No Scans: Dealing with squicky cultural differences in comics from another culture

[leahandillyana]

While reading foreign media culture clash inevitable, the further the cultures the more severe it is. I quite often have a particularly squicky type when reading manga.
In manga not infrequently the protagonist or an otherwise "good guy" is a rapist and it doesn’t change his (always his, I remember this trope used about female character only once, and even then it was somewhat deconstructed) good guy status and is not discussed.
Racist depictions of non-Japanese characters, even when authors in question have a reputation of humanism and empathy (Tezuka, Miyazaki).
In lesser calliber, manga assuming that boys should be physically violent and fighting is normal. A slice of school life manga can be as violent as a superhero comic. This toned down in last twentysome years though.
How do you deal when you encounter such stories?

Comments

[owlbrigade1]

I just try to ignore the bits I don't like, and focus on the non squicky bits. Japan has weird issues with consent, age of consent, and a different approach to nudity, so it just has to be taken as a cultural thing, mostly. If it gets too objectionable to me then I drop it.

It is the same approach I take to pretty much all comedies from before the mid 90s (for example I love the Carry On movies, but they are a whole mess of problematic crap that I would refuse to watch if made today, but on the otherhand I refuse to deal with On The Buses because that was just too problematic even for the time they were made) and also pretty much every American action movie. In fact the more recent the movie, with the ongoing trend of glamourising torture and the US Military, the more I have to overlook. If it reaches Wickian or Bayian levels then I'm tapping out, but on the otherhand I did still like the most recent Bumblebee transformers movie.

I just wish it had not been about Bumblebee. Seriously, Paramount-Hasbro, where is my Anode and Lug buddy movie!?

[icon_uk]

Yeah, the "Carry on..." films are bawdy, but always have an underlying sense of the ridiculous. They're not trying to depict reality, women are all sexualised (in one way or another), but the men are all buffoons.

"On the Buses". on the other hand, I literally cannot watch because it IS trying to be real, and it's reality is a ghastly, leering, misogynistic one.

[owlbrigade1]

On the Buses is everything that was wrong with 1970s Britain condensed into one horrible, horrible, terrible show. I wish I knew why some people seem to laud it or keep trying to bring its world back. It is one of the few things that tarnishes my views of my grandparents in that as much as I loved them both dearly, they both seemed to like that show. I wish I knew why.