Hiroki Azuma explores the emergence of a community of people who are extremely invested in Anime, called otaku, in his 2001 book Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. He reads the emergence of the otaku alongside the shift from the modern to the postmodern in the context of postwar Japan. Azuma creates models to show the shift in meaning-making structures from the modern need for a deep inner meaning and grand narrative, to the postmodern situation Azuma refers to as the ‘database model’ in which there is no grand narrative, no transcendental meaning, but only mini narratives which emulate desirable elements reducible to a ‘database’ of characteristics. While I disagree with Azuma’s claim that consumers no longer value narratives, I do take interest in his point that the otaku, and post-modern consumers in general, “use cultural products for the immediate satisfaction of needs without searching for or desiring profound underlying meaning from them” (xvi). But perhaps the shift is less about desire, and more about expectations – it is not that we no longer desire the profound, a sense of integration or wholeness, but that we no longer expect it – at least from the media we consume. This gap – between what we desire and what we think is acceptable or reasonable to desire – creates a kind of cynical, melancholic longing, a longing that from the moment we start to feel it is already frustrated, impossible. A desire that knows it is impossible to be fulfilled, yet can’t help desiring anyways. We have lost faith in institutions, we no longer trust in ideological promises like ‘democracy’, ‘the free market’, ‘science’, or progress narratives.
This thwarted desire can live alongside a way of encountering, using, living with media that is more practical and dynamic. If we treat the media worlds we come to love as open ended, they become things we can have ongoing relationships with. Azuma writes on the emergence of fan-created works as integral to the fandom universes surrounding a piece of media and how, though technically ‘non-canonical’, these works come to matter just as much as the canonical material: “This prominence of derivative works is considered a postmodern characteristic because the high value otaku place on such products is extremely close to the future of the culture industry as envisioned by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard… in postmodern society the distinction between original products and commodities and their copies weakens” (25-26). These “derivative” works can thus be considered simulacra, things that are not derivative at all, but rather confuse ideas about what is ‘original’ and what is a copy.
image credit of Bruno-Abbacchio fanart from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind
Yes, this Manga was completed, but I can draw as much fanart or write as many fanfics or create as many dating simulators as I want, continuing to engage with the world and characters I love in this way. Even better, on the internet, I can connect to an entire community of fans who are creating incredible works which not only serve as continuations of the media we share love for, but which also expand the material into new spaces. For example, I ship couples in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure that are not canonical, but because of internet fan-culture, I have access to hundreds of pieces of fanart, fan edits, fanfiction, etc. about these characters being together. This kind of fan content is especially important for queer readers, as queer content has not been as available as straight content. Pinterest gives me my Jotokak and Bruabba fix, and a ton of fans actually accept these ships as canon, even if they are only hinted at in the anime and manga. and Araki keeps publishing his crazy silly ~Bizarre~ Manga within an establishment that does not allow for queerness. Of course, I wish these couples could actually be canonical in-universe, but when it comes to homophobia we don’t always get what we want. Because of the way fan culture works, Bruabba is not-not canonical – in fact, the dominant reading of the series is that they are.
Instead of trying to ‘discover’ meaning deep within pieces of media, we weave the characters and worlds of fiction into our everyday realities, linking their lives with that of our own. We actively participate in the stories, exert a new kind of agency over fictional worlds formerly treated as closed to us ‘real’ worlders. This is a kind of post ironic engagement – we encounter the story, and our reading experience is one of immersion in which we believe the story. Then we are taken out of the story – we finish, or exhaust, the canonical materials, and discover that it is not ‘real’ – it is fictional, and defined as fictional through the closed-ness of its existence. But then, in making content or continuing to play out the fictional world, we re-enliven it for ourselves, and weave the being of the story into our own life-stories – in our own ‘real’ lives we are engaged in some kind of agential engagement with the story. Through this engagement we realize that the world of the story is not closed at all, but actually endlessly open for our deep engagement. This brings us to a place of fiction being not-not real. The kind of existence of the fictional universe to us becomes True, False, True. In other words, our fiction becomes not-not nonfiction.
Comments