HW 30: Citizen Journalist II

I attended Jiwan Ahn, Sander Lee and Mark Timney’s “Animations as Political and Social Constructions” a lecture from the Citizenship Symposium done by Keene State College. All three presenters are faculty here at Keene State College and their presentations were to educate us as their audience about the actual role in animations in our society. Ahn portrayed the art of Anime and the ways of seeing it, Anime has many admirers from the elite to simple fans she states that the “fanatical art work industry is huge” and that the admirers not only collect but also do Anime art work. The purpose of the flat style they use in Anime is so that the female body that they so often use is not portrayed in the wrong sexual manner. They wish to keep the body more as a symbol and less as an arousing sexual object, they use the body accompanied with violence, nature and in provocative clothing if at all clothed. This style “may be seen as being exploitative toward young girls” because they are so exposed in most of the artwork. However, this fan-boy style is how they use their artwork to get people to see new types of gender representation and a new way of thinking about gender representations to the media and society as well. Lee used WWII cartoons to show how animation has been used in our society for political and informative ways. Showing Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck in areas of Nazi Germany working for or being chased by Hitler and his cohorts in the war. In both cartoons, they show that Hitler could be conquered by another highly powered state as the US and the Soviet Union. This was their way of showing what was going on during the times of the war as well as what could transpire from the war. Lee states, “I feel that Bugs identity is an interesting one in terms of the situation. I maintain Bugs has an ethnic identity, an American accent or an image of Brooklyn which is street smart, tough and ethic and his accent and the way he operates identifies him as a representative for the American Melting Pot to the German government.” This is was intentional, not ironic. Timney uses South Park to identify animation with our society, claiming that it not only is exploitive of our country, religions, is vulgar and has blatant sexual content but it also is “satire at its finest.” This show has the ability to cultivate behavior among its viewers as well as ask its viewers to compromise for greater good, to be active citizens and think critically, check facts, have an open mind and refine generalizations. All these things are built in to a show that degrades and mocks our country and its aspects yet at the same time “teaches” its viewers to be good citizens, that was our presenters point however not something I agree with.