(you didn't really think I'd get away with only a one-part comment, did you? XP)
which is something to think about, too: that our fixation on "diversity" can be nothing more than an excuse to cherry-pick shiny things from other cultures.
Yes, I worry about this. A little less when I'm picking from Japanese culture, because Japanese creators do it themselves with such joy (not to mention picking from Christian mythology and a slew of other sources) but when it's something like Native American myth, which is appropriated all over the place...on the one hand, might be insulting; on the other, some of the ideas are so dang cool...what is a writer to do?
I like the gleeful abandon with which the Japanese appropriate stuff and mix it together, but it's not necessarily the best model to follow when you add the whole European/colonial complex into the mix
...not forgetting that Japan has its own colonial mindset. WWII, Japan wasn't cribbing the world domination plan from Germany; trying to take over Asia was their idea. One of the things that makes Japanese fiction interesting is that, while they have a lot of contact with American culture, they also have a strong national cultural identity. Japanese kids don't suffer from deepad's absence of dragons; they've got any number of Japanese icons to fan on. (Heck, Japan's got one of the few cultural whatevers that are imported wholesale into America, without the stigma of the exotic - Bollywood and UK movies are viewed as culturally "other," but Pokemon and Nintendo games are practically considered to be American - except even though they're translated and "Americanized," there's still a lot of Japan in them...)
short part 2
which is something to think about, too: that our fixation on "diversity" can be nothing more than an excuse to cherry-pick shiny things from other cultures.
Yes, I worry about this. A little less when I'm picking from Japanese culture, because Japanese creators do it themselves with such joy (not to mention picking from Christian mythology and a slew of other sources) but when it's something like Native American myth, which is appropriated all over the place...on the one hand, might be insulting; on the other, some of the ideas are so dang cool...what is a writer to do?
I like the gleeful abandon with which the Japanese appropriate stuff and mix it together, but it's not necessarily the best model to follow when you add the whole European/colonial complex into the mix
...not forgetting that Japan has its own colonial mindset. WWII, Japan wasn't cribbing the world domination plan from Germany; trying to take over Asia was their idea. One of the things that makes Japanese fiction interesting is that, while they have a lot of contact with American culture, they also have a strong national cultural identity. Japanese kids don't suffer from