You can't read just one

Lay’s, the potato chip company, uses the slogan “Bet you can’t eat just one!” The slogan, which actually goes well with some biological research, applies to a lot of things in our culture.

If we like something, you usually want more. Who wants to eat just one chip?

This appears in storytelling, too. We complain a lot about reboots, remakes and sequels.

The Romans borrowed heavily and “remade” Greek mythology.

There have been sequels for almost as long as there have been stories.

Homer created “The Iliad” and its sequel “The Odyssey.” Virgil wrote another sequel called “The Aeneid.”

Virgil’s Aeneid inspired Dante Alighieri to write “The Divine Comedy.”

Alighieri’s poem inspired John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and Milton inspired C.S. Lewis to write “The Great Divorce.”

Originality is important, but we like repeated ideas. They help us communicate.

In storytelling, regardless if it’s on film or in a book, we use ideas shared throughout media or throughout a genre.

Memes, tropes and clichés are a form of communication. If all the villains in a show have red hair we automatically begin questioning the intentions of the casts’ new red.

Most of the time these things come about because they communicate ideas very well.

Language isn’t technically original. The words not created as part of language are called loanwords, and they’re just borrowed from other languages because they convey a meaning that’s difficult to express in English.

German Expressionism, Greek epics and Japanese cartoons

Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and Shinichirō Watanabe's "Samurai Champloo"

This week’s post was going to be about Japanese wordplay. However, one link led to another, and I spent an evening researching foreign films and literature and genre.

In a PBS Idea Channel video from January host Mike Rugnetta discusses whether Nickelodeon’s Avatar franchise qualifies as anime.

As Rugnetta points out, in the U.S. “anime” refers to Japanese animation, but in Japanese “anime” is just a word for cartoon.

By the U.S. definition, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and its sequel series “The Legend of Korra,” both developed in the U.S., are definitely not anime, and by the Japanese definition, as they are both animated, they are definitely anime.

These standards don’t really help us much. Both terms lack the subtlety Rugnetta seems to be getting at.

C.S. Lewis's sci-fi novel "Out of the Silent Planet" and Shinichirō Watanabe's sci-fi series "Cowboy Bebop"

“The Maltese Falcon” is an American film, not a German film, but it is a part of the American film noir tradition that has roots in German Expressionism.

Film noir uses parts of the visual language developed by German Expressionist filmmakers.

The sonnet, which most of us associate with William Shakespeare, is an Italian invention.

Greek and Latin traditions share stories and styles of telling them. Virgil, a Roman poet, developed his “Aeneid” as a sort of sequel to the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” of Homer, a Greek poet.

This sort of cross-pollination exists in animation.

The Avatar franchise borrows heavily from the visual language and storytelling techniques present in various genres of Japanese animation.

It has at least one example of a beach episode standard to many Japanese cartoons that focus on high school students.

It also uses a stereotypical anime classroom set in one episode and shows Japanese influence to its animation.

Guillermo Del Torro's Spanish "Pan's Labyrinth" and Jim Henson's American "Labyrinth"

So, is it anime? Well, we're really back where we started.

“(500) Days of Summer” references French film, but that doesn’t make it a French film.

Japanese animation itself was influenced by Walt Disney in its early days, but that doesn’t make every Japanese cartoon a Disney picture.

Anime (by the U.S. definition) isn’t a genre in the same way film noir is or fantasy fiction is.

Comics "Astro City" by American author Kurt Busiek and "Watchmen" by British author Alan Moore

If it’s a genre at all, it’s one with numerous subgenres.

Just like American animation includes “Batman: The Animated Series,” Seth MacFarlane’s “Family Guy,” and Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” anime includes a variety of works with different tones and tropes.

Anime includes heartwarming films like Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” sci-fi adventures like Shinichirō Watanabe’s “Cowboy Bebop,” and crass comedies like Yoshito Usui’s “Shin Chan.”

Genre doesn’t rely on country of origin. “Shin Chan” has a lot more in common with “Family Guy” and “South Park” than it does with Watanabe’s “Kids on the Slope.”
“Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” are both fantasy novels. Just because Lewis Carroll was British doesn’t make his work more like Jane Austen’s than L. Frank Baum’s.
So what is Avatar? Well, it could be an early entry in a new genre of American animation that borrows from Japanese animation like film noir borrows from German Expressionism.
It could also be part of a trend of breaking down the American notion of "anime." Years from now the radical difference in animated stories that crops up between cultures might be very diluted as artists reference one another and one visual language affects another. 

American fantasy novelist L. Frank Baum's classic "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and British author Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell"

Kaput: From Beginning to End

The remnants of a weekend study session.

I spend most of my time working with words. Four of my five classes revolve around writing or the study of language.
Outside of class I'm a copy editor for the student newspaper.
In my free time I read about language and storytelling techniques.
Most of my study, both for work and pleasure, is fairly standard. I work out the kinks in my grammar or read about good and bad examples of foreshadowing.
Sometimes, though, I like to take a break from the serious stuff and follow an interesting factoid down the linguistic rabbit hole.

For instance, in an excerpt of his book "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks" posted to Slate, Keith Houston discusses the origin of the pilcrow (¶).

Once upon a time in Rome a "K" was used to mark the beginning of a new idea in a written work. The "K" represented kaput, the Latin word for head.

You might recognize "kaput" as being a word of German origin that means to be finished or broken.

Considering the huge differences in meaning, I was curious to see if the words were at all related.

One of the tricky parts of studying language is avoiding false friends, words that sound alike but mean very different things. They can trip you up when you least expect it.

I expected a quick Google search to reveal drastically different origins for the word, but I was surprised.

This "kaputt" is ultimately derived from the Latin. It took a very long road to get here and consequently changed quite a bit a long the way.

The German "kaput" comes from the French phrase "faire capot" meaning to be out of tricks in a card game, essentially to be hoodwinked.

A capot is a hooded cloak. In the original French, so is a cape.
From "cape" we can step back into Latin and find ourselves again at "kaput."

It starts off "kaput" or "caput" then changes to "capitulum." Then it jumps to the French "cape" and then to "capot." Then we get "faire capot," and from it we get the German "kaputt." Finally, we arrive at the English "kaput."

From beginning to end, that's how "kaput" got to the English language, and this is how I spend my free time.