Is your daily paper transvaluing values?

[imomus]

As 2009 dawned, I found myself rearranging my newspaper bookmarks. The website of UK newspaper The Guardian has been my main -- almost exclusive -- newspaper site for years; I hit the front page several times a day. But this year, for various reasons, I've felt the need to see whether I can replace The Guardian with something else. I turned to two rather odd newspapers, The International Herald Tribune and the Japan Times.



These papers are odd because they're, in some way, parachuted into the cities they're based in, Paris and Tokyo. They're both English-language papers in non-English-speaking capitals, and there's a blurriness and precariousness in their identity which I find, actually, very valuable, and which matches something in my own. I also like a certain quietness and restraint in their manner. Until fairly recently, the culture section of the Japan Times, for instance, was dominated by a column on yakimono pottery.

The International Herald Tribune (the only newspaper I've ever heard David Bowie endorse, incidentally) may speak English, but its outlook is cosmopolitan. It's linked with Monocle magazine and The New York Times. But it also covers Paris rather well; there's an interesting video story today (very much in the style of the video reports on the Monocle site) about the progress of new Paris art centre Le CentQuatre. The lead story on the paper's front page this morning was a style story: In the lap of luxury, Paris squirms. The focus was on how the recession is impacting luxury fashion brands, but I liked the way writer Elaine Sciolino presented this: "The recession brings anxiety to France but also a welcomed values debate on the French way of life."

"Only in France is the recession lauded for posing a crisis in values," writes Sciolino. "There is... an underlying satisfaction here that an era of sometimes vulgar high living is over and that a more bedrock French way of life will emerge. Some French intellectuals want to go much further, calling for the death of the entire luxury industry as a sort of national ritual of purification. "Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

This is a post-materialist message, and it's something I don't find much of in the Anglo papers, even The Guardian. On the front page of The Guardian today we had Dan Black, one of the paper's music tips for 2009 -- a somewhat annoying young man who sounds like an estate agent doing karaoke versions of Britney Spears numbers -- telling the paper that in ten years time "I'll either be swimming in a swimming pool full of champagne and diamonds or crying in a gutter trying to get ten pounds to buy a bag of skag." Black, like Britain, is still oriented to America, to consumerism as a selfish "guilty pleasure", to money-as-drugs, to bling. His vision of his future in Britain is a parody of a high Gini coefficient; he'll either be massively wealthy or homeless.

The cultural coverage in the Japan Times is much more to my taste. In the art section we have Donald Eubank on Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and his work with Brazil's catadores, people who recycle rubbish for a living: "An estimated 3,000-5,000 people live in the dump, 15,000 derive their income from activities related to it, and some that Muniz met in Jardim Gramacho come from families that had been working there for three generations. "These people are at the other end of consumer culture," he says. "I was expecting to see people who were beaten and broken, but they were survivors." His aim — besides the creative challenge — was to see... if the experience of creating art could change people".

There's a sense in both The International Herald Tribune and The Japan Times that the papers know what time it is; that they realise a "transvaluation of all values" (in Nietzsche's phrase) is necessary at this point. Even while it reports David Miliband's important public recognition that the War on Terror was a mistake, The Guardian doesn't seem to have taken this transvaluation thing on board. For instance, a story about a minister who said she saw "green shoots" in the UK economy basically takes for granted that green shoots mean economic growth, and that that's good, and its absence bad. There's no actual green perspective in the green shoots story -- it lacks the angle Sciolino wrote into her IHT story about how economic downturn is an opportunity to rethink priorities.

Another Japan Times story I love today is Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people. Here, Gregory Clark plugs -- without mentioning him by name -- the ridiculous Debito Arudou (David Aldwinckle), who has plagued his host country with lawsuits alleging discrimination against foreigners (in, for instance, barring him from certain bathing houses frequented by troublesome Russian sailors). Clark boldly says something I've long believed too: "Japan girai — dislike of Japan — is an allergy that seems to afflict many Westerners here... It is time we admitted that at times the Japanese have the right to discriminate against some foreigners. If they do not, and Japan ends up like our padlocked, mutually suspicious Western societies, we will all be the losers."

What I enjoy here is that an article by a foreigner in a foreign newspaper takes the side of Japanese against foreigners. That seems to express very well the complexity and ambivalence of these cuckoo newspapers, and the awareness, typical of sensitive foreigners, of one's own fragility and awkwardness. This guilt, for me, is at the root of consideration for others. It transcends selfishness, and to achieve it you have to be slightly decentred, as these odd expat papers are. I think their willingness to transvalue values is all tied up with these newspapers' transplanted, lateral, parallax positions in foreign cities.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is a post-materialist message, and it's something I don't find much of in the Anglo papers

Well, you'll find the exact same post-materialist message on the New York Times website, because Elaine Sciolini is in fact a Times foreign correspondent and that story was first published there. Since the Times bought out the IHT, the vast majority of its stories are sourced from the Times and there are very few IHT-only correspondents. These days, the paper is mostly a stripped-down Times with the international stories to the fore instead of the purely American ones.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh! Well, perhaps I need to restrict "Anglo" to "English" in this case. I think The Independent is probably an honourable exception, but I don't find their website particularly compelling.

[choan.livejournal.com]

The cultural stuff in The Japan Times is often interesting, but I'd hate to have to rely upon it for news. I don't know whether its news stories are largely translated, but it has some of the stiffest, most boring writing known to man. And don't even get me started upon its columnists and its letters to the editor section...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I like that they've got a Views from the Street (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090113vf.html) section now. I always used to like Japan Today's Pop Vox feature (http://archive.japantoday.com/jp/popvox/525), but it seems to be defunct now. Though I think there are too many gaijin in the Japan Times version; it gives it a kind of Roppongi feel.

Donald Eubank actually asked me to contribute to the Art section of the JT last time I was in Japan, and that always disposes me well towards a newspaper, obviously!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows the only reliable news source is the North Korean Central News Agency (http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm). Everything else is written by imperialist pigs.

"Here, Gregory Clark plugs -- without mentioning him by name -- the ridiculous Debito Arudou (David Aldwinckle), who has plagued his host country with lawsuits alleging discrimination against foreigners (in, for instance, barring him from certain bathing houses frequented by troublesome Russian sailors)."

If I was a hotel owner and I didn't want to allow gay couples to rent my rooms because they offend my moral sensibilities, should I be allowed to turn them away?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, if you'd had multiple episodes of them shitting in the beds or something, I think you'd be entitled to. These Russian sailors go into the saunas drunk, and start fights, and splash people, and so on. But only a tiny minority of sentos have racial restriction -- I've been to dozens, and I've never seen any "No Foreigner" signs.

I would definitely put a "No Debito" sign outside any institution I started in Japan -- the man is a serial legal harrasser.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

"Everyone knows the only reliable news source is the North Korean Central News Agency. Everything else is written by imperialist pigs."

--nah, just Rupert Murdoch.

Dan Black

[boof-boy.livejournal.com]

The Dan Black argument is very interested and deluded. It imagines only one kind of success, and indeed one kind of failure. It's rarely that way as those of us outside the mainstream understand. A for instance; remember Kitchenware Records - the Daintees, the Kane Gang, Hurrah! and Prefab Sprout - a kind of Geordie Postcard perhaps?

Many of the Kitchenware alumni are successful in music, long after their 'pop' career has finished. Wendy Smith of Prefab is a music project officer at the Sage Gateshead, and Martin McAloon now works for Generator - the North East's music development agency. Martin Brammer of the Kane Gang has written songs for all sorts of soft soul acts - from Tina Turner to Lighthouse Family.

Martin Stephenson of the Daintees still gigs (pubs and clubs mostly, but it's a full time job), and Paul Handyside of Hurrah! also plays occasionally, though it's not his day-job.

If you'd told any of these people, thirty years ago at the birth of Kitchenware, that they'd still be involved in music in 2009, they'd probably have been delighted. None of them are in the gutter, and none are floating in a swimming pool full of coke. But they're all successful in being involved in music and creativity. There are many ways of measuring success and failure - or perhaps it's not even relevant?

Re: Dan Black

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I guess people just don't want to say, in their debut music interview, "I may well be a music project officer in Gateshead or something ten years down the line".

[(Anonymous)]

You live in Germany. Don't you ever read the German press? You seem strangely cut off from where you live.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I actually enjoy being cut off from where I live. It gives me a sense of freedom. But I bumped another news URL up my bookmarks list, Spiegel International (http://www.spiegel.de/international/). It's not very interesting, but it's German.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

While I'm sympathetic to everything you say about The Guardian I can't agree with you about the absence of a post-materialist message in the British press. I linked back to this (http://jermynsavile.livejournal.com/64643.html) article a whle ago. If the repellent Evening Standard is running this kind of story then I rather doubt it'll be alone.

As for the British political situation - guilty as charged. The only God Britain has left is America - and the leadership of the two main political parties is made up entirely of true believers.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

When's the first bling burning, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_of_the_Vanities) Savanorola?

[(Anonymous)]

As far as 'rights' exist, can there be such a thing as the 'right' to be proactively racist?

Let's assume that there can. Of course the Japanese can 'do what they want' in their own culture, in the sense that it's something that just happens anyway, decided by the hegemony either of political power or of cultural majority, but at the same time, I then have the 'right' to get very annoyed when Japanese people ask me what I think about Japan and only want to hear about how wonderful it is, and walk away satisfied (only if you oblige with flattery), and make no further attempts to get to know 'the gaijin'.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

That was me. This machine won't seem to keep me logged in.

Are you sure you wanna endorse this Gregory Clark guy?

[(Anonymous)]

Clark writes, "The antidiscrimination people point to Japan's acceptance of a U.N. edict banning discrimination on the basis of race. But that edict is broken every time any U.S. organization obeys the affirmative action law demanding preference for blacks and other minorities. Without it, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama would probably not be where he is today."

What?

First of all there's no such thing as "affirmative action law" in the US. It's a series of local regulations that are by no means universal. And it is extremely arguable that encouraging preferences (a positive act) contradicts banning discrimination (a negative act), an argument that is generally taken up by all manner of racists and extreme right wingers.

But the biggest WTF is the casual statement that Obama is an affirmative action president. This is so wrong in so many ways, not even the vile Republican smear machine could stoop down to use during the campaign. He was from the get-go the most qualified person to go for the job in many years. Period. (I'm not a knee-jerk Obama supporter/worshipper, by the way.)

I really like your blog and I really hope that your "love" for this piece doesn't include that awful paragraph.

Re: Are you sure you wanna endorse this Gregory Clark guy?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I certainly do endorse Gregory Clark. You should read his lifestory (http://gregoryclark.net/lifestory/index.html). He's a veteran Australian diplomat and academic, the son of an assistant to Keynes, who speaks fluent Russian and Chinese. He protested the Vietnam war very vehemently, and continues to see it (along with the atomic bombings in Japan) as a crime against humanity.

I think what you're not registering is that "discrimination" is one of these words like "criticism" that has both a popular pejorative meaning and a technical neutral meaning. Just as it's extremely important to criticize, in the sense of assessing things with some degree of objectivity, it's extremely important to discriminate. As I say further up the page, there can be no justice without discrimination. John Maynard Keynes could not have implemented the socialist welfare policies that prevailed in the Britain I grew up in -- progressive taxation, socialised medicine, unemployment benefit and so on -- without discriminating in the precise, neutral sense: targeting money to those who lacked it, and harvesting money from those who had it. This "corrective" discrimination is the basis of socialism.

In the case Clark is discussing, a few Japanese institutions (private ones, who have as much right to turn people away as does, for instance, the door guy at the Berghain Club here in Berlin -- he turns away about one in ten, for purely arbitrary reasons based on appearance) have barred foreigners after bad experiences with Russians. To those who sue and make a big fuss about this (really just one man, the ridiculous Debito), Clark is responding that discrimination and racial profiling happen for positive reasons as well as negative ones: they are what happens when Justice takes off her blindfold and looks. Affirmative action is one type of positive racial profiling. Aid is another; aid agencies would waste their time helping white South Africans or Jewish settlers on the West Bank, when it's black South Africans and Palestinians who most urgently need assistance.

The same is true in Hokkaido: the sentos have a right (the same right as a trendy techno club in Berlin) to refuse admittance to people who wouldn't fit in. White people in Japan make a pretty unconvincing victim category: cry me a river!

To summarize: Justice does not mean applying the same treatment to everybody. It means treating people differently according to their needs and abilities, and according to how they act. It's the difference between equality of opportunity (which the West tends to mistake for justice) and actual justice.

Seen 'Fauxmus'?! (off topic)

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

Re: Seen 'Fauxmus'?! (off topic)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Couldn't they have made his lips a bit bigger?

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/world/asia/16outcasts.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

Well 80 responses to trawl...I don't know if anyone mentioned that Bowie once endorsed The Christian Science Monitor in the late 70s.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Christian Science Monitor has some good editorial stances, actually! Very anti-war, for instance. (And I love to imagine Christ with a microscope and a gyroscope in his backpack.)

Revaluing Grauniad

[unitalian.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

More or less given up on it myself now - seems to have revalued itself as a paper of the right. I now read it as the house paper of the Cameroonian class...

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

The recession is not a ‘much-needed reality check’ — it’s a source of great suffering

Puritans love disasters. No sooner has some calamity befallen mankind than some hair-shirted scold emerges from his priest hole and starts wagging his finger. The message is always the same: ‘You are being punished for your immoral lifestyle.’

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/columnists/3213126/status-anxiety.thtml

Go ahead--call them "right wing". But which article bothered to take note of people losing their jobs?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't have to call them "right wing", I just have to say this is an article written by Toby Young (http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Travel/Pix/pictures/2008/03/10/TobyYoungMartinArgles4.jpg).

A Different Vision for Japan

[steve-s.livejournal.com]

I have taken a much different position on the recent piece by Gregory Clark:

http://steve-s.livejournal.com/53180.html

Please feel free to read and comment.

Thanks,
Steve