10/25/2005 05:28:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|Through an internet linkage process that still remains a mystery to me, I came across an article that addresses, perhaps unwittingly, some interesting issues of both recombinance and the politics of aesthetics and eroticism. With disclaimers that it includes some pictures that are, in the parlance of our times, NSFW, and that I do not vouch for the journalistic integrity (or racial/sexual politics) of the source, I direct you an article from Net News Asia.
The article addresses the publication of a Nazi-themed photo spread in the adult magazine Akasi. The photos (some of which are included in this article) depict an Asian woman clad (and unclad) in a Nazi uniform. In various images, she stands in front of a Nazi flag and salutes, emerges from a Wehrmacht tank, and engages in some hanky panky with, if NNA's information is correct, a stuffed doll modeled after Nazi general Heinz Guderian.
The article classifies Akasi as a "Nipponophile" magazine, which sounds like it should denote a fetish for Japanese people and things, but I think the term may be intended as a catch-all term for the broader sexual fetishization of Asian women by non-Asian men. It's unclear whether non-Asian men are the publisher's intended primary audience, but it doesn't seem like a leap to assume that some portion of the readership fits this bill. The author of the NNA article contends that this particular photoshoot is the latest instance of a broader trend of Nazi fetishization in Hong Kong. While this is not a phenomenon that I was familiar with, a cursory google search provided some other examples in Hong Kong and South Korea (1, 2, and with another disclaimer about the site's regressive political bent, 3).
In most of these examples, the people responsible for the display of these Nazi symbols claimed that the displays did not indicate either fascist or anti-Semitic leanings - that the Nazi regalia was being used exclusively for its aesthetic sensibility.
So many questions. I'll present them in three groups:
1. Recombinance and Responsibility. It seems easy to claim that the the use of Nazi symbols and artifacts in any of these instances was in bad taste, but is it reasonable to argue that such displays are unethical? In other words, to what extent (or in what cases) does the recombinant use of imagery necessariy propagate the original creator's intentions?
2. Fetishism and Fascism. What is the meaning of the sexualization of Nazi imagery in the Akasi case? Is it fair and/or accurate to claim that these photos also represent the sexualization of genocide? How might this relate to the ideas addressed in Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies? Is there interplay here between the aforementioned fetishization of Asian women and the fetishized Nazi imagery?
3. Eros and Imperialism. What is the significane of the fact that this phenomenon is occuring in Hong Kong - a nation which also suffered under Axis imperialism (though not in a genocidal context)? How does it compare to an American cultural artifact such as Newt Gingrich's sexually-charged alternative history novel, 1945 ?|W|P|113028044139524353|W|P|Genocide, Eros, and Deuling Fetishisms|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/24/2005 08:11:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|
Here is a digital photo I took. Alter it through any digital or non-digital processes and send us back a copy of your version.|W|P|113019932003765660|W|P|Photo Alteration Project|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/24/2005 12:35:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|Here's an interesting question regarding the issue of participatory culture.
The New York Times has an article on the emergence of blogs dedicated to the discussion of individual brands. Is it reasonable to suggest that sites, which are apparently unauthorized by the represented brand companies, offer a broader range of discourse than the official branding undertaken by the companies in question? Or do these sites simply aid in reifying the artificial notion of the brand-identified lifestyle?|W|P|113017652782252794|W|P|Brand Blogs|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com12/27/2005 01:41:16 AM|W|P|Mark|W|P|cool link, I added it to:
http://del.icio.us/MarkDilley/AdPlacementResearch10/21/2005 12:13:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|Something really very interesting here.
A new web-based talk show, The Spartan Life, is begin hosted entirely within an online video game - I think it's Halo.
The first episode, which you can watch (QT or WM), involves a fair amount of discussion regarding the setting of a online game, virtual reality, and what these settings mean for the future of movies and books.
While the host seems to be adept at navigating the game-space, the guests are not, prompting the host's comment, "It does take time for our guests to adapt their motor skills entirly to their thumbs."
Both the ideas discussed and the setting are fascinating, and a form of recombinance that I had never considered before - a virtual space being simultaneously kidnapped (in a sense) and deconstructed.|W|P|112991167856658484|W|P|Discourse as Battleground|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/19/2005 08:40:00 AM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|Oh dear. It seems that Mrs. Bandwidth and Romance have let this blog go to seed over the last two weeks. Well, to keep things current, let's have a look at what's news in the world of culture production.
ITEM! Sony BMG is being sued for a its payola scheme (paying mainstream radio to play their songs more often). An independent label, TSR (which does not seem to have a website), is bringing the suit, claiming that, "independent labels were 'systematically excluded' from radio play lists as a result of record company tactics."
ITEM! ABC is so desperate to keep people glued to the tube on Saturday nights that it's made an call for programming suggestions. The linked article (from CNN) partially chalks the decline in Saturday night viewership to the available content, pointing out that the American public now has more television spectacle options to choose from.
And finally, some SUGGESTED READING and a DISCUSSION TOPIC! Have a look at Sven Birkerts' Gutenberg Elegies, specifically the chapter on hypertext (viewable in full here). Birkerts, writing in 1994, addresses the potential for hypertext to displace classical, physical, linear text. Personally, I'm not terribly interested in the notion of "the death of the book", as I don't think there's any reason to think that either one of these media should have to vanquish the other. However, it is interesting to note the author's views on the process of reading hypertext, and why he feels it may be a fundamentally inferior experience to reading a linear, physical text. Is this argument compelling? In what way might the development of virtual text in the last eleven years made Birkerts' argument obsolete (or, I suppose, bolstered it)?|W|P|112972814425148654|W|P|In The Headlines|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/03/2005 10:19:00 AM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|A comment by Victor on my earlier post about the Jet Blue incident got me thinking about the description of news media television discourse offered by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. I thought it might be worthwhile to post a short excerpt here for discussion.Our television set keeps us in constant communion with the workd, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is unalterable. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.
To say in still another way: Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows twhich provide us daily with fragments of dragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the newscasters to "join them tomorrow." What for? One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for months of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters' invitation because we know that the "news" is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to say. Everything about a news show tells us this - the good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter, the exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage, the attractive commercials - all these and more suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for weeping. A news show, to put it plainly, is a format for entertainment, not for education, reflection, or catharsis.
|W|P|112835017746821323|W|P|Airborne Amusement|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/05/2005 07:22:28 PM|W|P|Anonymous|W|P|I think of TV as presenting a spectacle, which seems different than entertainment. It has been a long time since I read Guy Debord, and it was in a third language, so I will not claim to have derived a coherent definition from his theses.
Still, it seems like the best catch-all term for some aspects of a society with pervasive communications technology, persistent advertising, strong consumerism, and a ginormous culture industry.
Though it could be easily overstated, people often do have their world interpreted for them -- not necessarily directly by "experts" or pundits but through their passive particpation in a series of visual representations of social reality. This trend and the technology associated with it are very useful for persuasion and suggestion, which I suppose is why they are so tied to advertising. I am not certain that the prevalence of persuasion and suggestion amounts to a more ideological form of cultural expression, or if that aspect of society has such an impact on the way people see the world. Guess I have not thought about it deeply.
How would I know, I don't own a TV. --One Tough Queer10/06/2005 01:53:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|Nice to hear from you, OTQ.
I don't think I'm clear on your distinction between entertainment and spectacle. Could you lay out how you differentiate (coherently or not) between the two terms?10/07/2005 10:57:56 PM|W|P|Anonymous|W|P|A damn good question, I was avoiding it. This response may simply reflect my limited notion of entertainment, which I see as a diversion, engaging a relatively limited part of the imagination.
I can imagine a cult leader regularly employing spectacles -- some impressive display, or highly-embellished representation of reality -- in capturing the imagination of adherents. But can one do that with entertainment? For me the term spectacle is flexible enough to include a public excecution; it would be sarcastic to claim that one is entertainment.
While someone can treat a television program as entertainment, I am more interesting in the way it assigns meaning to its symbols and images, giving those things a reality of their own and influencing the way people see their everyday life. Entertainment does not have this quasi-mystical dimension; it asserts few if any claims on how to assign meaning in the world.
Did I go too far? Felt like I was on to something. --OTQ10/03/2005 09:39:00 AM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|I've got a couple new tracks up at the Beastmaster Romance page.
The first one is something I've been sitting on for a while - a remix of "Silver Tiles" by Matt & Kim. I think it starts out pretty strong, though I'm not so enthusiastic about the ending I've got. I don't seem to be putting any more work into it at this point, so I thought I might as well put it up in case anybody else wanted to take parts of it for reformulation.
The second item is a collaborative piece I call "Robots, Locusts". It was instigated though Tribe.net, where new pal Dragon Fly gave me some lyrics to compose a track around. It's more organic/acoustic than the Beastmaster's usual fare.
Hope you enjoy them!|W|P|112834773620431843|W|P|Two New Tunes|W|P|romance@recombinanthumandragon.com10/02/2005 12:53:00 PM|W|P|Mr. Bandwidth|W|P|Last night was Paris's nuit blanche, French for "allnighter," when all sorts of establishments - bars, clubs, museums, public buildings, etc. - stay open extra-late and set up special activities to do any time until 7am. The night was especially lit up by a whole bunch of installations and projections throughout the city, often just projected onto the side of a building or onto the street. So it was a perfect occassion to grab some screen captures, following Mr. Romance's recent lead.
running from one camera, captured by another
self-portrait (channel 4)
|W|P|112827428014480458|W|P|screen capture romance|W|P|bandwidth@recombinanthumandragon.com10/02/2005 02:20:43 PM|W|P|Mr. Romance|W|P|So the second capture there shows a top view of Mr. Bandwidth, with the top of his head in the lower left hand corner of the light section and his arms extended outward toward the "CH4". However, when I looked at the picture, I thought I was supposed to be looking at a picture of his face, which I somehow created from the visual information there. I've remixed the picture in order to explain better. You can see it here
Talk about the audience recreating the work through viewing.