What rights does the viewer have?

[derek_t]

I'm sorry I thought that what you were impling. You weren't I applogize.

[Jonathan02us]

who me???

[derek_t]

No Johnathin that was for Milo.

[dwchang]

Man this is gonna be a long reply. I need to read/reply to the boards more often:

So let try to get this straight.

Its up to me the viewer to figure out what is trying to be said and I have no right to disagree with it even if the point is something that may seem questionable or totally poposterous?

And in no way should bad editing/writing/characters/ etc be considered.

So Attack of the Clones is an ok movie because despite bad writing, bad characters, horrible plot explotative, (this is all my opinion of course) etc if that what Lucas wanted then I cannot judge it? Is that what your saying?

Not exactly. I never said to disregarded your tastes and things like writing. The *key* difference is *what* you are saying is bad or disagreeing with. Your Episode 2 one seems to be the one that will probably illustrate this the best. All the things you mentioned, do they make a "bad" movie to *you*? The answer probably is yes.

As I said earlier, you have *every right* to hate something and dislike it. HOWEVER, you have no right in saying if the *creator* succeeded or failed with their goal/intentions. You have *no idea* what that is and only they do. They are the only ones who can truly judge if they succeeded or not (and that doesn't always pertain to making $$$ or having the audience understand/agree/like it). Hopefully that makes sense.

so we can never know for sure if we are judging him on the right set of goals. But we can still make an educated guess and use that 'intention' as a basis for judgement.

Exactly. Well not exactly. Exactly in that we can't judge them 100% on their goals and can never know (unless they explicitely say so). What I don't agree with is educated guesses...sure you can guess for your own sake (i.e. do I like it or not?), HOWEVER, you can't go around throwing your *guess* as fact which is more or less what this person did (or at least implied). You can't 100% know and thus can't have a true "answer." Just enough to say "I like it" or "I dislike it." That's human. I think you misunderstand my utopia...it's not saying you can't hate something...it's saying you can't fully understand something and thus make 100% truth conclusions.

And I *do* think Eva was aimed for those who tend to think things through and look beneath the surface - in that view it definitely accomplishes what it sets out to do.

Not entirely. Evangelion was quite popular with adolescent boys (lower teens). Not to say they necessarily understood every references both philosophically and religiously, but regardless there were a lot of kids who liked it and well...giant robots...who does that always appeal to? And BTW I'm *not* belittling te show. Everyone on here should know I love it.

Now, I get to jump in. You are DW seem to also be saying that one can never say a paticular point is wrong and that an anime can only be judged based on if the message is delivered. Look, there are things call subjective facts. These facts are made up by life experience. So if I say hey "the writer is wrong". I'm saying based on my life experience its wrong. Thats why I'm saying at times "the view is wrong". Because from my view it is fact that the creator is wrong. I have always allowed you to disagree with me on this becuase I understand that the view is different on your side.

No y'see, the difference here is we are discussing someone else's work while your statement that "the creator is wrong" is arguing with the creator...THE source. You *can't* argue with them. As I said earlier, it's *THEIR STORY* and *THEIR MESSAGE* if you didn't like it (which you are entitled to...I never said you had to like it), it's not their fault. Who says their point was even to please you or for you to understand something?

My point is that you can *never* know enough to argue with them and *reject* what they say. My key point is your usage of the word "reject." That implies that they are wrong when in fact you are the one who chose to watch it. You can't reject something since...you don't even know what they are going for. How can you reject something somebody else's truths and so on when they might not even relate to you or were meant for you?

You two also seem to be saying that the creator can do whatever he wants to tell the story. Using Lord Of The Rings for example, what if near the end of film things look bleak for Frodo when all of a sudden Aragorn yells out "Quick, use your heat ray eyes Frodo". The recaction would be something along the line as "BS, he never had heat ray eyes before, what the hell do they think their pulling". There is a line where a viewer will start rejecting what hes seeing and that line is different for everyone.

No y'see we can all dislike that and go "that's stupid," but you still can't reject it. YOU are the one who chose to see it, they didn't force you to watch it and thus there is nothing to reject. Just like your Episode 2 argument, you can dislike it all you want, but you can't reject it. It's their story and if they wanna make it "stupid," they have every right...just as you have every right to dislike it...however you can't *reject* it. That implies it was yours to begin with. You have no ownership. You chose to be entertained by *someone else's* work.

To be honest, I think I took the coments personally without realize where both of you were coming from

Well hopefully it's clear what we're trying to say. It's not a "OMG my point is right" at least for me. What I'm saying is that you can't reject something since you (or even I) don't know what it is we're rejecting and more importantly, we don't have any ownership of it.

It all comes from someones imagination, and that someone is not you. You can not tell the writer of a fictional story that they are writing it wrong simply because it is fiction. You can dislike the way things go, or say "that's stupid", but unless you wrote the story and someone then changed it, you have no right to say it is wrong.
.
You don't understand the reason behind how a story (made several years ago) ended. Whoop-de-fucking-do. You mean nothing to the anime, and will change nothing. People that understood it, or accepted it, will still like it. The only thing your whining and argueing accomplishes is annoying other people, and making you look foolish.

Wow Jon, you certainly said what I wanted to say quite well

If i didnt like a certain anime then that doesnt mean that the writer or the creater of the anime is incompetant or didnt work hard on the anime, im sure that have and they put their all into it. What im just saying is my opnion and thats it.

Actually the main reason I wouldn't disagree with you is your vocabulary useage. You clearly make the distinction between "I dislike" and "I reject." I am in NO WAY saying you can't dislike something...that's stupid. People have tastes and so on. What we are arguing with Derek is that he "rejects" something the creator says/does when in fact he has no right since he didn't make it. Big difference .

I felt that the Love Hina series didnt give me a true feeling of conclusion, i dont kno weither they got married or what. So what i decided to do was to read the manga, which i feel is better and gives me a better feel for the story.

Well that makes sense since the anime is based on the Manga and the creator directly worked on the manga. It makes sense that the manga is more complete since it is directly written/drawn by the creator. The anime is obviously based on it (however accurate), but can't be 100% (and in this case it made you dislike the ending...that's all fine.).

In conclusion, i feel that everyone has the right to say what they want, freedom of speech, just as long as it is not hurting anyone else like discrimination, because that is just straight up wrong.

Agreed...but again key difference is rejection...at least for me.

[Jonathan02us]

No Johnathin that was for Milo.

LOL ok, koo

Man this is gonna be a long reply. I need to read/reply to the boards more often:

Wow Jon, you certainly said what I wanted to say quite well

If i didnt like a certain anime then that doesnt mean that the writer or the creater of the anime is incompetant or didnt work hard on the anime, im sure that have and they put their all into it. What im just saying is my opnion and thats it.

Actually the main reason I wouldn't disagree with you is your vocabulary useage. You clearly make the distinction between "I dislike" and "I reject." I am in NO WAY saying you can't dislike something...that's stupid. People have tastes and so on. What we are arguing with Derek is that he "rejects" something the creator says/does when in fact he has no right since he didn't make it. Big difference .

Agreed...but again key difference is rejection...at least for me.

Oh ok, yeah i agree, he can say his opinion and all and im down that, but if u regect something because u think otherwise and feel that its not wat u want then can we really stop him? Some things that we feel that other people think is wrong and regects it, cant be really helped, thats the way things are in this world. So im all for expressing opinions but some things just need to be kept on the down low so that people wont get all upset and all. But its all good in the hood.

[derek_t]

Um, I hate to do this.

I don't think reject does imply ownership. Reject can simply mean to not agree with somebody.

For example:

Person a: I think because rainbows are blue, racism is ok

Person b: I reject that statement.

Person b isn't saying "I own person a. You are not allowed to say that". He is saying he disagrees with the person a's statement (yes I know I could of used a more realistic statement)

[UncleMilo]

Um, I hate to do this.

I don't think reject does imply ownership. Reject can simply mean to not agree with somebody.

For example:

Person a: I think because rainbows are blue, racism is ok

Person b: I reject that statement.

Person b isn't saying "I own person a. You are not allowed to say that". He is saying he disagrees with the person a's statement (yes I know I could of used a more realistic statement)

By that argument, Person A could happily go an beat in the heads of people of race he didn't like, because... while Person B doesn't like what person A said, Person A should be allowed to whatever he wants, because, hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

I don't even know why you're bringing up this point...

but let's say you're person A

and many other letters show up... B and C and D and all the lower case vowels all come along

and they all point out how a rainbow exists because of reflected light that passes through water molecules and thus, blue would have to be a color in the rainbow... and that colors in the rainbow have NOTHING to do with liking or disliking people of a particular race...

Person A should say "well... that's your view, but I have some children I need to butcher and I don't think you should be forcing me to think any other way then the way I'm thinking now. Ta' Ta'."


This seems to be your argument now and I think it's a bit frightening.

-Uncle Milo

[derek_t]

Now whos putting words in mouths.

I'm only saying reject doesn't nessecarilly imply ownership.

My god I'm just agruing semantics

[Arigatomina]

so we can never know for sure if we are judging him on the right set of goals. But we can still make an educated guess and use that 'intention' as a basis for judgement.

Exactly. Well not exactly. Exactly in that we can't judge them 100% on their goals and can never know (unless they explicitely say so). What I don't agree with is educated guesses...sure you can guess for your own sake (i.e. do I like it or not?), HOWEVER, you can't go around throwing your *guess* as fact which is more or less what this person did (or at least implied). You can't 100% know and thus can't have a true "answer." Just enough to say "I like it" or "I dislike it." That's human. I think you misunderstand my utopia...it's not saying you can't hate something...it's saying you can't fully understand something and thus make 100% truth conclusions.

Heh, I appologize. For some reason I could have sworn you'd gone to college and taken rhetoric and english classes. If you had, you'd have learned the way novels are *always* judged according to society, authorial history, and implied authorial intention. You seem to act like this is unheard of and morally wrong - it's common practice in the US (and most other countries), and it's the only way to determine what novels are the best - which ones our children should read, which ones are powerful enough to further future writers. The same is true for movies or any medium that carries a message. Authorial intention isn't something I'm making up, and the fact that we can't be 100% accurate doesn't mean we can't look at the facts and draw conclusions from them.

Example: Shakespeare was in the pay of a king. He wrote plays about that king in which the fictional king was made to look good. His plays were put on before large crowds of people living under the ruling king. With these facts we can draw the conclusion that his intention was to give a message to those crowds on behalf of the king for which he was working. His viewers were common people, but they had a grasp of puns and word-play. For his viewers his plays made sense - they were easily understood and therefore well written for the target audience. Common day people require background reading in order to understand those same plays. Does that mean they're poorly written? No. Because the authorial history and *assumed* authorial intention led him to model the writing for a different audience.

None of that is 100% accurate, but that doesn't make it any less true - you don't have to interview Shakespeare in order to draw certain conclusions about him - and thereby judge his work.

If no one ever made a decision without being 100% accurate there'd be no point in living. Do you have any idea how much of an extremist you sound like when you say we have to be 100% certain before we can move forward?

Not entirely. Evangelion was quite popular with adolescent boys (lower teens). Not to say they necessarily understood every references both philosophically and religiously, but regardless there were a lot of kids who liked it and well...giant robots...who does that always appeal to? And BTW I'm *not* belittling te show. Everyone on here should know I love it.

I've never actually seen Eva. ^_^ All I know is that the ratio of people who understand it versus the ones who don't is high. Few people fully understand it. Considering how deep the anime is, there's nothing wrong with assuming the message was hidden for those who cared to probe - and the flashy visuals were for those who want entertainment without indepth study. Either way, the creator succeeded on both accounts so it would be faulty to say he failed.

My point is that you can *never* know enough to argue with them and *reject* what they say. My key point is your usage of the word "reject." That implies that they are wrong when in fact you are the one who chose to watch it. You can't reject something since...you don't even know what they are going for. How can you reject something somebody else's truths and so on when they might not even relate to you or were meant for you?

What are you saying? That no one has a right to reject a message (disagree with - think it's wrong] unless he thought the message himself? Is there no such thing as free thought - the right to determine for yourself what is morally right or wrong? Once that message enters your mind - the moment you read the message, hear the message - it is inside your mind. You *have* to do something with it. Sure, you can ignore it, but almost everyone is going to mark it as 'right' or 'wrong' based on his or her moral and social beliefs.

This isn't a utopia now - it's a dictatorship in which the creator has the right to force anything onto the viewer without that person being allowed to disagree because "he didn't think it himself". WTF? I can't think something that goes against everything I've ever believed is wrong just because it isn't my thought? I don't have a right to think rape is wrong just because the creator of an anime thought of it and not me? Let's just throw all personal freedom out the window. I guess only people who create are allowed to have their own thoughts on matters of 'right' and 'wrong.'

This entire argument (on your part) seems to stem around your belief that a creator has total control over what he makes - no one is allowed to argue with his message, no one is allowed to say "excuse me, but people shouldn't do that" - whatever he cares to put forward must be accepted or ignored - no one has a right to say he's wrong. This is more than faulty, it's dangerous. I hope you're never in a position of power. You take away the very thing that makes us 'free' - the right to decide as individuals (or a society) what is 'right' and 'wrong.' For you, the creator is the last word and everyone else must sit silent and accept that.

I may have to withdraw from this. I'm sorry to say, but the very concept disturbs me as a freethinking individual.

[derek_t]

First off to Arigatomyna: Thank You

What I like is the way everyone here has a dirty word for how to describe a anime properly.

You can say "disagree" but you can't say "wrong". Gee, I think they are two different words descibing the same thing. Here lets use them in a sentence involving the same subject

I disagree with legalizing drugs.
Legalizing drugs is wrong.

Sounds the same to me.

Look, if I see something I don't like I have to right to not only say "I didn't like that", I can say why I didn't like it. To express my view I will at times use those dirty words some of you don't seem to like. If you don't agree with the view, no problem. If you wish to debate the view, fine. If your are saying "you have no right to feel it was wrong, you only can dislike it" well its pretty close too "you can dislike something, but you are wrong to do so". I mean why do you think I disliked it in the first place?

Does the creator owe me anything? No, the creator can write whatever story he/she chooses in whatever way he chooses.

Does the viewer owe the creator? No, the viewer can dislike the anime for whatever reason he/she deems. Why can a viewer despite not being in the production process. Well, I would assume that a creator want his show viewed. Guess what, watching and taking in the messages are the final part of the production process. If not, well who the creator writing for anyway?

And it doesn't matter what the creator intended. It only matters what the final product delivers.