Channels, Fall 2016

Page 150 Parson • Drawing Is Where the Joy Is around them. In one sense, the correlation seems unnecessary, since the qualities of solitude, sympathy, and naturalism are among the characteristics valued by traditional aesthetics. In the context of monster theory, however, the correlation becomes significant, since awareness of self, personal sympathy, and connection to nature are antithetical to our understanding of the monstrous. Aesthetics seem to provide the characters with one influence against the effect of the monstrous. By stressing the connection between aesthetic experience and connection to the self and nature, Ishii points out that such experiences are highly individual and cannot necessarily be shared with others. The usefulness of aesthetics to mediate between the self and the monstrous is limited to the individuals directly involved in the experience and their personal monsters. Aesthetics and the Monstrous in Contemporary Culture Since Ishii associates traditional aesthetics with relief from the influence of the monstrous in his characters’ personal lives, it seems surprising that all the professional artists in the film practice contemporary, popular disciplines. Yoshiko, Akira, and Ikki embody the louder aesthetic of contemporary popular culture, creating a strong distinction between professional artists, who must create new art within a new culture, and those who simply recognize beauty and often look for it in older forms of aesthetic experience. This apparent discrepancy between Ishii’s value for traditional aesthetics as a source of stability and his focus on contemporary popular artists points toward the difference in function between aesthetic experiences and true art forms in the film. By situating the professional artists in the film firmly in the context of contemporary art, Ishii acknowledges that the artist’s purpose is to produce items of aesthetic culture that cannot avoid belonging to the society in which they were made. In describing the artistic processes of Akira and Yoshiko, he demonstrates that even artists of contemporary culture must find their own ways to cope with cultural isolation and anxiety and must still ground themselves in the past in order to reinterpret it in contemporary expression. The art forms portrayed in the movie are unapologetically contemporary in form and popular in focus. Yoshiko spends the entire film working on a three-minute anime that turns out to be a variation on the sort of superhero-team seen in popular anime series like Avatar: The Last Airbender or Dragonball Z . The viewer never sees the professional work of Yoshiko’s mentor and father-in-law Akira, but when two animators come over to review Yoshiko’s work prior to an interview, they ask after him. Ikki Todoroshi, Yoshiko’s brother- in-law, draws manga in a Tokyo studio. By depicting artists engaged in popular contemporary work, Ishii breaks the continuity between traditional culture and the artwork in the film. As Richie aptly notes, such outlets of popular culture have all but overpowered any traditional influence on Japanese art. Anime and manga artists are instead associated with the new, louder culture of the otaku . Rea Amit describes otaku as devotees of a certain genre of popular art such as anime or manga. Amit concludes that the structure of Japanese aesthetics and even the terms used to describe it have changed as a result of the otaku ’s influence, but notes that “otaku-related terms such as moe, kawaii, puni, hatare , and yaoi are a perpetuation of previous aesthetic terms, such as wabi and sabi ” (176).