| 1. | (30 posts) | Panty Shots and Their Meaning |
We looked at 96 posts by 35 different contributors.
No time for an intro, must publish issue!
As promised last week, even more on Miyazaki and "certain things". It's not a good sign when someone (Hanno Mueller) comments, "I feel sorry to Lawrence when he tries to summarize this thread"
A general feel for the thread is summed up by Andrew Osmond, "About once each year, I seem doomed to read a message wrong, make an intemperate response and then a shamefaced apology. So, *MS.* Choo, I'm sorry I snapped and I'll try to behave better. I was misled by the end of your original post: 'I feel that we should all try to be objective and accept what we have to accept. Yes, the scenes have pedophilic qualities, there's no question there.' I thought you were claiming an objective high ground that struck me as unearned, but your reasonable follow-up put me right."
Working backwards, Kukhee Choo's original post included (besides the portion Andrew mentioned), "I clearly remember when Nausicaa was first released in Japan. I remember hearing from my Japanese friends about the "oshiri shot" while they giggled with embarrassment. It was like..."did you know that there's an oshiri shot in that film?". After hearing that, and then watching the film, I was very very aware of the notorious scene and couldn't help but feeling a bit awkward myself. I was asking myself throughout the film...why on earth is her skirt so short? I am glad that Hanno Mueller's is bringing this aspect to attention. I am not claiming that Miyazaki is a pedophile, but rather supporting Hanno's point about different camera angle choices. It is clear that the Japanese who went and saw Nausicaa in 1984 didn't perceive the "oshiri shot" as completely innocent either. . .
when Mononoke Hime came out, the surprise shot was not related to San, to my surprise, but was the decapitated head scene. At that time my Japanese friends asked me..."did you hear about the scene where the head gets cut off?" I fully anticipated in watching the film as soon as it was available to me. Why did he choose these shots? Perhaps he was doing what all other animators do...to provide his audience with a
titillating surprise shot. Does that make him less of a director? I don't think so.
Andrew followed with, "Rubbish. There _is_ a question there, and if you can't appreciate that then you're very stupid. (You post provocations, then expect flames.)" There's more, but as Andrew pointed out, if a retract command existed he'd probably execute it a few times.
Kukhee replied (in a non-flaming manner, kudos), "I simply provided my "personal" experience to show that one can't definitely state whether Miyazaki's shot was intended to be sexual or not. If he didn't intend it to be sexual, and yet I perceived it to be so, then "I" could feel that there could be more to the "innocent scenes". . . , the reason I provided my personal experience is to show how the films were perceived by Asian audiences "at the time" the films were released...not by audiences "now". I think this distinction is important. With all the heightened awareness of pedophilia (a word which does not exist in my 5" English dictionary from 1994) in the media now, one (including myself) could fall into the trap of viewing films with the Sanders-like filter. However, by providing an example of audience reaction "at the time" the films were released, I felt that one could hopefully see that audience were aware of the titillating shots, yet, it didn't matter to them. They were not important scenes enough to ruin his auteur vision."
How about moving on to another subject? OK, here's Andrew on the topic of "Nausicaa with no pants", "it was always obvious to me that Nausicaa was wearing trousers. The colour difference was perfectly clear. (I saw the film long before I was acquainted with anime fans.) I lent the film to several non-fan friends and none of them seemed confused either."
Freddie W wrote, "As some of you may know, my school had a week long "Project Week," where I led an animation viewing project. . . One of the movies we showed was the original version of Nausicaa, that a friend and I subtitled.
When the scene came up, the initial reaction of everyone in the room was "whoa! she ain't wearin' pants!" These were high-schoolers (9th grade-12th grade), who, for the most part, have only been exposed to Dragonball Z and Pokemon on the anime spectrum. A bit later, pants were inferred, due mostly to the realization that skin shouldn't be that baggy :)
Mike Arnold added, "The "panties shot" in Nausicaa was a source of debate even among people I knew in college, and I've seen the question pop up on the internet countless times in recent years. The fact that she's wearing pants is not obvious."
Andrew replied, "Not obvious to some people. Yes, the rumour made it onto a Reuters report (see Nausicaa FAQ) and is mentioned in Schodt's Dreamland Japan. On the most sympathetic reading, Miyazaki should have been more careful with his colour scheme. All I can say is that I was never confused; nor, presumably, were the people who released Warriors of the Wind U-rated into America and Britain"
An intersting theory from Artyom Tolstobrov, "The not-so-obvious explanation of "No-pants Nausicaa effect" is that skin tones are considerably deviated by NTSC video standard. I've never heard of a person who was not able to distinguish white color of her pants from the natural color of her skin in theatre; yet this misconception is understandable, since most of people outside Japan saw the film on LD or VHS (or even MPEG made from bootleg DVD made from third-generation VHS)..."
A theory later endorsed by Glen Stark, "Nausica on the other hand... I saw a pretty bad encoding of that, and I thought it was mushi shot also... glad to know I was wrong."
If you can't get enough of this kind of thread, try "What about MY theory (was Re: Surprise scenes)" by Michael Kerpan.
Akito T posted news about the latest "Sen" box office record. A "Nausicaa"-inspired aircraft from George Goodyear. Midnight Eye reviews "Pom Poko". Damien demonstrates incorrect usage of a listserv.
Next week contains a bit more variety in threads. Really!