Terrence Briggs wrote:
>
>
>>>Do you walk out of Paprika saying "Nah, I'd rather watch Azumanga
>>>Daioh"?
>>
>>...HELL, YES!!! >: 0
>
> The point I'm making is that AD aims far lower on the scale of
> narrative ambition that Paprika. I don't walk out of, say, Akira
> Kurosawa's Ran and say "I'd rather watch Mulan". By the same token, I
> wouldn't demand that Japanese art film newbies stick with lighter,
> less challenging Japanese TV shows, because they didn't like Paprika.
And yet, AD, on a computer-produced TV budget, can give us more
appealing and approachable insight into quirky human character in thirty
seconds through one of Osaka's Deep Thoughts or Sakaki's kitten-chomps,
than Kon can through 90 minutes of cold, impersonal Weird Eye-Popping
Artistic Surrealism with a whole major studio behind him...
But then, you don't see too much laid-back humor in the "art" theatrical
output, anyway.
> You don't advance the art form by spitting on ANY attempt to be
> unconventional, serious, or unconventionally serious. And, to wit,
> you don't advance the art form by dismissing conventionally told grade-
> schooler-friendly stories that are at least well-crafted (i.e., Toy
> Story, Incredibles, Finding Nemo).
And yet we do anyway, like any country that shows them on TV:
We may make fun of people who want to buy "Thundercats" on DVD because
they remembered it as kids, but that's nothing compared to most working
employed Japanese making of fans who still watch Sailor Moon or
Doraemon, or who gush over what a classic that darn Urusei Yatsura is,
coming back for a twenty-five year revival...But, of course, the
Japanese would've thought a Powerpuff Girls Movie would've been a big deal.
Thing is, THEY'VE heard of the local TV product, and they're sick of it
because it didn't have the mystique created by trying to seek it out.
The grass is always greener, etc., and a prophet is always art-snubbed
in his own hometown.
>>I can remember the HMC audience was divided into two distinct types:
>>Those who hadn't heard of Miyazaki or anime before SA, who thought HMC
>>was a "dazzling, inventive fairytale"...
>>And those who HAD heard of Miyazaki before SA, and groaned that Hayao
>>threw the book out the window, assembled the movie out of spare scraps
>>from all his old films, and was pretty much coasting on fumes for this one.
>
> Dude, how many people read that book? How many of them heard of
> Miyazaki? I'm betting you, and about 9 other people.
Even Roger Ebert--and let's underline that phrase for a moment, folks,
EVEN ROGER EBERT, who hadn't been largely familiar with Miyazaki's half
of the arthouse-anime market before Mononoke got the press and Spirited
got the Oscar--complained that Hayao seemed to be missing from the
movie, phoning it in long-distance, and panned that there wasn't much
point to whatever the heck was going on.
...Y'know, something's just *wrong* when that happens. Gotta check the
sparkplugs.
> I'm afraid that Paprika's North American audience will be too small
> educate anyone on anything. You can't start a movement to win the
> hearts of minds of the masses with a Sunday conversation club. "So
> who did the homework last night? Anyone?"
The only bee in my bonnet from the beginning were the theatrical nuts
who thought the hi-profile "Art" product was "all" of anime, and don't
seek out the "junk" being produced for TV, because someone forgot to
tell them it was out there.
(Or, as we always metaphor at this point, "Imagine wondering what
British Televison was, being sat down and forced to watch all of
Masterpiece Theater in its entirety, and never being told that Doctor
Who or Monty Python ever existed.")
And when Sony puts Paprika out with a tagline implying "THIS is Anime",
it don't help the image none, either.
Derek Janssen
ejanss@
comcast.net
