Hayao Miyazaki: iPad Use 'Disgusting,' "Masturbation-Like'

Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, known for animated cinematic greats like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl's Moving Castle , is no fan of Apple's "magical" new iPad--or gadgets in general.

According to Kotaku, Miyazaki compared iPad use to masturbation in a recent interview with a Japanese publication, "Neppuu."

"For me, there is no feeling of admiration or no excitement whatsoever," Miyazaki reportedly said about the iPad, which he dubbed a "game machine-type thing" that people use by "stroking with strange gestures". "It's disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying."

It's not only the iPad Miyazaki is giving the cold shoulder: he has said that he doesn't own a computer, fax machine, or DVD player; rarely watches TV; and doesn't know how to use a video camera.

What do you make of Miyazaki's critique? Tell us in the comments section below.

Comments

[444ovthedirt]

11:22 AM on 09/08/2010

Hayao is my hero.
He can hate whatever he wants :)

[boycottimmortality]

01:19 AM on 08/04/2010

A man after my own heart. Most vitally (paraphrased): "Be a creator, not a consumer." So many people use their possessions as a surrogate for substance. We are a poseur culture. To look musical, we buy guitars but can't play them; to look extreme, we buy gnarly bikes that gather dust; to look climbery, we buy bookbags that have loops for ice axes, and we clip our water bottles onto them with Black Diamond carabiners that can hold 26 kilonewtons; and to look artistic, we sit in coffee shops with our Apple products and acrylic-framed glasses.

[jeffp26]

01:44 AM on 07/23/2010

If owning an ipad is, as the headline but not the story suggests, like masturbating... I will be a the Apple store asap!!!

[Enrique Popi Pereira]

09:57 AM on 07/20/2010

It's very difficult to draw conclusions fr'om this brief anecdote. We should have been there to understand if what triggered the response was a Miyasaki's previous obsession, or perhaps an unbearable lightness of the interviewer.

If I have to choose necessarily, it seems much more a crucial contemporary issue the warning of Miyasaki. The irreflexive consumption, the passivity of being spectator of life. The millions of infinitesimal moments that rule over our lives in a quite intranscendent way. Much more that if Miyazaki eventually loses his diplomacy with a journalist.

The mention of masturbation doesn't constitute an appropriate metaphor. A matter of local culture's references relates to the interpretation of that phrase. Miyazaki himself warns it. But seems to meet its self-imposed obligation to notice about something important.

Anyway, what Miyasaki says has little to do with the discussion on the IPAD that develops in the USA. Miyazaki doesn't seem too interested in the commercial success of Steve Jobs, or what their business adversaries are trying to do in response. Maybe some of those making comments are extrapolating their own impulses.

It's not the IPAD itself, but the petulance and snobbery from those who think that possessing these kind of objects makes them better than anyone. Maybe someone is forgetting that Miyazaki knows well the issues of technology. That he's living in a pioneering society that develops what will be coming in the next twenty years for all of us. A society with many centuries of experience and wisdom.

[Dogma]

10:50 AM on 07/19/2010

If Miyazaki needs to hate technology to make his amazing films then fine with me.

[Pectin]

12:44 AM on 07/15/2010

Was it Woody Allen that said something like, "Don't knock masturbation - it's sex with someone I love." ?

[MikeElPaso]

10:56 PM on 07/14/2010

In one of my psych classes we read about lab animals that had leads attached to the pleasure center of their brains. The animals could push a lever which would send a signal activating the center. The animal starved to death. I've invited people who have iPhones to coffee. They couldn't put the thing aside. It reminded me so much of those lab experiments.

[Pectin]

12:43 AM on 07/15/2010

Maybe you need better coffee.

[MikeElPaso]

08:34 AM on 07/15/2010

Good point.

[hostile177]

12:51 PM on 07/14/2010

Luddite.

[bothpartiesstink]

10:08 AM on 07/14/2010

Thanks to the Internet, I read this story, and now know the name of some Japanese guy I never heard of, and really don't care to ever hear from again. Masturbation is the best sex most people ever have (and never admit), so I'm terribly offended "masturbation" (an organic entity) has been tainted by it's association with the iPad (a manufactured entity).

[Sock De Jour]

11:04 AM on 07/14/2010

"Masturbation is the best sex most people ever have." Speak for yourself.

And you miss his point. What he means is that's it's an experience that disconnects you from others, therefore it's ultimately narcissistic and adolescent.

When I see people playing with their phones, on the bus, on the train, walking around, with their eyes and fingers glued to a gadget, I see them disconnected from their own surroundings. It's a separateness that is creating communities of people all isolated from each other, but deluded into thinking that they're connected somehow. They aren't. We aren't. It's illusory connectivity.

It's not the gadget itself that's harmful, it's the replacement of human contact with a gadget. The gadget is a tool. The fact that people spend more time texting than talking on mobile devices is proof that gadgets are replacing human contact. The overuse of gadgets and addiction to gadgets is rewiring our brains. In a world where we are polluting the planet, exploiting human beings for cheap labor, and killing, torturing without thought or consequence; the gadget becomes just another way we can all disconnect from those problems without taking responsibility or action, because we're amusing ourselves with the latest "app".

[blogger521]

12:53 PM on 07/14/2010

I have to agree with Sock. Either you're the world's greatest masturbator or you should probably consult some sort of sex therapist.

[syrius]

07:29 AM on 07/14/2010

Projecting his views...he's going to go blind.

[Peter Giaschi]

07:00 AM on 07/14/2010

Is it possible he has a thing about...um...masturbation...?

[Craig 212]

06:57 AM on 07/14/2010

I'm no fan of Apple, but this guy is nuts.

[ReuelLoftus]

05:03 AM on 07/14/2010

1. What is wrong with masturbation? As Woody Allen has famously said "It is sex with someone I love"
2. Why is Mr. Miyazaki focusing on the hand gestures of people who are obviously not masturbating, but merely operating a device that allows them to access the world for ill or naught, for real or illusion?
3. The complete hypocrisy in this remark is the science of film making, from which he has reaped bounds without evidently understanding any of it.

[MikeElPaso]

10:58 PM on 07/14/2010

What is wrong with masturbation?

You miss the opportunity to meet some really interesting people that way.

[ancientmarinader]

04:46 AM on 07/14/2010

So he's saying public masturbation is bad? Well, you learn something new every day.

[soapboxdiva]

04:45 AM on 07/14/2010

He is absolutely 100% correct. Humans are moving towards becoming more and more inhuman. We often choose the company of electronic devices over human company, our everyday lives have become so far removed from nature and natural environments, it's no wonder there's a problem with depression, allergies, syndromes. Mother nature feeds the soul!. All of Miyazaki's movies have at the heart a homage to nature.

[ReuelLoftus]

05:08 AM on 07/14/2010

Yes, and how were his movies made, with crayons? Total hypocrisy. Get too old to master the the new, condemn all who do.

[nicnic]

11:37 AM on 07/14/2010

I beg to differ, but your reply seems mute-------------- viewing and creating are opposite actions. You don't make movies by "viewing" or "browsing". In fact, doing that barely let's get anything real get done. Get too old to create? Condemn all who do

[JumperPilot]

08:58 PM on 07/20/2010

Not crayons. Water colours. I think Studio Ghibli used some digital technology to meet deadlines for "Spirited Away" but they no longer have a computer animation department and have gone back to hand-drawn animation.