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Akihabara Majokko Princess
So the director McG recently teamed up with the Japanese artist-auteur Murakami Takashi to create a music video to the 80s hit "Turning Japanese" starring Kirsten Dunst, set in Akihabara, the otaku mecca (which isn't really actually an otaku mecca anymore, but that's another story).
The video is NSFW, because Akiba is NSFW.
The video features a lot of random passersby as well as Murakami himself. On one level it's completely awesome and on another it's jaw-dropping in a WTFBBQ kind of way; I really do urge you to watch it.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merin_chan and I discussed it a bit here on her LJ; having thought about it some more, it seems clear to me that Murakami, who really is Andy Warhol 2.0, is continuing his signature shtick of producing otaku-teki/type products for consumption by non-otaku audiences despite the fact that he is not an otaku himself (and yes I do find this problematic). Also, the video is clearly simultaneously both in earnest and (self-)parodic. I think this comes through clearest in the closeups on Dunst--check out her eyebrows! A central characteristic of the ideal otaku-teki girl-woman is a combination of sexual innocence with a physiologically impossible body--so you'll see girls with size FF boobs busting out of their miniscule underwear wearing embarrassed, self-conscious expressions. Dunst's character is clearly not innocent, which subverts the trope in an interesting way.
There's a comment to be made here about the convergence of the perception of Japan via animanga with Japanese self-imagery in animanga in the figure of Dunst lip-syncing to a song about turning Japanese at the site of the very nexus of the Japanese government's Cool Japan promotional campaign, as well as something to be said about race and (self-?)appropriation, but both these comments are beyond my mental capacity at the moment.
The video is NSFW, because Akiba is NSFW.
The video features a lot of random passersby as well as Murakami himself. On one level it's completely awesome and on another it's jaw-dropping in a WTFBBQ kind of way; I really do urge you to watch it.
merin_chan and I discussed it a bit here on her LJ; having thought about it some more, it seems clear to me that Murakami, who really is Andy Warhol 2.0, is continuing his signature shtick of producing otaku-teki/type products for consumption by non-otaku audiences despite the fact that he is not an otaku himself (and yes I do find this problematic). Also, the video is clearly simultaneously both in earnest and (self-)parodic. I think this comes through clearest in the closeups on Dunst--check out her eyebrows! A central characteristic of the ideal otaku-teki girl-woman is a combination of sexual innocence with a physiologically impossible body--so you'll see girls with size FF boobs busting out of their miniscule underwear wearing embarrassed, self-conscious expressions. Dunst's character is clearly not innocent, which subverts the trope in an interesting way. There's a comment to be made here about the convergence of the perception of Japan via animanga with Japanese self-imagery in animanga in the figure of Dunst lip-syncing to a song about turning Japanese at the site of the very nexus of the Japanese government's Cool Japan promotional campaign, as well as something to be said about race and (self-?)appropriation, but both these comments are beyond my mental capacity at the moment.
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steve knew the band, the vapors, who made that song in the 80s and said they were assholes.
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Also, I'm not sure Dunst's precocious character can be called subversive. She's just doing the American pop-idol persona (Britney, "not that innocent," blah why can I quote that) in Jpop cosplay. Her behaviour was one place where I thought "yes, this is an American directing a video on Japanese pop culture" as well as "yes, this is Murakami being his usual 'otaku-teki' self." It *is* a strange hybrid. But maybe it's also a reminder that "hybridity" and "self-consciousness" aren't automatically radical.
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http://video.filestube.com/watch,3a2038aa0e80ce9003ea/Kirsten-Dunst-Turning-Japanese.html
That's a good point re: the American pop-idol thing (can you tell I don't listen to pop music?). Definitely a strange hybrid, and I agree re: hybridity not being inherently radical.
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