An anime featuring famous writers of world literature has triggered a surprising literary controversy on social media. Nico Taibner shows why it is crucial to rethink the age-old question of the connection/separation of author and work in light of the questions raised by the MeToo movement – and why it is high time to overcome prejudices against ‘Tiktok brainrot.’
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“Bungo Stray Dogs” is an animated series from Japan based on a manga of the same name. The series is about famous authors from literary history. In this universe, however, they are not only writers, but also have supernatural abilities and work for a secret government agency that deals with highly classified crimes.
As is common in action manga, a lot of time is spent on excessive fighting scenes in which the characters can show off their superpowers in great detail. The superpowers are usually named after their most famous literary works. For example, writer Nikolai Gogol’s superpower is named after his famous short story “The Overcoat,” and Dracula author Bram Stoker’s ability is appropriately called ‘vampirism.’
Two characters have proven particularly popular on social media: the author of the classic novel “Marked,” Osamu Dazai, and the world-famous writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In contrast to their dusty portraits or black-and-white photographs, both are depicted as slim gentlemen with long dark hair and mischievous smiles. Just unconventional enough to be considered attractive, but not so unconventional as to be dismissed as freaks.
Recognized as sex symbols
This explains why they have so many fans. Both are recognized as sex symbols on TikTok and Instagram. There are numerous fan edits, fan-made compilations of the series’ most popular clips, and the famous TikTok comedian Stanzi Potenza has included Dazai in the canon of cartoon characters to whom she generously offers her body.
And this is where the problem arises, because Fyodor Dostoevsky and Osamu Dazai are not just cartoon characters, they were real people. They are people with complex histories. As an Instagram reel shows, Dostoyevsky suffered from a lifelong gambling addiction that also affected his family; he gradually gambled away first his own money and then his wife’s. Dostoyevsky was a great misogynist who blamed all his problems on women. Leo Tolstoy, who is only a minor character in “Bungo Stray Dogs,” abused and beat his wife.
Sexual violence against subordinates
The whole debate raises a broader and age-old question: Can a work and its author be separated? With the advent of the MeToo movement, sensitivity to misconduct by prominent figures has increased significantly. This sensitivity also applies retroactively. The MeToo movement has powerfully reminded the public of how often powerful men abuse their position to commit sexual violence against subordinates, knowing full well that the latter are unlikely to be able to defend themselves due to the imbalance of power. A recent example is the case of fantasy and science fiction author Neil Gaiman, who has been accused of sexual abuse by numerous women. This has reignited the debate about whether and how we should be allowed to consume the works of problematic individuals.
However, the cases of Dazai and Dostoyevsky are very different in many ways. In the case of living celebrities, the issue is also whether our admiration gives them a platform from which to further exploit their power over others. This is no longer the case with people who lived more than 100 years ago and are long dead. Moreover, today’s artists have no excuse for living in a different time with different values and challenges.
Reality check on Instagram?
For example, another Instagram reel mocks the surprise when fans of “Bungo Stray Dogs” discover that the characters from the harsh and turbulent times of the long 19th century were not just cute anime boys, but had complex personalities. The erasure of this complexity, which fails to recognize that the writers portrayed were ambivalent, contradictory, and often difficult personalities, also applies in a positive sense. This is true, for example, of Akiko Yosano, whose feminist and pacifist activism is also ignored.
As @elenabooklyn says: “Some people, when they realize that a man born in early 20th-century Japan suffering from depression, suicidal tendencies, and trauma (specifically from women), actually had problematic thoughts and opinions and was misogynistic – and he wasn’t, in fact, a cute anime boy.”
Learning from Dark Academia
However, many fans are not satisfied with the simplistic portrayal of the characters in the series. The popularity of “Bungo Stray Dogs” has also sparked a new interest in the works of Dazai and Dostoyevsky. Teenagers are filming themselves annotating paperback editions of “Crime and Punishment” or “Draw” and uploading the short videos to TikTok or as an Instagram reel. This also taps into the popular Internet aesthetic of dark academia, which romanticizes higher education, art, and literature, and has made it a popular trend to show oneself reading and discussing complex works of world literature.
All of this shows that TikTok and other short-video platforms are not just good for challenges, memes, and political disinformation, but can also be places for sophisticated literary debates. An animation series from Japan, for example, raises complex questions about the relationship between author and work, and how we deal with older works that we consider culturally significant but that no longer reflect our social values. Young people no longer get their information only from traditional media, but mainly from platforms such as TikTok or Instagram. It is only logical that these debates take place there.