(no subject)
Now that I started writing short stories, new ideas keep popping into my head. Or rather, I discover bits of stories in my head which have been floating around for ages, and realise they are not mental trash, but could perhaps be valuable components for writing.
---
Do you think Kyaru Pamyu Pamyu's success is the result of a sort of inverse future-shock, a let-down meh feeling of "we're already in 2015 and where are the flying cars!?!?". Of course I understand the super catchy songs and her cute face etc., but I think her image and the videos are like an antidote against future-disappointment. Which I guess must be quite a lot stronger in Japan than other places, since the disaster of Fukushima.
I don't claim to be the expert on Japanese collective psyche, but I have the feeling that it shattered a certain sense of technical superiority. Now a tsunami was a horrible natural disaster which killed many people and caused a lot of sorrow, but it seems to me that this is something almost to be expected (now I'm sorry, this sounds pretty horrible, I don't mean to be callous!) - but like there is expected to be a grand disaster about every other generation. I think that the Japanese measure time by great natural disasters. "so and so happened just a few years before the Great Kanto Earthquake". "This building was originally built then-and-then and rebuilt after Meiji-Sanriku earthquake". But that the tech failed, and poisoned part of the land, that's different. So one direction to take is the "back to nature", and green thinking, which is anyway quite in line with the state of the world at large. But every now and then I guess a bit of soothing balm in a form of an idol who is just what you'd expect from the second decade of the third millennium feels just right. At least for me her songs and videos give such a jolt of energy, especially lately listening to Kira Kira Killer, which also my daughter loves!
---
Do you think Kyaru Pamyu Pamyu's success is the result of a sort of inverse future-shock, a let-down meh feeling of "we're already in 2015 and where are the flying cars!?!?". Of course I understand the super catchy songs and her cute face etc., but I think her image and the videos are like an antidote against future-disappointment. Which I guess must be quite a lot stronger in Japan than other places, since the disaster of Fukushima.
I don't claim to be the expert on Japanese collective psyche, but I have the feeling that it shattered a certain sense of technical superiority. Now a tsunami was a horrible natural disaster which killed many people and caused a lot of sorrow, but it seems to me that this is something almost to be expected (now I'm sorry, this sounds pretty horrible, I don't mean to be callous!) - but like there is expected to be a grand disaster about every other generation. I think that the Japanese measure time by great natural disasters. "so and so happened just a few years before the Great Kanto Earthquake". "This building was originally built then-and-then and rebuilt after Meiji-Sanriku earthquake". But that the tech failed, and poisoned part of the land, that's different. So one direction to take is the "back to nature", and green thinking, which is anyway quite in line with the state of the world at large. But every now and then I guess a bit of soothing balm in a form of an idol who is just what you'd expect from the second decade of the third millennium feels just right. At least for me her songs and videos give such a jolt of energy, especially lately listening to Kira Kira Killer, which also my daughter loves!