Who's framing Hinano?
Jan. 29th, 2006 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHere's a photo I took yesterday on an Osaka underground train:
It shows two advertisements, one for a women's magazine called Miss, the other for a scandal magazine called Shukan Bunshun.
What initially caught my eye was that the model in the Miss ad is Hinano Yoshikawa. In the 90s, Hinano was Japan's It Girl, appearing in fashion magazines like Cutie (where she was photographed by Tajimax, who shot many Kahimi Karie photos and videos and came to Paris to make the "I Am A Kitten" video), then later advertising everything from Canon copiers to wedding dresses. She even wore a real one when she married cross-dressing singer Izam from Visual-kei band Shazna (he wore one too). She starred in a French film called "Tokyo Eyes" in 1999. And then, like that other over-exposed 90s mega-star Tomoe Shinohara, like Hiromix, and, to some extent, like Kahimi herself, Hinano disappeared off the face of the planet. Plouf! One minute everywhere in "the narrative", the next minute gone, written out of the plot.
I was surprised to see Hinano back on a poster. I was even more surprised when Hisae told me that the poster next to the Miss poster also mentions her. "The day [LiveDoor president] Horie-mon was arrested," the scandal mag says, "Horie's website was planning to announce that his new girlfriend is Hinano".
That in itself would be a fairly average story, the kind of thing you might read on Neomarxisme. Marxy likes the shukanshi press because they write more freely and critically about events in Japan than the kisha club papers do. Marxy might also like the conspiracy theory angle that, although Miss and Shukan Bunshun are owned by different companies, the fact that suddenly they're both bringing Hinano back, just at a time when Hinano is also suddenly dating the country's most notorious (and now disgraced) New Economy businessman all smacks of... well, if not of conspiracy, at least of some kind of suspicious synergy going on, some tight little narrative controlled by a small group of people. Even if that small group of people is at odds with another small group of people, they're all on the same page. And we're supposed to be right there with them.
Where Marxy would probably depart would be from my suspicion that this kind of narrative is operating in all cultures, and that it wastes our time getting tangled up in it. I spent a lot of the 80s being a satirist; setting out to refute the ideology of the day in songs. I'm now much more wary of being that kind of artist, or even that kind of blogger, because it just seems to me that it tangles us up in the puppet strings of narratives which are there to trip us up and waste our time. These narratives have, over the last twenty years, got both more slick and more shrill. And it doesn't really matter whether we're pro or anti the actors involved; the important thing is that we tune in, we follow them, we frame the world with the kind of understandings these stories bring with them.
The internet has added all sorts of conspiracy theories (here, for instance, is Michel Chossudovsky telling us that Al Qaeda was fabricated by the US intelligence services and that Angrael plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran in March 2006), but it's no longer a question of these being wrong and the mainstream narrative being right, or these being extreme and the mainstream narrative being moderate. We live in a time when the mainstream narrative is quite nakedly and openly fabricated by people whose idea of a good read is Tom Clancy; the people who so famously said: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
They overestimate their control, of course. Sharon's stroke may have nixed the Israeli strike on Iran Chossudovsky predicted. The fact that these narratives are fallible (idiotic, aggressive and nakedly fabricated) doesn't stop us having to deal with them. But personally, my instinct is to ignore these rumblings just as I ignore the fact that Horie is dating Hinano. (And, of course, to vote against their authors at every opportunity.)
"They" don't really care what I think about Hinano or Horie, they just want me to accept the basic framing of the story as important. "They" don't care what my position on Iran is, they just want me to keep "watching this space" and thinking of the developing story in the terms they dictate. If I spent my life reacting to these stories, even as an angry critic or activist, I'd already have lost an important battle, the battle to determine how and what to see. The ability to frame what's important in life, and concentrate on that. Without that, I'd already be dancing their dance. In fact, even this entry sees me shuffling reluctantly through a few undignified steps of it.
But what else is there? That's a question everyone has to answer personally. For me, there's a politics of texture, a politics of new and fresh views, a narrative that I hear coming mostly from artists and from the zone of culture. Yes, it's still politics. Yes, it's still a narrative. It's just not Tom Clancy. It's a bit more subtle and humane. Yesterday, the most inspiring thing I saw was a little picture of some old ladies in Kyoto selling vegetables off a cart. I immediately
noticed a resemblance to the sleeve of Sawako's album "Hum". They shared a respectful framing of everyday reality as something worth paying attention to (appropriate, since Sawako's music frames ambient sound in the same way). Sure, two old ladies selling vegetables may sound undramatic compared to the Livedoor affair or World War III (if you want to make it more epic, imagine they're two Brechtian "Mother Courages", or say this is the start of an important "vegetable school" of music). But maybe it's precisely by encouraging us to define those old ladies as "small" and "unimportant" that the people who cook up the big, flashy, trashy, violent and vulgar narrative win.
It shows two advertisements, one for a women's magazine called Miss, the other for a scandal magazine called Shukan Bunshun.
What initially caught my eye was that the model in the Miss ad is Hinano Yoshikawa. In the 90s, Hinano was Japan's It Girl, appearing in fashion magazines like Cutie (where she was photographed by Tajimax, who shot many Kahimi Karie photos and videos and came to Paris to make the "I Am A Kitten" video), then later advertising everything from Canon copiers to wedding dresses. She even wore a real one when she married cross-dressing singer Izam from Visual-kei band Shazna (he wore one too). She starred in a French film called "Tokyo Eyes" in 1999. And then, like that other over-exposed 90s mega-star Tomoe Shinohara, like Hiromix, and, to some extent, like Kahimi herself, Hinano disappeared off the face of the planet. Plouf! One minute everywhere in "the narrative", the next minute gone, written out of the plot.
I was surprised to see Hinano back on a poster. I was even more surprised when Hisae told me that the poster next to the Miss poster also mentions her. "The day [LiveDoor president] Horie-mon was arrested," the scandal mag says, "Horie's website was planning to announce that his new girlfriend is Hinano".
That in itself would be a fairly average story, the kind of thing you might read on Neomarxisme. Marxy likes the shukanshi press because they write more freely and critically about events in Japan than the kisha club papers do. Marxy might also like the conspiracy theory angle that, although Miss and Shukan Bunshun are owned by different companies, the fact that suddenly they're both bringing Hinano back, just at a time when Hinano is also suddenly dating the country's most notorious (and now disgraced) New Economy businessman all smacks of... well, if not of conspiracy, at least of some kind of suspicious synergy going on, some tight little narrative controlled by a small group of people. Even if that small group of people is at odds with another small group of people, they're all on the same page. And we're supposed to be right there with them.
Where Marxy would probably depart would be from my suspicion that this kind of narrative is operating in all cultures, and that it wastes our time getting tangled up in it. I spent a lot of the 80s being a satirist; setting out to refute the ideology of the day in songs. I'm now much more wary of being that kind of artist, or even that kind of blogger, because it just seems to me that it tangles us up in the puppet strings of narratives which are there to trip us up and waste our time. These narratives have, over the last twenty years, got both more slick and more shrill. And it doesn't really matter whether we're pro or anti the actors involved; the important thing is that we tune in, we follow them, we frame the world with the kind of understandings these stories bring with them.The internet has added all sorts of conspiracy theories (here, for instance, is Michel Chossudovsky telling us that Al Qaeda was fabricated by the US intelligence services and that Angrael plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran in March 2006), but it's no longer a question of these being wrong and the mainstream narrative being right, or these being extreme and the mainstream narrative being moderate. We live in a time when the mainstream narrative is quite nakedly and openly fabricated by people whose idea of a good read is Tom Clancy; the people who so famously said: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
They overestimate their control, of course. Sharon's stroke may have nixed the Israeli strike on Iran Chossudovsky predicted. The fact that these narratives are fallible (idiotic, aggressive and nakedly fabricated) doesn't stop us having to deal with them. But personally, my instinct is to ignore these rumblings just as I ignore the fact that Horie is dating Hinano. (And, of course, to vote against their authors at every opportunity.)
"They" don't really care what I think about Hinano or Horie, they just want me to accept the basic framing of the story as important. "They" don't care what my position on Iran is, they just want me to keep "watching this space" and thinking of the developing story in the terms they dictate. If I spent my life reacting to these stories, even as an angry critic or activist, I'd already have lost an important battle, the battle to determine how and what to see. The ability to frame what's important in life, and concentrate on that. Without that, I'd already be dancing their dance. In fact, even this entry sees me shuffling reluctantly through a few undignified steps of it.
But what else is there? That's a question everyone has to answer personally. For me, there's a politics of texture, a politics of new and fresh views, a narrative that I hear coming mostly from artists and from the zone of culture. Yes, it's still politics. Yes, it's still a narrative. It's just not Tom Clancy. It's a bit more subtle and humane. Yesterday, the most inspiring thing I saw was a little picture of some old ladies in Kyoto selling vegetables off a cart. I immediately
noticed a resemblance to the sleeve of Sawako's album "Hum". They shared a respectful framing of everyday reality as something worth paying attention to (appropriate, since Sawako's music frames ambient sound in the same way). Sure, two old ladies selling vegetables may sound undramatic compared to the Livedoor affair or World War III (if you want to make it more epic, imagine they're two Brechtian "Mother Courages", or say this is the start of an important "vegetable school" of music). But maybe it's precisely by encouraging us to define those old ladies as "small" and "unimportant" that the people who cook up the big, flashy, trashy, violent and vulgar narrative win.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 05:32 am (UTC)Yes. Prescient.
What? no fruits, trendy tarts, or creamy desserts?
Date: 2006-01-29 05:59 am (UTC)This is where I get off the boat. See you in Rio.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:10 am (UTC)I disagree with Dzima's comment inasmuch as it surely is possible to affect the world and make it more like one's idea of how things should be, even through simple acts of giving: buying goats to help sustain struggling families you will never meet, or even something as small as clicking on the Rainforest Site (http://www.therainforestsite.com) to preserve a paltry 11 foot of rainforest each day can be beneficial; and, I suppose, if I was a psychopath and a cannibal, I could follow the peculiar culinary course mapped out in Confessions of a Flesh-Eater (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/187398247X/qid=1138513806/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-1754743-9977749?n=507846&s=books&v=glance). However, I agree with Dzima in that, unless one becomes part of the establishment, it is impossible to change anything to an important degree; although it also seems true that, by becoming mainstream, one is forced to dilute one's vision (audition, etc.) of how one wants one's world to be, which seems somewhat schizoid. Indeed, it is a puzzle to me how anyone can maintain themselves (or the illusion of a continuous projection of self upon the world) under the immense weight of inevitably biased news stories, opinion pieces, commentaries, and "cultural schtick." Such strength of character is difficult to maintain, I think; and I wonder to what extent you manage it in your music and life. Is it easier virtually than actually?
Is it just through acts of creation or fabrication that it's possible to invent new ways of being (as the act of living in the world appears to require unwanted compromises with the culture and society in which one exists)? What do you think?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:14 am (UTC)Though he'll be here before long to address that I'm sure.
Lumping the hinano story in with the internet conspiracy theorists is such a broad sweep that I can't imagine there exists any sort of media that you don't think should just be ignored... except of course the media you like.
You skipping out of America, and Germany, and eventually skipping out a Japan that grows conservative and boring for you has a lot to do with the politics and the media climate of the country. Sure, up until a point, there will always be another place you can run off to, with cash in your pocket. Not everyone is so lucky though.
You guys can poke fun at marxy for actually giving a shit about the media climate and well being of the citizens of Japan, rather than just his own little art world, but it's really unbecoming anyone outside the Bush administration to tell the poor to eat cake.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:32 am (UTC)In my case, it's a constant movement between different societies (as well as a continuous production of narrative in addition to mere consumption of it) that seems to do the trick. Each culture has its own socialization machinery rattling away 24/7 to produce compelling narrative. Moving between cultures relativizes these narratives and renders them powerless.
Just as a tiny example, last night I watched the first episode of a UK sitcom called The IT Crowd (http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itcrowd/video/index.html). It's written by a "narrative producer" I've actually met, Graham Linehan (of "Father Ted" fame). Now, it's entertainment, but it's also socialization, because it re-inforces British values. And I'm still British enough to have laughed at some of the jokes, but I also felt very uncomfortable with some of the values, like the scene where an enraged female kicks one of the male characters until he bleeds. This "acceptable aggression" (it was acceptable because a perversion of gender politics has made highly unrealistic, savage and dangerous scenarios like this seem like "reparation") seemed to me to be "incorrect". It wouldn't appear in a Japanese sitcom.
I found exactly the same thing in a video by new Brit sensations the Arctic Monkeys. Their video for When The Sun Goes Down (http://www.dominorecordco.com/site/index.php?page=multimedia) contained an acceptance of violence (again justified by perceived post-pc "reparation") against characters defined as "scumbags". I could see how this UK socialization narrative justified this aggression to itself as a moral crusade of some sort, but I could also see how it leads to the production of a divided, loathesome and violent society in which the values I'd consider politically progressive will have a hard time flourishing (and that includes the rights of women and the homeless, the specific instances used in "The IT Crowd" and "When The Sun Goes Down" to justify massive aggression). In the end I find the PC aggression in these UK narratives very close to Tony Blair's use of bombs "to bring democracy". And I think you need to be (at least partly) outside the culture to see this clearly as something produced by narratives which it might be easy, otherwise, to applaud as "progressive".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:46 am (UTC)Secondly, I do give a shit about the media climate in Japan. I find Marxy ethnocentric for projecting his own views onto the Japanese public. I don't share his interest in focusing on mass market culture when you're not yourself a mass market consumer. I mentioned Sawako in this entry as a Japanese "narrative producer" I do choose to pay attention to. In a way, I could have made the entry very short indeed and just said "Never mind the bollocks, here's Sawako!"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:57 am (UTC)Your CV says you starred in something called Deep Throat Live on Stage. Was this in a particularly desperate time of your career? Anything to pay the bills?
(Fits of giggles) I think that should come off the CV. That sounds so much saucier than it actually was. The thing was, it didn't do what it said on the tin, and I think people came to see it thinking that there'd be some sexy girl doing saucy stuff. And I did a comic turn, I was on roller skates, and deliberately not being sexy. These poor men at midnight during the Edinburgh Fringe wanting to get a bit of eye candy, and instead I was just falling all over the stage being a bit of a dick.
What was it like working with Chris and Richard?
One of the nicest things about the job was that the three of us, genuinely, have a very nice dynamic. I did think the three of us are very different, but they're not too blokeish, either of them, and I'm not... a woman. No, that's wrong... What am I saying?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 07:25 am (UTC)Marxy's working in his field of specialization, but insomuch as there can be a "should" in the world of information dissemination, one should not propogate objective untruths for the sake of making money. It is in a sense very analogous to livedoor cooking the books, where the currency is public approval and popularity... media the world over exists to turn those two elements into capital, without regard to the impact on the culture. That it should be any less criminal than Horie's doings is a rather arbitrary twist of fate, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 07:31 am (UTC)I'm also less gung-ho than you about what is and isn't "objective truth" (I know Marxy's big on the "they're telling us lies!" angle too. Perhaps it's because you're both Americans?). My point in today's entry is "It's not about who's right or wrong, it's about who gets to frame the issues, and how much of my time I'm prepared to waste mulling them." Japanese currently watch 5 hours of TV per day. That's their business, but somewhere off at the corner of the picture you'll find Sawako humming, and me listening, and then blogging about it. "And that's reality", as John Lennon once spoke-sang.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 08:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 08:34 am (UTC)Yes, that was how I read it. I like reading things like this... thanks for making me think about things differently every now and then!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 09:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 09:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 10:05 am (UTC)1) The Horie-Hinano relationship was the gossip story about to break right before all hell broke loose for Livedoor. I wouldn't be surprised that this MISS magazine cover (and possibly the public romance) was part of a more expansive promotional barrage for her comeback. I doubt that Levie (her jimusho) is very happy now that Mr. New Japan is Suspect New Japan, and I bet that magazine isn't exactly thrilled either. I'm sure the editors didn't have enough time to pull her from the cover now that she's "tainted" by the scandal.
2) I will admit that my belief in a free media and in free information does stem from a political position, but I'm not sure that position is entirely based upon my ethnographic background. There are plenty of Japanese organizations and individuals working towards the dissolution of the press clubs and the elimination of television yarase. Have they all been "tainted" by a Western stench? You are welcome to blame me for hiding my political views behind "objectivity," but the idea that Japan's monolithic ethnographic profile somehow overrides all individual philosophies in Japanese public life seems like a stretch. I wouldn't even know about half this stuff if insiders weren't so happy to bitch about it.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 10:29 am (UTC)The Church of Momus in the making?
der.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:04 am (UTC)Irritatingly jargonistic phrases like "cultural feedback loops" and "matrices" and so forth spring to mind when trying to explain how these narratives arise, rather than "editors" or "creators". The writers, after all, are stuck in their own stories.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 02:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 05:05 pm (UTC)Until thier little vegatable stand it is struck by a missle which dessimates the entire block. But then they they are still not in the narrative. The narrative is delivered by those who fired the missle and repeated by for profit media. The story will be "we're pretty sure that we got Al Quada's #2 or #3 or #4 man".
Obviously I've placed the vegatable stand in another place. Some place where this event would be more likely to happen.
But I know what you mean. When I walk through the farmers market on sunday I think ahh, this is what life is. This is what is important.
I also feel that way when I watch cooking shows.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 08:31 pm (UTC)I've begun to accept the nu-speak definition of Conspiracy Theorist as a whack job who believes in UFOs. Still it's sad to see language deteriorate in this way.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just still pissed off about the streetcars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)
It would be hero-worship if I agreed with you more often...
Date: 2006-01-29 11:32 pm (UTC)I think that one of the best things about this blog - and very much one of the reasons I am always interested to read it - is that, by writing about your lifestyle, plans and myriad interests, you provide a template (well, maybe I should say after all say "design"!) for living much more according to one's own terms; through it, you've certainly inspired me (at least indirectly) to listen more to the internal whisperings of my own more creative thoughts and desire for self-expression, and you have also given what seems a full-colour map of the source of their frustrated oppression. So I guess your blog is a very generous gift; thank you very much indeed for it; long may it continue; and I may this very next week have the technology to send you a CD by misconceived way of thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:59 pm (UTC)Owen.
Tokyo Eyes
Date: 2006-01-30 02:34 am (UTC)- Patrick (http://www.chipple.net/)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 05:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 05:25 am (UTC)*adding*
Fluxus and re-interpretation
Date: 2006-01-30 02:53 pm (UTC)What do you think, crew?
from limbodance!
Date: 2006-05-02 10:49 pm (UTC)your article was funny, just a correction = that chick Hinano, she's been on fashion covers all these past years, she's never left that entertainment world. actually, she's still very popular when it comes to variety shows and fashion mags (e.g. being the face of "PINKY", "ar", etc for the past years) so while for Horie this definitely seems like a boost in the media, I fear that for Hinano with this it will stop activity maybe.. and then maybe it will become like you said
;) just to say that this has certainly not been her first cover in the past years, more like her 50th :D
julietbello1984@yahoo.com
Date: 2009-11-25 03:56 pm (UTC)Hello
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julietbello1984@yahoo.com
Date: 2009-11-25 04:01 pm (UTC)Hello
My name is juliet, i saw your profile today and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,I will want you to send email to my privet email address so that i will send my pictures to you.here is my email address julietbello1984@yahoo.com I believe we can move from here! Awaiting for your mail to my email address above
Yours in love
juliet