Naming and shaming
Dec. 8th, 2004 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHow do we name things? Naming Nature is an interesting BBC Radio 4 programme presented by the poet Ian McMillan. (McMillan also presents The Verb, a weekly 'cabaret of the word' on Radio 3. Along with Laurie Taylor, Radio 4's resident sociologist, I think he's the most distinctive radio voice of the post-Peel age.) The bit about the arbitrary Latin names for plants and animals made me laugh a lot.
Language represents the world, and therefore, like politicians, language inevitably betrays the world. Personally, I'm disturbed by labels, which always seem a kind of mini-betrayal. But I'm also disturbed when things don't have names. For instance, the male haircut (seen on a lot of contemporary dancers, for some reason) with 'something going on at the back' (no, not the mullet with 'a party at the back', I mean just some cute, fluffed, tufty stuff going on behind)? What do you call that? Or the baggy ass hipster jeans we've been seeing for the last couple of years, with their sagging, flat-bummed look, what are those called? I just saw a Wrangler poster featuring a pair, so I see they've made it into major manufacturers' lines. But the only word on the Wrangler poster was 'Wanted'. So tell me what you call these jeans? And how to describe my current look? Heimat Fisherman? Soldier Pierrot? Flip Spiv? When it comes to labels, I sometimes think 'the more the merrier'. That way we retain a bit of anarchy and stop any one label winning.
Browsing around clothes store Belleville the other day, I became totally absorbed in a photo book called Exactitudes. The book, by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, shows page after page of exaggeratedly conformist 'looks', each given a name and gridded twelve to a page. Ari and Ellie's aim was to point up the contradiction between individuality and uniformity by making 'an anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity'. Here are three 'Chairmen':
Here are three 'Musulmen':
Here are three 'Bonitas' (a familiar New York type):
Three 'Casual Queers':
And here are three of the only group I could find that seemed to include people who dressed like me: 'Vagabonds'!
One of the reasons I love regular features like Shift's Girls on the Street snaps is that it's so tempting to try to classify and generalize the looks on offer, and yet the attempt is doomed to failure. Looks are never as rigid as the 'Exactitudes' book makes them seem, and often, by the time you've found a word for a look, it's over. If naming and betrayal are closely related, naming can also be akin to killing. The most fascinating moment for a trend-spotter is somewhere between noticing a pattern emerging and knowing what to call it. As soon as a name is found and enters into common use, the look seems rubber-stamped, reproducible, conformist, commercial, ready to be flogged to death then filed away in some costume museum, ready for revival at some later date, primed for hybrids and irony.
Recently I've been enjoying another sort of street observation, more verbal than visual. Japan Today's regular Pop Vox feature (compiled by Sachie Kanda, it might as well be called 'Kanda Camera') links styles to opinions. Ordinary Japanese people are stopped on the street, photographed, and asked about topical issues. We get to see correlations between their looks and their views, between their objective presence in the world and their subjective reflections on it.
What strikes me is how sweet and sane, how tender and community-minded most Japanese are. If you compare their views with the comments posted by the Japan-based gaijin below, remarkable contrasts emerge. The gaijin (mostly American ex-pats) emerge as volatile and irascible vigilantes, proposing extreme solutions and taking the law into their own hands.
Sample answers to the question 'Should people use cell phones while driving?'
Japanese opinion: 'I know it is convenient to be able to call somebody when you get lost, but if you get hurt in an accident, you will regret it afterwards.' Gaijin opinion: 'If I see a car driver talking on his cell phone while I'm out on my motorcycle, I pull up very close to his window and rev the engine to 4,000 RPM. The noise drowns out their conversation and it drives them crazy. Isn't that fun or wot.'
Sample answers to the question 'How do you feel about men reading porn on trains?':
Japanese opinion: 'I wonder how the daughter of one of those dirty old men would feel if they saw their father reading such a magazine or newspaper on the train or wherever? He must be thinking of only his own gratification because he is lonely.' Gaijin opinion: 'The best way to handle those guys is to walk up to them, pull the magazine out of their hands and loudly ask them in Japanese which photograph is their favorite when they pull their johnson. Public shame works well in this culture from what I have seen.'
Sample answers to the question What do you think of bosozuku biker gangs?:
Japanese opinion: 'They sometimes get together near my house, but I'm not afraid of them because they haven't bothered me yet.' First Gaijin opinion: 'One easy tactic solves all your problems. When you see a line of them parked out in front of your local Lawson, place one firm kick to the center of the first bike, then run like hell. Good ol' Domino effect.' Second Gaijin opinion: 'After being woken up repeatly night after night by the noise I soon realized that the police and general population was ready to tolerate these punks... I decided to take matters into my own hands. I saved up some eggs and let them sit out in the sun on my balcony for a few days. Once I had a couple dozen ready to go I decided it was time to shut down the show. With the lights out and the noisy bastards coming down the road I let fly with the eggs from the 8th floor and couldnt stop laughing as a few of the eggs hit their targets and brought forth a barrage of foul language.'
Question: How can Japan preserve the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Japanese opinion: 'War is not only the A-bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. War is always happening somewhere in the world every day. If the media could report timely news with details such as the use of depleted uranium shells in Iraq, we would still be more aware of the present cruelty of war and human beings.' Gaijin opinion: 'You japanese should stop bitch whipping on every Aug. 06 et Aug. 14. All you deserved it.'
Question: Should porn be wrapped in plastic?
Japanese opinion: 'Even if the plastic bag is intended to prevent kids from looking at obscene materials, preventing them from learning about such things is even worse. Kids will find out about sex in the future anyway. We should teach sex education at an early stage.' Gaijin opinion: 'The only solution is to forget about the magazines, and to wrap anyone under 17 in plastic. This will also cut down on social diseases.'
Language represents the world, and therefore, like politicians, language inevitably betrays the world. Personally, I'm disturbed by labels, which always seem a kind of mini-betrayal. But I'm also disturbed when things don't have names. For instance, the male haircut (seen on a lot of contemporary dancers, for some reason) with 'something going on at the back' (no, not the mullet with 'a party at the back', I mean just some cute, fluffed, tufty stuff going on behind)? What do you call that? Or the baggy ass hipster jeans we've been seeing for the last couple of years, with their sagging, flat-bummed look, what are those called? I just saw a Wrangler poster featuring a pair, so I see they've made it into major manufacturers' lines. But the only word on the Wrangler poster was 'Wanted'. So tell me what you call these jeans? And how to describe my current look? Heimat Fisherman? Soldier Pierrot? Flip Spiv? When it comes to labels, I sometimes think 'the more the merrier'. That way we retain a bit of anarchy and stop any one label winning.
Browsing around clothes store Belleville the other day, I became totally absorbed in a photo book called Exactitudes. The book, by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, shows page after page of exaggeratedly conformist 'looks', each given a name and gridded twelve to a page. Ari and Ellie's aim was to point up the contradiction between individuality and uniformity by making 'an anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity'. Here are three 'Chairmen':
Here are three 'Musulmen':
Here are three 'Bonitas' (a familiar New York type):
Three 'Casual Queers':
And here are three of the only group I could find that seemed to include people who dressed like me: 'Vagabonds'!
One of the reasons I love regular features like Shift's Girls on the Street snaps is that it's so tempting to try to classify and generalize the looks on offer, and yet the attempt is doomed to failure. Looks are never as rigid as the 'Exactitudes' book makes them seem, and often, by the time you've found a word for a look, it's over. If naming and betrayal are closely related, naming can also be akin to killing. The most fascinating moment for a trend-spotter is somewhere between noticing a pattern emerging and knowing what to call it. As soon as a name is found and enters into common use, the look seems rubber-stamped, reproducible, conformist, commercial, ready to be flogged to death then filed away in some costume museum, ready for revival at some later date, primed for hybrids and irony.
Recently I've been enjoying another sort of street observation, more verbal than visual. Japan Today's regular Pop Vox feature (compiled by Sachie Kanda, it might as well be called 'Kanda Camera') links styles to opinions. Ordinary Japanese people are stopped on the street, photographed, and asked about topical issues. We get to see correlations between their looks and their views, between their objective presence in the world and their subjective reflections on it.
What strikes me is how sweet and sane, how tender and community-minded most Japanese are. If you compare their views with the comments posted by the Japan-based gaijin below, remarkable contrasts emerge. The gaijin (mostly American ex-pats) emerge as volatile and irascible vigilantes, proposing extreme solutions and taking the law into their own hands.
Sample answers to the question 'Should people use cell phones while driving?'
Japanese opinion: 'I know it is convenient to be able to call somebody when you get lost, but if you get hurt in an accident, you will regret it afterwards.' Gaijin opinion: 'If I see a car driver talking on his cell phone while I'm out on my motorcycle, I pull up very close to his window and rev the engine to 4,000 RPM. The noise drowns out their conversation and it drives them crazy. Isn't that fun or wot.'
Sample answers to the question 'How do you feel about men reading porn on trains?':
Japanese opinion: 'I wonder how the daughter of one of those dirty old men would feel if they saw their father reading such a magazine or newspaper on the train or wherever? He must be thinking of only his own gratification because he is lonely.' Gaijin opinion: 'The best way to handle those guys is to walk up to them, pull the magazine out of their hands and loudly ask them in Japanese which photograph is their favorite when they pull their johnson. Public shame works well in this culture from what I have seen.'
Sample answers to the question What do you think of bosozuku biker gangs?:
Japanese opinion: 'They sometimes get together near my house, but I'm not afraid of them because they haven't bothered me yet.' First Gaijin opinion: 'One easy tactic solves all your problems. When you see a line of them parked out in front of your local Lawson, place one firm kick to the center of the first bike, then run like hell. Good ol' Domino effect.' Second Gaijin opinion: 'After being woken up repeatly night after night by the noise I soon realized that the police and general population was ready to tolerate these punks... I decided to take matters into my own hands. I saved up some eggs and let them sit out in the sun on my balcony for a few days. Once I had a couple dozen ready to go I decided it was time to shut down the show. With the lights out and the noisy bastards coming down the road I let fly with the eggs from the 8th floor and couldnt stop laughing as a few of the eggs hit their targets and brought forth a barrage of foul language.'
Question: How can Japan preserve the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Japanese opinion: 'War is not only the A-bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. War is always happening somewhere in the world every day. If the media could report timely news with details such as the use of depleted uranium shells in Iraq, we would still be more aware of the present cruelty of war and human beings.' Gaijin opinion: 'You japanese should stop bitch whipping on every Aug. 06 et Aug. 14. All you deserved it.'
Question: Should porn be wrapped in plastic?
Japanese opinion: 'Even if the plastic bag is intended to prevent kids from looking at obscene materials, preventing them from learning about such things is even worse. Kids will find out about sex in the future anyway. We should teach sex education at an early stage.' Gaijin opinion: 'The only solution is to forget about the magazines, and to wrap anyone under 17 in plastic. This will also cut down on social diseases.'
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-09 04:47 am (UTC)Social systems which place different emphasis on Independence (e.g. American) and Inter-dependence (e.g. Japanese) each have their advantages and disadvantages. It's easy to "prove" that one is superior to the other if one focusses selectively on part of the evidence as is happening a lot in the discussion here and in Marxy's blog.
For example, today's Click Opera entry by Momus, contrasts the polite and reserved public opinions of Japanese pedestrians being interviewed by a reporter, with the flippant rantings in an anonymous online community. The contrast is amusing, but misleading, if it is intended to prove something about the superiority of one social system over another, and unfortunately it does not help Momus' credibility. It would be much more appropriate to compare these rants of the Japan Today Pop Vox commentary with some of what goes on at a site like 2ちゃねる (http://www.2ch.net/), Japan's most popular Bulletin board, which has lots of outrageous anonymous posting going on. But, or course, 2ちゃねる is all in Japanese.
Much more constructive would be a fair and balanced contrast of aspects of behaviour within different social systems. Fortunately that kind of discussion is taking place elsewhere. A worthwhile starting point is the long term collaboration between social psychologists Shinobu Kitayama (http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/cpl/index.html), formerly at Kyoto University, recently moved to U. Michigan, and Hazel Markus of Stanford. In brief, Kitayama and Markus suggest that comparisons of Japanese and American psychology only make sense with the assumption of different ways of being or Selfways, to use their term.
Good starting points are this excellent interview (http://www.researchchannel.org/program/displayevent.asp?rid=859) with Hazel Markus, in which she explains her work with Kitayama on Selfways, or this popular essay (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/stanfordtoday/ed/9807/9807fea5.html) by Markus. To dig deeper, the blockbuster 1991 review article, Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation (http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/cpl/articles/pre2000/markus_kitayama_1991.pdf) which is one of the most cited works in the social sciences from the 1990's.