Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 213

It's very similar to how video games are marketed and often still viewed as toys. It's why a lot of people today still struggle to call video games a form of art as well as a form of entertainment because a lot of people just think of buying them for their kids during the holidays and seeing the ads for Mario or Pokemon and believing that's what all of gaming is like. It's kind of fascinating how it can teeter on both sides.

The idea that we have Nintendo out here with the Switch and Mario Kart and then Sony with The Last Of Us which spawned a critical darling of a TV series is crazy. It's easy to only view it from one angle if you're not on the inside.

 

i get where you're coming from with this and can agree that there are multifaceted thematic and animatic differences between different works typically classified as anime, but again, the reason it's typically considered a genre by mass audiences has a lot to do with how sociological and market forces have effectively deemed it a genre, the same way that there's variation in the superhero and sci-fi genres, but it all still gets lumped together as a genre (even if everyone is in agreement that anime can also act as a medium, whereas superhero and sci-fi mediums don't exist).

the whole point of social constructionism is that despite the fact that something might have an intrinsic characteristic to it, society still imbues that object or concept with its own meaning and understanding, and just because you're cognizant that this thing has a socially constructed meaning doesn't mean that suddenly everyone is exempt from recognizing that that meaning has a substantive impact on everyday life.

an example of this is money: we all know that it takes on a variety of physical and digital forms. our financial and political systems (at least in the US) have effectively deemed that a green piece of paper with Benjamin Franklin's face and the number 100 on it several times somehow constitutes a $100 bill. they imbued that paper with meaning, and we buy into it that that's what that means in our monetary system - the same way we understand that someone assigned similar values to digital money. just because we recognize that money is a social construct doesn't mean that we're exempt from participating in that socially-constructed system.

as this relates to anime, it's true that anime is a medium, and i don't think everyone here is disagreeing with that. the point is that anime as a "genre" is a socially constructed idea with meaning that society largely subscribes to. regardless of our personal feelings about what does and doesn't constitute a genre, the mere fact that the masses recognize it as such ascribes anime with that value. when people go to watch anime on a larger, generally-focused streaming service (aside from something like Crunchyroll) or purchase DVDs from a big box store (assuming they still exist), you still participate in the social construction of anime as a genre by heading to the anime section to find what you want to watch.

would we like this to change down the line? sure. it'd be cool to see something like Grave of the Fireflies get classified as primarily a drama film instead of an anime film. and the great thing about social constructs is that they're always susceptible to change. it all depends on what forces will sway public opinion to not lump anime into its own catchall category when comparing it to other genres. but powers beyond any one individual - cultural, market, social, artistic, etc. - have resulted in it being classified as such. anime as a thematic characterization still means something to the masses at the end of the day, even though it's also a stylistic characterization.

tl;dr: sorry for the long post. this is the last thing i'll say about this conversation. this isn't a criticism levied at anyone, just an observation about how this all works from a sociological standpoint. it is a medium but can't currently be separated from mass conceptions of it also being a genre.

 

Michael busted out the thesis but that was a very informative read

 

i'm getting a PhD in this so i have a lot to say, haha

 

I do think it's changing pretty quickly actually. Anime becoming more mainstream in the last fifteen years especially with companies like Netflix, Hulu and more pushing them has really helped public perception. I think social media for all its flaws has helped as well. People can connect over anime from all over the world and share their thoughts and opinions on stuff like Tiktok which allows for more thoughtful discussions on the medium on a mainstream platform (granted there are a lot of dumb opinions and memes on there as well).

Manga is America is definitely helping too. The fact that book stores have entire manga sections and some of them even have them sorted and separated by genre is huge.

It's always been so frustrating to me that certain genres or mediums have been thought of as greater or better than others. When I see award shows putting comedies and musicals in the same category and ultimately doing both a disservice is irritating. A lot of this is how businesses want to control the narrative of media and art in general.

Guillermo Del Toro pushing hard on the "animation is a medium, not a genre" train is very nice to see from a big name in Hollywood.

 

Also I would love to see the whiplash on someone watching something like the first episode of Food Wars and then Serial Experiments Lain or Your Lie in April.

It would be very interesting if all someone knows is stuff like Dragonball Z.

 

Absolutely one of the greatest movies I've ever seen and I can't envision it getting any less relevant in the future. Also has one of my shortlist for greatest movie quotes.

 

Michael said everything that needs to be said about anime Im just going off about semantics and genre.

When I referenced semantics I mean as a branch of lingusitcs and logic concerned with meaning because I purposely wanted to stay with in the semantics (language) of genre.
Semantics allows a subject to have mulitple defintions depending on the context its being used in. These defintions do not need to account for each other to function but a discussion needs to stay with in one.

Semantics let a subject be defined by how it functions within the field. A parent has a legal, social, and biological definition. Arguing that adoptive parents cant attend parent teacher meetings because they dont meet the biological definition is as pointless as trying to get them included into genetic studies.

If im doing a cooking show discussing the best vegetables in a stir fry im using culiary semantics and chosing vegetables based on those definitons, I dont want Niel Degrass Tyson telling me that capsicum cant be discussed because its not biologically a vegetable.

You can criticize it as a medium but that is changing the semantics.
Anime can (and is, see Michael's post) defined through the lense of film genre and discussed as part of that field using its language. I was discussing anime as a film genre agaisnt other film genres in the language of film genre because that is the context in which I interact with it.

Anime's diversity does not exclude it from being a genre because the sematics of genre are extremely flexiable and already account for that. The vast topic of French cinema vs American can be discussed meaningfully using the language of genre.

 

I still want to know what anime sports are. I don't understand how that would be possible.

 

What do you mean? Anime sports as in a sport about or using anime or an anime about sports like Haikyu!!?

 

Do people have competitions on creating anime? That sounds super intense.

 

@xapplexpiex said anime sports. I don't think that means a fictional show or film about sports, but I don't understand how you would have an anime sport either.

 

Haha I get what you're saying. Anime sports is definitely a particularly specific way of phrasing it.

 

Anime Sports band name called it

 

Lupe Fiasco had a band called Japanese Cartoon

 

Friday the 13th is a bore. Most of my exposure to the Jason series is from Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason, which are pretty much comedies or at least aware of their own silliness. It is supposed to be scary, but in the post-Scream era you already know the beats; it is like watching a music biopic after seeing Walk Hard. People always talk about the fact that the killer in the first film is actually Mrs. Voorhees, but it is not a shock within the film because they never suggested it was Jason in the first place; it is an interesting bit of trivia only after it became a huge franchise with so much iconography around it.

It is never wise to try to academically critique a childrens' film, but The Parent Trap is a really ugly movie. Coming out at a time when divorce was becoming more normalized, what are we telling children when we pretend that all they need is an impossibly choreographed romantic getaway to get their parents back together? Maybe a film where the kids fail and learn how their parents were different people who had grown apart and trying again leads to more toxic behavior from both of them, but that probably isn't very kid friendly. However, it isn't like childrens' movies are completely absent of heavy themes. Adults tend to underestimate what children can handle and their ability to find meaning in narratives that are not so pleasant or clear-cut.

 

Friday the 13th can feel slow now in comparison to modern slashers, but it's so cozy and great to watch with friends who haven't seen it before. Strip-Monopoly? Kevin Bacon? That final jump scare? It's a classic for the reason, and that's before the franchise even finds its enduring iconography.

 

Haikyu is about a boys volleyball team, Slam Dunk is baseball, hajime mo ippo is boxing, etc. I phrased it wrong I guess.

 

Strip Monopoly doesn't make any sense. If you don't pay me when you land on my hotel, how am I going to re-invest in my properties?

 

typical complaint from a non-Strip Monopoly player.

 

Paid in cash and panties duh.

 

Jason appearing in the lake right at the end of the original Friday 13th is an incredibly effective moment of horror - by far the most genuinely scary moment in all of the Friday 13th films (not that scares is necessarily what the other films are going for).

 

The last time I watched this was with a group of first-timers and that scare genuinely got a pop form people who weren't expecting it. It was an awesome experience.

I find that slashers and horror in general, especially unpretentious horror, is a very communal genre.

 

I saw it in the cinema a little while ago (on Friday 13th of course...), and even in a room full of people that had seen the film, and knew exactly what was coming, it got big visible jumps from the whole cinema, and then a collective laugh afterwards, which was great.