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Last edited by scottfrye on Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

I enjoyed the beginning of the argument with the V guy. Even though he didn't seem to get that things have changed and we can't bring new fans in with TV anymore. I'm thinking the best way to introduce others to anime is through word of mouth and sharing your passion for anime with people you know. Randomly flipping through channels will only bring in a few new fans.

The days of anime on TV has died. More people seem to not watch TV like they used to. (I definitely don't watch much.) Some people are actually getting rid of cable all together.

The Eva part of the discussion was a bit crazy and honestly, I got bored of it. Some people like to have some deep analyze of anime. Most anime isn't that deep.

By the way, that V guy just seems like another crazy forum guy who thinks he knows what he talking about. And who takes things way too serious, which pushes people away. No one wants to listen to that crap. You definitely aren't gonna bring in new fans if you get on a soapbox.

This argument reminded me of those fansubs arguments I have from time to time.

Last edited by scottfrye on Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

_V_ wrote:

(this image is what I'm quoting when I first appear on the podcast)

Actually, I was thinking that was from that Rolling Stones song about the Devil. The beginning of that song says that exact thing.

So _V_ wants to be the Devil?

(By the way, the song is called "Sympathy For the Devil")

scottfrye wrote:

...he didn't seem to get that things have changed and we can't bring new fans in with TV anymore.

As someone who got into anime from what was shown on the sci-fi channel, I completely agree that the amount of anime shown on TV is irrelevant in expanding anime fandom. I would argue that anime has past its maximum adoption in the west, and has since shrunk. It was not only a bubble, but also a fad. It used to be that all my friends from high school watched anime, but now, they've moved on, and I would have as well, were it not for the Evangelion fandom. The sci-fi channel opened the door for me, and at that time, it was still a much smaller niche. Nowadays, it has a lot more exposure. People know what it is. It is available all over the place. You can buy anime in Wal-Mart, you don't have to drive an hour or more to a specialty store in a mall that carries a haphazard selection of VHS tapes. Anime will NEVER be a major industry. We should be glad it's so available to people as it is now. Every weekend of the year, there is a convention somewhere, where people are celebrating and enjoying their love of anime with others.

scottfrye wrote:

I'm thinking the best way to introduce others to anime is through word of mouth and sharing your passion for anime with people you know.

Yes. We aren't in web 2.0 anymore. It used to be that we had the tools to create sites, and forums, and wikis to provide content. That's not the internet we live in anymore. We're in web 3.0 now. We have Twitter, and Facebook, and YouTube. It's referred to as social media. Advertising is a thing of the past, it's now about influencers and sharing amongst networks of people. And those systems will eventuall consume conventional broadcast television. We're moving towards a democratic, on-demand style system. Eventually we won't have stations broadcasting the latest episode of a show at a specific time. Everyone will be watching it online. The generation that doesn't use computers, and doesn't know what the internet is, will be gone in the next 10 years. And once they're gone, I imagine broadcast will be reserved for more specific uses.

I mean, how amazing is it, that an office full of people, in (for example) Baltimore, can watch the World Cup live, streamed over the internet, as it happens in South Africa? That is amazing. That will be the norm in 5-10 years.

I don't even have cable. Don't need it. I consume my media via the web, and dvd. I have been a huge fan of Alias, Lost, and Heroes in recent years, and I almost NEVER watched it live. I torrented it. And I cared about it enough to buy a lot of the seasons on DVD. And that's the case with a lot of people. That is awesome. 10 years ago, it was impossible to have that completeness. That is what we are moving towards, and eventually away from it as the physical format starts becoming a collectors market, and most entertainment becomes either direct download, or on-demand.

TLDR:

Trying to get more anime on TV is pointless. TV is a ship that has not only sailed, but is sinking. No one jumps on a sinking ship. No one.

The Eva Monkey wrote:

scottfrye wrote:

I'm thinking the best way to introduce others to anime is through word of mouth and sharing your passion for anime with people you know.

Yes. We aren't in web 2.0 anymore. It used to be that we had the tools to create sites, and forums, and wikis to provide content. That's not the internet we live in anymore. We're in web 3.0 now. We have Twitter, and Facebook, and YouTube.

This is why streaming, for anime, and online readers, for manga, are strategic ~ you can mention a series and include a bit.ly of the legit stream rather than a link to an ANN Encyclopedia or Wikipedia article, and rather than pointing people to writing about the series or title, they can have a look at the thing itself.

Last edited by YotaruVegeta on Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:14 pm; edited 2 times in total

OtakuExile, I'd have to go back and read V's whole post to be sure, but I think I'd side more with him over you, especially since you say "why quote movies, this is an anime forum" What, that doesn't happen!?

Edit: I also do not understand what it is to be "spread too thin" amongst multiple fandoms. What, there's some magical breaking point where you can't like sports and Japanese animation and film and American animation (you get the point)?

I'd also like to add that while appointment television is "dead" (except for live TV events) so many of us still have TVs! Bigger and better, and higher defferer TVs! So isn't that the audience is "dead?"

@agila61 Why can't we do both? Doesn't hurt to let them read about it and to check it out if what they read seems interesting. Point them to info about the show (or just tell them) and where they can legitimately watch it.

Personally, I like to see a little info on the series before I take the time to watch it. That way I can see if I will even find it interesting. Sometimes I can tell from a summary if a show is something I will find interesting. Then again I'm already an anime fan and know the legitimately places to find the shows.

Zin5ki wrote:

Top Gun wrote:

I have a very scientifically-oriented mind, so that whole idea of any interpretation being essentially equally valid, despite author evidence to the contrary, doesn't seem very rational to me.

For you I have a certain question.
What is it about rationality, insofar as you understand and make reference to it, that prevents divergent and incompatible interpretations of the same work of fiction to be equally true?
(As a supplementary question, to what degree does the fact your mind is scientifically-oriented — whatsoever this is to mean — lend support to the claim that you judge the pluralism of interpretation to be irrational?)

My point there was that, within the realm of scientific study, or really any rigorous field of academics, you can't simply devise some crazy hypothesis and then play pick-and-choose with the facts to support it. Trying to publish a scientific article constructed in the same way as certain people's theories about Eva's religious symbolism would just get you laughed out of the journal editor's office. You want to come up with some crazy off-the-wall theory? Great. Now back it up. Show me all of your experimental data, cite other people's results, and verify that what you're stating can be proved independently and repeatedly, and then maybe we'll talk. Unless you can do that, you're just whistling in the dark. In the current Eva example, the show's creative staff have repeatedly stated that the series' visual religious symbolism is nothing more than Rule of Cool window-dressing...that's primary evidence. Any theory which ignores said evidence is a complete waste of time.

That's the sense in which I view myself as being "scientifically-oriented." If your supposed theories are easily disproved by a simple statement from a series' creative staff, then it doesn't interest me in the least. Now, if the author never says anything either way, that "pluralism" might be valid, but when that isn't the case, it's simply not.

Quote:

Further, you mention the fact that the series' creators did not intend the images to be interpreted as bearing a certain meaning, though all this uncontroversially establishes is the matter of what the authors intended.
The question that seems to be the crux of this discussion is whether there is any "importance" to the appearance of certain images in Evangelion, which is pre-theoretically distinct from the question of whether the creators of Evangelion intended these appearances to be so important. (The former question pertains to what, if anything, is true within a piece of fiction, wheras the latter question pertains to a strictly non-fictional domain.) You seemingly presuppose these two questions to be identical.

Well of course the two questions are functionally identical, because authorial intent is what creates the work in the first place. Razz

As I said above, stories are written by real human beings, and those people have certain thoughts in mind when writing them. If the author flat-out states what they were thinking, that said symbols meant nothing, then said symbols meant nothing, period. It seems very clear-cut to me. I view that whole "Author is Dead" concept as so much nonsense precisely because it ignores the entire creative process. It's one thing to come across an ancient manuscript and attempt to glean various meanings from it, but when you have living creators stating, "This is what I meant here," there isn't any wiggle-room for interpretation. Anything beyond that is just intellectual wankery.

What this entire conversation brings to mine is a certain course I took in college that included an analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I became absolutely convinced during it that at least 75%, if not more, of the themes and elements that scholars have attributed to the Bard's works were never intended by him in the first place. I mean, the guy was just trying to write plays that would make him some money, and while he was a genius at what he did, no single person could ever devise the massive tower of allusions that can supposedly be picked out of his plays. It's no wonder I've never had much respect for English departments. Razz

And on a completely-unrelated note, I'll never understand the "TV is dead" argument myself. To me, nothing beats sitting down on my comfy sofa and watching episodes the first time they're broadcast, knowing that all of the other fans of the show are watching it for the first time simultaneously. DVRs and streaming sites are great for those times when you can't make the premiere, but that sense of immediacy and united fandom is something that on-demand services will never be able to capture.

There is a fun to watching a first-run episode of a show, but people who use dvr, hulu, crunchyroll, etc know that these shows were shot a while ago, they aren't live, and therefore don't HAVE to be seen at that moment it premiers.

For sports, reality competitions, whatever, you need to have live tv for yourself, but I am luckily not a fan of something with a live component to it.

_V_ wrote:

Okay this was a big thing I wanted to say in the podcast and I'm sorry I forgot (it was AFTER 3 AM where I was) :

A major issue with what I'm saying, seems to be the very possibility of saying "that position is wrong".

Well...rival academic papers get discredited all the time.

(much needed snip)

Papers do get discredited all the time, this is true. And, generally, the point of a paper is to argue in favor of a single idea by interpreting data within the framework of a sound methodology. Analytical approaches/methodologies themselves, however, sometimes come under fire and lose currency among professional intellectuals (you acknowleged this yourself by alluding to phrenology: phrenology is not a single idea, it is a method that has been abandoned by all reputable psychologists).

Strict adherence to authorial intent is one such approach. It ignores the dialectical tension between a work of art's potential to be transhistorical as an object and the historically constructed nature of meaning. It also ignores the subjectivity of the viewer and the fact that viewing is an active, rather than passive, thing. People do not assign their own meanings to works because they want to or because some lit teacher in high school encouraged them to run wild with idiosyncratic analysis. Individual meaning is an inevitable product of the act of viewing.

The greatest sin against reality committed by slavish followers of authorial intent, though, is their assigning an absolute existence to meaning. Meaning beyond the individual level exists only insofar as a person, group, or class proposing said interpretation possesses the means and will to make their view socially dominant and thus affect material reality through the integration of their ideas into the social fabric.

Top Gun wrote:

Now, if the author never says anything either way, that "pluralism" might be valid, but when that isn't the case, it's simply not.
…
It's one thing to come across an ancient manuscript and attempt to glean various meanings from it, but when you have living creators stating, "This is what I meant here," there isn't any wiggle-room for interpretation.

You are resting upon the assumption that the meaning (simpliciter) of a creative work is identical to the meaning intended by the persons who produced it, and hence that "meaning" is in this context semantically indistinguishable from "intended meaning". Whilst this seems intuitive, I cannot accept this premise without a demonstration of it. Indeed, there are intuitions that go contrary to it. To give one of many examples, it does not seem implausible that a competent English speaker would in this context say the phrase, "unintended meaning", without thereby uttering an oxymoron.

dtm42 wrote:

firehawk12 wrote:

I understand context is extremely important to any reception/interpretation of a text, but someone needs to tell V guy about the concept of the 'death of the author'.

First of all, I am fairly confident _V_ already knows.

Secondly, you cannot have it both ways. The philosophy espoused in "Death of the Author" discards the context in which a work is made, and yet you yourself state that context is indeed important. How you have seemingly reconciled these two conflicting viewpoints has piqued my interest.

It's because I don't necessarily believe in the extremes between New Criticism and New Historicism. To utterly divorce a text from historical or cultural context is just as problematic as putting ones stake unto whatever the author has said or written about a text.

Let's take it another way - people STILL complain about the Star Wars films - both remaking the originals (Han shot first) and the prequel trilogy (they ruin Anakin). By the standard of "the author is always right", anyone who complains about Star Wars is unconditionally wrong.

If we consider the religious symbolism in Evangelion - I think it's completely possible that Anno et al just used the symbols because they looked interesting to them. But that said, they could have picked them up via other cultural texts that were referencing religion. Even if that process is subconscious, it's still there.

Texts are living, breathing objects that are interpreted and reinterpreted by the reader. Our interpretation is necessarily different from a Japanese interpretation because of the cultural differences. I don't know anything about LOTR, but while it's folly to say that the books are anti-Vietnam War books, it's very possible to interpret them as anti-war books in general and then suggest how they might apply to the situation of Vietnam. In that case, you aren't interpreting the text - you are interpreting the reception of the text. It's a very fine difference, but I think it is an important one.

To be honest, I don't know anything about Evangelion criticism... I have no idea what's been said and who V has offended on his panels. I just think this idea that there is only one proper reception to a text to be extremely problematic. Unless you are fluent in Japanese, you are already at the mercy of one level of re-interpretation (let alone not accounting for the fact that you are watching it on DVD/VHS and not while it was broadcast on television, or the fact that most people here probably aren't Japanese who grew up in Japan when the show was released). Why is that okay but some other re-interpretation problematic? How much of a "pure" experience does V want to have?

YotaruVegeta wrote:

Zac sold the interview with V Guy (I STILL don't know how the hell to actually address him)

Just "V", the letter "V". I'm nobody's "Guy", buddy.

OtakuExile wrote:

Any up to date references? That shit is past it's prime. Cartoon or anime?

Alrighty: Cowboy Bebop?

That was heavily influenced by Western stuff. The only reason I don't promote it as "THE best anime ever made, definitive of all anime" ....is that it really doesn't accurately represent what most anime series are like. That's the whole reason it was so popular in the West in the first place.

( I wouldn't show Evangelion to people as "typical" of anime, if only because its sort of a satire of other Giant Robot anime that came before it so you'd have to watch a few other anime series to realize why it was so revolutionary...generally I say "Show new anime fans Ghost in the Shell the Series" as "what anime is and can do").

But I digress....

Last edited by YotaruVegeta on Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

You're your own guy, V. I'm nobody's buddy.

Charred Knight wrote:

"death of the author" is a theory of criticism, not how you criticize literature. Some people such as V and I don't believe in death of the author, while I can't answer for V I simply see it that instead of searching for the true intention of a story "death of the author" is simply inserting your own bias into the series. You have a tendency to find what you want to find.

Actually, you hit the nail on the head, CharredKnight. I see "Death of the Author" as often (not always but quite often) just an excuse for "Did Not Do The Research".

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