Secret Asshole
Expert in things that never, ever happened
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⚡ Thunderdomer ⚡
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- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
Oh, indubitably. That's what makes them so loveable. That just earnestness is what draws people in. Audiences can be very sensitive to when you're milking them. This depends if they WANT to be milked or don't. There's a big difference. If an audience wants action schlock done by committee (Or a 9 year old, ala the Onion video with the Fast and Furious Screenwriter), they'll be perfectly happy to give you their money. If you milk them and spit in their face and deride them...I really wouldn't be expecting any big returns on that. And TLOU 2 really spits in your face.
Well, Waters loves his fans and his audience. So its not like he's making them miserable/uncomfortable to prove how much an 'artist' he is. Cage I think wanted to do movies (I don't think he honestly cares about landing Hollywood, also French art films are huge and have a long history so he doesn't need to), but became more enamored with the ideas of interactive movies than film-making. So that's the medium he makes and wants to try to explore. Good for him. He doesn't try and 'trick' you into thinking its something it isn't. You know what you're going to get when you buy his game. Also I can't recall if he does sequels or not. That being said....I still don't like his games or his approach. I think its pretentious nonsense, but I can respect what he is trying to do.
That's the one.
Replace "Western media" with "American mainstream media" and I'd say you are correct. Say what you want to about Europe politically, they have a lot of respect for their audience artistically. Probably because they're secure enough in their own cultures' artistic output that there aren't really any hangups about what "true art" is or things being unnecessarily pretentious, France being the most notable example.
On the other hand, you have a lot of relative unknowns making stuff for the love of it despite their financial hardships. This is where a lot of Western indie stuff resides, but also where a lot of media produced by developing countries is as well. When you're small, delivering quality is how you make a name for yourself. That, and honesty goes a long way.
The best part is that nowadays, you can by Euro comics on Amazon, games made by Chileans on Steam, and you can even see a lot of international animation/movies on sites like Netflix. (That's not even getting into GOG.) Call mebut I think that this increased competition will reduce other nations' dependence on American media, forcing large American companies to actually pay attention to anti/pro-consumer behavior. So if you hate what's happened to Star Wars or The Last of Us, there's a host of other people with great stories to tell, and your money means a whole lot more to them.
(I could sperg about this kind of thing for a while, but I'll leave it here.)
Hrm, its hard to say. The thing with East vs. West, is typically when people refer to 'East', its almost exclusively talking about Japan. Because a ton of stuff comes from one country, Americans can moreso get behind it. When shit is coming at you from all over the place, its hard to know where to look. With anime, there are very VERY clear cultural motifs that are constant through every genre (manning up, being a man and protecting women is literally a theme in 90% of the anime I've ever watched. From stuff like Food Wars, to Ecchi, to Comedy to fucking Edgelord to where 90% of the cast is strong women). And we're not talking subtle, it is very very explicit that Western society would grasp their chests at.
That's just one example. So culturally and thematically, I know what to expect. Like if I'm diving into 10 different countries, I have no clue with what I'm going to get or if I'm going to like it. Or if it is easy for me to acquire. Even a lot of popular anime is difficult to get sometimes, so I can't even imagine lesser known countries pop-culture. And even with torrenting, there's only so much. Not to mention I have to be sure its translated in a way that makes it half-way decent to follow. Like, a LOT of cultures have their own idioms, expressions and euphemisms that just don't translate to English at all. And unless it enters the English lexicon (ala schadenfreude from German), its going to need to be explained. What could be a single word or phrase could require a paragraph of explanation, whereas the audience its for would get it immediately, you'd have to look up translator notes. Even during anime, I hear the same words being repeated, but they're translated in different ways. So I sometimes question, "Am I getting something accurate? Or is the translator getting tired and I'm just getting a lot of short-hand?"
Also another important thing that is quite lost in translation and needs to be expressed is intonation and pronunciation. This varies from culture to culture. If you watch anime enough, you begin to pick up a little of the artistic cultural beats and what they're trying to say. But you have to watch a lot of it. Sometimes this isn't really available and you hear something great out of another country and it just feels janky and stilted, because you don't know the culture. This also goes for body language, which isn't universal.
Grammar is extremely important as well, and sometimes cannot be translated at all. 'The Witcher' is considered to be a Polish masterwork, not only in content, but mastery of the language. All of that is completely broken when its translated to English. For stuff like that, you basically need PhDs to translate and creatives to polish it to even have the same effect, and sometimes you never will unless you learn the language. This is EXTREMELY common, especially with books, where authors play with the grammar, phrasing and metaphor of their native language. Some books are basically untranslatable because 90% of the meaning is completely lost unless you know the culture or are a scholar.
So its not as easy as you'd think to just consume media from other cultures. I understand Americans are thought of as primitive beasts with gigantic, neanderthal sloping skulls and simple brains, but we're a hodge-podge of nearly every nation on Earth. Our media dominates simply because the sheer amount we put out, and even then there are certain cultural things even other Americans don't grasp about their own citizenry. We're 365 million people in 50 states, each with their own customs, little cultures and expressions.
I feel like Japan dominates because its a singular country that a sub-culture revolves around and generally has monolithic themes. Themes the Japanese might find dramatic I might find pointless and vice-versa. Just because i understand their pop culture a little doesn't make me a master of it. This is why anime series are so divisive I feel. Its about how much you accept those difference, interpret them correctly in order to follow the story. Which is why anime was a niche hobby for so long. It grew in popularity by word of mouth, people consumed it, and those that got used to the cultural differences stuck around. (The sub vs. dub endless debate is basically a debate over meaning and interpretation. A dub in an anime can change the whole fucking thing, just demonstrating that fragile balance). And this is from a country with popular foreign media all over the world.
I am all for nations creating their own pop culture and getting away from American habits or even taking American habits and making them their own (Bollywood for example, which is another really big foreign pop-culture that's made its ways over seas). Korean horror and Korean movies, which are generally more abstract, ambiguous and strange. All of these carry their country with them, and that's beautiful. The problem is the overwhelming amount. We even see this in gaming. See 'The Witcher's 3' treatment of sex vs. most American games. Same with the Japanese and their art and design philosophy.
I appreciate the thought, but I'm barely keeping up with Eastern Europe and Japan, so central and southern Europe (Fuck Northern Europe, you guys are FUCKED) is just too much, as is more impoverished, domineering societies where media is censored.
I think the real medium will honestly be gaming other than comics, books or movies. Games feed us on a primordial level, and cultural differences are much easier expressed when you can interact with them. So I think games, out of all other media types, has more of a capacity to bridge that culture gap.
Its the choice paradox, honestly. As you have more and ever expanding options before you, the anxiety of picking something increases, you end up paralyzed and choosing nothing. In the past, French and Italian films were EXTRAORDINARILY popular, because they were so uncommon and you can find them easily. With the advent of the internet, Youtube, Twitch, gaming, our entertainment options ballooned like pancreatic cancer. Its a well known phenomenon.
My Steam list has an embarrassing amount of games on it. Yet I only play a handful and am hesitant to explore. Why? Because I don't know what I'm going to get. I want to have a good time, so I stick with that good time I know is guaranteed. Same with a lot of series I re-watch instead of exploring new ones. It takes a lot to plunge into new things constantly, and even with the overwhelming amount of foreign games (Easter Europe is my second favorite, those weird bastards producing shit like 'The Void' and 'Pathologic' and the fucking Agony games (I get the body horror and the geiger influences). The Poles are fucking insane and doing God's work.
I think China will bite them, because they view China as a monolithic entity, so they'll just try and game their ratings board for maximum profit. This also reduces American media domestically, as what China wants, doesn't translate. Like that Matt Damon movie. It bomed here but the Chinese were like "WE WANT MATT DAMON" and all the screaming of white-washing fell on deft ears as it made bucketloads of money.
The Chinese, in general, don't like controversial or political media. They like white people. A LOT (I've heard it even extends to Chinese businesses, when meeting the competition, will hire whites to up the appearance of their prestige). And they expect them to be beautiful, but not sexual. Almost art to look at. And they like things where they turn their brains off (living in a communist shithole makes escapisim extremely profitable). So the Chinese is a different beast that really only thrive for Hollywood and corporate creatives because of exploitation of censorship. If the market was freer, I think it'd be way harder to capture.
