manga, pedophilia, fantasy, & reality
This is probably old news to a lot of people, but cleolinda posted some linkspam a while ago, and one article in particular really caught my eye.
The simple version is this guy, Christopher Handley, was in possession of a large amount of manga, some of which contained depictions of minors in the act of sex. The exact amount of this specific type of manga in proportion to Handley's entire collection is not mentioned, though it is implied that this manga -- which seems to be primarily lolicon or shotacon -- is only a small portion of Handley's actual collection.
The damning law than Handley is facing is the 2003 Protect Act. As of now, Handley is looking at a minimum of 5 years in jail and a maximum of 15.
The article was of particular interest to me. As a kid, I was what seems to be called a weeaboo nowadays, though back then I just referred to myself as an otaku, though calling oneself an otaku is hardly a positive thing, self-designated title or no. Anyway, I was obsessed with manga. I read pretty much anything the bookstores carried, regardless of quality. Boy's love/yaoi/shounen-ai not included because that was gross and as a child I feared the homogay; also, lesbians did not exist. I slowly grew less interested in the medium, and in the summer between my sophomore & junior years of high school, I sold over 1,000 volumes of my personal collection. I still read a handful off titles -- still do read a handful of titles -- but the animanga mania had passed.
I didn't really look at stuff that I wasn't already involved in/hadn't been recommended to me for a couple years. Then, about a year ago, I decided to try out some new titles and to find out what happened in some of the series I used to follow. It was a really disturbing experience. There were things I had missed when I was younger that made the stuff almost unreadable now. It lead me to do some extensive research on the subject for my literary theory course. The focus was a feminist one, and what I discovered was that, much like American comics, a lot of manga had some pretty disturbing things to say about women in particular and relationships on the whole -- at least from a Western viewpoint.
Two quick caveats:
01; I'm not saying there's something wrong with Japanese culture in itself, just that there are things in a lot of titles that make my Western, liberal, feminist values want to shrivel up and crawl in my ear.
02; I'm speaking about very general trends in manga, not that all manga ever is guilty of this problem.
A brilliant example of a lot of what bothers me is pretty much anything that happens in Aihara Miki's Hot Gimmick, a series with which I was pretty infatuated when I was younger. The basic plot is as follows:
In company-owned rabbit-hutch apartments live tenants who can't afford to live anywhere else, and the apartment complex in which high-school girl Hatsumi Narita lives is ruled over by the rumor mongering, self-righteous Mrs. Tachibana. Get on Tachibana's bad side, and life becomes hell. When Hatsumi has to buy a pregnancy test because her popular sister Akane is late, Mrs. Tachibana's son, Ryoki, who used to bully Hatsumi as a kid, promises not to tell the world about Hatsumi's secret, only if she becomes his slave. Suddenly Azusa, Hatsumi's protector in their youth, reappears to save her again! He's moving back into the neighborhood! Despite the budding romance between Hatsumi and Azusa, Ryoki has control over her through the secret that could ruin the lives of everyone in Hatsumi's family, and he hasn't forgotten who his slave is!
The thing is? Ryoki & Hatsumi end up totally, completely in love -- and he's still giving her orders well into the final chapter. Half of the romantic scenes are dub-con, if not outright non-con and Ryoki's focus with Hatsumi is more using her as a sex object. Neither of them grow as characters and their "love" sounds more like Stockholm Syndrome than anything else. Now, Hot Gimmick was marketed as an older teen manga, which bugs me a bit, because most teens, even "older teens" have been in my experience & for the most part kinda crap at distinguishing fantasy from reality. As an older-teen-just-turned-20 I've watched a lot of my female friends make some pretty crap romantic decisions because they got what happens in books or movies or what have you confused what happens in life.
See, I'm pretty okay with this kind of stuff staying firmly in the realm of wish-fulfillment for adults, though it alarms me. It's the same with my mom's bodice-ripping romance novels -- most of the time, the relationships are fucked up, unequal, and undesirable in reality. I don't get why people like them, but I respect their right to exist.
The thing with a lot of manga is that it's marketed as kiddie fare. It's all slung on the shelf pretty indiscriminately, though some Barnes & Noble stores do separate manga between "teen" and "adult". And I do make a distinction between what's okay for kids to read and what's okay for adults read. I'm not talking about there being violence or sex in something -- frankly I'm not all that worried about the usual stuff -- but in the way relationships between men and women, Caucasians and people of color, heteronormative folk and queer people, &c. are framed. These things are pervasive and while I don't think anything should ever really be censored, I do think children should be made aware of some of the inherent gender issues in things like manga, or Twilight, or a lot of the Fantastic Four stuff for that matter.
For a pretty good essay on the importance of the effects of media on people in general, this post is a pretty good read, for all it's concerned with television rather than manga/comics/books. Linked to me by ashlultum.
My point in saying all this is to stress a couple things: the first is that I do think there's a lot of cultural dissonance between Japanese manga & anime and Western values that needs to be critically examined, especially with regard to gender issues. However, the second, and frankly more important thing, is that I believe that adults have a right to choose to indulge in their fantasies, as long as certain fantasies remain firmly in the realm of fantasy, and as long as no one is harmed in that fantasy.
The Handley case bothers me because it seems to disregard the right to -- I can't even say fantasy because if those volumes were just a small portion of his collection, it's likely that he just grabbed some volumes to sell them to someone else. The intent to sell is also covered in the Protect Act, and that makes sense when it comes to actual child pornography where children were harmed. The problem is as of yet and to my knowledge there's no literature linking lolicon or shotacon sex-scenes to actual children. Having seen a fair amount of sex-scenes in Japanese manga, mostly of the yaoi variety I got over my homogay fear and realized lesbians exist and that I may/may not be one, I can attest that they're not incredibly realistic. There's no pubic hair, and a lot of the time the peen is just some sparkly blank space. Even where the genitalia is depicted, most mangaka don't really go for realism in their art. Which isn't to say all the art is the same; but most styles aren't exactly exactly focused on realism. What I'm getting at is, it doesn't seem like any children were harmed in the production of this stuff, so even if it is a little morally repulsive to most of the United States, I don't see what the hell is so obscene about possessing and distributing this material to other consenting adults. But then again, I'm a firm believer that morality and legality aren't really the same thing.
And you know, for every "slippery slope" argument, there's a rebuttal in saying that looking at manufactured comic porn might provide an outlet for people who would otherwise not have one because they happen to be attracted to children. Or, perhaps aeirol said it more clearly, "I've heard this argument used for porn before, and it makes sense to me: if reading this stuff is a way to curb any desire, no matter how slight, to go out and abuse children, then it's a good thing." Once again, we return to the realm of fantasy versus reality. Disregarding Handley’s specific case, I honestly feel that, as long as your fantasy does not harm anyone else, you should be allowed to indulge in it. Jailing someone for purchasing something that seems to be clearly in the realm of "fantasy" is one eerie step too close to the Thought Police for my liking.
I'm also a little bit curious because I haven't seen massive fandom backlash against it, and this sounds pretty much like the strikethrough '07 thing everyone got so upset about. Really, I think this is far worse and could quite easily extend itself into the fan fiction world - in which case, a pretty hearty amount of ficcers would be in trouble, especially if we’re talking about fic concerning minors - under 18s in the United States.
Also: There's a good post expanding some of the objections to this case further by Neil Gaiman here.
The simple version is this guy, Christopher Handley, was in possession of a large amount of manga, some of which contained depictions of minors in the act of sex. The exact amount of this specific type of manga in proportion to Handley's entire collection is not mentioned, though it is implied that this manga -- which seems to be primarily lolicon or shotacon -- is only a small portion of Handley's actual collection.
The damning law than Handley is facing is the 2003 Protect Act. As of now, Handley is looking at a minimum of 5 years in jail and a maximum of 15.
The article was of particular interest to me. As a kid, I was what seems to be called a weeaboo nowadays, though back then I just referred to myself as an otaku, though calling oneself an otaku is hardly a positive thing, self-designated title or no. Anyway, I was obsessed with manga. I read pretty much anything the bookstores carried, regardless of quality. Boy's love/yaoi/shounen-ai not included because that was gross and as a child I feared the homogay; also, lesbians did not exist. I slowly grew less interested in the medium, and in the summer between my sophomore & junior years of high school, I sold over 1,000 volumes of my personal collection. I still read a handful off titles -- still do read a handful of titles -- but the animanga mania had passed.
I didn't really look at stuff that I wasn't already involved in/hadn't been recommended to me for a couple years. Then, about a year ago, I decided to try out some new titles and to find out what happened in some of the series I used to follow. It was a really disturbing experience. There were things I had missed when I was younger that made the stuff almost unreadable now. It lead me to do some extensive research on the subject for my literary theory course. The focus was a feminist one, and what I discovered was that, much like American comics, a lot of manga had some pretty disturbing things to say about women in particular and relationships on the whole -- at least from a Western viewpoint.
Two quick caveats:
01; I'm not saying there's something wrong with Japanese culture in itself, just that there are things in a lot of titles that make my Western, liberal, feminist values want to shrivel up and crawl in my ear.
02; I'm speaking about very general trends in manga, not that all manga ever is guilty of this problem.
A brilliant example of a lot of what bothers me is pretty much anything that happens in Aihara Miki's Hot Gimmick, a series with which I was pretty infatuated when I was younger. The basic plot is as follows:
In company-owned rabbit-hutch apartments live tenants who can't afford to live anywhere else, and the apartment complex in which high-school girl Hatsumi Narita lives is ruled over by the rumor mongering, self-righteous Mrs. Tachibana. Get on Tachibana's bad side, and life becomes hell. When Hatsumi has to buy a pregnancy test because her popular sister Akane is late, Mrs. Tachibana's son, Ryoki, who used to bully Hatsumi as a kid, promises not to tell the world about Hatsumi's secret, only if she becomes his slave. Suddenly Azusa, Hatsumi's protector in their youth, reappears to save her again! He's moving back into the neighborhood! Despite the budding romance between Hatsumi and Azusa, Ryoki has control over her through the secret that could ruin the lives of everyone in Hatsumi's family, and he hasn't forgotten who his slave is!
The thing is? Ryoki & Hatsumi end up totally, completely in love -- and he's still giving her orders well into the final chapter. Half of the romantic scenes are dub-con, if not outright non-con and Ryoki's focus with Hatsumi is more using her as a sex object. Neither of them grow as characters and their "love" sounds more like Stockholm Syndrome than anything else. Now, Hot Gimmick was marketed as an older teen manga, which bugs me a bit, because most teens, even "older teens" have been in my experience & for the most part kinda crap at distinguishing fantasy from reality. As an older-teen-just-turned-20 I've watched a lot of my female friends make some pretty crap romantic decisions because they got what happens in books or movies or what have you confused what happens in life.
See, I'm pretty okay with this kind of stuff staying firmly in the realm of wish-fulfillment for adults, though it alarms me. It's the same with my mom's bodice-ripping romance novels -- most of the time, the relationships are fucked up, unequal, and undesirable in reality. I don't get why people like them, but I respect their right to exist.
The thing with a lot of manga is that it's marketed as kiddie fare. It's all slung on the shelf pretty indiscriminately, though some Barnes & Noble stores do separate manga between "teen" and "adult". And I do make a distinction between what's okay for kids to read and what's okay for adults read. I'm not talking about there being violence or sex in something -- frankly I'm not all that worried about the usual stuff -- but in the way relationships between men and women, Caucasians and people of color, heteronormative folk and queer people, &c. are framed. These things are pervasive and while I don't think anything should ever really be censored, I do think children should be made aware of some of the inherent gender issues in things like manga, or Twilight, or a lot of the Fantastic Four stuff for that matter.
For a pretty good essay on the importance of the effects of media on people in general, this post is a pretty good read, for all it's concerned with television rather than manga/comics/books. Linked to me by ashlultum.
My point in saying all this is to stress a couple things: the first is that I do think there's a lot of cultural dissonance between Japanese manga & anime and Western values that needs to be critically examined, especially with regard to gender issues. However, the second, and frankly more important thing, is that I believe that adults have a right to choose to indulge in their fantasies, as long as certain fantasies remain firmly in the realm of fantasy, and as long as no one is harmed in that fantasy.
The Handley case bothers me because it seems to disregard the right to -- I can't even say fantasy because if those volumes were just a small portion of his collection, it's likely that he just grabbed some volumes to sell them to someone else. The intent to sell is also covered in the Protect Act, and that makes sense when it comes to actual child pornography where children were harmed. The problem is as of yet and to my knowledge there's no literature linking lolicon or shotacon sex-scenes to actual children. Having seen a fair amount of sex-scenes in Japanese manga, mostly of the yaoi variety I got over my homogay fear and realized lesbians exist and that I may/may not be one, I can attest that they're not incredibly realistic. There's no pubic hair, and a lot of the time the peen is just some sparkly blank space. Even where the genitalia is depicted, most mangaka don't really go for realism in their art. Which isn't to say all the art is the same; but most styles aren't exactly exactly focused on realism. What I'm getting at is, it doesn't seem like any children were harmed in the production of this stuff, so even if it is a little morally repulsive to most of the United States, I don't see what the hell is so obscene about possessing and distributing this material to other consenting adults. But then again, I'm a firm believer that morality and legality aren't really the same thing.
And you know, for every "slippery slope" argument, there's a rebuttal in saying that looking at manufactured comic porn might provide an outlet for people who would otherwise not have one because they happen to be attracted to children. Or, perhaps aeirol said it more clearly, "I've heard this argument used for porn before, and it makes sense to me: if reading this stuff is a way to curb any desire, no matter how slight, to go out and abuse children, then it's a good thing." Once again, we return to the realm of fantasy versus reality. Disregarding Handley’s specific case, I honestly feel that, as long as your fantasy does not harm anyone else, you should be allowed to indulge in it. Jailing someone for purchasing something that seems to be clearly in the realm of "fantasy" is one eerie step too close to the Thought Police for my liking.
I'm also a little bit curious because I haven't seen massive fandom backlash against it, and this sounds pretty much like the strikethrough '07 thing everyone got so upset about. Really, I think this is far worse and could quite easily extend itself into the fan fiction world - in which case, a pretty hearty amount of ficcers would be in trouble, especially if we’re talking about fic concerning minors - under 18s in the United States.
Also: There's a good post expanding some of the objections to this case further by Neil Gaiman here.