Is it a high or low cultural genre, according to Napier (2005)? What are some of its subgenres?
Firstly, Napier (2005) defined that the “culture’ to which anime belongs is at present a “popular” or “mass” culture in Japan, and in America it exists as a “sub” culture. On the other hand anime is a popular culture from the clearly builds on previous high cultural traditions. Not only does the medium show influences from such Japanese traditional arts as Kabuki and the woodblock print. Finally, the issues it explores, often in surprisingly complex ways are ones familiar to readers of contemporary ”High culture” literature (both inside and outside Japan) and viewers of contemporary are cinema. Furthermore, he mentioned that things have changed. Whereas Japan has been known for such “high cultural” products as haiku, Zen and the martical arts, the Japan of the 1990s began to develop a new export, animated films and videos- anime, a Japanese abbreviation of the English world’ animation.”
As an anime fans, I do think anime is kind of art especially one of the country’s most popular animators, Hayao Miyazaki. “Grave of the Fire flies”, “Spirited Away”, ”Howl’s Moving Castle” and so are. They are not normal cartoon that for kids but also for all group of ages.
Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-14). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.
Hi Jing Lin
ReplyDeleteAs you have mentioned what Napier states, that anime genre is at present, so it is hard to define high or low cultural. furthermore, Napier (2005) also states that anime genre is well known and it is based in Japanese cultural traditions. also it has extremely grown in western and other Asian countries.