Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2006-03-03]
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Malintex Terek
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At last, a whisper of clarity amidst all this madness. Such is why Answerman should have avoided the original question in its entirety; though we all know "Hey, Answerman!" is a column, ergo the opinion of a single individual, that's not going to stop the Naruto fans from getting pissed off, and since ANN is a trusted and well-known website for Anime news, any representative of the website (working through it) holds a large degree of soft power. Last edited by Malintex Terek on Fri Mar 03, 2006 4:05 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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GreatSaiyaman777
Posts: 21 |
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Lo and behold, some people will. |
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hooliganj
 Posts: 113 Location: Longhorn Central |
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As I understand it, the rating system of high/middle/low class as applied to media and art is about critical analysis, not quality or even mass appeal. Something is considered low class if the body of work can sustain no more than a cursory or shallow examination. Middle class work is considered to have more depth, but still has limits to how far it can be scrutinized. High class work can be analyzed and evaluated repeatedly. The test of time is a part of the rating as well, especially for works that were not held in high regard in their own time.
Yes, the system is somewhat elitist, but, to be fair, dismissing the whole idea because it's snobby is also an elitist attitude. Regarding specific examples: The Simpsons may be past its prime, but in their heyday, the show was definitely something that warranted critical analysis. If it's still as relevent 50 years from now as it is today, it may very well be recognized as a high class parody. As for Project Runway, I agree that it's one of the few reality shows I can stand to watch, which says something, even if it's just my personal opinion. It's hard to specify what exactly the difference is, but I theorize that a reality show that actually encourages creation and rewards positive qualities like creativity, resourcefulness and technical skill is a cut above the rest. Whether or not there is any critical depth is a matter of debate, though. For anime in general, I have to agree that almost all of it is low class. One Piece (uncut) is one of my favorite shows, and I think it represents near-perfection in the genre of shounen anime, but in the end, it's about pirates looking for treasure, supported by their companions, and that's as far as it goes. On the other hand, Gankutsuou is about the society of nobility, and FMA deals with the corruption inherent in power, and both shows deal with those themes in ways that exceed the boundary of the story. To add a few more candidates to the list of middle class anime: Patlabor is about the weight of responsibility; Captain Tylor is about the nature of genius and leadership; Paranoia Agent is about disconnection and isolation in the modern era; Evangelion's lessons about dysfunction in people, families and society are important; and Utena contains a lot of cleverly played out messages about social roles. In the high class, all that comes to mind are Miyazaki's movies and Ghost in the Shell. A hundred or a thousand years from now, people will still be able to watch these films and might come to understand something that they didn't before. But I could be wrong - there's no way to completely prevent subjectivity here. For all I know our descendents will be wondering how we ever thought Miyazaki was a big deal while entranced by reruns of Futakoi. 
Last edited by hooliganj on Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:26 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zippydsm
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 134 |
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candeh
no you think? I need to lay off the caffine and learn to spell....and so far I ahve been able to do one
hooliganj wow nicely said! I am always in awe of pll with compelte crains 0-o I onyl have half a one *take it out and shows you have a brain* 0-o LOL uhg I need to use thunderbrids spellchecker more. |
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Lainofthenet
 Posts: 44 Location: Canada |
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I agree that "low or mid culture" entertainment can be enjoyable and at times preferable. We live in a complicated world and I for one sometimes find myself dreaming about it at night as my feeble attempt to sort it all out. I find it disconcerting when my hobbies or entertainment begin to cause the same process. Once after having read Shogun, when I was probably too young for it, I began to dream about the concept of seppuku. More recently during the reading of King's Dark Tower series I began to dream that it was imperative to contact Roland to let him know that spoiler[Mordred had eaten Randall Flagg] something had happened that he really needed to know about. Maybe the hobbit thing is a reflection of an aspect of leisure invading the consciousness a bit too much.
me |
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Malintex Terek
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Therein lies the issue that people are having a problem with. Why are "philosophical" stories considered to be superior to something like One Piece or Dragonball, which basically simply exist for tilt value? Taking the same issues in something like FMA or Evangelion and applying them to the real world in the forms of modern political corruption or social degregation usually promotes negative feedback. Such is a paradox for me to understand; if people are sick and tired off hearing about corruption, why do they find escapism in a story that deals with it as a major issue? It's the same as kissing someone or simply swallowing a spoonful of their saliva; same package, different medium. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Bear in mind not everyone treats film or television as pure escapism. I don't watch Fullmetal Alchemist because it's an escape for me, I watch it because I'm intrigued by the larger themes at play and am curious what the show's big-picture message is. |
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Zippydsm
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 134 |
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Malintex Terek
Some storys you can relate to like your goverment not being all its cracked up to be 0-o altho that kind of story finds alot of fans every few decades when the masses get tired of thier leaders 0-o |
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Steroid
 Posts: 329 Location: At home, where all good hikikomori should be |
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As re. culture classes: it's fine enough to give examples of each level of culture, but that's useless unless you establish an objective standard on which to classify those examples. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: being tragic does not make a work great. Being hard to understand does not make a work great. Being mundane does not make a work great. What does is whether its theme is relevant to human life, how strong that theme is, and how well it is expressed. And anime--many series--has a greatness not to be found in Shakespeare or in Opera: expressing themes pertaining to life in the modern, stable society. Hamlet may be a great play (it is), but no one today has to avenge their fathers' death. Death of a Salesman may be something worth study by Literature scholars, but few people today have to fear being destitute because they can't do the job they did twenty years ago. But I find greatness in Sailor Moon because making and keeping friends in the face of difficult tasks *is* something I face, and I find it in Love Hina because being awkward around the opposite sex *is* part of modern life.
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Malintex Terek
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I feel much the same with titles like Spiral; I love a good mystery, so despite some of the show's negative aspects, unravelling the intrigue is very enjoyable. However, that is not the issue I was identifying; why are shows that seek to "educate" about a certain issue held in higher esteem from something that does not? For context, why are historical fiction novels inherenetly considered to be of higher quality than fantastical fiction, though historical novels are easier writes because of a plausible empirical foundation? I see a dilemma; is it the storytelling that transcends cultural layers, or the story? If Anime is just a medium, the stories themselves are what determine cultural level; FMA is deeper than One Piece, so it is ranked higher. However, take a not so entirely different situation, in my example a fairy tale like Pinnochio, which is considered "child's fare" by nearly all adults. Run Pinocchio through Walt Disney Studios; now, we've a story with such masterful storytelling, it's deemed "culturally significant" by the US Congress. Disney's Pinocchio is virtually no different from a historical fiction novel; it was based on a story that may/may not be true. Furthermore, there doesn't appear to be a moral to Disney's version of the story; in Collodi's original, we realize that humans are held accountable for their actions (Pinocchio was hanged). American tastes are an odd dichotomy, indeed. |
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Zippydsm
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 134 |
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this is getting good ,I sohuld take notes! 0-o
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hooliganj
Posts: 113 Location: Longhorn Central |
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Malintex: Your problem seems to be with the consideration of one type of series as superior to another based on this one factor. Please do not take the "high/middle/low" designators as anything other than classification labels. A high class work is not necessarily any better or worse than a low class piece of art, in terms of entertainment value. The system has little practical value outside of critical and academic circles.
Steroid: If you think Love Hina dealt with gender issues better than Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, or Tweflth Night, then I would say you are practicing a different kind of elitism. Just because it's old doesn't mean it can't still be relevent. |
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Samurai-with-glasses
 Posts: 628 |
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As has been stated before, the hierarchy is not a hierarchy of "quality," but rather that of the depth and angles of the piece. You people don't have to be angry that Naruto is considered lowbrow (and, in my opinion, it is) because that doesn't make it worse. At all. It's still, to those who enjoy it (I really don't...), great fun and a great show.
Don't think High as grade A and Low as F; rather, think the aristocratic-commoner setting, or perhaps from an analytical view. And be aware that the classification is never, ever, absolute, no matter what self-righteous (a few of them) critics might claim. Shakespeare was considered lowbrow in its time. It stood the test of time, however, and is now "high class" to mainstream critics, at least. How? There is a philosophical position that thinkers and artists--or pretty much everyone--rely on their environments to define their worlds, consciously or not, and that influence also transferred into their works; so what was accepted as an undisputed truth, perhaps not even worth mentioning (like, "the sky is blue") at a time, could be a most interesting observation ages later, "increasing" a work's depth. The trend of overscrutinizing (according to me at least) art from the past, and the "natural selection" in which less attractive ones get lost in time, might also make older stuff looks, to our modern eyes, highly sophisticated. Of Reality TV today, (and perhaps novel-like memoirs that, according to some, are slowly replacing actual novels) perhaps ages later on, might show a "development in an appreciation of realistic settings among the masses and less reliance on pure escapism, in which the entertainment mediums become increasingly skeptical of and dismiss them as not worthing ther time; it is influenced by the increasing pace in general lifestyle and availability of entertainment medium that result in an attitude of "I don't have time for this fantasy"...blah blah blah." Yes, that doesn't make any sense to me either, but yeah... You get the point.
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YUGI
Posts: 173 |
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Roger, please don't pull a GrantM on us. He made many mistakes with his atittudes, and narcissism. Here is a huge thread about what he did, and how you can avoid it. http://forums.catsonmars.com/index.php?showtopic=1335&st=0
P.S. This post will teach you about not being blackballed by any person in the anime fandom/industry. |
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maus
 Posts: 84 Location: The Netherlands |
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Naruto and Bleach are awesome series but I have to agree with Zac that they are low culture. Those series are extremely enjoyable but they don't really provoke your brain cells.
On another note, I think the Harry Potter-books should be considered low culture too. They are poorly written and very shallow storywise if you compare them to the books of Tolkien and Martin. That's just my opinion though... 
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