Oh! Marxy

[imomus]

The productive two-year dialectic -- a battle for the soul of Japan, or at least a persuasive general definition of the nation -- between Click Opera and Neomarxisme may well have reached a sad end. Yesterday, infuriated by Marxy's refusal to offer any criticism of his own culture or any comment whatsoever on the war raging in the Middle East, I concluded that "by refusing to be relevant about what's going on outside Japan, you are unable to be relevant about what's going on inside it".



Marxy's response sounded weary and sad: "To be honest, I don't feel like getting sucked into this conversation or even trying to deconstruct your highly aggravating debating techniques. Sadly I am probably losing to your assault, but the constant barrage of this kind of unfair rhetorical sucker punching just makes my life worse and me more unhappy."

I apologized and, in a post-skirmish dialogue with a more sympathetic poster called Brown, ended up quoting Thomas S. Kuhn: "Advocates of mutually exclusive paradigms are in an insidious position: Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing... neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proof."

It's certainly true that, although we seem to get on fine in real life, Marxy and I have different basic intellectual paradigms. But I wonder if proof is really completely irrelevant? Take one of our earlier, more polite skirmishes. Back in October 2004 Marxy responded to a Click Opera piece on postmodernism with a Neomarxisme piece called Post-modernism in retrospect. Its provocative, reductive and ethnocentric tone seemed guaranteed to enrage me. Contradicting my claim that "Japan is the society currently most at ease with postmodernism", Marxy told us that "Japan's postmodernism has always been accidental... Japan is a nation without content... All the great treasures of content-based Postmodernism - meaningful bricolage, subversive irony, and creative sampling - don't exist in Japan... The good parts of American culture lead to a certain kind of elevated dialogue or at least put people into camps to argue about the work's value. Japanese popular culture leads to no dialogue."

In the comments section, I responded to this outrageous claim with what now seems like admirable moderation: "Personally I don't think The Simpsons is a "better" postmodernism than Oh! Super Milk Chan or Oh! Mikey."



Well, Kuhn be damned, there is "proof" that the Japanese are totally able to do postmodernism in a completely non-accidental way. Directed and written by Yoshimasa Ishibashi, Oh! Mikey has been in production for just over four years. It's a brilliant series of short sketches revolving around the Fuccon family, American ex-patriots James, Barbara and their son Mikey. They've been sent to live in Japan, where they've morphed into a sort of surreal, satirical stereotype of what Japanese people are like.

Played throughout by showroom dummies wearing fixed grins and liable to erupt at any moment into manic, sinister, unbridled laughter, the Fuccon family are in a sense the absolute inverse of the sweet Japanese families we see in Ozu films. Here, everyone is horrifically rude to each other and appalling hypocrisies are rife. By using gaijin characters who act exactly like Japanese, Ishibashi manages to critique Japanese behaviour and Western decadence and selfishness at the same time (his point could be that Japanese have become this way because they've started to resemble Westerners the way the Fuccons have started to resemble Japanese). I'd say there's a closer parallel with Ren and Stimpy than the Simpsons, because this is more than social satire; it goes into much artier, more uncomfortable areas. I'd put it on a par, for sheer surreal nihilism, with David Lynch and Todd Solondz.



But I've probably said too much already. Got a couple of hours to spare? Here's a ton of Oh! Mikey, courtesy of YouTube and Google Video. You'll be laughing as you watch this stuff, I promise, but stick a couple of Post-It notes on either side of the screen saying "Japan's postmodernism has always been accidental" and "Japan is a nation without content" and you'll laugh even harder.

Let's Go for a Drive

Mikey's Future

Mikey's Diary

The Love Surgery

The Papillon Cafe

Saori the Lady Driver

Saori the Lady Driver Part 2

The Papillon Cafe Part 2

The Return

Mikey Peeps

Mikey Being Kidnapped

A Marital Dispute

Moving Away

Growing Mikey

Mikey's Illness

Mikey's Exorcism

The whole of Oh! Mikey Series 2 (35 minutes long)

Comments

[warhooligan.livejournal.com]

but you can't ignore the fact that the show has to use a background of ex-pat americans to make the point, to be post-modern. Eastern culture has only been examined through a Western eye for a very short time, relatively speaking, so I think it is unfair to even apply the same definitions of these labels to Asian pop/art culture, framing it only in Western terms. Or am I being too reltivistic and missing the point?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can't see the supposed ethnicity of the characters as having anything to do with the genre of the piece -- after all, many if not most manga characters have rather Western-looking features too, and yet could only be Japanese in the way they're drawn, what they do, how they think, etc.

As for whether even using the term "postmodern" for Japanese art is relevant, I'd say it is. Let's say that postmodernism began in about 1956 (that's my personal, and arbitrary, start date). Japan has been, in the period since 1956, as completely modern, if not more so, than any Western nation. I don't think the West has a monopoly on modernity, and I don't think it has a monopoly on postmodernity either. In fact, it's one of my basic arguments that Japan is teaching us how to be postmodern. I think anyone who's been to Japan has to feel that it's a much more postmodern society than, say, the UK, although the UK does seem a little more "Japanese" and postmodern each time I visit. But perhaps it's careless of me to say that there are degrees of postmodernism in different countries. Perhaps there are only national flavours of postmodernism.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< I concluded that "by refusing to be relevant about what's going on outside Japan, you are unable to be relevant about what's going on inside it". >>

OUCH!

Hey momus, remind me not to piss you off TOO much@?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It only hurts if it's true.

OCKY MILK LYRICS? PLEASE

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Nick,

Why dont you include the lyrics in your lasts records??????

It's a bore if they are on your web, really. I love the printed lyrics even if they are as tiny as the Folktronic album.

Please add them in some edition of your Ocky album

Carlos

[gillen.livejournal.com]

By using gaijin characters who act exactly like Japanese, Ishibashi manages to critique Japanese behaviour and Western decadence and selfishness at the same time (his point could be that Japanese have become this way because they've started to resemble Westerners the way the Fuccons have started to resemble Japanese).

Then perhaps it was a typo "Japan's postmodernism has always been occidental."

Let's Go for a Drive

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

When I listened to this with my eyes closed, it sounded like Italian to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I think to be fair you should tell your readers that the general pattern is that Marxy criticises some event or series of events where some identifiable person or group of people gets hurt (through blacklisting of artists, rigging of matches or business competitions, etc. pp.), and you drag into the discussion lofty questions of locatedness and context-dependence of concepts like "freedom" (at which you throw Wikipedia links).

You've never declared yourself on that "unalienable human rights" thing. So there: "by refusing to take a stance on the issue of universal human rights, Momus is unable to even write about the colour pink without raising the suspicion that he supports torture."

der.

Postmodernism WikiFolklore

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

Connotations

Wikipedia, with its open, potentially limitless forum, is an example of the postmodernist fluidity of knowledge. This then brings problems of control, legitimisation and verification.

The role, proper usage, and meaning of postmodernism remain matters of intense debate and vary widely with context. See, for example, the discussion of Japanese postmodernism in [imomus blog]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Connotations

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, that's witty and funny as a joke, but if you mean it as a serious point I have to disagree that using Western-looking characters has anything to do with the genre status of a work. It's like saying Ben Hur is essentially Ancient Roman in its way of looking at the world, because it uses ostensibly Roman characters.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think my constant questioning of notions like "human rights" makes my general position quite clear, but if you want a specific statement I'll make one:

I believe that there aren't any universal human rights, but that as fictions go it's not a bad one if it's used well. Unfortunately, in the era of Blair and Bush, human rights are as likely to be used as the pretext to invade a sovereign nation as to save people from suffering. And if you counter that it's a double-edged sword which can be turned against the people who misuse it, I'd say a double-edged sword is always going to be more useful to people with a lot of power (the Angrael regimes) than people with a little (the UN, the ICC, and so on). In summary, I prefer the concepts like "above all, do no harm" or "thou shalt not kill" to the concept of universal human rights.

Re: Let's Go for a Drive

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

What? The syllables are accented completely differently!

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae5fzI-ha1k
quaint resemblance, that's all.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa yabai!

ffffff

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

hey momus, is the fuccon family related to the similar named faucon's???

http://www.bernardfaucon.net/photos/index.htm

Re: ffffff

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, Kuhn be damned, there is "proof"

This is, of course, a rhetorical flourish. Actually, I think Kuhn is right. What I present here as "proof" could only persuade people who already share my paradigm, not people who share Marxy's. Similarly, the kinds of concrete cases Marxy presents daily on Neomarxisme could never persuade me, or people who think like me, of the correctness of the wider conclusions he draws from them (and, unlike Jean Snow, for instance, who simply aggregates links and lets his readers draw their own conclusions, Marxy does editorialize and draw big conclusions about Japan from each small case he presents), no matter how many examples he flings out. Not because of any faulting of his proofs, but because of the framings: our paradigms.

It's for this reason that our battle has become wearisome. I do think, though, that is has been very productive over the past two years. Of what? Well, of blog entries, of course!

[aberrantangels]

...well, I'm operating with a blown mind now.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you believe there is such a thing as the sovereignty of a nation?
Because I believe that's a much more dangerous fiction than human rights.

By the way, would you like to renounce your human rights with me? I've got pink uniforms for both of us if you're game!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do you believe there is such a thing as the sovereignty of a nation? Because I believe that's a much more dangerous fiction than human rights.

The sovereignty of nations is a fact in today's world, the universality of human rights is not. I disagree with your implication that the sovereignty of nations is what causes war. I think Nietzsche has a better account:

"No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest. Rather, the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one's own morality and the neighbor's immorality; for the neighbor must be thought of as eager to attack and conquer if our state must think of means of self-defense. Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor's bad disposition and their own good disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as war and worse. At bottom, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because as I have said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile disposition and act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for conquests." Nietzsche, Daybreak

By the way, would you like to renounce your human rights with me? I've got pink uniforms for both of us if you're game!

What universal human rights do we actually have? Guaranteed by whom? And backed up by who else, should the first guarantor change its mind or forget? Where would we actually go to renounce them? And how would our lives be any different the day after?

You can see what "we hold these truths to be self-evident" is such a cunning piece of writing. It gets you off the hook of specifying what actually guarantees rights. References to a deity, and this-world calculations based on reparations to be made in a netherworld afterlife, do the same thing.

[plastickitty.livejournal.com]

I enjoy reading both your blogs, but you're both so black and white when you talk about Japan. If you and marxy could somehow combine into one person, that would be neat-o.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

In summary, I prefer the concepts like "above all, do no harm" or "thou shalt not kill" to the concept of universal human rights.

Kind of agree with you there. But your preferred concepts are actions rather than rights. In that sense, yeah, I agree. I've always had a suspicion we should be always pair "universal human rights" with "universal human responsibilities". As in, the current thinking might be "these are your rights" and there is no real mention of what actions you must take - your responsibilities - in order to ensure those rights for others. In that sense, there's a cart-before-the-horse kind of feel to it.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh wow I'm afraid I'm not very smart but will attempt to answer anyway!!

I hadn't figured you to be such a pragmatic on this subject, but you've got a good point! To what degree is national sovereignty a reality, though? There are many threats: war, international law, territorial disagreements, rejection of authority by individuals...

Nietzsche's account still depends on the assumption that the world is divided, and that there is a "neighbor". His explanation can be read as the "how" of my implication's "what". I'd also suggest that a world where national self-defense is rejected would have to be a world where borders were rejected.

As for human rights, none are universal. And I don't think they ever could be.

I'm not suggesting a one-time renunciation, but a continual vocal rejection of them whenever they are offered.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, we're closer than I thought. I thought you were being sarcastic when you offered to renounce your human rights!

Not sure if Nietzsche was anti-nationalist in quite the way you're suggesting. I think that, like me, he'd see nations as things which make things possible as well as things which restrict us.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

"... imply that our neighbor....is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight"

i always wondered if this is why there is such a prevalence of baseball bats in some of my neighbours cupboards

and now i think of it...why baseball bats?