Anime's Anomie - Lost Symbols & Barbaric Affluence

Описание: Anime is taken as a starting point to question the causes of anomie - a feeling of being lost and disconnected in an age of affluence. I explore the difference between traditional art (symbols) and more contemporary media (signs) and how lost symbols may lie at the root of today's widespread loneliness.

The combination of anime’s form (highly idealised, flat, glossy images) and its frequent subject matter (urban isolation and loneliness), means that it can be seen as both a depiction and a symptom of poor contemporary mental health.

Using the ideas of the historian/political philosopher Michael Oakeshott (“barbaric affluence”), the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (the Lacanian Triad), and the German cultural theorist Theodor Adorno (the culture industry), I argue that the huge popularity of anime demonstrates the extent to which highly technological societies have lost touch with the traditional, symbolic, elements of their culture that helped to ground people and give them a sense of purpose and belonging.

*Correction* I tripped myself up with my own title on the title page of this video - it reads (and I read it that way) "Amine" instead of "Anime" - apologies!

An Arctic-themed explanation of the Lacanian Triad
@https://blogit.utu.fi/ktmt/2023/05/04...

Christopher Gibson - Doctor of Education dissertation on the educational philosophy of Michael Oakeshott
@https://summit.sfu.ca/_flysystem/fedo...

Images used under a Creative Commons License:

The Ambassadors painting viewed through a tube:
@https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

The skull without anamorphosis effect:
@https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...

Goths’ Weekend:
@https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

“Talking Heads’ ” David Byrne dancing to “Once in a Lifetime”
@   • Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime (Offici...  

Adorno’s “On the Fetish Character of Music and Regression in Listening”:
@https://yaleunion.org/secret/Adorno-O...

#anime #mentalhealth #symbols