Perfect Man Play-Off
Nov. 30th, 2006 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
Japanese television is proving a continuing enigma to our good friend Marxy. "My brain fails to build up a fourth wall around the actors under the standard conditions of Japanese audio and video quality," he told us yesterday, admitting he only watched one show regularly and complaining that they didn't "filter the colors down to more "attractive" or film-like settings", and that "you can hear the same hums and buzzes that populate real life". Marxy is quite explicit about what constitutes good TV. It's stuff on Rupert Murdoch's Fox network back home in the US: The Simpsons, 24, Get a Life and Arrested Development.
Enlisting some academics to help him answer the question of why Japanese TV is so much "worse" than Fox, Marxy quotes Japan and the Internet Revolution by business-friendly academics Coates and Holroyd as they explain "the gap between Western and Japanese television production".
"Production values are mediocre by western standards," opine the academics, "and there is little evidence of the availability and use of advanced digital technologies and computerized production techniques... The television companies have substantial revenues (and a captive market, as cable services have made few inroads in the country) and very large audiences. It is choice," they conclude, "rather than resources or ability, which results in the low-key, low-tech television programming."
Are Coates and Holroyd right that Japanese TV is "low-key, low-tech"? Marxy goes with their judgement: if it's not lack of money or technological backwardness that makes it so, it must be a conscious choice on the part of the production companies.
"No question that our moral anthropologist superiors" (that's meant to be the Neomarxisme "culturalists" -- me and Alin and Dzima) "will automatically [say] that television stations are directly responding to a consumer need for low-tech programming -- because they believe all products to be a perfect reflection of tribe desires. Surely, the fact that the viewing public in Japan is generally Japan's least sophisticated demographics (old folks, stay-at-home spouses, teenagers, boring people) means a mass of viewers comfortable complacent with low-tech TV."
But who says we on the cultural team even agree that J-TV is low-key, low-tech and lacking in innovation? Let's not even go into the cultural arguments -- the view, for instance, that Japanese TV isn't a crappy version of the cinema, but an electronic izakaya. Let's look at something very specific -- a screenshot from a show aimed at some of the "unsophisticated" people Marxy disdains: stay-at-home spouses.
This is from a Japanese TV show I happened to be watching yesterday (I was at Smart Deli in Friedrichshain, where they pipe in J-TV for us cosmopolitan unsophisticates); TV Asahi's "Perfect Man Play-Off".
Now, in addition to the TV picture you'll notice that there are three different text areas on the screen, an inset reaction monitor, and a scoreboard. These aren't just digital effects, they're also interactive feedback devices, monitoring how participants in the scene reacted afterwards, and how the studio audience and an invited panel of judges is feeling about the situation.
The theme is "20 beautiful women choose the perfect man". The situation being illustrated is a hypothetical scenario in which a man (Kusanagi Tsuyoshi from Smap) comes home to discover his wife is having an affair. Kusanagi reacts in a super-casual, empathetic way by saying "Hey, let's go out for dinner!!" 20 of the beautiful women on the judging panel approve of this cool-headed reaction.
Now, all this complex information about the situation and the reactions to it can be gleaned from a single screenshot. I find that terribly interesting. It's very Japanese to want to cram that much information onto a screen. It's also not "low resolution" at all if you consider resolution to be a matter of information-per-frame. What's more, the information here is much more semantic and contextual than it would be in a single frame from the American shows Marxy is championing as self-evidently superior. It allows latecomers to grasp the show's concept, it allows people to watch TV with the sound down, it allows you to catch up quickly if you've been zapping, looking away or talking to someone in the room, and so on.
So it's over to you, the Click Opera studio audience. Is this really low-res TV? Is this TV that fails to use digital effects? Is it made by, and aimed at, unsophisticates? And how about the ethics and morals on display here? If this were on Rupert Murdoch's exemplary American TV wouldn't somebody be getting applauded for pulling somebody else's hair out? Wouldn't there be a murderer onscreen describing how he would've murdered his wife, had she been having the affair she was in fact having?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 12:13 am (UTC)It's not really clear to me why the whole discussion from both perspectives is being used as a way of establishing the superiority of one approach or the other. I don't think The Simpsons, Arrested Development etc. are "bad" shows either, although I don't like either in large or regular doses.
"Let's not even go into the cultural arguments"
Honestly I think you should. An analysis of the possible reasons why Western and Japanese TV are so divergent is the interesting topic here. What's your alternative to Marxy's explanatory principle that "oligopoly generally leads to indifference to innovation - especially when consumers have nowhere else to go"? Is it the "culturalist" argument that he alludes to so scornfully?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 12:23 am (UTC)Your "oligopoly stifles innovation" argument takes too much for granted that we all agree what innovation is. That it's all tied up with what Rupert Murdoch does on cable, for instance. But actually, that sort of "innovation" is precisely the opposite; technically slick though it may be, it's part and parcel with a global monoculture in which there's less and less variety, less and less (as Alin points out) pluralism. And in the context of this monoculture, what stands out as the whackiest, most original television anywhere? Yup, Japanese TV, whether it's the cameo of Matthew's Best Hit TV in "Lost in Translation" or people watching UA dressed up as a big bird on Doremino Terebi.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 12:52 am (UTC)But this isn't particular to Japan: take for example Mexican and Brazilian TV dramas (not a fashionable comparison I know); I'm guessing television is an even more profitable business over there but at the same time audiences wouldn't want their shows to lose the "home grown, down to earth" feel to them. Not only that, they basically only expect American shows to look a like Hollywood feature film (even if it is MacGyver). The "problem" in Japan is that audiences are not that keen on watching said shows from the US.
Having said that, the thing I enjoyed the most about Japanese telly wasn't even the food shows; I really liked the fact that when presenting the news of say an earthquake or the war in Iraq, anchormen would stop talking for one minute or so and just let images present themselves to the audience. It was like one less channel of noise pollution I had to face.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 06:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 01:00 am (UTC)American Television has been suffering from ubiquitous poor writing and obnoxious concepts since the 70's. English television didn't start to decompose until the early 90's. Japanese television has been consistently "good" when compared to Western TV of the past twenty years. Then again, I have watched very little TV over the past decade or so.
But, of course, this observation is completely opinion-and-abstraction (as is the entire subject, really).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 01:27 am (UTC)Murdoch and Hollywood have plenty of cash to throw around. Are Japanese TV producers rolling in dough and just holding back?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 04:52 am (UTC)But deregulation of media in the US has led to the corporate squeeze we are in now. Across the board production costs are being slashed left and right with little regard for creative content and heavy leanings on reality television. So in fact it is mongers like Murdoch who sell out the public who, BTW own the very airwaves he chooses to pollute. No?
On a related note, The National Press Club had Joan Collins of all people commenting on a youth obsessed Hollywood and Broadway. It will be interesting to see if the aging "baby boomers" in the US tune out the 18-yr-old-demo based programming.
I almost cry when I think of what's happened to radio in the US... but that's another thread altogether...
(no subject)
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 03:39 am (UTC)Comparing the sort of J-TV show that you've shot those photos of to an Arrested Development or a 24 is like comparing AD with an American reality or game show.. the production values are going to be different because you don't need a huge budget to produce daily off-the-cuff entertainment. If the graphic design on the screen looks a little cheesy by our standards, at least it's serviceable - and aesthetic norms in Japanese popular video have traditionally lagged seven to ten years behind America, even as fashion and high-art design shoot ahead.
I think if you were to evaluate high-end J-dramas or *cough* certain animations you might come off with a different assessment of the state of Japanese video production. Both sides of this argument assess Japan as a monolithic cultural entity in which the state of the entire television industry can be extrapolated from what happens to be on at the moment. If you sampled the imported media I watch, you'd come off wondering why american animators have taken so long to step up to the plate not only in terms of production quality but in terms of content, complexity, depth...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 04:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 05:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 05:29 am (UTC)"you'd come off wondering why american animators have taken so long to step up to the plate not only in terms of production quality but in terms of content, complexity, depth..."
said by h. duck.
um.. weird.. i like anime and all. but, disney.. ala.. snow white? warner brothers looney toons? popeye? etc.
this reminds me of a commerical, probably most people with a TV in the USA have seen. by GEIKO.. where its a fake news, talking heads thing. with a modern cave man. and they are saying how, the caveman hasn't really done anything "recently".. there for, is stupid.. with the caveman apologizing for not getting.. you know.. "the wheel" & "fire" to them sooner.
american animation has indeed gone the way of, well nothing, past shit to just nothing. but american animators stepped to the plate (with style, and content, complexity, social commentary, and humor) before the was a plate to even step to.
trevor
pandatone.com
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:03 am (UTC)There're a bunch of possible avenues of response to that. One is I'm talking about what people are doing _now_ -- I think nobody would dispute the idea that american animation experienced a golden age around the time of the original Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons without which there wouldn't be such a thing as japanese animation. But what've they done for us lately?
Maybe more pertinent, though, is that japanese animators have gone places that american animators never went in terms of difficult social and psychological themes. Disney made animation for children that could be enjoyed by adults. The Japanese have produced animation for adults - fully produced, professionally art-directed, non-comedic animation for adults - and that's something we've done very seldom over here. When we do the production values leave something to be desired (Ralph Bashki, anyone?)
But this is all beside the point, since what Mr. Momus is talking about is whether objecting to the lack of shiny production values on some Japanese TV amounts to cultural imperialism or not. All I'm trying to say is that the Japanese are perfectly capable of producing amazing TV, and we constantly produce shitty TV.
Random addition: the fact that we (in my opinion) are experiencing something of a rennaissance at the moment in terms of quality in dramatic television doesn't mean that we are in some way superior, given the creative doldrums the medium suffered through during, say, the entirety of the last decade... but we're confusing form and content now...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 06:15 am (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:43 am (UTC)Happy birthday! We'll join you next door in the pub when the presentation's over. If we're invited, that is.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 06:17 am (UTC)-guy named jacob in japan.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:06 am (UTC)Monster truck vs. Honda Civic
I think you're on to something, Mr. Momus. Likely, as a reflection of economy of space, there is an economy of means in these productions.
We Americans really like big things. Big car, big soft drink, big production values. I don't think there is this Japanese wish to use the biggest production values so they just don't bother.
But then, I wonder where the music industry fits in. If you compare a US pop song to, say, an Ayu song, the "big production" would definitely be Ayu's stuff, which is extremely overproduced.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:07 am (UTC)Anders och Måns: Radioactive goat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Y_U_C3K8Q)
An not-so-old-show from the radio-hosts-go-tv-hosts. This clip is cut though and only involve the part of one of the host being bit by a radioactive goat, giving him superpowers and later trying to explaining it for his girlfriend which involves retaking the scene over and over again... With different themes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:23 am (UTC)As for animation the US does indeed have people that still want to do the great programs that you'd want. Batman the animated series was awsome. South Park, Venture Brothers, The boondocks are all recent and i view as animation that i enjoy. As for anime i enjoy that to though i view the big hay day for both american and japanese animation to be the 80s. Lots of amazing and cool things were done during that period. Money was actually used for things that some people knew wouldn't make any.
Finally with quality, Video quality does not equal quality content. Otherwise youtube would not be so popular. You don't need something to be from the US, Japan, china, or India to be good.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 10:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 08:56 am (UTC)I think Marxy's deprecation of Japanese TV contains a deprecation of feminine values, collective values, and Asian values. This is fairly natural, of course, because he's a man, an individualist, and an American. The show I talk about is designed for women, clearly. Married women who are perhaps bored enough to be having affairs -- or wish they were -- and like to think they'd be forgiven for them if discovered. This contains a lot of Japanese ideas about gender and sexuality which differ from the American ideas Marxy reveals when he suggests it's shameful to be a "stay-at-home wife", for instance.
But the presentation is also very much about getting a group view onscreen. The reaction shot, the scoreboard relating the judges' views, this all links the actions of individuals to the concensus of a group. (In that sense, this resembles Densha Otoko, which also has a group peeking in on, and assisting, the efforts of the train man to seduce "Hermes".) If there's any parallel in the US, it would be shows featuring black audiences, like Oprah's. Because these collectivist values prevail, in the US, in the black, hispanic and Asian communities rather than the WASP ones.
It's also worth going back to one of the studies Dr Hazel Markus presents in Discovering Psychology (http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/26/e26expand.html)'s Cultural Psychology unit (you can watch the video at that link). She relates the experiment that discovered that Asians actually look at a picture or film differently than Americans. They look at context, they look all round the frame to get a more complex picture of context. Americans look for a dominant central figure, and stick to that. And whereas Asians think an isolated figure is a loser, Americans think an isolated figure is a maverick or a leader. I think you can see this interest in context and the group very clearly in the way the Japanese TV screen is laid out.
JTV
Date: 2006-11-30 09:26 am (UTC)A great deal of Americanisation had also taken place during that brief period. I found people spoke much more American slang and used many more American pronunciations. British newsreaders were now using very sloppy mid-Atlantic English, too. (And would probably refer to themselves as 'Briddish' newsreaders - it sets my teeth on edge.)
Well, I've gone off on a slight tangent.
There were one or two shows in Japan that I enjoyed, just for the ambience (most of them were like constantly having a Jack-in-the-box leap up in your face). I think one of them was called Edo De Gozaru! I don't think it was great, to be honest. It was a theatrical 'sitcom' set in Edo times, a bit like a Japanese version of 'Allo 'Allo, but slightly more cultural. There was also a kind of quiz show based on a celebrity panel making puns that I enjoyed because it seemed, in atmosphere, the equivalent to some fusty old thing like Call My Bluff. If the contestants made a good pun, they were given more cushions to sit on. If they made a bad puns, cushions were taken away.
A friend of mine (also British) delighted in making me watch Japanese soap operas, and they were really even worse than the Australian ones so popular in Britain.
Re: JTV
Date: 2006-11-30 02:34 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shōten
Re: JTV
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 10:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 11:40 am (UTC)The Vietnam war ended this operation, because it polarized politics:
"With the exposure of CIA secret influence and with the divisions over the war in Vietnam, the utility of the non-Communist left in the cultural cold war had come to an end. When some of the same faces resurfaced a decade later, first in the Committee on the Present Danger (the group of intellectuals and politicians instrumental in heating up the cold war) and then in the Reagan regime, they would speak as neoconservatives."
Anyway, what I was going to say about Arte is that it's rather like a less covert version of the same propaganda operation. This time, though, the mission is to prevent France and Germany -- the bedrock of the EU, but very different cultures -- drifting apart. A documentary like the CIA one is quite effective in doing this: France and Germany can overcome their differences by rising up in indignation at the thought of America's cultural tampering in the 50s and 60s.
(no subject)
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Date: 2006-11-30 11:56 am (UTC)The thing I love most about Japanese TV is precisely what you talk about in this post. It's so incredibly multimedial, using text and graphics in much more exciting ways than anyone else.
By the way, I'd like to hear more about the Murdochesque values are espoused by Arrested Development. As of now, it's my favourite American TV production, but if I'm missing some hidden agenda it definitely won't be for long :o
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 02:55 pm (UTC)Laust
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 12:24 pm (UTC)In Brazil this pre-PC computer was a huge sucess and I still remember these kind of screen in almost all of the games. I think that my love for the japanese culture really started there in my childhood when I started using these computers. It was a kind of communication that I have never experienced before, all the information you need was there and visually it was just like that: poor colours composition, visual pollution etc... So I was thinking isn't these screens still there in TV shows because japanese people are just used to them?
Dziga Vertov
Date: 2006-11-30 12:55 pm (UTC)Re: Dziga Vertov
Date: 2006-11-30 01:23 pm (UTC)For the people who run and watch it, Japanese TV is massively successful. Japan is the nation that watches the most TV in the world. Cheaply-made (but engaging) shows bring huge audiences to the advertisers. The techniques are tabloid, but there's none of the poisonousness we in the West associate with tabloids -- the malice, the sting operations, the eavesdropping, the people ratting on their friends and lovers.
Re: Dziga Vertov
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2006-11-30 01:32 pm (UTC) - ExpandFor kids
Date: 2006-11-30 01:36 pm (UTC)Re: For kids
Date: 2006-11-30 03:55 pm (UTC)Re: For kids
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 01:46 pm (UTC)The same goes for dramas and scripted shows. Instead of random blathering, though, you get a cliched story set up as supreme melodrama. You could probably predict the entire series just from watching one episode. Shows steal plot ideas and share them freely. For all of Japan's emphasis on the "real" human spirit and deep meditation on the meaning of Life, you get melodrama and hyperbole on TV.
TV is popular in Japan not because it's good, but because it's another group-mandatory activity that Japanese participate in to feel like a homogenous whole. If the activity is mandatory, Japanese will participate whether they truly like it or not and since TV is classically thought of as one of the three treasures of Japan, EVERY Japanese will at least pay some homage to this essential requirement of Japaneseness.
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Date: 2006-11-30 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2006-12-01 09:00 pm (UTC) - ExpandBerlin experimental arts festival invite
Date: 2006-11-30 02:00 pm (UTC)Just said I would send you an invite to an experimental arts festival in Berlin this coming wekend that may interest you. Sorry i sent this to an article reply but didnt find a separate email contact. Hope you make it out.
Paul P
this coming weekends festival is not to be missed
Lost Shadows 2 - 1, 2, 3 December
Lost Shadows 2
-3 day festival -live experimental music -exhibition -installations. Sound -video art experience -open ears -an attempt to reorientate auditive and visual conditioning.
With international artists.
Installations/Exhibits
by Frgmnt, Jacqueline Bourke, Martina Faherty, Julius Stahl, Seamus Fogarty, Daniel Weiß, Julie Simoncelli, Gosia Hejnat, Paul Prendergast, Soichiro Mitsuya, xxAntenAxx, Script, Irene Murphy, Danny Mc Carthy, Yoann Trellu, Marije Baalman, Jared von Hindman, Sara Hamming and Muiriosa Murphy.
Live performances
from Will Huckerby, Evil Moisture, Sciss, TOB, Metatonik, Line Destruction, Avant Reguard, Script, OstEar, Anton Sulak, Yoann Trellu, Mayumi Fukuzaki, The Quiet Club, CCP, Bob Rutman, milk milk lemonade, Ezdac, The Elektrokami, Tourette, AntenA/Akita.Y.
more info - http://www.lost-shadows.net/
Address/etc.
The Factory Berlin
Spreehöfe Aufgang D
3. Etage / Floor - Gallery
Edisonstrasse 63/ Ecke Wilhelminenhofstrasse
12459 Berlin
#
Directions/anLeitung - 5 minutes from S-BAHN SCHÖNEWEIDE
S9, S8, S85 - TRAM 21, 27, 63, 67
Night / Nachtbus N3, N65
#
Entrance / Eintitt :
1 night - 3,50 euros / weekend - 5 euros
Free audio CD for first 50 guests each night.
#
Opening Times for all days:
16:00 - doors open for exhibition/installatioins
20:00 - Live Concerts Begin
# Sunday concerts begin 17:00
open end bar
--
come + be erupted
http://www.lost-shadows.net/
http://www.salonbruit.org
http://www.salonbruit.blogspot.com/
spitzkrieg
Date: 2006-11-30 02:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 03:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 07:40 pm (UTC)But that's just talking about the superficial. There's a much more important point here that being missed by everyone including you, Momus. American shows tend to 'hold-out' their creativity on us, using the bare minimum of plot twists/jokes/guest appearances needed to make a marginally interesting show. Everything is measured and calculated to hold just enough viewer interest to get by.
Jtv on the other hand is very generous, giving us more of the 'meat' of whatever show it is we're watching. On Jtv talkshows, there is a constant barage of jokes, comments, slapstick etc. by a huge, interactive cast of guests, where in America on Leno there would be two carefully scripted appearances (if you've seen the recent Borat appearances, most of the jokes were recycled from elsewhere).