Alistair D. Swale

Anime as Magic

“Magic” for Collingwood takes on a special meaning and needs to be understood as a correlate to amusement which was treated in the previous chapter. While amusement is the relatively benighted and problematic mode of artistic expression that comes in for some extended analysis in relation to “pathological” instances of pseudo-art and cultural malaise, magic enjoys a status that places it closer to the mode of expression and experience that approximates the character of art proper, while not fulfilling the definition quite as it ought (Collingwood, 1938: 68–69). As with amusement, magic is a craft, a technique which can be honed down and employed to great effect — but Collingwood continues to insist that an artist’s capacity to produce it is not the same as being an artist per se. Some definitions and examples help to clarify why this might be the case.

Anime as Amusement

Though not explicitly articulated as “amusement” within animation, Thomas Lamarre’s discussion of the traditional propensity of animation to be associated with a form of comedic “play” fits well with anime’s inherent tendency to evoke tropes of visual amusement (Lamarre, 2006: 161 – 163). Drawing on some of the seminal commentary on animation from Paul Wells, we can suggest that this proclivity arguably stems from the pure “novelty” of animated figures — shapes and forms that metamorphosize and defy the conventions of mass and velocity on a routine basis (for a particularly detailed discussion of this see for example Wells, 2009: 69 – 76). As discussed earlier, Lamarre is correct to identify the infusion of 3D design in anime production as transforming the potential of this hybrid “cinema anime” to in fact subvert and subsume cinema as we know it, presenting on occasion works that are worthy of association with the epitome of tragic expression as opposed to the comedic.

R. G. Collingwood and a “Philosophical Methodology” of Aesthetics

R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art has enjoyed something of a resurgence in interest thanks to the endeavours of scholars such as Aaron Ridley who have proposed a reading that refutes the charge of ontological Idealism as articulated by Richard Wollheim and engages with the dimensions of Collingwood’s aesthetic philosophy that deal with expression and imagination. David Davies has endorsed Ridley’s argument and taken this “revisionism” one step further by proposing a “performative” interpretation of Collingwood’s theory of art based on Collingwood’s conception of the work of art as an activity rather than the product of an activity.1 Nevertheless, he also highlights a series of puzzles that Collingwood cannot fail but generate when he attempts to reconcile the conception of art as activity with the art/craft distinction. He concludes by suggesting that, despite these ambiguities, it is Collingwood’s novel conception of art as a “language” that enables us to better understand the structure of The Principles of Art and Collingwood’s significance as a commentator on the role of imagination in the experience of art.

Anime as Art: Digital Cinema and the Anime Aesthetic

In the introduction we considered the anime aesthetic more broadly in the context of current discussions of “digital cinema”. Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Sense s was briefly discussed as having one of the most accessible overviews of the key symptomatic features of a post-photographic, or “post-cinematic” experience of the moving image. They highlight the inherent paradox within the very term “digital cinema” and explore the significance of another expression that has now become accepted within the language of contemporary film studies, but warrants greater contemplation for its ineffability nonetheless: “virtual reality”. Through a discussion of several film texts (both conventional cinema texts with extensive digital design elements and 3D cinematic animations from Pixar) they persuasively illustrate how the infusion of digital imaging has led to the transformation of the screen from “window” to “portal”. Furthermore, they highlight the transformation of narrative conventions, character physiology and persona, along with the increasingly innovative exploration of space and time that seem to have become increasingly de rigeur features of the new media form (Elsaesser and Hagener, 2010: 170–185).

Anime as Representation

As we have attempted to demonstrate in the previous chapter, the avenue by which we understand anime as art is, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, not through craft, or even technique. Naturally, there has been no attempt to deny that technical, or technological, elements in the creative process will have some capacity to constrain or shape artistic expression. But so far as “art proper” itself is concerned, the focus of our consideration should be the imaginative dimension of both the creative process and the viewers’ engagement, and it is by keeping the focus on this that we avoid mistaking the essence of the art in the externalities of the process, rather than where it properly resides. As Collingwood himself acknowledges at the end of the chapter on art and craft, it is the desire to ground aesthetics with the “real” or the “tangible” that drives the attention to these quantifiable and identifiable elements in creative practice, but we would do well to avoid reifying this dimension (Collingwood, 1938: 40–41).

Anime as Craft

Anime provokes a number of fundamental questions with regard to technique. The overwhelming majority of Japanese-based productions maintain an attachment to 2D or hand-drawn character design within a backdrop and texturing that is aided by 3D design and digital imaging. This is a markedly distinct trajectory from North American production houses such as Pixar which have opted for an entirely immersive adoption of 3D design (Elsaesser and Hagener, 2010: 180–181). Clearly, animation in general is becoming more deeply integrated with what we might describe as the “cinematic vision”, but the question that arises here is whether these present two distinct instances of digital design in cinema or two instances of practice on a continuum of interface between cinematic imaging and animation as a separate art. Collingwood’s characterization of “art proper” suggests that art always transcends technique and can be embedded in a highly fluid inter-relation amongst potentially several disparate media simultaneously. The answer that seems unavoidable, then, is that the aforementioned seemingly divergent approaches to the moving image are indeed part of a continuum of practice.

Miyazaki Hayao and the Aesthetics of Imagination: Nostalgia and Memory in Spirited Away

Abstract Miyazaki Hayao has achieved international renown for a succession of feature-long animations that have been noted for their visual flair and highly imaginative world-constructs. Many of the narratives in these films have been situated in fantasy worlds with often only a tenuous representation of the world as experienced in some conventional contemporary (or historical) sense. Yet beyond the surface of these figures and fantastical plot devices there is a clearly discernible stream of engagement with the past. Focusing primarily on Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) of 2001, this paper critically engages with the leading commentaries on nostalgia and memory in Miyazaki’s work, contrasting the “culturalist” approach of Susan Napier with the “machinic” approach of Thomas Lamarre. In turn, the aesthetic theory of R.G. Collingwood, in particular his concept of “magic”, is employed to demonstrate how certain aesthetic devices within the film facilitate an imaginative engagement with the past, one that is subtle but nonetheless highly evocative of distinctive nostalgic emotions.

The Performative Face: Digital Masks and the Disembedding of the Aesthetics of Identity

Performativity has emerged as a term with special significance in relation to two areas that hitherto have remained relatively discrete, - discourses of identity and gender (c.f. Judith Butlers Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990) and, by contrast, the possibilities of creative participation in the generation of real time effects in relation to screen images (c.f. Chris Salters extended coverage of this field in Entangled: Real time Sound, Performativity and Embodied Machines, 2009). This paper reflects on a project which brings the two together by focusing on what might be described as the primeval drive for facial embellishment. Using facial recognition technology and an interactive Wacom tablet, participants are empowered to move between several templates based on traditional cultural practices of Europe, Japan and Oceania, - or they may choose to use this inspiration to articulate their own facial iconography for the contemporary world.

Conclusion: Conservatism, Traditionalism and Restoration

This work commenced with the assertion that there is a need to comprehend the Meiji Restoration not so much as an instantaneous event but as a far-spanning movement that had profound roots in the social conditions and intellectual discourse of the late Edo Period. The extent to which early tendencies toward the reconstitution of Imperial rule would have been worked out given the absence of foreign incursions in the early nineteenth century is significant, and largely unanswerable. However, given the spur of foreign encroachments and the palpable inadequacy of the Edo system of government to meet those challenges, the emergence of the Imperial Household as the fulcrum enabling national transformation was emphatic and unequivocal. The Imperial Household possessed what the Shogunate did not: the capacity for charismatic inspiration, a religious dimension that would enable incongruent forces and disparate elements to be recast into a new whole as if they had always been destined to be so conjoined.

The More Thorough Fulfilment of the Restoration

The successful conclusion of the campaign against the rebel shizoku in the Seinan War emphatically ended the possibility of armed resistance to the government. By 1878, the last major armed insurrection against the new centralized government had been safely quelled and the Restoration leaders could look forward to moving on to, using Ōkubo Toshimichi’s phrase, “the more thorough fulfilment of the Restoration.”1 From thereon in, other avenues of sedition and activism—either through the promotion of political organizations, the founding of an anti-government press or the carrying out of isolated acts of violence—would be the only remaining options.