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Sun, Jun. 20th, 2004 10:30 am (UTC)
You're probably right about symbols in European renaissance and medieval art. The rose, for instance, is very significant there, and I remember being puzzled regarding UTENA over whether roses were symbolic according to European symbolism, or whether they were symbolic in Japan in an entirely different way. But I don't think that particular set of codified symbols really penetrated into American popular or even elite culture. (But I'm not an expert!)

Post-code Hollywood--- were you thinking of trains going through tunnels and other signifiers for sex? I'm not sure. I tend to think of those sorts of symbols as being less abstract than, say, flower backgrounds, but that may just be because I'm more familiar with them.

I wonder too about previous comics reading being a factor, but the popularity of manga with American girls and women argues against it. I'm sure many or even most of the small audience of female American comic readers are also reading manga, but I have a feeling that a lot of the manga readers didn't come from that audience. I know that a) manga is booming in the US b) American comics are doing so-so, c) women make up something like fifteen percent of the readers of American comics (higher for non-superhero books like Neil Gaiman's, and d) half to more than half of manga readers are female.

I'd love to see some real numbers to find out if more American women are reading manga than are reading American comics, but I haven't seen that comparison anywhere. I cna't figure it out from the percentages, as presumably there's far more American comics than there are translated manga.
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