2000s Cultural Autopsy Thread

[Sanae]

@anthony Great retrospective on Jak 2, I look forward to the inevitable Jak 3 pisstake.

[turnip]

In the end it all comes down to this: the westerner can't simply take seriously certain forms of art, be it cartoons or console gaming. Unlike the Japanese mind which sees potential in every medium, the Westerner tends to dismiss a priori certain avenues of expression. The reason for this I don't know, and I wonder if it was something that happened in the later part of the 20th century as we all know that western cartoons weren't always this unfathomably ugly display of bipedal monstrosities combined with downright criminal understanding of color theory. I'm gonna personally blame grunge music for my headcanon, as the visual degradation of non-pretentious fields started with the Gen-Xers.

It's interesting to consider. One of the odd things I have seen people who've lived in Japan emphasize is that it's a "Country of Air," where there is a kind of thinness or groundlessness to things. This is also related to their inability to really get the Western notion of God. I won't pretend to have a deep understanding of their psychology, but it does seem to me at least that the Japanese have little issue pouring themselves into niche crafts, careers, obsessions etc.

Conversely, I get the hunch that underlying many of these hideous Western creations is a bad conscience that simply knows that its life is wretched and can not be redeemed. It's as if their creations are absurd because that's what their lives are, and trying to create something serious and aesthetic would simply be unnatural for them.