Manga Traces: Imitation, Integration, Art (nsfw)

The immediate motivation for this post is quickly explained: a couple of days ago, Wabisabi from Iwa ni Hana wrote briefly about mangaka Kaoru Fujiwara.  Reading her post reminded me that I had wanted to look this artist’s work up and read it, but somehow in the middle of my research I had stopped and forgotten all about it.  So yesterday I started reading her Fetish anthology and was quite amazed by it.

Panel from Fujiwara's "Fetish"

Halfway through I hopped on the Net and tried to find information about her.  There was less than nothing in English, so I switched to Japanese and found pretty much nothing.  Actually, I did find a number of discussions on 2ch about Fujiwara, but rather than focusing on her biographical details and habits etc, they were all centered on a scandal that erupted a few years ago.

It had come to light that she had traced with 99% fidelity a photograph from a fashion book and used it as a cover for one of her works [she subsequently made a new cover].  Soon after, as it always happens in these cases, it became clear that she had done this multiple times (especially in cover work) and usually taking her -ehem- inspiration from fashion photography.  Currently she is inactive, although I don’t know if this scandal was responsible for that.

There is a website detailing a number of Fujiwara’s images and comparing them to the suspected originals [here].  Even though the site is in Japanese, you only need to click to the links on the left to see what’s going on.   A couple of the pictures I see as really having no connection [interestingly, they include the picture in the Iwa ni Hana post I linked to above].  Other Fujiwara’s drawings in this site could be categorized with some leniency as “inspired” by the originals, a case of “imitation is the highest form of flattery”.  Some, like the one below (the cause of this scandal), are hard to take as anything but flat out copies.  As far as I know, Fujiwara never credited any of the original photographers.

Cover of "If you want to destroy the world", with original on the left

I imagine most people will be outraged by this practice.  It might seem like the best option is to abandon this particular mangaka as a “hack” and move on.  But there are a couple of reasons this is problematic:

a) the practice of “tracing” is widespread, and your favorite mangaka could very well be a tracer.  2ch loves the subject, here’s a set of links on various artists’ traces.  Besides the long history of imitation in Japanese art, there’s also the fact of the various insidious deadlines that any Japanese laborer, mangaka included, are subject to.  Sometimes, if the artist finds a photo that is not only stunning but which fits well with the theme of his work, s/he might be persuaded to use it simply as a matter of “survival” in the industry.

b) the fact remains that Fujiwara is a great artist in her own right.  The overwhelming majority of her art is not traced, is one to condemn all of it for the sake of those few “traces”?

How many stories...

My personal take on the situation roams outside or beyond the issues I have just mentioned.  For one thing, I have a deep respect for fashion photography and am of the opinion that there are plenty of ads and editorials every year deserving the title of “Art”, and darn good art at that.  However, because this medium is so inextricably associated with commercial concerns (often, as in the photo above, with the sale of human bodies as the strategic preliminary to the sale of the actual product), a lot of people pass it over.

Therefore, I see Fujiwara’s desire [if indeed she has it, I’m assuming she does] to enhance or spice up her work with “traces” of photography as ultimately beneficial: the integration of one flow [fashion photography] into the other [manga] not only increases the exposure of the original product, but it opens up new possibilities for the product → a photo is worth more than a thousand words, sure, but clever, spartan text of the sort that Fujiwara’s manga teems with can in turn explode [exploit?] that photo into a thousand worlds of thought. Chain reaction.  Value addition.  Synergy.  That sort of thing.

Of course, I haven’t addressed legal and ethical matters, a topic I am in fact slightly less ignorant of than I would like, so I’ll let others deal with those issues.

***

There’s another reason my take is somewhat twisted: I’ve come across this before.  I said that “tracing” was widespread in the manga community, but the same phenomenon occurs elsewhere.  A few years ago I came face to face with it in the triple sense [see end of the post *] at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany.  One of the prized works there is American pop artist Roy Liechtenstein‘s M-Maybe.  After coming back home I bought a book on the Pop Art movement and began reading up on the likes of Liechtenstein and Warhol.  Then I came upon this site [here] and behold:

What has changed? Original (left) and Liechtenstein's (right)

I was shocked, no doubt.  The background is different, the colors…but the text is exactly the same!!  [The words Deconstructing Roy Liechtenstein are the name of the site]  Liechtenstein sometimes changed the text, colors, background, but in essence he usually copied his pictures from American comic books.  I guess something that must be said for Liecthenstein is that his paintings have a strong impact when seen face to face.  However reading articles about this man without thaving seen the original comics, as most students I suspect do, you’d get the feeling he was making a commentary by reshaping the comic book form to his own medium.  As it turns out, reshaping is too strong of a word for most of his works: the more modest reframing will do.

I’ve never been a big fan of Liechtenstein’s so I haven’t felt a real need to reflect on what the genesis of his works means (or should mean) for my assessment of him as an artist.  The case is different when we come to Daft Punk.  I listen to them daily, have been for years.  And there’s an issue that every fan of the French House duo has to face at some point or another: their heavy use of sampling.

I’m not talking about your basic hip hop hit, which mixes a sampled refrain with an original rap on how the singer is so cool [well, now that I think about it, originality of that theme is extremely doubtful].  I’m talking about songs built around samples, like Robot Rock, the most original part of it which is the title!  This popular youtube video (2.4 million hits and counting) will demonstrate what I’m talking about:

It took me about 5 seconds to get over my crisis after I saw this video and read about the controversy.  I simply realized that I’d much rather listen to the Daft Punk tracks than the originals they were based on.  Remember Value Addition! The ethical aspect of the case, for those interested , is not a problem because Daft Punk credits and pays royalties to the people they sample from.  There are a few remaining accusations of plagiarizing certain songs without crediting them but the beats are different enough to go under the rubric of inspiration and flattery…

So..where’s the limit??  Is there one??  I feel as if there were a pair of opposing tendencies advancing simultaneously in our world: the sense that we are one planet, in other words, the triumph of a (suitably diluted) version of the Gaia Hypothesis, increasing alongside an obsession with copyrights and intellectual property.  Rather than drift into ethics or something boring like that, I’ll leave the last word to Jorge Luis Borges.

The Argentinian author wrote a story called Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote which you can read [here].  I would argue that the tale speaks of the same issues I’ve spoken of in this post.  Very briefly, a Frenchman decides to reproduce the Spanish classic in its exact original form [not an adaptation or a translation, the exact same text].  The narrator, a critic and Menard’s friend, argues that Menard’s text is superior to Cervantes’ (even though it’s the same thing!  Or maybe it isn’t??  Ay, there’s the rub) and ends the story by quoting from this would-be new author of Don Quixote:

“Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

THE END

* – Triple sense: 1) metaphorical – face to face as an intellectual confrontation with the issue; 2) – literal – face to face as physical (visual, of course) contact with the painting; 3) metaliteral – face to face as it is quite simply my face against that of the model painted on the canvas.  Neat!

~ by Haloed Bane on September 28, 2009.