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imomusPop 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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-12 03:58 pm (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-12 04:11 pm (UTC)"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."