UnoPuntoCinco said: Inter-textuality can be considered fanservice as well.zal said: No, it's called inter-textuality and it's a widely explored literary deviceAnd by the way citing other works is considered fanservice. |
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zal said: That's beyond the point and it's a value judgementUnoPuntoCinco said: Inter-textuality can be considered fanservice as well.No, it's called inter-textuality and it's a widely explored literary device |
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MindForged said: TripleSRank said: I never said Texhnolyze was pretentious. I couldn't possibly make that claim since I haven't even seen it. (I used it as an example due to Yudina's implications.) I merely said that anime that are pretentious rely extensively on the work of other authors rather than their own. Comprehension and recognition are not the same, and it is the former that is the issue with pretentious works. If an anime cannot be fully understood without relying on the work another author put into developing an idea, I do indeed believe it is worthy of criticism. I'm not sure this addresses the thrust of my point, which was that I question if there are any anime that really fit that description (relying extensively on the work of others to understand the anime or its themes). I merely mentioned Texhnolyze because the OP did, which I thought was a poor example (unless I'm missing something). Most anime that are pretentious are such, not because they name drop philosophers/literary works without exploring the relevant ideas, but because they seem overly focused with seeming like they are thinking about "deep" issues. Like, even though I felt Psycho-Pass treaded into this territory of name-dropping intellectuals, the referenced people & works are not needed to understand the underlying themes at all. I think I'm mainly just wondering what specific examples, from specific anime, that the OP had in mind, as some of the ones listed don't do this (imo, of course). My understanding of Yudina's claim is that those who are citing these works as being pretentious are simply not understanding the work-- that the work is deep despite appearing simple-- it is to that which my reply is directed. Assuming this is "true", if the work is only "deep" due to relying on the understanding of another author's idea (namedropping), then that is not to the credit of the referencing work, and therefore said referencing work is still open to criticism. That is, unless Yudina is implying these authors' works are not deep themselves and the mainstream audience is wrongly assuming they are, which would indeed make the "pretentious" criticism unfitting. I doubt that he intended to imply this, however. To be clear, I do agree that namedropping an author whose "deeper" work has nothing to do with the referencing work is pretentious if it is presented in a way that would make it seem important. It's just that Yudina's claim is beyond this step, with the assumption that the "deeper" referenced works actually do have bearing on the "otherwise seemingly simple" referencing work and the viewer just didn't understand it due to lack of familiarity with the referenced work, so I addressed that case. |
TripleSRankOct 16, 2016 1:43 AM
| @TripleSRank It seems to me as if you have skirted around the bottom line, which is that if we are not familiar with the works/concepts referenced, then how could one possibly know whether they are being used 'adequately' in a worthwhile or meaningful way? TripleSRank said: You seem to be drawing a false equivalence. To use your example of an anime name dropping philosophers, criticizing the anime as being pretentious isn't saying the philosphers named are completely unrelated to the themes of the show, nor that the works of said philosophers are shallow and unmeaningful. Rather, it is to say that despite referencing works that "are" deep, the anime/work doing the referencing is not deep or especially meaningful. But this can only hold true if said work is shallow and only name-dropping philosophers. I don't see where Yudina ever accepted such cases in his line of argument. I assume you're working off of this? "they believe the philosophers mentioned don't amount to anything" imo, is meant that people believe the quotes/mentions don't amount to anything, and not that the philosophers and works themselves do not. After all, if people thought as such of the referenced works then we probably wouldn't see accusations of pretension in the first place! TripleSRank said: This comes from the idea that works should be able to stand on their own, and I know you yourself subscribe to this belief to some degree due to your criticisms of the anime medium being too self-referential. If you can say, for example, that an anime's humor is shallow or insipid for referencing, building upon, or perpetuating some idea(s) in other work rather than standing on its own, why can't you say the same of an anime's themes should they reference, build upon, or perpetuate that of another work without being capable of standing on its own? Is this not hypocrisy? Actually, isn't this the false equivalence? Perhaps I'm missing out on the reference here, (do you see my pretension!!) but works being shallow and overly self-referential should be just that - a failure of those works in those aspects of content/comedy? Those even seem to be separate things: 1. Humour which solely consists of reference is surely shallow; if it is built into a larger comedic theme or structure, then it presumably is not. 2. an industry or movement that is too self-referential would surely have worse symptoms than insipid jokes. Surely comedy was not the (only) point of degeneracy in mention. But on the other-hand, it is indeed hypocrisy to make a criticism of a joke 'you do not get' and to then go on to accuse a work of pretension when you, 1. do not 'get' the work, or 2. are not adequately familiar with the referenced in question. TripleSRank said: That isn't to say a work can't target a reader of philosophy, but if I'm required to have read certain authors to be able to appreciate, extract meaning from, and indeed criticize Texhnolyze, why can I not apply this very same principle to Gintama, which does with humor what Texhnolyze does with themes? The issue with anime that are legitimately criticized as pretentious is that by not being meaningful or fully comprehensible on their own, they are stealing the work other authors have put into developing their ideas. Why must you reference another author's idea directly, save for lack of ability to reproduce the development of the idea with your own outcome (be it in agreement or in opposition)? As a defining feature of a work, I do think this should be open to criticism. The issue with anime that are legitimately criticized as pretentious is that by not being meaningful or fully comprehensible on their own, they are stealing the work other authors have put into developing their ideas. Why must you reference another author's idea directly, save for lack of ability to reproduce the development of the idea with your own outcome (be it in agreement or in opposition)? As a defining feature of a work, I do think this should be open to criticism. You can! I think that one can absolutely can criticise in your first case - criticise for being inaccessible or incomprehensible without that knowledge, certainly. But you can not criticise those making use and reference of others' work if you do not know the full extent and nature of that utilisation. And how can one know the extent off use, interplay, and 'new' creation when one is not even familiar with the material being worked with? To use an analogy, it is like criticising a potter's tea bowl for being too hard without knowing the properties of clay. One can still inspect and judge the bowl on the basis of their particular paradigm and knowledge, but the critical ignorance of relevant facts will thereby undermine the value of that criticism. Perhaps with expert knowledge it might in fact still be a valid criticism - but it does not change the fact that it is a view born out of an incomplete perspective. TripleSRank said: The issue with anime that are legitimately criticized as pretentious is that by not being meaningful or fully comprehensible on their own, they are stealing the work other authors have put into developing their ideas. Why must you reference another author's idea directly, save for lack of ability to reproduce the development of the idea with your own outcome (be it in agreement or in opposition)? As a defining feature of a work, I do think this should be open to criticism. If it is a work absolutely meaningless whatsoever, regardless of references, then sure. (I mean, what's even the disagreement if it's a 'legitimately pretentious' work?) But if it is a work where the meaning is uncertain unless one has a familiarity with external works and ideas, in such a case it can not rightfully be called pretentious without the knowledge of those externals. It cannot be rightfully judged as pretension if the accuser is working off improper evidence. As you say, it is absolutely open to criticism - it might even in fact be worthy to be criticised as pretentious, but it can not be assumed so without proper qualification. TripleSRank said: @MindForged If you're addressing someone specific, a ping or quote would be more prudent and more polite. I never said Texhnolyze was pretentious. I couldn't possibly make that claim since I haven't even seen it. (I used it as an example due to Yudina's implications.) I merely said that anime that are pretentious rely extensively on the work of other authors rather than their own. So, are you brave enough to give your examples? Besides, surely these would-be pretentious works are such not for the reliance on others' work. Rather, it is either an inadequately capable rendition that fails to create appropriate discourse, (thereby overreaching the creator's ability to communicate on the matter and utilise those external elements,) or it is a work that dresses itself up with the prestigious in order to give it that worthiness by association. TripleSRank said: Comprehension and recognition are not the same, and it is the former that is the issue with pretentious works. If an anime cannot be fully understood without relying on the work another author put into developing an idea, I do indeed believe it is worthy of criticism. "fully understood" - how are we qualifying that? Criticise that it is not accessible for the laymen, of course. But I hope you aren't implying that it innately negative for something to require some particular knowledge. One might criticise mass entertainment if it's esoteric because it goes against its own definition - it can be criticised for not being as entertaining as large an audience as possible. But it does not mean it is necessarily a poor work of entertainment - it may in fact be a fantastic work for those who have the prerequisite knowledge. The point is that while one can rightly decry a work for inaccessibility, that does not make it a poor work as a whole. A work that should be accessible that isn't is flawed. But a work that is inaccessible is not necessarily meant to be for everyone. To give the laboured example: we do not expect children who are just learning to read to be capable of comprehending a full length adult's novel, and we do not criticise the adult's novel for not being accessible to those children, because it was not meant for them. By the same logic we do not criticise more 'difficult' simply because they exclude us who are uneducated in its context. We might criticise because it excludes, but we do not impugn on the worthiness of that work. Given, much of what you've said seems to be preluded by your final post, which has me questioning everything that I've put to paper as yet. (Oh no) TripleSRank said: My understanding of Yudina's claim is that those who are citing these works as being pretentious are simply not understanding the work-- that the work is deep despite appearing simple-- it is to that which my reply is directed. Assuming this is "true", if the work is only "deep" due to relying on the understanding of another author's idea (namedropping), then that is not to the credit of the referencing work, and therefore said referencing work is still open to criticism. ... To be clear, I do agree that namedropping an author whose "deeper" work has nothing to do with the referencing work is pretentious if it is presented in a way that would make it seem important. It's just that Yudina's claim is beyond this step, with the assumption that the "deeper" referenced works actually do have bearing on the "otherwise seemingly simple" referencing work and the viewer just didn't understand it due to lack of familiarity with the referenced work, so I addressed that case. For the first part, I don't think this is Yudina's claim at all. For the second, of course the referenced works must have a bearing if they to not be pretentious. To be boorish, a work that integrated as these external works well - to get the 'full understanding' would require knowledge of those referenced just as an intimate sequel to a novel is incomplete without having read the first one! Really, the issue could even be made while completely disregarding the level of the depth of the referenced and referrer. Quite simply the verification of pretension is predicated on having an adequately complete view of the work in question and that which is referenced. While it might seem like a small unimportant thing to the unknowing viewer, from the vantage of the ivory tower, things are seen from a wholly different vantage. So, in a sense, Yudina is indeed saying that people are not savvy to the 'whole' of some works. It is not that they are "deep despite appearing simple" - this qualifier is too limiting and oddly specific when compared with the OP. Instead, it is that judging a work's use of intertextuality while ignorant to its references is like reading a book written in two languages while only knowing one. |
| It's always fun when @Ckan gets serious. I'm going to drop some of my weaker tangents you called out in favor of addressing the core of the matter. For those I didn't address, I suppose you may consider it a withdrawal in one way or another. That being said, for the sake of clarity, I don't think requiring some form of knowledge to better appreciate something is inherently bad. Certainly, an unintended audience might not be able to view the work in the way it was meant to be, but then, even as a basic premise I can't help but wonder how an anime fan is supposed to determine with certainty (rather than presumption) that a work isn't intended for them. It seems to me that the anime medium in particular is bad at making its intended audiences clear. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that.) Of course, this wouldn't make said audience any more "correct" in their criticisms, but it would certainly make them more excusable, which is in line with the apparent thinking behind this thread (whether these criticisms should be "allowed"). Tangential issues aside, I'm making two primary criticisms toward namedropping/referencing works. The former is the more familiar case in which a (referencing) work namedrops a (referenced) work when the referenced work has little to do with the referencing work. It is this form of pretentiousness that would require knowledge of the referenced work to apply properly as a criticism. It is also where one could be "wrong" in the sense that the referenced work could indeed have a lot to do with the referencing work (i.e. the viewer simply doesn't realize this due to lack of knowledge). However, it is the latter case that I'm trying to make my main point about in this thread. In the latter case, where the referencing work and the referenced work are indeed related, I am criticizing the reliance on reference to provide context and understanding-- regardless of whether the audience does or does not. This might initially appear to be contrary to my clarification in the first paragraph, but I think reference is a far more, overly specific way of providing meaning: It is one thing to require general knowledge of philosophical concepts, for example, but it is quite another to require knowledge of a specific author. The rub here is that these referencing works aren't sequels or even necessarily spiritual successors to the referenced works-- the referencing works are just borrowing very specific and personally developed ideas to save on time and effort. I generally perceive this borrowing to be lazy, or a product of an author's inability to adequately reproduce the concept on their own. This is worthy of criticism in my opinion, and it is here that the thrust resides. Such a situation is still pretentious; it's just in a different way than the first case: Pretentiousness is to attempt to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, meaning, etc. than what is actually possessed. My point is that a large portion of the meaning in the referencing work is not possessed by the referencing work, but rather by the referenced work, because it is the referenced work that created the meaning that the referencing work uses. Therefore, since the work does not itself contain the meaning it is affecting ("stealing", referencing), it is a form of pretentiousness. It is this latter form of pretentiousness that could be claimed whether or not one actually has knowledge of the referenced work. Of course, that's a lot of wording to say that requiring knowledge of a subject is not the same as requiring knowledge of a specific contextualized idea, but I wanted to explain the thought process behind it. It is my opinion that "leeching" off of a very specific and personal development of ideas is, at least in most cases, of less worth than developing those ideas yourself before doing something with them, and I think calling this "pretentious" is an accurate usage of the term because you are affecting meaning with another's work rather than your own. |
TripleSRankOct 16, 2016 11:05 AM
TripleSRank said: It's always fun when @Ckan gets serious. I'm going to drop some of my weaker tangents you called out in favor of addressing the core of the matter. For those I didn't address, I suppose you may consider it a withdrawal in one way or another. That being said, for the sake of clarity, I don't think requiring some form of knowledge to better appreciate something is inherently bad. Certainly, an unintended audience might not be able to view the work in the way it was meant to be, but then, even as a basic premise I can't help but wonder how an anime fan is supposed to determine with certainty (rather than presumption) that a work isn't intended for them. It seems to me that the anime medium in particular is bad at making its intended audiences clear. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that.) Of course, this wouldn't make said audience any more "correct" in their criticisms, but it would certainly make them more excusable, which is in line with the apparent thinking behind this thread (whether these criticisms should be "allowed"). Tangential issues aside, I'm making two primary criticisms toward namedropping/referencing works. The former is the more familiar case in which a (referencing) work namedrops a (referenced) work when the referenced work has little to do with the referencing work. It is this form of pretentiousness that would require knowledge of the referenced work to apply properly as a criticism. It is also where one could be "wrong" in the sense that the referenced work could indeed have a lot to do with the referencing work (i.e. the viewer simply doesn't realize this due to lack of knowledge). However, it is the latter case that I'm trying to make my main point about in this thread. In the latter case, where the referencing work and the referenced work are indeed related, I am criticizing the reliance on reference to provide context and understanding-- regardless of whether the audience does or does not. This might initially appear to be contrary to my clarification in the first paragraph, but I think reference is a far more, overly specific way of providing meaning: It is one thing to require general knowledge of philosophical concepts, for example, but it is quite another to require knowledge of a specific author. The rub here is that these referencing works aren't sequels or even necessarily spiritual successors to the referenced works-- the referencing works are just borrowing very specific and personally developed ideas to save on time and effort. I generally perceive this borrowing to be lazy, or a product of an author's inability to adequately reproduce the concept on their own. This is worthy of criticism in my opinion, and it is here that the thrust resides. Such a situation is still pretentious; it's just in a different way than the first case: Pretentiousness is to attempt to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, meaning, etc. than what is actually possessed. My point is that a large portion of the meaning in the referencing work is not possessed by the referencing work, but rather by the referenced work, because it is the referenced work that created the meaning that the referencing work uses. Therefore, since the work does not itself contain the meaning it is affecting ("stealing", referencing), it is a form of pretentiousness. It is this latter form of pretentiousness that could be claimed whether or not one actually has knowledge of the referenced work. Of course, that's a lot of wording to say that requiring knowledge of a subject is not the same as requiring knowledge of a specific contextualized idea, but I wanted to explain the thought process behind it. It is my opinion that "leeching" off of a very specific and personal development of ideas is, at least in most cases, of less worth than developing those ideas yourself before doing something with them, and I think calling this "pretentious" is an accurate usage of the term because you are affecting meaning with another's work rather than your own. I really like this post. People who think MAL can't handle serious discussions should go here. I agree with everything you said. Referencing is a lazy way of informing the audience there is philosophy in the anime. An anime can be deep philosophically without explicitly mentioning the person they borrowed from. However, what if I deliberately set out to make a 'spiritual successor' of some kind? By that, I mean I take a single author or a philosophical work and respond to it. Let's say I want to write a story concerned mainly with Camus' The Rebel so I reference it/quote it. What do you think of this? |
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| why are you allowed to shitpost? free speech. and the fact that you watched a show [or even if you didnt] any and every one is entitled to their opinions. |
TheBrainintheJar said: However, what if I deliberately set out to make a 'spiritual successor' of some kind? By that, I mean I take a single author or a philosophical work and respond to it. Let's say I want to write a story concerned mainly with Camus' The Rebel so I reference it/quote it. What do you think of this? I don't think there's a real need to explicitly reference the other work within your work even in such a case since you will have already made it clear that your work is meant to be a spiritual successor. However, in such cases I suppose it would be more innocuous. I'm unaware of any anime or manga that set out to be a spiritual successor to any of the works Yudina mentioned, though. |
Fasolt said: Well, no. People are entitled to have an opinion. That is not up for debate. What's up for debate is whether they have a respectable opinion, which is a whole argument entirely. If you didn't finish Ulysses, would you have as valid an opinion as a professor who's read it and studied it for thirty years? It's subjective, but 9/10 I would argue the latter would have a much more substantive opinion on it, whether he liked or disliked it.Not having any knowledge of particular authors does not, in my opinion, preclude them from holding an opinion – whatever it may be. Yes, it precludes them from then entering into a more detailed conversation with you about the work; but they can still hold their opinion. But this is a matter where I'm sure I won't win you over, and nor will you me; so I think I'll let it rest here. Fasolt said: Why would you be able to make those sorts of criticisms?As for Joyce: I obviously won't go around giving my thoughts on Finnegan's Wake, for example. And I wouldn't try to address any themes of Ulysses, since not having seen it through to its resolution, I can't perceive the novel as a whole. It's naturally reasonable to limit myself to what little I've experienced of Joyce, but to say that the only worthwhile criticism I can give is that I didn't finish it seems false to me. Surely I can at least speak of Joyce's literary style? Or of his absurdly keen sense of detail? You can surely make it on the first couple of chapters you read, but Joyce's literary style is different all across Ulysses. Literally every chapter is a completely different experiment with the English language. You can't comment on Proteus and expect it to be relevant to Scylla and Charybdis. One chapter is written in the form of a play, another in the form of a newspaper, another one in the form of Catholic catechisms, and another one in completely stream of consciousness. Could you speak of that literary style based on what you've read? "Absurdly keen sense of detail" is a vague and honestly I could point to a multitude of authors (Virginia Woolf, Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, etc.) who possess great erudition and an attention to detail that one might be described as "absurd" (Mann's The Magic Mountain is perfect with his obsessive attention to the number 7). |
| Why are people allowed to? why shouldn't they be? It's really not hard to see past the rather basic level at which some anime make use of those refrences |
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TripleSRank said: TheBrainintheJar said: However, what if I deliberately set out to make a 'spiritual successor' of some kind? By that, I mean I take a single author or a philosophical work and respond to it. Let's say I want to write a story concerned mainly with Camus' The Rebel so I reference it/quote it. What do you think of this? I don't think there's a real need to explicitly reference the other work within your work even in such a case since you will have already made it clear that your work is meant to be a spiritual successor. However, in such cases I suppose it would be more innocuous. I'm unaware of any anime or manga that set out to be a spiritual successor to any of the works Yudina mentioned, though. I can't, currently, think of such a work. I can definitely see how someone can read The Myth of Sisyphus and decide to use it a platform for a story. But then the art doesn't go shotgun with philosophy, but a response to a specific work. |
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