by Andrea De Falco
‘Fluid Images – Fluid Text’ was the title of an interdisciplinary conference that took place at Cardiff University (Wales) on 23-24 January 2020. The conference, organised by Dr Tilmann Altenberg (School of Modern Languages) and Dr Lisa El Refaie (School of English, Communication and Philosophy), hosted eighteen speakers from twelve institutions spread across seven different countries, featuring a wide range of backgrounds and approaches. The conference received financial support from Institute of Modern Languages Research (London), University Council of Modern Languages, Cardiff Comics Storytelling Network, Cardiff School of Modern Languages and Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy.
The aim was to investigate from a transdisciplinary perspective three different and interlinked dimensions underpinning comics’ mobility: time, space and artistic media. The chronological dimension covers a broad field including the relationships between comics and history and the transformations investing their editorial and reading practices. Translation is the key word to understand how comics have been able to transcend national borders, by means of transmission in different languages and cultures. The last dimension leads us to comics’ adaptation in other media, investigating their relationships with different forms of artistic expression.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: A Borrowed Life, A Distant Soil, adaptation, Aka B, Alessandro Tota, Alison Bechdel, Ana Penyas, art, Asterix, autobiography, Ángel de la Calle, Bea Enriquez, biography, Caterina Sansone, classroom, Colleen Doran, dictatorship, digital comics, Disney, Edgar Clement, family, film, Fumettibrutti, Fun Home, Gender, Graphic Novels, Greece, heritage, History, humour, identity, Il tempo materiale, intermediality, intertextuality, Italy, Je est un autre, Kobane Calling, Luigi Ricca, Martin Lemelman, memory, Mendel’s Daughter, Mexico, nationalism, Núria Tamarit, Non-fiction Comics, Operación Bolívar, P. La mia adolescenza trans, Palacinche, Paperinik, Phoebe Gloeckner, Photography, Pinturas de guerra, place, Politics, Race/ethnicity, social conflict, Spain, Storia di una madre, Taiwan, The Adventures of Tintin, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Story of a Mother, theatre, time, Tintin, Translations, transmediality, Transphobia, transsexual abuse, UK, Wales, Women, Zerocalcare
By Whitney Hunt
New Racism Ideology In the USA
Whiteness is an enduring construct of privilege and power that systematically shapes and maintains racial inequality, resulting in a hierarchal system of oppression toward people of color (Feagin & Elias 2013). Systematic racism requires generations of people reproducing racist institutions and the white racial framings that support them (Feagin 2013). According to Feagin (2013), the white racial frame is a broad concept encompassing racist practices, imagery and discourse throughout US society shaped by and for the primary benefit of individuals considered white by society. In all eras of American history, manifestations of racism contain the ideological underpinning that justifies racial inequality. Moreover, the societal grip of white racial framing underscores the gross reality that America’s racist foundations are regularly unacknowledged (Feagin 2014; Bonilla-Silva 2017).
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: adaptation, Black Panther, blackness, Captain Marvel, Colorblindness, DC, fandom, film, Jim Crow laws, Marvel, New racism, origin story, Race/ethnicity, racism, superheroes, USA, White racial frame, whiteness, Women
Takeuchi Osamu, a professor of media studies at Doshisha University, is likely not the best manga studies critic to use as an introduction to problems surrounding the relatively recent turn in Japanese manga studies discourse to formalism or, more specifically, to the study of manga expression (manga hyōgen), since his work is something of a too easy target. It is parochial—his examples, despite pretensions toward general principles, are exclusively Japanese—and has changed surprisingly little since the late 1980s, despite the fact that his contemporaries, such as Natsume Fusanosuke and Yomota Inuhiko, and the manga expression discourse in toto have changed considerably in the intervening years. Yomota’s Manga genron (Principles of Manga) makes reference to at least some non-Japanese comics artists, notably Windsor McCay, and in the introduction to a recent translation of two chapters of his Tezuka Osamu wa doko ni iru (Where is Tezuka Osamu?), Natsume reflects on how limited this early formalist work was and, if reproduced today, would have to be understood within the context of a global comics studies discourse:
At the time I wrote this book, my interests generally centered on postwar Japanese manga, and the scope of my inquiry was almost entirely limited to Japan. If we were to consider European and American influences on manga from the Meiji period [1868-1912], the discussion in this book on transformations related to time and panel articulation would link to world-historical questions of modernity (changes in the expression of time and space in modern times)… Future research will surely depend on sharing knowledge and intellectual exchanges between scholars in different countries.[1]
While a turn away from more parochial concerns is admirable, a broadening of perspective on manga-as-comic expression is not guaranteed to overcome or even make apparent a number of assumptions underlying the study of manga expression as it emerged historically and in direct response to the currents of nearly two decades of manga criticism that preceded it. In order to make those assumptions more apparent, my use of Takeuchi’s critical oeuvre here is directed more toward discourse analytical ends than toward a detailed explication of what his theory of manga expression entails.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Biranji, Cinematism, CJ Suzuki, Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold!, Doshisha University, eiga-teki shuhō, Europe, film, formalism, Frederick Schodt, gekiga, Helen McCarthy, historiography, image-text, Ishiko Junzō, Itō Gō, Japan, Japanese manga, jaqueline berndt, Kitazawa Rakuten, Kure Tomofusa, manga criticism, Manga genron, manga hyōgen, Mangashugi, Media Studies, Meiji period, Mizuki Shigeru, Nakano Haruyuki, Natsume Fusanosuke, New Treasure Island, Osamu Tezuka, Ryan Holmberg, Sakai Shichima, Scott McCloud, Shin takarajima, Shintakarajima, Shirato Sanpei, Shishido Sakō, shōjo, Speed Boy, Supīdo tarō, Takeuchi Osamu, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Tezuka, Tezuka Osamu, Tezuka Osamu wa doko ni iru, Thierry Groensteen, Thomas Lamarre, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Tsurumi Shunsuke, USA, Winsor McCay, WWII, Yomota Inuhiko
I. Who is Ishiko Junzō?[1]
Arguably, one of the first Japanese critics to discuss graphic narratives (story manga) for mature audiences is Ishiko Junzō (1928 – 1977).[2] Initially active as an art critic who explored a wide range of contemporaneous artistic and popular movements, he began to publish writings more specifically on manga between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. To many English-language readers his name might be obscure, perhaps even more so than his contemporary, philosopher and cultural critic Tsurumi Shunsuke, whose book Sengo Nihon no taishū bunkashi (A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945-1980)—a chapter of which is devoted to postwar manga—is available in English. Yet, in present-day Japanese-language manga research, Ishiko is repeatedly referenced, especially in relation to his media-specific discussion of manga. This article shall introduce art critic Ishiko Junzō and his scholarship, concentrating on his contribution to Japanese comics criticism and manga studies.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: adult readership, aesthetics, alternative comics, alternative manga, art, Artists, “anti-art” movements, censorship, Charles Hatfield, children readers, comics industry, Dick Higgins, digital media, Doryun Chong, dōjinshi, education, fandom, film, formalism, Garo, gekiga, Gondō Suzumu, graphic narratives, historiography, hyōgen-ron, intermediality, Ishiko Junzō, Japan, Japanese manga, jaqueline berndt, Kajii Jun, Kajiya Kenji, kashihon-ya, Kikuchi Asajirō, Magnificent 49ers, manga, manga criticism, Manga geijutsu-ron, manga studies, Manga to eiga, Mangashugi, mature readers, Miryam Sas, Miwa Kentarō, Mizuki Shigeru, MOMA, Negative Perceptions of Comics, Osamu Tezuka, psychology, Scott McCloud, seinen, Shirato Sanpei, shōjo, social class, structuralism, taishū bunka, Takano Shinzō, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Tezuka, Tezuka Osamu, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Tsurumi Shunsuke, Uryū Yoshimitsu, USA, Walter Benjamin, Weekly Shōnen Magazine, Yamane Sadao
As with the larger field of manga studies, the earliest attempts at theorizing what we now call Boys’ Love (hereafter BL) manga were made by Japanese critics and authors in the 1980s when the genre itself surfaced. Academic BL studies, however, had to wait until the 2000s, with some key works published after 2005, and these are the main focus of this article.
The first analyses of the roots of BL manga were written by Nakajima Azusa.[1] She traced the genre back to shōnen’ai manga (boy love)[2], stories about romantic and sexual love between boys that were serialized in shōjo [girls] manga magazines.[3] While shōnen’ai has become a popular loanword within non-Japanese manga fandom, in Japan, the most widespread term — not just for graphic narratives, but also novels, audio-dramas, and games — is BL, which overwhelmingly tends to signify the commercially published variant of this cross-media genre as distinct from the fandom-based, and often more sexually explicit yaoi variant. The shōnen’ai stories of the 1970s were revolutionary as they replaced the conventional girl protagonists of shōjo manga with boys, and they appealed to female fans in a way which went beyond the act of reading. In her early essays, Nakajima dissected not only BL narratives as such but also fans’ motivations for consuming and creating them. However, her psychoanalytical focus was often interpreted as fans of the genre being unable to cope with societal gender roles, to the extent of being, at best, escapist, and at worst, pathological. Nakajima herself was an author and editor of BL literature (which is often accompanied by single-image manga-style illustrations), and she played a seminal role in June (1978–2012), the first magazine dedicated to BL manga and fiction.[4] It goes without saying that her creative involvement in the formation of the genre shaped also her stance as a critic.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: adult readership, AIDS, Boys’ Love, cross-media, cultural studies, dōjinshi, Eureka, fandom, film, fujoshi, Gender, gender roles, Hagio Moto, Hana to Yume, Hata Mikako, hentai, Hermann Hesse, HIV, homosexuality, Hori Akiko, Ishida Minori, Japan, Japanese manga, June, Magnificent 49ers, manga, manga criticism, manga studies, mature readers, Mishima Yukio, Mori Mari, Mori Naoko, Nakajima Azusa, post-war period, psychoanalysis, Race/ethnicity, Ragawa Marimo, sex, sexual imagery, Sexual Violence, sexuality, shōjo, shōnen’ai, sociology, Takemiya Keiko, yaoi
Comics Forum 