally meet or see extraordinary things happen like alien and they are different from us humans. That aliens come from others galaxies, and they often bring fair to human, and they are something that is unpredictable or cannot explain to the science now and hardy to believe if the sciences do not see it by themselves. Many people believe in these aliens, but many not. “The colour out of space” shows the audience something hard to understand or cannot explain in science and it is up to human whether they believe or not.

“The colour out of space” want to show audience that the aliens is exists and it is a nightmare for human. Seeing how aliens with no form like us, it is basically just a colour harm humans and turn them into a monster like two characters in Gardner family. Everything happen in the movie is a sense of dread that I think everyone who is watching the movie will feel the same fear. The movie leave an no answer questions to everyone who watches it. I feel unsure about what is actually happening and terrified of what is happening in the movie.

Reference:

Omeragić, E. (2016). A Study of Horror Elements in HP Lovecraft’s Short Stories of the Cthulhu Mythos (Doctoral dissertation, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Department of English Language and Literature.).

Menegaldo, G. (2019). HP Lovecraft on screen, a challenge for filmmakers (allusions, transpositions, rewritings). Brumal. Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico, 7(1), 55-79.

Joshi, S. T. (2006). The Cthulhu Mythos. Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, 1, 97-128.

W5

What genre or genres is Princess Mononoke? How does it relate to its ‘prequel,’ Nausicaā ?

Princess Mononoke is a Japanese anime in 1997 with an epic, fantasy, war film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is animated by Studio Ghibli.

Princess Mononoke inspires a vast number of viewers to look at the movie more critically at some of the myths and modern Japan because Princess Mononoke works to fight and face the public stereotypes (Napier, 2001). Princess Mononoke includes a good scene of the great woodland god is a nature creature to bring independent power that embodied in the movie (Napier, 2001). It presents the power of hope and renewal. The same things happen in the final scene in Nausicaa, pure power of love, Sheeta’s and Pauza’s willingness to die together for the sake of the world in Laputa (Napier, 2001). Mononoke is a broken intricating world focus on anime prominent under their demonstration. The movie is an archetype and icon of the feminine to create a new vision of Japan at the crossroad of history. In some way in the anime include violent, indeed apocalyptic, this lament for a lost Japan alternative, heterogeneous, and female-centred vision of Japanese identity for the future (Napier, 2001). Mononoke is not based on an actual historical event, but it bases on the central myth of Japanese culture and society. Princess Mononoke makes it strange with icon and Japanese culture; the tale of the feminine as long-suffering and supporting; Japanese’s myth as living in harmony and nature often demonstrate the union of the feminine and nature. Mononoke ruins the traditional history, aesthetic, and gender relationship of Japanese society. Princess Mononoke’s use of fantasy to make a concept of clarifying the problem or interruption in real contemporary life.

Nausicaa takes the traditional epic and makes it new and fresh through the character of its eponymous heroine. Nausicaa is first presented as a mystery. Nausicaa, the teenage protagonist, has a plot of motivation to save her village (Shamoon, 2015). Nausicaa is brave by her “feminine” willingness to scarify her life for the sake of world harmony. Mononoke link to Nausicaa because they have the same meaning in the anime about human and nature.

“Mononoke is intended as a sequel to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (1984) which depicts a post-apocalyptic world composed of expanding dead-zones” (Mountfort, 2020). The Princess Mononoke is set in the ancient past, where Nausicaa is set in a post-apocalyptic future (Cavallaro, 2015). In Nausicaa, the relationship between human and nature is a divide of good and evil in much criticism. The Princess Mononoke uses to address the situation Nausicaa is continuing in this movie has been treated in the theme. The director defined the relationship between human and nature in the film, whether in a good or evil, but both sides should have better in relation.

When human is development, the environment is inevitable to not to be damaged. But the human should think of the ways of their happiness without destroying nature, and it won’t bring them a real pleasure. Therefore, in these two movies, the directors want to give a message to the audience to see how they should help and live together in a better state.

References:

Mountfort, P. (2020). Pop Genres_2020_Week5_Anime #2 [PowerPoint slide]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/

Napier, S. (2001). Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. Springer.

Shamoon, D. (2015). The superflat space of Japanese anime. Asian Cinema and the Use of Space: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 93-108.

Cavallaro, D. (2015). The anime art of Hayao Miyazaki. McFarland.

Napier, S. (2001). Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. Springer.

W4

Is Anime a high or low cultural medium, according to Susan Napier (2005) and what are some of its subgenres?

Anime in Japan has its free, creative form in many ways. Japanese animation popular in their country with the flexibility, creativity, and freedom in the medium itself on its society and it is not just because of their economy, constrains and aesthetic traditions (Napier, 2016).

Anime is high, or low culture medium depends on where were you and your culture. America sees it as a “sub” genre (Susan, 2005). In Japan, Anime has been inspired by their own culture, which is from great cultural Japanese tradition. Some of their animation or anime genres have been found in a significant fluency on their tradition.

Anime is in a vast industry nowadays, even in the United States. Anime was not for only children watching anymore but adults as well (Chambers, 2012). Anime has in many genres to attract adults, such as an anime in history that is unforgettable (Chambers, 2012). Some anime seems like not interesting or much connection with people has been banned in the United States continued up until the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan “dismantled agencies created to protect the public, and signalled to broadcasters that the FFC, which had bowed to the demands of ACT, would no longer be so stringent in its oversight” (Ladd, 2009). Japanese Anime is free in the medium itself to mark a point that is suitable in Japanese society. Japanese animation is as a narrative art form, and not only for its arresting visual style (Napier, 2016). Anime in medium identifies the combination of optical elements with an arrangement of generic, thematic and deep structures to produce a unique artistic world (Napier, 2016). The anime highlight the characters and setting them in neither western nor Japanese, they explore in the way that audiences can revel in a safe form of Otherness unmatched by any other contemporary medium (Napier, 2016).

According to Susan, Arika works extraordinary well in the subgenre of the hybrid genre that mixed the narrative of science fiction, horror and the feeling of an audience when they watch the movie delighted (Napier, 2016). “Sci-Fi anime: cyberpunk to steampunk” (Denison, 2015) anime has its popularisation and its subgenres of cyberpunk and steampunk, which used many metaphors and similar to get it out of this genre to explore and illustrate upon perspectives of human existence (Denison, 2015). Akira is a remarkable mark in America for Anime and global markets to discourse the story on the ultimate nature of Japanese animation; the story links with sci-fi and subgenres of a high spectrum in life and existence of Japanese style. In Denison’s works, he said that Anime’s subgenre had been explored and expanded in useful spaces that could be tested as a category that we understand of staring point that science fiction provides us. Anime is essential to keep the development of a transnational, transmedia genre of science fiction (Denison, 2015). “Dramatic” is another genre of Anime that makes sense because of Anime’s origins in Kabuki theatre and because American adults understand Japanese social cues as over the top in a specific way (Napier, 2007).

Animation of Japan is not the same as any other animation in other countries such as America. Mostly, the animation is for children in other countries, but Japan creates some of the animations in different ways of illustration which is not just only for children but in a different type of target audiences such as male, female, children or adult. Depending on the diverse target audience, they have a different kind of genres to create different visual elements in the anime or animation.

Reference:

Denison, R. (2015). Anime: A critical introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chambers, S. N. I. (2012). Anime: From cult following to Pop culture phenomenon. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 3(2).

Ladd, F., & Deneroff, H. (2009). Astro boy and anime come to the Americas: An insider’s view of the birth of a pop culture phenomenon. Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc.

Napier, S. J. (2007). From impressionism to anime: Japan as fantasy and fan cult in the mind of the west. (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Napier, S. J. (2016). Anime from Akira to Howl’s moving castle: Experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. St. Martin’s Griffin.

W3

What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?

The adventure of Tintin (1929-1986) has achieved in popular culture and receive much love more than four decades after the last public album. Women are absent over the entire albums and if they have voices in Tintin is hardly flattering. In the adventure of Tintin, women take a back seat. Herge resits and ignores women in his life and work by treating women less important in his works. Tintin works with funny drawing and exaggerates some of the features which can be comedic. This is shown by Herge’s claim that: ‘[w]omen have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s. I like women far too much to caricature them. And, besides, pretty or not, young or not, women are rarely comic characters’ (quoted in Sadoul [1975] 1989, 93).

Tintin au pays des Soviets has women but without speaking role, and they like a background in the stories where they don’t have mere figures in the crowd. African women critical Tin tin for the scene that causing a bump to her son’s head, and sad feeling to her husband’s illness. The women in Tintin remind background figures. Chinese women in an album praised by Claude Levi-Strauss depicted three generations depress and practice to reject as a western stereotype whereas in reality women were still suffering a lot in their action 1930s (Keeling 2008, p11-17). In the adventure, female’s tears are particular preferences and reproducing nineteenth-century women input as the psychologically ‘weaker sex’ (Fauvel 2013, p1). Herge depicts the assignation of labour roles in the early 20th century, ‘he ignores female aviators, intellectuals, writers, artists and other barriers breakers’ (Mountfort, 2020). The feminism’s second wave by the 1960s and 70s describe the women role is just like wallpaper in the album such as roles of wives, mothers, housekeepers, maid and nurses. Female labour is housekeepers, housewives, and mothers. Women were described as unidentified, nameless women, their visible agency voices metaphor as ‘absence, exclusion and erasure’ (Parkin and Karpinski 2014, p3). Herge said that he likes women too much to caricature them, but the women are still like a background in his books.

The women sought to free them from effective second class citizenship at the same time challenges to gender stereotypes with no reflection in decades. As Herge tell us, ‘women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s’ (Mountfort, 2020). That means women are the absence of useless like a background in Tintin’s stories and have a less supporting role in this. At the very start, Tintin explains how women are so associated with effect in the way they don’t want to live at a consequence depict as an annoy of caricature; Herge’s claim disregard to his opinion. The women status is low, it limits their roles in the family or society, and no career option as well as restricted their jobs.

While reading Tintin, we saw that women are excluded; their voices are covered and block in the way of how the society works at the time. The women have no voices, no place in the world; they are like a supporting role for man, and all women can do is working like a wife, housewife or subordination for a man that is present in last century as well as in Herge’s stories.

References:

Fauvel, A. (2013). “Crazy Brains and the Weaker Sex: The British Case (1860–1900).” Clio: Women, Gender, History 37: 1–25.

Keeling, R. (2008). “The Anti-Foot-binding Movement 1872–1922: A Cause for China Rather than Chinese Women.” Footnotes 1: 11–19.

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1-17.

Parkins, I., and E. C. Karpinski. (2014). “Introduction: In/Visibility: Absences/Presence in Feminist

Theory.” Atlantis 36: 3–7.

Sadoul, N. [1975]. Tintin et Moi: entretiens avec Hergé (Tintin and Me: Interviews with Hergé). Tournai: Casterman.