This is very noticeable in both Japanese animation as well as American media. It’s the lone hero fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds. This kind of media prepares the citizenry for fascism.
Democracy never features a lone hero. Democracy is about mass popular movements constraining and ultimately controlling the elite. I have yet to see this portrayed in any elite media. It’s not difficult to reason why.
It hardly matters whether the lone hero defeats the “evil empire” or not. All that happens is the lone hero will then have the power, and the people will be in a similar situation.
Anime portrays the common people as helpless victims of the vast destructive war between the “good guys” and “bad guys”. Screaming in terror is common – faceless and then a corpse is also common. A democratic story would show the democratic struggle rather than people living mundane apolitical lives followed by violent death.
But it can’t be portrayed this way – since the lone hero model, whether it be Chuck Norris, Arnold Swartzenegger, Shinji Ikari, Motoko Kusanagi, or any of countless others and all it implies (a complete lack of democratic energy in the populace) presents an extreme vision of fascism, which is the propaganda model the media wants to portray, and consistently does portray.
Imperial media shows two sides battling for power, with the winner getting the right to enslave the people and the loser receiving subjugation. Yet, sadly, it’s the people themselves who make up the majority of the viewers of this material. Of course, the media does not portray the battle in those terms. It’s portrayed as one side fighting “for peace, justice, and freedom” and the other fighting “for domination, subjugation, and slavery”. George W. Bush’s rhetoric is hardly any different.
We're in Our World Now 
March 5, 2008 at 2:41 am |
The free enterprisers in the 19th century were “rugged individualists” that believed that they could conquer the world by themselves and needed no one to help them, that they could do it all by themselves without government or anyone giving them a helping hand!
This same thought process is still in vogue with the Conservatives and the Libertarians in the 21st century! They are opposed to joining forces with others to protect or to further mutual interests! They call it “ethnocentric!”
They hate government assistance and regard the accepting assistance as a sign of weakness! and a form of socialism!
The so called rugged individualists are out of touch with reality!
March 5, 2008 at 10:58 pm |
That describes the Libertarian Right position of today fairly accurately, at least in spirit. They have no problem with business alliances however.
Under capitalism the goal is for individuals to accumulate capital. Under socialism the goal is for individuals to help each other. The kind of atomized technology-dominated society we have today could only have resulted from capitalism.
Ironically, one of the main reasons there are no mass populist political movements in the US as there are in many other countries is that the values of capitalism itself (looking out for #1, irrational wealth accumulation) prevent it. Only countries with a strong socialist streak within the populace can produce those mass movements that can bring about fundamental change in the power structure.