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May. 31st, 2010 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionFor those of you reading on LJ: I've now imported this journal onto Dreamwidth, but will continue to cross-post to LJ (with comments at DW only; more info in the footer at the bottom of this entry).
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World - Edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. This is a decent anthology, I think, as a starting point for academic thinking about fandom (I haven't read much stuff on it myself, and not for years and years); the writing is, for the most part, not too obnoxiously academic, and there's a fair variety of topics covered (with at least a thought towards non-US fandoms). I think what I enjoyed most about this anthology were the pieces about bits of fandom I've never played in (or that my friends haven't really played in either): Chekhov fans, Bach fans, backyard wrestling fans--the latter was particularly fascinating to me. Following from the first two was some interesting discussion on how fans of high culture are treated in fannish studies and by society, and how they view themselves, as compared to fans of pop culture. Other subjects covered that caught my particular interest: a piece examining how music evolved into something one could be a fan of in the nineteenth century in the US; performance among people who play digital (computer or console) games; and the gendering of female sports fans.
Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism - Koichi Iwabuchi. This book critiques the notion that cultural imperialism runs one way: from the West outwards, and that these other nations/people are hapless, passive recipients of Western culture, through examining how Japanese pop culture has spread throughout other parts of Asia. There's a lot of things going on here that I had never thought about before or had no knowledge of: Japanese feelings that they absorb Western pop culture and shape it to Japanese sensibilities (and how this is seen by some Japanese commentators as being superior to what they see as the uncritical consumption of the same by the rest of Asia); imperialistic taints to the export of Japanese pop culture to the rest of Asia; how some viewers in other Asian countries prefer Japanese dramas (for example) to US ones, because they feel slightly foreign but still familiar & attainable/comfortable, whereas US ones often feel off-puttingly alien; how Japanese interest in pop culture from other Asian countries is often from a nostalgic, condescending viewpoint: the other countries hearken back to a simpler, less advanced time in Japanese history--so then when Hong Kong's image changes to seem cosmopolitan and exciting, Japanese viewers are very surprised.
Iwabuchi also talks about how the "cultural odor" of a product (or lack thereof) plays a part in its success abroad. I don't know enough about sociology to know whether he's coined that term, but it seems very not neutral to me in a disturbing way. Also, he talks about how anime is culturally odorless & how the characters don't look Japanese--both sentiments which make my head go a little 'splodey. (& also, it takes about 5 minutes in Western anime fandom to realize that there is a shit ton of exoticism going on precisely because the products are Japanese, which, yeah, coexists with all the racebending/whitewashing stuff where people insist that it's "not Asian" at all & it won't matter if it's changed to be all white people) All in all, a very good companion to some of the ideas from The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader. Bits were a bit heavy on the academicese, but overall not as bad as I feared.
The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self - Julia Cameron. I'm a little embarrassed to say publicly that I've read this book, to be honest! Even though it's gotten a lot of positive attention over the years, something about it still makes me cringe. But that's the thing with any sort of book about creativity and finding your inner artist or whatever: any sort of skepticism can easily be written off as you just being blocked/resisting change. Anyway, this is the second or maybe third time that I've tried to read this; what got me to do it this time was serendipitously stumbling upon it in a library when I wasn't even thinking about it, and also the fact that I've been doing a modified version of morning pages (Cameron's pet exercise) for 47 days, via 750 Words. And I can feel something happening--well, some things have already happened, about which I won't say any more here, but it's been enough for me to at least temporarily put aside my skepticism and read the book. We'll see if I keep doing any of the other stuff.
I did find one thing that's always bothered me about the book does still bug me: the religious stuff. She says you can substitute in flow or creative energy, and fair enough, but in some places that doesn't actually seem to fit very well. Another thing is the emphasis on opening yourself up to all the good stuff the universe ostensibly wants to throw at you. I hate this sort of talk, because it's one step from that to implying (or outright saying) that if bad things happen, it's because you brought it on yourself by either thinking negatively or just not thinking positively enough. I do think that sometimes good things happen for apparently no reason, & that's lovely, but also, hello, bad things also happen for no reason, & that's terrible.
Like other similar books, Cameron does make assumptions about readers having money to spend. She suggests artist's dates where you go for a drive to browse in an antique shop or whatever, saying that things like this cost nothing. Except for the gas/bus fare/etc. And she suggests you spend a small amount, like $5, periodically on things to feed and coddle your inner child/artist. $5 isn't a small amount to everyone. Anyway--all that said, there are some hopeful ideas in here, & because I have seen the morning pages churning up my thoughts, I am willing to at least give the rest of the program a try. Even if I am wincing admitting it!
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World - Edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. This is a decent anthology, I think, as a starting point for academic thinking about fandom (I haven't read much stuff on it myself, and not for years and years); the writing is, for the most part, not too obnoxiously academic, and there's a fair variety of topics covered (with at least a thought towards non-US fandoms). I think what I enjoyed most about this anthology were the pieces about bits of fandom I've never played in (or that my friends haven't really played in either): Chekhov fans, Bach fans, backyard wrestling fans--the latter was particularly fascinating to me. Following from the first two was some interesting discussion on how fans of high culture are treated in fannish studies and by society, and how they view themselves, as compared to fans of pop culture. Other subjects covered that caught my particular interest: a piece examining how music evolved into something one could be a fan of in the nineteenth century in the US; performance among people who play digital (computer or console) games; and the gendering of female sports fans.
Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism - Koichi Iwabuchi. This book critiques the notion that cultural imperialism runs one way: from the West outwards, and that these other nations/people are hapless, passive recipients of Western culture, through examining how Japanese pop culture has spread throughout other parts of Asia. There's a lot of things going on here that I had never thought about before or had no knowledge of: Japanese feelings that they absorb Western pop culture and shape it to Japanese sensibilities (and how this is seen by some Japanese commentators as being superior to what they see as the uncritical consumption of the same by the rest of Asia); imperialistic taints to the export of Japanese pop culture to the rest of Asia; how some viewers in other Asian countries prefer Japanese dramas (for example) to US ones, because they feel slightly foreign but still familiar & attainable/comfortable, whereas US ones often feel off-puttingly alien; how Japanese interest in pop culture from other Asian countries is often from a nostalgic, condescending viewpoint: the other countries hearken back to a simpler, less advanced time in Japanese history--so then when Hong Kong's image changes to seem cosmopolitan and exciting, Japanese viewers are very surprised.
Iwabuchi also talks about how the "cultural odor" of a product (or lack thereof) plays a part in its success abroad. I don't know enough about sociology to know whether he's coined that term, but it seems very not neutral to me in a disturbing way. Also, he talks about how anime is culturally odorless & how the characters don't look Japanese--both sentiments which make my head go a little 'splodey. (& also, it takes about 5 minutes in Western anime fandom to realize that there is a shit ton of exoticism going on precisely because the products are Japanese, which, yeah, coexists with all the racebending/whitewashing stuff where people insist that it's "not Asian" at all & it won't matter if it's changed to be all white people) All in all, a very good companion to some of the ideas from The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader. Bits were a bit heavy on the academicese, but overall not as bad as I feared.
The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self - Julia Cameron. I'm a little embarrassed to say publicly that I've read this book, to be honest! Even though it's gotten a lot of positive attention over the years, something about it still makes me cringe. But that's the thing with any sort of book about creativity and finding your inner artist or whatever: any sort of skepticism can easily be written off as you just being blocked/resisting change. Anyway, this is the second or maybe third time that I've tried to read this; what got me to do it this time was serendipitously stumbling upon it in a library when I wasn't even thinking about it, and also the fact that I've been doing a modified version of morning pages (Cameron's pet exercise) for 47 days, via 750 Words. And I can feel something happening--well, some things have already happened, about which I won't say any more here, but it's been enough for me to at least temporarily put aside my skepticism and read the book. We'll see if I keep doing any of the other stuff.
I did find one thing that's always bothered me about the book does still bug me: the religious stuff. She says you can substitute in flow or creative energy, and fair enough, but in some places that doesn't actually seem to fit very well. Another thing is the emphasis on opening yourself up to all the good stuff the universe ostensibly wants to throw at you. I hate this sort of talk, because it's one step from that to implying (or outright saying) that if bad things happen, it's because you brought it on yourself by either thinking negatively or just not thinking positively enough. I do think that sometimes good things happen for apparently no reason, & that's lovely, but also, hello, bad things also happen for no reason, & that's terrible.
Like other similar books, Cameron does make assumptions about readers having money to spend. She suggests artist's dates where you go for a drive to browse in an antique shop or whatever, saying that things like this cost nothing. Except for the gas/bus fare/etc. And she suggests you spend a small amount, like $5, periodically on things to feed and coddle your inner child/artist. $5 isn't a small amount to everyone. Anyway--all that said, there are some hopeful ideas in here, & because I have seen the morning pages churning up my thoughts, I am willing to at least give the rest of the program a try. Even if I am wincing admitting it!
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Date: 2010-06-01 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 07:15 am (UTC)