Menhera, Vent Art, and Romanticization vs Upsetting Content
written on 12/09/2022
The introduction of menhera to the west brought with it many new eyes and opinions on the culture, including those who believe it's inherently bad. Amongst people with that opinion, the general reason is that "menhera romanticizes mental illness."
This is something I've always found fascinating. If you've ever interacted with the jp menhera community, then you would immediately see that these are not the kinds of people who romanticize their struggles. Every community has its bad eggs of course, but for the most part these are simply people who are struggling, and desire to express that and have their struggles understood.
Why is it that people look at menhera art and instantly assume romanticization? What could this possibly reflect about harm in the greater online culture?
There is a heavy mindset on the modern internet that everything is black and white, good or evil - and anything that's "evil" needs to be beaten down and removed immediately. To many people, what's classified as "evil" is simply things that make them personally uncomfortable. It's always been important to curate your online space and filter out content you don't like, but it becomes something different when you begin advocating that things which make you uncomfortable are inherently wrong.
This is, in fact, why menhera is so widely hated by general japanese society. The primary point of menhera art is to be raw, expressive, and real. It often contains themes of self harm, blood, suicide, and violence, because these are people who are suffering and want to make their suffering known. In Japan, such suffering is considered unseemly and as a personal failing, and thus such art about it is thought of as uncomfortable and needing to be repressed.
This is greatly driven by Japan's culture being so conservative - and indeed, the idea that anything that makes one personally uncomfortable should be deemed evil is a very conservative idea. Why then, do people online who claim to be leftist or left leaning see menhera art and deem it as wrong?
Online, where many people deem things they don't like as inherently wrong, people often want to justify not liking something by a greater means. As such, things that portray uncomfortable or dark content are often labeled as "romanticizing" that content. Romanticizing - describing something in an idealized and unrealistic fashion to make it seem better than it really is - is far from what menhera aims to do. However, people try to make it out that vent art they don't like must inherently be romanticizing something simply because they don't like it.
Thus, in the west, menhera gets labeled as "ableist," and western menhera art gets dumbed down to pretty girls wearing bandaids instead of real, raw expressions of suffering. However, this is not an issue that only effects menhera.
The idea of media literacy is certainly important - understanding a work's motivations, flaws, and what the maker is trying to say will always be a necessary part of enjoying art. However, many online have started taking this to mean that any form of art that contains dark content needs to be deemed as wrong to consume and, again, "romanticizing" that content. Small creators who engage in portrayal of dark content are often beaten down on as being disgusting people who must obviously support everything they write about.
This, in my opinion, is the opposite of media literacy. It's conservative ideals badly framed through false leftist agenda - it's forcing any content you don't like to be deemed wrong in order to feel better about yourself, instead of allowing yourself to understand when something is questionable vs when you simply find something upsetting and should move on from it.
Small artists, whether they draw, write, animate, or etc, do not deserve to be deemed disgusting simply for engaging with darker forms of media. In my opinion, media literacy is not just deciding what's good and what's bad. It's understanding the nuance of a work of art, and that not every work is made for you and doesn't need to be.
Menhera does not romanticize - it expresses a dark, raw view into the suffering of someone's life. Other people who do the same or similar should not be alienated for their expression.
