Yesterday I got an e-mail alerting me to a young woman named Heidi who is a PhD candidate at CUNY and is researching (dun da dun!) hentai! She is seeking men age 18-25 who view hentai to participate in a survey for her research and also requests suggestions on resources to help her get a view of the popularity of hentai in general. If you’re interested (and especially if you live in New York City), go ahead and e-mail her.

Now, of course, I wanted more information, so I dropped her an e-mail and asked a few questions. Here are the answers:

Gia Manry: How did you come to be interested in this particular topic in an academic setting? Are you interested in Jpop culture outside of academia?

Heidi Baez: I became interested in hentai in the past couple of years. I had known about it a while back, but a friend brought it back to my attention in the past years when we were in Chinatown looking at DVD’s. I do not have an extensive knowledge of anime or jpop culture, but have on occasion gotten into some of the more popular anime series and films and know only a few things about jpop culture from personal exposure and from friends who have traveled to Japan.

The reason I became interested in the hentai, in particular, is because I study different matters around sexuality, and pornography is one of those areas. To anwer your question as to why I am interested in an academic sense, I suppose part of it is curiosity, I have not been able to find extensive research in the area and I think it is a fascinating media to study because it conflates sexuality and fantasy (animation instead of live action opens the horizons of potential imagery and situations) and I would be interested in how the media itself relates to the audience. I do not take any political stance on it, because as I mentioned I am not familiar with the whole scope of it. I really want to learn more and think that in terms of sexually driven media it is an area worth investigating.

GM: Do you already have a thesis that you’re looking to support, or is this preliminary research to help you find a focus/thesis?

HB: I do not have a solid hypothesis, because I am really interested in hearing what viewers have to say about it, and learning and theorizing from that. Academically and culturally, I am currently interested in how it may, if at all, relate to the viewers’ sexuality and masculinity. Because I am interested in the masculinity aspect, that is why I am looking for young men. I am also looking to focus the preliminary study right now, and in time I should expand my participant pool.

GM: Have you learned anything about hentai and its watchers so far that people might find surprising?

HB: So far, I have not learned so much about the watchers of hentai, as much as I have about some of the more “fantastical” imagery found in hentai. For instance, when I mention it, if people know anything at all about it, they relate it to tentacles as fallic appendages, and some of the relatively violent themes, or even the youth aspect of the sexual encounters. I have watched some myself, which has intrigued me in terms of how the sexual scenes play out, but because it is something more novel to me, I am not sure how those who watch it regularly respond to it - that is what I would like to find out as well. That said, because those who know relatively little about it have biases as to what they think about it, I want to go beyond that, to delve deeper.

GM: I noticed that you also specialize in Criminal Justice and Crime Analysis (see here), so I can’t help but wonder: is your interest related at all to the association that some people make of hentai with pedophilia, due to the frequent inclusion of young and cute characters?

HB: I am looking into this as more of a sociological cultural study, and not with a criminal justice perspective. The project has been initiated as part of a youth studies course in my sociology program, but I hope to continue with it if I am able to get significant information in this preliminary phase.

So there you have it, folks! Perhaps in a few years we’ll have a relatively definitive set of information on hentai-watching in the US. Don’t forget to e-mail Heidi if you’re interested in helping out in some way!

Tags: hentai, interviews

15 Responses to “Hentai, The Academic Way”

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