The kids aren't alright ;-(
Mar. 31st, 2008 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
"Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?" The bizarre question appears in the song Smoke Rings on Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave album. The surprise answer is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife. The quiz continues with a second question with an equally surprising answer: a schoolbus is more macho than a lightbulb.Today I have a question in the same vein. Which is more elitist, art or marketing? On the face of it, it's a no-brainer. The art world is clearly more elitist than the marketing world, because the art world is a tightknit knot of collectors, investors, artists and commentators speaking an abstruse jargon replete with -isms. The marketing world, on the other hand, is a bunch of people with clipboards asking folks on the street what they want then trying to give it to them. Marketing is clearly oriented to the mass, the mainstream, the grass roots, the people, the salt of the earth.
Of course, that's bullshit. Marketing is a lot more top down, a lot more elitist (in its own way) than that. The marketer's client is the company, and the company is beholden to the shareholder. The marketer's task is not to find out what people really want and give it to them, but to whip up desire for the pre-existing products manufacturers have decided to offer. At its worst, marketing is totally elitist: it speaks without listening, it uses slick babytalk, it exploits people's desires, giving them other than what they want and less than they deserve.
But I'm not a total cynic about marketing. When I first heard that Marxy had got a job in marketing I thought there might be a good side -- clipboard in hand, standing on street corners, he'd now be listening to the Japanese consumers he'd previously tended to denigrate, trying to ascertain what they want and ensure that they get it. This would make him drop the "everything Japan has done since Shibuya-kei is wrong" line which made his old blog Neomarxisme such an infuriatingly mean read.
Alas, far from it. Marxy's main concern, as a blogger working in marketing, continues to be the attempt to show that the kids are not alright, and that the grassroots Japanese creativity reported in the Western media is in fact either an illusion or concocted by a small elite. The message seems to be "Don't bother listening for the sound of the grass growing -- it isn't. Not unless we -- the marketers, the brands, the corporations -- pour fertilizer on it, that is."
This mostly seems to involve withering scorn for all Japanese examples of what marketers call CGM -- consumer-generated media. On the current page at Meta No Tame ("staff blog" for Neojaponisme) we get refutations of the idea that Japanese is the world's number one blogging language (in fact, Marxy tells us, 40% of Japanese-language blog sites are generated by spambots), and the information that a trend for barcoded gravestones doesn't come from consumers but from the manufacturer who invented them. We get the announcement that Marxy is talking at a conference at UCLA on the subject of "whether Japanese fashion styles are “bottom-up” or “top-down” and how fashion magazines play a part in setting trends". We get a review of a book about the Harajuku fashion scene, Style Deficit Disorder, which debunks the book's introduction, with its emphasis on grassroots creativity:
"The Harajuku of SDD’s introductory chapter is quite literally the most amazing place on earth: masses of youth successfully fighting to create their own trends at a “grass-roots” level in the face of an increasingly-irrelevant global fashion market pushing industry-decided clothing on a rigid seasonal basis". This won't do: Marxy isn't buying this picture of "grass-roots democracy, consumer-driven markets, an almost anarcho-syndicalist model of opinion leadership, Japanese influence on global culture, a sense of fashion liberty, Japanese cultural independence, and a freedom from dogmatic ideologies".
So keen is he to puncture and debunk too-kind, too-optimistic Western views of Japanese grassroots creativity that Marxy doesn't seem to notice internal contradictions in his arguments: Harajuku is not all it's cracked up to be, he tells us, because "brands and magazines play a massive role in setting Harajuku trends". In a withering piece about Nakameguro, though, Marxy says that Nakameguro isn't all it's cracked up to be for precisely the opposite reason: this time it's because "almost none of the major retailers in Japan have decided to put a store there". The kids aren't alright if top-down brands influence their trendy neighbourhood, but also aren't alright if those same top-down brands spurn their trendy neighbourhoods. The kids, it seems, just can't win -- and all because those starry-eyed foreigners keep saying they're great!
Actually -- and this brings us back to the marketing versus art theme, and the elitism question -- foreign commentators aren't saying that Japanese kids are uniformly great. That certainly would be projection, and wish-fulfillment. Rather, those of us interested in Japanese creativity have a different concern. Marketing people tend to disregard anything which is too niche, too marginal. Their concern is with getting products out of their niches and into the mainstream. For talent-spotters, though, one swallow makes a summer.
In the last seven days of Click Opera alone, I've endorsed the work of dozens of Japanese creators (Yurie Ido, Akio Suzuki, Atsuhiko Sudo, Kasuga Nakamatsu, Yoko Ono, Aoki Takamasa, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tujiko Noriko, Jun Togawa, Hanayo, Koji Ueno, Keiichi Ohta, Haruomi Hosono, Misora Hibari, Miharu Koshi, Otomo Yoshihide). What I haven't done is make any claim that these people are "the kids" or represent a democratic movement, a grassroots creativity. They're mostly professional artists and performers. Even if I were blogging about Japanese street fashion, I'd probably focus on Shoichi Aoki just as much as the kids he puts in FRUiTS.
I therefore agree, broadly, with Marxy's emphasis on the top-down; I'm an elitist too. The difference comes in our chosen fields of operation and preoccupation: I'm an artist championing artists, whereas he's a marketing spook giving props to... well, marketing spooks. But there is hope that he'll come over to the good kind of elitism, the artist kind that champions creativity rather than the marketing kind that denigrates the kids: the man has a new album out.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 11:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 11:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 11:30 am (UTC)I was telling you a couple of days ago that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds when it's used as a stick to beat "hypocrites" with. Here, I find it unfair that Marxy refuses to give an area credit for either keeping the big brands out or letting them in.
I actually wouldn't mind if he were inconsistent in a non-mean way: if he said that Nakameguro's great for staying funky and big brand-free and Harajuku's great for being significant enough to attract big brands. But why be inconsistent and mean? Surely the only excuse for being mean is being right?
Marxy seems to have an idée fixe about portraying the kids as wrong. He'll tie himself in blog knots to do that. And I wonder if that's something endemic to marketing -- a sort of initiation rite, a stance you have to adopt to get ahead in that particular career? Or whether it's to do with his own ambivalent feelings about Japan (disappointment, passive aggression, alienation, superiority, and so on)?
Comments from marketers are welcome. Do you have to denigrate the consumer?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 11:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-03-31 12:04 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 12:48 pm (UTC)I would, but I know next to nothing about this Marxy person. But I'll think about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 12:57 pm (UTC)I find it most amazingly childish that Momus would act so outraged on LiveJournal but then be too bashful to actually comment on Neojaponisme when I wrote these particular essays. The comment reel is wide open. What are you waiting for? I'd be happy to hear your actual counterpoints. I was just tired of hearing your take downs of my personal morality for thinking such things.
If we actually want to argue about issues - which nothing about how you've framed this personal attack actually suggests - I would argue that Harajuku is interesting as a market system, but we can't just assume that everything interesting about it comes from the bottom-up as many people do in fact argue. There is a lot of top-down stuff that people choose to ignore. I didn't go into researching Harajuku in 2000 with the idea that the top had too much power or something. But when you put two and two together and you see how the media guides consumers, you start to figure it out.
And really, I'm the mean one?
Anyway, I am glad you are being "interesting" with this essay rather than "right." You had the option to write the exact same essay in an intellectually-honest, non-confrontational manner, but you decided to plunge the same rusty dagger instead. This essay says more about you than me.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 01:20 pm (UTC)The why be so mean to Marxy? I get the distinct impression he doesn't much enjoy being your punching bag. If your point is worth making, surely you can make it without denigrating a fellow blogger?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 02:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 02:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 03:08 pm (UTC)Marketing will always be about the turn-over of money, making it much less accessible. Popularity (and the attempt to create it) will always dictate the rules. Only those with the expertise to create or spot trends will have any chance of being part of that world.
I honestly believe there's something unique about the mentality behind Japanese street fashion. London has Camden (and to a lesser degree Shoreditch) but British street fashion doesn't hold a candle to the sort of variety you see on the streets of Japan.
British street fashion as a general rule seems to either fall into cookie cutter alternative scenes, or highstreet fashion. Go to Camden and you'll see the punks, skaters, goths, etc -- but thats it. In Japanese street fashion, anything and everything goes.
I think in Britain, we're a lot more rockist, self conscious and cynical on the whole when it comes to youth culture. I think Japan is more playful, fanciful and surreal.
the big question -- to what extent are these two attitudes down to grass roots creativity and/or marketing?
I think to put Japan's variety down to grass roots creativity alone is too much -- I think fanciful variety has been marketed to the Japanese just as much as heavy marketing has encouraged rockism in the British. I do however believe the Japanese variety approach to street fashion has encouraged and nurtured grassroots style self-expression which is a good thing, where as British rockist attitudes have permeated youth culture to such an extent (not thanks to marketing) it's stifled creativity. For this, Japanese street fashion deserves the praise it has garnered.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 04:09 pm (UTC)Laurie Anderson
Date: 2008-03-31 04:25 pm (UTC)pineapple = slang for grenade.
School bus = yes, blowing up a school bus.
Lightbulb = a lightbulb bomb, used in assassinations - where the filament would ignite a a detonator or highly flammable, explosive substance.
Geddit?
By the way, in reference to Marxy and Momus' "feud," why don't you BOTH please have a gander at this:
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 04:30 pm (UTC)See, Momus understands that point, why don't you!? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-31 04:40 pm (UTC)If you're provocative, stimulating, informed and intellectually daring enough to challenge the conclusions of the New York Times, Tiffany Gudoy, and a whole host of other Japan experts on your own blog -- and thank God, you are -- then I don't know why someone else doing the same thing to your conclusions elicits three or four paragraphs of hysterical victimy screaming.
I don't think it's a personal attack on you to say you work in marketing -- is there a term you prefer?
Saying that I should restrict my comments to your blog is like saying you should only have replied to the New York Times' Nakameguro piece by writing a letter to the New York Times. Why on earth?
Plus, if I'd restricted my comment to your blog, not only could I not have brought in the angle I'm really interested in -- the different kinds of elitism involved in marketing and the art world -- I also couldn't have advertised your new album to my gazillions of readers.
But thanks for making at least one substantive point in that rant: "There is a lot of top-down stuff that people choose to ignore." I think I did outline in the piece that that was your position, but anyway...
Re: Laurie Anderson
Date: 2008-03-31 05:02 pm (UTC)I think the really important thing is not whether people agree, but whether they're on more or less the same intellectual level, or have the same intellectual style and the same interests. That's what generates the longest-lasting conversations; small differences. And they usually are small; if the similarities are what keep the conversation / feud going, the differences usually turn out to be of the "glass half empty / glass half full" variety.
In this case: "You say it's more top down, I say it's more bottom up... not, wait, we both say it's top down, but I say top down is okay in the art world but not in marketing..."
High Heel Party versus Low Heel Party
Date: 2008-03-31 05:15 pm (UTC)