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imomus
Since Google Earth has just become available for the Mac, I've spent the last few hours flying back and forth between New York and Tokyo, zooming in on skyscrapers (perspective looks odd from space) and coasting along trainlines trying to tell one Chuo line station from the next (very difficult from geostationary orbit). Whose is that white van parked outside my old apartment on Orchard Street? And what is that extremely long blue shed in Ebisu, the one that looks like a particle accelerator? Is the Grand Canyon really that dramatic? How come there's (what looks like) an ancient Mayan burial site in the middle of Nakameguro?Google Earth, with its amazing capacity to zoom and pan, is a brilliant tool for giving a sense of how the part relates to the whole and how one place relates to another. It's a kind of real-time, interactive version of the Eames' famous Powers of Ten film. But it's not the only top-down view of places and their relationships out there. Sometimes a simple phrase can serve the same purpose. Take the Japanese slang phrase zenbei ga naita, for instance. It means, literally, "all America wept". But young Japanese actually mean "It's nothing special" by the phrase. Japundit explains:
"When many U.S. films open in Japan, they are accompanied by posters claiming that American viewers were moved to tears. But such films have little emotional impact on viewers here. So Japanese filmgoers have learned, apparently, to disregard such promotional claims as largely meaningless."
Already, in that phrase, there's a Google Earth-like pan from Japan to the US and back again. As with the interactive software, we suddenly see how being on opposite sides of the planet can make two countries face in completely different directions, and have completely different interpretations of the same events. But it may also be that Google Earth is itself an American perspective on things, because it's a top-down perspective, and America is a very top-down place. For instance, I defy anyone to use the program without thinking, at least briefly, of Pentagon footage of missiles destroying ground targets in the first or second Gulf Wars.
Perhaps, if Japan had invented Google Earth, we'd have seen, instead of the simple top-down view, something like the characteristic 45° elevation view of gyaku enkinhou, an Asian representational tradition used in the 12th and 13th centuries, then again in the 18th and 19th. "While the Western perspective system uses parallel lines that are drawn on a picture plane convergent at a vanishing point," explains Jaanus, "in gyaku enkinhou they are drawn to spread apart as they go further into the distance." This not only allows the artist more space to put objects into, but gives him the chance to do something like Cubism: to juxtapose a recognizable side-view of objects (the one we get as we approach them on foot) with a map-like view of the terrain they're in, and their relationship to one another. Sure, we never actually see the world this way (which of us will ever see the world from a satellite's point of view either?), but it's in many ways more realistic than a simple top-down view; it allows us to see objects for what they are, and where they are. So far, my main reaction to Google Earth is "What the hell is that?" I can see where something is, but, since I don't spend a lot of time floating across rooftops, not what it is.
Today's Neomarxisme entry illustrates another way American culture is "top-down". Not only are Western societies more hierarchical than Asian ones, with a bigger Gini spread between their richest and poorest, they're also more oriented, for their basic perception, to the authoritative views of experts, pundits, celebrities and politicians. Marxy expresses surprise that, whereas American film posters use quotes from celebrity film critics like Roger Ebert to legitimize their products, the same films tend to be advertised in Japan with quotes from actors. This, Marxy thinks, is silly: "asking Kuriyama and Hirosue what they thought of the film is like asking the hot, slightly intellectual girl in your homeroom what she saw at the movies last weekend. And that's the point: legitimization in Japan is less about proving objective value through qualified experts and more about associations with human contexts."
But is that so silly? Just as a satellite picture which somehow showed me objects as I would see them from the ground ('human contexts") and how they look from space at the same time would be a more useful one than the top-down view we have now, so a horizontal recommendation system for films (and we're seeing more and more of them with the internet taking over from the centralised media) might be more useful than the view from the bully pulpit of some professional pundit. I think the same phenomenon is apparent in the difference between Japanese and Western fashion magazines: Japanese magazines are far more likely to provide street fashion reports -- pages and pages of them, for Japanese cities but also foreign ones -- than Western mags, which revolve around elite brands and elite stylists, and tend to mean by "trends" the decisions taken by Hedi Slimane and Karl Lagerfeld rather than anything happening at grass roots level. A similar attitude comes across in Western journalism: read this New York Times article on cuteness and count the number of appeals to unspecified authorities: "researchers say... evolutionary scientists believe... Madison Avenue knows... experts tell us..." In the West we don't like to think of ourselves as the world's most "top-down" people, but we're certainly up there.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:58 am (UTC)I don't know that the appeal-to-authority runs any more rampant in the U.S. than anywhere else, such as, say, Germany or China. Frankly, I think that it's more of 90% of everything as crap.
I think this is a wee bit Orientalist.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:05 am (UTC)Is it orientalist to say there are different views in different places? (Including things like the development of different ways of representing perspective in art.) No, I don't think so. But I do think it's very essentialist to imply that we're all the same, and always have been, and always will be.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:17 am (UTC)And no, I don't think everyone is alike, but I do think certain things tend to be the case. Humans share a great many neurological structures, for instance.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:20 am (UTC)Helpful geek mode.
Date: 2006-01-12 07:26 am (UTC)It's butt-ugly, but it works, and it's cool.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:55 am (UTC)http://www.goarch.org/en/resources/clipart/icons/Myrhbearing_Women.jpg (http://www.goarch.org/en/resources/clipart/icons/Myrhbearing_Women.jpg)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:08 am (UTC)http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.716009~-73.991468&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1766455&sp=adr.38%20Orchard%20St%2c%20New%20York%2c%20NY%2010002
That's what I got when I plugged in "38 Orchard Street". Anyway, it's fun to play around with. And Japan didn't even invent it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:57 am (UTC)* any reference to East-West cultural difference is "orientalism".
* any reference to gender difference is "sexism".
* any reference to racial difference is "racism".
The point of identity politics was not that it should become impossible to talk about difference. In fact, identity politics before PC was a project to make difference visible.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 09:05 am (UTC)olivier
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 09:41 am (UTC)When Ja Rule speaks about 9/11 on television that's, no doubt, accepting someone's view simply because of their celebrity status. Ja Rule knows nothing about global politics or national security.
The truth is that on many issues we simply do not have the sufficient expertise to make a sensible judgment. If someone was to ask me what I thought of the latest Titan findings, I would no doubt be able to provide a very weak answer at best. Yet an astronomer or geologist who makes this his/her field could shed some useful insight on the issue which would otherwise have evaded someone without training.
I want opinions that sound sensible, thought out, coherent. If I can provide those myself, then I most certainly will. If I can't, I'm interested in hearing someone who can, placing myself in relation to his argument and learning something new with the whole experience.
The human element I can get from friends and family. We all know humans. Although many of us like to forget it, many experts are experts for a reason. Not all top-down relations are nefarious and misleading. When I read I look for informative and I look for insightful. So far I have found experts, researchers and specialists far more enriching in that sense than the most highly enjoyable bar gossip or friendly chat.
Re: Helpful geek mode.
Date: 2006-01-12 09:45 am (UTC)just check 'buildings' in the control panel.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 11:36 am (UTC)That's a good point, and I think it may be true of hard science subjects, but it begins to strech thin when your topic is "the true meaning of cute" or "the objective value of the Narnia film".
A couple of things
Date: 2006-01-12 12:13 pm (UTC)2) "Zenbei ga naita" - if this is slang, it's not particularly mainstream. I'd like to hear who's using it and in what contexts. Of course, the phrase is well used in ads, but the sarcastic meaning strikes me as being very non-Japanese.
3) Japan is so un-hierarchial that I spent literally 5 minutes today rearranging seats in my class so that we would all be away from the professor in exact order of graduate school entrance: Doctoral 3rd year, Doctoral 2nd year, Doctoral 1st year, Master's 2 year, Master's 2 year (one semester behind), and Master's 1 year. And this was just the weekly undergrad seminar! Not a graduation ceremony.
I'm not sure if your point is, Japan and America are hierarchial in different ways, but you can't deny that Japan is impossibly vertically hierarchial most of the time. Read Confucius. According to him, hierarchy is natural and beautiful and aligns the cosmic order. To a great extent in Japan, quality, meaning, power, ability are all based on fame/stature/status. "Nouryoku Shugi" is a relatively new concept.
Marxy
Occidentalism
Date: 2006-01-12 12:18 pm (UTC)I believe one thing we have in common is that Ian Buruma's A Japanese Mirror came early on in our interest in Japan. I wondered if you knew he has written a book called Occidentalism (http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,1296763,00.html) recently? If so, have you read it? What do you think?
I've read it, but I won't give my opinion just yet.
Re: Occidentalism
Date: 2006-01-12 12:36 pm (UTC)"I do think his new book on 'Occidentalism' seems to be lumping everyone with a different vision of life together with fascists, losers and cranks. It seems to be buying into the Bush dictum of 'with us or against us'. I don't think Buruma would see Slow Life as Occidentalism, though. There are ways to be 'post-industrial' that the West will also eventually discover. They are not refusals of the West by losers, but refinements of the West by winners.
"As a sort of protoleptic caveat Buruma (the same Buruma who once championed all that was most quirky about Japan!) says "Not all dreams of local authenticity and cultural uniqueness are noxious, or even wrong." That's not a particularly generous allowance, and yet the syntax leads us to expect further qualification, which duly comes in the form of: 'It is when purity or authenticity, of faith or race, leads to purges of the supposedly inauthentic, of the allegedly impure, that mass murder begins.'
"Mass murder does not 'begin' in the quest for purity, though. Mass murder is, alas, one of the constants of human history. I find it extraordinary that Buruma, in this essay, speaks so much about a Kyoto conference of 1942 which sought to resist American influence, and yet speaks not at all of two instances of mass murder committed by Americans against the Japanese in 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Were they conducted in the name of purity? No. They were, if anything, tests and demonstrations of new western technology and expressions of a certain ideology of pragmatism. ('This will save lives.') Do we now link the ideologies of pragmatism and technology to mass murder the way Buruma is linking purity and Occidentalism to mass murder? No, we do not. Perhaps only because we live in a world where these values seem to have won, and have therefore not (yet) been discredited. However, there is gathering evidence that they may not be harmless."
This is largely what Martin Jacques says in the Guardian review you link too:
"There is also an extraordinary neglect of the systemic relationship between the west and the non-west. It is impossible to understand anti-western resentment purely in terms of ideas: rather it is the interplay of the ideas and the power-relationship between west and non-west that is crucial. But Buruma and Margalit eschew any attempt to analyse this power-relationship."
So tell me your take, then!
Re: Occidentalism
Date: 2006-01-12 01:21 pm (UTC)This is the opening of one of the chapters:
The attack on the West is among other things an attack on the mind of the West. The mind of the West is often portrayed by Occidentalists as a kind of higher idiocy. To be equipped with the mind of the West is like being an idiot savant, mentally defective but with a special gift for making arithmetic calculations. It is a mind without a soul, efficient, like a calculator, but hopeless at doing what is humanly important. The mind of the West is capable of great economic success, to be sure, and of developing and promoting technology, but cannot grasp the higher things in life, for it lacks spirituality and understanding of human suffering.
Actually, when I first read this I just thought, 'Well, that's a pretty fair portrait of the West'. Looking at it again now, I think I'd remove 'efficiency' if I wanted a more accurate portrait. But in the book this kind of vague anti-Westernism (I suppose real enough for me to sympathise with it) seems to be conjured up merely in order to be dispelled, as if Western 'innocence' is a given.
Earlier on there is the sentence, repeated in different forms, "But criticism of the West, harsh as it might be, is not the issue here."
I don't understand why it's not the issue.
It is an interesting read because of the incidental detail along the way, but it feels as if the writers are wrestling with smoke since they refuse to make Occidentalism more than a kind of phantom with no grounding in reality. In the end it's not really quite clear what they are trying to do.
Re: A couple of things
Date: 2006-01-12 01:44 pm (UTC)Very good to start the day off with this article
Date: 2006-01-12 04:07 pm (UTC)nonomiya.jpg -- this picture is wonderful, and I can imagine the artist laying down those subtle lines of the window shades to the subject's left.
I love the japanese mags both online and off that do just what you mention, showing real trends, real happenings and verifiable instances.
Re: A couple of things
Date: 2006-01-12 04:10 pm (UTC)And let's look where it all comes from originally, in the case of Japan: China, Confucianism. Very hierarchical. And China today is one of the most hierarchical places on earth, not to mention having larger gaps between rich and poor than probably any place on earth. It is a place of utter extremes which are possibly only matched by special cases of a few Western countries, such as Brazil, where you have millionaries and favelas right next to eachother.
As far as context goes, that's a separate thing, which you can see reflected in hanzi/kanji--the context of the characters completely changes the resulting meaning--I think the outcome of this is more like: a hierarchical society in which people at various rungs have specific roles and expected patterns of interaction with those around them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 04:56 pm (UTC)NB: Your description also has placed in my mind images of Robert Schuller ( Sunday TV backdrop -- Crystal Cathedral in California ) preaching at his complex, which looks on TV like some religious Javits Center.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 05:00 pm (UTC)Yikes indeed!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 05:01 pm (UTC)Imagine if Iran had invented Google Earth. I dare say a few missles would be headed for thier head quarters. Only someone/thing like a huge american corporation could get awy with it.
... experts tell us...
Chomsky said that when he get's in his car he likes to turn on sport's talk radio because that's the only place where people don't defer to the experts. There could be a panel of experts on the show, players and coaches, and some guy from New Jersey will call in and tell them that they all have thier heads up thier asses.
If we could only get the footballers that interested in politics we might have a real shot at some kind of democratic republic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 05:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:17 pm (UTC)How does the media operate in regard to hard science / academic topics in Japan?
Re: Helpful geek mode.
Date: 2006-01-12 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:13 pm (UTC)Regarding difference:
1. If we were dogs we’d be the same breed, not even differing breeds
2. The vast majority of people in any group DO NOT do the defining stuff that tourists tend to notice and fixate upon
3. Peoples bind around a culture and consensus based on a national type, faith history or collective unconscious, sure. Still - they tend to maintain the ability to take or leave these; wherever one goes, and often have the ability to see the irony in being ‘traditional’ or chasing ‘the latest fad’ when required, even for the subtle entertainment value (pop bands who dress like young fogeys or toy with Arianism). This is why studying the consensus of culture is never, for me, as illuminating as studying an individual’s rejection of their own culture
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 10:55 pm (UTC)In the west, the most "revolutionary" successful people tend to be those who lack objective expertise. For example: Thomas Edison was a dropout. Einstein failed algebra. What were Bill Gates's "expert qualifications" when he built his microsoft empire? In the west, perception and reality rarely commingle - there is so much said about the importance of objectivitiy that it is rarely realized that objectivity is rarely even possible, much less necessary. In the east, there tends to be a (subtle) cultural realization that anyone can have a great idea and accomplish great things.
You'd certainly want an expert to perform surgery, but you don't need an expert to design and patent the surgical equipment or sell you the insurance plan that pays for it.
Re: Very good to start the day off with this article
Date: 2006-01-13 12:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 12:43 am (UTC)Re: Very good to start the day off with this article
Date: 2006-01-13 04:21 am (UTC)Double Take - Post Swipe
Date: 2006-01-13 04:35 am (UTC)Definition: a nipposexual is a non-Japanese person whose primary sexual orientation is towards Japanese people.
Where the heck did this trash response come from?
Citizen Anonymous Vulgaris -- lighten up! You ain't even close.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 06:35 am (UTC)iki
Date: 2006-01-13 08:14 am (UTC)about japanese aesthetic concepts 'iki' and 'wabi-sabi', with which you are probably familiar.
makes sense to me in the way that western (american) society seems to be obsessed with 'perfection', and asian (japanese (some wonderful generalizations here!!!)) seems to be far more appreciative of the 'imperfect'
http://www.answers.com/topic/iki-aesthetic-ideal?gwp=19
also makes me think of RUNDMC's Raising hell classic 'Perfection'
"perfection to me is quite essential..." to sum it all up (as I prefer the ever-changing much better myself)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 10:34 am (UTC)Here, every myriad aspects of human behavior are on direct trial, with 3 credentialed experts to evaluate the talento women.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 01:52 pm (UTC)...and to say that Albert Einstein 'lacked objective expertise' is perhaps stretching it just a bit.
/bug
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 04:02 pm (UTC)Einstein changed his mind about most of his own theories (he even went through a "religious nut" phase) every year or two - often contradicting himself, so his perspective is certainly a subjective one, by definition.
Experts
Date: 2006-01-14 03:36 pm (UTC)Reminds me of a speech I made in my communications class. It was on the topic of television and media influence in America...among other things. I spoke about the invisible entities called "experts". Who are they? Where are they? What authority do they have over others? How can their opinions matter so much if they do not possess a name or face? This paragraph made me happy because I seldom come across anyone who recognizes this as a problem. Does anyone notice? Does anyone care? I am not fooled by these words "expert" and "blah, blah, such and such scientist". I appreciate your observation.
imomus
Date: 2006-01-14 03:38 pm (UTC)Re: A couple of things
Date: 2006-01-20 09:57 pm (UTC)A more likely explanation of the differences in the way artists portray perspective (not that a simple one is to be found, since both evolved) is in the differences of our attitudes toward the natural environment around us. Traditional western architecture goes up and closes. Traditional eastern architecture spread out and opens. Maybe?