Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The Problem With the Youth Today

Definitions: Youth = 12 and under. Problem = cartoons.

I love one piece, I love transformers. I find Naruto most excellent. What I find odd is the absolute dominance Japan has on imagination, you just gotta pick up a copy of 'Fruits' magazine or look at Harvard's japanophile blog to see the strong body of evidence to suggest that the most creative place on earth appears to be Japan.
Yet you can also safely guess some of the most boring management practices are extolled and upheld by Japanese companies.
Anyhoo my girlfriend be Japanese, and I hate being taught 'beautiful japanese' which is to say how someone well educated with good grammer would speak in Japan. Largely because I don't speak using good grammer nor could I ever write an article for The AGe newsletter let alone read one of Helen Raiser's.
Anymahoo what I am interested in learning is how to speak in japanese like I would speak in Japanese. That is with appaling grammer and riddled with non sensical slang.
For examplewhen I started learning Japanese in highschool they didn't ask me 'would you like to learn Osaka Ben or Tokyo ben?' Tokyo ben doesn't really exist it's what we would call 'Japanese' however Osaka ben is a dialect used to mince grammer and convention in Osaka and what is spoken by most Japanese comedians.
Anyway where does one turn to try and improve one's japanese with said objective? Youtube. It's called Kaizoku fan subs where I can learn how to speak in Japanese like the simpleton luffy or Naruto.
But the other thing is the noticable difference between what Japanese kids are learning than what is censored out for the english dubs.
It's kind of like comparing the emotional value of Italian films such as Life is Beautiful and Cinema Nouvo Paradiso to American films such as Steel Magnolias and Stuart Little 2.
My point being Japanese children get to see stories that may involve the reality of death, betrayal, their villians may infact be cruel instead of moustache twirling 1920's villians.
Sure nobody can argue the impact Captain Planet had towards a callous attitude towards environmental cleanup (simply combine five Aristotlean elements to form an uber soldat to magically undo all the damage) but why doesn't someone see the massive impact Bob the Builder had on the market (for a toddler show it was extremely progressive with Bob asking a female out on a date) and equate it with introducing tragic and deep emotional lessons as well as strong role models of iron resolve into our children's viewing.
A loss of innocence I associate more strongly with when a kid wstarts smoking, not when a kid finds out cigarettes exist.
English dubbed cartoons censor out negatives such as blood, smoking, death, alcohol, religion but they also censor out all the values associated with them, and important attitudes of tolerance.
I guess I can't put forward the case well, but maybe occasionally pick up a manga in a bookshop and have a look at how masterfully the stories are told and pitched to a young audiance and cover with real world issues whilst still maintaining the innocence of the world of dreams which is where all children should grow up.

"So what you're saying is you want to see Itchy and Scratchy deal with down to earth real life issues and is teaming with robots that have magic powers."

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