Manga in libraries causes more controversy

Paul

Ghost of Animes
Administrator
After the knee-jerk debate caused by the news that UK libraries were being offered recommended (and screened) Japanese manga graphic novels to encourage reading amongst adolescents and teenagers, a similar argument has now cropped up in the United States.

The article, titled "Racy fluff or reading aid?" was posted by the Portland Press Herald and looks at the idea of manga in libraries from several varied viewpoints. "It's gratuitous and very sexist," says one concerned mother, whose 12-year-old son is a heavy reader of manga. "They have 12-year-old girls who look like 25-year-old strippers." Some of this article is, if anything, typical of the ignorant opinions held by those who have only learnt of Japanese manga by it's (popular) 'infamous' reputation rather than having actual first hand experience with it. As always, this makes for very interesting (if not highly frustrating) reading.
 
I find it ironic that the examples they use of Mew Mew and Peach Girl, they have listed as degrading to women are both shoujo animes. Havent read any of Mew Mew , but I certainly didnt find Peach Girl "degrading" to my gender . But then again im pretty much never offended by explicit sex scenes involving either gender in anime and manga ( well aslong as its between adults and not filled with tentacles ) let alone racy outfits and innuendo.

Frankly this is always something that will happen , people like to make a fuss about anything they can . Right now with manga and anime getting vast amounts of publicity especially stateside articles like this are bound to pop up. The titles mentioned in the article are suitable for the schools age group , its not like they have TenTen or Priest over their school library shelves.
 
I always find articles like that highly amusing! but I love the comments from the defenders even more, trying to justify themselves and manga against prejudice! (something I will not do).

Tokyo Mew Mew is no different to Sailor Moon or any other Magical Girl manga, infact it's my daughters favourite but honest to god if they had got their hands on Sailor Moon the comments would have been worse!
IMHO the reason parents like that get on their high horse is because they've forgotten what it's like to be a kid and have dreams and fantasies (and no I don't mean the rude ones :lol: ).

My 11 year old son won't read by choice, he won't even try Harry Potter but I can get him to read manga! he loves Chronicles of the Cursed Sword! I also think forcing him to watch subtitled anime, rather than dubbed, has helped with his reading too, he's been reading subtitles for 5 years and has a much higher reading level than most of the kids his age. So from a slightly biased parents point of view, I think manga is great :D but the same rule should apply with manga as anime, in that they should only read stuff suited to their age group (my daughter is 13 and I won't let her read any manga that states 16+, or older teen, or mature at all!).
 
If I had children , I would certainly not them allow to read manga unsuitable for them , but , as Miaka says the titles mentioned are in no way unsuitable for the children at the the school , which makes the article particularly laughable .

I also agree that manga is certainly a good reading aid . Some cousins of mine certainly read a lot more as a result of manga. And I certainly believe they get a lot more out of it than reading a lot of the fluff that is contained in American comics.
 
very interesting. i suppose one good thing that comes out of it is that the librarian reads through the books before putting them on the shelves - common sense if you ask me.
But some can be upsetting. Caitlin Lowell, a sixth-grader at King, says she remembers yelling at a book that features an army of buxom female robots who exist only to serve men.

"I couldn't stop reading it," she said, "but I was really angry."
from a Western point of view, this strikes me as hypocritical. what about the countless US 'teen comedies' that treat female characters as eye-candy and sex objects?
The Japanese comics, called "manga," are more sophisticated and complex than most American comics, which are dominated by superheroes. In manga, the focus is on character development. The illustration is usually in black and white, and the characters are typically drawn with large, round eyes.

Teenagers often wear school uniforms. Boys tend to be slender, with fine features and long hair. The girls' outfits are often provocative. Many series contain some nudity.

"It's a different culture," explained Melissa Orth, the young adult librarian at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. "America is on its own by being quite puritanical in its morals. The rest of the world isn't like that."
at least someone did some research into it. maybe there's hope for us yet...
 
I object to the idea that graphic novels as a medium are somehow intrinsically inferior to regular novels. What about books with illustrations? Are they any worse for the inclusion of pictures?

I could go on, but it's doubtful anyone here would disagree (for obvious reasons), and a one-sided debate is rather unsatisfying.

I'm also rather confused by the idea that certain subjects are somehow bad for children. I can see why some things wouldn't be recommended because children wouldn't understand them, but I have no idea why it's offensive for children to learn about sex.
 
Becuase of course, none of the books you'd find in libraries have ever contained anything objectionable. :rolleyes:

Leaving aside the obvious stuff like that though, I feel it's a good way to get kids reading. You can't force anyone to get into reading if they're not interested, you have to let them find something that interests them.

Me, I've been a gamer from the time I was a kid. I'm pretty convinced that playing games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle didn't just improve my logic skills, but also helped me greatly with my reading and comprehension. I was generally ahead of my class in English lit and Language when I was a kid.

I don't really see Manga as all that different. Both a are a visual medium of storytelling where you also have to do some reading. It allows you to build an evocative picture in your head much more readily and easily and helps you in your comprehension of what's being said.

Of course, I'm biased on two counts, one becuase I'm a an anime fan, and second because I had similar experience as a gamer.

In particular, I could never really find anything to read that interested me when I was younger. Then I played Dune II on my PC, and aside from the game itself, I got interested in the setting. So I looked the book up at my local (and very spartan) library. The end result is that I got heavily into science fiction books, and moved on to getting interested in reading stuff like 'the New Scientist' on a regular basis.

I can very easily see similar happening with Manga. It allows kids to realise that they enjoy reading, and helps them to find something that they're interested in.

Personally, I hated (and still dislike) Shakespeare when I was forced to do Macbeth for my GCSE's. I was forced to write glowing essays about how 'deep' and 'intellectual', it was. What a stunning work of literature it was. None of which I believed, but hey, that's what I had to do.

Now, if my experience of reading was being forced to read what others considered 'essential works of literature', but what I considered 'boring drivel', would I, in fact, be interested in reading in future? Likely not. Give the kids a choice of what they want to read for crying out loud, and stop patronising them so much.

So there's content you find objectionable there? As I recall, Shakespear's works include blatant themes of murder, infanticide, sex, blackmail, and general nastiness.

It's not difficult to find reading material that doesn't contain anything that's 'too much' for kids that age (whatever that's defined as these days). Likewise, a little searching will find Manga suitable for those groups which are at the same time absolutely stellar.

Frankly, I'd rather have a kid read Nausicaa than Macbeth. Easily more accessible, but still intellectual enough for the developement of a young and inquisitive mind.

And I'd definitely consider it more family friendly.

But then, I'm weird like that aren't I? :roll:

/rant
 
subedii said:
Personally, I hated (and still dislike) Shakespeare when I was forced to do Macbeth for my GCSE's. I was forced to write glowing essays about how 'deep' and 'intellectual', it was. What a stunning work of literature it was. None of which I believed, but hey, that's what I had to do.

You're a better man than me then! (not literally of course :lol: ). I did MacBeth for O'Level many many years ago and I didn't understand what the hell the teachers were going on about :shock:

subedii said:
So there's content you find objectionable there? As I recall, Shakespear's works include blatant themes of murder, infanticide, sex, blackmail, and general nastiness.

Too true! Wasn't there some gender issues in one of them as well? something about a girl pretending to be a man, or was it the other way around?! I don't remember a theme like that in manga :lol:
Same with Charles Dickens, his stories can be a bit sick as well but he's still listed as must read literature along with Shakespeare!
 
Miaka-chan said:
Too true! Wasn't there some gender issues in one of them as well? something about a girl pretending to be a man, or was it the other way around?!
You might mean Twelfth Night, and it is a girl dressed as a man. My teacher told us it was a comedy. I question the artistic value of any comedy that isn't funny. I'm also put off by the fact that every Shakespeare play for some reason has to retain the Elizabethan language it was written in.

I can't help but wonder if there's a manga version of Shakespeare's works. It wouldn't really surprise me; I know there are manga adaptations of things like Star Wars. Now that'd be something to show people that complained about manga being all rubbish.

I think literature classes put people off reading because they insist on making you analyse everything. This isn't something I look for in a book.
 
Colin said:
I can't help but wonder if there's a manga version of Shakespeare's works. It wouldn't really surprise me; I know there are manga adaptations of things like Star Wars. Now that'd be something to show people that complained about manga being all rubbish.

<a href="http://forums.animeuknews.net/viewtopic.php?t=592" target=blank">Funnily enough....</a>
 
Colin said:
Miaka-chan said:
Too true! Wasn't there some gender issues in one of them as well? something about a girl pretending to be a man, or was it the other way around?!
You might mean Twelfth Night, and it is a girl dressed as a man. My teacher told us it was a comedy. I question the artistic value of any comedy that isn't funny. I'm also put off by the fact that every Shakespeare play for some reason has to retain the Elizabethan language it was written in.

That's the one :D
I agree that Shakespeare could do with being "modernised" but we would sadly be in the minority :(
 
I actually like Shakespere :? , it was of the few things I actually enjoyed at school once I got over the older style of its writing. But yes , there certainly is lots of adult topics in Shakespere , far more than in some manga. Yet no fuss is made over children reading Shakespere as its seen as educational , certainly a mixed message here.

Literature classes certainly do over-analyze aswell , I think its far better to enjoy a good , deep story with interesting charecters. Which is something manga provides, plus the drawn format just makes it even more accessible to children.
 
Miaka-chan said:
subedii said:
Personally, I hated (and still dislike) Shakespeare when I was forced to do Macbeth for my GCSE's. I was forced to write glowing essays about how 'deep' and 'intellectual', it was. What a stunning work of literature it was. None of which I believed, but hey, that's what I had to do.

You're a better man than me then! (not literally of course :lol: ). I did MacBeth for O'Level many many years ago and I didn't understand what the hell the teachers were going on about :shock:

I second that I did Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and I didn`t understand much off it.I bluffed my way through it and I never did tell my teacher that I thought Shakespear sounded like it was written by a demented elephant on drugs.

At the time I wasn`t really interested in something where you constantly had to work to understand just the basic things the characters in the play was saying.
 
The problem with taught Shakespear is that it is read, not watched. Its like reading a script of star wars rather than watching the movies. It loses so much. Also the over analysis of what was in its day more like going to watch a movie. Twelth night would have been something like a Rom Com, or Macbeth like Gladiator or Shindlers list.
As for some of the idjets in the article the line for South Park the Movie
'We bust blame everybody before someone thinks of blaming us!'
 
I liked Shakespeare. The Elizabethan language is actually only used in his poetry, but on the rare times when he uses prose (e.g. Much Ado) it's actually really easy to understand. Now Dickens, I could never stand him.

It's sad when people say things without having any real basis for their argument. Yes, some manga is adult. Some Western books are adult, some movies are adult, but when it is foreign or different, people tend to stand out against it.
 
subedii said:
Personally, I hated (and still dislike) Shakespeare when I was forced to do Macbeth for my GCSE's. I was forced to write glowing essays about how 'deep' and 'intellectual', it was. What a stunning work of literature it was. None of which I believed, but hey, that's what I had to do....

So there's content you find objectionable there? As I recall, Shakespear's works include blatant themes of murder, infanticide, sex, blackmail, and general nastiness.

In my time at school i studied Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and then Othello at sixth form and i hated everyone. To have to fake such wonder and awe for something that frankly gives you a headache everytime you look at it is almost enough to drive you insane. Our class was made to re-do that damn Othello essay four times to get it to the level our stupid pompous teacher wanted it.

I don't think there is a Shakespear play out there that doesn't have some refernce to murder and sex etc, and it's not just Shakespear. I've also studied Enduring Love, by yet another author who can't write a book with out sex, incest etc. Streetcar Named Desire featuring rape amongst many other things; the poet John Donne, barely a single poem without reference to sex or sexism toward women, some really very crude. I could continue but i won't, the point is made.People are stuck in there ways, they continue to teach the same things year after year.

I have have to admit that in some ways i am glad i have learnt what i have, but i'm sure there is manga and other far more interesting books out there that could have been taught and picked apart with a fine tooth comb in the same way, and achieved me even higher grades than i got (because i actually would have been interested).

The result of this schooling being that, i hate Shakespear as much as ever, i enjoy analysing poetry although i believe it is often analysed too much....can't people just write things without having special meaning behind every syllable. I have found even more poets i dislike, and too top it all off i now find myself annoyingly over analysing too much of what i watch and read, in order to find hidden meanings....although frustratingly not Harry Potter, the thing i should be analysing and i don't
 
Chomolungma said:
It's sad when people say things without having any real basis for their argument. Yes, some manga is adult. Some Western books are adult, some movies are adult, but when it is foreign or different, people tend to stand out against it.

I have a basis, it's pants :lol:
No seriously, if Shakespeare were to be modernised and the uninelligible language translated, I would enjoy quite a bit of it, as the actual stories themselves are really interesting.
To me reading Shakespeare is like trying to read an untranslated manga - impossible!!
The main reason a lot of people detest Shakespeare is because it's forced upon them at school. I love H.G. Wells, The Time Machine being my favourite but guess what; I hate The History of Mr. Polly because it was forced upon me for O'Level!!
 
Miaka-chan said:
I have a basis, it's pants :lol:
No seriously, if Shakespeare were to be modernised and the uninelligible language translated, I would enjoy quite a bit of it, as the actual stories themselves are really interesting.
To me reading Shakespeare is like trying to read an untranslated manga - impossible!!
The main reason a lot of people detest Shakespeare is because it's forced upon them at school. I love H.G. Wells, The Time Machine being my favourite but guess what; I hate The History of Mr. Polly because it was forced upon me for O'Level!!

Maybe you should check out the animated Shakespeare, they give the essence of the story in thirty minutes without all the language (also, a different animation style is used for each episode).
 
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