Perfect Man Play-Off

[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?

Comments

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Your main point of objection seems to be the pejorative terms "low-key, low-tech" etc. with which Marxy describes Japanese TV content. There's no doubt that it is very different from western TV and some of the shows I've seen excerpts from I wouldn't be able to consume on a regular basis - I find them dissonant. On the other hand Iron Chef is a major cult hit in Western countries.

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?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I answered that question on Marxy's blog, so I'll just paste it here:

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.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's a pretty good answer. But wouldn't a true pluralist acknowledge the good work that's done according to "western" conventions as well?

I don't know enough about Japanese TV to comment even this far really, but how do you feel the innovation you describe compares to the constant flow of new reality-TV-shows-with-a-new-gimmick that we have "over here" in the global monoculture? Are they innovation along the same lines, are they a feeble reflection of the claimed creativity of a show like "Perfect Man Play-off", or something else?

The new concepts that producers come up within the reality TV genre always seem to me to fall more under subcreation than genuine originality, and I'm not sure why that doesn't apply equally to Japanese gameshows etc.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I was going to say this over at chez Marxy: the "low-key, low-tech" nature of J-TV is both a mixture of audiences expectations and producers knowing that those audiences don't really want or need highly budgeted telly features.

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.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

I think the era has a lot to do with this subject.

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).

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Godard once said "you see the money in the image".

Murdoch and Hollywood have plenty of cash to throw around. Are Japanese TV producers rolling in dough and just holding back?

[(Anonymous)]

I like the debate between you guys about Japanese television, I find it informing and well stated on all sides, but I have a problem with the way you sometimes present Marxy on this blog. You make a clear point that he likes things on Fox, with the obvious implication being that he is in some way sympathetic to Rupert Murdoch or the Fox News network or something. I just find that it almost shows you to have a poor opinion of your own readers, that you would not trust them to read the argument fairly, and think they need convincing that Marxy is evil. I mean why the smear tactics? Aren't the people reading this smart enough to appreciate that you are interested in preserving otherness in the face of an all consuming monoculture, and able to decide for themselves? Do you really think the guy's a right wing ideologue in blogger's clothing or are you just worried one of your wittle sycophants might start thinking he's smarter at Japan than you?

[eptified.livejournal.com]

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...

[(Anonymous)]

Well said.

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...

[akabe.livejournal.com]

one big problem with marxy is that his reading of most japanese texts, including japan itself, fails to take into account polisemy, ambiguity contradiction etc as generators of meaning, seeing them, in stereotypical american fashion, as stylistic inconsistencies or something. what he ends up criticizing is not the text itself but his own reductive reading of it.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

he also doesn't seem to know that basically someone in japan, south america, eastern europe etc is already watching a different X-files and listening to a different kurt cobain to someone in america. or when he does become aware of it he sees it as a failure to understand the true meaning.

[(Anonymous)]

someone said something to the effect of..
"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

[(Anonymous)]

I always find this "The Problem with Marxy..." stuff on your blog interesting because it's written in this distant third-person - as if I am some historical personage oblivious to the text. Thanks to the Internet, I feel like I can hover over coffee house complaint sessions I was intentionally not invited to.

Marxy

[(Anonymous)]

You rarely watch television alone here in Japan. There is always a celebrity audience in the room with you, discussing things. You participate in their consensus-making. If suddenly they disappeared and it was just the information, the skit, the food documentary; then you might start to feel lonely.

-guy named jacob in japan.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think I "smeared" Marxy here. I just quoted his argument. He did cite what's on Murdoch's Fox as his ideal television, and he did hold up the TV made in his own country as vastly superior to Japanese TV, and he did confess that he doesn't watch J-TV (apart from one show, and even that disappoints him because he can't suspend his disbelief) and let slip that he disdains the people who do (they're dull and stupid, apparently) while nevertheless accusing the TV companies of hoodwinking them from on high. What's more, the academics he cites do really seem to believe that Japanese TV needs more entrepreneurs and more competition to get better. In other words, these are people who want to "liberalize" and solve "problems" (ie someone's culture) with "market reforms".

In my book, that gives us a whole portfolio of sins: dubious politics, ethnocentrism, snobby elitism, conspiracy theory. Not to mention sins against aesthetics I subscribe to: he's against a Brechtian concept of presentation -- the stuff about suspending disbelief -- against lo-fi as a virtue, against the idea that high information density is high resolution.

Considering all these very major differences -- IN OTHER WORDS HOW VERY WRONG HE IS! -- I think we banter in a fairly affectionate way. I also get sarcastic barbs about being a "moral anthropologist superior" or "not selfless" or whatever, but that's fine. His blog's there for anyone who wants "the whole picture", but don't expect much nuance: the same concerns come up time after time, and they're the ones I've outlined today.

Is he a right-wing ideologue? It depends how you define right wing. He loves his homeland, which is currently pretty right wing, alas. And he seems to think that the free market, and entrepreneurs like Murdoch, are the solution to everything. If you want conspiracy theories, how about this? Marxy works for the CIA, and he's in Japan to promote the American way. (And make indie pop (http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2006/11/beaus-in-disarr.html) in his spare time.)

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

That's the case in a lot of programming, even shows that supposedly over-stimulate children, like Pokemon. A good portion of these childrens' shows actually have long segments with no music and sparse dialogue. However, when they are brought to the US, music and dialogue are added to those scenes. Very interesting, no?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I mean with the "electronic izakaya" thing. It's like dropping in to your local hostel for a bite to eat and a laugh with some amusing friends. It's somewhat tabloid in its populist presentation style, but it's by far the least toxic tabloid TV I've seen, when it comes to the values underneath.

[eptified.livejournal.com]

Whee, threadjacking.

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...

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Big vs. effective

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.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I am not that fond of tv shows, really, and I have really stopped watching telly. Mainly because the non-inernational shows are very boring. But I do have an example that is not:

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.

[ishinagami.livejournal.com]

I view both of them as apples and oranges, both are the same and different. As for good american television last time i checked what was slightly pleasing to everyone generally pleases no one. So popular tv shows are generally pleasing but really don't please anyone. Shows are generally aimed at a target audience.

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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're invited. It's just that it's my turn at the pecha kucha slide projector.

Happy birthday! We'll join you next door in the pub when the presentation's over. If we're invited, that is.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I don't think I "smeared" Marxy here. I just quoted his argument. He did cite what's on Murdoch's Fox as his ideal television,

He said HBO was better, actually, but I guess it was harder for you to come up with a straw man talking point for HBO.

Wow, Momus. Just wow.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the owner of a network is more than just a straw man.

[polychromatica.livejournal.com]

I don't get it, Marxy is just not very good as a boogeyman.

But for serious, being American and liking your country does not make someone inherently right wing. Maybe the country is leaning a more to the right than I am comfortable with (and I think Marxy has said essentially this several times before), but we still entertain a wide range of political beliefs up in here, thnx.