the Children Of Manga, Marx, and Coca-ColaYet, over time Akira did become less a case of cultural shock to its Western fans, and more a form of cultural fortification — it was “a bigger budgeted version of the same stuff [they’d] always been watching”. Rather than existing on the fringes of Western culture as a foreign cultural product, the film not only became assimilated into the West and part of Western (sub)culture but created an expectation that Japanese films would have an accompanying Japanese soundtrack. This is true of 1995’s Ghost in the Shell, but Macross Plus released in 1996 as a dubbed video, did not feature such overtly Japanese music. To a Western consumer who is unfamiliar with anime with a form, Macross Plus would not immediately strike them as a non Western product. This signifies the complex post-war dialogue which exists between the USA and Japan.
[...]
It is important to note, then, that Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and to a lesser extent Wings of Honneamise, have been the most well received anime films in the West — both critically and commercially. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most significant is that their scores lend them a degree of cultural authenticity. They become a sonic signifier for the Japanese nature of the films — distinguishing them from the Japanese animated - and influenced - but American produced films like Transformers, which featured a soundtrack comprising mostly hardrock and early 80s electro. Once then identified as emanating from Japan, the films and their music become exotic erotica for their Western audience. It is as if the ‘uncommercial’ nature of their scores allows these films to succeed within the West; they facilitate an articulation of “national identities by means of the imaginary difference” between the West (in particular America) and Japan (Hosokawa, p. 115).
---
the Children Of Manga, Marx, and Coca-Cola: Anime, Macross Plus and the Hybrid Cultural ProblematicYet another essay written by me. This one is a little older than the previous two I have posted (pre my first honours degree)*. Its an exploration of the cultural-hybrid issues raised by the symbiotic relationship between Japan and the West, specifically the USA, conducted using the focal-point of Manga soundtrack. It was written for a course in World Music and assumes some background knowledge of the pre-existing discourses in said field. Its also a PDF generated from a RTF of the original Appleworks document. This means that the formatting and the footnotes are a little screwy.
I apologise for any typo's and less than perfect sentences contained within.
Later that year, I produced a 'followup' essay discussing the sound design in
Ghost in the Shell. I'll post that shortly too. In recent weeks I've been doing some sound design for work and I forgot how much sound design is an 'uncharted' discipline within film academia.
FilmSound.org is one of the few places on the web (and in books) which dicsuss sound design as a sophisticated art with its own discourse and language. I've been probably living under a rock, but as far as I'm aware the only good theoretical book on sound is Michael Chion's
Audio-Vision. This book I consider essential reading for any director who wants to harness the power of sound to tell their story.
But that's a whole other discussion!
* This is important. Essentially, its a warning that this is a little less 'academic' in style and presentation. While it could become a paper - certainly my lecturer at the time was encouraging me to publish it - it lacks the polish of a proper paper. Polish referring both to the quality of the writing and the quality of the argument. :)
