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imomus
Shohei Imamura's History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (which Hisae and I watched last night) is a great film, a 1970 documentary that interweaves newsreel coverage of postwar events with the bar's-eye-view of a garrulous, brash, sex- and company-loving woman, the beehive-haired Onboro-San. When the Korean war breaks out, Onboro is having an affair with a barman. While students occupy the university, Onboro is having problems with her policeman boyfriend.Onboro's concerns are very different from the concerns of newspapers, but history in the newspaper sense does impact her, mostly in the form of passing anxieties that don't really lead anywhere, and certainly don't distract her from running her bar or having children by a large number of different men. Imamura's point is that Onboro's world is as much "the real world" as the newspapers' world is. And although I'm someone who checks the news headlines several times a day, it got me thinking that one index of happiness is the degree to which you can ignore that newspaper world. The degree to which you can elevate a personal reality above the sometimes crazy and usually inconsequential lurches of "history".
I got to wondering about how one might remake Imamura's film today, and picked a narrator Hisae and I have recently become fascinated with: Yama-Sama, one of the shop staff at Tokyo Bopper, a Harajuku boutique specializing in nu-rave hiking gear. Yama-Sama blogs regularly at Merry Daily, whose motto is the rousing "Now, select me as a tool for changes!"
Yama-Sama's worldview ignores completely the sub-prime crisis in the US housing market, Israel's declaration of Gaza "a hostile entity", the possibility of bombing raids on Iran and the irony that it's now France which seems to be touting them, or the opening up of a free water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific through the devastated ice of a north pole warmed by polar bear blood and car exhaust fumes. Instead, Yama-Sama is currently preoccupied with Tyrolean style, tartan, Northern European folk patterns, repurposed camping gear, the Cool Vienna blog, berets, smiley t-shirts and Argyle sweaters.
Yama-Sama does occasionally hint at wider issues. Gender politics, for instance, is evident in statements like "I wanna wear this like tough boots even I am a girl! I'm trying on Men's new trekking shoes". And an art school education is hinted at in the pronouncement that "even though it's avant-garde, the colourful makeup is still pretty". The syntax marks Yama out as something of an aesthetic conservative, despite her different-coloured laces and her mixture of Pringle classics with early 90s rave references.
Battles don't figure in Yama-Sama's life -- unless you're talking about the band Battles. "I'm listening this often these days," says Yama's colleague Tabi, who's playing the "Mirrored" album in the shop. "Sometimes it sounds like a hard dance music or rock'n'roll. But it partly sounds like a opera! It's very stimulous."
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I'd treat Yama-Sama and her fellow "charisma shop staffs" with at least as much respect as Imamura shows for his bar hostess. I don't know whether Israel's declaration of the Palestinians as "hostile" is evidence that Tony Blair has failed in his new job, or simply a bit of stage management to give Condi Rice some appearance of success in her current Middle East mission. I don't know if the McCanns killed their own daughter. I don't know if "Bin Laden" really exists. I don't know if the New York family living without electricity is doing it to save the planet or because they want to make a lot of money (and destroy a lot of trees) by writing a bestselling book about it.What I suspect is that much of what fills newspapers is theatre of a cheap and unedifying kind; spectacle management. I feel like a dupe, sometimes, for following it, for getting angry or anxious or disgusted on cue. And that's why someone like Yama-Sama can be a sort of hero to me. Yama-Sama generates her own narrative lines and follows them with passionate enthusiasm. And who's to say she's not living in the real world?
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 08:45 am (UTC)1) Did you get an erection whilst viewing my nude picture?
2) What do you think about while masturbating?
3) If you could have any superpower what would it be?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 08:46 am (UTC)1) Did you get an erection whilst viewing my nude picture?
2) What do you think about while masturbating?
3) If you could have any superpower what would it be?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 10:33 am (UTC)So do Momus nude pics get you soaking?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 05:09 pm (UTC)As for my nude picture, you will have to join momus_lolz for that. Although membership is screened by me and two others. And I don't trust you to keep my nude picture inside the community, dear Anonymous.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:11 am (UTC)- Lucia
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:19 am (UTC)Anyway, one of the points in today's entry (for those who didn't read it!) is that there's no obligation to get dragged into other people's narrative framings. I think that's one definition of freedom and heroism, and it applies as much to "Did you masturbate to my photograph?" (a question sure to make someone angry, however it's answered or even not-answered) as to the choice to be interested in Tyrolean fashion rather than, say, the McCann Saga.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 05:15 pm (UTC)But, seeing as how my question was twisted in that way (Freudian slip?), I will semi-rest with your semi-answer, Mr. Not-So-Mysterious.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:37 am (UTC)I'm finding this (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/18/wrussiablog18.xml) an interesting blog, in giving a slightly different angle on things.
Also a fan of Interbreeding (http://www.interbreeding.blogspot.com/), which has now been rendered completely anonymous (author and commenters both).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:57 am (UTC)The problem with acknowledging at its "proper" value the four million dead in the Congo stat is that atrocity can lead to a similar nihilism. Nothing we could do would stand up to that -- there would be, as Adorno recommended, no more poetry after Auschwicz. And that would mean, in a way, that the logic of Aushwicz had won, eclipsing everything else humans do, all the mild stuff, the kind daily stuff.
I saw M.I.A. posing in a t-shirt that just said DARFUR. It seemed to trivialize both what's happened in Darfur and what was happening in that photography studio, as part of that marketing exercise for a new album.
its message
Date: 2007-09-21 07:33 pm (UTC)Nic, I'm getting the hint that a Nic/Hisae collaboration hot docu is maybe in the works. What's up?
On Topic (ish)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:53 am (UTC)What's your view on the John Kerry UF taser phenomenon on YouTube, Momus? Have you been following that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jkgv2E8NWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmZdPILiGk4&mode=related&search=
The middle one of those links has received 98,321 views in three days, and it seems that EVERYBODY has got something to say about it.
Re: On Topic (ish)
Date: 2007-09-21 12:03 pm (UTC)News is the new rock! I think I hate it for the same reasons I hate rock -- that glib, self-serving mix of artifice and authenticity claims.
Re: Off Topic-ish
Date: 2007-09-21 12:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 12:55 pm (UTC)Not that there hasn't been the occasional hiccup over the last 3000 years, but basically society keeps rolling along, slowly evolving; and people's fears throughout the ages have more or less been a waste of energy.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 01:05 pm (UTC)Do you see that?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 02:15 pm (UTC)Yama San's style is definitely turn of the 21st century zeitgeist, but I think it's a huge problem with bigger-scale creativity, particularly in the US... people are refusing to realize the 90s are over, and it feels weird to turn away from the chaos of the world (most of which -our- society created) while that very willful ignorance kind-of gives a justified free reign to the blinding, unchecked greed fueling it all. Of course, this is coming from the perspective of an American, so there's an extra kind-of guilt and outrage going on.
Honestly, I just want to smack the twee, wishy-washy pseudo-liberal 666Bush666 "eat all your vegetables son" Brooklyn 30-something creative establishment for being so selfishly weak in the face of opportunity to create intense art. But that's a little off topic.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 05:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 06:25 pm (UTC)Nowadays, it's, who is producing the potato? Does it have pesticides? Can people in war-torn countries afford potatoes as good as this? Do they have enough? What is in this ground? Is this native ground or was it part of a development plan? What is in it? Could I safely spread it on my body, or eat it?
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Life used to be MICRO+MACRO but I think the Macro has claimed a lot of space.
Inconsequential history
Date: 2007-09-21 10:45 pm (UTC)Re: Inconsequential history
Date: 2007-09-21 11:04 pm (UTC)What I think is fairly unreal and inconsequential is the specific issue I raised re: Gaza -- not "the situation" in general, but Israel's designation of the territory a "hostile entity". This struck me as pure "spectacle management", an abstract piece of posturing which will allow the Israelis to concede something while appearing tough, and Condi to look a bit less useless than she did during the Lebanese war last year.
I went out to see a Chris Marker documentary about Israel today ("Description of a Struggle", 1960), and he has some interesting things to say in the film about how there's a kind of unsettling "end of history" feeling starting to make itself felt in Israel as early as 1960 -- a sense that in trading their suffering for mere comfort (building a sort of Florida of the Middle East) the "chosen people" are losing as well as gaining something. But there's no real argument for saying people should cling to their victim status just because it's historical.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:30 pm (UTC)Whether the student's purpose was genuinely political or pure spectacle (can these even be considered as separate objectives?), the reaction of the security guards is not justified. We can't go around calling one an abuse of power because its target is perceived to be a particular set of personal politics, and the other one A-OK because its target is perceived to be obnoxious opportunism.
-Max
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-21 11:59 pm (UTC)But look at this video and see if you can say the same thing. This one happened, I believe, last year at UCLA. A student of middle eastern descent is asked to show his ID in the library (apparently after a certain time of day, only university students and staff can use the library). The kid doesn't have his ID and is asked to leave. He believes that he's been targeted because of his name/skin color. The cops use a taser on him, I believe, 5-10 times. It only makes him more violent, yet they keep doing it. This is in direct opposition to the purpose of a police force. Can you just stand by and dismiss this as "spectacle"?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs
opportunism.
Date: 2007-09-22 12:05 am (UTC)Tyrolean mountain slave mistress restraint gear would garner more of the curious.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-22 12:10 am (UTC)But I think it does say something about the political climate, and how political speech is perceived these days. That cops would even imagine that a sizable force (4? 5 officers?) would be necessary to subdue an idiot whose only crime is barging to the front of a Q&A line and proceeding to hog the mic seems ridiculous to me. And that using a taser on him even crossed any of their minds is absolutely absurd.
It seems that the common assumption now, among law enforcement, is that political speech is especially virulent and prone to causing major public disruptions and safety issues. This is laughable, of course, because American political dissent hasn't been dangerous for decades. So why the need for tasers at a political gathering?
Taser celebritization
Date: 2007-09-22 09:21 am (UTC)Re: Taser celebritization
Date: 2007-09-22 10:32 am (UTC)Re: Taser celebritization
Date: 2007-09-22 03:19 pm (UTC)Etc, etc, etc.
-Max
Re: Taser celebritization
Date: 2007-09-22 12:24 pm (UTC)In some ways, weapons promising precise and exact, yet non-lethal effects scare me more than all the bombs in the world.
valid point
Date: 2007-09-22 03:17 am (UTC)Therein Barnouw goes into the relationship of people to information and entertainment. For me he summed it up quite well and I don't see any change; just deeper immersion and into the world of infotainment and more complexity in decerning what does and does not have relevancy to ones own life.
quelle surprise!
Date: 2007-09-22 01:51 pm (UTC)The reason she doesn't follow world events may have something to do with working seven days a week in a Harajuku shoe store and rarely getting home before 10pm. From this you could surmise that her worldview derives from the magazines passed around the store and the international mix of customers. Every young Japanese person who wants to gain firsthand knowledge of the fashion industry has a similar story to tell.
I've just emailed Yama about her newfound admirer and, in the unlikely event that she ever has the time to reply, you'll hear about it here.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-22 04:01 pm (UTC)It is sad that so many adults never leave childhood. I blame Geoffrey Giraffe for programming everyone to never want to grow up so they can stay a Toys R Us kid forever.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-22 04:56 pm (UTC)I can only speak for myself, but I find the old Japanese ladies who go travelling in pairs very sympatico. And I don't think Yama-Sama is really "sexy" -- though she does have nice spindle-thin legs.
She knows a hell of a lot more than you do about visual style, anyway, Cerulicante; in that sense her cultural capital is probably higher. Her working life is probably more pleasant than yours, and she may well be more popular with her peers. I don't think you have any right to sneer, unless it's pure jealousy!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-22 05:34 pm (UTC)To avoid the news isn't to be ignorant. It's to question (to refuse, perhaps) the dominance and supremacy of such a flawed and unreliable organ of what we consider "knowledge."
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-22 05:35 pm (UTC)To avoid the news isn't to be ignorant. It's to question (to refuse, perhaps) the dominance and supremacy of such a flawed and unreliable organ of what we consider "knowledge."
-Max