Sharks, skulls and coke

[imomus]

The sneering skull snorts a huge line of coke into her broken nose then turns to you. "I'm going to kill you," she growls.

That's a reductio ad absurdum of the iconography I pick up from a single edition of sharky UK style magazine Dazed and Confused, a magazine which recycles fashion-punk attitude endlessly. Publisher: Jefferson Hack, ex-partner of Kate Moss, the model currently forced into a big public mea culpa over her coke habit. (Personally, I'm with Tracey Emin on the issue. Coke sucks.)

I call this "sharky style", and the West is full of it. It's how we picture ourselves. We have sharky cars, sharky watches, sharky bands, sharky sports stars, sharky buildings, sharky white teeth (even when sharky tobacco companies are selling us cigarettes that first yellow our teeth then leave us dead in the water, static in a cloud of blood). They're all fit, these sharks, in the Darwinian sense. They kill their competitors. They're likely to kill you too... unless you can make yourself look and act like them!

The reasons the sharky style attitude (sneers, skulls, coke, killing) is so prevalent in the West (and just how much further can it go? Style mags filled entirely with bloody-toothed sharks? What if sharks become extinct and look like losers?) are various:

1. It's cool to kill: Yeeh-hah! It's very hard, confronted by someone who's threatening to kill you, to assert that they're trivial or uncool or a loser, just as it's hard not to admire an actor waving a pistol in a Hollywood poster. A sneer, a threat or a pistol transforms a model or an actor instantly from a passive, plaintive object, vulnerable and desperate for our approval, to a powerful subject, indifferent to our cries for mercy, not only genetically superior to us (and therefore more fit to reproduce) but on the verge, here and now, of snuffing out our DNA with a single shot to the head.

2. Empowerment: A woman can never be a sexual object when she's about to kill you, even if she's naked. A working class or black youth never looks like a sad victim, ready for a visit from a social worker, if he's pointing a gun at your head. Violent imagery is empowerment, innit? Like those killer-girls in "Baise Moi!", women too can be rapist-murderers, and all's right with the world! Instant justice from the barrel of a gun! A level swimming pool for all sharks, regardless of race, colour, gender or creed!

Actors, models and musicians are, of course, all a bit gay and girly to be "just about to snuff out our DNA". But it's the nerd's revenge, isn't it? No wonder it takes its inspiration from punk; who could be more nerdy than Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious? I mean, they were more like minnows than sharks, weren't they? Yet one of them, sharked up by drugs, turned out to be a real killer.

3. Drugs as a metaphor for consumerism: That great long line of coke the skull is snorting... it's a metaphor for the addictiveness of the consumer end of capitalism, just as the skull is a metaphor for the murderousness of the producer end of capitalism. You're not supposed to enjoy consumer societies. That would lead to widespread epicureanism, to wholesomeness, to health. No, plethora is supposed to lead to addiction, to guilty pleasures, to sin, to death. At the production end, well, if you get in the way of the producers you'll be disposed of, your body dumped in a quarry in Columbia. One human life doesn't matter much, my friend. If you're at the consumption end, your duty is to get addicted to the product, to buy it reliably, and to die promptly, without placing too much strain on the social health network of your state (if it has one).

And meanwhile, your style sharkiness is just for show because it's a metaphor for the real sharks, the ones on the floor of the brokerage, the ones in business suits, the ones with the power for which "empowerment" is a mere metaphor, a bit of fancy dress. Yes, the middle-aged, balding men in suits are the real sharks. They don't look like sharks themselves, though. They look more like elderly pigs or walruses.

"Dazed and Confused has found innovative ways to present brands to a uniquely influential readership that demands to be addressed on its own terms," waffles the Dazed and Confused press-pack. "Dazed has translated the following blue chip brands for the style audience: Coca Cola, Nike, Evian, Converse, Motorola, Canon, Hilfiger, Tiger Beer, Topshop... to name only a few."

"Demands, translated". The "style subculture" who read Dazed speak a different language from the language of capitalism (or at least some heavily-accented dialect) and therefore "demand translation". Once translation occurs (largely a process in which dominant values become visual metaphors in the subculture, because the subculture doesn't tend to read much), the basic concepts of the mainstream culture can appear, quite unchallenged, in the subculture.

The thing that interests me is this: not all social systems model themselves on Darwinism, and not all style mags require everybody to look and act like a shark. In fact, it sometimes seems like only the Anglo-American model does these things. There is nothing inherent in systems of production that demands shark-like imagery, or "empowerment" through skulls, sharks, and snorting.

Yes, you guessed it, I'm about to tell you that Japanese magazines have peaceful nature imagery, and unashamedly feminine women (the women of the future!) and reassuring pictures of cakes and cafes instead of skulls, sneers, and coke. That Japanese capitalism seems to be a production system with less viciousness and vulgarity than any other. Well, not quite. I'm going to show you.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

right-conservative

right-wing conservative

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Still: so?

I don't take his arguments in the light of simple Nihonjinron, but rather simply as a Jungian perspective on one culture's psyche. In the context of other cultures, other psyches, and humanity in general.

Just because he formerly directed Nichibunken doesn't mean he's a right-wing fanatical nuthead. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Then what you're saying is that we should take his arguments in the light of complex Nihonjinron. I wholeheartedly agree.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

More of what I'm saying is we should take Kawai in the context of overall cultural psychic development. Nihonjinron only focuses on the Japanese, but Jungian intepretation is meant to reveal things about the human psyche -- and that is relevant to all humanity. :)

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Oooh, here's a great article on the revival of the feminine psyche in Japan:

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/2000/1020/cover1.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I didn't like that article. It's anti-collectivist and pro-capitalist. And it reads this ideology into things which are quite unrelated. For instance:

"For ever more Japanese, the key word seems to be ikigai — that which makes life worthwhile. It is the idea that, in group-oriented Japan, individuals not only count, they can make a difference."

Ikigai, personal values which make life worthwhile, would seem to lead quite easily and naturally to the idea of Slow Life, which would lead away from the market. But Time Asia doesn't want to take it there. It wants to say, with Ryu Murakami, that changes are coming from the market.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

"Ikigai, personal values which make life worthwhile, would seem to lead quite easily and naturally to the idea of Slow Life, which would lead away from the market."

I thought that especially during this section:
""We've been operating on the assumption that people will be happy if we can produce 'things' they want," Komura says. "Now we're overflowing with 'things.'" Structural reforms to help the economy meet the new needs of consumers are needed, he says, adding that political stability is essential in order to carry them out."

Basically all they are saying is, "so I guess let's move from the product industry to the service industry..." How long until people tire of services, do you think?

[(Anonymous)]

What it does mean is that he is or was an ally of a very right wing nationalist faction of the Japanese government. His work is aimed at a definition of the "Japanese psyche" and he's employed by nationalists (Nakasone was the Mr. Yasukuni of the 80's).

He has international experience and writes partly for an international audience. So the writings themselves are not likely to contain statements that are overtly offensive.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does mean that -- but the concensus seems to be (from what I know of Jungian circles) is that he is rather, 'flexible.'

I asked in another reply if you could show his history as relevant in the works in question. As in, could you evidence where you think his analysis was colored unfairly by this association?

(Which is, very possibly, no longer a valid association -- he is not officially working with them anymore.)

[(Anonymous)]

As it turns out I'm not very interested in myths of nationalist psyche.
Not only have I not read any of Kawai's writings, I'm not likely to.
Though I can imagine what's in there. Jung, the psyche, what Japan has to offer for the universal unconcious and so on. Heady stuff to be sure.
But from my point of view, probably a waste of time.

I am interested in questioning the political associations and motivations of people who propagate myths of national psyche.

Clearly Kawai had something in common with the man who revved up Japanese nationalism during the heydey of Nihonjinron. Enough that he was appointee a plum position as director of Japan's prime Nihonjinron institute.

Hey, weren't the Nazis big fans of Carl Jung?

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Jungian analysis is used on myths, not to create myths. Just as Darwinism is a mechanism to examine evolution, not create evolution. (How effective such a tool is, you refuse to address from your own prejudices.)

How such things are used in the moral sense is a very very different animal. :/

I would suggest an intermediary stage of contexual synthesis to help prevent the problem of Nationalistic implementation. Yes, many of Kawai's writings on Japanese psyche are insightful (both about the Japanese about about Kawai) but then, what does Japanese psyche say versus x,y,z psyche. What does that say about human psyche. What does that say about psyche in general. What does that say about nonpsyche... &c. &c.

I think you are assuming I am giving this all over to Kawai, as if he represented my very identity or my opinions. He doesn't. I consider him a fairly interesting craftsman of Jungian analysis. (And one I don't always agree with, as always.)

Throwing a strawman ad hominem propisition of, essentially, equating Kawai (or me and my opinions) to the Nazis is absurd. Absurd in the most wasteful sense. :( You are plugging your fingers in your ears while trilling, "Nazi nazi nazi!!"

If you want to give a rational argument, as I keep saying, evidencing how this political affiliation is relevant that would be excellent. It would be informative, and it would synthesize a context for Kawai's works. Instead, you are being a jackass.

[(Anonymous)]

The last part about Jung and Nazis was a jibe, not meant seriously.
But seems like it met its mark.

Lighten up, pal.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

It's sad that I am discouraged from asking questions and wanting rational evidence; but it's preferable, it's right, for you to make silly jibes after rationalizing ignorance.

Yes, I will get to lightening up right now.

[(Anonymous)]

If you'd been faster on your feet you would have been able to refute me simply by pointing out that the first director of Nichibunken is saying somet sensible things about Koizumi's Yasukuni visits:

http://www.selvesandothers.org/view1356.html

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Yes, glad to hear it's still my fault.

[(Anonymous)]

he and kawai are still kings of nihonjinron, which makes their ideas suspect, ab initio.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Just because a bridge creaks does not mean I don't walk on it. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

If rational argument is what you're after, you've come to a strange place to seek it (although I applaud that motivation). But just what is that "psyche" thing you keep referring to?

der.

psyche inter alia...

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

We're always in a strange place, friend, but we should seek it regardless. ;)

Psyche = mind, most simply put. This will spiral wonderfully out of control though. When we get into dualism, Chalmer's Hard Question, Dennett's qualia denial, physical reductionism, etc etc etc.

But suffice it to say, psyche is a measurement. It is a measurement of general attitudes, emotions, opinions, desires, etc. Whether they are based on physical means purely or involve some sort of supernatural or simply supercosmic element doesn't matter...

on this playing field anyway! ;)

Or:

* In psychology and related fields, the psyche is the entirety of the non-physical aspects of a person.
* A Greek word (also spelled Psykhē or Psukhē) which means either "soul" or "butterfly". psycho-, and psyche- are common English prefixes for mind or soul-related concepts.
* In late Greek art and literature, a goddess who is the personification of the soul; she is primarily known for her role in the story of Cupid and Psyche, best attested in Apuleius' novel The Golden Ass.
* 16 Psyche, an asteroid.
* Psychidae, or Bagworms, a family of Lepidoptera.
* Psyche, a Gothic band.
* An album by British band Ant and Dec.
* A code name for Red Hat Linux 8.0.