Week 6 - Anime: a high or low cultural genre?

Not being a fan of anime and having not watched any anime films with any great deal of attention, I would always have said the genre was for kids. In my ignorance, all I knew of the genre was that it was animated - something I have always associated with children's entertainment. But in watching Princess Mononoke critically and identifying a number of themes present, it is clear that this is not the case. As with Tintin, there appears to be two audiences: 1) kids, who can enjoy it for the surface level, animated films that they are, and 2) adults, who can "read between the lines" so to speak and enjoy the under-the-surface, "schematic", adult subgenres and themes present in many anime films, as well as others who can enjoy it for the art form that it is. But what does this mean in terms of high and low culture?

Of whether or not anime is part of a high or low cultural genre, John Treat (as cited by Napier, 2005) suggests "To worry about the relation of the popular to high or official culture is to think about the perennial problem of value." I couldn't agree with this statement more, and it really makes me question what sorts of things our society places value on, and why. Blogger "Tabularthought" (2009) also asserts that the issue of high vs low culture has to do with "Aesthetic Relations" or our "judgement of what is good". (Tabularthought, 2009, para. 1). Rest assured, this entry will not revolve around a philosophical/cynical rant over the term 'value'. I just find it interesting how we have to put things into a box as if everything is either black or white.

Theory states that Anime, for the most part,  fits into the 'Popular' or 'low' cultural genre because of the pure popularity and commercialisation of it. Princess Mononoke is no exception, for the fact that it is Japan's highest ever grossing movie, making $US150 million in Japan in the first seven months of its release. (Rottentomatoes.com, n.d.).

However, Napier (2005) suggests that parts of anime stand out as drawing from Japanese high culture and that in recent times, "anime has been increasingly seen as an intellectually challenging art form". (Napier, 2005, p. 4). Napier also argues that many of the issues explored in anime are at times complex, and would be familiar to those fans of "contemporary "high" culture art cinema" both in Japan and around the world. (Napier, 2005).

I think the issue is clearly not black and white. Anime stands to offer points to both ends of the continuum, but so long as it stays part of this "popular" culture, I don't think it will ever truly be part of the "high" cultural genre or be seen in a canonical sense.


Reference:
Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-14). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.

Princess Mononoke (Mononokehime) (1999). (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2012, from http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/princess-mononoke/

Tabularthought. (2009, January 15). A redefinition of "high" versus "low" culture. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://tabularthought.wordpress.com