Children @ Play, Part IV: Cultural Systems and Social Choices

A quarter century ago, before I gave up the notion of writing a dissertation about Hello Kitty, I sat down at my IBM Selectric to compose my doctoral qualifying exams. One late spring day in upstate New York, I tackled the exam in the sociology of art and culture. Details have grown hazy, but I believe the question concerned differences between art called “high-brow,” “middle-brow” and “low-brow.” High-brow meant stuff like Tosca, and The Simpsons is contemporary low-brow. Nobody was really clear about the middle, but Josh Groban would probably fit the bill.

I had no more to say about brow art then, than I do now, and any variant of the two preceding sentences seemed insufficiently academic for the occasion. Not knowing what else to do, I rewrote the question and answered it. No one objected.

CULTURAL SYSTEMS

Being enamored with French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I shaped my question with his notion of cultural capital in mind. Being a good French intellectual, Bourdieu had been shaping a new understanding of patterns of inheritance. The inheritances that most interested him were the intellectual and artistic legacies of the children of educators, clergy, scholars and arts professionals–basically, people like himself, whom we now call knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers seldom amass fortunes. Compared to industrialists and high financiers, their economic capital is limited. Short of a sudden, rabid demand for IBM Selectrics, it will remain limited. The bequests of knowledge workers are the intangibles of their professional lives: intellectual sophistication and artistic appreciation. In the august culture that is France, these intangibles are matters of consequence.

Intellectual sophistication and artistic appreciation are what Bourdieu meant by cultural capital. Cultural capital as a love of Bach is what I acquired from Great-uncle Auggie, who was a teacher–unsurprisingly for Bourdieu. Instead of high brow art, I typed pages about a cultural elite system, which traded in the currency of cultural capital.

That left two brows. Whatever one may think of either man, Matt Groening and Josh Groban have more in common than the first three letters of their last names. They’re making fortunes, respectively, by drawing cartoons and crooning tunes for the American public at large. Compared to the Rockefellers or the Gateses, their fortunes may be small, but relative to faculty salaries at Towson University, they look damn good. I decided to lump low and middle brows together under the umbrella notion of a cultural industry system. Although perks like fame draw some, in the final instance, cultural industry systems trade in the bottom line: economic capital.

I was out of brows, and I had a dichotomy of elites and industries. I dislike dichotomies (think: good/bad, win/lose). I needed a third cultural system. I turned to my number two sociologist of art, Howard Becker (no family relation). There’s much to commend Becker. He’s a jazz pianist; he lives in San Francisco; he travels in France. In the tradition of American pragmatism, Becker promotes clear communication and derides sociological jargon.

Becker developed the concept of an art world, “the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for” (1982). Don’t be misled by a first impression of verbosity; after a couple readings, the definition shines as a gem of concise writing.

Becker also wrote about folk art as the transmission of expressive community traditions. In common usage, we think of an activity such as quilting as a folk art, but Becker includes humble rituals like singing Happy Birthday. It is not necessary to have sung the role of Floria Tosca at La Scala to croak out a passable Happy Birthday.

I had my third option: the cultural community system. Nowdays, I believe that cultural communities primarily exchange social capital, or the access to reciprocity within social networks. Sane folks don’t expect a recording contract or a gig with the Met just for singing Happy Birthday to a great-uncle. We do hope to be feted in turn when our birthdays come around. I answered my question and passed the qualifying exams.

SOCIAL CHOICES

I also soon forgot about the formalism of cultural systems. It came back to me recently, when I was trying to make sense my social calendar last July. There they were, one after another: a cultural elite system (The Sidney Silverman Young Artists), a cultural industry system (Otakon 2009) and a cultural community system (The Baltimore County 4-H Fair). In case you skipped the earlier installments, I’ll rank the three events on a scale of one to five Trophies for Global Betterment.

The Sidney Silverman Young Artists: 2.5 trophies for global betterment
Otakon 2009: 1 trophy for global betterment
The Baltimore County 4-H Fair: 4 trophies for global betterment

Ethics and activities co-exist in dynamic tension, particularly for individuals in formative stages of the life course. What emerging adults do today shapes who they become tomorrow. As a corollary, the activities that parents and other caring adults promote now influence the choices that mature adults will be making ten or twenty years in the future. For these reasons, I encourage all to consider the consequences of our social actions. Here’s a multiple-choice question to ponder.

Who do you want [your child/ren] to become?

A. a member of an elite that preserves its privileged status
B. a member of an industry that encourages wasteful spending
C. a member of a community that transmits core values to the next generation
D. none of the above

Feel free to compose your own question, if you have trouble with mine. You’ll be part of a fine tradition in critical thinking.

cheers,
dkb

p.s. If you a need a gently used IBM Selectric, don’t hesitate to call.

Read Full Post »

Children @ Play, Part II: The Family Sleigh, Zenki and Other Magical Things

This past July marked the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing. My Great-uncle Auggie didn’t lived to watch Armstrong and Aldrin make their famous moonwalk, but had he been with us, he would have been slow to comment. Auggie was a “wait and see” man. He was the sort who said, “Let’s wait and see if the horseless carriage amounts to anything.” When it did, Auggie bought his first automobile. More cars and trucks, too, followed with the decades, but my great-uncle never trusted his vehicles to run properly during Wisconsin winters. He kept the old sleigh ready and waiting in the stable. How magical was that sleigh in my childhood!

Every so often, I regret not having been able to tell Auggie about my first adventures in Japan, five years after the lunar landing. We never had a chance to speak about my homestay family. I never got to tell him about Megumi, my o-imoto-san (little sister), or about the cartoons that she and I watched before dinner on week nights.

Actually, Megumi and I didn’t watch cartoons as much as interact in response to them. We giggled nervously until Majingā Zetto finally triumphed over the forces of evil (for that episode). We cheered when Luna (no relation to Sailor Moon’s cat) helped Tetsuya repel the latest invading space monster. The marvels of Japanese animation became a vehicle for integrating into my host family, and into a strange society.

With her vast five-year old vocabulary, Megumi taught me many words and more than a bit about her culture. As it has been for subsequent generations of young Americans with a passion for Japan, the magic of anime was accessible to me when other avenues were closed. Great-uncle Auggie would have approved. A native speaker of German who taught school in English, he would have relished my learning a second language from mechas like Mazinger Z and cyborgs such as Casshan.

When I was struggling to memorize those barbarous katakana, I had no idea that anime were as new to my homestay sister as to me. Japanese popular culture of the 1970s was a wave that engulfed me. Struggling to swim rather than sink, I had neither the opportunity nor inclination to explore its history. Although I adored anime, I didn’t stop to ponder whether J-Pop would someday swell into a tsunami and inundate the US marketplace.

Like Auggie buying motor cars but keeping the trustworthy sleigh, I’ve adopted a pragmatic approach to the japanization of America. In the 1980s, I reluctantly abandoned the notion of conducting doctoral research on the social-psychological significance of Hello Kitty. In the 1990’s, I avoided saccharine Sailor Moon, despite the path-breaking yuri between Haruka and Michiru. In those years I preferred working out to videos of Zenki, possibly, the most undervalued anime of all time. Since the millennium, I’ve been loyally reading Nana, the best-selling shojo manga by Yazawa Ai. I’ve also been observing the attraction of J-Pop for the teen clients who come to Becker Academic for assistance with college selection.

CON AND CORP

On the Saturday in July before the 4-H fair, I took my interest in anime and manga to the next level. I convinced my husband, Kit, to accompany me downtown to the Convention Center for the fifteenth annual Otakon. The word Otakon is a clever contraction of the Japanese slang, otaku, an avid fan, and convention. Why Baltimore is home to America’s second largest gathering of East Asian pop culture fanatics is more a matter of happenstance than design.

However, the conference has become big business for the city. Last year, for example, 26,262 Otaku booked over 4,500 hotel rooms and contributed more than $27 million to the local economy. Attendance this summer exceeded last by 88 dues-paying members, so it’s safe to assume a continuing if flattening impact.

Otakon isn’t only an entertaining enterprise; it is also the annual meeting of Otakorp, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization. Unlike professional groups such as the Association of Asian Studies, which have non-member rates for annual meetings, it is necessary to join Otakorp in order to attend the conference. Kit and I joined at the door for an eye-popping $65.00 apiece, but better planners can save ten dollars by signing up early online.

The stated aim of Otakorp, Inc. is to use “Asian popular culture to increase understanding of Asian culture.” The synecdoche was probably lost on the average Otaku–the official member as distinct from the lower-case “otaku,” the fan who may or may not join up. From what I could glean, most youthful Otaku just wanted to attend a few workshops, watch anime, listen to the live music, take in the fan art and enjoy their cosplay (costumed role play).

Because we didn’t have three days to devote to Otakon and, frankly, because we are decades older than the target demographic, Kit and I only sampled the activities. We arrived after the Saturday morning game show, and we left before the evening masquerade. We didn’t dress in costume. (I considered going as Grandma Saki but knew that Kit would never agree to appear as Abbot Jukai.) By not booking a room at the adjoining Hilton, we missed the after-party scene. More geezer than geek, we opted out of the most festive of festivities. Our choices, no doubt, colored our impressions of the con.

We were left with panels, workshops, and anime screenings. Our other activities included standing in long lines for over-priced food, browsing the booths of artist/vendors and watching people wander the hallways, escalators and other public spaces. Keeping track of events was as easy as looking at the digital activities board. This was fortunate, because the font size of the pocket guide was indecipherable by middle-aged eyes.

PANELS GALORE

Later, when I could read the pocket guide, I was impressed. The number of panels was daunting–more than 150 from Friday morning until Sunday noon. Their variety was astonishing. To take examples with “anime” in the title, offerings ranged from the silly (“Anime’s Craziest Deaths”) to the serious (“Anime Lost in Translation”) and the outright studious (“Anime and Manga Studies”). There were panels to acculturate the neophyte (“Cover Your Bases” summarizing key anime) and to inspire the insolvent (“Cosplay Solutions for Any Budget”).

Aspiring artists could learn to create digital comics, make anime at home, build gundam models, compose manga or write fan fiction. Hard core otaku (lower case) could discuss their favorite series with others who shared their passion, be that for Evangelion, Negima or Full Metal Alchemist. (Alas, no Zenki.) For ordinary guys, there were panels on Japanese role play games (JRPG); for extraordinary girls, there were fashion tips on becoming American Lolitas.

The con organizers took seriously their mission to promote understanding of other aspects of Asian culture. A couple panels discussed Japanese music. (I hope they mentioned Sawada Kenji.) One panel covered the traditional board game, go. Another introduced the making of oishii (yummy) snacks.

In the realms of anime and manga fandom, facility in Japanese language seems to confer a singular cachet. The linguistic aspirant could choose between panels of the real (“Maryland Japanese and English Language Club”) and the virtual (“Intro to Learning Japanese for Otaku” emphasized online resources). Neither option conveyed the systematic drudgery that I escaped by watching cartoons with my homestay sister, but Otakon isn’t really about second language acquisition.

The prevailing dilettante cum ninja fantasy was nowhere more evident than in the sessions for surviving Tokyo. With titles like “Gaijin in Japan: A Real Taste of Tokyo,” “Budget Tokyo Travel,” and “Host Club Culture in Japan,” they approximated live-action Lonely Planet Guides geared to young, inexperienced students. Flying to Tokyo with little more preparation than an Otakon workshop would be as sensible as selling the family sleigh during a blizzard. However, Otakon isn’t really about intercultural communication.

Because I believed then that Otakon was about enjoying East Asian popular culture, I had one regret. I regretted not attending the panel, “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.” I regretted missing the “history hilarity and essential survival tips.” Without attending, I won’t forget that knives don’t require reloading. All by itself, the print description in the pocket guide offered creepy, good fun (once I put on my reading glasses).

RANDOM SELECTIONS

We missed the zombie apocalypse, but we did manage the next best thing. We attended the panel on Nishizaki Yoshinobu. The “Nish,” as the three panelists called him, is the pervert who came to fame producing Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and stayed in the spotlight for sketchy, extra-textual reasons. He’s a genuine spooky character, and the panelists succeeded in conveying his genius and his weirdness.

Because the Nishizaki session was astute and entertaining, Kit and I decided to follow one panelist–whose name I have regrettably forgotten–to his next presentation. The man and his new set of co-presenters had agreed to explain how to “Review Anime the Right Way.” They didn’t explain reviewing, right or wrong. They talked about the tactics needed to get and keep their jobs as reviewers. (Having a job and doing it well are not the same.)

One caustic panelist launched a tirade on the stupidity of numerical rankings. He insisted that his reviews were worth reading in their entirety, and for this reason he refused to assign grades, stars, starships or other icons to anime under review. Whoever the man was, he certainly was not David Denby. The guy should have appreciated that his readership isn’t the demographic of The New Yorker.

During the Q&A, members of the audience asked heartfelt questions with a voracious intensity that surprised me. Expectation filled the room, as most of the fifty-odd people waited for the panelists to drop a hint, provide a clue, or offer up a talisman for opening the gates to the magical kingdom of profitable, freelance anime criticism. Unsurprising to us geezers, their hunger went unfed.

For the price of my membership dues, this panel was a bad buy. I’d rate it one star out of five. The panelists’ self-aggrandizing annoyed me. Their poor preparation annoyed me. The dumb configuration of the chairs annoyed me. The rude dude yelling in my ear instead of his cell phone annoyed me. The voracious audience filled me with pity, which, in turn, annoyed me. (Pity isn’t playful.)

That voracious hunger was palpable again in the fan art exhibit. For the uninformed, Wikipedia defines fan art (or fanart, no space) as being “based on a character, costume, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist. The term…is usually used to refer to art derived from visual media such as comics, movies or video games.” The antecedent of fan art is the dojinshi of Japan, the wicked pop parodies by underground artists, some of which have acquired cult status and considerable monetary value.

In the fan art exhibit, you could forget budget cosplay. Expensively decked-out Otaku in their teens and early twenties circled tables laden with visual works. Most were reproductions of pricer, original fan art. Older, on average, by a decade, the fan artists sat serenely behind their wares, seldom speaking to the kids across the tables, to the kids staring hungrily into the charmed inner circle of J-pop fandom.

As a geezer, I’m more accustomed to crafts shows at the Maryland State Fairgrounds than to fan art on the con circuit. Over at the cow palace, folks meander up and down the aisles, peruse the wares, eat a greasy snack, and maybe buy a trinket for a favorite great-uncle. With settled lives and stable jobs, shoppers at craft fairs have no interest in becoming itinerant vendors of pottery or jewelry. In sharp contrast, many Otaku on the lower level of the convention center were impressed, if not awed by fan artists. More than one Otakorp member clearly aspired to the status of exhibitor. I heard a telling exchange between a bearded young man and a cat-eared young woman.

M: I hear (X) is making a living off his art.

W: He’s making money, but not enough to live on. His girlfriend’s paying the rent.

M: Yeah, okay, but can you imagine…getting here? [Gestures to the vendor in front of them.]

W: We’ll get here. We will. Just believe and keep working.

BEYOND THE CON

The beginnings of anime were modest. The meteoric rise of space operas like Mazinger Z and Space Battleship Yamato came after the fact of Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the moon. Anime took off about the time that my little homestay sister was teaching me useful words. For the last thirty-five years, I’ve been consuming J-pop stuff. I’ve never felt compelled to reach a conclusion about the enterprise as a whole, anymore than I’ve thought it necessary to make a pronouncement about American pop culture. This is my wait-and-see legacy from Great-uncle Auggie.

Like Auggie holding on to his sleigh, I appreciate the tried and true. I keep of copy of Royall Tyler’s translation of Tale of Genji (2001), Shikibu Murasaki’s eleventh century epic, on my nightstand. I’m confident about the quality of this rendering of a classic that has endured for a thousand years.

Again, like Auggie buying new cars and trucks, I function in the present. After Otakon, I purchased the seventeenth English volume of Nana, published by Shojo Beat. My Nanas are stacked neatly in numerical order, in a corner. Someday I may make a place for them on a bookcase. I’ll have to wait and see whether I truly treasure Yawaza’s opus or merely have a passing infatuation with her linework.

Without assessing the entirety of popular Japanese culture, I have reached a conclusion about Otakon. It is not positive. I regret this fact, because on the Saturday in July when I cajoled Kit into driving downtown, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would disapprove of anything as light-hearted as I imagined Otakon to be.

No doubt, thousands of cosplaying Otaku had fun frolicking at the masquerade. However, fun and frolic weren’t what I found. I found a disturbingly high level of need, of voraciousness. Far too many Otaku are spending thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars in their search for insider status, for subcultural identity, and for an income stream that is, for the vast majority, a mirage.

Otakon isn’t really about having a good time. The non-profit Otakorp, Inc. isn’t really about increasing understanding of Asian culture. Actually, the con and its parent corporation are a strategic global business appearing as entertaining, intercultural exchange. They sustain a select circle of American entrepreneurs, at the expense of “members” whom they only seem to amuse. In a semblance of fanspeak, Otakon/Otakorp, Inc. is a zombie apocalypse masquerading as a Halloween party for kids who’ve decided they’re too old to trick or treat.

Ironically, in the vast culturally imperialistic venture that is contemporary Japanese export production, the inner circle of Otakon/Otakorp, Inc., is positioned precariously at the margin. Baltimore may care if Otakon decides to move elsewhere. Tokyo wouldn’t blink if the corporation and its annual convention were vaporized tomorrow.

Skip the zombie apocalypse. Find another venue for exploring J-pop. For a genuine Japanese adventure, consider investing in a study abroad program. College students literally have dozens of opportunities to live and learn throughout East Asia, and several reputable companies run summer programs for teens. My favorite for secondary students is Experiment in International Living, the organization which pioneered the practice of homestays in 1932.

This past summer, as Otakon came and went from Baltimore, Experiment in International Living offered a four-week program on the northern Japanese island of Hokkadio. It was open to American secondary students, who had successfully completed one year of language training. The Hokkaido program combined homestays in Japanese families with classes at a local anime school. I can’t imagine a better immersion experience for the serious otaku.

cheering authenticity,
dkb

Read Full Post »