imomus | Japan Culture Lab: the comedy of superlegitimacy

Japan Culture Lab: the comedy of superlegitimacy

Is there an uncanny valley effect in faux-didactic comedy films which dictates that the closer they come to real instructional videos, the more boring they are -- until they hit the sweet spot where they could almost pass for the real thing, and suddenly yield super-subtle, super-dry comedy? That was certainly my experience of the excellent "analog baroque television" series Look Around You, which I originally watched thinking it really was a made-for-schools science series from the 1970s. (Expert pastiche graphic design skills are so central to this comedy genre -- think of The Day Today -- that we could categorize it as "graphic design comedy".)

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The Japanese Tradition is a series of nine short films (available on DVD, but most of them are on YouTube on here and here) by Japanese comedy group Rahmenz, and released by Japan Culture Lab. The films are directed by Namikibashi, which sounds like a pseudonym, and may be a famous graphic designer or advertising man flexing extra-curricular muscles (could it be Mr Shindo Mitsuo from Contemporary Production?). They're impeccable pastiches of cultural instruction videos -- How To guides to the correct use of chopsticks, paper-folding, sparring, the etiquette of family holidays, how to make rice balls, the way of tea, the rituals of apology, the eating of sushi and how to clap in time.

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The aesthetic is satisfyingly didactic: Helvetica features heavily, as do black backdrops, complicated science textbook-style diagrams (showing, for instance, the exact angle from which to blow into your hot teacup) and simplified ideal-type scenarios shot in studios -- the exact point where advertising photography meets Platonism. The budget is surprisingly high -- the paper models in the origami film must have been hell to make! -- and the production values excellent. As a result of this painstaking lushness, the films -- though they take their precision a few steps into parody -- do convince. As one blogger speculated, it makes you wonder whether the audience at this year's Berlinale Film Festival got the joke, or whether the films (in competition in February) passed as slightly alienated tributes to Japanese culture. Is this all part of what I've called the Japanese are almost Japanese phenomenon, by which national pride rises precisely at the moment when people forget their national customs and become "internal tourists"?

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Anyway, I love the look of these films as much as their dry cultural comedy. I watched them again last night after writing an article celebrating the austerity and elegance of Reclam pocket editions for Austrian art magazine Spike, and they hit all the same buttons as the books do. The style chimes with a sensibility I've referred to -- talking about graphic designer James Goggin and artist Liam Gillick's work -- as "ostentatiously non-demonstrative". (If I were making a pantheon of the "ostentatiously non-demonstrative" I'd have to include slideshow artists Alexandre Singh and Brian Dewan, and the excellent British film director Patrick Keiller.) It's a thoroughly elegant, aristocratic way for comedy to go -- in the direction of affection, respect and subtlety rather than gonzo nihilism, misanthropy and noisy aggression.

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Why not hit all my fetish buttons, already? We could even say the Japan Culture Lab films are what comedy is capable of becoming under conditions of superlegitimacy.

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If you head along Meiji Dori from Shibuya Station towards Ebisu, "Namikibashi" (並木橋) is on your right and will take you straight into the heart of Daikanyama.

Daikanyama is where Contemporary Production has its office. More evidence for the Shindo Mitsuo theory?

Actually, the actors in the films are the same ones who do the Apple computer ads in Japan. More of their work here (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ラーメンズ&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8).

The Rahmenz Get-a-Mac ads are here (http://www.apple.com/jp/getamac/ads/).

The illusion of us & them (http://www.goldmark.org/livia/papers/cultcult/cultcult.html) has long dogged Japan. It's something that's not only perpetrated within Japan by the Japanese themselves, but by foreigners trying to "understand" the Japanese psyche; "Individuality Vs. Conformism" being the most famous and over-pronounced example. It's a vicious circle that at best promotes curiosity but at worst fans the flames of extreme right-wing nationalism -- The more the Japanese speculate their differences and try to solidify them in the name of cultural preservation or sheer observation, the more foreigners come to say "ah, see, look, the Japanese are a strange and curious lot.", and these foreign ideas of what Japan is then get re-imported back into Japan and further still compounds the issue and gives it legitimacy even though it was utterly artificial.

The ideas behind Superflat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflat) are a fantastic example of something very simular happening -- "Anime-shon" was the Japanese emulating American animation styles. Then the Americans and the west imported these Japanese emulations of American animation styles, calling it by it's Japanese name "Anime", defining it as something distinctly Japanese. Because anime is now a world famous example of Japanese culture, the Japanese have re-appropriated anime as something distinctly Japanese.

The thing I love about the Japan culture lab films is they mock all the bullshit cliches foreigners and the Japanese attribute to themselves. Cliches regarding anal retentiveness, precision, and how "exotic" the Japanese actually are compared to the rest of the world.

In fact, I have it on good authority the next Japan Culture lab film is about train driving in Japan. (http://imomus.livejournal.com/36990.html)

But don't all cultures "re-import" versions of themselves as seen by foreigners? I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. To a certain extent, we're all the sum total of what other people think we are.

There's nothing wrong with re-importation of culture, as long as it's seen as the fairground mirror that it is.

Well, you seem to be saying that there's the "authentic" culture, and then there's the "fairground mirror" ie distortion of how foreigners see that culture, which then gets reabsorbed into the culture. I don't see it that way. Absorbing versions of oneself from the outside is part of what culture does. You can't make these distinctions.

You're missing my point.

Absorbing versions of oneself from outside, or rather, just plain absorbing culture from outside is all part of fluid nature of cultural evolution. This is not what I'm arguing against at all.

What I'm arguing against is the way "us and them" is distorted and over-emphasised, not only in terms of society but culture. As human beings we share more simualrities than difference, and no culture is "authentic" to the extent its utterly original... its all a complex system of cross polination.

I had a meeting with Holger Hiller on Monday, and this was one of the topics that came up: how he was expressing a certain idea of Germanness through the music he was making in London in the 80s (and also in Palais Schaumburg, a Neue Deutsche Welle band) and how he wouldn't feel comfortable doing the same thing today, in Berlin. He now feels as post-national as his son (half-German, half-Japanese, and living in London).

Why were you meeting with Hiller? Is there a collaboration in the air?

I was meeting him because I'd never met him, and we both live in Berlin, and I just emailed him suggesting it! But I had three things to propose:

1. An article about him for a magazine, in the format of a conversation between us.

2. Getting his first album re-released through Cherry Red in the UK.

3. See if he had any new stuff he wanted to put out.

As for whether anything will come of this, watch this space!

(I dread to think what the Momus_lolz girls are going to do with those...)

Momus, I hate to say it but you really need a makeover. The long thin gingery hair just accentuates the rapidly receding hairline. The whispy grey/white beard doesn't do much for you either. You're of an age now where you're going to look infinitely better if you smarten up a bit. Get yourself a sharp short haircut, lose the beard, buy yourself a funky suit and you'll look so much better, and younger to boot.

Feels a bit mean and cruel, but I have to agree. Momus, you are awesome and you are a handsome man, but the "I-am-a-twentysomething-hobo-slacker" look is not doing you any favours. Men in their forties can look really good, but not that way.

What are you doing in Texas, Mom?

Um, I'm in Texas as a stylist on a shoot, if you must know. Trust me, I really do know what I'm talking about. I've worked with tons of men your age.

What magazine?

Not for a magazine. A publicity campaign for a well-known fashion brand.

Ah. Well, you'd be welcome to try styling me. But really I style myself. Sure, it doesn't always look great -- that Holger picture isn't one of my favourites. This is what I prefer to look like:

But the thing with personal self-styling, as with cultural self-projection, is that the "errors" are part of the identity. You can't separate them. And so the "errors" can't really be called errors. It's just culture-of-Momus, or culture-of-Japan, or whatever. That said, I wouldn't say no to a bit more hair, if you could invent a way to do that.

These days, you can get hair implants that look utterly realistic, even to a professional eye like mine. But it costs a bomb. Otherwise, rule of thumb for people with thinning hair is short hair good, long hair bad. Actually, your hair doesn't look too bad there, but you've probably just caught a good angle... I think you'd look considerably better with shorter hair. Clotheswise: I think you should abandon the thrift and actually get something that fits. Look at your trousers in that photo. They're all over the shop. You're nice and slim for your age, so you'd look so much better (and younger) in fitted clothes. Beard makes you look jowly, you'd look five years younger without it, or if you insist on it, keeping it to a very close trim. As for sandals, well, maybe that's the German influence...

Keep that beard on there, mister!!

If you where on the coast of Maine or Nova Scotia the woman would be on him like flies!

It's his I'm-in-a-relationship-and-I-don't-care look. I bet if Momus was single he wouldn't look half as scruffy.

I actually didn't think of making anything with those pictures, but thanks for the idea!

And what's with the "dread"? Do my creations make you sad? :( :(

No, they make me gay!

BOOM BOOM!

Hmmm, then I'll put dozens of women in the picture! It would be a reflection on your real life! Because we all know you have dozens of women lined up outside your door there in Berlin. Probably hundreds.

THEY GO BAM BAM! AND BRING THE HOUSE DOWN!

By the way (http://download.yousendit.com/CBE9463A39189077), this was recorded 2 minutes ago and I didn't even tell him what to say!

it's Japanese name "Anime", defining it as something distinctly Japanese. Because anime is now a world famous example of Japanese culture, the Japanese have re-appropriated anime as something distinctly Japanese.

I've had numerous arguments/discussions (lulz) in the comments section of your journal with posters about the idea of cultural identity, ranging from race to nationality. It's a very touchy subject.

A lot of people seem to believe that embracing minorities to the point of awarding them privilege purely for being a minority is the right, ethical thing for harmony and diversity. For example The Mobo Awards are a celebration of "Music of black origin"; but it's just reverse racism, Its very name disregards all the influence other races have had on the promotion of "black" music. And the notion of national identity, we give importance to ideas and symbols for being respresentational of our national individualality, especially so in the name of preserving diversity, when ironically all world culture is a product of cross polination from foreign lands, all intermixed.

People just dont get it. Creating equality and diversity isnt about awarding minorities the right to double standards or preserving a nation's "cultural identity" through laws and schemes... racial labels and ideas of what those labels mean do nothing but divide us and stifle the natural progression of cultural cross polination, creating a static fairground of national/racial pride and what it's supposed to be.

As for preserving diversity, I share your love of the the novel, but preservation of diversity is static and creates divides. Promotion of individual diversity through creativity and expression is dynamic and should be promoted. whilst I'm aware that some of the most beautiful and lofty examples of diverity are only capable when people band together in conformity, I believe that all the pleasures found in the grandeur of cultural heritage can still be recreated on an individual level through art.

Talking about this with Holger, I basically laid out the position that the way we now experience cultural identity is synthetic. This is a perverse twist on the rockism idea, but the people who use national identity most in their work (and I used the example of Holger's "Tiny Little Cloud", which samples Brecht-Weill in the mid-80s and therefore sounds very "German", but of course Brecht-Weill is itself already a big sampling machine, pastiching American pop music of the 1920s) are the people who make national identity plastic. Authenticity and inauthenticity, the plasticity of a national culture and its supposedly-immutable realness, the local and the global, these are, in each case, two sides of the same coin. It's precisely the people (Morrissey singing about being "the last truly British people you will ever know") who conjure national identity who synthesize it. It's the rockists who are actually the most anti-rockist! Like "folktronic Texan" George Wanker Bush!

Or think of the Neue Deutsche Welle. It's got a German ring to it, hasn't it? That word "Deutsche". But what it really means is New Wave (a global movement) played out in the specific local context of Germany. So that national identity is a synthetic one (as synthetic as Holger's Weill samples -- he also sampled Nick Cave's faux-Germanic "The Carnie" -- a German sampling an Australian's idea of Germany), the kind of "authentic" local culture people lay out for tourists.

The people who sound most rockist and rigid about cultural identity actually turn out to be the ones doing most to make it plastic and flexible. Of course, it's the law of unintended consequences; they don't mean to undermine authenticity. They're actually very vested in it. But we should probably just let them get on with undermining it by making their pastiches.

" I basically laid out the position that the way we now experience cultural identity is synthetic."

I dont quite understand how you came to that conclusion. What is "naturally experiencing of cultural identity" and why do we not experience it that way now?

Natural and synthetic are only relative terms. What I mean here by "synthetic" is a more reflexive, self-conscious, other-oriented sense of national identity. Its two agents: the media and tourism. We are now "French" (or Scottish, or Japanese) for others, not for ourselves. Scotland is now "the Scotland Experience" -- consumable at reasonable prices, in small packets of time. Scots are as alienated from it as anyone else, because we all have our heads in placeless media like TV and the internet most of the time.

So there's now less and less gap between the way Scots consume Scotland and the way tourists consume it -- they both understand the nation through the same media channels. Scots (or Japanese) are "internal tourists", and the tourists are "external tourists". Same difference; same alienation, same formulaic, fixed views.

If you wanted me to commit to when this shift occurred, I'd say generally "the postmodern period" and specifically since about the mid-80s. There was a very noticeable cleaning up of city centres, shifting of problematical populations to the peripheries, Disneyfication. Edinburgh's Hogmanay is a good example: it's now a micromanaged mega-spectacle with giant video screens and a barricaded city centre. It used to be an anarchic free-for-all in which citizens kissed each other. Has national perception changed? Absolutely. More here (http://imomus.livejournal.com/82872.html).

"Natural and synthetic are only relative terms."

Aye, I'm asking purely for your subjective opinion.

"What I mean here by "synthetic" is a more reflexive, self-conscious, other-oriented sense of national identity. Its two agents: the media and tourism. We are now "French" (or Scottish, or Japanese) for others, not for ourselves."

National identity packaged for tourists is all about stereotypes and cliches -- Mini Scottish flags, Kilts, bagpipes on keyrings, that sort of thing. This isnt the identity most Scots relate to on a person level. It's a very synthetic, self-conscious, other-oriented sense of national identity. It's geared around foreigners and foreign consumption rather than the Scottish themselves. However, to claim that the media has stripped us our national differences is going a little too far. The world has become smaller but the boundaries and cultural differences havent disapeared altogether like you're suggesting.

The average Japanese youth and the average British youth are likely to wear very simular types of clothes because of the media. However, our diets are likely to be very different -- Japan and Britain are both small islands but the majority of Japanese people mainly eat fish and rice as a staple where as British people mainly eat meat and bread. There are hundreds more I can think of off the top of my head.
Geographical differences also dictate cultural differences, which are nothing to do with the media.

"So there's now less and less gap between the way Scots consume Scotland and the way tourists consume it "

If you think that youve been away from Scotland way too long and you've lost touch with the plebs.

tourists come to scotland to see edinburgh castle, the craggies, try some haggis, they buy a few scottish flag key rings, they ride in tour buses...etc.

A Scottish person will likely never do any of that on any regular basis. How can you say its even the same?

I dont buy into this idea that the scottish consume scotland the same as the tourists.

(fyi, I should have said "naturally experiencing cultural identity", typo)

"People just don't get it. Creating equality and diversity isnt about awarding minorities the right to double standards or preserving a nation's "cultural identity" through laws and schemes... racial labels and ideas of what those labels mean do nothing but divide us and stifle the natural progression of cultural cross polination, creating a static fairground of national/racial pride and what it's supposed to be."

But this doesn't speak to anything about the inherent power relations that continue in social outcomes. For example, is there not an asymmetry between the numbers of white male/non-white female couples than there are with "non-white male/white female couples"? Aren't the policies you're critical of really just a matter of creating greater equality of opportunity in social standing?

"But this doesn't speak to anything about the inherent power relations that continue in social outcomes."

Race quotas and the like are bullshit. They're assuming that people are making racist decisions without any substantial proof. They're unfair double standards that penalize and reward people based on race as opposed to merit. Reverse racism is still racism. We ideally want to reach a stage in society where being black or white is the same as having green or blue eyes -- of little bearing to anything. In france, the police arent allowed to describe people in files based on assumed race, because race is more of social construct than an exact science. They say "light skinned", "dark skinned", etc and this is how it should be. By giving importance and meaning to race, you exasperate the issues surrounding race.

So fucking what if more white men date non white women than the other way around? What do you want? "love quotas"?

Equality will come when society starts to realise how unimportant race is. Race quotas dont do that.

"Equality will come when society starts to realise how unimportant race is."

And how does that happen? Do you not "fucking" think that equality will come if society realise how important race is?

"And how does that happen?"

By people denouncing its importance. That doesnt just mean ending racial profiling by the police, it means no more "racial quotas" that mean people get places at jobs based on their skin colour, calling out the 'Music of Black Origin Awards' for what it is which is reverse-racist bullshit, and it means people need to get over that more white guys are fucking non white girls than vice versa.

"race quotas and the like are bullshit. They're assuming that people are making racist decisions without any substantial proof. They're unfair double standards that penalize and reward people based on race as opposed to merit."

So what is to be done? take no kind of affirmative action , just leave things as they are until 'society realises how unimportant race is?' (whatever that means). Seems rather naïve to me. I can only conclude that you are working from the assumption that racism isn't that big a problem, because you have 'no substantial proof' that people are making racist decisions.

Sorry, but how did you arrive at this? I'm sure many black people living in Europe and elsewhere where they are a minority group will be only too keen to correct this picture. There ARE widespread racist decisions made daily. Take Paris as a recent example. Not convinced? Would YOU cheerfully exchange places with a black man over here? perhaps then you would see that from a black perspective, race DOES matter and you'd see how those racist decisions mean many fewer opportunities come your way.... such as the case of some friends here in Madrid, just don't ask how it went when they were trying to rent a flat or get a loan. try telling them about merit not race being more important!

The sad thing is, the situation isn't going to change without action. Race quotas aren't ideal and I do partly sympathise with your argument but how else do we ensure blacks have equal opportunities when, despite whatever merit they have, more is always asked of them than of a white person - because of skin colour? until something better comes along it's the best we have.

I 'd like to respectfully amend your rather abstract conclusion to: 'Equality will come when black people have the same opportunities and access to what us whites have always had. Race quotas are an imperfect but useful step towards that '

"So what is to be done?"

The denouncement of the importance of race, the police and other authorities such as schools not being allowed to class people based on race, that sort of thing.

"There ARE widespread racist decisions made daily."

Prove it. Prove that people are hiring based on race. You're condoning laws that make assumptions about peoples thoughts rather than their actions and thats totally unacceptable.

The vast majority of street crime in the UK and the US is commited by black males. However tempting and potentially fruitful it would be to use these statistics in favor of racial profiling, we shouldnt because we live in a society where you're innocent until proven guilty, a society that strives to treat everyone as an individual, equally and fairly. "Race quotas" that assume disproportionate amounts of black and white employees are down to racism not only deprive those who deserve the job based on merit because theyre the wrong race but make assumptions about the employers motives.

If youre gonna argue in favor of race quotas, youre arguing that minorities and majorities should be treated differently, in which case you should be in favor of racial profiling by the police because based on stastics minorities are more likely to commit crimes. Same difference. You cant have it both ways.

"Equality will come when black people have the same opportunities and access to what us whites have always had"

They do. A black person can go to school, can get a well paid job, can use all the facilities a white person can. If you're automatically going to assume that because more white candidates were chosen than blacks because of racism (which cant be proves and assumes people motives unfairly) even when blacks get totally equal treatment they'll never know it because society will still be assuming racism is happening when its not. Its a self perpetuating lose/lose situation.

Ooops... so, yesterday I was looking at some Japanese comedy, and I thought, "Well, I bet Momus will put up a post about Japanese comedy soon." And you did!

I saw Eiji Okuda's NAGAI SAMPO last nite and I need a comedy Kudasai!

I like these. I know a few other people I think will like them, too.

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Japan Culture Lab: the comedy of superlegitimacy

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The Navy Look

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http://melon.ctime.jp/

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