Week 4 - Anita Ibell

Why is Harry Potter condemmed from a religious perspective? (According to Cockrell)

The view that many Fundamentalist Christians have of witchcraft is that, "Like angels or the voice of Satan it is out there, unseen but ready to swallow up the hapless child who can be turned toward its seductive allure." (Cockrell, 2004. pp.26) In a study undertaken on imaginary friends, fundamentalist parents believe that they're associated with the devil and thus- "fantasy will lead to lying and other decietful behaviour." feeding a necessary need to 'Protect their children from evil forces in the imaginary world'. (Cockrell, 2004.) It must be terrifying for the people who believe this that so many children find the Harry Potter series so appealing, and that fantasy is such a popular genre for childrens fiction.

What Cockrell (2004) also suggests is a threat to religous parents who already have worries that their children are slipping away from more a more traditional belief system is the way in which media infiltrates our daily life and pervades over a large section of society. Due to the popularity of the Harry Potter books, fandom is spread throughout the media... There are countless fansites on the internet and hysteria is built and mediated through mass marketing and merchandise. Movies have been made from the series as well as video games. There are fears among many that their children will fall to the allure of Harry Potter and in doing so break away from the control of their parents and beliefs without them being able to see or stop it. Much like the Dursleys are unable to stop the onslaught of letters being sent to Harry from Hogwarts, despite travelling to a deserted shack perched on a rock by the sea.

A further point to be made is that the Harry Potter series belong in the realms of low fiction. witches, wizards and an array of supernatural creatures inhabit the world of contemporary London (and other parts of Europe) alongside Muggles. "The magical world is not in Middle Earth, it is here, in our world and at any moment it may manifest itseld. There is no escape. If it wants to find you, it will find you." (Cockrell, 2004. pp27) It is all too close to home, whereas, high fantasy takes place in otherworlds that create distance between 'readers' actual lives and the material they are reading'. When the boundary between fact and fiction is blurred within the setting of a story like it is with the Harry Potter books, the reader questions what is really true, this might be threatening to those who only want one truth... (Cockrell, 2004. pp 28.) Ursula Le Guinn's 'A Wizard of Earthsea' follows the tradition of high fantasy, by putting characters and events into Earthsea, a world created of imagination. I mentioned in my last post that the way that Ged and the other characters live in Earthsea is kind of primitive and almost like they're in the middle ages again. So although this setting is still recognisable, it isn't really comparable to our world now, and the pop culture of today's youth... My opinion is that it's familiar enough to visualise, but not so familiar that we could imagine living there as we do now... and is perhaps a reason why, unlike Harry Potter, it is free from from religous condemnation.

References:

Cockrell, A. (2004). Harry Potter and the Witch Hunters: A social context for the attacks on Harry Potter. The Journal of American Culture, Vol 29, No 1.

Week 6

What are the underlying thematics of Princess Mononoke? How does it ‘de-familiarise’ its historical setting, according to Napier (2005)?

There is quite a number of underlying thematics of the Princess Mononoke narrative. These include power and governance. The struggle between the natural world and the synthetic one causes a great imbalance which is evident throughout the whole narrative. Both sides have their sights set on complete dominance of the whole entire area; including both the forest and the Tatara weapons factory. As Napier (2005) states with “undermining of traditional conventions, Tatara is not governed by a man but by a woman”, this is evidence of historical de-familiarisation. So contrary to events which took place in a male dominated historical setting, the two leaders of each opposing side of the main war were primarily female. Princess Mononoke who lead the forest creatures against Lady Eboshi from the opposing side; the human population who inhabited the Tatara village area.

Persistence was a strong theme in the film as every contributing character failed to give up upon the encounter of barriers. A perfect example was when Ashitaka was accidentally shot by one of the women in the crowd. Despite failed attempts to stop him, he managed to single-handedly push a heavy village open in order to rescue San from the Tatara villagers; despite knowing of his inevitable death which would follow.

Another important theme to consider is love, and the many forms it took in the narrative. Examples of this include the love between Princess Mononoke (aka San) and her wolf mother and the love they both have for the forest inhabitants. Included in this is the love Ashitaka develops for San. The love that Lady Eboshi has, which is not immediately obvious is that she “constructed Tatara as a utopian refuge for outcast women and people with incurable illnesses…” (Napier, 2005)

The environment was also a large focus of the story as it enabled audiences to see the destruction which resulted from the environment upgrades the likes of Lady Eboshi were aiming towards. Lady Eboshi was running a business, whereas San’s attempts were selfless acts towards saving her home and the natural order. A major de-familiarising feature includes Miyazaki’s “ability to blend the “real with the fantastic” (Napier, 2005). This takes place with “fantastic nonplaces characterized by vaguely European-style architecture and Western-looking characters” (Napier, 2005) which differs from the historical reality.

Napier, S. (2005). Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

Week 5

According to Lent (2000), what place does animation occupy in Asian societies? How different is this across Asia (ie comparing China and Japan)?

Lent (2000) highlights the importance of animation in Asian societies over time. These societies include China, India, Taiwan and Thailand, which from early times of production were predominantly based on outside influences; in this case American style ‘Disney’ characteristics. However, China and Japan incorporated “only those elements of foreign animation that fit their culture, never favouring full adoption” (Lent, 2000). This is important because in doing so, it managed to preserve authentic local flavours; the Wan brothers stressed the significance of American influence, but in the mid 1930’s added that China could no longer continue mimicking American animations. In addition to this, compared to the rest of Asia, India often “betrays the ethnic heritage of local animators and almost always borrows from Western productions” (Bendazzi, 1994). But in relation to the way of China, a small selection of Indian animators from a western training background managed to keep well grounded with their roots.

Lent, J. A. (2000). Animation in Asia: appropriation, reinterpretation, and adoption or adaptation. (11).

Week 5 - Sarah Hosking

What is the ‘shojo’ and how does it often function in anime?


A subgenre of Anime, it describes a type of young female character in Anime who is (from what i can tell) exempt from the "sexualising" that often dominates characteristics of female characters in widespread forms of literature including Anime. This appeals to me for many reasons being a female myself it's often insulting to see oversexualised females in literature.

"What fascinates the Japenese is that the shoujo nestle in a shallow lacuna between adulthood and childhood, power and powerlessness, awareness and innocence as well as masculinity and feminity" (Prindle 1998, p. 35). This would suggest that a child female in Japanese culture must embody these attritubtes which makes little sense to me. As upon first reading the definition of Shoujo I immediately thought "paedophiles". As the explaination I read included the words "...admixature of sexlessness and budding eroticism." which did not make sense to me in any way.

From what I can gather (putting aside my own comments on the genre) Susan J. Napier states that shoujo characters "embody the potential for unfetted change and excitment that is far less available to Japanese males,.." which shows me escapism is one of the main functions of the Shoujo subgenre.

REFERENCES
Cavallaro, D. (2006). Introduction. In The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki. (London: McFarland & Company) pp.5-13

week4

How does the fantasy genre relate to modern media such as video games?



In recent years modern media formats for video games have seen retail sales of games; particularly in the genre of fantasy became successful. Fantasy in video games has been always interesting because the gamer can create or enter a fantasy world. The roots of the fantasy genre are associated with legends and epics. Videoconference games all have welcomed this initiative, especially the role of main character such as heroes and etc. game developer interested to develop their games in fantasy stories. Their stories, roles, and other items, and each element of the infinite ways that have developed because of the fantasy word, games developers are always interested for some stories of the magical imagination.

week3

In my point of view Attebery defines fantasy as external view of the fact (reality) is the opposition at the end. "Fantasy is difficult to detect object in the world the same as things under the sun, it is based on the understanding that neither slavery." (Attebery, 2001)


Attebery states, Fantasy classified as any story that presents itself as impossible, he states that it is written as either odd or seemingly normal, however if the fantasy is impossible to provide the exhortative and that an arbitrary construct of the mind with logic and rhetoric are all controlled. Fantastic has ability to make readers believe that the existence of such creatures (birds, horses, dragons, like the characters) and as magical objects (rings, hats) are a series of categories to make it impossible to possible without reflection and without any doubt and to combine them with your intellectual understanding of the world as they work to get us to believe it is true that such things under any circumstances can be regarded as believable, even if imaginary. Any narratives would make some violence that the author clearly believes that is the natural law as and an important part of it means fantasy.



References:


Attebery, B. (1980). Locating fantasy. In The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guinn (pp. 2-9). Bloomington: Indiana U P.

week2

Q. What does Baetons means by "monstration", "graphiation", and "graphiateur"?

This question was a bit complicated for me to understand the meaning of those three words, and I am still not sure if I understood them as what they are and how Baetons (2001) states.

According to Baetens (2001), the distinction between different types of narrator and comic graphic artist, Marion proposes to change the names to “graphiation” and “graphiateur” for audiences (readers).

Graphiation is graphic and stories of the comic (indeed comic is a visual story), and apparent persistence of the features of the story, because of the images of the text. In additional, “graphiation” is powerful tool in a sketch stage.

Graphiateur is responsible for drawing pictures and texts in the comics not responsible to sign the comic end of its work.

Monstration is into the story and the film, which cannot be automatically moved to comic. “Monration” is the implicit in the comic. Therefore the process of “monstration” remains implicit. Andre Gaudreault was the first person used the term monstration while storytelling in various films. Monstration is different modes of storytelling to convey. Monstration is the events described in the film as a director tells a story. A story that could or (perhaps) is inspired by the film itself, and story is text itself.

References:

Baetens, J. (2001). Revealing Graphic Traces: a new theory of graphic enunciation. In Varnum, R & Gibbsons, C. (Eds.), The Language of Comics: word and image (pp. 145-155). Jackson: U press of missippi.