Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan by Kamm Björn-Ole Kam Thiam Huat Galbraith Patrick W

Author:Kamm, Björn-Ole,Kam, Thiam Huat,Galbraith, Patrick W.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472594983
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2015-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

Traversing fantasy in Otaku no Video

The term ‘fantasy’ is often understood to be a particular genre of creative works, which depict magical and fictional universes that do not exist in our physical reality. In psychoanalytic frameworks, fantasy is an imaginary scenario that connects the gaps between the subject and its never-fulfilled desire structured by ideology. In other words, fantasy serves as a way for individuals to imagine ‘a path out of the dissatisfaction produced by the demands of social existence’ (McGowan, 2007, p. 23). There are three levels of fantasy: simple daydreams, creative works and entire belief systems. McGowan argues that all films, even realist ones, belong to the realm of fantasy, since the very representation of reality mediates that reality and moves it into another form. Fantasy allows the subject to imagine, momentarily, the possibility of satisfying its never-fulfilled desire. A Lacanian thesis of fantasy is always on the side of reality, suggesting that fantasy supports the consistency of reality and provides a framework through which we see reality.

However, a common misunderstanding is that fantasy is a realization of desire, or, put somewhat differently, that if we desire something we therefore fantasize it to embody our desire. Žižek (2008) argues that it is the other way around. Fantasy actually constitutes desire or provides coordinates of desire. He asserts that, ‘fantasy teaches us how to desire’ (p. 7). Desire used to define one’s sexuality and thus one’s sex-desire becomes the core of the subject.8 Žižek extends poststructuralist concepts of the subject, arguing that there is never inherent desire within the subject as the core for the subject. Rather, there is always nothing at the core, and fantasy merely functions as a screen masking this void of the subject. For Žižek, not only does fantasy constitute desire, but also, through fantasy, the subject’s transgressed enjoyment gets domesticated. Thus Žižek advocates ‘traversing fantasy’, or ways of experiencing fantasy that acknowledge that there is nothing behind fantasy and understand how fantasy masks the empty core of the subject (Žižek, 1989, 2008).

Otaku no Video presents precisely this experience of ‘traversing fantasy’ through its juxtaposition of animated otaku fantasy and the distorted gaze of the mock documentary. While the fantasized anime presents the otaku dream of conquering the world as a distorted hope for mainstream acceptance, the interview segments reflect the otaku subject’s high level of self-awareness about the negative representation of otaku in Japanese society. One may argue that Otaku no Video is the object of otaku desire, but this argument simplifies the complexity of the viewing experience and representation of otaku in anime. Otaku no Video allows the otaku subject to access the fact that there is nothing at the core of otaku desire. By pursuing fantasized objects on a daily basis, otaku’s fantasy structures a material reality, which is paradoxically the positive condition of the subject’s existence, allowing the otaku subject to be seen in society. In addition, by viewing Otaku no Video, the otaku subject acknowledges the subject self as a mere object in the world.

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