A Malapropos State of Affairs
I find very interesting this phenomenon that I have recently noticed. For one thing, that first sentence was useless, but that’s beside the point. This phenomenon is in regard to a similar streak that runs through two separate yet similar subcultures that I have had my fingers in one way or another, at one time. There is a behaviour exhibited by both punkers and otaku that is most disturbing, indeed; but, first, let me define exactly what I mean by those two labels. The punker is someone who is familiar very deeply with old-school punk and the roots of punk; he knows all about old bands like the Ramones and Dead Kennedys, and, generally, understands what it meant to be punk originally. Nowadays, you can find these people as jaded, scruffy folk sitting in small punk shows and complaining — rightfully, if you ask me — about the state of modern punk music. An otaku, on the other hand, is one who is well-versed in her anime knowledge, being familiar with Miyazaki or Gainax, having seen plenty of the classics like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Mononoke Hime, Wings of Honneamise, Yatsuri Urusei, and so on. You can find plenty of otaku at anime conventions, obviously, and they’re the ones who are most commonly cosplaying, especially as either obscure, fan-favourite characters or characters from brand new shows in Japan. They pull the fan-subs off Torrents or IRC fservs, and, inside their rooms, one can usually find a scattering of manga and a wallscroll or two hanging. These two individual types of persons sound distinctly and far removed from each other, but you would be surprised to find, upon closer inspection, that they exhibit a nearly identical tendency.
Here’s the thing: both subcultures have, as of recent years, become very exposed to the masses through commercialisation and repackaging — nobody is particularly enthralled by this fact, either, and that’s where the similarity begins. I have come to realise that both a punk and an otaku treat their modern scene and those who inhabit them, now, with contempt and disgust. Granted, the anime subculture is much newer to public exposure and mass popularity than the punk scene — this started in the early 1990’s for them — but I can see it forming: the rift between new-school and old-school. However, the reaction to the modern incarnation of their respective subculture is the exact same, otaku or punk, and that is to shun it and, in most cases, ignore it altogether, proclaiming it a “falsehood,” a mockery of the “real” thing.
Yes, indeed, one could very easily hear a jilted, old punk sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, and lamenting the downfall of the punk scene and the uprise of terrible facsimiles of real punk bands — whether or not I agree with this is irrelevant to the current discussion, so I’ll try and leave my opinion out. Most of the malaise is aimed at the people newly coming into the scene on the tail of popular, new bands like New Found Glory or Dashboard Confessionals. Of course, even back when The Offspring and Green Day were just starting to get around, their fans were getting the shaft, too; because, you know, they “sold out” and became “manufactured.” The problem with punk, to give a little bit of insight into the scene, is that it hit a wall in the late 80’s and utterly shattered. Punk as just punk has been dead for years and years, replaced with the shards of the old punk scene: hardcore, post-hardcore, skater-punk, emo, pop-punk, screamo, jazz-punk, metal-punk, whatever they’re calling it all nowadays. There really are scant few actual punk scenes left — D.C. still has one, and Canada, for some reason too, and I’ll refrain from expressing my opinion of the modern-day East Bay — most of what you find are off-shoots of punk rock, widely different with little in common with 70’s and 80’s punk. Dropkick Murphys are not Minor Threat, and Floggin’ Molly are hardly the Gang of Four. It’s all different now, and none of it is just punk-punk; which is what a lot of old punks missed the bus on: that their scene is buried in the rubble. Anyway, a lot of what we have today is pop-punk, which is definitely not punk rock but has its origins rooted in it in an abstract way. However, I’m going on a bit too much about punk music, and I desire to get back to the point at hand: this phenomenon.
Anime, of course, has become popularised by the likes of Dragonball Z, Card Captor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh, and what-have-you. Basically, through the influence of Cartoon Network, a lot of random anime was brought to the foreground of the American animation industry, and thrust into the laps of American youth. Since then, the Warner Brothers Network and Fox and a few others, culminating in the existence of these all-anime network channels I, unfortunately, don’t receive, have been bringing forth a deluge of anime into the American teenage culture. Now, you can hardly show me an American anime fan that didn’t fall into the subculture of otakudom by means of anything outside of some American channel, Sci-Fi or ABC, airing an anime at one time in the distant past. Even us children of the Eighties can remember Iria and Vampire Hunter D being played on the Sci-Fi channel, or Sailor Moon and Dragonball being dubbed and edited — almost beyond recognition — by DiC and screened on ABC or NBC (I forget which exactly). But, it’s much bigger now, with Toonami and Adult Swim, all the anime being thrown around and soaked up by young, impressionable minds — it’s both good and bad in ways, of course. But, an otaku has been around the proverbial block, so they’re long past, and way above (in their eyes), the newcomers and modern anime scene. What you get is the same thing you get with the punks: elitism and exclusivist behaviour.
“Oh, you’re wearing a Green Day shirt? Feh, you don’t know punk. Offspring? What does Offspring have to do with punk?” “Oh, you’re costuming as a Dragonball Z character? Get away from me, you don’t un-der-stand anime, obviously. Pokémon isn’t really anime, stupid.” I’ve heard many variations on those sentiments, over and over. It’s interesting, because, instead of acknowledging bands or shows that they disapprove of as simply bad examples of products of their subculture, punks and otaku dismiss them as nonexistent and blatantly different things. (Is a punker otaku called a putaku, or otakunk? I do-o-o-n’t know.) I’ll give otaku that Pokémon and Dual Masters, things like that, are hardly the same as substantial anime shows, and are definitely made just to sell a product, too; much like what we Americans did with G.I. Joe, the Japanese will market a show for the sole purpose of pushing merchandise. Still, my problem arises from the fact that all it takes to be anime is to be Japanese and to be animated. That’s it, period. There’s no further criteria than to be Japanese and an animation; hence, there is no such thing as anime from other countries, too: they are classified as something other than anime by default. In other words, there is no American anime, to concede a point that is tangentially related to this discussion. Anyway, if something is Japanese and animated, it is anime; I do not want to hear about how Dragonball Z or G Gundam isn’t anime, because it is. I would be damn well sure that something that ran for over a decade in Japan and garnered a humongous popularity and following would be fucking anime, thank you — hey, I don’t think Dragonball Z is the greatest thing ever, but I will give it the credit that it is due. Dragonball Z is mindless action, with little depth to characters or plot, and atrociously slow-paced at times: it is not a terrific show for those who like to think or experience a show about real characters. But, it is anime, you fucktards, it’s just an action/shounen anime that is geared toward young male adolescents, nothing more or less. And what it comes down to is that there is anime made in Japan just for the sake of entertaining children or being bright and colourful and pretty, and not all of it is philosophical or thought-provoking or necessarily interesting to the intellectual or sophisticated, cultured mind. Get over it, folks, because that’s the way it goes.
Not to be leaving punks out of this diatribe, though, let me address something that I find it hard, myself, to say: pop-punk is a legitimate venue for music. It goes without saying that it is not punk rock, but it is still something akin to punk rock, sharing some traits and characteristics, and it should not be looked down upon for just not being punk enough. Yes, when the little pop-punkers parade around with their studded belts and spiked collars and whatever, proclaiming themselves to be punk rock — like Avril Lavigne — they should be beaten around the head and neck, preferably with a crowbar or four-by-four. But, the music itself, bands like Green Day and The Offspring, are doing what they do because they like to do it, and not to live up to some impossible expectations of being the new Sex Pistols or something; bands aren’t required to be anything, and they will always proceed to simply be the bands that they are, no matter what punks or whomever have to say about it. New Found Glory, as much as it pains me to say, has a right to play the music they play; the only decision on the behalf of those who are decidedly not the band is to either listen to or not listen to the music. Don’t like it? Don’t listen to it. I’m not going to get into the effect of radio and mass media on this subject, either, because that’s something for another time.
What it boils down to, here is that all I’m saying is that I’m sick of hearing people call something “false” or “fake” because they don’t like it. Anime is anime, and pop-punk is pop-punk — and punk is punk, which hasn’t been alive for over a decade or so — and that’s the end of the story. Anime that is translated into English and edited is obviously no longer precisely true to the original, yes, but it does not stop being a Japanese animation. And you may not like Dropkick Murphys or Blink 182 — and I honestly don’t — but it doesn’t stop being punk-influenced music because you say so. Both of these subcultures are recoiling in horror for the tiny luminance of the spotlight of the mainstream being shed on them, and they need to stop screaming that they’re melting like the Wicked Witch. (“Oh, what a world! Who would’ve thought a tiny amount of liquid would ever come in contact with me!”) Yes, American corporations are putting anime and punk music into a little box and gift-wrapping it to be fed by the spoonful to the youth of the nation, and that, in and of itself, is an outrage, but I don’t believe the anger for this should be aimed at the products that are being violated. What is an issue there is those who are doing the editing and manufacturing, those who are destroying something beautiful for the sake of marketability and profit. However, again, that is another rant to be ranted elsewhere.
What makes all this wrong, though, is the fact that those who come into anime or punk through the venue of having seen Toonami or Blink 182 tend to get harassed for this fact. They are expected to drop what they originally found appealing like a bad habit, and just like what they are told to like, basically. "Oh? You liked Dragonball Z? Well, here's Naruto, take it and like it and forget you ever saw Dragonball Z, and hide this fact in shame! Shame!" What kind of crap is this? I think it's great if someone discovers anime, no matter what the means be, because it's exposure for something that deserves it. The same for punk music, too; maybe AFI went to shit, but their old stuff is good, and if someone has to listen to the new albums to get to the quality albums before they went all spooky and retarded, then so be it. The point is that nothing is going to chase someone off from a scene like angry scorning for no reason aside from how they found out it existed, and have no previous knowledge that would tell them not to own up to what they saw or heard because it's unacceptable as "real" anime or punk. Fuck that shit, man, can't we all just get along?
This grows very long for one entry, so let me bring this to a close: Dragonball Z does not stop being anime because you don’t like it. And New Found Glory never started being punk, but just because it is not, in fact, punk does not mean it should be hated for that . . . Hate it for being bad music, if you’re going to hate it. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement from the Madman at Work.
Adios.
Here’s the thing: both subcultures have, as of recent years, become very exposed to the masses through commercialisation and repackaging — nobody is particularly enthralled by this fact, either, and that’s where the similarity begins. I have come to realise that both a punk and an otaku treat their modern scene and those who inhabit them, now, with contempt and disgust. Granted, the anime subculture is much newer to public exposure and mass popularity than the punk scene — this started in the early 1990’s for them — but I can see it forming: the rift between new-school and old-school. However, the reaction to the modern incarnation of their respective subculture is the exact same, otaku or punk, and that is to shun it and, in most cases, ignore it altogether, proclaiming it a “falsehood,” a mockery of the “real” thing.
Yes, indeed, one could very easily hear a jilted, old punk sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, and lamenting the downfall of the punk scene and the uprise of terrible facsimiles of real punk bands — whether or not I agree with this is irrelevant to the current discussion, so I’ll try and leave my opinion out. Most of the malaise is aimed at the people newly coming into the scene on the tail of popular, new bands like New Found Glory or Dashboard Confessionals. Of course, even back when The Offspring and Green Day were just starting to get around, their fans were getting the shaft, too; because, you know, they “sold out” and became “manufactured.” The problem with punk, to give a little bit of insight into the scene, is that it hit a wall in the late 80’s and utterly shattered. Punk as just punk has been dead for years and years, replaced with the shards of the old punk scene: hardcore, post-hardcore, skater-punk, emo, pop-punk, screamo, jazz-punk, metal-punk, whatever they’re calling it all nowadays. There really are scant few actual punk scenes left — D.C. still has one, and Canada, for some reason too, and I’ll refrain from expressing my opinion of the modern-day East Bay — most of what you find are off-shoots of punk rock, widely different with little in common with 70’s and 80’s punk. Dropkick Murphys are not Minor Threat, and Floggin’ Molly are hardly the Gang of Four. It’s all different now, and none of it is just punk-punk; which is what a lot of old punks missed the bus on: that their scene is buried in the rubble. Anyway, a lot of what we have today is pop-punk, which is definitely not punk rock but has its origins rooted in it in an abstract way. However, I’m going on a bit too much about punk music, and I desire to get back to the point at hand: this phenomenon.
Anime, of course, has become popularised by the likes of Dragonball Z, Card Captor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh, and what-have-you. Basically, through the influence of Cartoon Network, a lot of random anime was brought to the foreground of the American animation industry, and thrust into the laps of American youth. Since then, the Warner Brothers Network and Fox and a few others, culminating in the existence of these all-anime network channels I, unfortunately, don’t receive, have been bringing forth a deluge of anime into the American teenage culture. Now, you can hardly show me an American anime fan that didn’t fall into the subculture of otakudom by means of anything outside of some American channel, Sci-Fi or ABC, airing an anime at one time in the distant past. Even us children of the Eighties can remember Iria and Vampire Hunter D being played on the Sci-Fi channel, or Sailor Moon and Dragonball being dubbed and edited — almost beyond recognition — by DiC and screened on ABC or NBC (I forget which exactly). But, it’s much bigger now, with Toonami and Adult Swim, all the anime being thrown around and soaked up by young, impressionable minds — it’s both good and bad in ways, of course. But, an otaku has been around the proverbial block, so they’re long past, and way above (in their eyes), the newcomers and modern anime scene. What you get is the same thing you get with the punks: elitism and exclusivist behaviour.
“Oh, you’re wearing a Green Day shirt? Feh, you don’t know punk. Offspring? What does Offspring have to do with punk?” “Oh, you’re costuming as a Dragonball Z character? Get away from me, you don’t un-der-stand anime, obviously. Pokémon isn’t really anime, stupid.” I’ve heard many variations on those sentiments, over and over. It’s interesting, because, instead of acknowledging bands or shows that they disapprove of as simply bad examples of products of their subculture, punks and otaku dismiss them as nonexistent and blatantly different things. (Is a punker otaku called a putaku, or otakunk? I do-o-o-n’t know.) I’ll give otaku that Pokémon and Dual Masters, things like that, are hardly the same as substantial anime shows, and are definitely made just to sell a product, too; much like what we Americans did with G.I. Joe, the Japanese will market a show for the sole purpose of pushing merchandise. Still, my problem arises from the fact that all it takes to be anime is to be Japanese and to be animated. That’s it, period. There’s no further criteria than to be Japanese and an animation; hence, there is no such thing as anime from other countries, too: they are classified as something other than anime by default. In other words, there is no American anime, to concede a point that is tangentially related to this discussion. Anyway, if something is Japanese and animated, it is anime; I do not want to hear about how Dragonball Z or G Gundam isn’t anime, because it is. I would be damn well sure that something that ran for over a decade in Japan and garnered a humongous popularity and following would be fucking anime, thank you — hey, I don’t think Dragonball Z is the greatest thing ever, but I will give it the credit that it is due. Dragonball Z is mindless action, with little depth to characters or plot, and atrociously slow-paced at times: it is not a terrific show for those who like to think or experience a show about real characters. But, it is anime, you fucktards, it’s just an action/shounen anime that is geared toward young male adolescents, nothing more or less. And what it comes down to is that there is anime made in Japan just for the sake of entertaining children or being bright and colourful and pretty, and not all of it is philosophical or thought-provoking or necessarily interesting to the intellectual or sophisticated, cultured mind. Get over it, folks, because that’s the way it goes.
Not to be leaving punks out of this diatribe, though, let me address something that I find it hard, myself, to say: pop-punk is a legitimate venue for music. It goes without saying that it is not punk rock, but it is still something akin to punk rock, sharing some traits and characteristics, and it should not be looked down upon for just not being punk enough. Yes, when the little pop-punkers parade around with their studded belts and spiked collars and whatever, proclaiming themselves to be punk rock — like Avril Lavigne — they should be beaten around the head and neck, preferably with a crowbar or four-by-four. But, the music itself, bands like Green Day and The Offspring, are doing what they do because they like to do it, and not to live up to some impossible expectations of being the new Sex Pistols or something; bands aren’t required to be anything, and they will always proceed to simply be the bands that they are, no matter what punks or whomever have to say about it. New Found Glory, as much as it pains me to say, has a right to play the music they play; the only decision on the behalf of those who are decidedly not the band is to either listen to or not listen to the music. Don’t like it? Don’t listen to it. I’m not going to get into the effect of radio and mass media on this subject, either, because that’s something for another time.
What it boils down to, here is that all I’m saying is that I’m sick of hearing people call something “false” or “fake” because they don’t like it. Anime is anime, and pop-punk is pop-punk — and punk is punk, which hasn’t been alive for over a decade or so — and that’s the end of the story. Anime that is translated into English and edited is obviously no longer precisely true to the original, yes, but it does not stop being a Japanese animation. And you may not like Dropkick Murphys or Blink 182 — and I honestly don’t — but it doesn’t stop being punk-influenced music because you say so. Both of these subcultures are recoiling in horror for the tiny luminance of the spotlight of the mainstream being shed on them, and they need to stop screaming that they’re melting like the Wicked Witch. (“Oh, what a world! Who would’ve thought a tiny amount of liquid would ever come in contact with me!”) Yes, American corporations are putting anime and punk music into a little box and gift-wrapping it to be fed by the spoonful to the youth of the nation, and that, in and of itself, is an outrage, but I don’t believe the anger for this should be aimed at the products that are being violated. What is an issue there is those who are doing the editing and manufacturing, those who are destroying something beautiful for the sake of marketability and profit. However, again, that is another rant to be ranted elsewhere.
What makes all this wrong, though, is the fact that those who come into anime or punk through the venue of having seen Toonami or Blink 182 tend to get harassed for this fact. They are expected to drop what they originally found appealing like a bad habit, and just like what they are told to like, basically. "Oh? You liked Dragonball Z? Well, here's Naruto, take it and like it and forget you ever saw Dragonball Z, and hide this fact in shame! Shame!" What kind of crap is this? I think it's great if someone discovers anime, no matter what the means be, because it's exposure for something that deserves it. The same for punk music, too; maybe AFI went to shit, but their old stuff is good, and if someone has to listen to the new albums to get to the quality albums before they went all spooky and retarded, then so be it. The point is that nothing is going to chase someone off from a scene like angry scorning for no reason aside from how they found out it existed, and have no previous knowledge that would tell them not to own up to what they saw or heard because it's unacceptable as "real" anime or punk. Fuck that shit, man, can't we all just get along?
This grows very long for one entry, so let me bring this to a close: Dragonball Z does not stop being anime because you don’t like it. And New Found Glory never started being punk, but just because it is not, in fact, punk does not mean it should be hated for that . . . Hate it for being bad music, if you’re going to hate it. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement from the Madman at Work.
Adios.
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
2:01 AM
2 Comments:
Oh wow. You actually acknowledged pop-punkers. I know that holding back your bile must've been difficult. You deserve a cookie my friend.
I'm sorry to say that I (along with the ENTIRETY of the goth scene) am just as, if not MORE guilty of this. You've heard me dismiss 'spooky kid' and 'shock rock' music on numerous occasions, and yes, I suppose you're right, and that's not particularly okay. I should really stop.
But I just hate them sooooo much.....
Jordan
Yeah, you've heard me bash pop-punk more than twelve ways to Sunday (no, not Taking Back Sunday, either, that's not what I meant) and I know I didn't keep my distaste for it entirely out of the rant . . . But, you know, it's true, it's still music.
And I would've brought Goth into it, but I am, one, not experienced as part of it and, two, it was long enough already.
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