Toriyama should follow the Harry Potter movies' example and continue DB in a spin off

[Matches Malone]

With situations like this, I'm glad Toriyama generally keeps quiet and doesn't feel the need to spread his political beliefs. Because...they're probably not great.

Regardless of what his personal beliefs are, I think it's important to judge the work on its own, separate from the artist. If we find out that Toriyama killed someone in the past and is now going to jail for it, will everyone here who love DB suddenly dislike it ? I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but if the author never said what she said (I don't know exactly what's going on with her), would that change the current quality of her books ?

[Kataphrut]

With situations like this, I'm glad Toriyama generally keeps quiet and doesn't feel the need to spread his political beliefs. Because...they're probably not great.

Regardless of what his personal beliefs are, I think it's important to judge the work on its own, separate from the artist. If we find out that Toriyama killed someone in the past and is now going to jail for it, will everyone here who love DB suddenly dislike it ? I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but if the author never said what she said (I don't know exactly what's going on with her), would that change the current quality of her books ?

See, it's easy to say that, but I was actually getting back into Harry Potter around the time JK's terrible attitude became known and I just lost interest in it. It's hard to disassociate the work from an authour if you know they're of bad character, especially in cases like the Lovecraft example where it affects the work.

If Toriyama did something that heinous, I imagine it would turn a lot of people off Dragon Ball. As far as I know, the worst thing he's done is that alleged tax-dodging, and even that could be sufficient for some people depending on their views.

[JulieYBM]

Studying art to study a person's mind has academic value but the idea that one can enjoy art without taking into consideration the person who made it is to basically assume that all art comes out of thin air. Art does not come out of thing air, it is the labor of emotional turmoil and jubilation for the creator.

I mean, Christ, not to toot my own horn but allow me speak from experience as a creator: a piece of how a creator sees the world inevitably influences how a creator creates their work. Gokuu is written with a poisonous tip as a reaction to the commercial decisions of the animated franchise staff to make his character heroic in the older films. Furthermore, the 2013 film was crafted as a light-hearted response to Fukushima. In the 2015 film we see the everyman character, Kuririn, relegated to the role of a police officer, proposing that cops are good-willed and trustworthy (they're not, unless you're a rich person...like Toriyama).

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

[Polyphase Avatron]

I like most of Lovecraft's stuff because of the creative ideas and creatures. "At the Mountains of Madness" is better than most modern sci-fi, and it inspired a lot of it too. There are only a few stories where his racist views are so obvious as to ruin the enjoyment of the narrative.

[Shaddy]

Studying art to study a person's mind has academic value but the idea that one can enjoy art without taking into consideration the person who made it is to basically assume that all art comes out of thin air. Art does not come out of thing air, it is the labor of emotional turmoil and jubilation for the creator.

I mean, Christ, not to toot my own horn but allow me speak from experience as a creator: a piece of how a creator sees the world inevitably influences how a creator creates their work. Gokuu is written with a poisonous tip as a reaction to the commercial decisions of the animated franchise staff to make his character heroic in the older films. Furthermore, the 2013 film was crafted as a light-hearted response to Fukushima. In the 2015 film we see the everyman character, Kuririn, relegated to the role of a police officer, proposing that cops are good-willed and trustworthy (they're not, unless you're a rich person...like Toriyama).

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

I think that's too optimistic a view of things, sadly. If we just assume that art with bad politics is always made by people with bad politics, that people with bad politics inherently produce bad art, and that people with good politics never like art with bad takes, then we would have solved both art and politics long ago.

People always put their beliefs into their art, but that doesn't always mean its obvious. It's not like someone playing Minecraft could easily have foreseen Markus Persson being a weird Qanon loser. It can be incidental, and it can be intentionally obscured.

Secondly, quality of obviously super-subjective, but I'm not sure we can necessarily bad political views and low quality are the same thing. Let's take Dirty Harry as an example. Reinforces and celebrates all the worst things you could imagine a cop to be, and possibly brainwashed a generation into thinking madmen gunning down everything in sight is what's right for protecting a nation.

But the action scenes in Dirty Harry? Can be really fucking fun. Like, I'm not going to say they're not fun. If I'm having fun, either that means there's something about me that makes me sympathetic to the movie's politics, or that there is something good about the movie, despite its views. Obviously you can have good action without Harry Callahan being an authoritarian dictator, and I would applaud a movie that does, but it's still a part of the movie.

And finally, there's a lot of mix in people's views at times. I'm not one to play the enlightened centrist, everyone knows this about me, but it's not like there isn't racism, sexism, antisemitism, transphobia and LGBT hate on the left. It's the side most of us take because it's the best anyone's got, not because its infallible. With that in mind, a person who would otherwise be considered as having generally good takes can make a mistake, and that doesn't necessarily trace back to them projecting their own hatred onto the page/screen. I guarantee every piece of media you've ever consumed has had something someone can take issue with in good-faith. I mean, I said that thing about Minecraft before, and someone could easily disagree and say the villagers in the game are antisemitic caricatures not unlike JK's goblins, therefore Notch going off the deep end was a foregone conclusion. I personally think it's a bit of a stretch, but you're gonna have to draw a line somewhere.

EDIT: unless you're saying that a bad political take is itself one type of flaw within a narrative's writing, in which case I agree, and I just spouted a bunch of bullshit you already know.

[Kinokima]

With situations like this, I'm glad Toriyama generally keeps quiet and doesn't feel the need to spread his political beliefs. Because...they're probably not great.

Regardless of what his personal beliefs are, I think it's important to judge the work on its own, separate from the artist. If we find out that Toriyama killed someone in the past and is now going to jail for it, will everyone here who love DB suddenly dislike it ? I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but if the author never said what she said (I don't know exactly what's going on with her), would that change the current quality of her books ?

Yes honestly if I found out something horrible about Toriyama not sure I could enjoy his works the same way.

The same thing happened to me with Rurouni Kenshin. It was one of my favorite series but the manga-ka was revealed as a pedo. I really can’t look at the work the same way. It doesn’t mean I think the work itself is not good but it’s forever tainted for me

JK Rowling’s hateful comments have also tainted Harry Potter for me

It’s a bit different when the person responsible is long dead and no longer profiting. Like I know Tolstoy was anti-Semitic. I am not really happy about it but it is easier for me in his case to separate the art from the artists because he is dead. He no longer has a voice to do harm. He is no longer making money off his works and then spreading hateful views or maybe hurting more children in the case of Kenshin’s manga-ka

[JulieYBM]

Studying art to study a person's mind has academic value but the idea that one can enjoy art without taking into consideration the person who made it is to basically assume that all art comes out of thin air. Art does not come out of thing air, it is the labor of emotional turmoil and jubilation for the creator.

I mean, Christ, not to toot my own horn but allow me speak from experience as a creator: a piece of how a creator sees the world inevitably influences how a creator creates their work. Gokuu is written with a poisonous tip as a reaction to the commercial decisions of the animated franchise staff to make his character heroic in the older films. Furthermore, the 2013 film was crafted as a light-hearted response to Fukushima. In the 2015 film we see the everyman character, Kuririn, relegated to the role of a police officer, proposing that cops are good-willed and trustworthy (they're not, unless you're a rich person...like Toriyama).

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

I think that's too optimistic a view of things, sadly. If we just assume that art with bad politics is always made by people with bad politics, that people with bad politics inherently produce bad art, and that people with good politics never like art with bad takes, then we would have solved both art and politics long ago.

People always put their beliefs into their art, but that doesn't always mean its obvious. It's not like someone playing Minecraft could easily have foreseen Markus Persson being a weird Qanon loser. It can be incidental, and it can be intentionally obscured.

Secondly, quality of obviously super-subjective, but I'm not sure we can necessarily bad political views and low quality are the same thing. Let's take Dirty Harry as an example. Reinforces and celebrates all the worst things you could imagine a cop to be, and possibly brainwashed a generation into thinking madmen gunning down everything in sight is what's right for protecting a nation.

But the action scenes in Dirty Harry? Can be really fucking fun. Like, I'm not going to say they're not fun. If I'm having fun, either that means there's something about me that makes me sympathetic to the movie's politics, or that there is something good about the movie, despite its views. Obviously you can have good action without Harry Callahan being an authoritarian dictator, and I would applaud a movie that does, but it's still a part of the movie.

And finally, there's a lot of mix in people's views at times. I'm not one to play the enlightened centrist, everyone knows this about me, but it's not like there isn't racism, sexism, antisemitism, transphobia and LGBT hate on the left. It's the side most of us take because it's the best anyone's got, not because its infallible. With that in mind, a person who would otherwise be considered as having generally good takes can make a mistake, and that doesn't necessarily trace back to them projecting their own hatred onto the page/screen. I guarantee every piece of media you've ever consumed has had something someone can take issue with in good-faith. I mean, I said that thing about Minecraft before, and someone could easily disagree and say the villagers in the game are antisemitic caricatures not unlike JK's goblins, therefore Notch going off the deep end was a foregone conclusion. I personally think it's a bit of a stretch, but you're gonna have to draw a line somewhere.

EDIT: unless you're saying that a bad political take is itself one type of flaw within a narrative's writing, in which case I agree, and I just spouted a bunch of bullshit you already know.

Writing on phone so going to be terse.

1. 'The Left' isn't a party or entity, so being bigoted would automatically precludes someone from being on 'the Left'.

2. The ideology inevitably aspects of a work but those aspects drag the work down. D.W. Griffith invented new film techniques but that doesn't prevent their films from being horrible fucking shit in summation.

[Kinokima]

Studying art to study a person's mind has academic value but the idea that one can enjoy art without taking into consideration the person who made it is to basically assume that all art comes out of thin air. Art does not come out of thing air, it is the labor of emotional turmoil and jubilation for the creator.

I mean, Christ, not to toot my own horn but allow me speak from experience as a creator: a piece of how a creator sees the world inevitably influences how a creator creates their work. Gokuu is written with a poisonous tip as a reaction to the commercial decisions of the animated franchise staff to make his character heroic in the older films. Furthermore, the 2013 film was crafted as a light-hearted response to Fukushima. In the 2015 film we see the everyman character, Kuririn, relegated to the role of a police officer, proposing that cops are good-willed and trustworthy (they're not, unless you're a rich person...like Toriyama).

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

I think that's too optimistic a view of things, sadly. If we just assume that art with bad politics is always made by people with bad politics, that people with bad politics inherently produce bad art, and that people with good politics never like art with bad takes, then we would have solved both art and politics long ago.

People always put their beliefs into their art, but that doesn't always mean its obvious. It's not like someone playing Minecraft could easily have foreseen Markus Persson being a weird Qanon loser. It can be incidental, and it can be intentionally obscured.

Secondly, quality of obviously super-subjective, but I'm not sure we can necessarily bad political views and low quality are the same thing. Let's take Dirty Harry as an example. Reinforces and celebrates all the worst things you could imagine a cop to be, and possibly brainwashed a generation into thinking madmen gunning down everything in sight is what's right for protecting a nation.

But the action scenes in Dirty Harry? Can be really fucking fun. Like, I'm not going to say they're not fun. If I'm having fun, either that means there's something about me that makes me sympathetic to the movie's politics, or that there is something good about the movie, despite its views. Obviously you can have good action without Harry Callahan being an authoritarian dictator, and I would applaud a movie that does, but it's still a part of the movie.

And finally, there's a lot of mix in people's views at times. I'm not one to play the enlightened centrist, everyone knows this about me, but it's not like there isn't racism, sexism, antisemitism, transphobia and LGBT hate on the left. It's the side most of us take because it's the best anyone's got, not because its infallible. With that in mind, a person who would otherwise be considered as having generally good takes can make a mistake, and that doesn't necessarily trace back to them projecting their own hatred onto the page/screen. I guarantee every piece of media you've ever consumed has had something someone can take issue with in good-faith. I mean, I said that thing about Minecraft before, and someone could easily disagree and say the villagers in the game are antisemitic caricatures not unlike JK's goblins, therefore Notch going off the deep end was a foregone conclusion. I personally think it's a bit of a stretch, but you're gonna have to draw a line somewhere.

EDIT: unless you're saying that a bad political take is itself one type of flaw within a narrative's writing, in which case I agree, and I just spouted a bunch of bullshit you already know.

Writing on phone so going to be terse.

1. 'The Left' isn't a party or entity, so being bigoted would automatically precludes someone from being on 'the Left'.

2. The ideology inevitably aspects of a work but those aspects drag the work down. D.W. Griffith invented new film techniques but that doesn't prevent their films from being horrible fucking shit in summation.

I don’t like DW Griffith’s films either all that much but there are other filmmakers whose films I like who also weren’t the best and who I am glad aren’t on social media today


Perfect example Would be Hitchcock. I love his films but with how he treated the actresses who worked for him if he was making films today and the stuff came out about him now would I be able to support him. I think not. But his films are still masterpieces to me.

[jjgp1112]

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

Art doesn't solely exist to be escapist, optimistic comfort food.

[JulieYBM]

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

Art doesn't solely exist to be escapist, optimistic comfort food.

I'm aware, but your grisly art actually has to have a point and a message. Why is this story being told, what are we trying to tell the audience? What I described in my above post is art that says "Actually, all these terrible things are good things!" That's the sort of weird shit you get out of Wonder Woman 1984 or Zack Snyder's films. (My use of 'you're' might have seemed specific in nature but it was meant in reference to a general 'you', as in the world at large and how it operates).

Art doesn't have to be comforting--lord knows I'd made terribly discomfiting art myself when suicidal--but it can impart good thinking on its audience.

[jjgp1112]

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

Art doesn't solely exist to be escapist, optimistic comfort food.

I'm aware, but your grisly art actually has to have a point and a message. Why is this story being told, what are we trying to tell the audience? What I described in my above post is art that says "Actually, all these terrible things are good things!" That's the sort of weird shit you get out of Wonder Woman 1984 or Zack Snyder's films. (My use of 'you're' might have seemed specific in nature but it was meant in reference to a general 'you', as in the world at large and how it operates).

Art doesn't have to be comforting--lord knows I'd made terribly discomfiting art myself when suicidal--but it can impart good thinking on its audience.

I...sort of agree, but I think it also comes down to ultimately your audience and if you're communicating a message in a way that's actually compelling.

But then, I'm generally not inclined to assign as much responsibility to entertainment as most. But then, I work in advertising, so what do I really know?

[Planetnamek]

How we see the world influences how we make art. People with shitty ideas about the world inevitably inject those ideas into their art and then their art...just becomes really terrible. Who wants to consume art that tells you that you're going to die or that better things aren't possible? That's a conservative's art right there.

Art doesn't solely exist to be escapist, optimistic comfort food.

I'm aware, but your grisly art actually has to have a point and a message. Why is this story being told, what are we trying to tell the audience? What I described in my above post is art that says "Actually, all these terrible things are good things!" That's the sort of weird shit you get out of Wonder Woman 1984 or Zack Snyder's films. (My use of 'you're' might have seemed specific in nature but it was meant in reference to a general 'you', as in the world at large and how it operates).

Art doesn't have to be comforting--lord knows I'd made terribly discomfiting art myself when suicidal--but it can impart good thinking on its audience.

I actually enjoyed those films overall and that certainly wasn't the message I took from them. Not all art has to be thought-provoking or ultra-smart, sometimes I feel like just watching people beat the shit out of one another and Snyder certainly delivers on that front.

There is definitely nihilistic art that i'm not a fan of like Game of Thrones, whose penchant for constantly killing off it's characters made it impossible for me to get attached to a single one of them.

I don't think dark art always has to have a point, I think it's perfectly fine if it does not as long as it tells an engaging story(I.E. Suicide Squad, lots of violent action and horror films in general).

[ABED]

Game of Thrones was not nihilitic and more main characters make from the first to final season than you would think.

All art says somethng, whether intentional or not. I don't require stories to be deep or philosophical, but I prefer them to be functional, as in they follow the fundamentals of set up and payoff. Yes, even children's shows.

If the story has an explicit message, the message better be integrated into the story. If you want to be didactic, art is probably not the medium for it. The power of art is to get the audience into the shoes of the characters and feel what they feel.

[kemuri07]

Game of Thrones isn't nihilistic, it's just brutally honest about how politics can warp those even with good intentions. Ned Stark would be the main hero in any traditional fantasy tale because of his honor. But it is that same honor that leads to his downfall because he just assumed that people largely thought the same way he did, and couldn't realize that other people would be willing to play dirty in order to achieve power.

Even art that's purely escapism has politics because they tend to follow moral and social rules that we all, for the most part, agree on. Who is bad and who is good? That's politics. The people who fall in love and are considered an ideal coupling? Politics. A movie that ends on a happy ending? Politics. Can't escape it dudes, it's everywhere. So just embrace it!

If you want to be didactic, art is probably not the medium for it. The power of art is to get the audience into the shoes of the characters and feel what they feel.

I disagree. While sure that's part of it, but ultimately the part of any artistic medium is to create an emotional reaction from its audience. It doesn't necessarily have to be from empathizing with a character. The point of something like dadaism is less about telling people how they should feel, but getting people to arrive at their own conclusions.

[ABED]

It’s not about telling people how they should feel but just feeling how another person feels whether you ultimately agree with them or not.

[Zephyr]

Philosophy grad student here, "specializing" in Ethics, Aesthetics, and Social/Political Philosophy, with some nitpicks I guess.

Even art that's purely escapism has politics because they tend to follow moral and social rules that we all, for the most part, agree on. Who is bad and who is good? That's politics. The people who fall in love and are considered an ideal coupling? Politics. A movie that ends on a happy ending? Politics. Can't escape it dudes, it's everywhere. So just embrace it!

More precisely we might say that this is Ethics. The study of morality, right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice, etc. Much Social and Political Philosophy can be viewed as a practical application of Ethics, toward the goal of social organization. Actual Political systems are often, in turn, Social and Political Philosophies put into practice.

But something or someone having or presenting a viewpoint about right and wrong is not "political". It is rather the other way around, I would say: someone having or presenting a viewpoint about some political action is necessarily having or presenting a viewpoint about right and wrong. Our sense of "good", period, will impact how we view a "good" form of social organization, or a "good" rule or law, or a "good" work of art, or a "good" aesthetic flourish.

ultimately the part of any artistic medium is to create an emotional reaction from its audience. It doesn't necessarily have to be from empathizing with a character. The point of something like dadaism is less about telling people how they should feel, but getting people to arrive at their own conclusions.

Very much so agree with this, though. The essential function of all "art" is to elicit an emotional reaction, which are felt in the minds of the audience as "aesthetic experience". The sensation of seeing something beautiful is a type of "aesthetic experience". Even the sensation of seeing something repulsive is a type of "aesthetic experience". We might call these "good" and "bad" aesthetic experiences, respectively. Or, put another way, aesthetic experiences that are pleasant, and unpleasant, respectively. Being "in the zone" is a kind of aesthetic experience. Being amused is a kind of aesthetic experience. Being aroused is a kind of aesthetic experience.

We have "aesthetic experiences" in response to everything that we perceive, not simply art. Art is simply whatever is created, which elicits an aesthetic experience. This might trivialize the very definition of "art" for some people, as anything that is created might be seen as "art". I guess that's my position on it.

Regardless, you could embed a piece, such as a song, a comic, a film, or what have you, with an explicit message. Something for the viewer, the reader, the listener, the perceive, the audience, to learn or pick up on. This could be some sort of descriptive information, such as helping to inform the viewer on matters of fact, truth, and reality (a piece of animation that explains a scientific idea, for instance). This could be some sort of normative information, such as helping impart a moral lesson onto the viewer. For instance, manga like Berserk and Vinland Saga incorporate a variety of normative philosophical messages into the text and subtext, which I recognize from my own studies.

The presence of a comprehensible normative message in the text of a comic book is going to alter, enhance, or otherwise complement the rest of it, especially if it's a normative message that resonates with me personally (and in the case of Vinland Saga especially, this is indeed the case). This is a case where the message helps inform the (emotional) aesthetic experience, but it would still be art and elicit some (emotional) aesthetic experience even without that message. It would just be a different piece, and one which would mean a lot less to me.