Friday, August 03, 2007

Friday Friday Friday! Open Thread, and Reader Participation!

I keep starting to write posts and deleting them, so I thought, why not make this another open thread?

I was originally going to write about Princess Mononoke, because I really love it, and I think that it's got some really interesting women in it. It's nice to see a movie where a man and woman end up having to rescue each other, and neither one of them is made into an oaf or a fool. It's also nice to see a movie where the woman who is set up as the antagonist isn't an evil witch, but is, in fact, a reasonable person who does a lot of good but just happens to have goals that conflict with the protagonist. That kind of moral complexity is refreshing and enjoyable. Plus, the animation is absolutely beautiful.

Unfortunately, I'm feeling too fuzzy to write more than a paragraph about the movie before it starts to look... erm... wrong? So, those are my thoughts on Princess Mononoke for the day. Maybe more some other day?

Has anyone else seen it? I assume some of you probably have... it's not exactly an unknown piece of animation. Heh. I'd love to hear what other people thought of it.

In other news: I'm going to be out of town until Monday evening, so I won't be around for the next few days. Not that I'm usually here on weekends, but I likely won't have a post up on Monday either. I'm going to be doing a little hiking and swimming. I haven't been swimming yet this year, which is weird, since we're already into August, but there you have it. What's everyone else doing this weekend? Fun stuff, I hope.

9 comments:

wellie said...

have fun this weekend, roy! i'm going to an 'enchantment under the sea' dance (so rad!), a goodbye party for a couple of friends moving to florida, maybe seeing the hard lessons, and doing my usual geeky crafting, lol. on post ideas... i was at lunch with my video games editor friend today, and we began discussing most offensive & terrible video games ever, which led me to this page online: http://www.arthurshall.com/x_2006_manly_video_games.shtml
i'd love to learn your take on this, as i was fairly appalled at the brazen sexism and homophobia within.

Jaclyn said...

Strangely enough, I'll be hiking and swimming this weekend, too... ;)

HertzaHaeon said...

Princess Mononoke is indeed a great film. Miyazaki's works are full of strong women and deep stories. If you haven't read Nausicaa of the Vallery of Wind, you should. It's basically much more of the same. There's an anime that's good, but nowhere near the masterpiece that the manga is.

Jaclyn said...

Taking advantage of the open thread with a totally ignorant question: what's the difference between anime and manga?

Rex Libris said...

Anime is like a cartoon.
Manga is like a comic book.

baby221 said...

I've only seen it once and it was before I'd seen any other kind of Japanese/-style animation. I watched all of it, but was extremely confused, because I was still stuck on why a sword could slice someone in half like that when the rest of the story had moved on. And, being a sheltered child, I was completely floored by the amount of cartoon bloodshed going on.

I've yet to rewatch it (I keep meaning to, but ... eh), but I loved Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away. Kiki's Delivery Service was cute and The Castle in the Sky was all right.

Anonymous said...

Have fun this weekend!
Tell your hiking and swimming partner we said hello!

Unknown said...

Mononoke-hime is an excellent film, although the first time I saw it (prior to my interest in Japanese culture) I was very confused as to why the princess wasn't named "Mononoke". Miyazaki's other films are fantastic, granted, I believe with the exception of "Howl's Moving Castle" it's better to watch them subtitled than dubbed, even though Disney's dubs are pretty good. Spirited Away seems to make so much more sense if it's in a foreign language. :o)

cme said...

I've recently been struggling with how to address "I don't want to call myself a feminist because I don't like making mean jokes about guys to 'get back at them for centuries of oppression'". Saying "but that's not what feminism is like!!" may be true (is true, for me and the people I am pleased to call friends), but it's not very strong and echos every other "but you don't understaaaaand, it's not liiiiiike that!" plaint ever made, many of which turn out to be defenses of things like racist and misogynist video games. I don't know what to say that will be true, and that that might make a difference, and that is a short enough rebuttal to keep eyes from glazing over.

My personal theory for reaching an adversarial audience is to say something very short and direct, almost pointed- so that it makes an impact and changes the tone of the discourse and gets the other person interested against their expectations. So far I haven't found a way to apply that theory here- perhaps you have an idea, or a different approach.

* I loved video games as a kid, especially the early computer adventure games. My father was given an NES when they were brand new, and we kids loved it to pieces. A rigorous high school curriculum and college (and subsequent poverty) took me away from them and I haven't played much that's newer than that era, but I remember them very fondly- even though at the at of 6 I was still indignant that the boy character got to have all the fun and the girl character had to be rescued from a tower in an alternate universe with a completely improbable sky.