Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: christianity, melancholy, nerds, sehnsucht, the trap, time, timewasters
Revised: 13.10.2009.
Upon returning to this here blog, I discovered a link I had put in an otherwise blank draft post entitled “On Escapism.” (The link was to the curious essay “The Rabbit Hole: Anime and Escapism” from the on-hiatus or defunct Tachikomatic Days.) It was apparently part of an ongoing discussion, one which I intend to extricate from solely anime-watching and assorted nerdery.
No, what I wish to discuss today is the concept I call “cocooning,” or the deliberate and repeated self-withdrawal into private worlds of either one’s own or someone else’s devising.1 I’m no stranger to it, and I doubt you are either. In our current postmodern cultural climate, where everything seems to be subject to change and pop culture rewards us with endless variations on the same themes, cocooning could be considered an almost sensible response. But I digress…
As both a Christian and a person who cares about what’s real and what’s not, the brief but profound isolation from reality that is escapism causes at least titters of worry on my part. At one point, I maintained a full-blown obsession about it, if you can believe that. In any case, we all have our little cocoons of ephemera to amuse us and belief to sustain us, so in one way it’s unavoidable. Part of it, I suppose, is the old dividing line between what makes a hobby a hobby and an obsession an obsession. Like food or drink, it might be up to us to use such things responsibly. I’ve seen some even suggest that, especially among consumers of more creative cultural products, the obsession in question may provide a good mirror of their own lives and conduct and a worthy tool of reflection. I for one have always used concepts, the written word, and other inanimate personages to learn more about myself.
I suppose I’m saying all this because I maintain a healthy (in size, not in actual health) cocoon around myself these days. I feel more aware of those around me than I used to, however.
God willing, we won’t end up as the dessicated husks with a telepresence depicted in every major sci-fi dystopia from The Matrix to Surrogates.
Gentle reader, I yield the floor to you: what’s your opinion on this matter?
1Good gracious, that’s a convoluted definition. What am I, Samuel Johnson?
I think he is a she.
—Someone in Ranma, I’m Sure of It
Anime >> Ranma 1/2 (Eps. 1-5)
You know, after a semester of writing scholarly screeds and attempting to write my beloved fiction once more, I almost forgot the simple joys of the rant, or what I like to call “recreational nonfiction.” So, here goes:
After reading reviews and a few pseudo-reviews about how awesome Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 series is, I decided to bite the bullet and check it out online. I already knew that it was about a hermaphroditic martial artist engaged to… no, that’s not right. It’s about this guy named Ranma Saotome and his father, see, and they find these mythical Cursed Springs. Mr. Stereotypical Chinese Man tries to warn them of its fell waters, but they continue to train near said Cursed Springs. So Dad falls in and is cursed with transforming into a panda whenever he’s hit with cold water, and his son Ranma is cursed with turning into a “busty” (lovely reviewing term, ain’t it?) red-haired girl who still looks oddly like Ranma. They end up staying with the Tendo family, which includes the quick-to-anger martial arts girl Akane. Unlike every other screwball romantic comedy in anime or manga, these two actually have a professional background for their beating the crap out of each other constantly.
The main problem with this series, although the premise is admittedly pulled off quite well, is that the episodic and repetitive nature of the manga shows up apparently in the anime as well. There are 36 manga volumes and 161 anime episodes of this series, so you could spend a good portion of your life simply consuming Ranma 1/2 and related properties. Thus, after I sat through about five episodes, I knew I had basically seen what it had to offer… I guess (LAWL!). Essentially, new threats or suitors for either Akane or Ranma occur and reoccur on a frequent basis, along with anime-style “awkward situations.” Now, I give credit where credit is due here to Takahashi et al. for basically inventing a truckload of anime cliches… these weren’t cliches at the time–they were REVOLUTIONARY (sort of) !
Final Grade: B.
