evilthecat said:
Now, to be fair, Kamitani's "joke" would probably have been completely acceptable had it only been viewed in Japan, because casual homophobia remains perfectly acceptable in Japan. Even his "apology" makes it perfectly clear that he still doesn't actually understand why the joke was offensive, but it was. It was offensive because it implies a) that if Jason Schreier had been gay this alone would be grounds to laugh at him and b) that the wider opinions of actual gay people aren't actually important and don't have to be considered.
evilthecat said:
The only difference is that one is a half-naked woman and the other is a half naked dude (or three).
Read the apology.. seriously.. it's quite informative. Apparently, he was only getting requests for publicity images of the female characters, including blatant fan service images like female characters in swimwear so he drew a picture of sweaty dwarves in bathing suits to express cynicism at the fact that retailers were only requesting pictures of the female characters.
..incidentally, this is merely an aside, but pause at this point.
Go look at the concept art of the female characters in question and keep the above statement in mind..
Anyway, apparently he was going to post his sexy dwarf picture on facebook for the benefit of fans, but then thought about Jason Schreier's article and decided to make a "lighthearted joke", which turned out to reference Schreier's implied preference for the images over the images of women which he had also drawn.
Seriously.. join the dots.
I'm confused. Unlike many others making the claim that Kamitani's dwarf picture was some kind of homophobic attack, you appear to have all the pieces necessary to understand Kamitani's viewpoint, and yet seemingly refuse to do so.
In what way is it homophobic? Homoerotic, sure. But I can find nothing in the picture, or Kamitani's poorly translated facebook post, that expresses that it's in any way negative. The fact that he drew a picture that appears to be celebrating the male form, and perhaps homosexuality, should at least give people pause in interpreting it so negatively.
Nor do I think the words attached were a homophobic attack, though I can certainly see them more easily interpreted in that way than the picture alone. But I think, particularly given the context in which it was drawn (frustration that he repeated received requests for sexy promotional pictures of the female characters, and not of the male characters), it's very easy to see Kamitani thinking "Finally, here's someone complaining about the sexy female pictures! It would be funny and ironic to show him the sexy male picture I drew." I see his response as "Drawing sexy, homoerotic pictures of dwarves should make it clear that I am not a 14-year-old boy, and that I am comfortable in my sexuality and sexual preferences."
Homosexuality just isn't the enormous controversy and social conflict in Japan that it is here. While it's certainly not the norm, and is considered kind of weird (much like in most other countries in the world, at the moment), there simply isn't the level of hostility. The fact that they can make "casual jokes" about it expresses a higher level of comfort with homosexuality overall than in America.
The cultural difference that might obscure this is that Japan is such a private, collective, normative culture. They do not embrace public, individual expression like the western world, especially Americans, and in that way, are more repressive of deviation. That does not make them a homophobic culture, and they have far more homosexual characters in their media who are developed, interesting characters, and not just parodies of homosexuality. They are more progressive in this regard, at the least.
Should Kamitani have been aware of the cultural differences, aware of how his response might have been perceived? Well, it would benefit him to, if he's going to interact on an international scale, but aside from that? He lives in Japan. It makes sense that he would be most attuned to the norms and attitudes of his own culture. There's no more reason for him to know or care about what Americans (or members of any other nation) think than most Americans know anything about Japan. Sure, it would be smart, it would be best to know about as many cultures as possible, but it's just not reasonable to expect that any arbitrary person from around the world is going to understand how you, personally, think and feel. That's why there has to be communication, rather than reactionary mud-slinging. (Hey, I managed to tie into the message in Jim's video!)
Archangel357 said:
In storytelling, every part of a character should be relevant to the story. A villain needs a reason to be bad besides "he's an arsehole", just like a "seductress" needs more reasons to be "sexy" than "it will increase sales by 10%". Hercules, Samson, Siegfried, and indeed Kratos are shown as strong because they need to be. It is a side effect that they conform to our society's notions, which consider muscular men to be sexually desirable. So I put it to you: why make a character sexualised if it has no bearing on the medium? If there were a novel about a guy who solves crimes from a locked room, using only his computer, would he need to be built like an NFL linebacker?
Does the color of a character's hair, or their ethnicity, need to be justified or relevant? Or can it just be something to add flavor to the story? I find that stories need distractions, need elements that are "unnecessary" in order to make them feel more real and relatable. If you know that every aspect of a story is relevant and necessary, then it's nothing more than an intellectual puzzle to be solved. And given the frequent claims that every story has already been told, it's the arbitrary variation that keeps things interesting, and relevant to the modern world. Just your example alone: I'd be far more interested in a story about "solving crimes from a locked room, using only his computer" when the character is a guy "built like an NFL linebacker" than some more ordinary character associated with the genre, because it's an interesting variation, and I'd like to know more about the character. Why does this guy choose to use a computer and his intellect, rather than his strength? Even if it's not explained, it's still more interesting than another cliche, physically weak brainiac who solves crimes.
I don't think the size of a character's breasts are any different. Variation is good. What the industry needs is more diversity, more variation in female characters, not a universal shift away from one single depiction and towards another, single, uniform depiction. The problem (on both sides) is the focus on breast size, rather than the size of the breasts themselves. Discounting a female character because they have large breasts is just as shallow as liking them for the same reason.
