I’m a fan. I am displeased by stylistic homogenization.
Like, I get that this is, on some level or to whatever extent, a … marketing to whichever demographic kind of problem or process.
Either I am in the minority of fans, or, they’re targetting market demos inefficiently.
… it would be very difficult to say which of those is closer to ‘true’, with anything approaching objectivity, unless people were literally polled/surveyed on this.
But, the other element here is that just is what capitalism does to art. It smushes everything down into generic, familiar, safe, with as much broad appeal as possible.
Because its churning this stuff out on an assembly line, anime is a mass market product, like spam or canned soup or plastic plates.
I simpler terms, broader appeal means less complexity.
If you want more people to “get” a piece of music, by definition it must be less complex.
For example a current pop song will be more approachable by more people than Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, simply because everyone can get the former, but only some people can grok Miles’ music (and those people also get the pop stuff, even if they don’t listen to it much, or if the listen to it a lot).
It’s not a free market thing, it’s simply the old distribution curve applied to art. Marketing just utilizes the nature of people.
I “get” Miles stuff much more than the average person, but when it comes to visual arts I know fuck all, so only the most fundamental stuff has any appeal to me.
I’m essentially the same in visual arts as someone who only listens to pop music.
Arguably, the entire, main problem with capitalism at a basic conceptual level is its natural tendency toward oligopoly and monopoly.
You can also have free markets in many kinds of different social paradigms that differently allocate or control capital than our modern paradigm of essentially ‘capitalists get to do whatever they want, everyone else is at the mercy of their whim, and mercy is not profitable’.
You basically always have to have regulation, anti-trust laws, various sorts of mechanisms to actually maintain anything resembling a free and competetive market, in most categories of goods and services.
IE, “Free Markets” can only exist for a short time by essentially random circumstance; to prevent them from stratifying and consolidating, you need some kind of system that exists outside of and around said market, to actually maintain it as a competetive market.
You’re not wrong that a good deal of the homogenization effect is just basic marketing, just how appeal works across a population…
… but capitalism overemphasizes this, exaggerates it, as the relentless pursuit of maximum profit, in the short term, changes business strategy toward monopolist rent seeking.
Now, combine that with… well this literally is media we are talking about, so, this directly changes broader social and psychological norms of what is socially acceptable to be expected.
Were the production and distribution of art more distributed, more varied, less highly concentrated into a small number of huge orgs/systems, wasn’t gatekept so hard, was easier for smaller players to not get drowned out by bigger players… you woukd find a consumer market closer to a free and competetive market, with more diversity, as it would be easier for studios that take artistic risks to come and go, to exist, to cater to a specific niche or set of niches.
What you’re forgetting is that anime (and art in general) is typically not done to please the critics, but to please the fans.
I’m a fan. I am displeased by stylistic homogenization.
Like, I get that this is, on some level or to whatever extent, a … marketing to whichever demographic kind of problem or process.
Either I am in the minority of fans, or, they’re targetting market demos inefficiently.
… it would be very difficult to say which of those is closer to ‘true’, with anything approaching objectivity, unless people were literally polled/surveyed on this.
But, the other element here is that just is what capitalism does to art. It smushes everything down into generic, familiar, safe, with as much broad appeal as possible.
Because its churning this stuff out on an assembly line, anime is a mass market product, like spam or canned soup or plastic plates.
I simpler terms, broader appeal means less complexity.
If you want more people to “get” a piece of music, by definition it must be less complex.
For example a current pop song will be more approachable by more people than Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, simply because everyone can get the former, but only some people can grok Miles’ music (and those people also get the pop stuff, even if they don’t listen to it much, or if the listen to it a lot).
It’s not a free market thing, it’s simply the old distribution curve applied to art. Marketing just utilizes the nature of people.
I “get” Miles stuff much more than the average person, but when it comes to visual arts I know fuck all, so only the most fundamental stuff has any appeal to me.
I’m essentially the same in visual arts as someone who only listens to pop music.
Capitalism != Free Market.
Arguably, the entire, main problem with capitalism at a basic conceptual level is its natural tendency toward oligopoly and monopoly.
You can also have free markets in many kinds of different social paradigms that differently allocate or control capital than our modern paradigm of essentially ‘capitalists get to do whatever they want, everyone else is at the mercy of their whim, and mercy is not profitable’.
You basically always have to have regulation, anti-trust laws, various sorts of mechanisms to actually maintain anything resembling a free and competetive market, in most categories of goods and services.
IE, “Free Markets” can only exist for a short time by essentially random circumstance; to prevent them from stratifying and consolidating, you need some kind of system that exists outside of and around said market, to actually maintain it as a competetive market.
You’re not wrong that a good deal of the homogenization effect is just basic marketing, just how appeal works across a population…
… but capitalism overemphasizes this, exaggerates it, as the relentless pursuit of maximum profit, in the short term, changes business strategy toward monopolist rent seeking.
Now, combine that with… well this literally is media we are talking about, so, this directly changes broader social and psychological norms of what is socially acceptable to be expected.
Were the production and distribution of art more distributed, more varied, less highly concentrated into a small number of huge orgs/systems, wasn’t gatekept so hard, was easier for smaller players to not get drowned out by bigger players… you woukd find a consumer market closer to a free and competetive market, with more diversity, as it would be easier for studios that take artistic risks to come and go, to exist, to cater to a specific niche or set of niches.