Well, I think the idea of “society” in this sense is more localized, in that there’s a problem and in the course of the work it gets fixed. Think Midsummer Night’s Dream, where people are getting punished simply for being in love; the action of the play creates a society where everyone’s happy.

Hahaha. Oh my yes. My reading in this book is what’s shaping my idea I was espousing for our “taxonomy” project, that we would illustrate how the trope is typically used in a generic sense, and how it might change given new contexts — and color those contexts in turn.

You’re taking a fine and sturdy middle ground. : D But no, you make sense as well. I just genuinely feel there’s no reason to use a word that may require explanation when another is available. I suppose it’s my deal that discourse should be comprehensible to the “intelligent layperson.”

More reason to love Minmei Macross all over again!

…Is what a less scholarly person than I would say. Ahem.

The “new society” is a world in which the “ordinary” virtues are rewarded, whereas in the low-mimetic/ironic world of the beginning, they are punished.

Huh, I never thought of low mimetic tragedy and irony as punishing ordinary virtues so much as positing that the real world awards and punishes with little regard for virtue, and trying to emulate that vision of reality. But I suppose the effective result of that could pretty easily be called punishment of ordinary people.

Here’s one of the two important points: the genre signifiers (my term, not his) of a piece can shift and change depending on one’s perspective.

I am, at present, kicking the shit out of myself for not happening upon Frye’s thoughts on that matter when I was writing the essay I sent to the grad schools I applied to. The damn Anatomy of Criticism was sitting on my desk the whole time.

I’m thinking particularly of a recent thing I read (through lelangir’s anitations, so I don’t know who originally said it), which defended the weeaboo’s tendency to insist on using the word “seiyuu” when “voice actor” can suffice. The general rule for loanwords from other languages is that they only really work if there is no analogue — which was the argument. I don’t agree. I think “voice actor” can carry all the important, salient points with it. If we must explain to someone outside our discourse that there’s a difference between the practices of American and Japanese voice actors, then that’s that. We would have to perform the same act of footnoting by using the Japanese word, and using something in our language makes us look less like douchebags.

Also re: what you said to animekritik — no, seiyuu isn’t a great loanword, and all the English-speaking otaku in the world can’t force it to enter the language (I doubt that they even want to). But I would still defend its use among otaku insofar as it’s technical jargon; it carries weight in that circle that “voice actor” doesn’t, and in that sense it’s far removed from other obnoxious weeaboo borrowings, like kawaii and sugoi. I certainly wouldn’t refer to seiyuu in casual conversation any sooner than I’d refer to deconstruction, but the word has its uses.

And you’re totally right about loanwords, it’s just that I don’t think there would ever be *enough* steam behind the word for it to get into the language. That’s what I wanted to try to say about not having an analogue already — if an otaku uses the word and too many people just go, “You mean a voice actor?” then it’s not going to work. Of course, this is pure speculation and only time will tell, I suppose. ^_^

how a work of art can be of its own time and of ours, which at first blush seems paradoxical at best and antithetical at worst

Relating this to my favorite anime, Super Dimension Fortress Macross I figure it to be melodramatic romance of the low mimetic kind. It’s heroes are kind of everypeople — not larger than life, even Lin Minmei is strikingly ordinary in her being a willful teenager unsure of wanting the success that she got when she had it.

Fightning is, if not outright wrong, not preferable to peace – achievable through culture. Also, true love that is less selfish wins over love that is. Love begets freedom, fulfills dreams, et cetera.

I’m not sure if this response is a result of getting your criticism right, but I had an interesting time making it.