Densha Otoko and "our penis"

[imomus]

I went to Flushing Mall yesterday and happened to pick up a cheap DVD of the movie Densha Otoko. This is the feature film version of the hit TV show "Train Man", which we discussed here last year in the context of whether it mattered that it was "based on a true story".

The "true story" part is absolutely the least interesting thing about Densha Otoko. I have to say I think it's a terrific mainstream movie -- not an original work of art, but one of those commercial films that hits big, obvious, universal themes, and does so deftly, with wit, charm, panache, basic goodness of heart... and a tiny sprinkling of innovation (in this case, the technical novelty that the train man is using an internet bulletin board at every step of the way as an information and advice resource -- Professor Higgins and Woody Allen's Humphrey Bogart transformed into, well, a sort of electronic chorus of guardian angels -- as he attempts to overcome his gaucherie and get the girl).



So much experimental art is "protestant", protesting against... well, against DNA, against normality, against the way things are. Radical, experimental art likes to ask "Why must things be this way?" But it can be powerful when art goes "catholic", goes with the flow, accepts some of the universal laws that govern us and says "Things must be this way!" Call it dharma or call it DNA; when art gets lined up with reality rather than trying to pick at or resist it, well, you risk finding yourself snuffling into a Kleenex, as I did towards the end of this tender-minded, morally upright, lushly sentimental film.

Like DNA itself, the film demands that its anti-hero, the (rather too good-looking) otaku, spruce himself up and make himself fit for reproduction. To do this, he must please the (rather impersonal, and rather too old) personification of dharma, love object (and mazakon icon) Miki Nakatani. Like all universals, Miss Nakatani wisely stays abstract and somewhat absent, giving our hero room to embarrass and improve himself, to bring himself gradually into conformity with the timeless laws she embodies.

Of course, every culture negotiates its relationship to universals by means of its own specificities and particularities; each culture allows local signifiers to stand in privileged proximity to the universal givens of dharma. As you know by now if you know me at all, I respond particularly to the way Japanese people have negotiated their relationship to these universals (nature, reproduction, society). This means that, whereas I tend to favour destructive, marginal, experimental art coming from the West, art that asks "Why does it have to be this way?", it tends to be mainstream values and mainstream art that I favour in Japan. (I think this explains why I've only ever had commercial success as a songwriter in Japan; in the West I want to "sing perversity", whereas in Japan I'm content to "sing normality".)

We know very well what the West does with this theme: we see it in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam. The ghost of Humphrey Bogart is there to give Woody advice ("Just kiss her! Go on!") but basically at a certain moment he's on his own. But the important moment in Train Man comes when our otaku is told by his ghostly internet collective: "You have us all by your side." Like ancestors, they are always with him (under the table, on a handheld wireless device, standing across the subway platform), demanding his conformity to their code. We keep expecting the narrative to dispense with them, to reach a moralistic moment when the Train Man will learn that he must go it alone, but that moment never comes; the bulletin board chorus is still there at the end, distributed across all the neon lights of Akihabara, sending their congratulations.

It is, of course, the triumph of collectivism; even in our lonely, personal struggle to reproduce our DNA, the group is always with us. Our successes and failures are theirs too, and that's a help and a comfort. Even seeking what may seem like the most selfish of satisfactions, the individual is indivisible from the social mass. I thought of a note I scribbled in my notebook last week: just the two words "our penis". A startling combination, because of course we think of the penis as somehow something terribly selfish, a pleasure-seeker, a self-reproducer. We think of it as "mine", the very essence of male individuality. But what if the penis were a collective property? What if the male penis were actually owned by the women who are able to excite and erect it? What if the penis of a living man (and I mean, specifically, his DNA) were actually owned by his ancestors, and his descendents? What if the penis were guided, not by an individual, but by a collective? The penis which seems so much of the "now" and of the "me" might, in fact, be piloted by the future, and by someone else; not by "now" but by "then", and not by "me" so much as by "us" or even "them".

Densha Otoko struck me as an "our penis" sort of movie; a film in which a woman (a sort of mother) stands between the isolated, unsocialised male hero and a universal, collective dharma, coaxing him through many small acts of faltering self-improvement, obedience and consideration towards a final, overwhelmingly beautiful submission. The film never shows the sexual intercourse these events must lead to, but we're left in no doubt: it will be a crowd scene.

Comments

not MY penis

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

is this some sort of ploy to intellectually shepard the women of Click Opera into a Momuscentric otaku no orgy in the name of collectivity and art?
could be a bit less mainstream when converted to chinatown dvd i suppose.

and by the way do you actually spend time on 2ch or 4chan?

Re: not MY penis

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think I would hate a literal orgy. No, I'm talking about the metaphorical orgy that Freud described when he said that every act of sexual intercourse always has ghosts hovering above it; the ghosts, principally, of the introjected opposite-sex parents of the participants. (I don't want to spoil it for you, you don't need to think of this next time you're doing it, but of course you probably will now...)

No, I spend no time at all on Japanese bulletin boards. Mixi is my limit, and half the time I'm pushing the wrong buttons there (as I would be, no doubt, in an orgy).

Re: not MY penis

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

yes i find both [Mixi and orgies] rather like operating the control panel of an aircraft on which i have no experience.
[never flown a plane....]
at least with Mixi i know hiragana/katakana....and with the other, well, some buttons are shinier/more intuitive/built in the muscle memory.

4chan is pretty horrific [esp /b/] on a frequent basis but on Saturday, aka Caturday, it's jolly cute fun.

anyway, i'll probably see Densha Otoko if i can get my hands on it. maybe i won't cheer for the underdog.

Re: not MY penis

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Densha Otoko would've been pretty gruesome if he'd turned to 4chan for advice.

Re: not MY penis

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

someone actually posted the supposed original 'help letter' there, and he was quickly chastised, in typical 4chan fashion, and called out as a fake.

Bah

[eptified.livejournal.com]

And in this way all the doors of mutation flutter closed, and we and our collective penis go tripping down a narrower and narrower path until at the last we end up mongolized and eaten by those that had the chutzpah to be more interesting. You remember the song you did called "Human Diversity"?

I am distracted from my point by the image of the all-penis tripping down a path (possibly holding a wicker basket filled with daisies in its...limb...I suppose..)

I find the kind of desires and motivations that "densha otoko" peddles intensely boring. The best art from Japan has always come from the non-participators.

Re: Bah

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's because I'm more of an outsider than you are, but I've always found being able to approve of dharma incredible. Sex has always been my favoured point-of-entry to dharma; this is what I was singing about way back on my first album in "Little Lord Obedience". The beauty of capitulation and obedience to a universal law, with women as the enforcement agents for that law.

[eptified.livejournal.com]

This debate is old and goes back to the first christian missionaries, who thought buddhists were death-worshippers because they sought annihilation of the self.

I think that there's a distinction to be made between surrendering to the eternal will (or the negation of orgasm) and to the prevailing trends of a society. Everybody fuzzy-feel good work together isn't the same as dharma. The feeling you get when you look out at all the little houses thrumming away with the obaa-chans cooking supper might be, but that's distinct.

And you're the kind of outsider that gets written up in the Times, so don't come the slippery eel with me.

Re: Bah

[jimmyandfriend.livejournal.com]

This seemed appropriate and I love it. Schopenhauer on Sex:

"If I am asked where the most intimate knowledge of that inner essenc of the world, of that thing in itself which I have called the will to live, is to be found, or where that essence enters most clearly into our consciousness, or where it achieves the purest revelation of itself, then I must point to ecstasy in the act of copulation. That is it! That is the true essence and core of all things, the aim and purpose of all existence."

All might as well be Buddhas at that point. I wonder what would happen if we all "capitulated" at the same time.

-Jimmy

[(Anonymous)]

Freudian coincidence that Miki Nakatani is very strongly rumored to be a lesbian?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, she is a lesbian, for sure. She's also a fan of my records, I hear!

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Just because something isn't 'Protestant', it doesn't automatically make it 'Catholic'.

Just as any animal that isn't a cat isn't automatically a dog.

'Our Penis' @ Kanamara Matsuri

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Re: 'Our Penis' @ Kanamara Matsuri

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nice!

Re: 'Our Penis' @ Kanamara Matsuri

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

It's actually a cute picture, all those tiny, happy cheering women carrying that huge erect phallus. Pity Dean Swift didn't have this for inspiration when he wrote Gulliver's Travels.

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

"What if the penis of a living man (and I mean, specifically, his DNA) were actually owned by his ancestors, and his descendents? What if the penis were guided, not by an individual, but by a collective?"

uh... duh. are you at all familiar with the biological imperative to reproduce? this is shared trait at the species level. ALL notions of individuality are just distractions from this condition. do you GENUINELY think that your experiences, down to your internal dialogues, are somehow divorced from this? bags of mostly salt water are we.

Our womb

[(Anonymous)]

In the u.s. this would be a discussion about "our womb" and they would be speaking literally. The member groups of the present ruling coalition almost unanimously think they have a right to enforce their control over women's bodies.

Forced pregnancy after rape is considered normal to this crowd, and they continue to introduce laws to that effect. Only the remnants of a sane judicial system stops them from jailing millions of women, this may not be true forever. "The Handmaidens Tale" is a wonderful movie about the conditions under one such state.

So the individual v. collective debate, is nicely described here as a male thing. Women understand in a much more direct way that these topics are mostly intellectual for penis carriers and 'not so much' for the vagina endowed.

Mainstream and or ...

[(Anonymous)]

Its strange to me that you are saying that you associate yourself with mainstream Japanese culture. are you sure? What you talk about in your blog and how you present yourself as a public figure seems antithetical to much of the mainstream in Japan. You've recently railed about other people's music (great article by the way..) so I could hardly imagine you submitting to the structure of Japanese pop music, having your music written by a collective of marketers, and your style predetermined for mass appeal. Let alone you following the course of a mainstream Japanese man, working your way up the corporate ladder.

Densha Otoko was a fun film, and I agree with your review save that I hardly think it mainstream. Simply because corporate Japan has woken up to the profitability of otaku culture doesn't quite make it mainstream. In the same way I hardly think that skater culture is mainstream in the US because a computer company can sell skateboarding video games.


And as for the penis being directed collectively. Thats kind of a scary thought. Are you advocating for US university fraternities

Re: Mainstream and or ...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Its strange to me that you are saying that you associate yourself with mainstream Japanese culture. are you sure?

Well, to be honest I'm not sure. Of the cultures I've experienced, Japan has the least toxic mainstream culture, the one with which I can most easily come to some sort of compromise. The Japanese "way of being in the world" and "negotiating the relationship between the particular and the universal" is relatively refined, admirably restrained, quirkily creative, tender-minded, pacifist, sensual, tasty, clean, communal, considerate, and so on. But I draw the line at J-Pop, which is utterly dismal music. And my idea of hell is being stuck for eternity in Tsutaya W-w-w-w-w-w-w-wave Ceeeeeeee 3...

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

What kind of phone has Momus got?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't have a phone, and I don't have an iPod (http://wired.com/news/columns/0,70625-0.html?tw=wn_index_2).

[(Anonymous)]

"tender-minded" is becoming a Momus cliché. You've used it twice here, you use it just about every post. Find some variation on the theme please!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

One person's "cliché" is another's core value. What's wrong with using a key term, devised by the psychologist William James (http://imomus.livejournal.com/181406.html) and seen as one of the great axes of human temperament? It's like telling me to stop using "introvert" or "extravert"! No, I won't! (Stamps.)

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

watched it last night. You're laying a pretty forced reading on the poor little mega-budget film. You'd be closer to the mark for me if you had said that through their unrelenting faith in the nerd's penis, all parties were redeemed in such a way as to honor their own penises. Densha kun went on to get the chick primarily for the sake of not letting the community down... and the crowd was invigorated through his penile triumph.

as much as the movie was cute and nice on it's level, I find weak, weak men whose greatest charm lies in being pitiful as leading characters quite infuriating.

[femaletoys.livejournal.com]

There were some interesting moments, but generally I can't say I liked it.