Generally, anime surpasses Hollywood. This is so for several reasons. Primarily, anime typically lacks the dichotomy of good and evil. What I mean by this is that the stories driving anime usually manage to provide for some reconciliation between (or entirely lack) the 'good' and 'evil' characters. While there are rarely any 'evil' characters in serious anime (virtually anything other than shounen anime), they frequently exist in Hollywood. For example, consider Princess Mononoke and any Disney movie or The Lord of the Rings. While I do enjoy both Disney movies and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, they simply fail to provide any depth whatsoever to the 'bad' characters (any Disney villain or Sauron). Compare to Princess Mononoke where either the humans, led by Eboshi, or the wolves, characterized by Mononoke, could be considered the antagonist. In Mononoke, Ashitaka (the protagonist) allies with both of the possible antagonists. This alone signifies a complexity absent in the vast majority of Hollywood films.
The dichotomy present in typical Hollywood films is unrealistic and merely impresses upon people a false distinction among people generally. While I realize it is a cliché, there simply is no such thing as a good or evil person. Everyone has 'good' and 'bad' qualities and characteristics. Everyone must have some redeeming quality, regardless of the atrocities they have committed in the past.
That this false dichotomy is impressed upon people is a tragic reality of current societies. It is, I believe, responsible for the deaths of countless people. People who oversimplify and are able to categorize others into the groups of 'good' and 'evil' are responsible for the deaths of innumerable people and entire populations. I believe that, in some minimal yet significant way, anime can help society as a whole overcome such dangerous categorizations and perhaps bring about the dawn of a new and more tolerant society.
No comments:
Post a Comment