A YouTube channel named Study of Swords has a video titled You Are Wrong About Deconstruction, and I have very uniquely mixed feelings about this video. Sometimes I feel like I agree with it entirely and sometimes I feel like it’s led astray by a myopic perspective on the subject.
The gist of the video’s thesis is that the modern Internet Culture understanding of Genre Deconstruction is entirely the invention of TVTropes and that it’s both unrelated to Derridean Deconstruction and not something that any work of fiction has ever truly done, certainly not intentionally. And if one did it would be inherently bad.
Here’s the thing, all the specific examples of alleged Deconstruction they are annoyed by are Anime examples. And their defense of that is that they are an Anime centric channel and that’s the discourse they are in dialogue with. However the video isn’t titled “You are wrong about Deconstruction in Anime” or “Otaku are wrong about Deconstruction” and TVTropes didn’t build their concept of Deconstruction on primarily Anime examples, they built it on Watchmen and Game of Thrones (the books before it was a TV show) and Scream and Shrek.
In 2003 The History Channel aired a documentary called Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked. I'd recorded it on VHS when it aired so I had watched the entire thing multiple times back then. However I had gone years without rewatching by the time I first discovered TV tropes in 2012 and still didn’t rewatch it again till after I’d watched this YouTube video. It speaks to the unreliability of memory that I had basically incepted myself into thinking they actually used the word Deconstruction or Deconstruct in the segment on Watchmen, in fact they did not. However the basic idea of what TVTropes means by Genre Deconstruction was there.
The quote they put at the start of their video is telling “Deconstruction is when a thing I like is a Genre I disrespect”. Because within the Anime Community that definitely feels like it’s often the subtext, the community is filled with Anti-Otaku like Noralities who can’t admit to liking an Isekai without going on about how it’s not like all the other Isekai, same with the Yandere. And while this sentiment doesn’t get expressed much recently, there definitely were some early Madoka fans who were open about liking it and not the classic Shoujo Magical Girl shows.
Thing is that’s not really the case when it comes to Deconstruction outside of Anime. No one who calls Watchmen a Deconstruction while explaining why they like it but hate the rest of the genre exists, rather everyone understands you need to love the genre in its standard forms to appreciate the Deconstruction. Same with the relationship between GoT and Fantasy, or Scream and Slasher films. Despite it’s technical etymological relation to the word Destroy it’s not actually meant to be malicious, it’s about taking it apart to assemble something new, like a Lego set.
Because I was a Normie Nerd for over a decade before Anime became my main interest, my perception of terms like Deconstruction isn’t as inherently filtered through Anime discourse.
Even among people using the word to describe an Anime they like I don’t think the intent is universally malicious. I currently oppose labeling Madoka a Deconstruction, but early on I was different, I did defend calling it a deconstruction in the past, but it never went with some hostility towards other Magical Girl shows, rather I got into Madoka soon after I became mature enough to finally be willing to publicly admit I like Sailor Moon and always have.
This of course isn’t the only AniTube video that is in part about denying certain popular Anime qualify as a Deconstruction, others do know to make the comparison to Watchmen, and in so doing show their ignorance of the place Watchmen actually holds in the history of its Genre. Like when Trixie The Golden Witch did a video on the subject arguing certain things aren’t Deconstructions because they didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before, unlike Watchmen. However Watchmen in fact did not do anything that hadn’t been done before, all through the 70s there were already Superhero Comics that were Dark and dealt with real world social issues and politics, there were already Antiheroes and Heroes turning into Villains and Villains turning into Heroes, already stories with moral complexity. Watchmen didn't do a single thing that was completely new, it was all in the complete picture it painted. Madoka however did things that had rarely if ever been done before and that’s why it’s not a Deconstruction, none of what’s Dark about it feels like a commentary on prior stories because all of it is tied to what’s mechanically distinct about Madoka.
But maybe this misunderstanding of how inherently critical a Deconstruction is supposed to be has seeped outside the Anime Community. Consider all the Breadtubers who think it’s important to “Deconstruct” what’s Problematic about the Superhero and Fantasy genres. Consider the YouTuber Worm’s Hole who seems to think the Darker version of a Genre is always better because they expose what’s dark and ugly about the real world.
In discussions of both Watchmen and Game of Thrones I commonly see the phrase “Critique of Power” used to describe what both Alan Moore and George R. R. Martin are trying to do and that’s why no it isn’t Feminist to root for the Dragon Lady Girl Boss. I don’t entirely agree with either side of those debates, but I do think the kinds of Leftists who put too much emphasis on critiquing Power as a concept need to rethink their priorities. I’m neither a Tankie or an Anarchist, if I’m a Marxist at all I’m somewhere between Kautsky and Luxemburg.
We do not in the 21st Century need to worry about arguing against Feudal Style Monarchy anymore. If anything the knee jerk reaction of many Liberals and even some Socialists to anything that even looks like Monarchy is a problem, whether Cuba or Vietnam qualify as a “Dictatorship” or not is irrelevant to if they are successful Communist experiments. The Greek word Tyrant was not originally inherently derogatory, it was made derogatory by the same Laconophiles to whom the word Democracy was Derogatory.
So the title “You are wrong about Deconstruction” is probably increasingly correct when directed at a good number of people. But the video’s understanding of why is flawed.
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