@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix dc: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Arts, Faculty of"@en, "Asian Studies, Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Yoshida, Kaori"@en ; dcterms:issued "2009-03-02T16:29:46Z"@en, "2008"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """In the contemporary mass-mediated and boundary-crossing world, fictional narratives provide us with resources for articulating cultural identities and individuals’ woridviews. Animated film provides viewers with an imaginary sphere which reflects complex notions of “self’ and “other,” and should not be considered an apolitical medium. This dissertation looks at representations in the fantasy world of Japanese animation, known as anime, and conceptualizes how media representations contribute both visually and narratively to articulating or re-articulating cultural “otherness” to establish one’s own subjectivity. In so doing, this study combines textual and discourse analyses, taking perspectives of cultural studies, gender theory, and postcolonial theory, which allow us to unpack complex mechanisms of gender, racial/ethnic, and national identity constructions. I analyze tropes for identity articulation in a select group of Disney folktale-saga style animations, and compare them with those in anime directed by Miyazaki Hayao. While many critics argue that the fantasy world of animation recapitulates the Western anglo-phallogocentric construction of the “other,” as is often encouraged by mainstream Hollywood films, my analyses reveal more complex mechanisms that put Disney animation in a different light. Miyazaki’s texts and their symbolic ambiguities challenge normalized gender and race/ethnic/nationality representations, and undermine the Western Orientalist image of the “Asian Other.” His anime also destabilize the West-East binary, by manifesting what Homi Bhabha calls a space “in-between”—a disturbance of the dominant system of identity categorizations. This suggests that media representation acts not only as an ideological tool that emphasizes conventional binaries (e.g. “Western”=masculine, “Oriental”feminine), but also as a powerful tool for the “other” to proclaim an alternative identity and potentially subvert dominant power structures. Miyazaki’s anime also reveal the process of Japan’s construction of both the West and the rest of Asia as “others,” based on the West-Japan-Asia power dynamic. I argue that this reflects Japan’s experience of being both colonizer and colonized, at different points in history, and that Japan also articulates “other” through anime to secure its national identity. My dissertation will contribute to the understanding of mechanisms of subjectivity construction in relation to visual culture."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/5316?expand=metadata"@en ; dcterms:extent "9120766 bytes"@en ; dc:format "application/pdf"@en ; skos:note "ANIMATION AND “OTHERNESS”: THE POLITICS OF GENDER, RACIAL, ANI) ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE WORLD OF JAPANESE ANIME by KAORI YOSHIDA B.A., Seinan Gakuin University, 1992 M.Ed., Fukuoka University of Education, 1996 M.A., University of Calgary, 1998 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA VANCOUVER August 26, 2008 © KAORI YOSHIDA, 2008 ABSTRACT In the contemporary mass-mediated and boundary-crossing world, fictional narratives provide us with resources for articulating cultural identities and individuals’ woridviews. Animated film provides viewers with an imaginary sphere which reflects complex notions of “self’ and “other,” and should not be considered an apolitical medium. This dissertation looks at representations in the fantasy world of Japanese animation, known as anime, and conceptualizes how media representations contribute both visually and narratively to articulating or re-articulating cultural “otherness” to establish one’s own subjectivity. In so doing, this study combines textual and discourse analyses, taking perspectives of cultural studies, gender theory, and postcolonial theory, which allow us to unpack complex mechanisms of gender, racial/ethnic, and national identity constructions. I analyze tropes for identity articulation in a select group of Disney folktale-saga style animations, and compare them with those in anime directed by Miyazaki Hayao. While many critics argue that the fantasy world of animation recapitulates the Western anglo-phallogocentric construction of the “other,” as is often encouraged by mainstream Hollywood films, my analyses reveal more complex mechanisms that put Disney animation in a different light. Miyazaki’s texts and their symbolic ambiguities challenge normalized gender and race/ethnic/nationality representations, and undermine the Western Orientalist image of the “Asian Other.” His anime also destabilize the West-East binary, by manifesting what Homi Bhabha calls a space “in-between”—a disturbance of the dominant system of identity categorizations. This suggests that media representation acts not only as an ideological tool that emphasizes conventional binaries (e.g. “Western”=masculine, “Oriental”feminine), but also as a powerful tool for the “other” to proclaim an alternative identity and potentially subvert dominant power structures. Miyazaki’s anime also reveal the process of Japan’s construction of both the West and the rest of Asia as “others,” based on the West-Japan-Asia power dynamic. I argue that this reflects Japan’s experience of being both colonizer and colonized, at different points in history, and that Japan also articulates “other” through anime to secure its national identity. My dissertation will contribute to the understanding of mechanisms of subjectivity construction in relation to visual culture. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii List ofTables v List of Figures vi Acknowledgements ix Note to Readers x Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Identity Articulation in Media Fantasy 15 1.1. Identity Articulation through Media Narratives: reinforcing the dominant view 17 1.1.1. The subject as susceptible to the ideological apparatus of visual representation 17 1.1.2. Construction ofthe racial “Other”: Edward Said 21 1.1.3. The politics of vision and the articulation of “Self” and “Other” 25 1.1.4. Stereotyping: a strategy for creating raced and gendered “others” . . .28 1.1.5. The gendering/sexualizing of race and the construction of “yellowness” 29 1.2. The Subversive Power ofMedia Representations 33 1.2.1. Subversion by the “other”: power and resistance in liminal space . . ..34 1.3. Conscious Perception and the Embodied Experience of Visual Media 48 Chapter 2: Studies ofAnimation and Anime 53 2.1. The Development ofAnimation and Some of Its Characteristics 55 2.1.1. Definition of animation 55 2.1.2. The development of animation in the West 58 2.1.3. Animation as a myth-making tool 62 2.1.4. Subversive characteristics ofanimation: examples in the West 69 2.2. What is Anime9 73 2.2.1. The history of anime and anime research 74 2.2.2. Characteristics and types ofanime 76 2.2.3. Anime and the (re)articulation ofnational/racial identity 83 2.2.4. The role of the “shöjo” in gender/sexual identity articulation and its evolution 87 2.3. Anime as an “Other(’s)” Cultural Form 98 Chapter 3: Miyazaki Hayao’s Philosophy of Animation Aesthetics 99 3.1. The Foundation of Miyazaki’s Fantasy 101 3.2. Miyazaki’s Aesthetics (1): what is anime to him9 104 111 3.3. Miyazaki’ s Aesthetics (2): Miyazaki’ s Occidentalist and self-Orientalist views 118 3.4. The Reception ofAnime outside Japan and “Japaneseness” 128 Chapter 4: Western Orientalism & Japanese Occidentalism Aladdin, Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Win and Porco Rosso 132 4.1. Aladdin (1992): manifestation ofclassic Western Orientalism 134 4.1.1. The Oriental “Other” as peril and domestication of the “Other” 140 4.1.2. The mechanisms of gendering, sexualizing, and racializing of the “other” 144 4.1.3. Color complex: embracing “whiteness” and posing as white 152 4.1.4. Can “parody” work?: difficulty in deconstructing “race” 155 4.2. Construction of the Western “Other” (1): Kaze no tani no Nausicaä (Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind) (1984) 157 4.2.1. Representation ofthe Western “Other” in Nausicaã 160 4.2.2. Hybridization in the imaginary 167 4.2.3. Politics ofvision: the Western “Other” as a spectacle9 168 4.2.4. (Re)discovery of empowered women 170 4.3. Kurenai no buta (Porco Rosso) (1992) 174 4.3.1. Fantasy toward the Western “Other”: another form of Occidentalism 176 4.4. Persistence of Orientalism and Resistance ofOccidentalism 180 ChapterS: Pocahontas & Princess Mononoke: “Others” in Reconstructed History 184 5.1. Using History to Re-create the Nation’s “Other”: Pocahontas (1995) 184 5.1.1. Perpetuation ofwhite “Self” and “red (native) Other” 186 5.2. “Others” within “Traditional Japan” and the Exploitation of History: Mononoke hime (Princess Mononoke) (1997) 207 5.2.1. Representation of “others”: subversion of Orientalism and self-Orientalism 208 5.2.2. History as a site for subversion 217 Chapter 6: Western (Re)Orientalism and Oriental Orientalism- Mulan & SpiritedAway 232 6.1. Perception of“Yellowness”: Mulan (1998) 232 6.1.1. Re-inscribing the yellow “Other”: mythologizing and feminizing East Asia 234 6.2. Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Hierarchies: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (SpiritedAway) (2001) 252 6.2.1. Subversion of the Orientalist view ofthe East and West 254 6.2.2. Cultural hybridity & confusion ofnational identity 260 6.2.3. The mechanism ofvision in the spirit world: look & gaze 268 6.3. A Third Space: matrix of(re)Orientalism, Oriental Orientalism, and hybridized space for identity articulation 271 Conclusion: Can Japan Speak? 274 Bibliography 294 iv ASETU!PPlVU!SJO4OPO3!0ApUnsiaonsnqoUflJAJt,oIp3 SWIUVIJOISfl LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1. Jasmine’s perfect “hourglass figure,” Aladdin (Disney) 145 Figure 4.2. Jasmine’s seductive eyes toward Aladdin, Aladdin (Disney) 146 Figure 4.3. Jasmine’s seductive eyes toward Jafar, Aladdin (Disney) 146 Figure 4.4. Jafar (sordid skin tone), Aladdin (Disney) 148 Figure 4.5. Jafar and his cobra-headed scepter, Aladdin (Disney) 148 Figure 4.6. The sultan ofAgrabah, father of Jasmine, Aladdin (Disney) 150 Figure 4.7. The sultan put a clown costume by Jafar, Aladdin (Disney) 150 Figure 4.8. Shan Yu (the evil leader ofthe Runs), Mulan (Disney) 152 Figure 4.9. Aladdin, Aladdin (Disney) 155 Figure 4.10. Jasmine, Aladdin (Disney) 155 Figure 4.11. Razoul, Aladdin (Disney) 155 Figure 4.12. Tapestry in the opening sequence, Nausicaã ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 158 Figure 4.13. Tapestry in the opening sequence, Nausicaã ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 158 Figure 4.14. Nausicaä riding on the flying device “mehve,” Nausicaã ofthe Valley ofthe Wind(Studio Ghibli) 161 Figure 4.15. The Giant God Soldier (kyoshinhei), Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 163 Figure 4.16. Nausicaä collecting poisonous spores, Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 163 Figure 4.17. NausicaA’s laboratory, Nausicaã ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 163 Figure 4.18. Nausicaa’s resurrection in the golden meadow, Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind(StudioGhibli) 164 Figure 4.19. Nausicaä in the battle with invaders who murdered her father, Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (Studio Ghibli) 172 Figure 5.1. Leaves swirling around Pocahontas and Smith, Pocahontas (Disney) 190 Figure 5.2. Shishigami (Forest God) during day, Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 209 Figure 5.3. The Lake ofShishigami, Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 209 Figure 5.4. Grotesque tatarigami transformed from a boar, Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 215 Figure 5.5. Shishigami (daytime) close-up, Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 215 Figure 5.6. Shishigami (night time), Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 215 Figure 5.7. San’s mouth covered with blood, Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) 223 Figure 5.8. Storyboard descriptions of San, Princess Mononoke: The Original Storyboard 223 Figure 6.1. Captain Shang’s action and body, Mulan (Disney) 236 Figure 6.2. Chi Fu, the councilor, Mulan (Disney) 238 Figure 6.3. Dr. Fu Manchu, Mulan (Disney) 238 Figure 6.4. Chi Fu’s mannerisms: going to bathe, Mulan (Disney) 239 Figure 6.5. Feminized Chi Fu: scared by panda, Mulan (Disney) 239 vi Figure 6.6. Figure 6.7. Figure 6.8. Figure 6.9. Figure 6.10. Figure 6.11. Figure 6.12. Figure 6.13. Figure 6.14. Figure 6.15. Figure 6.16. Figure 6.17. Figure 6.18. Figure 6.19. Figure 6.20. Figure 6.21. Figure 6.22. Figure 6.23. Figure 6.24. Figure 6.25. Figure 6.26. Figure 6.27. Figure 6.28. Figure 6.29. Figure 6.30. Figure 6.31. Figure 6.32. Figure 6.33. Figure 6.34. Figure 6.35. Figure 6.36. Figure 6.37. Figure 6.38. Figure 6.39. Figure 6.40. Figure 6.41. Figure 6.42. Figure 6.43. Childish behavior of Chien-Po, Ling, Yao, Mulan (Disney) 240 The gang ofthe three disguised as women, Mulan (Disney) 241 Close-up ofLing disguised, Mulan (Disney) 241 Mushu, the dragon, as a caricature of Chinese tradition (or Asia), Mulan (Disney) 246 Woman dressed as Disney’s Mulan at Plaza Inn, Hong Kong Disneyland 251 Dessert at Plaza Inn restaurant: Mickey Mouse jelly 251 Dessert at Plaza Inn restaurant: Mickey Mouse pastry 251 Dessert at Plaza Inn restaurant: Mickey Mouse steamed buns 251 Domineering manager, Yubaba 253 Yubaba’s jewelry symbolizing materialism, Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) 253 Chihiro’s father as a pig, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 254 An extravagant amount of food eaten by Kaonashi, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 255 People eaten by Kaonashi at the bathhouse, Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) 255 Yubaba’s baby, BO, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 256 BO devouring candies and chocolates, Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) - 256 Bö’s room, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 257 Trompe-l’oeil, similar to Bö’s room, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 257 Haku, the dragon, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 257 Haku in human form, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 258 Haku in dragon form, wounded, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 258 A dragon on the ceiling at Tenryti-ji Temple from Tenryu-ji pamphlet 258 Kasuga-sama, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 260 Gods like legendary “Namahage,” Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) 260 Gods ofbirds, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 260 Gods with antlers, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 260 Radish spirit, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 261 Grumbling heads as Yubaba’s servants, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 261 Mr. Kamajii, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 261 Employees at the bathhouse, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 261 Employees at the bathhouse, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 261 Red motif of the bathhouse, architecture, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 262 Exterior of the bathhouse, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 262 Kaonashi, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 263 Korean mask (woman shaman) 263 River God, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 263 Korean mask (old gentleman) 263 Stink God in the bath, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 266 A girl standing at the train station, Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) 268 vi’ Figure 6.44. Buddha looking at Chiniro, Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) 269 Figure 6.45. Icons of“eyes” on billboard, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 269 Figure 6.46. Signs using “eyes,” SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 269 Figure 6.47. An big eye on the screen, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 269 Figure 6.48. An eye sticker on the luggage An eye sticker on the luggage 269 Figure 6.49. Murakami Takashi’s “Jelly Fish”2001 270 Figure 6.50. Chihiro’s vanishing body, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 271 Figure 6.51. Chihiro’s vanishing hands, SpiriredAway (Studio Ghibli) 271 Figure 6.52. Ghostly figures in the train, SpiritedAway (Studio Ghibli) 271 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe particular thanks to Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh, my supervisor and mentor, for keeping me inspired with her insightful questions and observations. If it were not for her academic advice as well as mental support, this dissertation would have never been completed. To my dissertation committee members, Dr. Stephen Kline and Dr. Hyung Gu Lynn, as well as my research committee member, Dr. Mary Lynn Young, I offer deep gratitude for enriching my vision in the field. I offer my enduring gratitude to the faculty, staff and my fellow graduate students at Asian Studies in UBC, who have supported me to continue my project. Special thanks are owed to my parents, who have supported me throughout my years of education academically, mentally and financially. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my inspiration Mark MacKinnon for always believing in me. To my friends Rupa Bagga, Motoko Tanaka, Kevin Tan, Maiko Behr, Yuuki Hirano, Douglas Lanam, and especially Nick Hall— thanks for encouraging me to finish my project. Last but not least, I acknowledge a Pacific Bridge Award granted by the Centre for Japanese Research, UBC to support this project. ix NOTE TO READERS I would like to note that despite my attempts, I was not able to obtain permission to use pictures whose copyrights are held by The Walt Disney Company and by Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. As you read through this dissertation, you will notice that pictures that are supposed to aid readers are unfortunately removed and replaced by squares with their descriptions. It is my hope that you will find these descriptions reasonable substitutes. x Introduction It [the past] is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points ofidenflhlcation, unstable points of identWcation or suture, which are made, within the discourses ofhistory and culture. Not an essence but a positioning. 1 —Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” Thus it is that no group ever sets its4fup as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itsef..2 — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex The expression of a duality of the self and the other, as Simone de Beauvoir claims in The Second Sex, is as primordial as consciousness itself, and is regarded as a primary category ofhuman thought.3 Theorists from various fields, including phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and postcolonialism, have revealed a dialectical process of identity formation involving interaction with the outside world and other people. In other words, the world around us is made meaningful through our relations with others. Hence, as both quotations above suggest, “self’ is constituted intersubjectively through attraction and repulsion, where one’s identity keeps changing according to socio-cultural and historical conditions. Maurice Merleau-Ponty rightly encapsulates this rapport between self and other, stating: “There is no inner man; man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.”4 ‘Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), p. 226. 2 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: A. Knopf, 1953), p. xxiii. Beauvoir, p. xxii. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology ofPerception, trans. Cohn Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1962), p. xi. 1 What needs to be stressed is that one’s recognition of“Self’ through interaction with others is carried out based on the construction ofthe imaginary “Other,” which often derives from power differentiations. In this mechanism, our perceptions—even our history and memories—are socially constructed. And it is, as Stuart Hall claims, through fantasy and myth that such a mechanism operates effectively to generate narratives that favor the dominant group in society. These fantasies are constantly produced and maintained through production and consumption of popular media products that represent certain identities as privileged over others. This conceptualization is practiced typically in Orientalist discourse, in which the West represents the East as “a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences,”5through media representations including novels, poems, and films. In this fashion, Orientalists place and maintain Western subjectivity as dominant over the East, creating a dichotomous, unequal power relationship through which the Western “Self’ and the Eastern “Other” are fixed. In an age of globalization, when “more persons throughout the world see their lives through the prism of the possible lives offered by mass media in all their forms,”6encounters with distant others become commonplace, and more and more media products, producers, and ideas flow across national/cultural boundaries. Technological development has also allowed us to experience “otherness” on theater and television screens. It is, however, important to stress that under these circumstances identifying specific cultural identities becomes more difficult; on the other hand, this phenomenon of boundary-crossing has also lead to a trend towards cultural protectionism. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 1. oj Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions ofGlobalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 53-54. 2 Walt Disney, one of the leading purveyors of globally consumed media in the form of animation, has often been criticized for media imperialism, coined “Disneyfication.” Though small in number, some of Disney’s animated features have nonetheless significantly contributed to re-making both “history” and the present with the result of securing the position ofthe “rational West.” The production and worldwide consumption of fantasies based on storytelling encourage an unceasing desire and fascination for the “Other”—a longing for what the white order has lost, and thereby animation plays a significant role in the construction of both central and marginal identities. In this respect, following the notion of Aithusser’s notion of “ideological state apparatuses,”7it can be argued that popular media, including Disney animation and Hollywood films, function as one of these apparatuses that potentially prescribe ideologies beneficial to groups in power, which work as a vehicle to articulate other individuals’ subjectivities as well. Exploiting the system of media representations by the stereotyping, exclusion, and degrading of “other” people and cultures, the white male subject can pervade the narrative of”nonnal” perceptions. Simultaneously, these dominant perceptions and stereotypes can also be subverted by media representations, through exaggeration of stereotyped images or the overturning of presumed roles in society. Amid increasing cultural globalization coupled with technological advances, the success of popular media created in Asia or by female producers has enabled previously marginal groups to become prominent, even capable of challenging Anglo-male-centered aesthetic standards. This subversion of the dominant is plausible partly because of viewers’ increasingly critical examination of previously unquestioned popular texts, and partly via the voice of academic criticism. It also stems ‘ Louis Aithusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, 1971). 3 from the limitation of dominant meaning, since the same text can be interpreted differently by viewers from different cultural backgrounds.8 With this knowledge, a key question is how exactly narratives created in fictional reality, reflecting and constructing our worldly reality, corroborate the (re)articulation of “differences,” in the process of constructing selfhood vis-à-vis otherness. Answers to this question should aid in better understanding the complexities of identity politics and power dynamics that are reflected in popular media, based on the premise that identity is not an autonomous configuration but defined through a socially interactive process. Various media are engaged in the issue of identity politics. Film, particularly animated film, offers a contested site for identity formation, by means of its techniques to create “reality,” and its form of expression—story telling—which provides wide audiences with the resources for narrative-creation that can foster collective identities, for persons and groups attempt to relate to other people or integrate ideas partly taken from media in order to articulate their own identities. For this reason, this study is concerned with a better understanding of the mechanisms linking intended meaning in animated texts and articulation of cultural identities. Animation has long been associated with Disney, yet for the last twenty to thirty years, other studios in North America and Asia have emerged on the global scene. Anime, Japanese animation, has become a particularly strong rival to Disney, and has emerged as a potential challenge to dominant Western aesthetics and ideologies. In order to explicate different aspects of identity articulation through anime, I analyze specific works by 8 See Stuart Hall, “Presentation and Media.” Lecture at The University of Westminster, videotaped by Sut Jhally (The Meida Education Foundation, 1997); len Mg, Watching Dallas (London: Methuen, 1985); David Morley, The Nationwide Audience: Structure and Decoding (London: British Film Institute, 1980); Tamar Liebes & Elihu Katz, The Export ofMeaning: Cross-Cultural Reading ofDallas (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). 4 Miyazaki Hayao, who consciously responds to trends in Western animation, and compare these works with those of Walt Disney. Both producers are renowned in the global market, and present different narrative and visual representations that can either reinforce or manipulate viewers’ preconceived notions of cultural identities. In order to lay the foundation of my study, Chapter 1 maps out a theoretical framework to provide a deeper understanding of the construction of “selfhood” and “otherness,” with attention to issues of genderization and racialization involved in media representations. Discussions in this chapter focus on works that analyze representations of the Orient, and the notions of “Asiaxmess,” or more specifically, “yellowness.” Also cited are classical postcolonial works, such as those of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon,9 specifically tying their arguments to popular visual culture. Although Said’s concept of Orientalism may seem somewhat dated for describing contemporary circumstances, it provides an important starting point for approaching the structure of fantasy and power dynamics in the creation of animation. The discussion of self/other further incorporates a postcolonial feminist perspective to introduce the gendered representation of race and racialized representation of gender. Theories discussed in the following chapter explicate the ways that people use narratives in the process of articulating their own subjectivities. These allow us to speculate that media narratives would have a significant effect on the way viewers/readers understand themselves and others. This provides a vital tool for discussions in later chapters. In addition, the integration of a phenomenological perspective on the animation viewing experience provides a more comprehensive understanding of the interrelation Said, Orientalism. Also see Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967). 5 between animators, text and viewer. This view derives from Vivian Sobchack’s idea that one’s subjectivity is constructed not necessarily through the unconscious but rather in a conscious, self-reflective manner through film experience. Among various film works, animation is particularly important in the discussion of identity politics, though it has rarely been taken seriously, and is often written off as only meant for children and therefore too transparent to be studied in a scholarly way. This view is rooted in a close association of animation with the traditional notion of “childhood” in the West as a sphere dissociated from politics. On the contrary, however, the notion of “childhood” is itself a socio-political construct, and therefore even children’s media can be heavily influenced by the intentions of cultural producers and authorities. Hence, whether it is touted as targeting children or not, animation should be understood as a medium of expression that projects adults’ political, economic and moral concerns, while playing with the notion of “childhood.”0As Henry Giroux describes, animation is “a sphere where entertainment, advocacy, and pleasure meet to construct conceptions of what it means to be a child occupying a combination of gender, racial, and class positions.”11 This suggests that animation is a form of ideologically-loaded text that influences and is influenced by people’s worldviews, and that therefore it is often associated with cultural imperialism or cultural resistance. The idea of animation as an ideological apparatus that reinforces 10 characterize animation as a “medium” rather than a genre, because of its distinctive characteristics in terms ofcodes, grammer, and ways ofgenerating messages, as described by Paul Wells in Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998); Thomas Lamarre in “From Animation to Anime: Drawing Movements and Moving Drawings,” in Japan Forum 14: 2 (2002); and Joanna Bouldin in “Bodacious Bodies and the Voluptuous Gaze: A Phenomenology ofAnimation Spectatorship,” in Animation Journal 8:2 (Spring 2000). I will explain the distinction between medium and genre, as well as between animation and anime as different media in Chapter 2. Henry Giroux, in “Animating Youth: the Disnification of Children’s Culture,” says this in regard to children’s culture in general, but the statement is applied to animation because of its association with children’s culture. (see this article at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/GfrouxlGfroux2.html) (accessed on September 20, 2006) Likewise, consideration of children’s culture as an adult institution and as a means of pursuing adult politics is discussed intensively in Stephen Kline’s “The Making of Children’s Culture” in The Children Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York University Press, 1998). 6 dominant perceptions has been addressed in a multitude of critical analyses of Disney animation since Dorfman and Mattelart’s How to Read Donald Duck in 1975, which claimed that Disney’s animation industry manifests the dissemination of American ethnocentric ideology.’2 Chapter 2 first discusses more specific characteristics of animation which facilitate its function as an ideological apparatus: animation’s myth-making and its morphotic nature, both ofwhich contribute to the articulation of cultural identities. As Dorfman and Mattelart, as well as others suggest, with its narrative and visual representations, Disney’s myth-making has contributed significantly to maintaining unequal power relationships between Anglo-America and the rest of the world. In addition, meanings and perceptions provided through animation narratives also potentially influence the global audience both in front of and away from the screen, through the synergetic business model which, initiated by Disney, extends animated fantasy to such products as stationery, T-shirts and mugs. Through this breakdown of the divisions between entertainment and material consumption, Disney has contributed to disseminating pleasure as well as ideologies through the animation industry. Another characteristic that makes animation a more effective vehicle for ideology production lies in its form of expression—its “morphotic” quality that is clearly distinct from that of live-action films. This quality essentially distances the animated world from physical reality, which challenges perceived views of space and time, creating a 12 Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperial1st Ideology in the Disney Comic, trans. David Kunzle (New York: International General, 1975). I acknowledge that there are many other aspects to animation beyond its function as an ideological conveyor, and others have examined this cultural form in different lights. However, in this dissertation my discussion of animation focuses on its function as a vehicle that is capable of transmitting ideologies to a significant degree, ideologies that potentially influence viewers’ perceptions of the world around them. 7 “metaphysical reality,”3and thus allows creators to express their ideas and intentions more flexibly than through live-action films or conventional photography. The flexibility allows creators to project their intentions effectively, and translates to a greater potential to destabilize ideological orthodoxies. This makes it possible to practice either manner of media representation: reinforcing dominant ideologies or subverting them—myth-making or demythologizing. On the basis of these observations, the chapter then moves to discussions of the characteristics and development of anime, which shares the abovementioned qualities of animation, but shows differences in its role as a vehicle for cultural identity configuration. The historical trajectory of anime is outlined, including technological developments influenced by Western sources and other art forms from different cultures, which have been appropriated into the Japanese context, showing the hybridized nature of anime.14 In the process of its development, anime has been often positioned in relation to its Western counterparts, particularly Disney productions, in terms of representations, aesthetics, or position in the global market. While Disney’s animation studio has faltered lately, anime has emerged on the global stage with remarkable success to rival the Disney Empire. The potential of anime’s success was anticipated as early as 1953 by Imamura Taihei, a leading Japanese motion picture critic: The animated cartoon has made little progress except in America, but the popularity of Disney films.. ..gives reason to hope that there will be a world-wide development in the field of animation.... Whether we like it or not, traditional art must be the foundation of a truly Japanese animated ‘ Thomas Hoffer identifies live-action film as presenting physical reality, and animation as metaphysical reality in Animation: A Reference Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1981), p. 3. 14jlm A. Lent, “Introduction,” in illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor, Magazines and Picture Bookr, ed. John A Lent (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2001), p. 5. 8 cartoon. . . . It has been pointed out by S. M. Eisenstein that ancient Japanese art has characteristics closely related to those of the animated cartoon and employs similar methods.15 Japan’s first animation was released in 1917, but the industry really began to come into its own with the establishment of Toei Animation Studio in 1956, followed by Japan’s first feature length color animation: Hakujaden (Panda and the Magic Serpent) in 1958,16 and since the 1980s anime has been one of Japan’s most important cultural exports. In this study, anime is understood to mean more than simply “Japanese animation,” referring specifically to Japanese animations that have been distributed to theatres and TV stations worldwide, especially since the 1 980s and 1 990s. Anime has provided a significant influence on the global cultural arena in artistic, economic, and political terms. It manifests the complexities of Japan, particularly in relation to the West and other Asian countries in the midst of globalization, and therefore it is a major site for identity articulation. These aspects indicate that anime needs to be studied as a medium distinct from animation. Some critics even distinguish anime from a similar term, Japanimation, which was mainly used to refer to earlier Japanese animation that was exported abroad until around the 1 970s) As mentioned above, because of similarities and differences between them, Japanese animation has often been viewed as influenced by, contrasted with, or resistant to its Western counterpart. Walt Disney was born at the right moment to explore the potential 15 Imamura Taihei, “Japanese Art and the Animated Cartoon,” trans. Fuyuichi Tsuruoka, in The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television 7:2 (1953), p. 217. This article is to appear as chapter in Imamura’s Manga eiga-ron (Theory of Animated Film) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992). 16Hakujaden produced by Yabushita Yasushi, was the inspiration for the well-known Japanese animator Miyazaki Hayao to become an animator. This is one ofthe first works of Japanese animation exported abroad. See Miyazaki Hayao, Shuppatsuten (Starting Point) (Tokyo: Studio Ghibli, 1996), p. 44. This anime is inspired by a Chinese folktale where a young Chinese boy falls in love with a beautiful girl who possesses strange and mysterious powers. It is therefore interesting to note that early anime was afready representing the Asian “other” fifty years ago. ‘‘ See Otsuka Eiji and Osawa Nobuaki, Japanimëshon wa nazeyabureruka (Why Japanimation Will Fail) (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2005), p. 8. 9 ofmedia technologies and business models, as well as to expand the genre ofanimation, and he essentially laid the groundwork for his followers, including the two biggest anime creators in Japan: Tezuka Osamu (1928—89) and Miyazaki Hayao (1941—). In particular, anime works by Miyazaki, sometimes referred to as the “Walt Disney of Japan,” provide intriguing insights because of their similarities and differences with those of Disney.’8 Miyazaki’s animated films have been critically renowned since the mid 198Os, and serve as an alternative to Disney in the world of animation, as well as providing a new subgenre distinguished from other types of anime (such as cyberpunk science fiction, mecha anime, and so on). The popularity of Miyazaki’ s anime has been phenomenal both inside and outside Japan, as demonstrated by his receiving the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003, followed by the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005. What is perhaps the most marked aspect ofMiyazaki’s recent works, besides their popularity, is their sense of ambiguity that serves as a resource for viewers’ identity work, or their particular configuration of “self’ and “other,” especially in representations of gender and ethnicity. A close examination ofMiyazaki’s works therefore demonstrates how anime can subvert the dominant Western discourse, specifically the Orientalist worldview, which has been and still is influencing ways that anime is produced and how it aids in forming cultural identities. While there have been more and more studies in the field of anime recently, many of them analyze it as a product, providing descriptions of genres of anime, or the overall characteristics of this medium. While these are useful, such analyses are not sufficient to understand the mechanism of identity construction 18 It should be noted that the focus of my analyses is animated films, not TV animation. Also, I am focusing here on animated products aimed at and marketed to children. Therefore, animations such as The Simpsons and South Park produced in North America will not be discussed in my study. 10 through representation in anime. There has not been much close analysis of the texts of specific anime, certainly not to the extent that Disney animations have been studied. While there are a number ofanimation studios and directors in both Japan and North America, as well as a variety of subgenres, the present dissertation focuses on a particular group ofworks produced by Miyazaki Hayao and Walt Disney (through Walt’s successors), in order to explicate how Miyazaki influences the way his studio creates “identity” in its animated works, as well as the linkage between identities circulated in anime narratives and the articulation of cultural identities.’9 Auteurs such as Miyazaki and Disney have the role of privileged storyteller, thereby making this linkage particularly effective. In this respect, both Miyazaki and Disney set out to produce an “animated folklore” using cinematic animation as the primary form, in order to provide the viewer with resources for articulating cultural identities: stories that explore explicitly what it means to be “American” in Disney’s and “Japanese” in Miyazaki’s productions. For this purpose, among a great range of styles, techniques, and subgenres, my study examines animated features that employ saga storytelling, because this subgenre explicitly manifests cultural identities through narrative and visual representations. My analyses look specifically at animated films produced from the 1 980s to the early 2000s, a period of intensive cultural globalization that has brought about difficulty in defining cultural/group identity. They attempt to show how representations of”othemess” (in gender and ethnicity) have changed or remained the same in Disney’s animated folklore since Dorfman and Mattelart’s study in the 1970s, and how Miyazaki’s work in the same subgenre contributes 19 While acknowledging that the Disney animations examined in the following chapters were produced in the 1990s under the supervision ofMichael Eisner, who holds different political visions from Walt Disney, I argue that there exist strong continuities between the early animated works of Disney and their successors of the last decade. 11 to the construction of”otherness.” Disney animations have certainly developed a more empowering representation of”otherness,” for example, by using sarcasm that potentially challenges dominant ideologies or by using different cultures as the subject of narrative. My analyses also attempt to show how “otherness” is represented by Miyazaki’s animated folklore as well. In order to lay bare the complex mechanisms of cultural identity articulation, I closely analyze specific animated films from both Disney and Miyazaki in an attempt to answer the question of how representations in animated fantasy of this subgenre contribute to the construction of notions of “self’ and “other.” The animation texts analyzed in the case studies are ones that demonstrate gendered/sexualized or racialized “otherness”: Disney’s Aladdin, Mulan and Pocahontas, and Miyazaki’s Nausicaa ofthe Valley ofthe Wind Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, all of which are globally distributed. I also take into account the historical and social aspects of their production, as well as critiques and reviews of these films, which also contribute to the discourse of the fantasy world. My analysis is also specifically concerned with two kinds of cultural identities: gender and ethnicity/nationality. I build my argument upon existing theories and studies on the construction of “self’ and “other,” with approaches from feminist film theory, postcolonial theory and cultural studies.2° These theories share the premise that “self’ and 20 My sources include psychoanalytic analyses such as Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Screen 26: 3 (1975); Mary Ann Doane’s “Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema,” in Femmes Fatales (New York: Routledge, 1991); Ann Kaplan’s Women & Film: Both Sides ofthe Camera (London and New York: Routledge, 1983); postcolonial and cultural studies such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (Harmondswarth: Penguin, 1978); bell hooks’ “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” in Cultural Studies, eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992); Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989); Rey Chow’s Writing Diaspora (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993); Richard Dyer’s 12 “other” are constantly shifting concepts, and that the construction of “otherness” involves “the complex processes and channels through which representations flow in different directions,”2’which includes both physical and psychological aspects of human consciousness. In Chapter 3 I introduce the philosophies of fantasy creation and worldviews of Miyazaki Hayao and other popular anime directors, comparing them with those of Walt Disney and his Disney Corporation. Knowing how these globally recognized animation directors see the world will help better understand their representations of “difference” and “otherness” in the texts that will be discussed in the subsequent case study chapters. Following the discussion of the directors’ views of animation, in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 I analyze specific animation texts, along with their production contexts. These chapters examine in greater detail how “otherness” is constructed by Disney and Miyazaki animations in different contexts, particularly focusing on the genderization and racialization of the “other.” Chapter 4 is concerned with analysis of the Saidian Orientalist representation of the “Oriental other” constructed by Disney’s Aladdin (1992), in comparison with how the East constructs the “West” or “occidentalizes” it, by analyzing Miyazaki’s Nausicaä ofthe Valley ofthe Wind (1984) and Porco Rosso (1992). In Chapter 5, I focus on how the “Other” is constructed within a country by playing with its national history. For this purpose, I examine Disney’s Pocahontas (1995) and Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997). In Chapter 6, I provide insights into the construction of “Asia” by both the West and Japan. The chapter demonstrates a Western (re)construction of the Eastern The Matter ofImages: Essays on Representations (London: Routledge, 1993); and Stuart Hall’s “New Ethnicities,” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). 21 Elizabeth Hallam & Brian V. Street, Cultural Encounters: Representing ‘otherness’ (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 6. 13 “Other” in Disney’s Mulan (1998) (which supposedly attempts to defy Orientalist stereotypes but ends up re-inscribing them), and juxtaposes this with an examination of Miyazaki’s SpiritedAway (2001), which reveals the Orient “othering” another “Orient.” I analyze Spirited Away not only as subverting the Orientalist discourse, but also as a manifestation of a hybridized and ambiguous space, which destabilizes the concept of “identity” itself much more obviously than other works by Miyazaki. In addition, all the protagonists but Chihiro (Spirited Away) in these works are categorized as “princesses,”22 albeit with significantly different depictions of their “princess-ness.” It is neither my intention to demonize Walt Disney or Disney animation, as many critics have, nor to judge Miyazaki’s works entirely in a positive light. Instead of simply polarizing Disney and Miyazaki’s animations based on differences between them, the goal of this study is to enrich our understanding of how these auteurs are creating narratives that frame collective identities. Although I acknowledge that viewers do not necessarily identify with the identities produced, I also integrate theorists who have analyzed the ways that people use narratives in the process ofunderstanding their identities, in order to suggest how animation fantasy can influence the way viewers understand themselves, their world, and their others. My analysis is thus based on the premise that meanings or tropes in media texts reflect creators’ intentions, but at the same time they are produced and interpreted in social discourse. Mulan in animation is not strictly a princess, but she is included as one of the “Disney Princesses,” which include Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, Pocahontas, and Snow White (Disney Princess Official Website at http://disney.go.com/princess/htmlImain_iframe.html) (accessed on March 16, 2005). 14 Chapter 1: Identity Articulation in Media Fantasy Representation does not occur after an event, but it is part 0/the event. Reality does not exist outside the process ofrepresentation. —Stuart Hall, “Presentation and Media” there is no doubt that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensfy its own sense ofitselfby dramatizing the distance and dIfference between what is close to it and what isfar away.2 —Edward Said, Orientalism The above quotes by Stuart Hall and Edward Said suggest that media representations provide a powerful imaginary space that offers resources for creating “reality,” a space that projects images that may work toward articulating cultural identities—identities structured around notions of “self’ and “other.” This chapter outlines the theoretical framework of my work: how people use visual and narrative representations in the process of understanding their own identities and others, contributing to the articulation of cultural identities; and how those media representations are often influenced by dominant ideologies and may sometimes subvert those dominant ideologies. It should be stressed that this dissertation identifies film viewers as being subjected to the text, while also acknowledging the possibility of viewers consciously acting to build their own perceptions and identity articulation through the viewing experience, and assumes that this idea is universally applicable. While the relationship between representation and national/cultural/ethnic/gender identity has been studied extensively in the context of live-action film, in the field of animation studies this issue has not been studied adequately, except for some studies on 1 Stuart Hall, “Representation and the Media.” 2 Said, Orientalism, p. 55. 15 the works of major U.S. studios such as the Walt Disney Company. Moreover, on the issue of racial representation in particular, many film studies attempt to analyze white people’s perceptions of non-white races as depicted in Hollywood film; few studies, however, discuss how non-whites represent whites, or how a non-white race represents and perceives itself or other non-white races. Even among studies of racial representations, (East) Asians (the “yellow”) have been given much less attention— whether as depicted in film or as creators of filmic depictions—than blacks or whites. And in the subfield of animated films, the scholarly neglect of (East) Asians is even more evident. Another purpose of this chapter is to lay out previous theoretizations of the ways sex/gender is intertwined with ethnicity/race/nationality in media representations, and how these complex mechanisms of representations affect articulation of identity. In this dissertation I take a postcolonial and feminist critical stance, so it is necessary to first lay out the relevant critical tools in posteolonial and feminist studies and the connections between them. This project proceeds from the assumption that narratives—including the fantasy narratives of animation—influence the way that the consumers of those narratives see the world, even if we do not fully understand yet the mechanisms behind that influence. I am far from alone in this assumption, and will trace in the following sections some of the previous scholarship that has theorized the mechanisms of media influence on consumers. Film scholar Herald Stadler gives a pithy description of the close relationship between reality and fantasy, stating that 16 “perception, imagination, fantasy, dreams, and memory are simply different modes of experience, all of which constitute a sense of reality.”3 This suggests that in the postindustrial, postmodem context, we live in a world where the boundary between the real and the fictional has virtually disappeared. Even if viewers know that things they see on the screen are not directly connected with their real lives, these things “induce some emotions in the subject and thus constitute a part of the subject’s life experience.”4 As a consequence, a sense of personal or group identity is no longer conceived of as based solely on genetics and/or childhood influences, but instead it is believed that aspects of identity are articulated significantly, and continue to be articulated throughout life, to a significant extent, by the fictional “realities” that people consume. 1.1. Identity Articulation through Media Narratives: reinforcing the dominant view 1.1.1. The subject as susceptible to the ideological apparatus of visual representation The practice of reinforcing dominant ideologies through media is discussed in Bill Nichols’ study of the ideological function of visual media, focusing on classical narrative film. He explains how the ideologies disseminated through film shape the viewers as subjects. Taking Louis Althusser’s concept of”interpellation”—the self as called into Herald Stadler, “Film as Experience: Phenomenological Concepts in Cinema and Television Studies,” in Quarterly Review ofFilm and Video 12: 3 (1990), p. 46. 4Miroslaw Filiciak, “Hyperidentities: Postmodem Identity Patterns in Massively Multiplayer Online Role- Playing Games,” in The Video Game: Theory Reader eds. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 96-98. Filiciak, along with other postmodernists, such as Jean Baudrillard, stresses the fluidity of postmodern individual identity, by using the term, “hyperidentity.” 17 being as a subject by ideological institutions—Nichols uses the term “self-as-subject,”5 arguing that the fabrication of visual representations “subjects” us to a specific way of seeing, by masking the conditions that underlie the surface appearance. The sense of “self-as-subject,” according to Nichols, is often shaped by the visual codes that the dominant discourse provides for viewers. Nichols goes on to argue that “[sjince images bear an analogous or iconic relationship to their referent, it is easy to confuse the realms of the image and the physical world by treating the image as a transparent window.”6 Although it would be too simplistic to believe that viewers are completely trapped by these images, Nichols’ argument partly explains why it can be difficult for viewers to distance themselves from what is on the screen: because of its visual proximity to their real lives. Nichols’ view of the influence of images on viewers is rather obvious, but what is less obvious about the power of fantasy is that even if images do not precisely mirror our material reality exactly, they can affect viewers to a similar extent, if not more. The power and effectiveness of these fictional realities are emphasized by Michael Riffaterre’s concept of “fictional truth.”7 Riffaterre argues that fiction seems true because it is fictional, and therefore can be more meamngful to a reader than a direct imitation of reality. That is, truth in fiction is predicated on “a verisimilitude, a system of representations that appears to reflect a reality external to the text, but only because it conforms to [the rules of] grammar” of representation, which establishes narrative truth.8 It follows that the “reality” or “verisimilitude” in media fantasy does not necessarily Bill Nichols, Ideology & the Image (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 29. p. 21. Riffaterre, Fictional Truth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Riffaterre, p. xiii-xiv. 18 require verification against our worldly reality, and that it can be powerful enough to leave the viewer susceptible to ideological messages, whether they reinforce the dominant view or challenge it.9 Riffaterre’ s view of the system of “reality” in fiction is an important aspect to be considered in examining the animated world, which has its own visual grammar different from that of live-action film, but still conforms closely enough to the visual grammar to which viewers are accustomed to give a convincing sense of narrative truth. I will discuss how the narrative grammar of animation is used in later chapters with reference to specific animated works. It can be concluded from both Nichols’ and Riffaterre’s arguments that image- makers play a key role in influencing people’s perceptual habits, by disseminating and reiterating particular visual codes and systems of signification. As people learn to read particular visual codes and signification systems, they become familiar with them, and come to expect them. Considering that every visual code or signification system embodies particular ideologies, and that people who benefit from dominant ideologies are likely to be those who are in the position of power to create and disseminate images, it is reasonable to assume that ideologies carried through widely and repeatedly circulated images would be largely dominant ones, and are capable of influencing people’s worldviews or perceptual habits. This idea is strengthened by the correlation between perception, recognition, and pleasure. According to Nichols, the reason that we are continually drawn to the codes that have formed our habits of perception lies in a sense of “recognition,” an identification with things that we have previously encountered. Moreover, we derive pleasure from idea also concurs with Louis Aithusser’s concept of media as an ideological apparatus, or a process of establishing a consensus in a (naturalized) power structure. 19 recognizing these familiar codes, and this process contributes to a sense of stability in our relationship to the world. Thus, the sense of familiarity that is built upon learned codes brings us-as-viewers pleasure, and as long as we-as-viewers agree to position ourselves as subjects, according to the implicit definitions of the dominant ideologies, our viewing pleasure continues because the perceptual codes we have learned turn sensory impressions into organized and meaningful concepts. 10 It is hard to imagine that viewers of films would seek to disrupt their viewing pleasure in the midst of pleasure to analyze a film’s sources and consequences. Since codes and conventions for signification tend to be influenced by dominant ideologies, as mentioned above, viewers’ pleasure of recognition potentially makes them susceptible to these ideologies, which may subsequently obscure their own active role in perception. This is what Nichols calls “the grand deceit of ideology,” a system that “fixes us in an imaginary.., relationship to the real conditions of existence.”11 In this respect, as viewers we are free, but may be free to be “subjected” to/by ideologies. Following this viewpoint, it can be argued that media representation may confine and exploit viewers’ perceptions to a significant extent.12 This aspect of Nichols’ view echoes Roland Barthes’ notion of “myth,” or the secondary “connotative” meaning created by images and signs, which masks antithesis such that the dominant power and its perceptions can significantly influence our way of 10 acknowledge that accepting the dominant or intended reading is not the only way that viewers can obtain pleasure from media texts, and certainly, the dissemination of ideological messages is not the only function of media such as film. Nonetheless, my dissertation focuses on the ideological aspect of the media, and on the importance of understanding mechanisms by which “intended audiences” subjected to media potentially articulate cultural identities, in order to figure out how these identities can be also subverted. “Nichols, p. 42. 12 This does not mean that I accept the idea that viewers’ perceptions are entirely controlled by media products and trapped in their representations, as the viewers are subjected to them. However, in order to examine the subversive power of media representations, we need to understand perceptions subjected to the dominant view, and how dominant ideologies operate through media texts. 20 viewing the world.13 In this sense, a “myth” is analogous to an ideology that promotes the interests of the dominant groups. According to Barthes, no image/representation is free of attendant “myths,” and therefore we can see how visual representations might have a powerful and complex influence on media consumers in the process of understanding their own identities. To sum up: media representations, which may seem neutral, are significantly loaded with ideologies that are often supported by those who created these representations, and their viewers are subjected to/by those representations because they can derive the pleasure of recognition from them effectively if they consent to view them from the position implicitly defined as “subject” by the dominant.’4 1.1.2. Construction of the racial “Other”: Edward Said The meaning-production system of Barthes’ “myth-making” is also taken up by Edward Said in explication of the way “race” is represented or articulated through media. Said’s notion of “Orientalism” describes Western representation of the racialized East as “mythic discourse” which ignores or obscures the West’s own origins as well as those of the “Orient” it represents.’5 In the discourse of Orientalism, media texts created in the 13 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). To explain this structure of “myth,” Barthes uses a picture on the cover of a French magazine of a black African soldier saluting the French flag. Barthes argues that this image promotes an idea of racial harmony in France, such that even the formerly colonized subjects feel French patriotism. But this “myth” of French racial harmony and colonial success covers over the remaining schisms and tensions between races and between the former colonizer and colonized in France. 14 do not mean to deny the possibility of viewers conceiving their own critical interpretations when viewing film. It is certain that some viewers do “read against the grain” of the ideologies put forward implicitly by the text. The point of the arguments here is that such critical viewing requires conscious effort and may be hard to sustain even by those who intend to remain resistant to the text’s implicit positioning of viewers. 15 Said, Orientalism, p. 321. In this dissertation I will at times use the word “Oriental” to refer to the people of Asia. “Oriental” is often taken to refer to East Asians—Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans—but because Said’s original defmition of “Orientalism” referred primarily to European depictions of the Near and Middle East and North Africa, it could be argued that “Oriental” applies to anyone living anywhere on the Asian continent. My reason for using the outdated and somewhat pejorative terms “Orient” and “Oriental” is 21 West draw on connotative meanings that are associated with its fantasized perception of the East. One of the chief perceptions associated with Orientalism is organized around a binary relationship—the West is figured as rational, knowledgeable, modem (and masculine), and the East as emotional, ignorant (or, in a positive spin, as possessing ancient “wisdom” rather than Western science), not modernized (and feminine). Through the paradigmatic figure of the veiled woman, who came to stand for “the Orient” in the cultural products Said analyzes, the East is also figured as enigmatic and unknowable— except by those Westerners (“Orientalists”) who have lived there or studied it. In the classic discourse of Orientalism, even those people who live in the “Orient” cannot fully know themselves or their culture until it is “rationally” explained to them by the Orientalist. Said’s Orientalism is provocative in theorizing the concept of racial “otherness” as it is influenced by media representations, particularly those in novels, paintings, and in academic monographs, and in showing how the construction of the racialized East was really for the purpose of sustaining the hegemony of Western discourse. Said’s conceptualization of the Orientalist view thus underscores the power dynamics involved in the discursive construction of the Western “Self’ and the (Middle) Eastern “Other.” His view is relevant to the contemporary relationship between America and Asia, and may even hold important insights that can be transferred to the consideration of other unequal power relations.’6 precisely to underscore the fact that I am talking about depictions of or concepts about Asians that were created in the West, but have also influenced Asian people’s own self-identities, as I discuss further below. 16 In the years since Orientalism first appeared, Said’s basic arguments have been refined, updated, and enriched by a number of scholarly responses, several of which I will refer to in later chapters where I talk about specific textual issues involving Orientalism. The simple overview here is intended to lay out only the basic ideas from which my arguments proceed. 22 Among Said’s three types of Orientalism—academic, imaginative and historical— it is the imaginative definition that is most closely tied to the way cultural identities are articulated in media fantasies, which may affect the way the people who consume those fantasies understand themselves and others. In this regard, Said argues that media spaces, which may offer distorted images of peoples and cultures, serve as imaginative geographies and histories, underlining the epistemological distinction between the Oriental “other” and the Occidental “self.” Said states that: “[w]e must not forget that the Orientalist’s presence is enabled by the Orient’s effective absence,” or by the Orientalist remaining outside the Orient.17 In this discourse, the “Orient” is a Western creation, which is built upon the desire and fear of the West toward the “enigmatic” East. The creation of the Western image of the Oriental “Other” amounts to a manifestation of Western dominance over access to representation and the ideology embedded in it, which subsequently limits the autonomy of the represented object (the Orient in this case). One facet of Orientalism, therefore, holds that “the Orient” is an unenlightened entity which can improve only by practicing a Western-value-based worldview. While some scholars may critique Said’s notion of Orientalism as outdated or too specific in region—as mentioned above, he concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth century European view of the Middle East, the Arab world, and Islam—I argue that it is still entirely pertinent in the age of globalization, where people are still often positioned as either “Westerners” or “Easterners.” (As we will see in later chapters, Japanese filmmakers and cultural critics certainly believe that Orientalism continues as an important aspect of global discourse—both popular and academic—and their own creative and scholarly work is predicated on that belief.) ‘ Said, Orientalism, p. 208 and p. 222. 23 It is also important to emphasize that Said neither intends to claim the existence of the/a real Orient, nor does he suggest that the Orient can be understood only by the Orient. Rather, he highlights the idea of “the Orient” as an engendered entity, one which is maintained by both the West and the Orient itself.’8 In this respect, he attributes part of the triumph of Orientalism to the system of global consumerism, in which the Orient is captured in Western popular culture markets. Among his examples are “Arabs,” who have come to regard themselves as “Arabs”-as-portrayed-in-Hollywood-films.’9The fact that Orientalism is a product both of Western Orientalizing practices and the Orient’s self Orientalizing practices suggests the complexity of current relationships between the West and Asia. Self-Orientalizing aids in the “colonization of the imagination,”20in which the “other” ultimately is deprived of any expectation of having control over its own subjectivity through fantasies. In addition, the imaginary “Orient” may bring people in the West a sense of “freedom,” as a means of escape from their own reality. Stressing this idea in the context of nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism, V.G. Kiernian explains the exotic fascination of Oriental fantasy in the West as follows: to Western fantasy this Orient was one of freedom, where man could expand beyond all common limits, with the unlimited power that Napoleon Said, Orientalism, p. 322. 19 In Orientalism, Said points out Orientalizing through myths made in the Orient itsell which is happening among Japanese, Indians, and other Orientals. (See p. 322) Also, in the “Afterword” of Orientalism, he emphasizes that Orientalism did not end with the end of institutionalized colonialism, but continues up to the present (1994, when his book was published) in new modes and forms that echo old colonialist practices. (See p. 348). 20 Hagedom states: “Colonization of the imagination is a two-way street. And being enshrined on that pedestal as someone’s Pearl of the Oriental fantasy doesn’t seem so demeaning, at first; who wouldn’t want to be worshipped? Perhaps that’s why Asian women are the ultimate wet dream in most Hollywood movies; it’s no secret how well we’ve been taught to play the role; to take care of our men.” (see, “Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck,” in Ms. (Jan/Feb. 1994), pp. 77-78. 24 dreamed of there, unlimited luxury, a palace and princess, magic and adventure; all those inordinate things that orderly modem man had to renounce 21 Just as Said argues that Orientalism has continued beyond the time of institutionalized colonialism, I would argue that Kieman’s point also remains valid in the postcolonial context. (We will see examples to support this idea in the case study chapters later in the dissertation.) Said’s exposition of the complex interrelation among power, knowledge, and imagination (pleasure) revealed in Orientalist discourse, as well as his vision of the “Other” as “alter ego” that aids in separating “them” from “us,” are foundations for discussion of the ways that Self/Other conceptualizations operate in the process of cultural (and other) identity articulations in animated fantasies, and I will therefore return to his ideas in later chapters. 1.1.3. The politics of vision and the articulation of “Self” and “Other” Nichols contends that fantasy created through visual media brings forth the consistency of “self-as-subject,” which “compels us as subjects to seek positive identification with, or antagonistic opposition to, the other.”22 In this context, the establishment of “self’/”other” binaries necessitates a discussion of vision. Nichols draws on Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “Mirror Stage”—the (mis)recognition of se1f, which describes the subject’s setting of an imaginary boundary between self and other—in order to provide a theoretical understanding of how visual media contribute to identity 21 Victor Gordon Kieman, The Lords ofHuman Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man, and White Man in an Age of Empire (Boston: Little Brown Co., 1969), p. 131. 22 Nichols, p. 32. 25 formation.23 For Nichols, the relationship between images on the screen and the viewer parallels the way the “Mirror-Stage” operates, in the sense that both show the necessity of an Other in the (mis)recognition of the Self. That is, the “self’ is not an autonomously existing entity, but is socially constructed in relation to others as well as visual signs around it. The concept of the Mirror-Stage is useful in examining how the imaginary “Self’ and “Other” play a role in the fictional world of film (including animation) for viewers’ identity work. Based on the concept of Orientalism and the Lacanian notion of the imaginary (or misconception of) “self’ and “other,” hereafter I use “Other”/”Self’ and “other”/”self’ differently, in the context of gender and racial identity articulations. I use “Other” and “Self’ to refer to the imaginary or symbolic entities that are conceptualized or stereotyped in the subject’s mind, specific images with which the subject mistakenly yet firmly identifies, in order to articulate its own subjectivity. Thus, the “Other” in the racial context, for example, suggests singularity: each race (or ethnicity) is designated as having its attributes as the “Other.” In contrast, the “other” and the “self’ are grounded in real life, but because the concept of “identity” itself is socially constructed, I place these terms in quotation marks. It is therefore appropriate to say that after one’s experience of the “other,” s/he establishes the “Other.” Sharalyn Orbaugh affirms the significance of the mechanism of vision—how we are seen by others—as a major source in the construction of subjectivity. She draws on 23 Jacques Lacan, “Some Reflections on the Ego,” in International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 (1953), pp. 11-17. In the “Mirror-Stage,” an infant establishes the “imaginary self’ (the ego) in responding to an external image of its body reflected in a mirror (or through responding to the image of its primary caregiver). Since the image of the unified body that the infant mis-recognizes as “self’ does not correspond to its actual physical body, this image serves as an ideal “i.” it is important to note that although this model of construction of the “self’ is conceived by Lacan as a permanent characteristic of the individual, it is reasonable to think that the ego keeps being re-formed through his or her adult life, through the encounters that occur in normal social relations. 26 Lacan’s concept of the “gaze”—a discursively articulated vision that should be distinguished from a “look,” because the former refers to an act of vision that is powerful and defines its object.24 In other words, the “gaze” always generates and reflects unequal power relations between its subject and object (for example, in the context of genderization and racialization). On the contrary, a “look” is “not powerful, is associated with time and mortality, and is only minimally capable of defining or reif’ing its object.”25 In the context of visual media, “the gaze” is similar to a camera in film, exerting a strong power that can define and penetrate its object, which cannot access “an alternate epistemic configuration.”26 This distinction between “gazing” and “looking” plays an important role in my discussions of the relationship between vision and power dynamics among different races or genders in later case studies chapters. With regard to the link between the logic of visuality and power relations, Rey Chow provides useful insight into “the technologies of visuality” that she claims place “subjects” (spectators) and “objects” (spectacles) in uneven positions due to hierarchically distributed energy between the two. She argues that, with the development of modem technologies such as film that expand our concept of vision beyond the physical dimension, the visual realm reveals an “epistemological mechanism” that magnifies social difference, particularly differences of class, gender, and race.27 Thus, in this context, “the spectacle” refers to a person or people, who are depicted as “helpless.” In other words, where film (technology) is inseparable from the perception of the spectacle, the mechanism of visuality contributes considerably to the formation of the power hierarchy 24 Sharalyn Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction ofthe Allied Occupation (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 70. 25 Ibid. 26Orbau Japanese Fiction ofthe Allied Occupation, p. 75. pp. 50-60. 27 between an onlooker (as the “self’) and the spectacle (the “other”)—such as women, the third world and so on—which leads to the perception of the “Other.” What makes film technology influential is that it can emphasize the “automatized” body of the “other” who is subjected to exploitation exercised by the dominant group. According to Chow, the “aesthetic” power of the spectacle (or the “automatized other”) is accentuated based on the degree of its awkwardness or helplessness projected on the screen, and this also aids in demarcating the “self’ from the “other.” This logic of visuality therefore works as a foundation for the West’s construction of its “Other,” by unequally placing the former as spectator and the spectacle: the non-Western “other” functions in film as a source of “the spectacle” for the consumption and entertainment of the Western “subject.” Film is the major site that manifests this mechanism of visuality and the operation of the selfYother binary explicitly and repetitively, until it permeates the viewer’s unconscious mind. The case study chapters that come later in this study examine how the visual paradigms such as those described above are practiced through comical depictions of Asian figures and cultures in films such as Disney’s Mulan. 1.1.4. Stereotyping: a strategy for creating raced and gendered “others” Chow’s idea of the “other” as spectacle can be understood through the concrete example of the heavy stereotyping of marginal groups and cultures that are still featured in many mainstream films. Walter Lippmann, who coined the term “stereotype,” emphasizes its ideological implications and its function of demarcating “self’ and “other,” for the explicit purpose of strengthening the self s sense of comfort and stability. He describes the term as follows: 28 A pattern of stereotypes is not neutral... It is not merely a short cut.... It is the guarantee of our self-respect; it is the projection upon the world of our own sense of our own value, our own position and our own rights. The stereotypes are, therefore, highly charged with the feelings that are attached to them. They are the fortress of our tradition, and behind its defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy.28 Based on Lippmann’s definition, the motive behind stereotyping lies in a dichotomous view of “our” value, which needs to be demarcated and protected from others outside “our” group or our society. This viewpoint concurs with Julia Kristeva’s concept of “abjection,” which refers to the social and psychical logic that conceptualizes the “self’! “other” separation. According to Kristeva’ s concept of “abjection,” subjective and group identities are constituted by excluding anything that threatens one’s personal or the group’s boundaries.29 The process of abjection typically indicates a repression or rejection of “otherness” for the purpose of group formation, based on factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and gender. Hence, a discussion of the role of stereotypes needs to extend Lippmann’s definition and to point out that the problem is not necessarily the existence of stereotypes per Se, but resides in who controls them and what interests they serve for whom.3° 1.1.5. The gendering/sexualizing of race and the construction of “yellowness” As many scholars argue, we cannot talk about the racialized “Other” in visual narrative without referring to the issue of how gender or sexuality is represented, because race and gender/sex are frequently intertwined. It is, for example, crucial to look at the 28 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 96. 29Julia Kristeva, Powers ofHorror: An Essay ofAbjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 30Richard Dyer mentions this point in The Matter ofImages. 29 interplay of race and gender/sexuality in discussing the way Asia and Asians are typically figured: despite the recent economic power of some parts of Asia, the region and its people are still often “feminized” in relation to the “masculine” West through media. In his study of Asian-American film, Jun Xing argues that “sexual aggression against white women” by non-white (male) characters signifies a threat posed to the white victim by non-white races, and serves as a strategy to emphasize racial “otherness,” and secure white subjectivity.3’In the history of the American film industry, the sexualization of race was institutionalized when the Motion Picture Production Code, which prohibited the filming of interracial sex or marital scenes, was implemented from 1934 to the middle of the 1950s. This was certainly based on the racist views of interracial relationships as a threat or as “unclean.” What is striking is the fact that, despite this code, “white males [were] shown to easily transgress interracial sexual prohibitions on-screen,”32which turns the body of non-white (women) into a sexual object. This is a typical example of the sexualization of non-white races through media representation. Similarly, the depiction of non-white males also contributes to accentuating racial “otherness.” In this regard, Xing argues that the dominant regimes of Hollywood films have corroborated the essentialization of the racial identity of Asian Americans. Representations of Asians as the “yellow” in mainstream films have not been studied as much as the mainstream representations of the “black,”33 though representations of “yellowness” and “blackness” share many aspects. ‘ Jun Xing, Asian American Through the Lens: History Representations and Identity (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 1998). 32Xing, P. 76. The case of black male characters has been extensively studied. For example, Gail Dines addresses the image of black men as demonized “others,” or outsiders to the “normal” realm of white masculinity in Hollywood films. Using films such as King Kong, which depicts a sexually obsessed black man—a “black menace”—who, lacking human qualities, has a voracious appetite for a white woman, Dines demonstrates 30 Xing’s observation of the discourse of Hollywood master-narratives reveals that people from any part of Asia are represented as “Orientals” according to a transhistorical set of fixed racial categories. In this sense, “Asian American” is not a natural or pre-given identity, but a political invention for the benefit of the hegemonic discourse, in which mainstream films co-opt Asian Americans through the “institutional racism” that privileges white subjectivity.34 Xing’s categorization of representations of Asians in Hollywood into three formulaic archetypes is worth citing here: 1) the yellow peril formula, 2) Madame Butterfly narratives, and 3) the Charlie Chan genre.35 Xing explains each of these three categories. The “yellow peril formula” represents Asians as the aggressive or canny “other.” For instance, they are represented as sexually aggressive figures against white women, in roles such as gangsters and rapists. Xing states that a hypersexualized Asian (male) image has become a “metaphor for the racial threat posed to Western culture by the ‘other’.”36 This formula was more prevalent in the 193 Os and 40s, when the rapid modernization of several East Asian nations threatened “white” economic and political hegemony, but more recently, too, a significant number of Hollywood films, such as Year ofThe Dragon (1985), Gung Ho (1985), and Rising Sun (1993), have made use of images and tropes that recall the “yellow peril” pattern of representation. that a political or social threat by other races is always synonymous with a sexual threat. The sexual overpresence of the black significantly marks racial difference, and reinforces a binary opposition between the non-white “other” and the white “self.” See Gail Dines, “King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity,” in Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader, eds. Gail Dane et al. (London: Sage, 2003). “ In this regard, Xing argues that through a long-standing practice of “role segregation” in Hollywood film, Asians are placed as sidekicks, and Caucasians play major Asian roles, using “racist cosmetology” such as “yellow facing” to produce thefr exaggerated Asian features. See Xing, p. 35. Xing, pp. 54-63. 36Xing, p. 55. 31 “Madame Butterfly” narratives manifest an archetype of Oriental femininity, which underpins Orientalist discourse. In these narratives Asian women’s bodies are fetishized for the purpose of sexual seduction. “Madame Butterfly” narratives emphasize the devotion of Asian women to white men, who in turn downplay or deny the women’s subjectivity. Based on the original Madame Butterfly story, narratives of this type have long contributed to the conceptualization of Japan as “feminine” (represented by the lovely young Butterfly) in relation to the United States, which is represented as masculine and white through association with Pinkerton. Furthermore, the image of Asians as the feminine “Other” is reinforced by the third category, the “Charlie Chan type” or what Xing calls “cinematic castration,” which uses the representation of emasculated Asian males to perpetuate a vision of Western masculinity. In every case these archetypes are mobilized with the intention of implicitly ensuring white male American subjectivity. Xing’s argument resonates with other critical studies on Orientalism in visual media from the 1980s and 1990s, such as Darrel Hamamoto’s Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics ofTV Representation, which investigates the symbolic subordination of Asian Americans in U.S. media.37 These studies underscore the notion of a white gaze that dehumanizes the Orientals who do not have the ability to claim their own subjeetivities or a means for doing it. The effectiveness of the construction of a consistent vision of “yellowness” is also seen in the fact that, despite changes in historical and social circumstances over the past seventy years, Japan has been consistently represented as a peril or a silent victim in Hollywood films. Darrel Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics ofTV Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 32 In particular, the image of Japan as a peril has been constantly fed by historical events throughout the twentieth century—its victory in the Russo-Japan War in 1905, the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and the dramatic economic growth that made the country competitive with the United States from the 1960s onward. These historical events are continuously linked to the present. For instance, the sense of fear toward Japan generated by white Americans has been hinted at in recent Hollywood films such as Kill Bill (2003). It is intriguing that while “yellow” Asians are represented as peril, they are at the same time feminized, whether they are female or male. In this sense, both Asian men and women discursively play a “female role” in relation to the white “masculine” West. The construction of “yellowness” in media manifests the West’s complex attitude toward the East Asian “Other,” which is a mix of fear and desire. These observations also demonstrate that while people and cultural products have been traveling intensively across national boundaries in the age of globalization, the image industry ceaselessly exerts ideological power, which encourages the continued demarcation of “self’ and “other.” 1.2. The Subversive Power of Media Representations Where there is power, there is resistance, andyet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position ofexterioriry in relation to power. —Michel Foucault38 The previous section of this chapter demonstrates how media can create an “imaginary reality,” often closely linked to dominant ideologies, which intended viewers use for their cultural, ethnic/racial, and gender identity articulation. Some postcolonial 38 Michel Foucault, The History ofSexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 95. 33 scholars deny the possibility of the subaltern’s access to a means of representation to articulate its own subjectivity: the subaltern cannot speak.39 But if dominant media representations and the ideologies attached to them are so powerful, how can one conceptualize the subversion of those representations, or the expression of alternative understandings of cultural, ethnic, racial or gender identity? 1.2.1. Subversion by the “other”: power and resistance in liminal space Let me emphasize that in this study the word “identities” does not refer to something given or fixed, but instead refers to “the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”4° This view not only reveals the power of media representation to reinforce dominant ideologies or stereotypical images of the “other,” but also indicates the potential to subvert those very same images. This viewpoint is partly based on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony.” Unlike Aithusser’s view of ideology, which does not assume the existence of ideologies in conflict with the dominant one, Gramsci’s hegemony presupposes the co existence ofvarious ideologies where marginal views could also emerge. Coupled with Michel Foucault’s quote above, this suggests that the hegemonic view is never stable, and is always contested, because it constantly faces a battle against subordinate forces that emerge within the same discourse. It is naïve to assume that the socio-politically constructed “other” holds a permanently fixed position. In the same line of thought, in Culture and Imperialism Said Specifically, Gayatri C. Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271-313. Those who believe in the possibility of resistance against the dominant include Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. 40 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” in Framework 36 (1989), p. 69. 34 also acknowledges the rise of oppositional indigenous voices among the literatures of former colonies, while identifying Western fiction as a weapon of domination.4’He claims that media provide a potential tool for cultural resistance, a tool that can challenge the West, and be a means of resurrecting local literature and languages to (re)articulate their identities of these former colonies.42 This sheds light on a potentially subversive mechanism of media representation, a mechanism that highlights conflicting ideologies. The idea of a stable dominant discourse can be undermined by different interpretations of media representations. This section seeks theoretical explanations of how cultural identities articulated in the dominant discourse may also be re-articulated or de-articulated. It further introduces a potential subversive space, where the “other” may emerge to give rise to a counter-hegemonic discourse through media representations. (1) The Reversed Gaze The first section of this chapter discusses the politics of vision, which plays a significant role in fixing the position of the white “self’ and non-white “other.” In the case of whites and blacks, this “visual” relationship perpetuates a false concept of white subjectivity in relation to black “others” who seemingly cannot “look” or assert their subjectivity. Bell hooks identifies three misconceptions created among whites in white supremacist society: 1) whites are invisible to blacks because of whites’ control over the gaze, and therefore blacks are unable to cultivate their subjectivity, so that 2) blacks become invisible to whites, because it is safer to avoid being seen, except in the limited 41 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). 42 Said’s argument for cultural resistance among the previous colonies, or the “other,” correlates to Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony,” which refers to conflicts between different ideologies. 35 role of a pair of hands on a serving tray; and 3) whiteness is perceived by blacks in the way whites want to appear: as good.43 Questioning this (mis)conception of the positionality of white and black, hooks points out that while there have been a number of studies of the white’s view ofblacks in North American discourse, there has been little interest in representations of whiteness in the black imagination, representations which may countervail stereotypical perceptions of blacks. Hooks goes on to argue that blacks have access to an active look at whites as a target of imitation; moreover, contrary to the white belief that they are perceived by blacks as personifying goodness, whiteness is seen as an epitome of fear and terror rather than goodness. She contends that blacks, by calling on an alternate collective memory, potentially draw on an alternative, black subject position, different from the one that is endorsed by the dominant system. Hook’s explanation of the way collective memory works can be seen as a practice of Foucault’s notion of “counter-memory” as a site of resistance.44 By highlighting marginalized memory, hooks questions the seemingly stable memory of white supremacy and its subjectivity, which has prevailed through daily practices and fantasies over time. If we accept hooks’ proposition that the dominant discourse sustained by prevailing memories can be de-hegemonized, then we could argue that media representations may function as a vehicle for dismantling these memories, so that it becomes possible for the “other” to assert subjectivity. This shift in the notion of memory, as well as recognition of the subordinate’s agency in possessing a reversed gaze, acts to challenge white (mis)conceptions. This mechanism may operate similarly in relationships hooks, “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” p. 340. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977). 36 between whites and other races, although most studies on this issue heretofore have focused on black/white relations. For instance, an analysis of whiteness in the yellow person’s imagination can also destabilize the image of whites as civilized saviors who enlighten the yellow “other” if we bring in a “counter-memory” that constitutes a new relationship between yellows and whites—an alternative to the hegemonic collective memory. The non-white’s imagination of its white “Other” through visual media will be pursued more specifically in the case study chapters. (2) Strategic essentialism: the “other’s” articulation of identity Another theoretical explanation of how the dominant discourse may be challenged in the process of identity articulation draws on the concept of “strategic essentialism” introduced by Gayatri Spivak. Essentialism/essentializing normally refers to an act similar to stereotyping: labeling a nation or people (or any other group) as being “essentially” comprised of a specific set of characteristics, thus ignoring variation within the group as well as changes in a group’s characteristics over time. Essentializing the “other” is a common tool of dominant discourse. But Spivak has proposed “strategic essentialism” as a tool of the oppressed. “Strategic essentialism” refers to the practice of a group’s members defining themselves in postivist and generalizing terms.45 As Spivak maintains, this strategy may work as a powerful political tool for “others” to have control over narratives about their own identities, because, unlike regular essentialism, it allows disempowered groups to define their essential attributes, rather than having them defined by more powerful others. The disempowered groups who make use of “strategic Gayatri C. Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, eds. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 13-14. 37 essentialism” consciously construct and articulate the identity they think most useful for political purposes—this is what makes it “strategic essentialism” rather than just self- essentialism, which is also a common practice among both dominant and marginal groups, often to serve to the dominant. While Spivak focuses on feminist debates about the gendered subject, this concept is also useful in discussing the formation of the racialized subject as well. Simply pointing out that racial identities are articulated by Orientalist or white-centered views does not undermine the foundation of the dominant power. When marginal groups use strategic essentialism, however, new terms are added to the discussion, possibly leading to changes in the way the dominant groups conceptualize the marginal. Despite its failure to address differences within the group,46 strategic essentialism provides a potential for marginalized groups to access an expressive tool—even if only temporarily—to claim a collective identity. Similar to the notion of “counter-memory,” this concept names one possible approach that allows the “other” to take charge of articulating their own alternative narrative of identity. Using this concept in the field of film, Xing provides an example of strategic essentialism on the part of “Asian Americans” during the 1 960s’ civil rights movement. According to him, the strategic development of this ethnic label, based on (somewhat) shared historical experiences, was in order to create an important device—a recognizable group identity—to elicit and protect the political interests of diverse groups who embrace an “Asian American” identity against the white hegemony. Xing identifies the existence of an Asian American aesthetic in flimmaking, which is characterized by the incorporation Indeed, Xing acknowledges limitations of this strategy using “Asian American,” and the difficulty of actually accomplishing solidarity or meaningful identification among diverse groups. 38 of “materials collected from their communities in the United States, from Asia, and even the Asian diaspora,” instead of relying on “white norms and practices.”47 This strategy allows Asian American filmmakers to counteract dominant white, androcentric representations, and to articulate an identity for their own benefit. More specifically, Xing asserts that one of the stylistic elements of film with which Asian American filmmakers can assert their departure from white norms is the use of a non-linear narrative structure, which formally and conceptually challenges the Western worldview and the idea of stable subjectivity. In Western thought, the chronological, unidirectional flow of time is a critical notion, logically leading to the labeling of “others” as backward. This concept is reflected in the narrative structure of film. Linear narrative is seen in many (probably most) American mainstream films, typically beginning with equilibrium, followed by the introduction of opposing forces and disruptive events, and returning to a new (and usually “better”) equilibrium at the end.48 In contrast, some Asian American films that Xing presents utilize unique structures, with no solution, open-ended conclusions, or temporal ambiguity.49 This aspect of film construction is further discussed—particularly in the field of animation—in later chapters. As an example of strategic essentialism conceptually practiced by a racial “other,” Japan has asserted its “unique” national identity at various times in the modern period (from roughly 1850 to the present), in relation to both an imaginary “West” and an 47Xing, p. 81. 48 The term “equilibrium” is based on Tzvetan Todorov’s literary theory of “equilibrium.” He identifies five stages of conventional narrative structure: 1) a state of equilibrium, 2) a disruption of the equilibrium by some action, 3) a recognition of the disruption, 4) an attempt to repair the disruption, and 5) a reinstatement of equilibrium. (See Tzvetan Todorov, “The Grammar of Narrative,” in The Poetics ofProse, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Comel University Press, 1977, p. 111). See, Xing, p. 48. 39 imaginary “Asia,”5° In other words, Japan has continued to articulate its collective identity by Orientalizing itself vis-à-vis the West, as well as Orientalizing other parts of Asia. For example, after the Meiji Emperor was restored to power as the result of a brief civil war in the 1860s, the Japanese people were persuaded to support the nation’s rapid modernization through slogans such as datsua nyuo (escape from Asia, enter the West). Throughout the Meiji period Japan presented an image of itself to the outside world that stressed its similarity to the already modernized, “white” West, as opposed to its “backward” Asian neighbors. This strategically essentialist self-positioning succeeded to a large extent, culminating in the Japanese people being declared “honorary Aryans” by Germany and South Africa in the years leading up to World War 11.51 Others among the already modernized nations were harder to convince, however. After fighting on the side of the victor nations in World War I, in 1920 Japan was invited to join the League ofNations as a founding member, seemingly indicating Japan’s achievement of the status of”fiilly modern nation.” When the Japanese delegate proposed a statement of basic racial equality for the founding charter, however, the other member states refused to consider it. Whiteness and superiority were still inextricably linked in the Anglo-European discourse of modernity. It is not surprising, therefore, to recall that Japan also employed another, opposite strategy of essentialism in the first half of the 20th century, characterized by the “daitöa kyoeiken” (Greater East Co-prosperity Sphere). This was an appeal to the rest of Asia to ° Here I describe Japan as the “other” in the sense that Japan has been struggling with obtaining recognition of its subjectivity over history, due to its non-white race. 51 See John W. Downer, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999). 40 join with Japan as one large and powerful group, united by a common “Asian” cultural background. This pan-Asian rhetoric was strategically used to essentialize “Asianness” in opposition to the West, in order to invoke a united front against the West. Bound up in this complicated, seif-essentializing rhetoric is Japan’s anomalous position in modem history, as perhaps the only nation to have intensively experienced being both colonizer and colonized. Japan’s experience as colonizer is obvious: from the establishment of its first imperial colony, Taiwan, in 1895, until the end of World War Two, Japan aggressively and successfully colonized significant areas of China, the Korean peninsula, Indonesia, the South Sea Islands, and other parts of Asia. Japan’s position as colonized is less clear, but also undeniable. Beginning in the Meiji era, when Japan rapidly adopted a wide range of Western institutions and discourses in order to avoid being colonized itself (as China and other Asian nations already were), the country experienced what we might call “cultural colonization.” While this may have been “voluntary” in the sense that it was a policy decision of Meiji intellectuals and government officials, it was coerced in the sense that acceptance of this cultural colonization was the only option for maintaining some level of sovereignty. Then, after the defeat of the Axis Powers at the end of World War Two, Japan was literally occupied by a coalition of Western forces (dominated by the policies of the United States) during the seven-year Occupation, 1945-1952. Even after the end of the Occupation, Japan has maintained “unequal treaties” (one of the hallmarks of the nineteenth century colonialism) with the U.S. in terms of providing bases for the American military.52 52 For more explanation about Japan’s position as colonized and colonizer, see Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, pp. 76-77. 41 Moreover, because of the absolute power wielded by the Occupation forces, and with some influence from the subsequent presence of significant numbers of American military personnel on Japanese soil, we can again argue that Japan has “voluntarily” (but actually with little choice) adopted many American (and more broadly Western) hegemonic practices and values. Certainly Japan has existed from at least the nineteenth century until the present as a part of the West’s (especially the U.S.’s) imagined “Orient.” Contemporary Japan uses a strategy similar to the one pursued during World War II, and this system is well explained by Köichi Iwabuchi, who describes it as “the complicity between Western Orientalism and Japan’s self-Orientalism [which] effectively works only when Japanese cultural power in Asia is subsumed under Japan’s cultural subordination to the West.”53 Differently put, Japan’s attempts to articulate its own narratives of identity using the tactics of strategic essentialism have operated in an environment where the West plays the role of the modernized “Other,” and “Asia” embodies Japan’s past of backwardness and tradition.54After the defeat in World War II in particular, when Japan was forced to shift its position from colonizer to colonized under American cultural and political domination, the strategy of essentializing the rest of “Asia” as backward helped to stabilize Japan’s postwar identity. While this has often been a strategy that demeans and discursively oppresses other Asian nations for Japan’s benefit, it has sometimes resulted in a challenge to Western essentialized visions of Asia (as we shall see in subsequent chapters). Kôichi Iwabuchi, Re-centering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), PP. 7-8. 54However, Iwabuchi questions the appropriateness of using the “Japan-Asia-the West” triad model from the 1990s onward, because of the dramatic development in Asia, which has led to the emergence of several “fully modernized” (rather than backward) nations. 42 (3) The carnival mode of representation Mikhail Bakhtin’s philosophical project also argues for the case of the “other,” which sheds light on cultural resistance by means of visual media. In particular, his concept of “carnival” explains that resistance against authority is realized by the physicality of obscenity and transgression that marks the festival mode.55 In other words, “carnival” signifies a liminal space that, though provisional, brings about an inversion in the hegemonic social system. The liminal space created through media representation may therefore be disordered and liberating, where one can experience having his or her subject position (temporarily) overturned. The practice of the “carnival” mode in the field of visual media is introduced in John Fisk’s study of American sitcoms, such as Married ...with Children and The Simpsons.56 These texts are carnivalesque in that they destabilize dominant social norms and identity categories by mocking assumed authority. In these shows, patriarchal gender structures are undermined either by exaggerating female sexuality, or by representing emasculated male characters. Fisk contends that in Married.., with Children Peggy’s exaggerated acts “expose to mocking laughter the patriarchal control over feminine bodies and behavior.”57 In this way, the media text subverts the “normal” hierarchy of gendered subject positioning. Similarly, media representations may also function as a canivalesque space for cultural resistance by the racial “other” against racist assumptions though there have not been substantial studies on this subject. This perhaps means that the racial hierarchy is Mikhail Bakhtin, Comics: Ideology, Power & Critics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989). John Fisk, “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach to Watching Television,” in Poetics 21(1992), p. 348. 57Ibid. 43 harder to overturn, or that dominant social narratives about the racial body are more resistant to deconstruction through media representations. One is hard pressed to find visual exaggeration of a non-white body to mock white supremacy in film. It is rather more common to see a strategy of “passing,” by which non-whites act as “white” to be accepted by the dominant system instead of resisting it. It may follow that in the racial domain, the concept of “carnival” may be harder to implement through transgressive visual representation (or exaggeration), unlike observed in Married ... with Children in the gender domain. The concept of “carnival” does not imply a drastic or permanent social change, but only a temporary revel, which still offers social “others” a sense of empowerment. It is, on the other hand, also considered a way for the authority to keep subordinate groups under control and to maintain the status quo, by allowing them to “let off steam” for a limited duration of time, which then makes them more willing to return to their normal subordination. In this sense, both strategic essentialism and carnivalesque modes of representation can be potentially problematic, because of the possibility that in the end they just reinforce the hegemonic discourse. (4) Hybridity: an “in-between” space for resistance Concepts of strategic essentialism and the reversed gaze are both subversive in the sense that they reverse existing hierarchies. However, they do not deconstruct the idea of categorization itself. In this respect, Xing suggests that being obsessed with creating positive images of those considered “other” is not necessarily an adequate counter hegemonic approach to representation, because it may in turn essentialize identity categorizations such as East and West. Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity,” however, 44 possibly provides a way out of the binary system and essentialized categorizations. Bhabha attempts to complicate identity categorization and move beyond simple pigeonholing. Bhabha’ s “hybridity” derives from his concept of “mimicry”—an act of imitation and appropriation of the colonizer’s culture by the colonized—the result of which is that the latter creates a third culture that is similar to but still distinctive from the colonizer’s. This process indicates that, by being forced to imitate the colonizer, the colonized “other” consequently becomes a threat to the former as its “double”—a “subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite”58—which then disturbs colonial discourse and helps reclaim the voices and identities devalued by the colonizer. Hence, the practice of “mimicry” exposes the ambivalent and unstable nature of colonial rule; while the difference erased by mimicry works to suppress the subjectivity of the colonial subject, it also allows the colonial subject to occupy “a ‘partial’ presence” within the dominant discourse,59and this may empower the “other” to create an alternative culture and identity. Thus, Bhabha describes this condition of mimicry as “the sign of the inappropriate,” through which “a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, eventually poses “an immanent threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers.”6°Based on this concept, it is not so much the fixed identities of the (colonialist) “self’ and the (colonized) “other” as the disruptive distance or “difference” between them that maintains the hegemonic cultural power, as well as establishing the position of the “other” as a threat. 58 Homi Bhabha, The Location ofCulture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 86. 59 60id. 45 The ambivalence inherent to the dominant culture, which is revealed by the concept of mimicry, allows us to posit the possibility that “other” cultures may “contaminate” the dominant discourse, in what Bhabha describes as a liminal space of “hybridization.” In the practice of “hybridization,” the “other” capitalizes on the “difference” from the dominant culture, and undermines the concept of a singular, unified identity. For instance, people who are born of parents of different races inhabit in- between categories, or a hybridized space. This condition of hybridity undermines the concept of binary oppositions in identity categorizations, such as “self” and “other,” white and non-white, and East and West. In contemporary society we recognize many people who transgress presumed categories, such as transsexuals, diasporic people or people of mixed race. This kind of hybridized or “in-between” identity/location provides the marginalized “other” with a space for cultural resistance, through reforming the dominant discourse. This also underscores the contingency of postmodern cultural subjectivity characterized as “temporality of indeterminate and undecidable”—an arbitrary closure of “self’ and “other.”6’ Thus, creating an “in-between” space through media—where the “other,” appropriating the dominant cultural text, establishes a third culture—would not only subvert the dominant cultural narrative, but would also deconstruct the view of identity categories as stable and transparent. Bhabha’ s theorization of subjectivity provides an optimistic vision of cultural resistance through media representations, by which the racial or gendered “other” emerges as a subject. 61 Homi Bhabha, “The Postcolonial and the Postmodem: the Question of Agency,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 202. 46 While Bhabha’s “mimicry” and “hybridity” are concerned with the relationship between the colonizer and the colonial subject, they can also explain Japan’s identity in relation to American hegemony in the political and cultural domains. Particularly, applying these concepts in the context of visual media representations, the “other’s” strategies may play with existing cultural assumptions and stereotypes through the text, and challenge the dominant discourse. Discussions in later chapters employ this concept to examine Miyazaki Hayao’s work as a form of Disney’s (the West’s) “double” which is intentionally “almost the same, but not quite.” (5) The tactic The production of a “third culture” derived from within the dominant culture is also suggested by Michel de Certeau’ s concept of the “tactic,”62which refers to the subordinate appropriating elements of the dominant discourse to integrate into his or her own practice. De Certeau’s concept resembles Bhabha’s “hybridization,” in that both shed light on the agency of the subordinate who appropriates the culture of authority to disturb it, and suggests that media texts might provide one context in which marginalized groups could set their own agenda. These ideas highlight the potential subjectivity of “others” who are often considered incapable of controlling narratives that define their own identities, the subjectivity that enables “others” to utilize media representations, or other forms of expression. Miyazaki, for example, may be considered to be one of the “others” (as a non- Western director) who has been exposed to Western literature as well as Disney 62Michel de Certeau, The Practice ofEveryday Life (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. xvi-xvii. 47 animations since childhood, and his auteuric creativity through media texts now provides an alternative narrative for viewers to articulate their cultural identities. 1.3. Conscious Perception and the Embodied Experience of Visual Media Lastly, to provide a different perspective on the limits of the ideological influence of mainstream films on identity articulation, it may be worth briefly discussing the viewer’s conscious participation in building perception, in order to avoid the deterministic view of the text as an apparatus that single-handedly controls the viewing experience. Despite this dissertation’s heavy focus on texts, I do not mean to present the viewer as a passive victim. Some film analyses (e.g. some psychoanalytic analyses) assume that the structure of the text determines the viewer’s consciousness, and results in the saturating of his/her unconscious with ideologies through the text. Differing from this view, my project takes into account the idea that watching film is a form of viewers’ conscious action of understanding themselves. The film experience should be regarded as a sense-making circuit consisting of the text, the producers and the viewer, rather than simply a matter of the consumption of the text by the viewer. While active audience theory has been discussed by different scholars,63 this section introduces a phenomenological perspective, which understands knowledge as deriving from consciousness. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’ s concept of “perception” supports the idea of viewers’ conscious involvement in building their worldviews through media representation.64 Merleau-Ponty assumes that we actively create meanings from the world through a unity 63 Such studies include studies based on surveys, such as David Morley’s Nationwide Audience: Structure and Decoding (mentioned in Introduction), Stuart Hall’s Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (Birmingham: Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1973). 64 Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology ofPerception. 48 of subject-object, rather than simply through a given discourse. In his view, “perception” is formed through our embodied experience, and therefore the self is understood as a conscious being. In other words, it is the structure of the subject’s conscious experience that creates understanding of ourselves and others, though this does not necessarily mean dismissing the unconscious. Merleau-Ponty’s “perception” thus undercuts the assumption of the subject’s absolute susceptibility to ideological systems. Based on this notion of “perception,” Vivian Sobchack’s examination of the phenomenon of vision, incorporating a semiotic phenomenological approach, brings to light the possibility of human choice and expressive freedom in the film experience along with historical and cultural constraints (or specificity). Her approach is premised on the idea that “the structures of being determine the structures of language,”65in contrast to a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach, which assumes that the latter determines the former. This perspective on cinema spectatorship serves as an intriguing, comprehensive, conceptual angle to theorize how subjectivity is potentially informed through the (animated) film viewing experience. In The Address ofthe Eye: A Phenomenology ofFilm Experience, Sobchack explicates the nature of the film experience as a set of intersubjective relations among the text, producers, and the viewer, and also describes film viewing as “performative” vision.66 This concept of “performative” vision conjures up the idea that the human body is an expressive space as well as a medium to perceive the world. In other words, as we watch the projection of other people’s (producers’) ways of seeing on the screen, we too express our perceptive experience. This view, as well as identifying subjectivity 65 Vivian Sobchack, The Address ofthe Eye: A Phenomenology ofFilm Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 100. 66 49 formation as based on an intersubjective production of meaning, also destabilizes the binary relationship between object and subject, and recognizes “dialogue” in the viewing context. In this respect, the film experience is “an act of seeing that makes itself seen,” because a film organizes and presents the producers’ (or director’s, camera person’s, or writer’s) vision of the world through a set of visual signs that is seen by the viewer. It is therefore an embodied act that makes watching film “reflexively felt and understood,”67 and provides both the producers and viewers with a space where they articulate their own perception and identities. Sobchack’s account of film experience may also be applied to animation, which should be likewise acknowledged as a site that allows the viewer to access the world of others, and through which the viewer dialectically constructs his or her subjectivity. In this regard, Wendy Hsu’s study is inspiring, putting forward the idea of”performative” viewing of anime (Japanese animation). As a non-Japanese, Hsu examines the spectatorship of this transnational media text. Her observation rests on Sobchack’s view of film watching as an embodied experience in specific social and cultural contexts, and embraces the idea of active spectatorship.68 Similar to Sobchack’ s perspective, Hsu’ s “performative” mode of viewing emphasizes a self-reflective process of viewer perception, through recognition of what is familiar and unfamiliar (uncanny) to one’s cultural home: a reflexive dialogue between the viewer and the text. As Hsu contends, citing Susan Napier, watching animation (anime in particular) gives rise to “a heightened self-consciousness” pp. 3-4. 68 Wendy Hsu, “Misreading the Random: A Translational Reading of the Japanese Anime Cowboy Bebop.” Unpublished MA thesis (University of Virginia, 2004). While Hsu’s research addressed only a TV anime, the same logic works with theatrical animated works. 50 among American fans,69 through the defamiliarization evoked by the text. If animation itself is considered as creating “another world,” this reflexivity could potentially operate among Japanese viewers of anime as well. Moreover, Hsu’s observation suggests that the anime viewer “performs,” while acting and reacting to what is happening on the screen. This indicates that the viewer’s subjectivity is articulated by his or her conscious interaction with the world (of “others”) projected on the screen, not only by the viewer’s reception of text at the unconscious level. It also highlights the self-other dialogue that is centered upon neither the subject (the viewer self) nor the object (the text), but the space in-between. The activeness of animation spectatorship, more so than live-action film, is encapsulated by the term “migrant gaze”70—a reflexive viewing of the text, which allows the viewer’s gaze at the text to reflect back on his or her self. The above conceptualizations emphasize the idea of articulating subjectivity through the film experience as a conscious and participatory action. It is also suggested, coupled with Sobchack’s view, that dialogic film viewing may produce a perception that differs from that established by presumed coding that could gain access to the viewer’s unconscious. In the contemporary globalizing, mass-mediated world characterized by rampant cultural boundary crossing, fantasy is central in identity politics. This chapter has mapped out a theoretical framework regarding mechanisms of identity (de)articulation through fantasy, mainly the fantasy created by/in film. Later chapters examine a particular genre 69 Susan Napier, Animefrom Akira to Howl s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporaiy Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 242. 70 Hsu, p. 30. About a migrant’s gaze, also see Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 51 of film: animation. Animated fantasy plays a significant role in articulating individual and collective identities, and operates similarly with live-action film in some aspects and differently in others. The theoretical discussions in this chapter are offered as methodological tools for analyzing specific animated texts. This dissertation does not involve audience analysis based on interviews or surveys. While I acknowledge the value of such direct methods of researching audience response, research based on interviews with sample audience members is always susceptible to being skewed in economic, cultural, or other terms, which can drastically limit its value. What I would like to pursue in the chapters that follow, without falling into a deterministic view of texts, is an explanation of the linkage between creators’ intention, text, and intended viewers, a linkage that potentially brings about a significant degree of influence on the production of cultural identities. 52 Chapter 2: Studies of Animation and Anime Animation is an intriguing medium of expression through which to investigate the relationship between media representations and the articulation of cultural identities, not simply because of the scarcity of previous research on this medium, but also because of its unique nature. Thus, while animation shares many qualities with live-action films, it is important to study animation independently. In this chapter I sketch out the development of animation in the West that influenced animation production in Asia, particularly in Japan (in terms both of techniques and narratives/text). I also introduce the medium’s “morphotic” and “myth-making” characteristics, which facilitate the conveying of creators’ ideas and accelerate the function of animation as an ideological apparatus. I focus on particular characteristics rather than providing an all-inclusive observation of this medium. Because of its long-term status as a leading player that laid the foundation in the industry, and its innovation of genres, styles, and business models, I pay particular attention to Disney animation as a model of animation in the West (particularly the U.S.) in this and the following chapter. Based on these observations, my core discussion evolves around the development and characteristics of anime which make it a distinctive medium, and which are influenced by the West and Asia, as well as in turn iiifluencing them. I also discuss and demonstrate some similarities and differences in issues of gender and racial/national representations in both Western animation and anime, as these are significant factors in articulating viewers’ cultural identities. 53 It is also imperative to note here that some define animation as a genre of film instead of a medium, considering a “medium” as a “technical form” or physical transmission device by which the means of communication are actualized (i.e., radio, TV, books, photographs, and films). However, in this dissertation I characterize animation as a “medium,” using the term in a broad sense that refers to a means to convey messages, which is similar to the way that acting and facial expressions may also be considered to be media of expression. I also define animation broadly in the sense that it encompasses multiple modes of delivery, such as film, TV, and video games. That is, I consider a medium as “an intermediate agency that enables communication to take place,” and that transmits codes to convey messages.’ Animation has its own grammar, codes, and techniques to convey messages, which differ significantly from those of live-action films, as well as other media. (As Paul Wells points out, for example, movements of animation are not directly recorded in the conventional photographic sense, unlike live-action film.) The view of animation as a distinctive medium of expression is also suggested by Jayne Pilling, who recognizes animation as “a medium that spans a far wider range of films than that of cartoons only for children.”2 Others who see animation in the same light include Paul Wells, John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin, and Charles Solomon. Likewise, I identify anime as a “medium,” not a genre of animation, since anime, rather than being limited by its theme, encompasses various genres. As Susan Napier and other anime critics such as Christopher Bolton and Thomas Lamarre emphasize, anime ‘In this regard, see Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, eds. Tim O’Sullivan, et al. (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 176-77. 2 Pilling, “Introduction,” in A Reader in Animation Studies, ed. Jayne Pilling (London: John Libbey & Company Pty Ltd. 1997), p. ix. Also see Wells in Understanding Animation, p. 6, John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin in Visual Culture: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 33; Charles Solomon in “Animation: Notes on a Definition,” in The Art ofthe Animated Image: An Anthology, ed. Charles Solomon (Los Angeles: American Film Institute, 1987), p. 12. 54 creates a distinctive aesthetic world that works with “distinctive visual elements” that are combined with “an array of generic, thematic, and philosophical structures” and different sets of codes.3 Therefore, it should not be studied simply as a category of animation. 2.1. The Development of Animation and Some of Its Characteristics 2.1.1. Definition of animation Paul Wells states that “the animated film has the capacity to redefme the orthodoxies of live-action narratives and images, and address the human condition with as much authority and insight as any live-action film.”4 This not only indicates that animation and live-action film share an equal level of sophistication, but also underlines the significant differences between the two forms of media. Before moving to more complex discussions of animation, it is imperative to defme this medium. Wells defines animation as follows: To animate, and the related words, animation, animated and animator, all derive from the [L]atin verb, animare, which means ‘to give life to,’ and within the context of the animated film, this largely means the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and forms.5 Similarly, Norman McLaren, an eminent British animator, describes animation as “the art of manipulating the invisible interstices between frames” to create a narrative.6 These Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Howl s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave, 2005), P. 10. Also, see Christopher A. Bolton, “From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechanical Bodies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater,” in Positions 10: 3 (2002), p. 737. “Wells, Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 4. Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 10. 6 Solomon, “Animation: Notes on a Definition,” p. 11. Scholars and film critics in Japan also understand a general technical definition of the medium in the same way. See Tsugata Nobuyuki, Animeshon-gaku nyãmon (An Introduction to Study of Animation) (Tokyo: Heibon-sha, 2005); Imamura Taihei, Manga eiga ron (Theory of Animated Film) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992), p. 16. 55 defmitions suggest that the creators of animation can manipulate reality according to their intentions, producing through animation what Wells calls a “subjective reality.”7 The creation of illusion in animation is done conventionally in a two-dimensional space, which is distinguished from the fictional world of live-action film that entails a higher degree of conformity with the laws of physics.8 The two-dimensionality of animation allows an illusionary world to be illustrated more effectively than in three- dimensional live-action films, because of animation’s greater distance from physical reality. Animation allows creators to flexibly manipulate the existing assumptions of “reality” in order to project their own ideas. Donald Crafton describes animators’ relation to their texts as “self-figuration,”9highlighting the animators’ injection of themselves into their texts, more so than in any other type of film. Wells strongly believes that flexibility is one of the major features that distinguish animation from live-action film.’0Even granting the increasing overlap between animation and live-action film due to technological advancement (e.g. computer graphics and editing devices), he argues that animation remains relatively more flexible than live-action. Wells calls animation’s freedom of depiction and flexibility “morphotic.” It is because of the morphotic nature of animated images, Wells argues, that animation can subvert our Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 27.8 Paul Wells, Animation: Genre and Authorship (London: Wallflower, 2002), p. 15. In recent years animators have experimented with techniques that produce a sense of three-dimensionality, in computer- generated films such as Shrek (2001). None of the films I address in this study is in this mode, however, and, in any case, even apparently “three-dimensional” animation is distanced from physical reality in the sense that what it depicts never had a material, three-dimensional existence in the “real world.” Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1896-1928 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1982), p. 11. ‘°This point is affirmed by other scholars as well. See Philip Kelly Denslow, “What is animation and who needs to know?” in A Reader in Animation Studies, pp. 1-4; Solomon, p. 9. 56 accepted notion of reality and challenge the orthodox understanding of our existence and surroundings.11 In addition, in terms of the persuasive power of the “reality” created by media, different media affect viewers and elicit involvement in the meaning-making process to different degrees. In this regard, Marshall MeLuhan categorizes media into “hot” and “cool,” based on the degree of the viewer’s engagement with that media’s texts. A “hot” medium, such as live-action film, explicitly presents a significant amount of information (through raw materials), so that it does not require much work on the part of viewers to make sense of it. In contrast, “cool” media, such as comics and animation, are composed of simplified signs, which entail a more active role for viewers in meaning-making.’2It can be argued that the more actively viewers are involved in the interpretation process, the less likely it is that they will be affected by the ideological messages embedded in the text. In this sense, I would argue that animation, as a medium that requires the viewer’s active participation in meaning making, has a greater potential to challenge stereotypes than live- action film; and that is a strong motivation to study the ideological messages in animated works. Based on the above observations, in this dissertation, I define animation as a medium that generates an illusionary “reality” that reflects creators’ woridviews, and through which creators provide narratives and tropes for viewers to articulate cultural (national, gender, racial) identities. The animated world is therefore a socially and culturally constructed one, reflecting both creators’ backgrounds and the discourses in See Wells, Understanding Animation. 12 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extetisiotis ofMan. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964). 57 which they are situated. It is a sphere that should not be mistaken for an innocent form of production, but should be recognized as one of the sites for identity struggle. 2.1.2. The development of animation in the West Twenty-five thousand years ago, in the caves of southwestern Europe, Cro Magnon man made astounding drawings of the animals he hunted. His representations are not only accurate and beautifully drawn, but many seem to have an inner life combined with a suggestion of movement. Since that time, we have been inundated with artists’ attempts to shape something in clay or stone or paint that has a life of its own.13 — Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston Human beings have always had an urge to create representations of non-living things that seem animate. This urge was concretely materialized in the form of the flipbook in the sixteenth century, which operated based on the persistence of vision, a fundamental cognitive mechanism on which contemporary animation also relies.’4 It is unfortunate that, despite its invention prior to live-action film production, animation has been overshadowed in the research, theory and criticism of visual media. The history of animation has paralleled the development of visual technologies in the West: moving images, film technologies, sound, and color. In France, Emile Reynaud invented the praxinoscope in 1876, based on a previous moving-image toy, the zoetrope, which was invented by British mathematician Wiliam George Homer in 1834. The praxinoscope allowed the viewer to watch moving images projected in a mirror. Reynaud gradually improved the technology of his machine, and eventually in 1982 introduced the ‘ Franic Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The illusion ofLife: Disney Animation (New York: Walt Disney Production, 1981), p. 13. 14 Imamura, Eiga mangaron, p. 7. According to Imamura and Wells, the theory of persistence of vision, which explains how hwnans perceive movement, had emerged as early as 65 B.C.E. 58 Theater Optique, wherein he sequentially projected images from hand-painted glass plates, each of which was a little different from the next, producing an effect of continuous movement. As an early type of animation, this technique is also considered to be a big step toward the current concept of film-making more generally. These inventions were incorporated in Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope in 1891, which was followed by the Lumiere Brothers’ cinematographe (essentially the modem film projector) in 1895 in France.’5 The first book specializing in animation was Animated Cartoons, published in London in 1920, just about ten years after the invention of conventional film animation.’6 The Disney Studio later made animation prominent in visual culture, but nonetheless the medium has experienced decades of relative critical neglect. As the twentieth century progressed, animation began to appear in an increasingly wide range of venues—from films, computer games, web sites, and TV commercials to ATM bank machine screens. Against this background, the previously marginalized medium of animation began to be acknowledged in cultural, economic, and political spheres, and began to draw attention in academic circles as well. After World War II, animation began to be treated as a distinctive medium by organized scholarly bodies, such as the International Association of Animated Film (founded in 1960), the Society for Animation Studies (SAS, founded in 1989), and Women in Animation (founded in 1993), and the study of animation has increasingly grown to be a recognized research field. In addition, the success of animated feature films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Wallace & Gromit, and Akira, along with the ‘ See Wells, Understanding Animation; Tsugata, Animation-gaku. 16 This book contains the explanation of visual technologies that contributed to the invention of animation and of the technical description of the production process. See Tsugata, Animation-gaku, p. 109. 59 increasing popularity of animation among adult audiences, started bringing more scholarly attention to the medium.17 Yet, while film studies have significantly developed since the 1960s in various aspects, animation studies—including the medium’s history, theory and criticism—have remained marginal, because of the conventional belief that animation is a transparent and “innocent” form of entertainment for children. This view has been perpetuated alongside the concept of “innocent childhood” in North American society, which has been taken for granted in part due to the pervasiveness of the aesthetic of Disney animation since 1928.18 These conceptualizations mask the fact that “innocent childhood” is a fairly recent social construct which allows the dominant discourse to permeate society, supported by adult producers’ and authorities’ interests rather than children’s preferences or needs. In recent years the view of animation as an “innocent” cultural form has begun to be questioned, and in this study I emphasize that this medium should be understood as a manifestation of political and ideological conflicts. Eric Smoodin provides a useful understanding of the way that “norms” that are founded on dominant ideologies are constructed through Hollywood cartoons and 17 See Jayne Pilling’s emphasis on a recognition of animation as a field of study in her “Introduction” to A Reader in Animation Studies, ed. Jayne Pilling (London: John Libbey & Company Pty Ltd. 1997), pp. ix-xii; Eric Smoodin, Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), p. l.A Reader in Animation maps out the diversity of contemporary animation studies. In the introductory chapter Jayne Pilling lists the main disciplines in which papers have been presented at SAS conferences in the 1 990s, including cultural studies, sociology, film history, and feminist studies. Along with this variety of disciplines, the recent topics dealt with are also certainly diverse, ranging from ethnicity and diversity, the globalization of animation in the industrial context, modes of production, and canon formations, to gender theory. The book encompasses a variety of topics; however, the fact that this “international” scholarly organization and yet it focuses mainly on studies of European and American animated works indicates room for further progress in this field of study. See Pilling, “Introduction,” pp. xiv-xv. ‘ With regard to the concept (or the myth) of “innocent childhood,” see Neil Postman’s Disappearing Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1982). There is a fme line between “innocent childhood” and “children as hope for the future,” and I will discuss Miyazaki Hayao’s view’s on children as audience in Chapter 3. 60 government involvement in the industry from 1928 to l96O.’ From his analysis, he concludes that cultural products act to impose norms and regulations on viewers through their production and consumption. Lynn Spigel verifies this view, emphasizing the commodification and politicization of childhood, and identifying children’s media as a vehicle for colonizing the world through image-making that represents American jingoisms.2°Julianne Burton-Carvajal concurs: [p]recisely because of their assumed innocence and innocuousness, their inherent ability.., to defy all conventions of realistic representation, animated cartoons offer up a fascinating zone within which to examine how a dominant culture constructs its subordinates.21 All of these critics underscore the constructed “innocence” of animation, which potentially allows the dominant ideas to insinuate into the viewer’s mind conveniently and effectively. Many studies have been done on Disney animation, including Walt Disney as an auteur, the studio’s history, its political impact, and so on.22 To many people, “animation” is synonymous with Disney, and largely for this reason, other animated works (non Disney productions) inside or outside the United States have been significantly neglected,23despite their increasing growth and the significant roles that they play. See Smoodin, Animating Culture, and also studies on Disney as a key player in the construction of dominant ideologies can go back at least as early as Richard Schickel’s The Disney Version: The Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968). 20L)’rm Spigel, “Innocence Abroad: The Geopolitics of Childhood in Postwar Kid Strips,” in Kid’s Media Culture, ed. Marsha Kinder (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 21 Julianne Burton-Carvajal, “Surprise Package: Looking southward with Disney,” in Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, ed. Eric Smoodin (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 139.22 Studies on Disney animations include: Paul Wells, Animation and America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Smoodin, Animating Culture; articles in Disney Discourse, ed. Eric Smoodin; and From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics ofFilm, Gender and Culture, eds. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, Laura Sells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 23 This is not to say that there are no studies of animation outside the Disney Studios. Significant works in this field include: Paul Wells, “Animation: Forms and Meanings”, in An Introduction to Film Studies ed. Jill 61 2.1.3. Animation as a myth-making tool Some scholars argue that one of the main reasons that animation travels with little difficulty across national boundaries lies in its low level of “cultural discount,” or its “culturally odorless” quality.24 “Culturally odorless” refers to products whose cultural specificity and distinctiveness are negligible, so that they can be easily accepted by a global audience. This view of animation is reinforced by well-known film critic Sergei Eisenstein’s naïve yet influential vision of the medium as ideologically neutral because of its engagement with only the “surface of the phenomenon.” In Eisenstein’s view, the animated form itself resists “looking beneath to the origins, at the reasons and causes, at the conditions and pre-conditions.”25 He seems in turn to emphasize the apparent pleasure (form/style) of the animated media text over its implications (content/message). These observations have a certain truth; however, they neglect the complexity of animated texts, failing to take into account the messages embedded in and generated around specific animated narratives: it is important to remember that animation is a content-based medium, which, as Wells suggests, “can carry important meanings and engage with social issues.”26 In other words, animation, composed of both visual and narrative textual elements, is a communication vehicle, purveying narratives or giving instructions. Although animation embraces various functions, its storytelling or narrative Nelmes (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Wells, Understanding Animation; Wells, Animation: Genre andAuthorship (London: Wallflower Press, 2002); Jayne Pilling, A Reader in Animation Studies; and Maureen Furniss, Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 24 The term “cultural discount” is mentioned in Stuart McFadyen, Cohn Hoskins, and Adam Finn, Global Television and Film: An Introduction to the Economics ofthe Business (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 32-33; “Culturally odorless” is mentioned in Iwabuchi, p. 27.25 Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney ed. Jay Leyda (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1986), p. 23. 26Wells Understanding Animation, p. 4. This idea is verified by his brief discussion of a scene from The Blackboard Jungle (1955). In the film, there is a scene where a teacher uses an animation to get delinquent boys engaged in his class, and the animation inspires them to raise questions about the images on the screen. 62 creation is one of the main characteristics of this medium. Thus, through the viewing of animated texts, viewers are acquiring or exchanging ideas or ideologies with the texts’ creators, and through the production and consumption process, narratives pertaining to national, gender, or class identities can be established—a process of myth-making—in both producing and recipient countries. As discussed in Chapter 1, consumers also assist in the production of meanings and narratives when viewing animation. I discuss the elements of narrative creation in animated film which aid in maintaining dominant ideologies below. (1) Linear narrativization One of the strategies for creating myths that tie to identity politics and our perception of the world is linear narrativization. Linear narrative refers to a plot that proceeds from beginning to end without deviation, whose organization is preconceived to allow writers to guide the reader/viewer to their prescribed reading.27 This narrative style assumes that readers gain pleasure not from having a choice of how to read, but from being led. Animated texts in the West often adhere to a linear narrative structure28:a typical problem-solution-happy ending/moralization plot from one of Disney’s “princess stories” (from the classic Snow White (1937) and Cinderella (1950) to the more recent Mulan (1998)), for example. This can reinforce dominant ideologies regarding gender 27 For a more detailed explanation of linear narrative, see Jennifer Fraser, Visualizing a Hypertext Narrative (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1999), p.’7, and also Hayden White, “The Value ofNarrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in Critical Inquiry 7: 1 (1980), pp. 5-27.28 This point is suggested in studies such as Jack Zipes, “Breaking the Disney Spell,” in From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics ofFilm, Gender, and Culture, eds. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Hans, Laura Sells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), and Henry A. Giroux, “Memory and Pedagogy in the ‘Wonderful World of Disney’: Beyond the Politics of Innocence,” in From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics ofFilm, Gender, and Culture, eds. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, Laura Sells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 63 and/or racial identities: such narratives allow little scope for imagining alternate interpretations or alternate gender identity articulations. Linear narrativization also operates to create a narrative coherence between different media or between fantasy and reality, which even allows for adding “conventional plots to inherently plotless materials.”29 In the case of Disney’s project, for example, linear narrativization helps to establish a narrative coherence between the animated film or TV show, theme parks, and merchandise: the Wonderful World of Disney. In this World, the viewing of an animation may be followed by a visit to one of several theme parks, where visitors are guided in a programmed direction. The purchase of synergetic merchandise completes the “Disney narrative.” In other words, a narrative coherence maintained by images and plot, as well as products in daily life, suppresses possible (mis)readings of a text, and subsequently contributes to the uniform perception of issues around us, such as identity politics or the view of “self’ and “other.” Linear narratives make viewers susceptible and subservient to those in a position of power in society, through ideologies that are produced, reproduced, and internalized in the viewer’s mind. (2) Escapism: Sugar-coating unpleasant reality Components such as linear narrativization often work to conceal the cruel aspects and realities of historical events, sanitizing and simplifying cultural problems such as racism. This approach is related to a desire for escapism, an important element for pleasure in the fantasy world. According to Tim O’Sullivan, escapism is a “process which 29 M. Johnson, “Disney World as Structure and Symbol: Re-Creation of the American Experience,” Journal ofPopular Culture 15: 1(1981), p. 162. 64 enables the individual to withdraw from unpleasant or threatening situations by recourse to preferred symbolic or imaginative states.”3° The narrative simplification pertaining to conflicting histories or perceptions of “enemies” practiced by Disney animations explicitly creates an ideal, simplistic space for escapism, and instead establishes the “friendly neighbor of the U.S. Latin America” (Three Caballeros, 1944) or “the devious Middle East” (Aladdin, 1992), for example. Disney narratives representing specific cultures or peoples, such as Pocahontas (1995) and Mulan (1998), tend to wipe out complex politics and unpleasant realities to guide viewers to a “make-believe” world where everything is peaceful and transparent. Henry Giroux stresses this aspect of Disney narratives, describing them as vehicles for rationalizing the authoritarian, normalizing tendencies of dominant culture.31 With this strategy, histories of oppression such as colonialism or inter-cultural, racial or sexual conflicts can be effectively purged. In this respect, Disney animation does not necessarily offer the audience realistic ways of living in society, but often provides only the compensatory pleasures of a fantasy world. The implications of this will be discussed more closely in the next chapter. (3) Essentialist representation: gender and raciallnational identities According to Said, the myth of the “Other” is constructed by “imaginative geography and history,” which “help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far 30Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, eds. Tim O’Sullivan, et al. (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 106. 31 Giroux, “Memory and Pedagogy in the ‘Wonderful World of Disney,” p. 46. 65 away.”32 The same argument can be made about animated fantasy, which is capable of creating an “imaginative geography and history” through the dramatization of “distance and difference.” To make myths that “dramatize the distance” between “self’ and “other” is to over-emphasize or to essentialize the difference between the two. Articulating the essentialist mode in which the Western (post)colonial discourse of the “Other” operates through the sexualization of race in live-action films, Ella Shohat notes: The gender and colonial discursive intersection is revealed in the ways that Hollywood exploited the Orient, Africa, and Latin America as a pretext for eroticized images, especially from 1934 through the mid-fifties when the restrictive production code forbade depicting “scenes of passion” in all but the most puerile terms Exoticising and eroticizing the Third World allowed the imperial imaginary to play out its own fantasies of sexual domination.33 Stereotypical representations of races have often been seen in animation in the United States and other Western countries, providing a sense of security to white subjectivity.34 The racial/ethnic representations in many Hollywood animations (such as those produced by Disney, the Fleischer Brothers Studio, Warner Bros., and MGM) provide good examples of the type of myth-making that resorts to the essentialization of certain groups. This mode of representation of the Orient is manifested in, for example, Disney’s Aladdin, which is closely investigated in Chapter 4. Similarly, in Chapter 6, I discuss at length the national, racial and gender images that constitute Disney’s Mulan (1998), which at first glance appears to challenge gender and ethnic stereotypes, but actually reinforces them in a variety of ways. 32 Said, Orientalism, p. 55. Ella Shohat, “Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema,” in Quarterly Review ofFilm and Video 13:1-3 (1991), pp. 68-69. This is not to suggest that non-white nations do not also produce stereotyped or essentialized depictions of race or ethnicity. Racial representation strategies practiced by non-white “others” are discussed in Chapter 1 and Chapter 5. 66 It is important to note that, according to studies of Hollywood animations, a significant number of animated narratives continuously redefme the way in which gender and race/ethnicity are represented, and this becomes especially noticeable in times of national identity crises or conflicts in foreign affairs.35 A specific example is introduced by Wells, who examines American animated works that present Nazi Germany and Japan during the Second World War, in which antagonistic codes are used to portray “other” races, in order to establish American national narratives of heroism and to secure “masculine identity.”36 In other words, dominant modes of representation continually shift in the socio-political context. In the age of globalization, decolonization and the de centralization in the world system have heightened identity crises and a sense of insecurity and anxiety within the power center, resulting, in some cases, in new instances of raciaL/ethnic or gender stereotyping. As we have seen in Chapter 1, it is a mistake to believe that power relationships of dominance and oppression are simple, or that they are necessarily stable over time. Nonetheless, inequality between nations or between racial/ethnic groups within nations remains surprisingly persistent, resulting in long-term unbalance in the ways or degrees to which some groups may be represented in discourse. Since the l940s, increasing public resistance to stereotyping in the United States has put pressure on filmmakers to address See Burton-Carvajal, and Smoodin’s, Animating Culture. 36 To illustrate the racial representation in animation, Wells uses one episode of the Superman series, “Jungle Drums” (1943), in which an Allied spy plane is shot down by Nazis, as well as briefly mentioning “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944, Warner Bros.), in which Bugs fights against very stereotypically depicted Japanese soldiers, demonstrating violence and antagonism towards the Japanese. (See Wells, Understanding Animation, pp. 193-95). In this Bugs Bunny episode, Japanese soldiers have buckteeth and speak language (or mere noise) that is not Japanese, and act violently in a barbaric manner with swords. A Japanese woman with kimono (Bugs Bunny in disguise) is depicted as seductive and manipulative. Also, in Animating Culture Smoodin discusses “mythologised stereotypical American values” brought into play through representations of Mickey Mouse’s masculine characteristics. (See, pp. 64-67). Both studies indicate how closely gendered representations intersect with racial or national narratives in animated texts, particularly in the 1 930s and the 1 940s. 67 the issue of unequal representation in film of African Americans, Hispanics, and women, to name just a few examples. Despite the pressure brought by interest groups, which has resulted in diminished racist imagery, “positive images did not increase” until the 1970s, as Maureen Furniss points out.37 Essentialized representations of gender are also plentiful in North American animation. Wells points out the existence of a male-dominant code of representation in Disney productions, as well as in animated versions of Superman (1941, the Fleischer Brothers Studio) and Popeye (1932, the Fleischer Brothers Studio). This, Wells explains, derives from the fact that the animation industry in the West is overall “pathologically male, run by men in the spirit of expressing the interests of men, creating patriarchal hierarchies in major studios.”38 In these works, male characters are defined by their physical actions, whereas female characters are defined by signifiers of conventional “feminine” appearance (Mickey Mouse vs. Minnie Mouse; Popeye vs. Olive Oyl) and portrayed as “difference,” in comparison to their male counterparts. This emphasis on “difference” serves to reinforce the polarization of the gender binary. According to Wells, these depictions of female characters accelerate the infantalizing or sexualizing of women. In this respect, the animated body is a crucial site for the (re)inscribing of masculinity and femininity, in the ways that gender (and/or race) is embodied through characters’ appearance, behaviors, or physical movements. Since the 1980s, the academic world has been more and more critical of essentialist aspects of Disney animations, largely because of their problematic representations of certain groups of people and cultures. The issue of representation is an Fumiss, p. 232. 38 Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 187. Although I do not address this issue in detail in this study, Japanese animation studios are similarly male-dominated and patriarchal. 68 issue of power politics, and therefore, the discussion of animation texts in relation to cultural identity articulation should address the question of who represents whom and with what intention, which is the main focus in my case studies in later chapters. 2.1.4. Subversive characteristics of animation: examples in the West (1) The deconstruction of myths of “gender identity” Wells regards animation as a potential tool to be used to resist the patriarchal discourse of media representations, which cannot be accomplished as easily through live- action film. He states that: [i]f men, in general, have used animation to echo and extend the premises and concerns of men in live-action film-making, then women have used animation to create a specific feminine aesthetic which resists the inherently masculine language of the live-action arena, and the most dominant codes of orthodox hyper-realist animation which also use its vocabulary.39 In his study, Wells reveals in the works of several female animators a “feminine aesthetic” which deconstructs the concept of masculinity that has been privileged in many live-action films and in orthodox Disney animation. According to him, the feminine aesthetic has the following attributes: 1) Women’s animation recognizes the shift from the representation of woman as object, to the representation of woman as subject. This seeks to move away from traditions in which women are merely erotic spectacles or of marginal narrational interest. 2) The feminine aesthetic mistrusts language, perceiving it as the agent of masculine expression, preferring to express itself in predominantly visual terms, using a variety of forms, and reclaiming and revising various traditions. 3) In order to construct a feminine aesthetic, it is necessary to abandon conservative forms, and create radical texts which may demand greater participation from the viewing audience. Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 198. 69 4) The feminine aesthetic seeks to reveal a woman’s relationship to her own body; her interaction with men and other women; her perception of her private and public role; her social and political identity within the domestic and professional space, as determined by law; and also, the relationship between female sexuality, desire, and creativity.40 Defined by these characteristics, the “feminine aesthetic” in animation is a key element of subversive visual and narrative representations, which work either to expose the instability of gender identity categorizations or to create representations that transform the female “other” into the female-as-subject. (This account of the feminine aesthetic and its potential leaves open the question of whether male animators can also employ it to make subversive animation texts.) Furthermore, animation’s nature of being free from physical laws, a logical consequence of its two-dimensionality, also aids in challenging dominant or presumed codes of depiction, a process that Thomas Lamarre describes as “metamorphosis”41—a rejection of fixed forms of expression or a resistance to realistic illustration. That is, the mutability presented through the animated body constantly in flux effectively illustrates the instability of identities (such as gender and race), and this mutable body can therefore deconstruct essentialist categorizations. Animation characters are effective in this respect, because their bodies can morph into a different sex or even a different species, unlike live 40As an example of the “feminine aesthetic” in animation, Wells introduces the work of animator Faith Hubley, who employs subjective expression, and eliminates the hard-cel and the hard line in order to challenge a male-dominated orthodox animation style and the phallocentric aspects of the language of animation. Similar practices can be seen in the work of other animators, such as Joanna Quinn’s Girl’s Night Out (1986). Wells’ list also includes Emily Hubley, who addresses sexual confusion, rape, pregnancy and social alienation in The Emergence ofEunice (1980), Alison Dc Vere, who addresses how a woman becomes more conscious of herself as a woman by interrogating the roles that have been imposed upon her in The Black Dog (1987). See Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 199-200. Thomas Lamarre, “From Animation to Anime: Drawing Movements and Moving Drawings,” p. 338. Eisenstein also expresses this characteristic of animation with the term “plasmaticness,” the mutability of images that rejects fixed forms of expression. Although plasmaticness, a resistance to realistic illustration, is a characteristic of animation in general, the concept of realism in animation is relative. For example, Disney animations after Silly Symphonies focused more on verisimilitude in characters. See Eisenstein on Disney. 70 action characters who, generally speaking, can change their gender only through changes in their outer appearance (costume, hair, behavior). In this way, playing with the sex/gender of the morphotic animated body allows “viewers to both identify with.. .different kinds of bodies, and create [a] space for polymorphously perverse spectatorial experiences.”42 This means that viewers can relatively easily experience identities other than their biological sex by means of the animated body, and that these animated bodies also draw viewers’ attention to the constructed-ness of identity categorizations, such as race or gender/sex, which we usually take for granted. Joanna Bouldin draws on one of the Loony Tunes episodes in which Bugs Bunny performs in “drag” to illustrate this point. In this episode, Bugs changes not just superficially, but fully: his body changes shape to become entirely feminine, something that would be impossible for a live actor. This mutability of sex/gender is accepted by the viewer as plausible because, although animation is highly imaginary, the animated body still resonates with our image of a real physical body. With Bugs Bunny, changes in actual body shape allow the character to perform in a way that live-actors could not, to potentially subvert conventions of gender representation. Examples of live actors enacting gender changes include Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubfire (1993) and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982), where the real bodies of the actors can be covered in ways that make them look like women, but their bodies’ real shapes do not change. Unlike Bugs Bunny, for example, the waist size of male actors in drag cannot be reduced to enhance the illusion of femininity. As Bouldin argues, the animated body offers the viewer a liminal space where he or she transcends corporeality, and at the same time the relatively “realistic” depictions of people in animation make it 42 Bouldin, “Bodacious Bodies and the Voluptuous Gaze,” p. 63. 71 possible for real people to identify with the animated characters. “Identity,” in the case of the animated body is, therefore, contingent on continuous (re)articulation. Observing this process in the context of animated narratives may make the notion of constructed-ness of gender identity—even in real life—more compelling. From these observations, it can be argued that the stereotypical representations of the race/ethnicity or gender of characters’ bodies in orthodox animation such as Disney’s works tend to confine viewers’ corporeal experience of animation. On the other hand, the representation of subversive corporeal performances by animated bodies may help in emancipating marginalized subjects in society: by watching bodies mutate, those in marginal groups may be encouraged to think about the constructed nature of typically assumed identity categories. At the same time, the recognition of this nature may make those in dominant groups more accepting of “others” that they formerly ignored or despised. Although these subversive narratives often tend to target niche markets, they have been increasing in number. Animated works that disturb gender/sexual identity categorization include Girls Night Out (1987), in which a scantily-clad, muscle-bound stripper’s naked body positions female viewers as capable of using the gaze for their own voyeuristic pleasure—a reverse of the way that female bodies are typically fragmented and eroticized for gaze of male viewers in the dominant media discourse. (2) The destabilization of the concept of “racial/ethnic identity” The abovementioned approach, by which “femininity” and “masculinity” are re defmed, may also be relevant to the question of racial representation.43 However, while a number of animated works highlight the constructed nature of gender identity, the racial See Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 188. 72 body seems to remain more often stereotypically depicted. Nor have there been many studies that identify Western animated works that challenge an essentialist view of racial identities by means of the animated body. This may be because, compared to gender and sexuality, the representation of race is more difficult to overturn through characters’ bodies. Or it may be that racial “others” have so far used animation less often as a vehicle to expose and subvert conventions of racial stereotyping. It must be noted that discussions of representation in animation have been focused on Western animated works, particularly those created by Disney. Wells’ studies also concentrate heavily on North American and European animated works. A better understanding of mechanisms that link representations in animated texts and potential articulation of cultural identities entails the theoretical exploration of works from Asia— Japan in particular—to which I turn next. 2.2. What is Anime? Only it [animej can counterbalance the hegemony of American animation in Asia and the world, showing that globalization of popular culture does not necessarily imply homogenization or Americanization.’ —Wai-Ming Ng In the field of animation, the United States (Disney in particular) has dominated the global market. However, the phenomenon of this one-way flow from the United States to peripheral countries began to change from the late 1980s and 1990s, and that change included the tremendous growth of Japanese animation, as Wai-Ming Ng’s quote (above) suggests. This recent change in the animation industry scene may be interpreted Wai-Ming Ng, “Japanese Animation in Singapore: An Historical and Comparative Study,” in Animation Journal 9 (2001), p. 47. 73 as a sign of increasing resistance to American cultural hegemony. Supporting this view, Wells describes “a whole range of animation from across the six continents” as “the fullest example of the appeal of animation to express personal, socio-cultural and national concerns that bear no relation to the American context at all.”45 This suggests that the “resistance” to American hegemony was not necessarily intentional—it is just that more countries have the means and the desire to produce animation, and thus North American products automatically become less central. As a result of this, these countries are given a means through which they may countervail the hegemony. This statement indicates that in an age of globalization, animation produced in previously (or currently) marginalized countries plays a significant role in (re)establishing national identity through the imaginary, and in turn undercutting American-centered ideologies and aesthetics. Anime (contemporary Japanese animation) is a national cultural form that has grown increasingly popular—both at home and abroad—since the 1 980s and 1 990s. Anime frequently evokes Japan’s problematic national identity in relation to the concept of “otherness,” which, as we shall see, is often intertwined with issues of gender and sexuality. 2.2.1. The history of anime and anime research The term anime in this study refers not to the entire slate of animation made in Japan from the first animated cartoon in 1917,46 but to contemporary animation produced Wells, Animation: Genre and Authorshiv, p. 3 46Japan’s first animated film shown at a theater was made by Shimokawa Bokoten. This short-length animation was made by drawing with ink directly on the film stock. See Yamaguchi Yasuo, Nihon no anime zenshi (The Entire History of Japanese Anime) (Tokyo: Ten Books, 2004), pp. 44-46. 74 after the 1960s and 1970s. The history of anime therefore spans only the last thirty to forty years. It was not until after the Second World War that Japan started to be recognized as a significant animated film production center. Film critic Imamura Taihei designates 1958, when Japan’s first feature-length color animation Hakujaden (The Legend ofthe White Serpent) was produced, as the moment when Japanese animation reached an acceptable level of achievement.47 Hakujaden was produced by the first large-scale animation studio, TOei Doga (Toei Motion Picture). The early 1960s was time of rapid economic growth for Japan, and this allowed many families to purchase television sets for their homes. Soon TV animated cartoons targeting children sparked a boom in Japan’s animation industry. Animation at that time was known as “manga eiga” (comic book film) or “terebi manga” (TV comic book) in Japan.48 It was from the late 1 970s and early 1 980s that anime began to cater to older age groups, and this became a major characteristic of contemporary anime. This is also when anime started to become recognized worldwide as one of the most appealing visual media of Japan. The 1980s and the 1990s witnessed the global anime boom, a phenomenon that has shown steady growth for the last few decades. What is especially noteworthy during this period is the fact that anime began to demonstrate a distinctive “Japaneseness,” or what Susan Pointon calls “uncompromising ‘othemess” manifested in its narrative and ‘ Imamura, Manga eigaron, p. 204.48 As I discuss later in this chapter, there is a close relationship between anime and manga, with developments in manga usually preceding those in anime. 75 visual styles.49 This distinguishes anime works from animations made in the 1960s and the 1 970s, which avoided reflecting specificities of Japanese culture or customs. As for research on anime, the first animation study in Japan began in 1934, about fifteen years after Animated Cartoons was published in London, yet there was no monograph published on animation in Japan until Imamura Taihei’s Manga Eiga ron (The Theory ofAnimated Film) in 1941. This book discusses expressive methods characteristic to Japanese animation, especially those drawn from manga (Japanese comic books) and from Japanese arts and music. Even in the 1950s, the majority of books on animation were nothing more than impressionistic studies of specific animated works. It was only gradually that critics learned how to review animation by reading European or American critical essays. From the 1960s to the 1970s, we witness development in the publication of critical essays and studies of animation, yet these studies mostly deal with animation made in the United States. It was not until the late 1970s and 1980s that a significant number of critical essays and books specializing in anime appeared.5° 2.2.2. Characteristics and types of anilne (1) Anime as a distinctive medium Tsugata Nobuyuki defines anime as characterized by the following three main features: 1) the use of cel animation, 2) the use of cost effective strategies (i.e. fewer pictures for the depiction of a scene), called limited animation, and 3) a tendency to have stories not simply of good vs evil, but of complicated human relationships and Susan Pointon, “Transcultural Orgasm as Apocalypse: Urotsukidöji: The Legend of the Overfiend,” in Wide Angle 19: 3 (1997), p. 45. ° The first magazine specializing in anime was OUT, published in 1977 followed by Animage published in 1987, Animec in 1978, The Anime in 1979, My Anime in 1979, Animedia in 1981, and New Type in 1985. (See Tsugata, Animeshon-gaku, pp. 109-111.) 76 worldviews.5’With regard to the visual aesthetics of anime, world-renowned contemporary artist Murakami Takashi argues that anime draws its distinctive visual style from an aesthetic he calls “superfiat,” an aesthetic that characterizes traditional art, and continues to be prevalent in a variety of contemporary visual forms. Murakami goes so far as to call the superfiat aesthetic “the DNA that formed Japanese culture.”52 As the name suggests, superfiat refers to a cultural preference for two-dimensional visual presentations, rather than the rounded, three-dimensional, depth-filled presentation that results from the one-point perspectivalism championed in Western visual art after the Renaissance. In anime, one typical evocation of the superfiat aesthetic is the use of a single, static, flat-looking background scene, against which the main characters move. While some film historians link this technique with the low budgets and high-pressure production schedules of early TV anime, others argue along with Murakami that this visual characteristic expresses a Japanese cultural preference for two-dimensional, flat visual presentations.53 But, as Tsugata suggests above, the definition of anime should not only refer to stylistic aspects. As Lamarre comments, “to reduce the complexity of anime is to ignore the complexity ofJapan.”54 By the same token, Susan Napier states that “[tb define anime simply as ‘Japanese cartoons’ gives no sense of the depth and variety that make up the medium.”55 Both statements emphasize the need to differentiate “anime” from 51 Tsugata Nobuyuki, Nihon animëshon no chikara (The Power of Japanese Animation) (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2004), P. 21.52 Murakanii Takashi, “A Theory of Super Flat Japanese Art,” in Superfiat ed. Murakami Takashi (Tokyo: MADRA Publishing, 2000), p. 25. No translator listed. L.amarre, p. 338. Lamarre, p. 336. 55Napier, p. 6. 77 animation made in other countries, and the importance of examining anime as a distinctive medium. One of the major features that distinguishes anime from any other medium as well as from its American counterparts is its wide range of genres or themes—from romance, comedy, tragedy, adventure, and science fiction, to pornography—making it possible for virtually everyone, from young children to the elderly, to find anime that appeal to their tastes.56 This originates in the similar diversity of manga, on which anime are often based.57 According to Napier, another point that distinguishes anime from animation is its function as both a globalizing and a localizing force, reflecting Japan’s problematic identity in relation to the world.58 That is, anime as a distinctive cultural form maintains its Japanese roots; while hybridization or reciprocal influences of other (Asian and Western) cultures on anime seem to be very much a part of the development of both its narrative forms and techniques, they would not lead to a total convergence. Napier goes on to investigate Japan’s national identity configuration through anime as a national 56Napier, pp. 30-34. She further categorizes anime into three main modes of expression—apocalyptic, festival (carnival), and elegiac—which go beyond any nation-specific site and elucidate issues common among a global audience. The apocalyptic mode of anime, characterized by works such as Evangelion (TV anime, 1995, by Anno Hideaki), expresses social pessimism. The festival mode, similar to Milchail Bakhtin’s concept of “carnival,” demonstrates the privileging of transgression and carnivalesque themes and narrative structures. This mode includes works such as Ranma 1/2 (TV anime, 1989-1992, by Mochizuki Tomomitsu) and Urusei Yatsura (1’V anime, 1981-1986, by Oshii Mamoru & Yamazaki Kazuo), both of which exempli1j a festive transgression of gender and sexuality. The elegiac mode refers to lamentation and melancholy mixed with nostalgia, which links with the long lyric tradition in premodern Japanese culture, celebrating the beauty of transience. Napier points out that these modes are familiar to audiences around the world, but outside Japan are more usually found in the fields of literature or live-action films, rather than animation. Also see Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World ofJapanese Comics (New York: Kodansha International, 1986). A large percentage of narratives that are made into anime begin as manga. The most typical process is for a manga series that has proved popular to be made into a TV anime series, and then sometimes to be repackaged into feature-length animated or sometimes even live-action films. Many popular narratives in Japan exist simultaneously as on-going serialized manga, on-going serialized TV anime, and annually released animated feature films. 58Napier, p. 27. 78 cultural form, drawing on Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto’s question about the relationship between the global circulation of images and regional boundaries: does anime reinforce national specificity, or are globally circulated images simply subsumed by globalization, effectively losing all national specificity? I will return later to the relationship between national identities and the characteristics—both form and content—of anime. (2) Anime as a national cultural form Like its Western counterpart, anime is a storytelling medium, and its narratives provide viewers with resources for their identity articulation. This section discusses the “Japaneseness” of anime, and the ways its cultural specificity (or the lack thereof) influences the kinds of messages provided by creators about gendered, racial, or national identities. The view of anime as both a global and a local force is related to the creation of national narrative, and is also associated with what “anime” signifies in the global arena. As Tsugata mentions, the term anime has been used outside Japan since around the 1990s.5 This indicates that phenomena originating outside Japan contribute to the perception of anime, as well as to the image of Japan itself: anime is now an international concept and an international product, a complex phenomenon that should not be viewed as emerging from or existing within a purely Japanese context. Some critics argue, however, that anime’s popularity abroad should not necessarily be celebrated. For instance, Darrel Hamamoto attributes anime’s overseas popularity to Tsugata, Nihon animëshon no chikara, p. 21. 79 “Asiaphilia,” a kind of fetishism for Asia that is just another side of “Asiaphobia.”6°A verification of this argument would require close investigation of who represents whose identity for what purpose, as well as examining how things are represented in anime, all of which may contribute to understanding the contemporary construction of the image of Japan. While such an examination is beyond the scope of this chapter, later chapters will contribute to a verification of Hamamoto’s thesis. Hamamoto’s view of anime becomes compelling when we look at the discourse that links anime to “Japaneseness,” closely tied to cultural nationalism, where positioning anime as a unique or “different” medium from animation creates an image of Japan as a powerful “Other” to the Western world. This image is eagerly promoted by the Japanese government as a tactic to survive in a time of rampant globalization, especially after the “bursting” of Japan’s bubble economy in the 1990s. The use of anime as a national policy has become evident in the last five years, in government strategy papers.61 One of the most representative cases is the launch of the Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2002, chaired by Ishihara Shintarö, the governor of Tokyo Prefecture. The executive committee of the event remarked in The Japan Times that this fair was “started to publicize Japan’s animation to the rest of the world and promote the animation industry in Tokyo.”62 Ishihara is introduced in the article as a ferocious nationalist who stresses the superior 60Darrel Hamamoto, “Introduction: On Asian American Film and Criticism,” in Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism, eds. Darrel Hamamoto and Sandra Liu (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), p. 11. 61 Another governmental strategy for promoting anime as a national force can be seen in the new Education Ministry’s curriculum guidelines implemented in 2002. In the new guidelines, “visual media,” such as manga and anime, was introduced as a new subject in arts for improving students’ ability in the area of visual communication, which is seen as necessary for the purpose of “internationalization” (kokusaika), a goal the government has been emphasizing for the past fifteen years. See Otsuka and Osawa, pp. 193-4; also, the current curriculum guidelines by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. 62Anemi Nakamura, “Curtain Rises on Tokyo International Anime Fair,” in The Japan Times, March 17, 2006: Weekend Scene 1. 80 “essence” of Japan, and, combined with the executive’s comment above, we get a glimpse of the government’s political intention to generate Japan’s national identity in relation to its “others.” Phenomena such as this highlight the close link between anime and cultural, economic (trade revenue), and political (cultural nationalism) domains. Ishihara claims that “Japanese are inherently skilled at visual expression and detailed work,” and suggests that anime can work to push “Japan to stand up to the United States and assert its intrinsic superiority,”63explicitly highlighting his intention of positioning Japan in relation to the United States. Thus, while encouraging anime to appeal to a global audience, Ishihara’s view of”kokusaika” (internationalization) generates a polarization between Japan and the United States (the “West”), and assumes that Japan is recognized and demarcated only in opposition to, or based on recognition by, the United States. In this respect, anime as a cultural product contributes to Marilyn Ivy’s description of Japan’s “internationalization”—paradoxically a nationalistic project— which aims at “domestication of the foreign and dissemination of Japanese culture throughout the world.”64 In the meantime, this project is criticized by some who do not believe that the success of anime abroad can be attributed to Japan’s powerfhl “authentic” traditions. Manga critics Otsuka Eiji and Osawa Nobuaki, finding it dangerous to view anime as a reflection of “Japaneseness,” make the rather radical claim that anime is a mere 63 Virginia Hefferman, “The Award for Best Satanic Rabbit Goes...,” in The New York Times, April 2, 2006: Television 1. 64Marily Ivy, Discourses ofthe Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 3. It should be noted, however, that the government’s policies on anime do not necessarily agree with those of actual creators of this medium. For example, an article in The New York Times on 2006’s Tokyo International Anime Fair mentions the attitude of anime creators, such as Sato Dai, who are indifferent to or critical of the government’s use of anime for Japan’s global expansion. (See HefTerman, “The Award for Best Satanic Rabbit Goes...”) 81 transformation or extension of Disney animation, and has no real Japanese roots.65 According to this perspective, it is not the Japanese aesthetic values embedded in anime that have been appreciated by a global audience, but rather the American aesthetic values in them. Taking a different tack, animator Takahata Isao repudiates the idea of anime as having purely Western origins, and insists that it has roots in twelfth-century Japanese picture scrolls.66 Both observations are compelling to a certain degree; however, the origins of anime are too complex to attribute to a single source. As I will discuss further, all cultural forms are always already hybrid. (3) Anime as text: issues of representation It is imperative, as mentioned above, to examine anime as a textual product capable of representing ideologically different kinds of narratives: those that reinforce dominant ideologies (in a manner similar to the Disney narratives mentioned above); and those that subvert dominant ideologies. Potential subversiveness can be observed in many anime products, effected mainly through parodic or otherwise “twisted” representations of gender/sex/sexuality, race, and nation. This is where this medium makes a great contrast to the ideologically “reassuring” tone of Hollywood or Disney conventions; as mentioned above, Napier calls anime a medium of”de-assurance.”67As she further argues, anime is the perfect vehicle to portray “the shifting nature of identity in a constantly changing society.”68 In other words, a significant number of anime texts are equipped to potentially 65 Otsuka and Osawa, p. 8, p. 176. Similarly, Iwabuchi argues that what other Asian recipient countries experience through Japanese products like anime is “a highly materialistic Japanese version of the American original.” See Iwabuchi, p. 35. Takahata Isao, Jüni-seiki no animëshon (Animation of the Twelfth Century) (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1999), p. 54. 67Napier, p. 33. 68 Napier, p. 12. 82 destabilize the presumed concept of identity itself—especially in terms of the fixed categorization of racial/ethnic/national, and gender/sexual identities. 2.2.3. Anime and the (re)articulation of nationaLlracial identity Animation in general, and anime in particular, has embodied a greater potential for portraying “alternative” identities than many other nations that produce animation, partly because of Japan’s post-colonial positionality. Cultural categorization becomes blurred in the anime space. Napier contends that anime’s distinctiveness prevents it from being “subsumed into global culture,”69but she also stresses the existence of “non-Japanesque,” non-culturally specific features of anime which typically appear in the science fiction genre. Anime characterized by a lack of cultural specificity is described by some critics with the term “mukokuseki” (statelessness),7°which refers to the context-free space created within some anime, and is sometimes applied as well as to animators who seem unable to find national or etimic roots (furusato) for themselves. According to Napier, the stateless fantasy space of this type ofanime provides viewers with an experience of “postethnic identities.”7’Napier’ s concept of the “statelessness” of anime is applied mainly to the science fiction genre, because the setting of this genre is often in future cities that are impossible to identify as any specific nation or culture. I would like to add another aspect to Napier’s “postethnic” 69Napier, p.23. 70Napier, p. 24. Kusanagi Satoshi is another critic who has commented on the “non-Japanesque” features of some anime, although he discusses primarily examples of Japanese animations in the 1 960s (e.g. Mad Monster Party (1967), Little Drummer Boy (1968)), which were supposedly “co-productions” with an American company (Rankin-Bass Production) but practically Japanese animation studios worked under the American company’s control in the production process. See Kusanagi Satoshi, America de nihon no anime wa dOmiraretekitaka? (How has Japanese Anime been Seen in America?) (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten), pp. 90- 97. 71 Napier, p. 26. 83 nature of anime: culture boundary-crossing and hybridization of culture, which also make it impossible for viewers—both Japanese and non-Japanese—to locate the anime text within a specific culture or nation.72 That is, what makes anime stateless is also how “race” is represented. In this respect, anime (of this kind) destabilizes the concept of cultural identity itself, although, as discussed later, anime’s statelessness also reveals a dark side that can draw on the opposite effect—creating an essentialist view of identity— through an Orientalist perspective. Napier’s vision of stateless anime also reminds us of Köichi Iwabuchi’s description of anime as a “culturally odorless” Japanese export, which therefore travels well, along with consumer electronics and computer games. I agree with Iwabuchi’s idea of anime as “odorless,” containing minimal bodily and racial specificities of Japan, to the extent that many anime, especially visually, depict people whose race/ethnicity is hard to identify. However, it is questionable to apply this idea to all anime works without analyzing messages pertaining to cultural identities in different genres of anime texts. While Iwabuchi’s study explicates the relationship between cultural globalization and national identity formation through media products, he neither elaborates what constitutes the “cultural odor” of contemporary Japan, nor provides insights into the messages potentially generated in actual anime texts. Since there are certainly many anime that present distinctively Japanese referents, it is crucial to examine actual texts in order to discuss how anime relates to the issue of cultural identity. For example, in Sailor Moon, the protagonist has a Japanese name in the original Japanese version—a name that is a cultural reference that only makes sense to those who know Japanese culture, Tsukino Usagi—-and clearly goes to a Japanese high school, wearing a typical-looking uniform as worn by many Japanese high school girls. But because she seems to have blond hair and generically Caucasian features, she is easily accepted outside Japan as being “white.” Many Western viewers are shocked when told that she is Japanese and lives in Japan. At the same time, Japanese viewers are so accustomed to seeing characters who are clearly meant to be Japanese depicted with blond or red or even green hair, and non-Asian facial features, that they have no trouble accepting that Sailor Moon is Japanese despite her appearance. 84 Another reason for the need for close textual analyses is the fact that “statelessness” is more complicated than merely the absence of ethnic/national boundaries. That is, while some aspects of “stateless” anime may offer a “postethnic” experience, as Napier proposes, other aspects may simultaneously re-inscribe national/cultural boundaries. Ueno Toshiya and Oshii Mamoru stress this side of the statelessness of anime, which they believe gives rise to a phenomenon known as “techno-Orientalism”73—another way of Orientalizing or othering Japan. The term “techno-Orientalism” was initially used by David Morley and Kevin Robins to explain that: [t]he association of technology and Japaneseness now serves to reinforce the image of a culture that is cold, impersonal and machine-like, an authoritarian culture lacking emotional connection to the rest of the world.74 Oshii and Ueno apply this concept of “techno-Orientalism” to the reception of anime outside Japan, arguing that a number of works in the science fiction genre, such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell; Innocence; and Evangelion, are understood by non-Japanese viewers to depict Japan as a technological wonderland, or, more negatively, to depict Japanese people as emotionless Japanoid automata. Ghost in the Shell and Innocence, in particular, are not only set in context-free futuristic cities, but also present most of their characters as humanoid or cyborg (for instance, scenes showing the expressionless face of a human- looking character whose stomach is cut open to reveal machinery inside). While non- Japanese viewers may ostensibly celebrate Japan’s technological progress, the discourse The concept of “techno-Orientalism” was introduced by David Morley and Kevin Robins in Spaces of Identity (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 169. Ueno applies this concept mainly to anime. See Toshiya Ueno, “Japanimation and Techno-Orientalism,” in The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture, ed. Bruce Grenville (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002), pp. 227-29. David Morley and Kevin Robins, p. 169. 85 of techno-Orientalism actually serves to “other” Japan and the Japanese, so that the West may construct a view of itself as embodying the (positive) qualities that Japan lacks. A further significant point in Oshii and Ueno’s argument is that techno Orientalism operates as a mirror stage, wherein the West not only constructs a fantasized Japan for its own purposes of self-definition, but the Japanese also misunderstand themselves and begin to believe in the fantasy.75 In other words, as in the case of classic (Saidian) Orientalism, those produced as “Japanoid Other” in techno-Orientalist readings of anime—the Japanese—may begin to understand themselves through that definition, leading in turn to further self-Orientalizing. In this respect, Japan, even after its dramatic modernization and technological development, is still caught in the Orientalist mirror through both the Western Orientalization of Japan and Japan’s self-Orientalization based on the Western definition. This should not be misunderstood as an argument for the existence of a “real” Japan, but rather indicates again that how the Japanese identify themselves depends on the West’s perception of Japan. In opposition to the critics who see anime as creating a non-Japanese fantasy space are many others (discussed in detail below and in later chapters) who see anime as reflecting a distinctive Japaneseness, and the existence of the disagreement between these two groups manifests Japan’s ambiguous and problematic national identity. Due to many and complex factors involved in cultural identity formation sketched above, it is necessary to unpack the mechanisms of the articulation of cultural identities through this medium. This is accomplished by close examination of specific ways that national/ethnic identity is represented in specific anime narrative texts. This is a large part of my focus in later chapters. 75Ueno, “Japanimation and Techno-Orientalism,” p. 229. 86 2.2.4. The role of the “shUjo” in gender/sexual identity articulation and its evolution The issue of the (mis)representation of gender, often linked with representations of specific nationalities or races/ethnicities, has been studied considerably in the context of Disney animation, but anime has not yet been analyzed much in this light. As introduced earlier in this chapter, the normative (mythologized) concepts of gender/sex can be interestingly subverted through visual representations that involve physical metamorphoses, which are more easily and effectively accomplished in animation than in any other visual medium. Physical metamorphosis is taken to the limit in the representation of characters’ bodies in anime such as Ranma % (manga: 1987-1996; TV: 1987-1996; film: 1991). The protagonist in this narrative, a boy named Ranma, is cursed when he falls into a magical spring in China. Thereafter, whenever his body is touched by cold water he transforms into a female, and whenever his body is touched by warm water, he turns back into a male. (His father, suffering from a similar curse, changes into a panda bear when touched by cold water, and reverts to human shape with warm water.) Ranma’s constant transformations between male and female are sometimes inadvertent and embarrassing, and sometimes intentional, as Ranma uses his transformative abilities to further his own ends, such as spying on the girls in whom he is romantically interested. This anime poses a challenge to normative concepts of sex/gender in a number of ways (while also reinscribing some aspects of those normative concepts). For one thing, Ranma is frequently made to realize the ways in which girls are treated differently from boys solely because of social convention, rather than because of character or abilities. Viewers are therefore forced to consider the ramifications of their own embodiments in ways they might not otherwise have done, and to imagine what 87 alternative embodiments would be like. The target audience for (female manga artist) Takahashi Rumiko’s original Ranma 1/2 manga was young adolescents, from about eight to thirteen years old. Both in Japan and abroad, however, the anime version of this narrative was particularly popular among boys, despite (or because of) the fact that it provides ideological “de-assurance” rather than Disney-esque reassurance regarding the stability and normalcy of sex/gender identities and social roles.76 There have been many popular Japanese manga and anime narratives that similarly challenged the monolithic nature of sex and social/cultural gender through characters’ bodies, such as Tezuka Osamu’s Ribon no kishi (Princess Knight, manga serialized in 1954-1968; TV anime in 1967), discussed below, Yamauchi Naomi’s Za Chenji (The Change, manga serialized from 1986), Sutoppu!! Hibari-kun (Stop!! Hibari, manga serialized from 1981, also made into a TV anime series), Naka Tomoko’s Guriin bOi II (Green Boy II, manga serialized from 1990), as well as countless others.77 Another characteristic of gender representation in anime can be observed in a shift in (re)presentations of the “shöjo” (literally, a young girl), corresponding to shifts in social expectations and perceptions over time. According to the SanseidO Japanese Dictionary, “shojo” are defined as young girls from around ten to sixteen or seventeen years old; however, this term signifies far more than its literal definition. “ShOjo” is a cultural construct. It emerged in the early twentieth century along with the establishment of girls’ boarding schools, magazines and other media targeted explicitly at girls, and other 76 scholar Robin Wood calls the dominant tone of most Hollywood films a cinema of “reassurance.” Robin Wood, “Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Regan Era,” in Movies and Mass Culture, ed. John Belton (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), p. 206; Also for more on the liminality seen for instance in the transgender theme of Ranma 1/2, see Napier, Animefrom Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle, p. 13 and p. 33. more information about the exact nature of the sex/gender subversion in each of these narratives, see Yukari Fujimoto, “Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynies,” trans. Linda Flores and Kazumi Nagaike in The US.-Japan Women Journal 27 (2004), pp. 76-117. 88 innovations, almost all of which were for the purpose of producing “good wives and wise mothers” for the benefit of the state. In other words, the idea of”shöjo” was originally conceptualized as part of a constellation of efforts to confine female sexuality and to emphasize the conservative gender demarcation between “feminine” and “masculine.” The “shöjo” culture created at that time reflected a new understanding of the typical life stages for females, simultaneously recognizing and giving rise to “a period in life when a female was neither naïve child nor sexually active woman.”78 In contemporary society, “shöjo” symbolizes “a state of being that is socially unanchored, free of responsibility and self-absorbed—the opposite of the ideal Japanese adult.”79 Thus, the term “shöjo” has mutated over time to reflect current social expectations. Coupled with the dramatic growth of Japanese popular culture and consumerism since the 1980s, the image of the “shojo” presented through media representations has been used to associate women with “emptiness,”80or to eroticize them as the object of male sexual desire. This image of the “shöjo” symbolizes as an innocent, pure, but passive and “toy-like being.”8’ Such representations are constructed within a phallocentric discourse, and feature images of “shOjo” who cannot speak for themselves and make no claims to true subjectivity. 78 Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Shöjo,” in Encyclopedia ofContemporary Japanese Culture, ed. Sandra Buckley (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 458-59. About the birth of the “shojo,” see Horikiri Naoto, “Onna wa dokyo, shOjo wa aikyO” (Courage for Women, Charm for Girls), in Shöjoron (Theory of Shojo), eds. Honda Masuko et al. (Tokyo: Aoyumisha, 1991), P. 109. For more on the development of the concept of”shojo,” see Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Busty Battlin Babes: the Evolution of the Shojo in 1990s Visual Culture,” in Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, eds. Norman Bryson, Maribeth Graybill and Joshua Mostow (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), pp. 200-228. Orbaugh, “ShOjo,” in Encyclopedia ofContemporary Japanese Culture, pp. 458-59. 80hn W. Treat, “Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: The ShOjo in Japanese Popular Culture,” in Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, ed. John W. Treat (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), p.301. 81 This phrase is used by Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, and which is quoted by lizawa KOtaro’s article, “Shashin, shöjo, korekushon” (Photos, ShOjo, Collection), in Shöjoron, pp. 40-41. 89 Hence, the concept of the “shOjo” draws on the established notion of girlhood in which she transitions into a woman who meets the patriarchal social expectation of “a good wife and wise mother”—a notion that continues to have force even today. Yet, at the same time, postwar popular visual media such as manga and anime play with the concept of the “shöjo” through unusual visual and narrative representations, deconstructing the patriarchal perception of gender/sexual identity and providing resources for alternative identity articulation models. What follows sketches out the evolution of one subversive stream of anime from the 1 960s to the 1 990s, which uses depictions of”shOjo” or “shöjo-ness” to gradually alter traditional gender models. Deeper discussions of the depictions of”shôjo” and their implications for the way girls (and boys) form a gender identity partly through their consumption of popular culture can be found in later chapters. Anime intended specifically for girls, known as “shojo anime,” originated in the late 1960s and 1970s. In its early years shöjo anime was created mostly by men, and despite some tinkering with traditional gender rules, it generally presented gender according to patriarchal models. Even in Tezuka Osamu’s playful Ribbon no kishi (Ribbon Knight), in which the shOjo protagonist dresses as a boy, fights to defend her kingdom, and has both a female and male “heart,” the narrative ends with the protagonist giving up her male persona to enjoy happiness in the traditional role of wife and mother. From about the 1 980s, and especially as more women became active as writers of the manga on which many anime are based, the representation of the “shöjo” began to change dramatically, playing a key role in the subversion of conventional concepts of gender/sexual identity. This change is indicative of conscious attempts to deconstruct the patriarchal, heteronormative discourse of gender/sex through popular visual texts. 90 (1) The 1960s and the 1970s: Carnival 1- the birth of female heroes82 Educated, middle-class daughters of Japan’s upwardly mobile urban families initiated what many Japanese women describe as the “radical” or “revolutionary” phase of the women’s movement from 1970 to 1977. .women’s groups in this period analyzed the inadequacy of Marxist analysis for feminist revolution, published critiques of the “myth of motherhood,” and published radical essays.83 In 1966, the first girls’ anime, Mahötsukai Sally (Little Witch Sally), debuted on Japanese TV. Until then, the protagonists in anime had always been male, and female viewers had no choice but to identify with the passive female figures who were always secondary to the main narrative, or to identify with the active male protagonists, if they wished to access power. In the 1960s and 70s, female heroes increasingly appeared on screen, especially in the form of magical girls—the aforementioned Mahötsukai Sally, followed by Himitsu no Akko-chan (Little Secret Girl Akko) in 1969, and Ma]okko Megu (Witch Meg) in 1974. !j-9--- 9— jjcT) -y— -9— ‘-y She is a charming princess riding on a magic broom. Sally Sally, Once she says a magic word, love and hope emerge Sally Sally, little witch Sally (from the theme song of Little Witch Sally in 1966, my translation) - ‘1u -UlW’-) Z)’) t)’- 7A Princess Cinderella has appeared. Who is she? She is a little secret girl, Akko. (from the theme song ofLittle Secret Girl Akko in 1969, my translation) 82 use the term “carnival,” borrowing Bakhtin’s concept, to signify the early hints of subversiveness shown by some female heroes. 83 Sharon Sievers, “Women in China, Japan, and Korea,” in Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History, eds. Barbara N. Ramusack and Sharon Sievers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 230. 91 øt2Q)< ;L1 Lt 9iQ) L51L