Interview with Marco Pellitteri on His Book the Dragon and the Dazzle Models, Strategies, and Identities of Japanese Imagination: a European Perspective (2010)

JICMS 2 (1) pp. 109–117 Intellect Limited 2014

Interview

Pedro Moura University of Lisbon and the Catholic University of Leuven

Interview with Marco Pellitteri on his book The Dragon and the Dazzle Models, Strategies, and Identities of Japanese Imagination: A European Perspective (2010)

This book extends in part some of your previous work. How much do you feel it has achieved in relation to your previous articles and books? My very sincere opinion is that this book, for a European and international readership, is somewhat a general ‘map’ of the whole discourse on anime and manga in Western Europe. At least, this was my objective. With respect to my previous works (previous to 2008, the year of publication of this book

109

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 109 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Pedro Moura

in Italian), I think I have taken considerable leaps in regards to the content, theoretical reflection, and breadth of analysis. The book can be, I believe, very useful for a North American readership as well, since it shows many nuances and aspects of Japanese pop culture in Europe (and, perhaps, something interesting about the US too).

Now, I think that we finally accept the fact – at least, within academia – that it is impossible to have a single volume tackling all the facets of any given subject. However, your book does accomplish some sort of completeness towards its particular subject. Do you hope this book to be adopted by programmes around the world? In other words, when you wrote it in Italian, where you already planning an English translation in order to make it reach a wider audience? The very fact that I have designed such a book is due to my experience with this international debate since the early 90s – and by ‘experience’ I mean, first of all, the fact that I have tried to read, study, keep informed; then, of course, I have also published. I had already written a popular book, in Italian, on Japanese imagination in Italy (Mazinga Nostalgia. Storia, valori e linguaggi della Goldrake-generation/Nostalgia for Mazinger: History, Values, and Languages of the Grendizer-Generation, in 1999, with two revised editions in 2002 and 2008) and a book on animation for parents, teachers and educators (Conoscere l’animazione. Forme, linguaggi e pedagogie del cinema animato per ragazzi/Understanding Animation: Forms, Languages, and Pedagogies of Animated Film for Kids (2004)). I have also written several essays and articles for Italian and foreign journals and books, plus a variety of papers for international conferences. I was aware of the debate and, actually, at a certain point in time I jumped into it. From Italy, the perspective of such debate is very interesting because Italy is the western country where the largest amount of manga has been published and anime broadcast on television; Italy is a pivotal laboratory in the discourse about Japanese pop cultures in western countries. Therefore, after the publication in Italian, I thought I could propose such a book to an international public. Nonetheless my priority, when first writing and assembling it, was to resume all the discourse and the debates in the Italian–European area, for an Italian readership. When I saw that the result might be worth translat- ing (at least, this was my sincere impression), I decided to submit it to the Japan Foundation, in order to ask for funds. They appreciated the book very much and gave my Italian publisher (Tunué) two monetary subsidies, for the translation into English and the printing. Tunué, besides, is currently designing an e-version of the volume, for iPad and similar platforms. My main interest is, at the moment, to get feedback from colleagues and scholars. There are 750 pages that need to be discussed; this book is, as far as I know, an unprec- edented effort and, besides the size of the volume, the variety of the content deserves analysis (both negative and positive). That the volume might be adopted by some professors or lecturers in graduate or undergraduate courses, is my hope. But it is not my task to judge its possible value as a textbook.

You acknowledge that you could have chosen other metaphors, or perhaps, other models. Were there any other alternatives that you thought of, before or after the publishing of your book, that might have lead you into a different direction? I tried to find models that could include most of the themes and issues that I wanted to talk about. With the process of anime and then manga’s arrival in Europe (specifically in Italy, France and Spain), the infant, the machine, and

110

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 110 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Interview with Marco Pellitteri …

mutation were the most inclusive, I believe. But other models and metaphors, or, if I may say so, sub-models and sub-metaphors, where possible. For example the ‘doll’, the ‘spirit’, the ‘warrior’. And there is still that third phase/strategy to analyse, the one which, on my opinion, is about to arrive and that I briefly talk about in the Introduction and in the Conclusions of the book, a phase to which I have not given a name yet, but which I could name, the ‘Octopus’ …

I have the feeling that there is a trend, both in European and North American comics scholarship, to rely mostly on aesthetical principles or on disciplines related to cultural studies. Although there are some studies from a sociological point of view, do you think there is much more to be done, with real hard data, anchoring oneselves in broader social debates and so forth? Definitely. There is a strictly ‘bureaucratic’ reason why most studies on anime and manga still come from literary and cultural studies-related areas: in these academic environments and departments there is more freedom to find new research topics, despite a variety of prejudices, of course. These prejudices are, nevertheless, higher in the domain of sociology. I can say so because I am a sociologist. This situation produces an unbalance from the theoretical and empirical points of view. We know very much about what manga/anime were and are; we know a lot about authors, styles, contents. To sum it up: we know the texts. We are recently beginning, however, to discover the contexts. As a scholar who comes from semiotics and text analysis (in a parallel life I am also a professional graphic designer and my studies were primarily in figurative semiotics, Gestalt theory, aesthetics, history of contemporary arts, advertising, visual communication, etc.), I am very interested in this side of the story; but as a sociologist, I notice that much work has still to be done about fundamental questions such as ‘what people do with manga/anime’. And I don’t mean just the fans (much research is currently ongoing in this field, in Europe and in the Americas), but a more general public. And even if research projects are currently being carried out here and there, most of the empirical techniques are qualitative: this kind of research does produce ‘hard data’. In this sense, many European or American departments of sociology tend to underestimate the importance of the cultural and economic phenomena connected to manga and anime, therefore they give little or no money for such kind of research. There are exceptions, of course, but in any case there are very few ‘pure’ soci- ologists (experts in dealing with statistical software, in designing a question- naire, in selecting a statistically representative sample, in working with the macro-, meso- and micro-dimensions of theory, etc.) who are also experts of anime and manga and willing to do research on these topics. The scenario is fastly changing, however, also thanks to initiatives by the Japan Foundation and some Japanese universities, which are funding research with Japanese and western scholars. I myself, for instance, am part of a research team, known as ‘Manga Network’, started by French political scientist and historian Jean- Marie Bouissou at the Centre d’études et recherches internationales (Ceri) at ‘Sciences-Po’ (Paris) and whose senior researchers are Bouissou, Bernd Dolle- Weinkauff (Frankfurt University, one of the main German experts of comics and children literatures) and me; the pillars of this research are also other scholars, above all our Japanese colleague Yui Kiyomitsu, professor of sociology at Kobe University, and several Ph.D. students, professors, lecturers and independent scholars from several countries – in fact, we are currently extending the scope of the research to other countries of Europe, to Canada

111

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 111 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Pedro Moura

and to Israel. This project is called ‘Japan’s new cultural power’ and focuses on manga readership in several countries. In the first phase of the research we focused on European countries: France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, and we analysed (and are currently analysing) about 1200 questionnaires, thanks to fundings from the Ceri, the Japan Foundation and, recently, the Japanese society for the promotion of science, through the University of Kobe, within another big Japanese project coordinated by the aforementioned Yui and of which we, as ‘Manga Network’, constitute the European team. Further developments and results (and publications) will be soon achieved, thanks to the work of analysis we are currently carrying out between Europe and Japan. In the next years, I believe that some sociology departments in western universities will follow our example. I am aware, for example, of interesting projects in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in England, in France, in Germany, involving not only literary departments but also political science and economics.

Perhaps this is nothing but rephrasing the last question, but do you think that the animosity many people have towards Japanese products – in a way that is very different in relation to, say, the Disney hegemony or the superhero genre – is based on some sort of cultural/aspectual blindness?

There are several reasons, of course, and it is difficult (and I’d say, risky) to generalize, but in all my interviews and research I have clearly enough seen that a strong element in this “animosity” among many people comes from a latent, or apparent, West-centrism, the underskin idea that Japan, seen as ‘Orient’, has to be inferior. The perceived exoticism of Japan generates the idea that whatever Japan does, it only does to please the West (which in a certain measure has been true in the past, but it is not the whole story, though …). Among the several pseudo-proofs of this perceived attitude by Japan towards the West, is, according to those in the West: for example, the idea that the big eyes of anime and manga’s characters are due to the Japanese intention to make these characters seem as much as possible like ‘Caucasian’ characters. Many essays on the historical and aesthetic reasons why the eyes in many manga are like they are, show on the contrary that this pseudo-reason finds no actual ground. I’d dare to say that there is still in many westerners a latent racism toward Asians, in that the very fact that Japanese anime and manga display a very peculiar set of contents, styles, and values, is seen as negative. That is, the otherness is, per se, seen as a negative fact, a matter of discontent, instead than a human resource of dialogue, in order to understand others. Many adults of the past generations, and many older people today (who, actually, are the same adults of twenty years ago, but older and still angry and suspicious …) fail to see the huge cultural opportunity of that which their children and grandchildren have been immersed since anime and manga arrived in the West.

Manga and anime are extremely pervasive today and I agree with you that young people seem to go much more for its stories, ambiance and characters than any other given ‘territory’. You point out to several of the possible reasons, from visual cues such as the kawaii structure to the emotional investment with the characters. Do you want to elaborate on those reasons, and do you think that that stems from a different perspective on education and childrens’ and youngsters’ development from the Japanese perspective?

112

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 112 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Interview with Marco Pellitteri …

I don’t think that, at this moment, I could add much more upon this subject than I did in the book: I’d risk repeating myself. But yes, I agree with you about the fact that many youths, these days, grow up within a social-cultural environment strictly connected to new media and to ‘new’ forms of entertainment, like manga and anime, and for one reason or another their informal education is in a way or another influenced by these cultural forms of expression.

How important ‘the practices of re-elaboration’ of the receptive public are for the (relative, should I add?) success of these phenomena? As I write in the book, a great element of novelty in the modalities of consump- tion of anime and manga (I focus on some western contexts) is in that manga and anime are not only reading and watching, they are practices: they involve, for several reasons, a variety of activities by the fans. They are becoming in certain ways means of distinction, even in the Bourdieu’s meaning; in most cases, a mean of cultural and generational identity. When you say ‘relative’ you are right, we are not talking about a pervasive diffusion of the manga/anime culture among youths, we are still talking of (although wide) communities and subcultures. This does not reduce their objective importance for sociological, anthropological and literary studies.

How far do you think that the influence of this culture goes? And why do you think that this influence, which is the exact way culture functions, becomes so ‘visible’ (in ways that, say, American influence is more ‘invisible’)? Your example is perfect, because American culture’s influence, after a long process which took place since the first half the last century, is today so deep in European popular cultures and societies and youths’ worlds that it has become somewhat ‘invisible’ or, better, totally integrated in our lives. This process is currently ongoing for what concerns Japanese pop culture. We currently can still see the difference between ‘our’ culture and Japanese cultural elements and products. Many youths see this difference as fading out, or as a slight one, and other youths do not see this difference anymore or, better, they could never see it at all, since they were born and are growing up as ‘manga/anime natives’ (I will better explain this concept in the answer to one of the following questions). It might be that in the next decades Japanese pop culture will become so integrated in our European cultures and lives, that we and above all our children and grandchildren won’t be able to establish a clear difference anymore. And this will happen on the basis of a progressive and inexorable process of ‘hybridization’ of cultures. This process is as old as the humankind itself, but upon which theorizations and research in the field of cultural studies, literatures, and international sociology are all fairly recent. Thus, the fact that today Japanese pop cultures are perceived by most Europeans (and by westerners in general) as remarkably ‘different’ is probably due to the dynamics by which they have arrived in western contexts: within the cultural framework of East vs West, westerners see eastern cultures as ‘the Other’ and this makes easier to think of them as different, distinctly separated from western cultures. When this framework, along the years, will have faded away, we won’t be able to see the differences any longer, probably because there will be no difference at all.

In the Conclusion (and throughout the book), you point out to the emergence of a third phase, of a conscious and integrated attraction between Japanese producers

113

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 113 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Pedro Moura

and agents and the western publics, but also on the intertwining of political clout, commercial savvy and creativity. To a certain extent, the western world does that already, through the ideology present in everything, from Lord of the Rings to Iron Man, to more open political/military ideas, such as the new Call of Duty videogame in which one must attempt at Fidel Castro’s life. Do you think that political authorities are noticing more and more that so-called children’s or youth products may be used as indoctrinating tools? In other words, is soft power just a very well-disguised form of hard power? I don’t think that soft power is hard power in disguise. Whenever an author, or a group of authors, or even an anime producer, put some of their ideas into their works, we are in the field of legitimate authorship. Yoshiyuki Tomino did it with Kidô senshi Gundam, Yushinobu Nishizaki did it with Uchû senkan Yamato, Yoshinori Kobayashi did it and does it with his corro- sive political manga, Kaiji Kawaguchi did it with Zipang, Tsugumi Ôba did it with Death Note. We may or may not agree with their ideas, which are often very well readable under the skin of drama and adventure (in the case of Kobayashi, we are anyway in the field of explicit political-ideological provo- cation, not in that of narrative as in the other examples), but every author has the right to express his/her own ideas. Another, totally different case, is when a nation state tries to exploit a cultural product as a ‘national’ brand for political purposes. Here we are in the field of national promotion, or cultural diplomacy, or, in the worst case scenario, of propaganda. In the case of Japan, its apparent soft power (i.e. a cultural power) was acquired without wanting it, or better, without any specific institutional, political design. This cultural power of Japan, achieved thanks to its pop cultures, especially in the West, was formed during historical and commercial concomitancies. Hence the question, now, is – and I posed it at the end of the book, whose first edition, in Italian, was published in 2008 – whether Japanese government intends to use this cultural asset and, if that’s the case, towards which direction. From what I’ve seen, attempts by Japanese institutions (government, Japan Foundation, etc.) to use manga and anime, and other forms of Japanese pop culture, as a national brand are ongoing, and their results fluctuate between good and bad results in terms of effectiveness and visibility. I haven’t seen any organical, systematic attempt to use Japanese pop cultures for political purposes in the West. Another story should perhaps be told about the presence of Japanese cultural diplomacy and industrial-commercial relationships in south-east Asia and Middle East, but I primarily deal with the presence of Japanese pop cultures in Europe, thus I wouldn’t risk to express myself in this field, since I am no expert on these other two scenarios. In any case, several scholars point out that the most explicit attempts by Japanese authorities to exploit this soft power in a way or another are probably doomed to fail (some have also judged these attempts as sloppy), because the strength of anime and manga among youths all over the world is precisely their being extra- institutional, ‘spontaneous’, based on a direct emotional and intellectual relationship between authors, characters and public, without any institutional filters and strainings.

In Chapter IV of Part two you mention the print medium as a ‘classic technology’ and the audio-visual as a ‘more sophisticated technology’. Does this have to do solely with its abilities and form, or do you mean their own specific communication capaci- ties, or even their capacity as mode of expression?

114

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 114 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Interview with Marco Pellitteri …

I meant both in purely technological terms and in linguistic terms. For what concerns the technological level, the technologies of the audio-visual are digital; the printed media are based on older technologies. Also for what concerns the linguistic level, the complexity of audio-visual media outruns that of printed media, but this is a tricky issue, since the complexity of a language depends on many factors, such as the pre-, inter-, and intra-medial competences, the cognitive education, the technological, cultural, and media environment of those whose capability to understand a media tecnhology and its language is to be evaluated. It is a very complex matter. Maybe I will write another 750 page long book on it …

At one point you mention that western children are ‘so influenced by the new [Japanese] codes [as to] incorporate them as their own’. Now, I know what you mean by that and you do explain it thouroughly, but don’t you agree that today, at least in our societies, those codes are actually their own? Or do you think that its cultural (Japanese, that is) basis is still very elusive? Is the understanding of those products illusory or only its ‘Japaneseness’? Do you think that the negotiation and re-elaboration of these products by western kids impedes them to really understand more profound differences or is it a platform to further explore the understanding, and perhaps even bridging, of those differences?

This is a very interesting point, in fact we could apply the categories of ‘migrant’ and ‘native’ to this context as well: there are manga migrants and manga natives. The former are people like you and me, who met manga and anime when we were kids, yet these cultural forms were, at that time, just arrived in the West and our youth culture was fundamentally based on western categories and forms. The latter are today’s kids and teenagers. In recent times, the newest generations meet manga within a cultural context where Japanese comics and animation are becoming (for certain aspects, already are) mainstream culture. Therefore, as you suggest, there is a strong likelihood that they recognize manga and anime as their own culture. This couple of categories intersect with another one, formed by ‘authenticity’ and ‘hybridism’. The whole process by which the Japanese aesthetic and linguistic features of manga and anime were circulated in the West shows a turning point from an idea of Japanese comics and animation seen as ‘naturally’ Japanese, to a set of evidences where we can see how these formerly ‘Japanese’ features have often become parts of ‘western’ cultural forms and products. Of course, there has never been such sharp separation between Japanese and non-Japanese cultural forms (not in an essentialist meaning, anyway), but this is the perception in the eyes of most western observers, and, if the famous Thomas theorem is still valid (and it is …), this misconception has had concrete consequences. Thus, from the framework of authenticity applied to anime and manga we have recently witnessed a progressive mixing of Japanese and western (American, French, German, Italian …) artistry, imagery, editorial formats, filming languages by those western manga/anime migrants – film directors like the Wachowski brothers, animators like Genndy Tartakovsky or Peter Chung, comics artists like Adam Warren or Alessandro Barbucci, a huge number of European and American ‘mangaka’, etc. – who have created works deeply involved with languages and styles which remind us certain features of manga and anime; and among those who benefited/benefit of such works there also were/are many young manga/anime natives, for whom the mix of languages, styles, aesthetics (in a word, this hybridism) is the normal condition.

115

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 115 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Pedro Moura

There would also be very much to discuss about the continuity from the intercultural encounter between Japanese and western cultural forms in the domain of manga and anime to the transformation of this intercultural dimen- sion into a downright transculturality. I hope there will be occasion some- where, soon, in the future.

Am I right to say that at least part of your interest for this particular theme or area of comics and animation is related to your own personal experience as a child? Is there a hint of nostalgia in the choice of subject? It is not by chance that my first book on anime and manga is titled Mazinga Nostalgia. Yes, nostalgia is a component. In a positive meaning: a nostalgia that is not disjointed from an enthusiasm for the new developments of the culture of anime and manga. And anyway, it would be insane to write so many pages, to do so much research, if there weren’t any interest and passion, don’t you agree? In this sense, I think that the best academics, in every field (but I’d say, in every professional domain), are fundamentally geeks and nerds, in the best possible meaning of the words. A scholar of Dante’s Divina Commedia, an expert of Caravaggio’s use of lights and shadows, an archeologist who cata- logues ancient pieces of Greek amphoras, a scholar of the relation between Japanese politics and robot anime of the 1970s, they are all geeks and nerds, in some ways, and their passion for their subject of study, together with a solid education and technical know-how, give them a right equilibrium between love for their study matter and scientific detachment.

At some points you mention the behaviours of children towards their favourite characters, such as the ones described in page 323 on the sounds kids do trying to imitate robot sounds … is that you too? (I did that too, don’t worry!) Proposing that example I was also recalling so many afternoons spent alone or with friends doing exactly those noises, and in the following years, as an adult, I often observed children (i.e. those of my friends) when they play; some dynamics have not changed that much: today’s children repeat those kinds of noises, because the most part of sound effects on television, in cartoons and anime, are the same. There is a positive influence on creativity in the multi- sensory relationship between children and the multiple incarnations of their heroes: television, video games, toys, cards, etc.

Given the fact that I feel a positive, inclusive pleasure from you towards these works, products and creations, would you agree that to enjoy something is helpful to the study of that same thing? Do you think that people who dislike manga and anime, and dismiss them in their entirety, for whatever prejudice, miss out an opportunity to understand a contemporary and – at least in the so-called western world – pervasive phenomenon? I absolutely agree with you. These people miss above all the opportunity to understand their children and the global youth culture. Missing this opportunity is per se a great pity and somewhat a shame from the pedagogical point of view; it is also a signal of dismissing a younger generation as a whole, as if it were formed of stupid persons, as if they were incapable to make the right choices in general, because their tastes are different from those of older people. This kind of generational racism is a problem of our era and it is a more general issue, not regarding only the perceived otherness of the taste related

116

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 116 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM Interview with Marco Pellitteri …

to manga and anime. It is the idea, by older generations, that the youths of today do not want to grow up and are incapable to be mature. *The interview was conducted via e-mail in November 2010.

Contributor details Pedro Moura is a Ph.D. student with a research project on Trauma Studies and Contemporary Alternative Portuguese Comics at the Centro de Estudos Comparatistas/Comparative Studies Centre, Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and the Faculty of Arts of the Catholic University of Leuven. He is also a comics critic, having written for several online Portuguese and international publications (including Quadrado, Vértice, the International Journal of Comic Art, Journal of Artist’s Books, the succoaccido website). He has peer-reviewed articles published in English in Reconstruction. Studies in Contemporary Culture (12: 3, 2012, ‘(In)Securities’) and in Portuguese in Estrema. Revista Interdisciplinar de Humanidades (2012), both available online. He is also active through his own Portuguese-language blog, www.lerbd.blogspot.com, addressing both a wide array of comics and also of comics scholarship. In this area, he has worked as translator, editor, documentarist and curator. He has also been the coordina- tor of the Portuguese Conferences on Comics (www.cbdpt.blogspot.com and www.reirubro.org) since 2011.

Pedro Moura has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

117

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 117 11/29/13 4:32:58 PM intellect www.intellectbooks.com publishers of original thinking

New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

ISSN 1474-2756 | Online ISSN 2040-0578 3 issues per volume | Volume 11, 2013

Aims and Scope New Cinemas provides a platform for scholarship that broadens and elaborates our knowledge of late-twentieth century and contemporary cinematic theory and practice. Welcoming approaches that do not take existing conceptual Editors Stephanie Dennison paradigms and canons as given, it anticipates submissions that refresh our University of Leeds understanding of established bodies of work as well as those which tackle [email protected] practices still in the process of development. Stuart Green Call for Papers University of Leeds [email protected] New Cinemas would like to invite contributions in all areas within this field. This could include: Reviews Editor Duncan Wheeler • Analyses of generic tropes [email protected] • Revisions of existing critical concepts in film studies • Focused explorations of the work of particular directors or cinematographers • Studies of industry-related issues within and across national borders

Intellect is an independent academic publisher of books and journals, to view our catalogue or order our titles visit www.intellectbooks.com or E-mail: [email protected]. Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, UK, BS16 3JG.

JICMS_2.1_Interview_109-117.indd 118 11/29/13 4:32:59 PM