Costume Drama
Image by jaseanton
In Kidderminster's Caffe-Fucking-Nero, while there's some sort of town criers' convention outside the Town Hall, there's an abandoned copy of 'The Times of London'. It's a 'Souvenir Edition', apparently. It's title is 'Costume Drama', the photo gracing its front is of synchronised swimmers, or summat like that.
I'm back at the epicentre of everything that's truly disturbing about life in the 1500s - Caffe-Fucking-Nero, Kidderminster - after going for an expedition round town to get a lighter, which turned out to be a florescent Clipper with a cartoon ladybird on it.
On my way to get the lighter from the market (WH Smith's had a queue of mainstream beasts, as you'd expect, so I walked), I bumped into some people from out of town, dressed in costumes that would look bizarrely out of place, if you really couldn't see by now what this town is really fucking like.
I tried to engage them, as best I could, across time - possibly centuries - trying to convey, with a language they may have understood fragments of, perhaps, that maybe if they got real and realised that dressing up and doing ridiculous fucking things like they were planning to do all day in the epicenter of a town centre that may always see no wrong, despite it all being in their faces possibly ever since the 1500s, amidst the psychosocial, cultural chaos all around them, partly because it's also in them, too, was going to do absolutely fuck all to address what needs fixing in this town, making their shit show even more of a nauseous sham than they'd ever know, when you think about it, with some sense of anything, even briefly...they may begin to wake up from their ages-old power nap.
But the quite elderly chick, all dressed up in this ages-old costume for some idea of 'fun', had her script for the day - maybe it should be a prescription - and I didn't really want to blow her bag after she had a look in her eye that kind of tried to see that there was something beyond her clearly narrow conception of life and the world around her.
I went to get a lighter and decided to walk around town to take a snap of them, so I could do a write up of that little event. But there was more. Fucking shit, this is Kiddy: there's ALWAYS fucking more.
When I got back to outside the Town Hall, where they'd been (guess what - it turned out that they'd only gone to Nero's), they'd disappeared, in a rarely, for here, non-newsworthy sense.
Instead, there was Cyril, from Walsall, and here we are, with Cyril, maybe subconsciously grasping that bell end of his, possibly trying to cling on to hopes for what his particular costume drama should achieve, looking like he wants to stab me in the neck, or gouge my eyes out, and so end all threats to maintream culture, the British Class System and Kidderminster's 'cultural' 'life', with that bell end of his.
Nice bloke, if you don't go too deep in his head (but if you do, just go deeper and realise that it probably isn't his fault, in the end), and he was more than happy for me to take his picture, referring to photographers, even though I had to explain a few things about smartphones, if that's possible, considering the time-space shit.
We talked. Well, by this time, I'd regained that vibe that meaningful communication is almost certainly utterly futile in the epicenter of this place (which can transcent place), so I just asked what I already knew (it can distract them from their suppressed bloodlust, sometimes) about these people not being 'involved' in 'local politics' so he could say that he was just some sort of detached, innocent bystander to anything and everything that he doesn't have a personal, vested interest in.
We laughed. We smiled. I could see he was a bit human, somewhere in there, but that's probably only coz he's from out of town, and human in ways he'll probably never see or develop to counteract the bullshit that gets him to waive a bell end in the 1500s in Kidderminster.
We'd made our way to the doors of some sort of Hell - the Town Hall's entrance. I stood on the doorstep, a bit nervous, just in case I was 'taken'.
What do you know, as we're standing there, my neighbour Bob who's the ceremonial slave to the big-wigs in town, doing stuff like driving the mayor around, emerged probably because he's sold his self-respect yet again to try and be a pillar of the community. Yet again.
I don't mind Bob. He's so wrapped up in superficial parochial crap that he can't really help how he goes on most of the time, often trying to big himself up after being a good guy by trying to make out he's a great playa. What can you do? What he needs to do is develop his human side, something he HAS got, but it's highly vulnerable to the very culture and mindset, he thinks he's all 'above'.
Cyril, who'd revealed everything I thought he would, in advance, about cultish behaviour in small towns, when Bob came on the scene, disappeared into the Town Hall, like Leonardo di Caprio in Titanic, but without the facial expressions or the awareness of what was really happening to him in entering those doors.
Bob proceeded to tell me stuff about the local area. His theory is influenced, in part by a psychosocial mindset that's Kiddy through and through, while, as I've mentioned, trying to act all 'above' Kiddy (which may actually be even more disturbing, if that's possible). He told me stuff - without any sense of irony - that he's really impressed with, like stuff by a religious nut who came here centuries ago (Richard Baxter), in framing his argument that the 'good' times are coming back (?!?) because the people of Kidderminster are going to have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do something to earn money or summat, tapping into a whole heap of cultural bullshit from all over the place. Unfuckingbelievable.
I won't bother going specifically into this in any depth (Bob's head gives me headache, just thinking about it, which is more of a drag coz he's my neighbour), but this ties in with our big-wig, the other day, who, while pointing out that the culture and/or mindset here hasn't changed since the 1500s, saw in this a bogus division, backed up by 'demographics', she believed, that I know, without any shadow of a doubt, they don't understand. They're both tapping into the same idea that there's a clear section of this 'community' in Kidderminster that needs fixing.
Guess what? It's an idea that would play into the hands of the culture and mindset they really think they are above, which they think they understand and, in Bob's case, think they have an answer for. But what they tragically fail to even remotely grasp is that they are within that mindset and culture and, because they've never really got that, they won't even begin to be able to consider how to even think about it all in the ways that would start to improve their approach to it all.
I tried to hint to Bob what I know is going on across this town, things that go beyond the beliefs they peddle, which gets them really thinking that there's some sort of foundation in science for how they picture the problems and solutions around them, without realising they need to address the impact of the culture of the place so they can address their own problems first. The solution, here, is obvious when you talk to them and think about what they say in context.
I gave Bob a few hints and politely destroyed his theories of this town and what needs to be done. Bob tried to brush me and my theory off with 'Oh, you're too clever for me, Jason.' I responded, I'm sure accurately, 'And that points to the problem, Bob'. I don't think he'll even begin to understand that, and I think he's wrapped up in too many personal interests, and too much of the other bullshit, to try. Significantly, also, Bob knows the big-wig well. I'm not sure either of them know I know that, but I do.
Faced with an environment like Kidderminster, some people try education. As I'm NOW writing this, I'm sitting outside Tesco's. I'm looking at this building they're constructing, which they're trying to fob off as an educational establishment in town. There's a big sign: 'The Academy of Kidderminster - opening September 2012'. When I saw someone I'd known from my college days, yesterday, I'd advised her to get her kids educated outside of Kidderminster, but she'd already decided on that. Think about it.
Faced with an environment like Kidderminster, some people try religion. What turned out to be a Jehovah's Witness just engaged me after I asked if she was ok, because she was looking downtrodden (you see that look at times, here, though you see a stressed look, more). She tried to play the game many of these people often do, to get me to listen to the theories they cling on to, sometimes quite desperately.
Although I feel sorry for her, because this woman hasn't got a clue about shit, I just told her the truth: that she clearly didn't know anything about the world or her beliefs and that this inability to understand any of this, had made her vulnerable to such a belief system, where, if she tried to get to grips with herself and the world around her, instead, she maybe wouldn't look so downtrodden or have desperately tried to pull the stunts on me that she tried, in a vain attempt to convert me with a really lame little power game I pretty much sussed out when I was a child, something you need to do if you're going to have any sort of awareness of anything in a place like Kidderminster.
She's really not very smart, this one, but that's her bag and I don't mind, but if I've got an opinion, I see no problem expressing it, at the age of 42, especially with desperate people, like this chick, who try to build up their self-esteem by questioning yours in an attempt to convert you to a comical set of ideas, when you really think about it.
All this could get me into trouble round here, one day. Remember, this is Kidderminster. Dunno, for sure, if there is anything I want to know about what this Jehovah's eyes could've once seen to make her so very dumb. Maladaptation to something made her like this. People aren't born this dumb or desperate. But her eyes aren't cynical, though, so when she was saying cynical things to protect something - what she thinks are her beliefs or why she's really into them - I stuck to the message that none of her cheap pamphlets or cheaper stunts will ever help her begin to grasp. She won't listen. At some stage - and this is blatantly obvious - she's been to some sort of 'Hell' and is now in some sort of 'Heaven'. All of this - the framework of the experiences, what's followed and what maintains her in it all - has pretty much destroyed her in terms of being a fully functioning human being, meaning she's vulnerable to that level of bullshit existence till the very end.
She's symbolically sucking Diet Coke on a straw, now, looking around like a child close to pre-shock about something, but instead of going into it with an approach that would deal with it all, she's on the run, big time. There's an amazing developmental issue being played out, here, without a doubt. She looks like she's trying to avoid all significant thought away from the detrimental comfort of her belief system and, as I looked over, she sweetly put in a polite effort to avoid eye contact, possibly thinking her idea of Jase is lost in her idea of 'modern' society.
What a fucking mess and what a fucking shame that this chick will never sort it out. I know some of her mates quite well, and they really aren't bad people. However, the day after I only questioned the validity of their faith with a subtle hint they got defensive about, they got all patronising the very next day. Take that and imagine what these religious nuts could be capable of to protect their interests and core beliefs. Convert or get running, is all I can say, especially in a place like Kidderminster, coz you're having a fucking laugh if you think anything else round here would stand a chance of saving ya.
Anyway, that chick is beyond lost in the environment she's in, running round, buried in a world of bullshit everywhere she looks, even trying to 'save' the masses in a lame, desperate and damaging attempt to save herself. Maybe she needs a boyfriend. I dunno. Maybe she needs to take on the information about things she's scared of, but suppressing, including the ideas that could allow her to do this, eventually seeing that her fears were ultimately based on yet another layer of bogus beliefs in the mainstream culture.
She needs summat, anyway, and pretty fucking quick, if she's ever going to improve the quality of her life. That thing she needs is a good grasp of herself and the world around her but, because the person she is, and the world around her, are both blocking that with the very bullshit that, in no small part, would have got her into all this in the first place, and keeps her there, she probably isn't ever budging, and neither is her world.
She'll be all right, to a certain extent, though, this one. She can't see shit for shit, and all that isn't doing her any good whatsoever, but at least her similarly deluded mates will stop her freaking out too much if she ever gets close to getting real and, because current conditions are what they are, I suppose that's something.
Faced with an environment like Kidderminster, some people try emmigration. Back at Nero's, a mate from school, Zena - massive bloke, one of those lovable people in life - told me about Canada. This isn't exactly scientific, but he told me that his experience there had shown him a much different world, a healthy world, where the look in people's eyes is different, a bit like the look in Zena's eyes. He loves it there. Good bloke, Zena. He listened to what I said and he sort of got it and got it quite well, as it goes. I told him we're lucky to have got through life here and be the way we are. Not everyone's like that.
I wouldn't go to Canada, although Zena makes it sound nice. I can't see myself leaving Kidderminster, to be honest. But I think what I'm doing, maybe just for me, should help me understand myself and my environment even better, despite the environment trying to detract from that in so many ways. Maybe the aim is to have a good level of psychosocial functioning, so that life's genuinely 'good', rather than just trying, desperately, to believe that.
I think other people could get a sense of this good life, here, and I think they need it. The more I think about the transformational potential of social media, which may easily be lost, if it isn't already, the more I'm wondering how the fuck that potential is going to reach anyone here, on the human level I think it needs to be targetted at. There's maybe too many personal interests along with too much abused logic, misinformation, poor information, poor communication and too many damaging and damaged relationships that are formed by all that, though. Who knows?
Faced with an environment like Kidderminster, some people try alcohol or sex or summat. Two people just walked past as I'm still sitting outside Tesco's. One, an occasional alcoholic whose Mom was a woman who was heavily and desperately into religion, partly because she couldn't get her head around sex, someone I couldn't stand from an early age. He's with an extremely creepy and psychosocially fucked guy (I walked from a joint, earlier, just coz he was there - they're fucking everywhere, eh), who's strung out on psychiatric meds, and walks - or 'slithers' - around, scanning the environment, with snake-like eyes. He has an air of 'coolness' and 'street-wiseness' (there's a barista at Nero's who's been so assimilated into the culture, that he goes on just like this guy), and is friends with a guy who stalked a young chick, I helped out on Weavers Wharf, with me very publicly condemning him and his stalker mate for being lying creeps. These people will talk. Don't they fucking always. And the talk will be distorted. And it will be conservate. And limiting. And, before you know it, that conservative, limiting vibe of people who, all too often, in processes that have become a way of life here, will perpetuate that vibe, distorting anything they can lay their hands on, anything that comes from that chance encounter, which will quickly do the rounds, probably reaching the Wharf, evolving on its way, as it does, in yet another instance of age-old processes, often leading to me observing a bizarre and surreal costume drama, that's often played out in Weavers Wharf, Kidderminster, where it's often the case that, when you walk though the doors of Caffe-Fucking-Nero, it really can be like stepping into a timewarp, right back into the Middle Ages.
It's very little to do with me, but a lot to do with petty personal power, obscured by psychosocial issues so much that, at times, these people have no qualms about putting it right in your face, so influenced are they by the age-old culture and mindset, here. It's almost everywhere, if not everywhere, because it can assimilate people into it so quickly and deeply and because this possibly is a town stuck in the 1500s.
I'm thinking about distorted power and its impact on information along with the relationships that then maintain it all in some sort of vicious circle, and how this town really functions - all over the place - in essentially the same ways, based on essentially the same ideas from essentially a highly ineffective interpretation of, and attitude towards, limited evidence.
The key to all this remove or nullify the culture and mindset that not only abuses information, but leads to a very mindset that is abusive, even in the very mechanisms it uses to protect itself. The key is to find ways to remove or nullify the incentives to distort information within a culture and mindset that is all about petty power and abuse. The reputation of many small towns for corruption across the board, isn't really a fantasy, when you look into it, and these are the core reasons why. The key is to improve people, relationships and processes through a culture of effective communication. It really is that simple.
People struggling with belief systems that have never really worked, even after so long, need this. As do people trying to adapt to or avoid a distorted environment with alcohol or street drugs, which are, in a way, other damaging belief systems. Similarly, with people who turn to psychiatry (yet another belief system), in bizarre desperation, only to spread their psychosocial issues through too often closely assimilating and buying into the very mainstream culture and mindset that led to their psychosocial issues. The conservative, limiting institution that is psychiatry, that has distorted information throughout, is so obviously faith-based, beneath the layers of bullshit, and also so very misguided and broken, it's tough to sort this out, partly because it's such an effective faith-based system.
It all fits, and fits so remarkably, that it's a testimony to how distant we are from being able to adapt to and reform our environment, that so many mainstream faith-based systems have survived for as long as they have and remain as powerful as they are, despite the damage they do and so easily maintain.
It's all about relationships, really, based on the distortion of information for power, too often brought about by, and protected with, forms of abuse. That is how these cultures and mindsets survive so well. That's also why mainstream culture, perhaps the biggest faith-based system of all, has so easily got so many of us to buy into it, even though it doesn't exactly do us any good. The solution is the same: effective communication that gives people the chance to understand themselves, their relationships and their environment better, especially in the age of social media.
Right now, though, I'm thinking mythologies. I'm thinking the 1500s. I'm thinking I need a shit. Then it's back to the costume drama that is Kidderminster, for a coffee and a fag.
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Some good points related to the above are in the following presentation: Dave Meslin - The antidote to apathy on.ted.com/o6UY
On Tour: In Search of the Japanese Self
Image by timtak
Partly as a result of wondering how it is that Japanese can see their relationships with others, including the world, as being internal to themselves, I asked 20 Japanese to rate the extent to which certain things and phenomena are so much you that "If it were changed you would cease to be yourself," and "Not public, or anyone else's." I am not sure if I asked the right questions but I was trying to get to what my subjects thought themselves to be.
I was particularly interested in whether they would deem their view / visual sense percepi as being themselves or out there in the world, as well as the relative selfness (?) of body, self, speech and voice.
I had predicted a greater importance afforded voice since it always seems that in shows featuring suited representations of Japanese cartoon and masked tokusatsu characters, they have to mime to the voice of the standards voice actor for them to be felt to be the real thing. There is also an Bean Bread Man (Anpanman) episode in which he and Germ (Baikin) Man swap bodies such that the mind of Bean Bread Man inhabits the body of Germ Man, and vice versa. The voice of the two post-swap, however, indicates the mind inhabiting the body. After the body swap (even though presumably speaking with Germ Man's vocal cords) Germ Man speaks with the voice of the voice-actor that voices Bean Bread Man.
The results, shown above, show that Japanese identify most strongly with their head, followed by their feelings, internal self speech, dreams, body, voice, and finally vision. Vision was felt to be way down the list, below the mid point of the scale (1-5) where 5 meant entirely essential and private, whereas 1 meant inessential and public. All the same they were half way to avowing that their vision might be private and that the wold they see might not be shared with anyone else.
I should have included some other, but less, self phenomena such as clothes, name, possessions, home, self-facts (such as being from Saga obviously a 1 on the "not public" part of the scale, but perhaps important to ones identity.)
I think that I should also make the scale a little longer 1-7 perhaps to allow for more variation between the top (head?) and bottom (possessions?) of the scale.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in the above graph is the reversal of the relative heights of the blue and red lines for the three items on the right. It is clear that my two questions are different. In the case of dreams for instance, one might imagine oneself continuing to exist as oneself without dreaming, and yet feel it very strange if anyone else saw, or could see ones dreams. It was interesting however that both voice and vision should be evaluated in the same way. Would I be more surprised if I suddenly had another voice, or if someone else had the same voice as me? I (incorrectly) feel that I have quite a neutral accent, so I am not sure I would be all that surprised to meet someone with my voice.
Finally, I am tempted to think that other people see the same colours as I do, and share the same visual field as I, but I would find it very strange if my experience went dark, if I were to become a philosophical Zombie. Perhaps my subjects' lack of surprise referred to the possibility that they should go blind.
Addendum
Upon reading Mochizuki(2006) I become convinced that the Kanjin (Hamaguchi, 1997) or lately interdependent self (Markus and Kitayama, 1991) that contains relationships, or parts of others, can be understood from attending to the field of vision that Mach (1987) sees as being the fundamental stuff of the universe: subjective experience. If one accords experience as having existence then it is at once ones own as it is populated by the phenomena of ones experience, a space shared between the presumed physical causes of the phenomena and the presumed subject 'having' the sensations. But as Mach himself points out, even the latter is a construction, and the sensations or where they take place, the "primordial space" (Mochizuki, ibid).
A difference (perhaps) between Wasuji and Mach is that the latter emphasises that different senses have different "domains," whereas the Japanese seem to see them all as all part of the same fishbowl of experience. While the fishbowl of experience consciousness may analogue, having no clear seams between its constituent domains, it seems unclear why one would say that it is a space any more than a time, since the phonetic space is extended in time, unless one is speaking more metaphorically of a field or space-time. I get the impression from reading the Japanese that they are emphasizing the visual (just as much as Westerners are emphasizing the phonetic) by their use of spatial metaphors.
If one is ones "climate" or is ones environment then this is surely going to effect ones attitude to tourism. In a sense it may make tourism impossible because as space, you (the Japanese) will be in their own space when they get to their destination. This is the reason why I think that Japanese travel to places with a name, name spots, (See Nenzi, 2004) even to "Ruins of Identity" (Hudson,1999) because they are going in search of names and signs rather than in search of sights (Urry, 2002). The Japanese have been doing this for a long time. Religious tourism was, and remains in search of symbols (Amulets, Fuda) that they brought back a plenty, and mass pilgrimage was brought about when such symbols were rumoured to be falling from the sky. The Japanese stilll go in search of symbols, collecting them at stamp rallies echoing the stamps reciieved at shrines, and when they go on tour now they have to read the guide book and get a guide to name and explain the sights for them. I guess that if there were no name as the places they visited they could just imagine them and be done with it. There is NOTHING to see at some Japanese famous places (Nenzi, ibid, Hudson, ibid).
This reversal of sight and symbol takes place also in the things that Japanese send home as proof of their having gone. The Japanese take a photo of themselves at the place stamping their face, space on the namespot, whereas Westerners write their narrative on a picture postcard stamping themselves on the sight. I am not sure why we all have an urge to do this. It is as if we are in search of each other's selves, westerners go to find spaces, Japanese to find narratives. Or perhaps it is to find the part of ourselves that we have lost.
Thinking of Stamp Rallies made me think of stamp collecting, philately. I used to collect stamps from all round the world but I would not have gone to get them. Again I feel a reversal is going on ini the things that Japanese and British boys like to collect without leaving their home towns. I wanted to collect symbols of distant places. My son wants to collect the faces or figures of Ultramen, Pokemon; and Bakugan, the faces of persons imaginary from distant stars.
I am still not sure what is going on.
From a Lacanian point of view....
The self is created out of a dual identification with name and image. In the west there is no generalized viewer so identification with self-image is always fraught with dependency and fragmentation issues. The possibility of an Auto gaze is almost (Totten, 2002) everywhere rejected and gazes even if simulated are presumed to be the gazes of others (Cohen & Gunz, 2002). The voice however is thought (in the West) to be essentially provide a mirror, one only has to speak to hear oneself as another says Mead (1967) and Lacan. Language provides Westerners with a Super-Addressee, Other, Generalised Other. It is generally assumed that it is only language that has this generalising, universalising, third, or fourth person tendency. In the West, those that are heard can be heard by God or themselves (see my critique of Vaz and Bruno 2003, below) and those that are watched are watched by oppressive authoritarian others.
But in Japan people learn to see themselves, not just from the point of view of specific others and authorities (Foucalt, 1977; see Vaz and Bruno, 2003 for a critique), but with an "I-witness" self-loving, auto-gaze of the seeing Other.
In both cultures, however, there is also a seed of the other modality. The mirror image is the thing that gets in there and creates the primary narcissism, that vectors the child's movement into self-hood. The phoneme itself contains a corporeal trace (Derrida) that Western philosophers are always trying to banish by raising straw men such as writing (Plato) and Speech Acts(Austin). We Westerners almost succeed in sublimation, transcendence, getting all the stuff out of the symbol.
And it is symbols that allow the Japanese child to "henshin" into a self. The self-symbolising stage is the mirror stage that the Japanese must grow out of. Susano whines to Amaterasu in ameru-y language misrepresenting the situation, mis-quoting his father. Language is an unreliable mirror. Language should be swept away in rituals of purity to leave only an empty mirror, pure(Nishida) uncongitized, primordial space, pur res extensa pure in res media(Kasulis).
And so it is with Westerners, and Lacanian psychoanalysis I think attempting to cure the patient of mirror identifications, to rid them of nasty narcissistic imaginary (cultural pun) identifications. To Westerners the image is "imaginary," mere image (Aristotle, see Brenkman)
So perhaps tourism is an attempt to show the self that the other modality is out there, far away, not part of self. Those names are out there, not in here. Those images can be seen in foreign parts. By writing postcards about alter images out there the Western tourist is perhaps trying to triumph over the image, persuade himself that the world or at least his own, can all be spoken. Perhaps the Japanese tourist taking photos of herself at name spots, is showing herself and the world that all the names can be seen to bring them all into the light. We are trying to collect, and at the same time reject, exteriorize that which we are missing?
In an absolutely excellent paper, Vaz and Bruno explain how the Auto-Gaze is seen as negative in Western scholarship, as internalisation without identification (p276). They state the problem that while we internalise an eye, there is another part of ourselves that the eye can not see. As long as this is the case, that the eye of the panopticon is internatlised, but there is another part of us that can not be seen, but is still something with which we identify, then we will experience the eye as oppressive. They then quote Ian Hacking complaining that surveillance does not see the internal monologue. This is a straightforward explanation of why one can not have both kinds of self without feeling dominated. As long as one identifies with ones internalisations, as long as one is at one with them, then they care for the self. But as long as there is another one of you (I am writing about myself!) then there is conflict. Vaz and Bruno go on to argue that the reason for the sense of self-oppression, -- the belief in the the dystopian/negativity of self-surveillance-- is the belief in a normalising power such as God. Thus far they are correct. Westerners do feel the gaze to be oppressive because they do believe (sub consciously at least) in a logocentric listening God. The belief in the logocentric god allows them to believe in themselves as narrative. And the belief in themselves as narrative splits their mind into not three but four parts the (nasty) surveyor, themselves as seen (docile body), the hearer (God), and their internal monologue (their true self). Japanese do not feel surveillance to be oppressive since they do not feel that there is anyone listening, and that their internal monologue is comprised of dead sounds.The Japanese do not have Ian Hacking's problem, because there is only the seeing and the seen.There is however a normalising power (a God, that sees) but this does not cause problems as long as it is transcendental, loving, and something that one wishes to identify with. An internalisation is always going to be a dis-identification, unless it is of a deity and not of any real other.
Westerners tour to be invisible. Japanese tour to be nameless. Perhaps I can get in here a bit about how Japanese never greet other Japanese when they meet each other on tour. They wish to be nameless on tour. The names are out there, not in here.
And when put in this way, as a war between different modes of self, then real physical animosity seems inevitable. Western culture in Japan is bound to be encouraging (yes, definately at my workplace) a linguistic panopticon, a surveying ear into Japanese society and fracturing the Japanese self as CCD cameras (made in Japan or China??? nah, I can't go that far) fracture Britons. More tourism is needed, until the structure of the tour itself can be apprehended in its full horror. We need more, darker, tourism.
Post script
Japanese superheros such as gao-ranger, one piece, and dragon ball, like Japanese tourists often go around in search of symbols too.
PPS
The way in which the symbol acts in the same way as the mirror is illustrated by the Bakugan ball/drago and card that sit on the table next too me. A sphere (the soul is a sphere in Japan) is rolled onto a card and transforms into a body of a dragon. As later lacan says, the symbolic is required to allow iditification with the image to allow Japanese believe that they are embodied minds, that their field of vision is in their body. The symbol is that admixture of externality and objectivity that allows themselves to do the mental back flip.
And then I read the Semiotics of Tourism from Culler 1988 and find myself very confused. Have I been speaking utter bs? Quite possibly. This usually keeps me from writing anything at all.And it is sometime since I read McCannell which I need to read again too. I was thinking more of Urry's emphasis upon sight.
1) Western Tourists are semitocians - they want to see and translate the sights in to meaning.
2) The sights are Marked but the Western tourists want to avoid places with too many markers that are "encrusted with renown," They want to give their own meanings. They want to take an ethnologist with them they seek authenticity so as to convert it into hackneyed meanings.
3) Japanese tourists do not seem to mind renown but instead seek it. Empty sights do not even need markers. They seem to want to be given meanings rather than to interpret them.
4) In both cases there is a enjoyment of something like, "The measuring up of the thing[sight] to the preformed symbolic complex" but perhaps in Japan it is the other way around, "the measuring up of the symbolic complex to the preformed image. " "It was just like I had imagined it said one of Nenzi's diarists.
Zotero is great for creating bibliographies but it often does not add the URL.
Ames, R. T., Kasulis, T. P., & Dissanayake, W. (1998). Self as image in Asian theory and practice. State Univ of New York Pr.
Cohen, D., & Gunz, A. (2002). As seen by the other...: perspectives on the self in the memories and emotional perceptions of Easterners and Westerners. Psychological Science, 13(1), 55–59.
Culler, J. D. (1988). Framing the sign. Univ. of Oklahoma Pr.
Hamaguchi, E. (1997). A Methodological Basis for Japanese Studies—with Regard to‘ Relatum’ as Its Foundation. Japan Review, 9, 41–63.
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
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Mochizuki, T. (2006). Climate and Ethics: Ethical Implications of Watsuji Tetsuro’s Concepts:‘ Climate’ and‘ Climaticity’. Philosophia Osaka, 1, 43–55.
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Vaz, P., & Bruno, F. (2003). Types of self-surveillance: From abnormality to individuals ‘at risk’. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 272–291. www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/self.pdf (highly recommended analysis of why visual surveillance has been seen as negative, dystopian "internalization without identification")
Project 365 Day 14: Focus
Image by Greg McMullin
14-01-10 After yesterdays lack of inspiration came a flood of new ideas! Well more of a trickle really. Today's shot was inspired this picture which posted on Reddit yesterday so I can not take responsibility for the Idea. I picked up my camera manual this morning to read my daily page and my eyes fell upon the above sentence. You know in cartoons when a light-bulb suddenly appears above the head of the protagonist? Ding! Anyway I clicked on the macro lens and snapped a few frames off. Processing wise I ended up using Silver Efex Pro to convert to black and white with a +1ev bias. Then I messed with the curves, added a slight graduated filter to the bottom of the image and gave it a vignette in Lightroom. I'm quite pleased how it turned out.
Manual Page Read: Page 57 - Shooting with the program Auto (Obviously!)
Images Viewed: Thanks to strobist for introducing me to the work of Kevin Cooley. .
Other Inspiration: Getting up early! I've got up at 7:30am (early for me!) two days straight. It leaves me time to Study, put effort into the 365 and be able to get to work and train staff.
View On Black
On Twitter.
My 365 blog - greg365.mcmull.in
Photographed
Image by Gamma-Ray Productions
Old fair from when I went to high school. Photographer from the yearbook committee taking the music department's photograph. I wasn't on the yearbook committee, or I'd be the one in this photo taking a photo, and this photo wouldn't exist as there'd be no random photographer in the school such as myself.
I got very far in converting this photograph into a cartoon like my hunting photo, but never finished it.
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