Given my last few posts on the impact of foreign influences on local culture, this ties in with what is happening in Singapore recently - the 6.9 debate.
More food for thought. By Terence Chong, first uploaded on ISEAS Perspective yesterday and reprinted in Today and also The Malaysian Insider.
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/litee/sideviews/article/singapores-impending-integration-challenges-terence-chong/
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
A Complex Relationship
In my last post, I wondered how the Filipinos felt about the invasion of manga. Especially when you know that the komiks pioneers fought against the Japanese during World War II and supported the Americans to return.
Francisco V. Coching spent the war years as a guerilla with the Kamagong Unit of the Hunters-ROTC resistance organization. It was his unit that conceived the clever idea of smuggling arms in coffins past Japanese checkpoints.
As a boy during the occupation, Alfredo Alcala (Voltar, Conan, Boba Fett) would spy on Japanese installations from a distance, memorized the details and location, hid somewhere to draw it put and passed it on the Americans. He was a spy boy.
The tensions I mentioned are real. Ace Vitangcol, the writer of the popular Pinoy manga series, Love Is In The Bag, hesitated when we asked about the reaction towards manga by some in the komiks community.
He said this was a slippery slope and he has been burnt before by this: the manga backlash.
In the early 2000s, a new group of young Filipino comic artists influenced by manga and anime emerged. These were the people behind Mangaholix and Culture Crash and pretty soon, they were receiving hate mail. When Ace started Love Is In The Bag in 2007, he was warned that he would encounter the same thing. "Some factions were not keen towards us."
"This made me asked what is a Philippine comic? I came to the answer: it is anything done by Filipinos."
"We are not in the Philippine market and we are not in the purely Japanese market as that focuses more on manga from overseas and local doujins. We are in between and filling that gap. Our books are sold in bookstores like the National Book Store, and not at events."
For younger female artists like Columbia Kho, she draws comics because "we love manga and not because we want to revive the komik industry." (Columbia contributes to Oh No! Manga) So in that sense manga allows them to better express themselves as compared to other styles or genres. Kring from Cebu proclaimed herself as one of the newer generation of comic artists influenced by manga. Since high school, she saw the dynamism of manga in telling stories. She found manga to be a deep way of storytelling, especially shojo manga which put a lot of feelings into the story. It is the same for Tin Tin Pantoja. "Manga is a natural way of telling a story for me."
This is similar to the reactions I got from younger Malaysian artists I spoke to a few years ago about being influenced by manga and Western comics when there was already a more indigenous style that has emerged in Malaysia in the 1980s in the form of Lat and Gila Gila. To them, there was nothing wrong if their comics look like a Western or Japanese comic. Maybe they are right. We can't fight globalization.
Diplomacy and politics play a part too. From The Straits Times, 11 January 2013: "Tokyo, Manila to boost ties amid regional changes: Japan offers Philippines help over Beijing's 'threatening' activity in South China Sea".
And 2012 marked the 30th anniversary of Malaysia's Look East Policy introduced by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1982 to improve bilateral relations between Japan and Malaysia. The Look East Policy will continue. (New Sunday Times, 23 December 2012)
In the March 2012 issue of Oh No! Manga, a detective tries to solve the case of Serial Vandalisms of 2896. In this future, the culture of the Philippines is slowly deteriorating because of colonial mentality and dirty politics. The people have forgotten their own history and the vandal is a promotor of nationalistic ideals and relives the past through vandalism. He is sending out a message about the country's dying culture.
The detective has a Japanese name, Ysaganni Ibarra and lives in Neo Manila, which is populated by robot maids from Japan.
I wonder if the irony is intentional.
Francisco V. Coching spent the war years as a guerilla with the Kamagong Unit of the Hunters-ROTC resistance organization. It was his unit that conceived the clever idea of smuggling arms in coffins past Japanese checkpoints.
As a boy during the occupation, Alfredo Alcala (Voltar, Conan, Boba Fett) would spy on Japanese installations from a distance, memorized the details and location, hid somewhere to draw it put and passed it on the Americans. He was a spy boy.
The tensions I mentioned are real. Ace Vitangcol, the writer of the popular Pinoy manga series, Love Is In The Bag, hesitated when we asked about the reaction towards manga by some in the komiks community.
He said this was a slippery slope and he has been burnt before by this: the manga backlash.
In the early 2000s, a new group of young Filipino comic artists influenced by manga and anime emerged. These were the people behind Mangaholix and Culture Crash and pretty soon, they were receiving hate mail. When Ace started Love Is In The Bag in 2007, he was warned that he would encounter the same thing. "Some factions were not keen towards us."
"This made me asked what is a Philippine comic? I came to the answer: it is anything done by Filipinos."
"We are not in the Philippine market and we are not in the purely Japanese market as that focuses more on manga from overseas and local doujins. We are in between and filling that gap. Our books are sold in bookstores like the National Book Store, and not at events."
For younger female artists like Columbia Kho, she draws comics because "we love manga and not because we want to revive the komik industry." (Columbia contributes to Oh No! Manga) So in that sense manga allows them to better express themselves as compared to other styles or genres. Kring from Cebu proclaimed herself as one of the newer generation of comic artists influenced by manga. Since high school, she saw the dynamism of manga in telling stories. She found manga to be a deep way of storytelling, especially shojo manga which put a lot of feelings into the story. It is the same for Tin Tin Pantoja. "Manga is a natural way of telling a story for me."
This is similar to the reactions I got from younger Malaysian artists I spoke to a few years ago about being influenced by manga and Western comics when there was already a more indigenous style that has emerged in Malaysia in the 1980s in the form of Lat and Gila Gila. To them, there was nothing wrong if their comics look like a Western or Japanese comic. Maybe they are right. We can't fight globalization.
Diplomacy and politics play a part too. From The Straits Times, 11 January 2013: "Tokyo, Manila to boost ties amid regional changes: Japan offers Philippines help over Beijing's 'threatening' activity in South China Sea".
And 2012 marked the 30th anniversary of Malaysia's Look East Policy introduced by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1982 to improve bilateral relations between Japan and Malaysia. The Look East Policy will continue. (New Sunday Times, 23 December 2012)
In the March 2012 issue of Oh No! Manga, a detective tries to solve the case of Serial Vandalisms of 2896. In this future, the culture of the Philippines is slowly deteriorating because of colonial mentality and dirty politics. The people have forgotten their own history and the vandal is a promotor of nationalistic ideals and relives the past through vandalism. He is sending out a message about the country's dying culture.
The detective has a Japanese name, Ysaganni Ibarra and lives in Neo Manila, which is populated by robot maids from Japan.
I wonder if the irony is intentional.
Manga and the Philippines
A recent trip to Manila got me thinking about manga in the Philippines. Given the long history between US and the Philippines and the strong connection till today, when and why the turn towards manga? Part of the global trend? Any resistance given the traditional stronghold the US comic art style has over the Philippines?
I found my answer in pages 132 to 134 of John Lent's The First One Hundred Years of Philippine Komiks and Cartoons (2009). I will quote extensively here.
Basically, Japanese manga and anime is much responsible for the renewed interest in comics in the Philippines. Anime was a formidable force in the country before Marcos banned it, especially "Voltes V", in the 1970s. (Fans remembered the beloved series well - celebrity cosplay photographer, Jay Tablante, was gushing about "Voltes V" when we met him in Manila)
By the late 1990s, manga and anime had made a comeback with Filipino artists doing their own manga in magazines like Culture Crash and Questor. Other titles like Mango Jam and the Mangaholix series appeal to the Filipino manga consumers - mainly females in the 8 to 25 age bracket and buying their books at specialty comic shops and bookstores.
Not all were happy about the manga invasion. Gerry Alanguilan, for one, felt it was inappropriate to use a style that is so uniquely Japanese and to call it "Philippine-made comics." He said that in 10 years of observing Filipino artists who started out with manga, he did not find any who have evolved their own style. Manga's "danger" is that it has a strong and recognizable group style not found in American comics drawn by artists from other parts of the world. (of course, this is debatable - is the style of Ardian Syaf from Indonesia and Carlo Pagulayan from the Philippines that much different from their counterparts in America?)
Alanguilan went on to say:
"Our culture is defined more by what we create, than by what we consume. We are no less Filipino when we eat Japanese food, and although we are no less Filipino citizens when we use Japanese art to create Filipino comics, it does put into spotlight that we no longer have a voice of our own."
Pretty strong words from one of giants of Filipino comics today.
However, for artists like Melvin Calingo (aka Taga-Ilog), he felt that it was "strange and utterly unfounded" that by accepting manga, Filipinos were accepting and promoting a foreign culture. Claiming the major difference between Japanese and Philippine manga was the audience, Calingo pointed out the unique qualities of Pinoy manga to be:
a) having Philippine cultural and linguistic nuances and local settings
b) being oriented to the youth subculture compared to the mainstream in Japan
c) using Philippine humor, drama and cultural values even in fantasy stories
Calingo felt that manga had been appropriated and transformed into something "quite unlike itself back in Japan." For him, Pinoy manga "suggest an intermarriage of influence between Filipino ingenuity and the usage of Japanese and American aesthetic conventions in creating comics."
Writer Joel Chua said that the decision of Filipinos to imitate manga was pragmatic because more work opportunities opened up for artists working in that style.
As in elsewhere, the Japanese government has promoted manga in the Philippines as a valuable cultural and financial export. Filipino artists have been encouraged to enter international and other manga competitions organized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
For more info, see Herbeth Fonddevilla's article, "Contemplating the Identity of Manga in the Philippines" in International Journal of Comic Art, 9:2 Fall 2007: 441 - 454.
I will be writing more about this in the next few posts.
I found my answer in pages 132 to 134 of John Lent's The First One Hundred Years of Philippine Komiks and Cartoons (2009). I will quote extensively here.
Basically, Japanese manga and anime is much responsible for the renewed interest in comics in the Philippines. Anime was a formidable force in the country before Marcos banned it, especially "Voltes V", in the 1970s. (Fans remembered the beloved series well - celebrity cosplay photographer, Jay Tablante, was gushing about "Voltes V" when we met him in Manila)
By the late 1990s, manga and anime had made a comeback with Filipino artists doing their own manga in magazines like Culture Crash and Questor. Other titles like Mango Jam and the Mangaholix series appeal to the Filipino manga consumers - mainly females in the 8 to 25 age bracket and buying their books at specialty comic shops and bookstores.
Not all were happy about the manga invasion. Gerry Alanguilan, for one, felt it was inappropriate to use a style that is so uniquely Japanese and to call it "Philippine-made comics." He said that in 10 years of observing Filipino artists who started out with manga, he did not find any who have evolved their own style. Manga's "danger" is that it has a strong and recognizable group style not found in American comics drawn by artists from other parts of the world. (of course, this is debatable - is the style of Ardian Syaf from Indonesia and Carlo Pagulayan from the Philippines that much different from their counterparts in America?)
Alanguilan went on to say:
"Our culture is defined more by what we create, than by what we consume. We are no less Filipino when we eat Japanese food, and although we are no less Filipino citizens when we use Japanese art to create Filipino comics, it does put into spotlight that we no longer have a voice of our own."
Pretty strong words from one of giants of Filipino comics today.
However, for artists like Melvin Calingo (aka Taga-Ilog), he felt that it was "strange and utterly unfounded" that by accepting manga, Filipinos were accepting and promoting a foreign culture. Claiming the major difference between Japanese and Philippine manga was the audience, Calingo pointed out the unique qualities of Pinoy manga to be:
a) having Philippine cultural and linguistic nuances and local settings
b) being oriented to the youth subculture compared to the mainstream in Japan
c) using Philippine humor, drama and cultural values even in fantasy stories
Calingo felt that manga had been appropriated and transformed into something "quite unlike itself back in Japan." For him, Pinoy manga "suggest an intermarriage of influence between Filipino ingenuity and the usage of Japanese and American aesthetic conventions in creating comics."
Writer Joel Chua said that the decision of Filipinos to imitate manga was pragmatic because more work opportunities opened up for artists working in that style.
As in elsewhere, the Japanese government has promoted manga in the Philippines as a valuable cultural and financial export. Filipino artists have been encouraged to enter international and other manga competitions organized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
For more info, see Herbeth Fonddevilla's article, "Contemplating the Identity of Manga in the Philippines" in International Journal of Comic Art, 9:2 Fall 2007: 441 - 454.
I will be writing more about this in the next few posts.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The power of RM$5
Zunar has been selling these at rallies for RM$5. This is to reach out to the rural masses who may not have accessed to information about the coming Malaysian general elections, their 13th since 1957.
Zunar and his artists are breaking it down for the people - how much Najib's wife is costing the individuals.
Ask Zunar about his agit-pop this Friday at Select Books, 7 pm.
Zunar and his artists are breaking it down for the people - how much Najib's wife is costing the individuals.
Ask Zunar about his agit-pop this Friday at Select Books, 7 pm.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Kwan Shan Mei
A friend alerted me that Kwan Shan Mei passed away in Vancouver last year. I remember reading her Mooty the Mouse stories in the late 1970s. I was told she drew cartoons. Anyone got info?
http://www.facebook.com/kwanshanmei
http://www.facebook.com/kwanshanmei
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Zunar coming to Singapore
Cartoons and Politics
What is the role of political cartoons in society? Do they merely reflect public opinion or do they shape it? Should they in the first place?
Zulkiflee Anwar Haque (better known as Zunar) is Malaysia's most important political cartoonist right now. His books are banned. He has been arrested and persecuted for drawing political cartoons. He is partisan, has strong views about politics in Malaysia and provides interesting commentary about the state of things up north. Especially with the 13th General Elections coming up in April.
Comics historian Lim Cheng Tju, Straits Times editorial cartoonist Dengcoy Miel and ISEAS Deputy Director Ooi Kee Beng will be engaging Zunar about all these and more.
Location: Select Books
Date: 1 Feb 2013 (Fri)
Time: 7 pm to 8.30 pm
NB: for an interview with Zunar.
What is the role of political cartoons in society? Do they merely reflect public opinion or do they shape it? Should they in the first place?
Zulkiflee Anwar Haque (better known as Zunar) is Malaysia's most important political cartoonist right now. His books are banned. He has been arrested and persecuted for drawing political cartoons. He is partisan, has strong views about politics in Malaysia and provides interesting commentary about the state of things up north. Especially with the 13th General Elections coming up in April.
Comics historian Lim Cheng Tju, Straits Times editorial cartoonist Dengcoy Miel and ISEAS Deputy Director Ooi Kee Beng will be engaging Zunar about all these and more.
Location: Select Books
Date: 1 Feb 2013 (Fri)
Time: 7 pm to 8.30 pm
NB: for an interview with Zunar.
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