91–100 of 147 posts
The popularity of actual caucasian models in advertisements is also interesting.
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I was okay with it until here: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." It's a red flag when you preemptively declare all of your opponents racists before they've even had a chance to respond. Maybe s…
Well, that's inflammatory, but what if it's true? Because it is such an inflammatory statement, it should be better supported, if that was the author's main point, or omitted, if it wasn't. There's something else at work, though. I think that as soon as many readers read "racist", they mentally shut down as a defence mechanism. "B ... b ... but it's an axiom that I can't be racist, so any argument that might cast me…
My response would be that it's okay to unequivocally declare a class of arguments as wrong. "Wrong" in the sense of a bad argument that doesn't hold up, it could still (coincidentally) reflect the correct position. What the author does is different though, he simply declares an entire side wrong on the assumption that they all must be using a certain class of arguments.
But the example you offered does demonstrate an equally important point: There are correct and incorrect reasons to rule out a class of arguments. Clearly "if this were true I'd be bad person, therefore this is false" is one of the bad reasons. The technical term is "argumentum ad consequentiam": appeal to consequeces.
So you're absolutely right to preach caution here.
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You see a lot of that in the Philippines especially. Everyone wants to be as white as possible, so they carry umbrellas to block the sun, and use whitening lotions and soaps. Contrast that with the US, where people want to be tan, to the point of using tanning salons and spray-on tans.
I had initially assumed that whitening creams were used to create a caucasian look - an idea which I found quite repulsive. When a friend explained that it was to mimic the appearance of the upperclass, whose skin colour contrasted with a labourer's, it began to make sense. When thought of as a status enhancer, it doesn't seem that disimilar to tanning..
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When I lived in Korea it was explained to me that farmers and peasants had darker complexions because they were out in the sun all day. Having lighter skin was a matter of class distinction, and it had nothing to do with Western influence.
That argument strikes me as disingenuous. Being fat used to be a class distinction (poor people couldn't afford to be fat) but it's not popular today. I suspect preference for lighter skin color is more self-racist than people like to portray (even to themselves).
This phenomenon is acknowledged enough by the Japanese to where it has a name: it's called "mukokuseki" which is Japanese for "no nationality". Basically it amounts to this: characters are drawn in an ethnically neutral way so that they have universal appeal, and it makes it easier to export these media works into foreign markets. Maybe the foreign markets thing was not a concern in Tezuka's early days, but it certai…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I lived in Korea it was explained to me that farmers and peasants had darker complexions because they were out in the sun all day. Having lighter skin was a matter of class distinction, and it had nothing to do with Western influence.
That argument strikes me as disingenuous. Being fat used to be a class distinction (poor people couldn't afford to be fat) but it's not popular today. I suspect preference for lighter skin color is more self-racist than people like to portray (even to themselves).
I have always pondered this question so I quickly went to the link and was confronted with a really weak and half-baked argument. First, this is not a question of American audiences; I'm not American and love anime but they don't look Japanese to me either. "The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed." This may be true but it has very little to do with anime.…
"why are the characters in traditional Japanese paintings look very Japanese (slanted eyes, hairdo, etc.)." So modern anime characters should look more like traditional Japanese paintings? "How can you explain that a lot of Japanese women go through cosmetic surgery to get rid of the slant in their eyes to make them look more Western?" Citation? How many is "many"? "Why is baseball so popular in Japan?" Because they'…
Actually, most still agree that the Japanese professional baseball is close but not quite at the level of American major league baseball. The top Japanese players obviously can compete at the top level in the US but most people think that Japan would probably only have enough players for a half-dozen MLB-level teams at the most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"why are the characters in traditional Japanese paintings look very Japanese (slanted eyes, hairdo, etc.)." So modern anime characters should look more like traditional Japanese paintings? "How can you explain that a lot of Japanese women go through cosmetic surgery to get rid of the slant in their eyes to make them look more Western?" Citation? How many is "many"? "Why is baseball so popular in Japan?" Because they'…
Because they're better at it now than Americans? Actually, most still agree that the Japanese professional baseball is close but not quite at the level of American major league baseball. The top Japanese players obviously can compete at the top level in the US but most people think that Japan would probably only have enough players for a half-dozen MLB-level teams at the most.
I'm going to give what is probably a very contrarian view here: scientific studies show that Caucasian features allow for a higher standard deviation than Asian features. (That is to say, both Asian and Caucasian test groups think two randomly-sampled Asians look more similar than two randomly-sampled Caucasians.) When you have 10 or 20 characters, and want them to be recognizable at a glance (for brand ownership), e…
Don't just claim "scientific studies say X;" cite studies Y, Z, and A. I'm not saying that your claim is wrong, but it sounds implausible to me, and I suspect that, if such studies exist, they probably indicate that whites find it easier to differentiate other whites and Asians find it easier to differentiate other Asians (I'd be curious: are such studies done solely in the United States? If so, they'd be worthless).
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Here's ( http://www.bellasugar.com/Jessica-Simpson-Eyelid-Surgery-Pri... ) a recent link on how popular double eyelid surgery is in Korea and Japan. I don't have the hard figures but I would guess that this procedure would be much more common in Korea and Japan then in China since these populations are more affluent and were heavily affected by US presence. As for baseball, most everyone agrees this is a quintessenti…
Baseball is more popular throughout the Caribbean and Latin America than it is in the U.S., and many of the best major leaguers come from there. During the World Baseball Classic, most of the biggest names were playing for countries other than the U.S. And Japan won the tournament, both of the times it has been played so far. The best U.S. finish is fourth. I see the U.S. relationship with baseball becoming similar t…
As a case in point, consider the recent FIBA World Campionship: Turkey played the final with US and gave it a run for its money (at least at the start of the game). Serbia was awesome, too. The US Team didn't even make it to the final in the previous three times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_World_Championship#Results). Now, that doesn't mean that the level of basketball in these countries is better or on par with the one in US. It just means that the very good pro players see this as a waste of time and money (and chance to be injured) and don't go. I bet a similar reason applied in the case of baseball.