Japanese animation, also known as anime, has recently had a wide exposure in the U.S., but without much reference to it as anime or from the nation of its origin. For instance, Pokemon, a popular animated children’s program that is actually a Japanese anime (albeit voice-dubbed in English for U.S. audiences), is not recognized for its origins. Inevitably, at least bits and pieces, if not full scale themes of Japanese culture are inserted into the series, yet it draws most attention from U.S. adults, particularly the mainstream media and conservative parents groups, in terms of its perceived references to magic and the occult (Logos Resource Website; Probe Website). Many of these groups’ complaints address how television programming and card games associated with Pokemon teach children how to summon magical forces in opposition to their Christian beliefs, and to dismiss adult authority as unimportant and even undesirable.
These have been the latest charges against the teachings of anime programming made by those outside of anime fandom. Besides criticism of violence appearing in what has been traditionally a children’s format of entertainment in the U.S., particularly noticeable complaints have focused attention on the perceived heightened violence and sexuality in anime, especially that found in a misogynist context (Pointon, 1997). Such anime, known also as “hentai” (the Japanese word for “pervert”), have been cited for teaching young adolescent males violent attitudes towards women. The complaints have been particularly numerous when they address a notorious sub-genre of anime known as “tentacle rape” in which alien male aggressors violently rape human females with tentacles as opposed to actual penises (Napier, 2001; Pointon, 1997).
Such criticisms have invariably shaped how many in the U.S. perceive anime, particularly in terms of its “foreignness” in both being from Japan and in having events within a cartoon medium (e.g. violence, sexuality, supernatural forces) that U.S. animators have largely not included in their own works. Even if an anime program has conventional elements in it that are normally associated with U.S. animation, the style of anime drawing, which keeps to the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints of the 16th through 19th centuries that allow for a great latitude in the viewer’s interpretation (Napier, 2001; Levi, 1996), adds to the sense of “foreignness” that many in the U.S. associate with anime. Coupled with the fact that much anime is shown with the original Japanese dialogue intact (albeit subtitled in English) makes animation from Japan that much more mysterious and intimidating for many U.S. viewers.
As opposed to the Japanese, who regard anime as part of their mainstream popular culture, most of those living in the U.S. who are aware of anime consider it to be the focal point of a subculture. The misunderstandings of anime by the U.S. mainstream have not diminished the heartfelt devotion that U.S. anime fan subculture feels towards it, however. For at least the past 20 years, anime has been well-received in the United States to an extent that a vibrant and diverse subculture devoted to it began, evolved, and continues to grow almost exponentially in terms of anime video sales, anime convention attendance, and anime’s near-ubiquitous presence on the Internet and World Wide Web with over 5 million sites related to anime available (Google Website, Website Search). In fact, as this essay argues, the repudiation of anime by the U.S. cultural mainstream has allowed anime fan subculture to more successfully appropriate and transform it for its own cultural purposes. There is little fear of transgressing borders of what this form of entertainment “should” and “should not” be since the U.S. mainstream has already decreed participation in the subculture to be deviant to an extent. This deviance is especially defined in terms of grown adults faithfully watching animated programs frequently and making them the foundation of a subculture to begin with. In the process of social interaction within this subculture, which simultaneously conforms to and rejects mainstream U.S. cultural expectations of how one should consume entertainment, norms of how anime and even the Japanese culture that created it should be appreciated become standardized. Eventually, both newcomers to the subculture and more experienced fans are taught these norms and how to practice them in a process of informal education about anime and Japanese popular culture in general. This essay will show how informal education is key to the survival and growth of U.S. anime fan subculture by first discussing the history and current state of the subculture, then the concepts associated with informal education, and finally by discussing the process of informal education within the subculture.
U.S. Anime Fan Subculture’s History and Current State of Affairs
Up to this writing, the history of anime fan subculture in the United States has remained largely undocumented by any historian. What written records exist can be found mainly in the archives of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.anime and its subgroups such as rec.arts.anime.creative or rec.arts.anime.misc, where discussions of topics about and related to anime took place. What is known from an investigation of online records is that discussion of anime by its U.S. fans on the Internet took place as far back as the early 1980s (Google Website, Usenet Archive), a time when the Internet was heavily dominated by users from the military, research universities, and skilled computer enthusiasts. These enthusiasts were mostly white middle-class males from, if not the U.S., then Western developed nations, who, not surprisingly, also dominated U.S. anime fandom during this period (Napier, 2001). Not coincidentally, these fans also comprised a heavy percentage of members of the older U.S. science fiction and fantasy fan communities. Their overlap in membership in different fandoms contributed heavily to the growth of early anime fandom in the U.S. by their including anime-related articles in Xeroxed science fiction newsletters and showing anime (particularly that which featured giant mecha robots and spaceship battles) at science fiction and fantasy conventions (Napier, 2001). In other words, there already existed a previous base of general media fandom to build upon so that another sub-fandom of anime fan subculture could originate. The heavy links between science fiction and fantasy, anime, and the Internet continues as of this writing, though the demographics of anime fandom have started to move away from domination by middle-class white males to other groups such as Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who are not necessarily science fiction or fantasy fans.
Besides occurring as an offshoot of science fiction and fantasy fandom, the available literature has placed the origins of anime fandom in the 1980s as the result of both student exchange programs between Japan and the United States and the increasing technological capacities of home entertainment. At a time when economic competition between the two nations obsessed policy makers and corporate leaders on both sides of the Pacific, there was a greater perceived impetus for U.S. students to travel to Japan to learn how to conduct business with the Japanese. In the process of living in Japan, these students began to collect both manga (the inexpensive and widely available comic books that much anime is based upon in terms of the manga’s storyline) and anime (Levi, 1996). Thanks to the then recent invention of the videocassette, it was then possible to bring anime back to the U.S. that had been released as either a television broadcast or an OAV (original animated video that was released directly to home video). These students would then return to the U.S. and show their manga and anime to their friends since the stories and animation were so unique in terms of theme and style, respectively. From there, an interest in these art forms carried anime fandom into its still perpetual growth.
However, from my own informal correspondence with persons who have been involved with anime fandom in the U.S. since the 1970s, the explanation of how anime began in the 1980s seemed to be inaccurate, or at least incomplete. Indeed, anime fandom had been smaller in the 1970s, yet it had originated from another relationship between Japan and the United States outside of business – the U.S. military. Even before the intense economic rivalry between the U.S. and Japan had gained its legendary intensity, U.S. armed personnel stationed in Japan had collected manga in their spare time, and a few even managed to obtain filmstrips and Betamax cassettes of anime programs. What’s more, manga shops were established and anime programming had been showing in Hawai’i, in no small part due to the large Japanese and Japanese-American population receptive to these materials, which in turn gave U.S. military personnel stationed there a steady supply of these forms of Japanese popular culture. Upon their discharge, these persons would take these materials back to both their home communities and to the fan conventions discussed earlier to share their passion for these art forms. Though former servicepersons took their anime and manga back to most points of the United States, the continuation of anime fandom’s early growth was centered in the West Coast region. This was, and to an extent still is where more anime and manga can be purchased in urban locales populated by Japanese and Japanese-American shopkeepers and Japanese ex-patriot anime and manga enthusiasts than most anywhere else in the U.S.
Technology had contributed to the origins of U.S. anime fandom through Betamax tapes, videocassettes and Xerox copiers. It also allowed the subculture to engage in its still continuous growth. Before the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1989, Usenet and BBS’s (bulletin board systems) were the primary means of posting static information, particularly text, on the Internet. The rec.arts.anime Usenet newsgroup discussed earlier had begun in 1988 (Google Website, Usenet Archive), when most in the U.S. were not aware that the Internet even existed. It had contributed to a growth in online anime fandom through the discussion of anime related topics such as the details of a certain anime series, the Japanese culture present in anime, and how one can effectively share their love of the medium of anime with the uninitiated without “turning them off” to it. Yet, awareness of anime by U.S. computer users, particularly youth who have traditionally been more comfortable with using computers for everyday activities, was largely absent into the early 1990s since most of their devices were not wired for Internet access. This changed with both the rise of home Internet use beginning in the mid-1990s, and the enrollment of a large number of young university students who had by then both access to and the willingness to use high-speed Internet connections. Not coincidentally, many collegiate anime clubs that currently exist were started to make these aficionados’ love of anime into a social and educational phenomenon for themselves and those unfamiliar with anime. Groups who had traditionally used the Internet to conduct social interaction within the fan subculture were in an excellent position to capitalize on their expertise and to contribute to the growth of anime fan subculture that coincided with the growth of U.S. Internet usage in general (Evans, Website).
Amid the continuing massive growth in anime fan subculture as of this writing, I have observed some sociocultural norms and conflicts related to those norms that have existed in U.S. anime fandom during my almost two years as a highly active participant. The most contentious and dominant issue in fandom, the “sub vs. dub” debate, merits a detailed explanation and analysis. Anime has been imported into the United States either in the original Japanese language with English subtitles, or with English-speaking actors voicing the anime characters with the original Japanese language cut out, a process known as “dubbing”. Most English-speaking people in the U.S. who watch anime prefer to watch anime dubbed into English since it is less taxing to read subtitles, and more familiar to listen to spoken English as opposed to spoken Japanese. However, the deeply-held preference of those who consider anime fandom to be a focal point of their daily lives and social interaction is for subtitled anime. They consider subtitled anime to be a “purer” form (Levi, 1996) that has been uncorrupted by what they consider to be bad, corny, and unrealistic English voice acting that decimates the nature of their beloved anime characters.
Levi is correct in her assertion that dubbed anime is winning over subtitled anime in terms of overall video sales (1996). However, most anime viewers in the U.S. are casual viewers who purchase perhaps one or two videocassettes or DVD’s, and belong to no organized fandom whatsoever. Within U.S. anime fandom, however, subtitled anime remains the overwhelmingly preferred format, and dissention from this preference by those who have been in the subculture enough to forge substantial social links, who should “know better”, is seldom tolerated. This conflict has come to an interesting new level with the introduction of DVD technology, which allows a viewer to instantly select either the subtitled or dubbed version of the anime. At a recent anime fan convention I attended, where a screening of a DVD of an anime program took place, the audience composed largely of more experienced anime fans overwhelmingly expressed their preference for showing it subtitled when given a choice. At other conventions where dubbed anime had been shown, I heard many of the viewers ridicule the voice acting, groan during parts when the voice acting seemed dramatically over the top, and sometimes saw them leave en masse before the showing even began. This condition has also consistently been the case for anime clubs where I have frequented as an attendee.
At fan conventions and elsewhere that passionate anime fans congregate, I have witnessed the frequent use of Japanese colloquialisms and expressions by native English speakers (e.g. konnichiwa for greetings, kawaii for a pleased expression that something or someone is cute, and baka for calling someone foolish). Among anime fans in college, a high percentage of them I have encountered are majoring in the Japanese language. Fans of manga often purchase them with the characters speaking in Japanese as opposed to English, with the expectation that they will translate the manga at a later date – often when they say that they will have learned Japanese by then. This indicates that not only do more involved anime fans prefer subtitles for their avoidance of the use of “corny” English voice acting, but also to hear spoken Japanese and see written hiranga, katakana, and kanji characters. Through anime, these fans are attempting to absorb an artifact of Japanese culture chiefly through its language, albeit with the aid of subtitles, a language they feel more superiorly conveys an anime character’s emotions, intentions and nature as a person, albeit an animated fictitious one.
Answers have varied in answering the question of whether or not involved anime fans consider Japanese culture to be superior to their own in terms of its ability to entertain, and why or why not it has been the case. Susan Pointon’s misguided analysis points to anime as a medium more saturated with violence and sex than U.S. cartoons and can therefore more successfully appeal to the prurient interests of late adolescent males (1997). Annalee Newitz describes the reception of anime in the U.S. among male enthusiasts (according to her, the only anime enthusiasts) as a denial of the “political correctness” they find in U.S. culture in favor of a less “politically correct” Japanese culture that puts women in a de-eroticized yet subservient position reminiscent of the televised situation comedies of the 1950s. In the process, male anime fans in the U.S. seek to be assimilated into Japanese culture, which for them is superior to the hypersexualized and egalitarian U.S. culture that they are rejecting (1994). Antonia Levi takes an opposing optimistic view that growing anime fandom is a sign of a greater acceptance of multiculturalism in the U.S. by youth undirected by policy makers or schools to embrace a Japanese artifact of culture into their daily lives (1996). Susan Napier on the other hand sees anime less in terms of its ability to convey Japanese culture as its capacity to operate within a new global sphere that transcends national boundaries while at the same time encompassing cultural ideas from inside and outside of Japan – most notably and unsurprisingly, the U.S (2001). To speak of globally-influenced anime solely in terms of its Japanese origins would, for her, be missing the point of why it attracts viewers outside of Japan. None of these explanations, however, touches upon anime fan subculture as an educational enterprise. It is through an observation of an educational process that occurs within anime fan subculture that one can better answer the question of how involved anime fans construct Japanese popular culture’s ability to entertain, inform, and be made relevant to their experiences as members of a subculture.
Informal Education and Popular Culture
As opposed to the formal institutions of schools and universities and the nonformal entities such as Boy Scouts USA organized specifically to conduct teaching and learning, informal education occurs largely with no intention of conducting an educational process per se. Despite the lack of formal or nonformal educational intentionality, the process of teaching and learning, in which ideas, norms and practices (i.e. culture) are intentionally transmitted and transmuted, occurs within most settings in which human interaction, and therefore informal education, takes place.
The context in which informal education takes place is usually defined as everyday settings where people in social networks such as the family and peer groups conduct the routine business of life with one another’s guidance and imparted wisdom. Despite the connotations that “everyday settings” do little to encourage dynamic learning, the fact that such social networks are seldom self-contained groups of people means that the knowledge that is transmitted from one person to the other is continuously influenced and changed by that group’s own contacts with other groups and their cultures (Carrithers, 1992).
As opposed to the simple rote training that chimps undergo in order to amass skills for the benefit of the trainer, human learning in even informal contexts involves the learner’s approaching towards an “aesthetic standard” without promise of an immediate reward to the teacher (Carrithers, 1992). This is a term that Michael Carrithers borrows from David Premac, yet he himself is ill to concretely define it for fear of diminishing its flexibility, yet defines it as the result of judgment and imagination (1992). Only a process in which teachers attempt to bring learners towards this flexible “aesthetic standard” that itself changes over time as the result of social change can be called pedagogy (Carrithers, 1992).
Examples of informal learning in situational contexts in the literature are numerous; two of them will be described here that share similarities with anime fan subculture. The first comes from a discussion of learning within the context of the deviant behavior of marijuana smoking. Marijuana users do not simply obtain a “high” from their smoking of the plant in the company of other smokers. Rather, their enjoyment of marijuana is a socially-constructed phenomenon that is guided by more experienced marijuana users who know how more novice smokers can reach the recognizable aesthetic standard of the high (Becker 1991; Carrithers, 1992). The novices learn from the more experienced users through two ways; the direct instruction from experienced users and the indirect instruction through the novices’ observations of how the experienced users are smoking the plant (Becker 1991). This social interaction serves as an impetus for the novice users to avoid embarrassment for not reaching a high as their peers are doing while at the same time comparing themselves with more experienced users in terms of whether or not a high has been achieved (Becker 1991). From the more advanced users’ standpoint, they must continually reinforce the novices’ attempts to get high by reassuring them that what they may perceive as an unpleasant sensation is a normal part of the process of becoming a seasoned marijuana smoker (Becker 1991).
Though anime fan subculture is not criminally deviant as marijuana-using subculture is, it is still ascribed a status by the wider culture as the “Other” which is stigmatizing, albeit on culturally-defined levels different from that of its marijuana subculture counterpart. Further, anime fans do not simply enjoy anime in the company of others, but rather novice fans are taught the “proper” way in which to both enjoy anime and use it in their day-to-day experiences by those who have been in the fan subculture longer. Part of this process is guiding new fans through a cultural terrain they may perceive as uncomfortably foreign but which must be redefined as normal and even pleasurable.
U.S. anime fan subculture’s status as the Other is peculiar given its geographically situated location. In Japan, anime is considered a part of mainstream popular culture. For anime fans located in the United States, they are engaged in the interaction with a popular culture that is not their own in terms of mainstream accessibility. Yet, they rely upon it in similar ways as those who engage with the mainstream popular culture of their own country. The schoolchildren in Jan Nespor’s study used popular culture not as an object of contemplation, but rather as a means of giving their own socially-constructed experiences and identities a boundary within which to explore the possibilities of whom they can be and how to make sense of those experiences (in press). Much of their interaction with popular culture heavily depended upon their position within other infrastructures, such as school and the family. In many cases, their type and frequency of use of popular culture reflected how much their other infrastructures allowed them access to operate in the day-to-day sphere (Nespor, in press). Nespor suggests that the degree to which schoolchildren feel the need to localize distant experiences in popular culture to address their own circumstances is commensurate with how far other geographically-situated infrastructures in those schoolchildren’s lives have failed to provide them with access to the outside world of peer and other social networks (in press).
Nespor’s ideas on how popular culture is used by individuals to define themselves and their relations to others have important ramifications, yet fall short in other areas when applied to anime fan subculture. The geographic situation of anime fan subculture in the U.S. determines how involved fans use anime to a great extent, as opposed to if they were living in Japan where it is considered part of mainstream culture. Much of the culture presented in anime is used by involved U.S. viewers to evaluate themselves in relation to others both inside and outside of the fan subculture. However, unlike the schoolchildren in Nespor’s study, the large majority of anime fans actively involved in the subculture are adolescents and older persons who actively contemplate on the substance of the popular culture of which they are devotees. Further, unlike the infrastructures discussed in Nespor which determined how the schoolchildren would use popular culture, the fan subculture itself is an infrastructure which determines to some extent how its members interact with one another and with those in infrastructures outside of anime fandom. The specifics of how my analysis of these two cases of informal education is acted upon in anime fandom are discussed in my own observations within anime fandom that focus on the sub vs. dub debate discussed earlier.
Where Anime Fan Subculture and Informal Education Intersect: Subbing vs. Dubbing
For most anime enthusiasts that I have come across at anime club meetings, anime fan conventions, online bulletin boards, email lists and the World Wide Web, the overriding preference, as I stated earlier, is for subtitled anime. However, because anime fandom has been growing rapidly over the past five years, the subculture has attracted an influx of persons who have watched only anime dubbed in English. This is because a novice anime fan’s early exposure to the medium is often through Cartoon Network’s showings of dubbed anime and rentals of dubbed anime at outlets such as Blockbuster Video designed for the distribution of entertainment easily accessible by a mass English-speaking audience. In many cases, a novice fan rents an anime DVD, yet opts to watch the program dubbed when an option for spoken Japanese with subtitles is available.
More experienced members of U.S. anime fan subculture oriented towards subtitled anime are largely aware either through anecdotes or personal experience of this “deficiency” of anime fan novices to properly enjoy anime as it was meant to be seen. Though the aesthetic standard (Carrithers, 1992) of enjoying anime subtitled need not be approached through the learning any sort of specialized skill, many experienced fans blame the “laziness” of novices refusing to put forth the effort to read subtitles as part of the problem. Instead, the problem is with attitude as opposed to competency, and it requires a pedagogy that can bring the attitudes of novices in line with that of the prevailing attitudes of fandom towards the Japanese language in anime.
Nespor’s study of schoolchildren’s use of popular culture allows some explanation of the motivations behind using pedagogy to change novice anime fans’ attitudes towards language use in anime. Anime fans with greater experience in fandom have had more opportunities to use anime programs as a boundary for determining their own position against others within and outside of fandom. Most recognize their identity as one of the Others as defined by mainstream U.S. society. Their use of the Japanese language in anime is as a mark of distinction from traditional English-speaking U.S. animation, which is usually considered children’s fare by both anime fans and non-fans, as well as from other English speakers outside of fandom they define as unwilling to broaden their cultural horizons and are therefore worthy of disassociation (Nespor, in press). Adherence to the aesthetic standard (Carrithers, 1992) of subtitles is also a means of establishing solidarity between experienced anime fans (often through the use of Japanese phrases said in anime in fan-to-fan conversation), and as a means to more confidently associate oneself with the Japanese anime being watched (Nespor, in press). Despite a reliance on subtitles, a language barrier (and therefore a cultural barrier) is overcome with their help, which allows experienced fans to more comfortably and confidently localize the parts of anime they select (e.g. characters, plots, themes, settings) into their own experiences as both fans and as people operating outside of fandom (Nespor, in press). Their ability to both step outside of the culture that criticizes their passionate zeal for anime and to step into another culture that seemingly welcomes and even relies upon it is increased that much further (Nespor, in press).
When confronted with newcomers to fandom who lack an appreciation for anime spoken in the original Japanese, experienced fans are prepared to turn to peer-oriented forms of informal education not unlike those found in Becker’s study of marijuana smokers. Sometimes the indirect observations of novice fans that an anime club they’ve joined or a video room at an anime convention they’re attending is showing anime subtitled is enough to have their attitudes change to accept that subtitles are what “ought” to be seen (Becker 1991). Similarly, a newcomer may notice the use of Japanese phrases and even conversational Japanese within their locale of anime fandom, and therefore feel pressured to begin enjoying anime in the language that other members of that locale are using in the fandom (Becker 1991). Other times, newcomers face jokes, quips, and derogatory statements made about those who watch dubbed anime (e.g. “People who watch dubs are too lazy to read subtitles,” “The kids who watch Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network don’t know any better,” “Friends don’t let friends watch dubbed anime.”) and change their preference accordingly lest they be labeled and shunned (Becker 1991). Still, many experienced fans are aware that newer fans aren’t accustomed to animated programs in Japanese, and make special attempts to accommodate them as a “learning experience” for them. This includes informing new fans that watching anime in Japanese is a normal, even desirable way to broaden their cultural horizons (Becker 1991). By implication, any steadfastness to preferring dubbed anime indicates a moral shortcoming on their part to close-mindedly refuse to engage with other cultures (although they’re doing so already by watching anime in the first place) and better themselves as people. Many experienced fans will find some anime programs dubbed in English that they consider as good as if not superior to the Japanese voice acting in subtitles, and consequently begin to shed the idea of subtitled anime as the only “real” or “pure” form (Levi, 1996). Nevertheless, this type of elitist attitude towards the use of language in anime has proven itself to be a dividing line between self-proclaimed “hard core” fans and those considered to be poseurs and dabblers. In the process of acting as a divider, this attitude has maintained conformity to the subtitle ideal by those who seek to be meaningfully included in anime fandom and taken seriously as anime fans.
Relations to Culture and Education Overall
In the process of attempting to transcend their own dominant culture, involved anime fans in the U.S. are creating their own by enforcing dominant norms and beliefs through informal pedagogical methods of educating newcomers to anime fandom and reinforcing the beliefs of many of those long since initiated into the fan subculture. Though there are other norms within fandom that are contested and deserve further analysis (e.g. homosexuality in anime, anime’s privileging or belittling of technology, or the role of women in anime), the sub vs. dub debate is most notable for not just its intensity, but also for its contentious use (or non-use) of an outside language for cultural ends and the meanings ascribed by fans to that language, and by extension, to that culture. The case of anime fandom mirrors countless other examples of humans’ use of culture as both a force for collective organizing as well as a tool used for distinguishing members from non-members according to the same cultural criteria.
Though it lacks formal or nonformal organization as an educative body, this does not preclude the possibility of education occurring within anime fandom. In terms of education, the informal modes of teaching and learning that characterize anime fandom, and particularly the recognized need of learners to approach an aesthetic standard shaped by human history and cultural change (Carrithers 1992), are generally present in one form or another in most spheres of human interaction. Informal education is one of the few activities that, along with possessing and altering culture, nearly all humans perform as part of their life’s work.
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