Proquest Dissertations
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TRANSFORMATIVE BODIES: ANIME, FANDOM, AND CYBORG SUB- CULTURES MADELINE ASHBY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2009 Library and Archives Bibliothdque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-62249-0 Our file Notre r6f4rence ISBN: 978-0-494-62249-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 14-1 Canada ABSTRACT As anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics) continue to swarm theD twenty-first century media landscape, studies of both the artforms and their • consumers have becoming increasingly common. Previous analyses of anime, manga, • and fandom indicate the interdisciplinarity necessary for thoughtful critique, • with contributions from the areas of film theory, feminist analysis, and AsianD studies being the most prominent. This thesis examines anime and fandom from • the perspective of Donna Haraway's cyborg theory. Each chapter highlights an • anime title which disrupts binarist notions of the body, identity, or nation, • and questions where the activities of online fans fit on the spectrum ofD current cyborg politics. The thesis proposes Haraway's cyborg as a new metaphor • for the online fan in the hope that her vision of a liberated subjectivity whose • focus is on affinity rather than identity will open new interpretive pathways • for fan scholars. iv DEDICATION This writing is dedicated to the memory of Emm Townsend. Everything is clearer now Life is just a dream you know That's never ending I'm ascending -Yoko Kanno, "Blue" ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of the program in Interdisciplinary Studies, the tireless work of Ouma Jaipaul-Gill, and my committee: Jennifer Brayton, Wendy Wong, and Suzie Young. Jennifer especially gave me more than my share of her time, books, conversation and guidance. I would also like to thank Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson and everyone at Transformative Works and Cultures for their efforts and their patience with me as a writer. Robin Anne Reid also helped steer me, and the online communities of both the Anime and Manga Research Circle and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts acted as a group mind when I had seemingly lost my own. Frenchy Lunning encouraged me. So did Brian Ruh. Peter Watts watched Evangelion with me. Karl Schroeder watched Avatar: The Last Airbender with me, and then argued with me about race, forcing me to defend and further articulate my opinions. David Nickle listened every day, and Caitlin Sweet motivated me to finish strong. My husband Robert Ashby did all of these things, and more. His intellect is outmatched only by his (continually surprising) patience with and belief in me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction: Girls Who Are Plugged In Some History: Power Lesbians 1 The Vanishing Cyborg: Why Cyborg Theory Remains Relevant in the 21st Century 6 Girls Who Are Plugged In: The Subjects of this Thesis 14 2. The Home Theory Network: A Shopping List of Metaphors 17 A Shopping List of Metaphors 21 The Cyborg in (American) Academic and (Japanese) Popular Culture 26 Conclusion 34 3. Orienting the Otaku: Fandom, Fantasy, and Mash-up Asia 36 The Nation in Translation 37 "This show is not an accurate portrayal...like we care." 42 "Long ago, the Four Nations lived in harmony." 47 Fans Who Go Pro: Cyborgs, Gender-benders, and Cosplayers 53 4. Ownership, Authority, and the Body: Does Anti-Fanfic Sentiment Reflect Post-human Anxiety? 58 The Post-human Body 61 The Post-author Fandom 74 5. Getting Our Bodies Back: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fan Foresight, and Cognitive Narratology 87 My Brother, My Burden: Fullmetal Alchemist and Cyborg Reproduction 89 All Parts in Working Order: Fullmetal Fandom and the Body 100 vii "Be thou for the people": Fan Studies and Other Sciences 107 6. Conclusion: Women on the Integrated Circuit 116 Lost in Yoyogi 116 Surviving the Econopocalypse 121 7. Works Cited 126 viii Introduction: Girls Who Are Plugged In Some History: Power Lesbians In explaining a thesis on anime and fandom, I find that I must first explain two concepts which might be foreign to my readers: anime, and fandom. For while many outsiders understand the concepts in the abstract, they have only a postcard snapshot of both ideas. And just as one cannot understand the fascinating history and complexities of either an entire artform or an entire culture based on a single postcard, one cannot grasp what makes both anime (Japanese animation) and its fandom (the group of people who enjoy it) so special based on the nouns alone. The tendency to lump all anime into one category shares an alarming resemblance to Orientalist thinking in both its lack of subtlety and its assumption that an artform identified with a particular East Asian country (Japan) must therefore indicate the whole of that country's history, culture, and experience. All anime is not the same in the way that all Japanese are the same: Japan is a nation of islands, and anime is a medium of genres. There are anime targeted at women, men, and children of all ages, and there are anime featuring robots, aliens, kittens, high school students, baseball players, doctors, tofu makers, and nuns. Similarly, there is no single face of anime fandom: the old guard who first watched Battleship Yamato at a Los Angeles science 1 fiction convention in 1989 and ushered in the practise of fansubbing is greying, and the continuing popularity of anime and manga as media has spread as far beyond its roots as a medium for Asian immigrants and white pop cosmopolitans. My students are perhaps the best indicator of where anime fandom is going: first-year arts majors who downloaded anime and manga (Japanese comics frequently adapted for use in anime) straight to their in-class laptops and who were black, Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, and Muslim. Nor are my experiences with anime and fandom either full or complete. I came to the party late, years after the first fansubs were so painstakingly made with VHS tapes and careful editing. I attend few fan conventions. I have never worked as a "scanlator" (one who translates unreleased manga into English, then scans it and makes it available for download) or "fansubber" (one who translates unreleased episodes of anime, then re-encodes the file and releases it online for download, often as part of a transnational team of translators and encoders providing the files via torrent services). I have not seen every anime title in existence, nor do I ever wish to. Researching this thesis has led me to chapters of the fandom's history that I never knew existed. In many ways, I am still a student, still a cultural immigrant to a community whose lexicon and textual canon continues to evolve and likely always will. My introduction to anime and anime fandom happened, like that of many other fans, in high school. While fulfilling a graduation requirement, I acted as a teacher's assistant. During class, I found myself partnered with another young woman 2 with whom I had never taken classes before. She was the exact opposite of both my peers and my school's ruling social elite: she wore her hair short and un-styled, dressed in giant t-shirts, men's jeans, and hiking boots every day of the year. She was completely unapologetic about her appearance, at a time when most everyone else (including myself) sought to fit a mould and assume a brand identity. But beneath this exterior was a girl who desperately loved shoujo (girls') anime, who read 'shipper (romantic) fanfiction from a massive binder towed everywhere in her backpack, and who spent her free time during class periods carefully shading in the Sailor Moon colouring books she had scoured local toy stores and thrift shops to find. Over our ten-week period together, she introduced me not only to anime, but to fanfiction and fanart.