When I was struggling earlier today to begin a post, something that kept coming to me was how much my feelings for music seemed related–or at least similar–to my feelings for manga, both in depth and breadth. This led me to think about why I love both, and then to why I love manga. But to start, I think the question I must begin with is:
Something I’ve always had difficulty relating to is the concept of “real life” as being something different than a person’s online life. I mean, I get it kind of, but it’s not like I become imaginary when I sit down at my computer, and every person I deal with online is just as real as I am regardless of whether or not they are being honest about who they are. Just as in “real life,” my words and actions have the power to affect other people, for good or ill. So how is this not a part of my real life? Similarly, I’ve always been at odds with the idea that imagining, writing, reading, or interacting with fiction is somehow less a part of what’s real in this world (and in our lives) than anything else. Fiction is our greatest tool for sharing ideas with each other as a species, in a way that touches and inspires not just our logical minds, but our hearts and even that intangible thing we like to call our “souls.”
Nearly everything important I have learned about life, people, and the world around me has come from one of two places: my own personal experience or fiction; and I have a feeling that if it was possible to sit down and write out every one of those things, fiction would come out on top. After all, the potential human experience available to one forty-year-old woman is miniscule compared to the volume of fictional works written since the dawn of man, or even just since the dawn of modern language.
Fiction is the the place of dreams, yes, but also the foundation of reality–how we perceive it and how we express that to others. Even the most escapist works tell us something about ourselves, both as individuals and as a society, and I can personally vouch for the fact that even these works are capable of inspiring deep thinking and emotion, whether their authors ever intended that or not. Each person’s experience with a fictional work is wholly unique to that person, and yet it is a connection between one person’s ideas and another’s that gives it its power. This, to me, is the most awesome thing in all the world.
My personal devotion to the products of human imagination–for me, fiction and music in particular–has always been what makes me feel most connected to other human beings, and the only thing capable of successfully bridging my very rich inner life with my more troublesome outer life. As such, I feel these things are inextricable from my life and who I am, and I’m very comfortable with that.
Why Comics?
The one particular product of human imagination it took me until recent years to truly connect with and appreciate is visual art. Outside of a childhood obsession with attempting (unsuccessfully) to draw all the characters out of my own imagined fiction and one year at college during which I would repeatedly visit a particular Pierre Bonnard painting at the Carnegie Museum of Art–earnestly seeking the answer as to why it affected me in a strong, emotional way that other art generally did not–I was never a person who connected deeply with visual representations of life.
The simple explanation for this may actually be that, unlike music, prose fiction, or theater, visual art was not something I could successfully experience as a creator (or at least a participant)–something that those who know me well can recognize as an important part of how I interact with art. How it happened to be comics that finally achieved this is somewhat of a mystery to me, though perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the art is acting as part of a narrative, which is something I can personally connect to more easily than an isolated image.
Yet it was not western comics that actually pulled me in, but manga. Which brings me to…
Why Manga?
The fact that comics are part of mainstream popular fiction and therefore serve a much broader audience in Japan than they do here is, I’m sure, largely responsible for many of the elements that draw me most to manga–epic (but finite), single-creator stories in a huge variety of genres and styles, offering me the same variety and breadth of human experience and emotion as I’d find in prose fiction, movies, or television in this country. Whether this is connected to the sudden and profound realization that I could glean something new about the human experience from hand-drawn black lines on white paper, I am not certain, but I do know that my first encounter with manga was life-changing. It’s as though I was experiencing sight for the first time. For years, my imagination had subsisted (and very heartily) on written, and oral (including musical) language, either brought to life entirely by my imagination (as with print) or by other live humans (theater, television, film)–the closest thing to a visual element I was really in touch with. I can say honestly that up to the point I first read a manga, I really had no concept of how powerful and real a drawing could be or how strongly I could connect with such a thing.
It’s possible that a great deal of why I easily connect with manga in this way after failing to do so with western comics, is the tendency of manga to let the art take the lead in telling the story, which I think is less often the case in comics here. Odd that this would be the key, considering my previous attachment to prose; or perhaps not odd at all, since one of my problems with reading western comics had been that I kept feeling that the pictures were in the way as I tried to read the story. This is not a judgement on western comics, but really a suggestion that until I read manga, I was actually kind of impaired, and it took manga to fix that.
I think what is special about manga and why I have immersed myself so deeply in it in such a short time (aside from the fact that this is just how I do things) is that it offers a unique opportunity for the reader’s imagination. Something I used to talk about regarding art song, which was my favorite form of music to work on as a classical voice student, was that it offered an experience for interpretation that was different than anything else. Unlike opera, in which the music and libretto were working together to tell a single story, art song usually began as a poem–a form that invites greater personal interpretation than narrative fiction –to which the composer would add his/her personal interpretation through music–another form that invites great personal interpretation. The singer is then in the position to draw upon both these potentially disparate elements to create a third interpretation–one that is likely to be unique to each singer (ditto with the pianist, lest this be forgotten). By the time the art song reaches the listener–the final collaborator–the possibilities for interpretation are so richly layered that each person will take away with them something not only unique in itself, but uniquely guided by all who touched the piece before it reached them.
Now you’re saying, “Whoooa, crazy music lady, the manga is more like opera,” (unless you’re just saying, “Whoa, crazy lady you lost me three paragraphs back”) and you’d be right. Except not exactly. Plays, movies, and television are like the opera. Manga is something in between. Though the pictures and the words are working together to tell the same story, the fact that it is black-and-white drawn, still images providing the more specific interpretation of the text actually leaves much more for the reader’s imagination to fill in, which to me is closer to the art song, though perhaps close enough to the opera too to provide the best of both worlds. While the skilled mangaka has the power to inject true, specific human emotion into something as small as a single line on a character’s face, it is still up to the reader’s imagination to actually translate that into the face of a real human–a face that will inevitably be a little different one for each person who imagines it. Aside from the element of color, this is true of western comics as well, but it is the combination of all these things at once–the epic, finite works; variety of genres; visual storytelling style; and the crazy music lady stuff–that makes manga special, or at least makes it special for me.
~o~
If you’ve made it this far, you probably deserve a drink. Since I can’t offer that across cyberspace (is this proof of the whole “real life” business??) I will instead thank you for reading and ask for your thoughts. :)
Grace says
June 5, 2009 at 9:52 pmThe variety is what hooked me on manga, too. While there are some US comics that are not superheroes, it’s undeniable that the vast majority of US comics are superhero comics. They offer one style of story, and one style of storytelling (never-ending, multiple-creator, conflicting canon, confusing crossovers, characters who never age, etc. etc.). With manga, as you said, you can have any type of story you could have in a novel (and that’s exactly how I’ve always described it to people, too). I love that.
I did read comics as a kid. My mom was a huge Superman fan, and I often read her old Superman (and Superman-related) comics. She also had some Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge ones, which I actually got hooked on more. When I was…preteenish, I guess, I was really into Disney comics, especially anything Donald-related (Ducktales, Scrooge, etc.) and bought those every month. But that’s really the extent of my involvement in US comics.
I always say I’m not that fond of superheroes, yet I love shounen battle manga. It’s just a totally different type of hero story than the US tradition.
Melinda Beasi says
June 5, 2009 at 9:59 pmI remember some Richie Rich comics that were around our house when I was a kid, which I sort of enjoyed in a passive, disposable way, but like the way I enjoyed comic strips—which I always enjoyed, though for the political commentary and stuff more than anything else. My dad had a big collection of Doonesbury comics I loved even though most of the references were not current for me. And I loved Bloom County when I was in high school. I never read any comics that were real stories though, until a couple of years ago. Heh. And the art never meant anything to me at all. I can’t believe how much that has changed for me.
Hee- yes, I completely agree re: superheroes vs. shonen battle manga. :D
jansong@livejournal says
June 5, 2009 at 10:14 pmThoughtful post. Thanks. I must remember to come back and reread this.
Melinda Beasi says
June 5, 2009 at 10:19 pmThanks mom. :) Is that your very kind way of saying, “thoughtful post, but it really doesn’t make any sense?” :D
jansong@livejournal.com says
June 6, 2009 at 6:18 amNo, no, no. I thought it gave me a better understanding of where you are coming from and how you got there. I need to reread because I’m a bit obsessed with the large hive reaction I’m having to an insect bite, and it keeps distracting me. :)
Sara K. says
June 5, 2009 at 11:01 pmSome of the very first things I ever read were Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics. That’s because my dad is a Carl Barks’ collector, and that’s what he was interested in reading with me. So I’ve always seen comics as a satisfying art form. I re-read a lot of them about a month ago, and they are still some of my favorite comics ever (including manga). That might be why my interest in manga developed so gradually – I started reading manga in 2001/2002, but there have been six-month periods since then when I read no manga at all.
I remember one of my teachers talking about how, if you put different elements together, even if they are picked randomly, and audience is going to see connections between them, and those connections are going to make the work more meaningful to them.
Also, I once read volume 5 of Swan (where they perform Swan Lake) to the music of Swan Lake. Though I had to constantly change tracks on the CD because I wanted it to match what they were doing in the manga. It was fun.
Normally I don’t defend superhero comics (or even read them), but there is good stuff in that haystack. I particularly like superhero comics from the 1940s (though maybe I’ve just read some of the best).
“If you’ve made it this far, you probably deserve a drink.”
I don’t need drinks or any other intoxicant to act silly/insane. I’ve never even drunk anything with caffeine (a fact my friends are grateful for, because they are scared what I would be like if I had even *more* energy). I much prefer the thank-you. And you’re welcome.
Melinda Beasi says
June 5, 2009 at 11:08 pmI remember one of my teachers talking about how, if you put different elements together, even if they are picked randomly, and audience is going to see connections between them, and those connections are going to make the work more meaningful to them.
This is absolutely true, and I kind of love it. :)
Also, I once read volume 5 of Swan (where they perform Swan Lake) to the music of Swan Lake. Though I had to constantly change tracks on the CD because I wanted it to match what they were doing in the manga. It was fun.
Oh, that’s fantastic! I have done similar things (hee, one time I wrote a piece of fanfiction that was intended to be read while listening to a particular Ravel piano piece. I don’t know if anyone ever took my advice and did that, though.)
I am sure you are right about superhero comics. I’ve liked Captain America, for instance, and Young Avengers, both of which were foisted on me by friends. I think for those of us who started late into comics, though, the volume of work is very daunting. I can’t imagine finding the stuff I’d like in that haystack.
Sara K. says
June 6, 2009 at 12:41 am“I think for those of us who started late into comics, though, the volume of work is very daunting.”
That’s one of the nice things about 1940s superhero comics, they don’t assume that the reader knows the mythos behind a character. They feel more geared to a mainstream audience.
I recommend reading “A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics”, which includes both superhero and non-superhero comics from 1938-1955. I don’t like all of the stories, but everything is interesting.
Melinda Beasi says
June 8, 2009 at 5:08 pmOh, thank you for the recommendation! I will look into that!
Katherine Dacey says
June 8, 2009 at 4:57 pmThe art song analogy is terrific, and nicely explained for the classical n00b. (Believe me, I know from my own teaching experience—the lied unit was always one of the most challenging, even when I had musically literate students.) I wouldn’t discount the opera/manga comparison, though, as both put a premium on emotion — characters’ reactions to events are often more important than the actual events, even when those events are depicted onstage.
Melinda Beasi says
June 8, 2009 at 5:08 pmI wouldn’t discount the opera/manga comparison, though, as both put a premium on emotion — characters’ reactions to events are often more important than the actual events, even when those events are depicted onstage.
You are absolutely right, of course, and I think I let my analogy go a bit too far anyway. :) I’m blaming my state of mind at the time. I think my own biases against opera (or the trappings/business of opera, anyway) which are very deep for many reasons (some good, some… probably not so much so) discourage me from being completely honest with my readers. Heh.
Ed Sizemore says
June 9, 2009 at 12:42 pmMelinda,
It’s a great thoughtful post. I, Kierkegaard, & the Eastern Orthodox tradition agree with you on the power of art to really get inside a person in the way that logic and non-fiction can’t. We don’t have icons in my church just because their pretty pictures. We have them because we believe they can convey deep spiritual truths to the viewer. There is also a wholism to art. We use or body (whether ears or eyes), our imagination, our reason, and our emotions.
I enjoyed superhero comics as a kid, but what stayed with me as an adult was not a specific story of Superman, but the idea of Superman, and the vision of a hero he conveyed. He was as mythic and inspiring as Theseus, King Arthur and Gandolf. I think one of the reasons I don’t read superhero comics today, is that none of the stories live up to my image of Superman.
The power of fiction to me is the power to inspire us to embrace the noblest and best ideas of humanity. The best fiction can give us an example of what a life of virtue looks like. Those stories dare us to dream and to strive for those dreams.
Thankfully, early on manga had men like Tezuka who believed and preached that manga was a literary form just like short stories or novels. Unfortuately, American comics didn’t have a visionary like that early on. By the time Eisner and others were ready to truly plumb the possiblities of the comic art form, comics had become discredited by American society. Hopefully, American society is finally coming around to understand the true values of comics.
Melinda Beasi says
June 9, 2009 at 4:17 pmWhat a thoughtful comment!
The power of fiction to me is the power to inspire us to embrace the noblest and best ideas of humanity. The best fiction can give us an example of what a life of virtue looks like. Those stories dare us to dream and to strive for those dreams.
I agree on a philosophical level, though I would be bored if all fiction *really* did was portray lives of virtue. I love deeply flawed characters the most, and I think there is often more for us to learn from examining those lives than the lives of the perfectly virtuous. I think, too, that fiction gives us a way of talking to each other about what is broken in us, and what gives us pain. Sometimes I think it is enough to dream and strive just for something *better* in ourselves, even if we can never honestly dream of a virtuous life.
I hope that you are right about American society and comics!!
Sara K. says
June 13, 2009 at 12:32 pmI took a while before making another response because this is a subject I care about and I needed time to reflect.
Some of the best explanations about why people read I’ve encountered come from a textbook on children’s literature. Here’s a quote
“‘Esthetic’ reading is different from efferent reading because the goal is not the acquiring of information, but participation in the experience … Reading for experience – esthetic reading – can no more be done by someone else and then reported to us than our eating can be done by another.”
The book talks about how reading fantasy (and the book says that all genres of fiction are some type of fantasy since they involve imagining things which aren’t there) is important because it builds our creative ability, our ability to see the world from multiple angles, to solve problems, to develop empathy for others.
On illustrated books – and comics are illustrated books – the textbook has this to say (please substitute the word ‘children’ with ‘people’) –
“In this age of visual bombardment … do children need even more images in picture books? The answer is an resounded ‘Yes!’ … Picture books are a perfect vehicle for opening a child’s eyes to the beauty and power of art because they do not function like other books, in which words alone tell a story or convey information”.
Anyway, back to your post
“It’s possible that a great deal of why I easily connect with manga in this way after failing to do so with western comics, is the tendency of manga to let the art take the lead in telling the story, which I think is less often the case in comics here.”
It’s funny, I always felt the other way around – Western comics let the art lead more than in manga. To me, manga is breezy – the drawing is simple, there’s not that much going on in any one page, and I sail right through them. Whereas Western comics have a lot more detail per page, which makes for a richer experience. That’s why I feel paying $20 for a 100-page graphic novel from an American artist I love is a better deal than paying $10 for a 200-page volume from an Japanese artist I love equally. To me, the four volumes of A Distant Soil (which are approximately 200 pages each) have more happening than most manga have happen in 16 volumes. Matt Thorn explains talks about this in http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/english_news/opinion/2005/op20050415/op20050415main.htm
Lately I’ve been reading mostly manga, but that’s partially because I neglected manga for years. I feel that Western comics are still my native habitat.
“Thankfully, early on manga had men like Tezuka who believed and preached that manga was a literary form just like short stories or novels. Unfortuately, American comics didn’t have a visionary like that early on. By the time Eisner and others were ready to truly plumb the possiblities of the comic art form, comics had become discredited by American society. Hopefully, American society is finally coming around to understand the true values of comics.”
As a lover of American comics, I find this mildly insulting (though I am sure this was not your intent). For the record, I have tried a significant portion of both Tezuka and Eisner, and have come to the conclusion that I don’t like either of them. Like Matt Thorn, I think the influence of Tezuka on manga has been exaggerated, probably because it’s easier to attribute something to one figure than to examine all of the deeper causes. Manga would have been quite different if there had been no Tezuka, but I don’t think it would have been any less big in Japan.
I believe the causes of why comic industries grow or don’t grow are deeper than can be strongly affected by any individual, and shaped more by the business people than the artists. Of course, Tezuka was a businessman as well as an artist, and I admire him more for his contributions in that regard.
Anyway, if you made me choose between Western Comics and Asian comics, it would be a very hard choice, and I would hate you for making me give one up. I would choose is Western Comics.
Melinda Beasi says
June 13, 2009 at 12:36 pmAs a lover of American comics, I find this mildly insulting (though I am sure this was not your intent).
It will take me a while to compose a response to this comment as a whole, but I feel the need to point out that the statement you’re referring to here was not made by me. I did not say that.
Sara K. says
June 13, 2009 at 3:27 pmOh, I know Ed made the statement, but I still felt a need to respond to it, and I didn’t think of making a seperate response as a reply to his.
Okami says
December 13, 2009 at 8:02 pm38) You’ve just basically expressed everything I feel about fiction and life in the first “why fiction” part perfectly, which is something I haven’t been able to figure out, or haven’t had the time to figure out, how to do yet in my short life. So, thanks for that. And sorry I don’t have something more worthwhile to add to everything you said.
P-chan says
July 18, 2010 at 4:27 pmWow, this is a very wonderful article and I’m thankful for having found it!
Unlike most people, I never got into Western comics, though my mother who raised me had been a huge fan from an early age. When I was 5, we entered the world of manga together, which is I think is the reason I never got into Western comics to start with. I’ve always thought of Western comics as illustrated stories (graphic novel) while manga was something else entirely. Something dually comprised of words and images that was incomplete without both elements, and I was always attracted to that aspect of manga.
There is, as you mentioned, interpretation and personal experience that are important parts of fiction, something that flooded all the manga I read in my childhood and early adolescence. When I got older, my grandparents who are stubbornly convinced that all comics are for children, often gave me grief for not only NOT putting away my manga with other childhood things, but also spending money on them and buying MORE. Even my uncle who greatly appreciates art, music, literature, and almost all forms of personal expression, would make faces at the mere mention of manga in passing conversation.
I think part of the appeal of manga to me is that as a young girl in America, there was barely anything marketed at ME. All children’s cartoons and TV shows were for young boys (in which girls are always annoyances, sidekicks, or villains) or for gender-neutral audiences (mostly family comedies, which bugged me even at the time, for being censored, immature, and making me feel isolated as someone who DIDN’T have a family or social life even CLOSE to the “norm” presented on television).
But in anime and manga like Kodocha and Cardcaptor Sakura (not Cardcaptors) for example, I got everything that I wanted. It wasn’t dumbed down, but it was still for kids. I had a girl who wasn’t a complete idiot (though Sana IS very silly) or a complete brat (Sakura was a nice girl who was still COOL). And it brought up issues that American television wasn’t willing to bring up in front of children even though most children either go through similar situations or at least know someone who has. For example, Sakura’s mom is dead, her brother is gay, and she meets people with all sorts of unusual situations. In Kodocha, Sana is adopted, Akito is neglected AND verbally abused, Tsuyoshi is phsycially abused and his parents go through a divorce. The shows and manga talked about these issues and opened them up for conversation, instead of hiding them in the invisible closet. These are extreme cases to be sure, and I don’t expect it to be on American television for children, but at least I didn’t feel awkward about having something less than a perfect family or felt like i was being talked down to in something meant to be entertaining.
But putting that and my grandparents’ opinions aside, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying manga. After your heart breaks when you read a letter in a library in 1980s New York or when you find a studio full of fashionable clothes full of memories, or when you watch a girl break down and cry because she never told the boy she loved him . . . and now she never will, and someone tells you that it’s childish, you’re not going to believe them.
For me, manga is something entertains me, but it’s also something that allows me to experience, to ponder, and to feel.