Comments on: Cultural Literacy: Part 3 – Application to anime viewing

By: Lelangir

Lelangir — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:43:45 +0000

So what about Afro Samurai – since it skipped the whole subtitling process; it’s a mesh of stereotypical Japanese representations of historical samurai and its modern subcult(ure), as well as stereotypical American behaviors (look at how the imaginary friend acts). Reading AS as a text can be difficult for that very reason, yet it makes it all the much more interesting (in a meta-perspective, the actual content is eh…).

So viewing shows like that puts a twist to cultural literacy because what you’re reading is yet another product of cultural literacy itself.

http://lelangir.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/blacks-and-the-convenience-of-representation-part-2-afro-samurai/

By: saikomango

saikomango — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:32:51 +0000

you have a great point there. not only does the cultural barrier hinder us from interpreting what the writer intended, but it also supports the existence of discrimination towards things from each country. this is really only common sense, but people tend to be too ignorant to realize that, and consider whatever it was they didn’t understand as bad. there are many examples i could give, but a familiar one would be an american’s criticism of anime. those people are more often than not unfamiliar with japanese culture, and have not taken much time to enjoy an anime. there are many cultural references and behaviors that normal anime fans would not recognize as different. they have subconsciously learned to connect their understanding of the culture with common knowledge, which is ultimately the goal of someone wanting to associate themselves with another culture, whatever it may be.

By: j.valdez

j.valdez — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:44:55 +0000

Well, Uhhhmmm, to a certain extent I am.

Even though it doesn’t show all the time, one of the basic ideas behind this blog is that the individual’s experience is a valid interpretation of the material. The opposite argument would be that the author/creator’s intended view is the most important interpretation, possibly the only valid one.

We still enjoy the art and story telling, which is not at all odd. For that matter, most people don’t leave a session of watching anime feeling like they missed understood a cultural detail. That’s what I was trying to remind people about. Our tendency to fill in the parts we don’t understand is what creates a unique experience for the individual.

Cultural literacy was used as a vehicle to better understand what we could possibly be missing. Of course, the examples in the post are more concrete and identifiable that what I originally meant (labyrinth, Icarus, Internet meme, Jesus, Hamlet). Not understanding them doesn’t make the post unreadable, but it does take away some of the intended meaning.

By: Uhhhmmm

Uhhhmmm — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:35:23 +0000

Sooo, aren’t you just conveying that our ignorance of our ignorance is making us unique?

By: j.valdez

j.valdez — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:55:40 +0000

I intentionally made this entire thing a bit one sided. As a fan I’ve picked up a bit of knowledge about Japanese culture. Of course, that makes it easier to understand aspects of many of the shows I enjoy. There are shows that are less influenced by outside sources such as the Rurouni Kenshin OAV. I enjoyed them even without knowledge of the historical references. Although, knowing some of the specifics enhance the story.

It’s that aspect that makes things interesting. I enjoy anime largely because it is “different.”

By: Cameron Probert

Cameron Probert — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 06:52:06 +0000

Very interesting post here. Although your final point reminds me of something iknight wrote a while back about interpreting something without knowing the original intent. Honestly, I’d probably argue that any interpretation we do of anime or otherwise will have some sort of culture barrier. It’s just that the barrier between Eastern and Western cultures is generally greater then the barrier between different Western cultures.