holy superflat! Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s newest video!
you guys! vote for this design! it is great and designed by ray b!
club kid / harajuku couture worn by nicki minaj at the 2011 VMAs
for the record, i think she is working it. (fuck the haters)
-eric
A time lapse video of the dismantling of the Real-G 1:1 real size scaled model of the RX-78-2 Gundam in Odaiba near Tokyo.
Conversations on Superflat (part 2)
After our Superflat panel at Anime Boston, we received a few emails from readers with really interesting questions about the movement and the presentation. Here are some excerpts from these conversations:
reader: it never felt to me that Murakami was condemning cutesy or fetishized art in and of itself, but the ridiculous abundance of it in Japanese culture (virtually EVERYTHING has a cute mascot there) and people’s intense obsession with such escapism that they resort to If you look at the personal blog of one of Murakami’s otaku friends that I mentioned a while ago, he’s into a lot of weird/cute/creepy otaku things and draws manga containing fanservice of underage girls. BUT, he also has an active social life and an actual family that he supports, and leaves his strange interests in the realm of fiction - he doesn’t seem at all like someone Murakami would condemn, despite whatever weird anime things he might be into.
There are people who were very confused by Murakami’s efforts to defend a loli fanservice-filled manga during last year’s anime/manga censoring fiasco, because they assumed that Murakami was simply against such things because he deems them as being harmful in the same way that Americans deem them as being harmful (THEY LEAD TO CHILDREN BEING RAPED IN REAL LIFE etc etc) when in reality I don’t think his problem isn’t with the existence of such things, but with its sheer prevalence (there is Shonen Jump manga aimed at young boys with loli fanservice in it) and people’s intense obsession with it that turns them into severely broken people. With some effort someone can easily balance strange anime fandom with a decent, productive life, and chances are Murakami is okay with such people. What I’m saying is that Murakami is clearly far, far from having a Miyazaki-esque view of moe and loli and whatnot. But due to their gut reaction to such things, people instantly assume that Murakami is simply against such art in any form and views it as inherently immoral and wrong.
It should also be noted that one of Murakami’s superflat artists, as I mentioned earlier, is a self-described “lolicon”, and when asked if his work contains he instantly responded with a “no”. And really, all his work shows this off this theme - it’s sometimes intentionally distorted and strange in a traditional superflat way and can be seen as a self parody (i.e. “man, I’m pretty freaking weird”) but sometimes it’s simply delivered straight-facedly without any attempt at parody: (NSFW!) http://www.hintmag.com/artcrawl/artcrawl.php - if Murakami was completely revolted by such things, he wouldn’t support his protege in showing his art to the world; art containing the sexualization of underage girls and boys that he admits is not societal criticism, but simply about “releasing his fantasy world through his work, instead of acting it out in real life.”.
While Murakami himself is most likely not into these things, some of his artists ARE and don’t really make any efforts to hide it. He’s also a huge fan of Evangelion (and its creator Hideaki Anno), a show that sexualizes the hell out of its 14 year old characters (with Anno’s approval no less - he’s the one who decided to make Asuka’s plugsuit even more fanservicey in 2.22). But once again, Evangelion also has an anti-‘otaku basement dweller’ message and is meant to show off just how bad people will end up if they avoid society and facing their problems head-on. A lot of people see this mix of unironic fanservice and otaku criticism as being completely hypocritical, but I don’t necessarily see it as such - with some effort, you can be a nerd and be into some weird things to an extent while still having a fulfilling social life.
Also, one more question - in that video, when you listed works that you guys view as being ‘superflat’ like FLCL and Persona 3, was it just your own personal thoughts with no real connection to Murakami and other self-described superflat artists? Because as far as I know, FLCL wasn’t really associated with Murakami or his art (Murakami only seems interested in Gainax’s older work), let alone Persona 3 and 4 - am I wrong here?
eric: At a certain point we have to remember that an artists work is separate from their personal life, nor does the fact that Murakami has friends who are striaght up otaku disprove that there is an element of critique in Murakamis work. If we take the Andy Warhol example again (and I am really pushing heavily on this point because I think it is important), we can observe that while Warhol was friends with a number of socialites and celebrities, going as far as to paint personalized portraits for/of them, he was never not criticizing the condition of their social status. The Leo Castelli portrait in particular is often studied for this reason. In fact his relationships with these celebrities itself was a form of criticism: he himself became a super-flattened ever-bored persona, the unsatisfied voyeur; his entire personality was a form of critique, a scathing hyper-exaggeration, a character type. And yet, it was 100% sincere: he truly loved celebrities, he truly loved being famous. Murakami may (or may not!) being playing a similar game: his relationships with otaku, his status as an otaku are itself a manifestation of his criticisms, an invented half-ironic half-sincere persona developed in order to criticize and celebrate, to understand (and appreciate!) from within, to de-construct and re-construct. Whether or not Murakami has friends who are actual lolicom fans or moe mangaka seems less signficant than the semiotics of the pieces themselves which, in my opinion, are not harmless symptoms of kawaii culture but instead point to the hidden pernicious machinations of kawaii culture. Murakami’s defense of loli art, when seen from this perspective is not confusing at all, it makes perfect sense. Nor could I really picture any artist, even if condemning a certain artistic style for being pernicious, advocating any kind of censorship. This kind of tactic is seen by a number of post-modern artists: J.G. Ballard was put on trial for obscenity in the early 80s (forgive me, that date might be wrong?); when asked if his literature is obscene he replied “Of Course! It is supposed to be!”
If Murakami is playing this kind of semiotic game, then the question of irony is never absent, nor can it never be fully sussed out. If Murakami is both celebrating and critiquing simultaneously, then he could easily be doing neither or nothing at all: his art is simply an examination, affectless, meaningless, lacking depth, or super-flattened. The term super-flat, super-flat art itself, is necessarily self-reflexive in this way.
When commenting upon Evangelion you say: “A lot of people see this mix of unironic fanservice and otaku criticism as being completely hypocritical, but I don’t necessarily see it as such - with some effort, you can be a nerd and be into some weird things to an extent while still having a fulfilling social life.” This is the exact stance I think that Murakami is trying to take in all of his art: otaku criticism and unironic fan-service presented simultaneously.
My memory is a bit fuzzy but I am pretty sure there was a video showing (or maybe a special screening of?) FLCL during the original superflat exhibit in NYC a few years ago. That being said, our presentation, and a general ongoing project I’ve had (possibly being developed into an MA / PhD thesis?!) is to expand and reinterpret Murakami’s use of the word/concept superflat so as to better understand the post-modern condition. We were/are attempting to investigate the concept of super-flat as either symptomatic of the post-modern condition or an integral tactic for understanding the machinations of this condition. Questions that are included in this investigation would be: what cultural texts could be better examined from a super-flat lens? To what extent are super-flat products the result of the post-modern flattening of affect, late-capitalist consumer culture, and 21st century technology? With these questions in mind, we could easily see things outside of Murakami’s scope as super-flat: persona 3-4 were included in the presentation as an example of this, along with the american vinyl toy industry (Kidrobot) and the rise of American celebrities like Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga. We were/are attempting to understand the ways in which the super-flattening of concepts like high/low art and east/west art manifested. So Persona 3/4 worked out to be a great example: the way in which the simulated experience of a (simulation of the idea of) “Japanese” childhood is sold to American audiences is, in a word, superflat.
[as always: feel free to send us requests, questions, ideas, commissions, or inquiries by email or ask box!]
Conversations on Superflat (part 1)
After our panel at Anime Boston we had a number of interesting questions about Superflat and the theoretical discourse surrounding anime. Here are is a little bit of some of these conversations:
Reader: Well, first thing’s first. As someone who has not read Murakami’s books, I’m above all very curious about a certain preconception about Superflat that seems extremely common among westerners: that the entire movement, at its core, is meant to be a protest against things like otaku fetishism (mainly lolicon) and consumerism. This is such a common idea among English-speaking Murakami fans that people even go as far as to dissect his commercial works (like Superflat Monogram of all things, which is literally a COMMERCIAL) to find an anti-commercialism message. The “anti-moe/loli” thing seems equally misguided considering Murakami himself is friends with and has over the years supported the artistic careers of many people who draw that sort of thing, including a man who is a self-described “lolicon” (something that Murakami himself pointed out).
Has Murakami himself EVER made a single statement implying such a view of the ‘intention’ of Superflat artists? Or is it just a result of a lot of the work that he and his cronies have made? Because really, there’s a huge difference between making fun of something and aiming to outright protest against it and label it as something inherently harmful that must go.
eric: Those are all important points. What needs to be thought about is the way that pop art, all pop art including super-flat, functions semiotically. That is to say: there is always a double gesture happening, at once condemning and celebrating, simultaneously. If we take the claim seriously that Murakami is the Warhol of Japan, then we must remember that Warhol, too, was not outright damning celebrity or consumer culture (or in Murakami’s case, otaku/moe/kawaii culture) — it was always a mix of critique and worship, never just one or the other.
It would certainly be interesting if Murakami was some kind of staunch anti-capitalist who used his art to skewer late capitalist Japanese consumer culture, meanwhile pocketing vast sums of money and laughing his way to the bank, but I don’t think that is the case, nor do I think there is enough evidence in the art to suggest that. Murakami clearly has a vested interest in the collapsing of low art and high art, and that interest is fueled, at the end of the day, by dollar bills and not just postmodern ideology.
That being said, to suggest that Murakami is some kind of fetishist or otaku himself, recapitulating the tropes of anime and manga for his own amusement and enjoyment, without any kind of criticism, is equally as ridiculous. By looking at specific examples, his atom bomb series or ever his larger scaled D.O.B. paintings, it is easy to see how cliches of kawaii culture are transformed into grotesque versions of themselves, vomiting and masturbating, so that the audience does not get settled into a state of comfort or joy about these cliches.
Postmodern art, including Murakami, cannot deliver a message without ambiguity, by its very nature: no meta-narratives are present, by definition; there is no grand moral structure, lesson, or singular message or meaning to take away from any of the pieces. It would be too cliche to JUST celebrate or JUST critique, therefore the only interesting art (to me and other postmodernists) is art that does both.
Let me know if that helps clarify your questions. It is very possible we came across sounding like the typical western art critics you speak of, but that certainly was not the idea.
Sam: I took it upon myself to actually look for any articles and/or interviews featuring Murakami discussing his artwork as anti-commercialism, anti-moe/loli.
What I found is not that his statements are a protest against Otaku culture and fetishism but more a interpretation of why this content and culture came to be and how he sees it changing the culture. I pulled this from an Economist article about his show in New York in 2008, a statement which I think well represents his artistic vision and understanding of where Otaku culture sprang from and something I think comes across in our panel:
“Mr Murakami argues that the Japanese fixation with violent comic books, titillating plastic figurines and super-cute creatures, such as Hello Kitty, is a product of the country’s sense of impotence following the second world war. The humiliation of Japan’s military and the rise of the female corporate executive served to invert the traditional gender hierarchy; in his writing he refers to the “self-medicated denizens of a castrated nation-state.”
As Eric mentioned before in his response, Murakami subverts images, like the mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb, as a way to comment on how uncomfortable the kawaii culture can and should be, yet one can read this as a commentary on how powerful this defeat in WW2 was and how prevalent it still is in Japanese culture today.
Finally, I just wanted to point out that Superflat intially rose from frustrations with the post war Japanese art market and generally negative views of Japanese animation. He is quoted as saying that the market is nothing but “a shallow appropriation of Western trends” and his reaction was to make art in a non-fine arts media, hoping to rejuvenate the contemporary Japanese art scene by placing hope in animation and Otaku.
[as always: feel free to send us requests, questions, ideas, commissions, or inquiries by email or ask box!]
Hello Kit-Li! hello Kitty moonlighting as streetfighter Chun-Li.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/khallion/t-shirts/6966022-1-hello-kit-li
holy superflat!
