When someone needs to trash what other people love, it only makes that person look insecure.
I trashed a lot of popular manga and anime titles as well in forums about those things as well as among friends and family, I also trashed non-Hollywood live action movies even here as well. I guess that you might have gotten the impression that I was focusing on trashing Hollywood movies but that was never the case, I just criticized some Hollywood movies which is expected given it's a site about criticizing (mostly) Hollywood movies. Most of them are Hollywood movies because most movies talked about in this forum are Hollywood movies because this is an American forum and movies to most Americans means Hollywood movies.
I don't trash the anime that people here love and I don't like here because I never saw anime titles that people here love and I actually disliked here. Thing is that the few anime titles that people here talked about are the absolutely most popular and accessible masterpieces like Miyazaki's movies which are universally loved. If the only Hollywood movies people here talked about were movies like The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, 2001, Star Wars, Blade Runner, etc, then I wouldn't trash any of them either.
Anyway, I was indeed insecure back them. I felt like something was wrong with me from being so affected by fictional narratives characterized by very stylized art. The reason is that Western culture is prejudiced against Japanese visual culture. Specially the elements of Japanese visual culture that are very non-Western. And nothing is less Western than "brutal moe" stuff like Madoka. The reason is that Western culture places primary value on reproduction of physical realism in art. While the highly stylized look of Japanese visual culture places no value at all in reproducing physical reality. Hence, my Western cultural background was telling my subconscious that such way of expression is inferior. Since I was emotionally affected by it do a very high degree I felt like something was wrong with me. I though in my subconscious without really understanding it: "how can I be so affected by this supposedly inferior means of expression?", "is something wrong with me?"
I understand where this feeling came from and now I think now that heavily stylized images are potentially more effective than realistic images in generating emotional responses for the human mind. It makes sense since you are not constraining yourself to reproducing physical reality but making something that is better at conveying emotions than it. Hence, heavy stylization is natural and it's the West's obsession with physical reality that needs to be explained.
Since I understand now where these feelings of insecurity came from: essentially from my brainwash by the basic Western conceptions of art, which Japan has shown that are highly restrictive, and so I don't feel the insecurity anymore.
Also, I also understand now why I had the desire to make people watch some anime films in the previous HoFs as a way of making myself feel better about my feelings if non-Anime fans could also reproduce these feelings (I knew lots of anime fans that liked the same titles but I though their impressions didn't count because they were not "normal"
). I also though live action movie fans, being supposedly accustomed to greater diversity in movies than the general population, would be more open minded to different senses of aesthetics, but I was wrong. In some ways experienced watchers of certain genres of movies tends to dig in deeper in those genres and be less open minded about different stuff from what they regularly watch. Anyway, I don't feel this desire anymore because I am not insecure anymore as I finally understand that there is nothing wrong in not being a slave of one's cultural background.
And if other people cannot enjoy the stuff I can enjoy that makes them worse off and not me.
Guap isn't the only person who spends way too much time telling us fans of Hollywood films that they are stupid, arrogant American movies. We all have the right to like what we want. And if that threatens somebody, then the problem lays within them.
It is indeed a problem that English speaking people have that they are scared of consuming non-English speaking culture, they feel intimidated but it. But by restricting themselves to the cultural output of only a small fraction of the world's population they only make themselves worse-off as a result.
I certainly would be much worse off if I only knew Hollywood movies and English language TV, since these are only about 1/3 of my favorite media products (although, that;s still a higher proportion than most Brazilians). Well, in the end it's their loss not mine.
I think that some English speaking people feel the need to attack Hollywood/US media because the fact that almost everybody who is English speaking only talks about and watches Hollywood's stuff and they ignore everything else. Naturally one feels the need to "correct" that. Although many times the way people articulate their feelings backfire as the people who restrict their media consumption many times feel insulted by these "social justice movie warriors."
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