I stopped thinking right about here.Shao Feng-Li (post: 1343556) wrote:Having experimented with digital and CG technology on Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki has gone back to basics for Ponyo, which is made up of a stunning 170,000 individual hand-painted frames. He says he has seen none of the landmark digital animations of the past two decades, including Toy Story and Pixar Studio’s recent smash Wall.E, despite being friends with Pixar’s creative director John Lasseter.
And this is why I prefer Satoshi Kon. Kon seems to be a more... how do you say it... normal person.
Having experimented with digital and CG technology on Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki has gone back to basics for Ponyo, which is made up of a stunning 170,000 individual hand-painted frames. He says he has seen none of the landmark digital animations of the past two decades, including Toy Story and Pixar Studio’s recent smash Wall.E, despite being friends with Pixar’s creative director John Lasseter.
***
“I can’t stand modern movies,” he winces. “The images are too weird and eccentric for me.” He shuns TV and most modern media, reading books or travelling instead. It is no surprise to find that the multimillionaire director’s car, parked outside the Ghibli studio, is an antique Citröen CV, an icon of minimalist, unfussy driving.
Ghibli’s creative engine house is a reflection of its founder’s preoccupation with authenticity and distrust of popular culture. New talent (the studio has just added another 150 animators to its 270 full-time staff) is tested out in a sort of animation boot camp, where the use of cell phones, blogs, iPods and other electronic devices is forbidden.
“Young people are surrounded by virtual things,” he laments. “They lack real experience of life and lose their imaginations. Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.”
He is known to lecture constantly on the need to find harmony between the human hand, eye and brain, and the ever-expanding computer toolbox. Ponyo, he says, is partly about living without technology. “Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn’t be defeated by life without them.”
Having built close ties to this notoriously hyperreal media empire, Miyazaki disavows these ties by stating that contemporary cinema in general, and Pixar's films in particular, are too technological to be real/authentic. Rather, to show in an article that is presenting a simulated representation of him that he is living a completely real and authentic life, he is presented as doing the following. 1. He drives in an artificially constructed antique vehicle with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of "minimalist, unfussy driving." This distinguishes him from those who drive artificially constructed contemporary vehicles with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of 'flashy, glamorous driving.' 2. He only consumes media through an analog, rather than digital medium. Of course, these days books are written, edited, and published through digital means, so the illusion of escape through the analog medium is itself a creation of the digital medium. And, as has often been noted, books are a simulated representation of reality, not reality itself. 3. He frequently travels away from the artificiality of Japanese culture to immerse in the sights, sounds, signs, and representations of other regions. Of course, the fact that most of these regions are probably reachable by airport and the interconnected tourist industry probably means he will find himself in just as much of a hyperreal environment as when he started.Ibid. wrote:The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It's meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusion of their real childishness.
GhostontheNet (post: 1343960) wrote:I guess you could say this is an example of hyperreality and its discontents. For those unfamiliar with the concept of hyperreality in semiotics and post-modern philosophy, the term refers to social situations in which the simulcra or simulation of reality overshadows reality itself in importance, and human consciousness is unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. In illustrating this concept, Jean Baudrillard cites a scenario from Lewis Carroll of "a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining –]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality[/URL]>) Naturally, Wikipedia is itself an excellent example of this principle in action. But then, what indeed is the world we live in if not a place where the cartographer scenario has come to pass? Miyazaki's efforts to show that his life and work are "real" is filled with irony, but completely understandable. Here is the man who has built his own media empire of fantasy, who has constructed a theme park analogous to Disneyland. Disneyland, of course, is of great interest to Baudrilliard, who writes:
Having built close ties to this notoriously hyperreal media empire, Miyazaki disavows these ties by stating that contemporary cinema in general, and Pixar's films in particular, are too technological to be real/authentic. Rather, to show in an article that is presenting a simulated representation of him that he is living a completely real and authentic life, he is presented as doing the following. 1. He drives in an artificially constructed antique vehicle with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of "minimalist, unfussy driving." This distinguishes him from those who drive artificially constructed contemporary vehicles with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of 'flashy, glamorous driving.' 2. He only consumes media through an analog, rather than digital medium. Of course, these days books are written, edited, and published through digital means, so the illusion of escape through the analog medium is itself a creation of the digital medium. And, as has often been noted, books are a simulated representation of reality, not reality itself. 3. He frequently travels away from the artificiality of Japanese culture to immerse in the sights, sounds, signs, and representations of other regions. Of course, the fact that most of these regions are probably reachable by airport and the interconnected tourist industry probably means he will find himself in just as much of a hyperreal environment as when he started.
How then, do Miyazaki's films take on the characteristic of the real and authentic? Apparently, first and foremost, by isolating his animators from electronic culture in a secluded "boot camp" away from mainstream Japanese society. Naturally, mainstream society is often quite alarmed by those who withdraw to such seclusion, because it signals their isolation from reality. Nevertheless, the animators feel very powerful experiences of "pain and shock and emotions" in boot camp, so their grasp of reality is very good. Still, it must be emphasized that cultists and fringe groups who have similar experiences under similar conditions do not have a good grasp of reality, so why Miyazaki has the magic touch, and they don't, nobody really knows. 'Technology stifles the imagination,' says Miyazaki, citing the many films he has not seen over the past few decades, because their images are too "weird and eccentric." That such 'weirdness' and 'eccentricity' could signal a high level of imagination is a thought lost to the talented director, who himself has been ascribed the cultural sign-value of "weird and eccentric." That the "real" Hayao Miyazaki considers himself to be no such thing is of no great importance, because the public image constructed by representations of him in the media has overshadowed the man himself. Sorry Miyazaki, the matrix has you.
I'd prefer it if you had put "where does Miyasaki gets [sic] his magic from, if not from the (delusion of) the real?" in single quotes, since I am being paraphrased rather than quoted. My comments about Miyazaki's boot camp were more directly aimed at discussion of his efforts to function in a media culture than at the clear genius of his films. By "magic," I euphemistically referred to something unexplainable, namely, how his films could be real because of conditions often noted for their unreality. In other words, there's a screw loose in his logic, and his premises do not prove what he hopes to prove. Don't get me wrong, Miyazaki's ingenious directorial vision as a contemporary auteur is undeniable. But in no way can he be said to be free of the media culture he repudiates.Maokun (post: 1343996) wrote:After reading GhostontheNet's dissertation, I'll dare to answer the rethoric question of "where does Miyasaki gets his magic from, if not from the (delusion of) the real?": It comes from being in the road, not for attaining the goal, following a figure of speech. By believing that there's actually something different, unique and untainted in the activities he favours, he actively instill those mundane (and unequivocally "unreal" in the sense that GotN explained, though probably the best word is "virtual") inclinations of the same magic he then proceeds to extract from them. C.S. Lewis would explain that his pretension dressed the delusion with reality, which is perhaps the best definition I can find for "magic".
In other words, he finds inspiration and fantasy precisely in the activities he already fancies, in the same ways that other artists credit their success or creativity in their unique lifestyles. Thus, his opinion may be perfectly valid for himself but one would do better in finding one's own path than in blindingly following his example.
minakichan (post: 1344040) wrote:they forget that every single generation before them has said the exact same thing
GhostontheNet (post: 1344044) wrote:I'd prefer it if you had put "where does Miyasaki gets [sic] his magic from, if not from the (delusion of) the real?" in single quotes, since I am being paraphrased rather than quoted. My comments about Miyazaki's boot camp were more directly aimed at discussion of his efforts to function in a media culture than at the clear genius of his films. By "magic," I euphemistically referred to something unexplainable, namely, how his films could be real because of conditions often noted for their unreality. In other words, there's a screw loose in his logic, and his premises do not prove what he hopes to prove. Don't get me wrong, Miyazaki's ingenious directorial vision as a contemporary auteur is undeniable. But in no way can he be said to be free of the media culture he repudiates.
"Unreality" can be both fun and dangerous insofar as it creates an illusion or fantasy with little or no direct relation to reality. "Hyperreality" however, is hazier territory insofar as it creates a state of affairs in which it is difficult, if not impossible to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and this state of affairs is symptomatic of media culture. Take the "reality TV" show Big Brother, for example. Under the parameters of the contest, the house guests must simply live together in a relatively ordinary house, only with the knowledge that their every move is being watched by the ubiquitous cameras, and they will be judged by millions of people based on what they are shown. This element of judgment is reinforced and encouraged by the parameters of the contest, which demand that housemates are evicted at regular intervals. Hence, the house guests themselves become performing actors in their day to day lives, and the dividing line between their performance as actors and their lives as individuals becomes so blurred as to be indistinguishable. In the cutting room, the footage is given slick, fast cuts to condense time spent in the mundane into a glossy consumer product. Hence, the life of the consumer itself becomes a consumer product marketed to the consumer. Naturally, the producers have no great concern for relational ambiguity, much preferring the entertainment value of the images captured. The end result is that for many viewers, the images of "reality TV" are more real than their day to day lives. This is an example of hyperreality, which can be distinguished from examples of unreality (i.e. Goths who go out on Friday night dressed as vampires and fairies to dance to dark and ethereal music). Since "hyperreality" is an established term in the realms of philosophy and semiotics for this particular state of affairs, it would be best to stick to it.
LadyRushia wrote:Guys, let's cut the poking fun of other's people's posts and opinions please. It doesn't do much to add to the conversation.
pikmintaro wrote:Hmmm while I like some of Miyazaki's movies I am starting to lose a bit of respect for him, especially after reading all that.
He's complaining about all of the iPod's and Cell Phones and stuff and how people would get around if those stopped working but what about him? What does he do if his Car breaks down or if his equipment malfunctions? starting to sound like he's a bit of a hypocrite.
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