Love jam

[imomus]

Pop and porn have always been on a continuum with each other; sex, after all, is a major and perfectly legitimate element in most pop culture. The I Love Music forum currently has a thread going entitled Top Howevermany Transparent Sex Barely-Even-Euphemisms in Pop Music in case you need reminding of that fact. One of the many tragedies of the current Michael Jackson trial in California is the fact that, however it turns out, Michael will be culturally emasculated; he will never again be able to hiss and yelp out the sexual innuendos that once powered his music. Considering that he's a true genius of pop, and that the true genius of pop is sex, this will truly be a loss to the world, and a victory only for the new puritans -- the same people who reacted so violently to his sister Janet's "wardrobe malfunction" and made it part of their pre-election "culture wars" last year.



In Japan, a culture much less hung up about sex than the US, the continuum between porno and pop flows with much less turbulence. Culture stores like Book Off, Tsutaya and Village Vanguard shelve their stock with a smooth, unanxious transition from the "pure" to the "impure", the sexless to the sexy. Although there have recently been concerns in Japan about the too-easy availability of porn products to children, it's generally accepted that sex is part of the normal commercial landscape and doesn't do much harm. I'd say that, just as America's attitude has a lot to do with Christianity, Japan's is the result of their combination of a detachment religion (Buddhism) with a fertility and nature religion (Shinto).

Let's jam a bit further on this riff. When Avex recording artist Ai Otsuka released her Love Jam album last year, it was accompanied by a major poster campaign showing Ai's faced spattered suggestively with globs of jam. We don't need to call a semiologist to decode the sexual meaning of the Love Jam campaign, but just in case we missed it, porn site 100% Douga has Photoshopped the fig leaf (or should we say "the jam jar"?) of metaphor away entirely, reminding us that the fruit from which we make jam is nothing more than an attractive, glossy distribution system cunningly devised by strawberry plants to spread their DNA. They have quite a bit to teach us about pop marketing, those strawberries.

Comments

[evalien.livejournal.com]

I must be pretty innocent for not getting the sexual link in the strawberry picture. I thought it was very cute and associated it with sugar instead of sex.
I do hate all that sex in videoclips though. I find it very irritating and manipulating.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Fruit is not really about sugar, though, it's about seeds. Fruit is pretty seedy. Pretty and seedy.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I saw an advertising poster for a mobile phone (I think) on the London Underground. The idea was, the pictures it sent were to real that they came out of the phone. In this case, an attractive young woman had her face spattered with snow. I couldn't help thinking "Bukkake!" But maybe that's just me.

[evalien.livejournal.com]

haha,you're absolutely right. Have you seen the packaging on Maom...something sweets? I'll have to search for that. One moment...

[evalien.livejournal.com]

http://www.werbeblogger.de/media/maom.jpg

[evalien.livejournal.com]

more than suggestive?

[vireoibis.livejournal.com]

The only problem with your otherwise right on comparison of sex and pop, is the fact that Jackson is a baby-fucker, not just a seller of sex and himself. Puritans, my ass, if he'd been screwing grown-ups, no one would care (well, the xtiofascists always care, but . . .), he is, after all a "musician" (and that's expected.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, let's not rush to judgement, shall we? None of us know yet whether, or to what extent, Jackson is, as you put it, a "baby-fucker". I can imagine people saying of Oscar Wilde, a century ago, "The only problem is that Wilde is a sodomite, not just a seller or sex and himself..." If we burn every major figure in the history of the West who was drawn to children it's a big pyre, and at the end we exchange a heap of ash for the Greek philosophers, Lewis Carroll, almost the entire Catholic church, and a big chunk of rock 'n' roll.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

well, the other difference being that Janet J. had a renaissance of fame, whereas if her brother is convicted, he's quite likely to be murdered in prison.

our Michael hasn't sizzled as a sex object in the popular imagination for a very long time now. he's been busy building himself a totally different mystique.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

The Japanese do not have this relaxed approach to sex that you describe. Japan detaches sex from its procreative function more than any other country in the world. Sex is fetishised to the extent that they obsess over body parts, youth, nubility, rather than, say, fertility. Japanese men's worst fear seems to be a woman possessing an adult sexuality. That's why it's schoolgirls' - rather than, say, 'ladies'- knickers in the vending machines and they have no tradition of porn featuring MILFs, grannies, preganant or lactating women, like in the West. Jap porn is borderline paedophilic - even pubic hair is taboo.

They seem to be stuck at, or before what Freud describes as the 'anal stage' - they haven't even got to the phallic stage yet. No doubt you (or some of your tedious 'friends') will try and discredit me here for using a Western thinker's terminology when discussing Japan.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Who "obsesses over fertility"? I mean, even over on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pregnant (if it still exists) it's not really fertility that's getting them off, is it? And by the way, pubes have been acceptable for quite some time in j-porn. Mores change, which is why the "love that dare not speak its name" of 1890 may be quite a different thing than "the love that dare not speak its name" in 2005. What remains a constant, alas, is persecution of those who step outside of society's arbitrary chalkmarks.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

preganant or lactating women,

Oh, I only wish it were the case that no hentai features preggers or lactating women.

fetishized

[(Anonymous)]

From my experience in Japan fetishism abounds here...and I wouldn't describe it as relaxed. I would , however describe it as interesting, energetic, and creative. Schoolgirls are a very public face of it, but scratch the surface and there are a milion other varieties...from OLs, Cosplay, stockings, food, older housewives,public nudity, and my favorite...pantyline fetishes. Personally I think the focus on a piece of clothing that is seen as a shape through tight pants has a certain amount of subtlety and style. Not actually my cup of poison, but I kind of admire the taste of those interested in that niche.
A little off-topic, but related... Momus I was reading your recent comments at GlitchslapTKO and was surprised to see you question why Japanese men don't get off on blond round eyes or some such thing....very weird. I'm sure enough do to keep the Russian hostesses flowing into the country. My friends here have just as many different desires AND dissatisfactions within and outside their society as you or I might have with ours.

[gogmagzog.livejournal.com]

I saw this the other day and found it the best way to sum up the entire MJ case.


By Tina Brown
Thursday, March 10, 2005; Page C01

The strange thing about the Michael Jackson trial is that the supporting actors are more interesting than the star. The weirdness of the King of Pop is so overexposed that no new revelation can shock. Either Jackson is a complete lunatic who slept with young boys and didn't fondle them or he's a complete lunatic who slept with young boys and did.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22015-2005Mar9.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read that already! I got there through Google News and thought it was some local paper in Kansas or something... But it's too well-written, too morally nuanced. Tina on Bashir:

"And how about Bashir himself? Why on earth did Jackson and the Princess of Wales both choose to open up their entire lives to this brooding, charm-free figure? He looks about as well-intentioned as the interrogator you meet when you are rendered by the U.S. military -- and seems to wreak the same havoc on his subjects' lives."

There's just something very odd about Bashir starting the programme telling us that Jackson has very kindly agreed to let him see round his house, meet his children, etc, and ending it like some grim judge, saying "There were still some areas where I felt Jackson wasn't being straight with me." You know, Bashir, you're either a guest or a judge. You can't be both.

Tina ends with:

"It's hard to know if Jackson will one day be seen as a repellent relic of celebrity culture, or another Oscar Wilde or Vivaldi, an artist persecuted for something or other we can't recall. Even the people who are absolutely sure he's guilty don't want to stop listening on their iPods to "Thriller" and "Billie Jean." That's a question neither conviction nor acquittal can answer yet -- whether Jackson will be remembered for the shame or for the art."

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

I've never mentioned it before, but you may want to check out WaiWai (http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/index.html), which collects the best of the surreal and sexual headlines from the Japanese weeklies and makes them available in English.

As for Jackson, there is no simple answer, I think. How do you propose dealing with those who are criminally creative, especially when the charges appear to be valid? Do existing laws regarding sex with minors encourage a smaller evil, in order to protect society against a larger one... or visa versa? Where and how do you rewrite the laws regarding consentual sex with minors? How can you reasonably judge the ability of a minor to give consent? Is any decision they make truely a consentual one, or are they victims, addicted to the attention or the stimulation... were they "sucked into it", as it were?

I say this based on having sex back in my early thirties with a few people who were the age of consent, plus a few days... and if I found out later that they were a few months younger, well, would I have stopped having sex with them?! Questionable.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

That's funny, I "read" the jam as menstrual blood and very lesbo-sexy. No photoshopping necessary.

[queersolitude.livejournal.com]

ah same here. interesting.

Really, you must look at this before I take it off my webpage.

[robotar.livejournal.com]

It seems that the Chinese have also blended pop and porn! (http://www.oberlin.edu/student/tjones/RealNinjaPorn.mpg)

Re: Really, you must look at this before I take it off my webpage.

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

Wow that was fantastic! Particularly "Invincible Wheel"!

Where on earth did you find it?!

what the butler saw

[(Anonymous)]

joe orton wrote in his diary, after visiting tangier, when he was back in dreary london and looking at a 15 year old boy:

"england is intolerable. i'd be able to fuck that in an arab country. i could take him home and stick my cock up him!"



e,klengke

wu-tang porn ain't nothin' ta fuck wid!

[(Anonymous)]

very interesting. please leave this up on your page for a day or so. i have some friends that need to see this.

anyway, i think the interesting thing about this clip (other than the fact that i want to try a few of the things in it) is how it, in it's lithe, "gymnastic" nature, compares to the "athletic" nature of American/hollywood porn (the guys look like tanned, buff, late-night TV exercise machine models, and the girls look kind of like barbie gone wrong...and the fucking it all BANG, BANG, BANG!!!
i think i remember brian eno saying (he is rumored to be one of the world's biggest porn collectors, btw) that after viewing copious porn from asia, europe, and ameria, that each area had it's own prevailing characteristics, with east asia/japan being 'kinky'-er (but not "athletic ") than the rest, and i think video this helps fill in some interesting conceptual space!
best,
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/

Michael Jackson's cultural emasculation

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

It may not be the case that Michael Jackson will be culturally emasculated; there are precedents for that not happening. Remember when R&B singer R. Kelly was charged with having sex with/pissing on a 14-year-old girl? Shortly after that, he released an album titled "Chocolate Factory". The contents combined references to confectionery with crunk sex-nasty jams, as if to taunt his critics and assert his right to fuck children if he so desired, because he is Someone and his critics are Nothing.

By that token, if Michael Jackson is not locked up, perhaps we can look forward to him taking over the part of the Childcatcher in the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang musical currently playing in the West End?

Re: Michael Jackson's cultural emasculation

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess George Michael releasing "Outside" is also a precedent. But just what could Michael release, after giving us "Bad", "Dangerous", "Criminal" and all the rest? There was a clue in Bashir's documentary. Jackson said, of Gavin's sleepover, "There's just the two of us there, it's safe. Who is the Jack the Ripper in the room?" So I guess his next record has to be "Jack The Ripper".

[waited4thisday.livejournal.com]

no shit. holy hell what a new and innovative theory! How did you come up with this!?