The most interesting change is that the second-place post from two years ago, “Naked Flicker Sex Erotic Bodies” at 1,464 hits has now dropped to sixth place, with only 4302 hits. What’s Popular, and Why is in fourth place with 4,814 hits. It didn’t even show in the rankings last time, of course, because it WAS the post. Truth be told, the popularity of that post is one reason I decided to revisit the topic.
These are the only two posts in the top ten that ARE NOT about animation (see list below). Four of the eight animation posts are about Disney features; three are about anime; and the last is about a Warner Brothers cartoon. That more or less tracks my interest levels in animation.
Twenty-three (23) of the top thirty-five (35) posts are about animation and other one uses a Road Runner cartoon to make a point about current affairs. Judging from those numbers you’d almost think that this is an animation blog. To be sure, I’ve written a good many posts about animation – I’ve tagged 148 posts with “animation” – but I’ve put-up over 1900 posts.
Obviously the animation posts are the most popular. That’s long been obvious to me. I didn’t need to count them up to discover that.
That those posts are popular is, of course, gratifying. I write them because I love animation. Naturally enough, I wish my other posts were more popular. I’ve spent a good deal of time on those subjects – on cultural evolution, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. But I’ve done so as someone interested in understanding literature, music, movies and art, as a humanist. But most humanists have little interest either in the newer psychologies or in cultural evolution, so those academics aren’t going to be coming around here.
I further suspect that the small audience for those more academic posts isn’t much interested in cartoons. That bothers me a bit as I think animation is important and worthy of the most serious intellectual attention.
And then there’s my work on graffiti. It’s perhaps the single most important movement in the visual arts in the last forty years. I suppose the people who DO graffiti aren’t much interested in reading about it and those who are interested in reading about the visual arts aren’t much interested in reading about graffiti.
Oh well. Nothing to do but to keep on truckin’.
Most Popular Posts on New Savanna
Counts as of 6 PM Wednesday 21 August 2013.
Name of Post Date Count
1 Sex, Power, and Purity in Kawajiri’s Ninja Scroll 9/18/10 27,338
2 Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed* 10/25/10 11,428
3 Two Rings in Fantasia: Nutcracker and Apprentice 12/29/10 6589
4 What’s Popular, and Why 4/25/11 4814
5 Disney’s Fantasia as Masterpiece 11/24/10 4766
6 Naked Flickr Sex Erotic Bodies 11/16/10 4302
7 Pigs in Spirited Away 12/4/10 3828
8 Sakaki Rides a Dolphin ** 4/19/10 3193
9 Desire and Causality in Road Runner Cartoons 4/30/11 3168
10 Domestic Tranquility, NOT: Disney’s Pastoral 11/11/11 2983
11 Real Dreams: From Seeds to Trees in Totoro 12/11/10 2584
12 Why I Love Disney’s Nutcracker Suite 5/27/10 2456
13 Thread to Thread: Nina Paley's 4 Elements 4/16/11 2405
14 Pastoral 4: Orality and Mastery 11/14/11 2072
15 Animal Passion? Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator 11/20/10 2070
16 Follow the Acorns: Revealing Totoro 12/6/10 2002
17 Porky in Wackyland 1/17/11 1846
18 Mother and Son, Gender and Violence in Dumbo 7/12/12 1732
19 Music and ADD 2/12/12 1686
20 Inter-Racial Sex: A Passage to India and Light in August 5/6/10 1577
21 Why A Stork? The Opening of Dumbo 7/9/12 1544
22 Samurai Champloo: Graffiti and Baseball in Old Japan*** 9/3/10 1523
23 Disney Agonistes: Night on Bald Mountain 9/30/11 1441
24 The Hottest Man in Siam 3/26/11 1425
25 Gojira 1954 10/18/10 1410
26 Is Academia Eating Its Young? 5/4/11 1358
27 Two Puzzles Concerning the Self 5/27/11 1321
28 Mind the Gap: Reality and Prophesy in Nausicaä 10/12/10 1310
29 Miyazaki Notes 2: Castle in the Sky 10/30/10 1241
30 Reading Latour 3: Groups and the Game of Graffiti 8/21/11 1149
31 Porco Rosso 1: Pig as Protagonist 11/28/10 1136
32 Pastoral 5: Ring Form Construction 11/18/11 1110
33 Roustabouts, Trains, Elephants, and Crows 7/1/12 1074
34 The Underbelly Project 2 11/2/10 1071
35 Uh Oh! Hosni Mubarak and Wile E. Coyote 2/6/11 1069
* Reposted on 2/18/13** Reposted on 3/22/13
*** Reposted on 5/22/13
