Criticism

Volume 55 | Issue 1 Article 6

2013 Otaku for Queer Theory and Media Theory Michael Moon Emory University, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism

Recommended Citation Moon, Michael (2013) "Otaku for Queer Theory and Media Theory," Criticism: Vol. 55: Iss. 1, Article 6. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol55/iss1/6 Otaku for Queer In 2004, in the initial phases of try- ing to write a book about Henry Theory and Darger and his little-girl combat- Media Theory ants, I was intrigued to come across Michael Moon an online review of a book on otaku—hardcore fans of “fighting Beautiful Fighting Girl by Saitoˉ girl” manga and anime—by a Japa- Tamaki, translated by J. Keith nese Lacanian in which Darger was 1 Vincent and Dawn Lawson. a central figure. For the next sev- Minneapolis: University of eral years, this one review was all Minnesota Press, 2011. Pp. 213 + I could learn about Tamaki Saitoˉ’s xxv. $60.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. take on Darger and otaku and the figure of the “beautiful fighting girl.” (The review I’d seen was en- titled “Attack of the Phallic Girls.”) Then I heard a couple of years ago that J. Keith Vincent and Dawn Lawson had completed a transla- tion of the full text of Saitoˉ’s book and that it was in press. In his book Beautiful Fighting Girl (first pub- lished in Japanese in 2000), Saitoˉ analyzes the culture and sexuality of otaku, the mostly young male participants in one of the princi- pal thriving consumer-collector- connoisseur subcultures that has formed around manga and anime. With the publication of the pres- ent volume, non-Japanese-­speaking scholars and fans of anime and manga, as well as students of sexu- ality and media, can now form our own responses to Saitoˉ’s account of the meaning and significance of the sexuality of otaku and of the erotic charge of the highly medi- ated “warrior girl” figures who fascinate them. As cotranslator J. Keith Vincent attests in his in- valuable, extensive introduction,

Criticism Winter 2013, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 147–154. ISSN 0011-1589. 147 © 2013 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 148 Michael moon it is “quite a baggy monster of a widespread, and more controver- book” (xii), comprising chapters sial, in the decade since his book that range in kind from psychoana- was first published. lytic theory to interviews with in- And yet, as Vincent points out dividual otaku and analyses of the in his introduction (xiv), sexuality, workings of temporality in anime and specifically an extreme form and manga. But Vincent goes on to of allegedly perverse sexuality, had make a compelling case that, taken been placed at the center of public together, the parts of Saitoˉ’s book debate on otaku over a decade be- still have much to offer readers fore Saitoˉ’s and Azuma’s respective across a broad range of disciplines books first appeared. That occurred and interests, especially readers and in 1989, with the arrest of twenty- practitioners of queer theory. six-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki, Indeed, Beautiful Fighting Girl a Tokyo serial killer, for the mur- has generated as much heated de- der and sexual molestation of four bate as it has largely because of its girls, aged 4–7. Before his arrest, author’s insistence on putting otaku the media had referred to Miyazaki sexual desire and behavior—their as “The Little Girl Murderer,” but, strong emotional and/or erotic at- soon afterwards, the discovery (or tachment to comics-and-cartoon planting—the debate about that depictions of cute girls in and out appears to be unresolved) of anime of battle—at the center of his anal- as well as slasher films in his re- ysis of otaku. Other commenta- portedly vast video collection (over tors have tended to de-emphasize five thousand titles) led to the me- sexuality in their accounts. A book, dia’s rechristening him “The Otaku published in Tokyo in 2001, in re- Murderer.” The notion that watch- sponse to Saitoˉ’s, by Hiroki Azuma, ing too much video—too many another prominent culture critic in slasher and anime films—had di- Japan, has already been published rectly caused Miyazaki to commit in translation by the University of his crimes gave rise to a full-blown Minnesota Press (Otaku: Japan’s moral panic in which the otaku Database Animals, 2009). Azuma’s subculture was “exposed” and de- book foregrounds political and so- monized repeatedly as a breeding cial trauma and recurrent US cul- ground for deranged and violent tural invasions as primary factors pedophiles. in explaining otaku. He also dep- A full decade had already passed recates Saitoˉ’s focus on otaku sexu- since the public outcry against otaku ality and his pioneering attention when Saitoˉ published his account to the kinds of highly networked, of otaku sexuality, and the highly mediated, Internet-pervaded sexu- sensationalized discourse of otaku alities that have only become more as potential killers of little girls On Tamaki’s beautiful fighting girl 149 had at least partly given way to the emblematic to some of their cham- more measured, if still disapprov- pions of a potentially revolutionary ing, image of them, widespread in form of appropriative, communal the media, as obsessive, unproduc- fan culture. tive, unsocialized nerds—a public Saitoˉ’s book labors to create image closer to the one that had some kind of middle ground in prevailed before the publicity sur- which otaku can be seen as being rounding the arrest and trial of the neither budding serial killers nor so-called Otaku Murderer. Inevita- exemplary and successful sub- bly, there had emerged during the verters of (US or global) capitalist same decade (the 1990s) several ver- consumer culture. What otaku rep- sions of a utopian account of otaku resent for Saitoˉ, what makes their that cele­brated the subculture for shared practices deserving of a book- its ability to foster community length analysis, is their ongoing among otherwise marginalized existence as a subculture of which and alienated young people, to the members have, collectively and subvert capitalist consumer culture individually, become proficient fic- by radically reconfiguring it into tionalizers of perverse desires, taking networks of fan-producers, and to one another as their primary audi- resist successfully the hegemony of ence for their performances of their US entertainment media with local strong attraction to the girl-warrior media products. In its extreme ver- heroines of their favorite comics sion, otaku were proclaimed unrec- and animated films. These perfor- ognized heroes of contemporary mances, as Saitoˉ evokes them, sound Japan’s assumption of international highly rhetorical, as well as highly cultural primacy through the ever- stylized. While there is no entry in increasing popularity of manga and the index to Beautiful Fighting Girls anime in many parts of the world. for “dandies” or “dandyism,” nev- Rather than a class of young men ertheless, the public or semipublic who needed to grow up, otaku performances of perversity among became in this telling the advance otaku may have illuminating prece- guard of a new world order in dents in other dandiacal subcultures, which manga and anime were East and West. Saitoˉ’s pronounce- rapidly establishing themselves ment that “the passion of the otaku is as one of the first fully globalized more performative” than that of the entertainment-media products— merely obsessive collector of anime products around which new otaku (19) now seems ripe for the kinds of or otaku-like subcultures were theoretical development enabled by forming in many places far from the work on theories of performa- Japan. Superconsumers to their tivity inaugurated by Judith Butler critics, otaku paradoxically become and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. 150 Michael moon

At the heart of the debate about seems to assume that the reader otaku culture and otaku erotic wants or needs such assurance— culture is a strong disagreement perhaps, as Vincent suggests, in re- between Saitoˉ and Azuma about lation to the preceding moral panic) whether, in engaging in masturba- that, while abundantly kinky in tion in conjunction with reading their “imaginary” sex lives, otaku a manga, watching an anime, or are almost entirely straight “in re- playing a video game about a “girl ality” and tend to have “perfectly warrior,” an otaku is performing a respectable members of the oppo- sexual act. Indeed, as Vincent dis- site sex as their partners.” Otaku, cusses in his introduction, Azuma he argues, are adept at shifting has gone so far as to deny in pub- between desires and their “orien- lic debate (with Saitoˉ and feminist tations” thereto (30); for him, both critic Kotani Mari) that “mastur- kinds of desire partake of real and bating to a picture” is an “actual imaginary elements, and the ability sexual act,” insisting that it is more of the otaku to navigate the psychic “like thumb sucking,” more like and social shoals between these dif- the behavior of an infant or small ferent but related kinds of desires child enacting a compulsion rather makes them a type of notably suc- than that of a postpubescent erotic cessful early adopter of a view and subject enacting a desire. Given an experience of erotic relations in Azuma’s refusal to consider mas- which one engages sexually with turbation as possibly constituting a high level of awareness of the “real sex” of any kind, otaku are for largely fictive qualities of one’s re- him somehow beyond sex or even lations with one’s objects, whether (Francis Fukuyama take note) at they are one’s real-life partner the end of sex. For Saitoˉ, to the con- (or partners) or whatever kind of trary, the practice of masturbating mass-mediated narrative figures to orgasm as one fantasizes about tickle one’s fancy. Vincent points a fictional warrior girl, “get[ting] out the consonance between Saitoˉ’s release with an anime character,” way of thinking about this and is an act of definitive significance; it Sedgwick’s, quoting (xix–xx) the is for him the one thing that distin- latter’s Epistemology of the Closet guishes an otaku from other kinds (1991): “Many people have their of anime enthusiasts (30). richest mental/emotional involve- Saitoˉ, who sometimes exhibits a ment with sexual acts that they pundit’s tendency to construct so- don’t do, or even don’t want to do.”2 ciologies (albeit if only very much While it may seem entirely likely in passing) on the basis of what ap- that there have long been people pears to be only a little anecdotal who were notably (if perhaps only evidence, assures the reader (and to themselves) adept at commuting On Tamaki’s beautiful fighting girl 151 between real and imaginary erotic And what about those relatively desires and behaviors, what seems understudied (at least in this book) different about otaku for Saitoˉ is female otaku? Saitoˉ offers no sub- that this formerly relatively private stantive consideration of them and or even secret (if also widespread) their practices; in his introduction, practice has in the past few decades Vincent informs us that the author become an increasingly mass-me- has written about female otaku diated social role with an unprec- elsewhere, and that what Saitoˉ edented amount of public visibility. seems to mean by “female otaku” Saitoˉ denies that the female are female fans of yaoi, another partners of his (perverse) straight- huge subset of manga that, in con- male otaku are in any sense “sub- trast with girl-warrior narratives, stitutes” for the heroines of anime features beautiful schoolboys fall- that the otaku may (also?) adore ing in love and (in many cases) hav- and desire, and opines, “My per- ing sex with each other—narratives sonal impression is that marriage that are mostly written and drawn to another otaku of the opposite sex by women authors for a largely fe- tends to be seen as the perfect end- male audience. (Gay men my age ing to life as an otaku” (30). Vin- might have found yaoi disturbing cent defends Saitoˉ from the charge but fascinating when we were ado- of heteronormativity by arguing lescents, but made do with Archie that while “Saitoˉ may describe the comics instead.)3 In one of his few real-life sexuality of the otaku he direct references to female otaku, knows as tending toward the het- Saitoˉ mentions not only yaoi but erosexual and the vanilla, . . . he also shotakon, a manga and anime never prescribes that it be so” (xx). genre that features prepubescent For Vincent, what gives Saitoˉ’s or pubescent boys in romantic and work its considerable interest to sometimes erotic contexts (29). queer theorists is its theoretical Is the interested reader to as- tendency neither to privilege nor sume that Saitoˉ understands female pathologize the otaku’s enjoyment otaku desire as simply a mirror of “the reality-producing charge image of the male desire he ana- [that] . . . the beautiful fighting girl lyzes so elaborately in this book? sparks across the gap between” his That reader will for the most part outward performance of sexual have to look elsewhere for answers “normality” (xx) and his sustained to such questions. And indeed, be- commitment to both his per- sides making clear the reasons for verse imaginary pleasures and the the importance of this book to stu- ­media-saturated collective context dents of queer theory (and media that enables and sustains these theory) of several stripes, Vincent’s pleasures. introduction does an excellent job 152 Michael moon of providing useful information for in analyzing the dynamics of moé. readers about some places where Saitoˉ’s somewhat sketchy account they may continue to pursue ques- of the etiology of moé, based on a tions about fictiveness, desire, gen- somewhat ungrounded version der, and sexuality beyond Beautiful of trauma theory, sits awkwardly Fighting Girl. alongside his otherwise generally Besides questions of performa- upbeat, win-win account of otaku tivity, another potentially fruitful sexuality and its anime-heroine ob- area for queer theory–related re- jects. Script theory’s central concern search into the erotics of mass-me- with the construction of scenes, and diated narrative and “real” fictive their linkage and amplification by desire would be that of affect theory intense emotions, pleasurable and as theorized by Silvan Tomkins and otherwise, make it a potentially revisited for queer theory by Sedg- productive place for analysts of per- wick and Adam Frank in their 1995 verse, fetishistic desires and behav- collection Shame and Its Sisters. Espe- iors to explore.4 cially pertinent to research on affect Of all Saitoˉ’s objects of study in is Beautiful Fighting Girl’s recurrent Beautiful Fighting Girls, it is perhaps and intriguing, if somewhat incon- Darger and his work for whom the clusive, discussions of the particular academic and theoretical contexts configuration of otaku affect known have undergone the most change in Japanese as moé, which is the feel- in the decade since the book’s first ing that otaku are said to have in appearance in Japanese. Saitoˉ’s con- response to what they experience as tention that the Chicago janitor- the powerful and pleasurable attrac- artist was merely neurotic (76), not tiveness of their favorite character or the potential or actual psychopath type of character. Again, proponents that pioneering outsider-art scholar of moé run the gamut from those John M. MacGregor for some time who embrace and avow what they considered him to be, was certainly experience as the sexual turn-on a position worth staking out in the element of the extreme cuteness of first years of Darger’s coming to their fantasy media object to those public hypervisibility in the late who deny that plays any part in 1990s, but the polarization around their devotion to the character(s) the question of whether he was they love. Tomkins’s script theory neurotic or psychotic has ceased to of affect, a late-career resumption define the limits of debate about of his fascination with the practice him and his art for some time now. of playwriting as an undergraduate Readers expecting Saitoˉ to analyze at the University of Pennsylvania, the sexuality of Darger and his work may provide some useful concep- with the kind of elaborate attention tual tools for students interested to detail and nuance that he pays to On Tamaki’s beautiful fighting girl 153 the erotics of otaku in the rest of the stimulating of these might include, book may be disappointed. besides Vincent’s introduction to Yet even though Saito’s book Beautiful Fighting Girl, Kevin Ohi’s appears to have little to add to the recent article on Robinson Devor’s debate about the impact of Darger’s film Zoo (2007) and the entry on sexuality on his work, it does in its “Titillation” in Ian Bogost’s How to consideration of his work suggest Do Things with Videogames (2011).5 the first of many kinds of connec- Although not all parts of Saito’s tions that students, scholars, and book are likely to please every fans may be interested in making reader who takes an interest in it, between otaku and other kinds of from anime fan to queer theorist graphic narrative. The point de- to the student of media and media- serves emphasis that this book is of enabled sexualities, readers have interest to students not only of sex- reason to be grateful to Vincent ualities but also of fictive narrative and Lawson for their painstaking media of a number of kinds. In- translation and annotation of this deed, the imbrication of these two text and to the University of Min- ranges of phenomena with each nesota Press for adding this volume other has, arguably, intensified to to the rich mix of works (such as a remarkable degree in the decade this and other volumes on manga since Saitoˉ’s book first appeared. and anime, as well as the excellent Who foresaw the proliferation of anime-and-manga “fan arts” jour- mobile porn downloads specially nal Mechademia) that they continue designed for viewing on smart- to make available to anglophone phones (rhetorical question)? The readers. degree to which sexualities of many kinds are now resolutely attached Michael Moon, professor of American Studies to and in some part products of and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Emory University, is the author of Darger’s the Internet and Internet-enabled Resources (Duke University Press, 2012), A social collectivities (antisocial as Small Boy and Others: Imitation and Ini- watching porn on your smartphone tiation in American Culture from Henry James to Andy Warhol (Duke University in a crowded restaurant may seem Press, 1998), and Disseminating Whitman: to be) is a circumstance for which Corporeality and Revision in Leaves of Saitoˉ probably deserves credit as Grass (Harvard University Press, 1991), an early anticipator. Readers ex- and is the editor of the second edition of the Norton Critical Leaves of Grass (2002). cited by Vincent’s reintroduction of Saitoˉ’s work on otaku sexuality into a more recent theoretical moment Notes may be interested in other current takes on networked sexualities. 1. William O. Gardner, “Attack of the A short list of some of the most Phallic Girls,” Science Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 485–89, accessed 12 March 154 Michael moon

2011, http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/ Frank provide excerpts from Tom- review_essays/gardner88.htm. kins’s writings on script theory (in Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins 2. eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology Reader [Durham, NC: Duke University of the Closet (Berkeley: University of Press, 1995], 179–95), as does Virginia California Press, 1991), 25. Demos in her selection of Tomkins’s 3. Keith Vincent has written about yaoi writings (Exploring Affect [Cambridge: and gay-male readers of the 1990s in Cambridge University Press, 1995], “A Japanese Electra and Her Queer 303–410). Progeny,” Mechademia 2 (2007): 64–82. 5. Kevin Ohi, “The Consummation of the 4. silvan Tomkins’s own account of his Swallow’s Wings: A Zoo Story,” South script theory is to be found in chapters Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 3 (2011): 32–41 of his Affect Imagery Conscious- 715–43; and Ian Bogost, “Titillation,” ness, vol. 3: The Negative Affects: Anger How to Do Things with Videogames and Fear (New York: Springer, 1991). (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Press, 2011), 103–9.