Abstract: Aca-Fan Service: Strategies of Scholarly Seduction in Ghost it the Shell: SAC and Ergo Pro

[merin_chan]

Aaah, summer! For the first time in years I finally had a vacation, a real 3-week vacation away from the internet and course prep and manuscripts and everything. But now it's time to gear back up, and that means conference proposals. Here's my accepted proposal for this year's Mechademia/SGMS conference in Minneapolis. Feedback very welcome,

Comments

[corneredangel]

A very critical question would be whether these references are indeed "gratuitous" - or are actually valid and meaningful citations. The (related) example that always comes to mind for me are the references in Gainax anime to very specific terms from Western science fiction - but yeah, does the Instrumentality Project in Eva mean the same thing that it does in Cordwainer Smith, and is it even meant to evoke Smith...

[merin_chan]

Great point! I was thinking of Eva as a counter example too! One of the threads I really want to tease out is the difference between purposeful, repeated allusions that arguably build something into a series -like the systematic use of religious and spiritual imagery in Eva-- and cases where theory quotations or authors' names just crop up as in-jokes or shout-outs, like the Tachikoma reading Deleuze and Guattari in one of the "Tachikoma Days" segments of GitS:SAC.

Directors and screenwriters in Japan often give the excuse that they just pick Western names or words because they "sound cool." But I think there's a middle ground between structured, systematic allusion and random cool-sounding words. That's where aca-fan service comes in!