WITHOUT LOOKING FOR A DEFINITION, what does "deconstruction"

Deconstruction means that I can regard the post including the word as a joke/shitpost

>>156743264
You sure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY3deSWuO58

>>156743218
Some gay shit about recursively finding new meanings from contraditions in text some French faggot rambled on about at some point.

Or serious satire.

It means "I don't know anything about this genre, but want to sound like an expert".

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Like construction but in reverse, taking a preexisting structure and then stripping it to its foundations. Maybe it's to get a good look at what's underneath, maybe it's to reduce it all to rubble, or maybe it's an exercise in seeing how that structure came to be built in the first place. Also I am talking out my ass because I have no idea what deconstruction is supposed to be or whether what I'm watching is meant to be one.

>>156743294
This isn't /v/, OP. Go back there.

"This anime subverts and critiques many of the tropes found within the genre it operates in"

Something that entertains the idea of not being a cliche pile of shit, but never becomes anything other than a cliche pile of shit.

>>156743218
You know the tone and theme of how this idea usually plays out? Let's do the exact opposite of that.

>>156743218
If I were to answer this seriously without being either dismissive or pretentious? It's usually when you take a fairly cliche kind of story, but try to look at it from another angle.

>>156743436
>link a youtube video about ANIME
>get told to go back to /b/ lite

>>156743218
Take a thing and try doing it differently from how it's been done, like removing the cliches and stuff.

>>156743650
Or taking those cliches and playing around with them.

You pick something apart to see how it works and possibly how it came to be.

>>156743218
It derives from postmodernist structuralism, that is, someone who looks at the cliches in use in a work and deliberately alters them to highlight some particular aspect not present in the original.

>>156743218
You take every established thing in a genre, and play it out till the very end. The most popular ones are ones that usually have bad endings or nonsense ones. The best ones, however, are the stories that start out as deconstructions but eventually become reconstructions. It's always fun to make sure to put everything back together in new ways once you tear something down.

>>156743218
The way it's used to describe something in media is usually taking things in fiction that we usually just accept with the suspension of disbelief and defictionalizing them, making them a key part of the narrative or driving theme of this piece of fiction.

Also something about some fag named Jaques. That's all I get without googling.

>>156743218
A deconstruction is the subversion of a trope or genre to highlight why it is unrealistic or why it doesn't work. A deconstructive work takes apart the framework of its genre.
Madoka Magica is not a deconstruction of magical girls. Even though it subverts some tropes, it embraces the themes of hope, friendship, altruism, and sacrifice. It is simply a dark magical girl show. Just because it does something different than the genre typical doesn't mean it's a deconstruction.

>>156743901
>Even though it subverts some tropes, it embraces the themes of hope, friendship, altruism, and sacrifice.
*citation needed*

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>>156743931
>i am retarded and i don't understand anything i watch

>>156743218
Pseudo-sophisticated mental gymnastics done by liberal arts students chewing down their inheritance from daddy and/or accruing $100k+ in debts just so they can end up being Starbucks baristas.

>>156743901
>>156743764
I said WITHOUT looking it up.

>>156744103
I am offended by your lack of faith.

>>156744088
I haven't watched any magical girl shows save Utena. All I can discern from Magica is that positivity doesn't always win out, the victories have negative consequences, there are no morals, and the animal mascot is evil.

>>156744183
So you admit that you've never watched it? How can you claim that you understand it? Go fucking watch it.

>>156744266
I have watched Magica.

Deconstruction in general would be taking something already constructed apart, probably piece by piece without destroying the parts in such a fashion the process could be still reverted and the object could be recovered to its original state.

In other possibly relevant context, it'd be taking a certain genre/media, taking some of its characteristics/narration aspects/tropes and taking a different look at it than it's usually made. It generally serves as a critique/analysis of the unrealistic portrayals presented, but its usage/purpose varies. It is still distinct from parody/satire/comedy as it serves a different purpose.

It other context it's just a buzzword to dismiss something you don't like or care about or to praise something that seems complicated to you without necessary saying anything about it or requiring to ellaborate about what makes it deep/interesting.

>>156743218
Youtube-tier attention whores and hipster shitposting

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>>156743218
"Deconstruction" means "threads where some autistic hipster faggot spergs out and insists that NGE and Madoka aren't deconstructions, even though they contradict every definition of deconstruction and provide no references in doing so."

>>156743218
It's like someone watched one too many of the same genre and decided to take it into their own hands but in an edgy middle-school way.

>>156743218

To break down.

In the literary and creative sense - to break the established and accepted elements of the genre, style or school of thought and attempt to either rearrange those elements or change them in a way that when re-assembled to create a work will be recognized as being related to the genre, style or school of thought that was originally broken down.

That's what art school taught me anyway.

>>156744356
Selfishness vs altruism is a central theme in Sayaka and Homura's arc. To quote Mami speaking to Sayaka, "Miki-san, do you want his wish to come true, or do you to be the person who made his wish come true?"
On hope, Madoka spells it out for us, saying, "If someone tells me that it's wrong to hope, I'll tell them they're wrong every time." The central theme of Madoka's character is hope and altruism.
These are things you cannot deny.

Deconstruction in the academic sense is separating something into its many parts and inspecting them individually. Presumably you're talking about the far more recent use of it though, so I'll go into more detail on that.

OK, so, what tends to happen within a genre is that certain things stick and are built upon as new works within that genre are created. They become cornerstones of that genre, things you expect to see without fail, and eventually things come to a point where innovation is restricted to finding new ways to present the exact same ideas, themes, tropes and character archetypes, eventually leading to over-saturation of the same shit over and over again. Naturally this starts to feel stifling for some creators and they want to set things off in a new direction completely, however this is not as simple a task as it may sound, especially if the genre is built on a strong foundation. In order to achieve this they have to roll back all that progress and start their new direction from much further down the chain. If the work hits with enough impact the older chain is going to be abandoned and they're all going to jump on the new chain instead, but if it doesn't it's just going to be seen as a failure within the genre.

But it's the rolling back of all that progress and the questioning of "does it HAVE to be done like this to succeed?" that's the deconstruction. I personally think it's a silly thing to call it since it's also got that aspect of reconstruction but hey, language gonna language.

>>156743218
Subversion of expectations based on genre conventions.

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>>156743616
I feel bad for you because no one took pity enough to give you one of these, so here you go

>>156743218
It means the poster is a pseudo-intellectual nerd raised on pop culture and internet analysis who desperately wants to appear intelligent but can't manage anything more mentally strenuous than watching children's cartoons.

>>156745379
Impressed that there are still some smart lurkers left in modern /a/ Genshiken 2D vs 3D threads will never live again.

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>>156743218
Pic related.

>>156743218
It's when something does away with most of the cliches that require suspension of disbelief in a genre or work, and exaggerates its darker tones in order to satirize and encourage critical thinking.

>>156743218
Dissembling a structure?

A bunch of guys in hard hats taking something down without the use of a wrecking ball or sledgehammers

>>156743218
>what does "deconstruction" mean to you, if anything?
An academic essay. Certainly not an anime series.

>>156743218
Basing content off of a popular genre, but then adjusting some key features of that genre to end up with a different result.

shitty poopy

>>156743294
>HxH is a deconstruction
Yeah, just like Madoka and Evangelion!

>>156743218
Self absorbed wankery that doesn't actually deconstruct anything other than viewers' braincells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBuo4vi_A0s

>>156743218
What Zack Snyder thinks he's doing but isn't actually doing with his DCU

>>156743218
Recycling for spare parts.

>>156743901
Why is the word "trope" used in English, rather than the word "topos"?

Topos fits much better, IMHO.

>>156743218
In a lot of media, and particularly in anime, there are pretty standard ways that you "construct" a plot. For example magical girl anime all follow a pretty similar format and are made out of a fairly common set of parts.

So in general if you want to make a new magical girl anime, you take all of those established parts, put your own individual spin on them, and put them together.

If you want to make a "deconstruction" of the magical girl genre, you take that already-assembled set of parts, disassemble it, and play around with what purpose the various parts serve and how the work might exist without them.

For example let's look at one way Madoka does this:

Magical girl settings commonly have one or more cute mascot characters who give the girls their powers, help them fight whatever villain opposes them, and are generally some combination of magical or highly technologically advanced. Madoka takes this idea and asks, is such a thing necessarily an ally? Isn't "magical alien taking a form that appeals to little girls" actually pretty creepy and suspicious when viewed outside of the context of the magical girl genre?

I feel like people generally hate the term "deconstruction" and view it as a buzzword because they see a lot of pretentious people who think being a "deconstruction" automatically means it's intelligent and high-concept. But it's perfectly possible to deconstruct the themes of a genre and do a real shitty job looking at them from a different perspective and putting them back together again, thus ending up with garbage.

Subverting the viewers expectations of certain cliches and common situations.

It means something dark and edgy.

>>156743218
I define deconstruction as something like:

>Deconstruction of a banana
What if we took a banana, and made it taste like an apple?
Is it still a banana?
What if we told you that once, all bananas tasted just like apples?
What does that mean for bananas that taste like bananas? What does that mean for the banana that tastes like an apple?
And what does that mean for apples?


Yeah, something like that.

>>156743218
Anime about demolition contractors.

You really want to know?
Hegelian dialectics are commonly understood to involve the juxtaposition of opposites.
Derrida rejected the notion of pure antithesis, and substituted his own term différance to refer to the indescribable ways in which things are different.
Deconstruct was a vague attempt to turn différance into a verb that you can do to texts. Derrida never really bothered to define anything, since definitions are contrary to the spirit of différance.
Since then, postmodernists have taken deconstruction and applied their logocentric bullshit to it, thereby ruining Madoka threads forever.

It's a meme from TV Tropes that people use to feel smart

>>156743218
Following your rules;
A series that takes a well known and defined genre and does something entirely different with it on a level that shakes that genre to its core.

>>156743218
the word basically means that the person using it is a fucking pseud.
postmodernism was a mistake

>>156750899
Because the people who use the word trope in that sense are literal retards

>>156744102
this tb.h desu

It's basically trying to subvert some cliche or premise and add some realistic consequences to it.

>>156743218
Derrida's discourse on antihumanist bullshit that has absolutely no relation to madoka or anime in general.

Post-structuralism was a mistake.

>>156744799
I hope you didn't pay for that schooling.
Actually, I hope to fuck your school didn't try to teach you Deconstruction with a series of powerpoint slides instead of making you actually read the goddamn essay, holy fuck.

90% of the people ITT are just (poorly) describing parody or satire and calling it deconstruction.

>>156750925
/thread

Why isn't there any postmodern anime?

>>156743218
A practice in poststructuralist criticism that seeks to show how the meaning of the text is built through difference and always deferred, therefore undecidable

>>156744799
>art school

>>156754734
Most anime is inherently postmodern, just not in a way which pushes the political agendas pre-approved by most western postmodernist schools, and thus disregarded. Literary academia is junk.

>>156754734
They're all postmodern, anon

>>156743218
It means that the person speaking is trying to excuse any shitty part of their favorite anime as being a parody of the genre or archetype that it's trying to "deconstruct". It's an excuse to make them feel like they don't have shit taste.

>>156754870
postmodernist academics love anime, though
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/90898/AbusiveFQ.pdf?sequence=1

>>156743218
Taking established tropes/ plotlines and turning them on their head.

Because of that, stuff like Madoka aren't deconstructions.

>>156754734
There are, but they're pretty much all comedies which means that no one takes them seriously.

Whenever people say deconstruction I think of School Days as a good anime example. It takes the idea of the harem visual novel, where you can restart after you have sex with a girl so you can move onto the next girl's path, and throws real life into it. Then the ending is just icing on the cake

>>156755106
Except School Days is orginally a nukige, where you actually can just be faithful to one girl or go full out on everyone.

>>156755189
it's not a nukige tho

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Who called Madoka Magica the anime of deconstruction first? I think you guys know better about the western media than I do.

>>156755611
It was just shitposting here.
People used "deconstruction" unironically to try and sound intelligent . It was used quite a lot before madoka to describe various shows in that same pretentious "I want to sound smart but don't really know what I'm talking about" way, but we all remember madoka for it because the threads for that show were so huge and the attracted so much pseudointellectual autism.

IIRC, the deconstruction bit carried over to madoka threads specifically from the awful summer of monogatari shitposting, where it had become a forced meme for a while.

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>>156755928
Wasn't there the central figure for the meme?

>>156756012
No.
Any named identity attached to it would have just been co-opting the thing from anonymous posts in the threads. There was no shortage of that, mind you. Countless 'anime intellectuals' sincerely parroted shit that was said here in jest without any self-awareness whatsoever and wrote up elaborate thinkpieces misusing the word deconstruction because they thought they could profit off of the show's popularity and 4chan shitposts. The reality is that it just came up organically from a mixture of armchair literary critics not understanding what words meant and a fresh trend of reverse-trolling by using words like 'pretentious,' 'DEEP' and 'deconstruction' half-ironically.

>>156743218
unfunny parody, often hamfisted

>>156743218
My impression has always been taking a genre and then subverting the common things about said genre

ie a shonen usually has the win by the 'power of friendship' right, a deconstruction might have the mc call upon the power of spite or something idk i'm not a writer or smart

it's like how konosuba is an isekai but instead of a neat power, he picked a retarded goddess. sure it's still isekai but it's a direct grab at the standard and then a step to the side

>>156743218
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-2Y2MYpl2g

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>>156756262
In Japan, there are a lot of famous critics for anime and manga:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/藤津亮太
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/氷川竜介
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/岡田斗司夫
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宇野常寛
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/東浩紀
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宮台真司
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/大塚英志
They have opinion leadership. The list includes people I dislike, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZDNUSYL2NA

>>156756719
>They have opinion leadership.
Okay.
What point are you trying to make?

>>156743218
Closely examines the parts of a story that are usually taken for granted or ignored.

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>>156756778
Aren't there famous opinion leaders in western community for anime & manga?

Deconstruction is when an someone uses a certain trope, but picks it apart and tries to use it in a somewhat realistic manner. Example, Madoka has the "Mahou Shoujo" trope which is supposed to be about friendship, magic, and love. But Madoka Magica picks it apart and shows us how cruel it actually is if Mahou Shoujos were actually real.

Another example is Re:Zero. Most isekai fantasy usually end up making the protagonist either strong, talented, or being the chosen one. Re:Zero doesn't do this. Instead it shows that being sent into a fantasy world full of monsters and people who could blow your head off with one arm isn't that fun because you're still a regular person. It shows us that these isekai worlds are cruel and only the fittest survives. The protagonist literally can't do anything against these people and monsters unless he dies multiple times, or get some help from someone.

>>156756874
Oh
I'm sorry, not that I know of.

>>156756874
it depends on how influential they'd need to be and still be called opinion leaders
digibro is pretty influential

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>>156756956
>>156757080
Okay. In Japan, they are university professors or animators or bloggers and so on.

Good night.

>>156756939
Madoka isn't a deconstruction though.

Classic Mahou Shoujo like Sailor Moon and Precure have plenty of darker moments within them where the characters suffer. Madoka also empathsises the power of friendship and love, which is also typical of the genre.

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>>156757143
b-but muh rebellion

>>156756939
>But Madoka Magica picks it apart and shows us how cruel it actually is if Mahou Shoujos were actually real.
Evil magic is just as "realistic" as friendly magic, you fucking mongoloid.

>>156757358
To be honest, Rebellion's ending is about as close to deconstructionist as the series gets. I'd love to see someone argue that because there's certainly some fertile ground there.

>>156756939
>picks it apart and tries to use it in a somewhat realistic manner
I think where this tvtropes/tumblr/reddit version of "deconstruction" really founders is the idea that it's comparing elements of a fictional work to objective reality. The notion of "realism" is typically left undefined, because even light scrutiny tends to reveal that it's constructed entirely from the person's own unexamined assumptions about the world.

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Shit that isn't supposed to happen happen.

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>>156743218
To deconstruct

>>156755611
>>156756012
>>156756719
>>156756874
Is there more of these? Maybe a name for them?

A word that retards use in an attempt to so sound smart

>>156743218
some shit I still don't understand despite having read several books on it. I felt like I understood better after reading some primers for linguistics, but even then

>>156760275
One of the defining features of antihumanism is the idea that total comprehension is an undesirable status. Deconstructionism and many various other ideas to come out of that movement are presented in a way that deliberately seeks to make that kind of complete understanding impossible.

There's actually a word for the specific linguistic style Derrida and the like employ to try and make their work coherent yet incomprehensible, but I don't remember what it was called.

>>156760538
I have no problem with writers going out of their way and consciously discouraging systematic forms of knowledge. I actually prefer that they do. But Derrida remains a fucking mystery to me.

>>156743218
Means I'm eating at one of them fancy restaurants and my plates gonna look like shit

>>156743218
Taking apart your mums arshole after I'm done rekin it nerd
>socrates pper
Yeah I know captchka

>>156750527
>Evangelion is a deconstruction of the mecha gente
>it shows how traumatic the experience would be to a 14 year old kid
>it spits on the face of love conquers all
The guy is so full of shit, jesus.
What is Gundam, Zambot 3, Ideon, Zeorymer?

>>156759779
How can one girl be so best? Kyoko is the best thing to happen in the anime.

>>156763007
Meant to say genre.

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>>156763149
Agreed.

>>156743218
That you make something look like it belongs to a genre before doing some fuckery with it so it belong to another genre.

>>156763703
>replying to yourself
>tripcode

>>156759779
god I wish that were me

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>>156763808
>cant handle best girl kyouko
>m-must be samefagging
Can't handle perfecton? It's okay. Not everyone is strong.

>>156763993
you show 'em!

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>>156743218
Personally, I think it's just looking at an established trope from different lens, possibly but not necessarily more realistic.

When I think deconstruction, I think Gundam 0079 and Amuro's dad specifically. The trope it deconstructs is giant OP mecha being built by shonen's relative, in Amuro's case the Dad was so obsessed with fucking giant robots he started living in junkyard, gave his son junk and told him to fuck off and kill more people.

>>156743901
>to highlight why it is unrealistic or why it doesn't work
nope

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>>156744784
>insists that NGE and Madoka aren't deconstructions, even though they contradict every definition of deconstruction


Either you didn't mean to type "aren't" or didn't mean to type "even though". Which is it?

>>156763993
Apple-chan, what would you do if you were trapped in Sayaka's body and had a relationship with Kyouko?

>>156743218
A work that's aware of the cliches and tropes of its genre, and either hates itself for including them or loves them wants to gush over them with you.

It doesn't mean shit. People call Gintama a shonen deconstruction when it's straight up shonen.
People only use the term when they want their favorite anime to seem more mature.

>>156763993
Whatever helps you sleep at night.

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>every one in this thread

>>156767857
>tripfag
>trying to be above it.
Pottery.

a parody that isn't funny

>>156743218
A piece of work that follows conventional methods with the main intention being to examine or mock those methods rather than just using them to entertain or make an unrelated point.

>>156760045
Just search the image with google or SauceNAO. It's the first link on pixiv

>>156769905
Thank you, didn't see it, since it's on page 2 for me.

https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=15318419

>>156769981
Nice

>>156743218
when something gets called a "deconstruction", normally it does all the same generic cliches as other works in the genre do, but with some kind of fourth-wall-breaking metahumor saying "haha we know these are all generic cliches"