Thora Wrote:

vileru Wrote:What's worse is that arrogant perceptions are usually made with feminist intentions.

Odd statement, no? If the feminist intention is separate from the arrogant perception, why is assumed to be a negative just b/c its a feminist intention (whatever that is.)

I should've been more careful in my phrasing. I meant to say that, people often cast arrogant perceptions despite having feminist intentions (which, in spirit, are antithetical to arrogant perceptions).

Thora Wrote:

vileru Wrote:Recently, we've seen this with white, middle and upperclass women deploring the status of Middle Eastern women and pretending to understand what their circumstances are like, despite objections from Middle Eastern feminists.

Why would they "pretend"? Do you mean "assuming that they understand"?

Yes. I actually first wrote the sentence using the word "assuming," but I wanted a more negative connotation, and so I replaced it with "pretending." But you're right to have pointed it out since the two words have different meanings.

Thora Wrote:

vileru Wrote:By looking down on certain ideals of beauty, such as thinness or innocence, are we not arrogantly perceiving too?

No, that degree of emaciation is a health issue. Health is universal.

I agree that ideals of beauty should not encourage unhealthiness. However, by referring to thinness, I didn't mean to include malnourishment. I just meant to use it as an example to show that we should avoid making unjust social perceptions when launching criticisms against unjust social perceptions.

Thora Wrote:To me it's not actual innocence. More like intentionally acting like a child to fulfill some externally imposed demand for arrested development and submission. lol Yes, it's a consequence of power. But I don't really see how ignoring that fact would improve the situation.

I did not mean to suggest that the actual power imbalance should be ignored, but that it's grounded in a perceived power imbalance, i.e. the actual power imbalance arises because people act upon the perceived imbalance. Hence, even if you fix an instance of actual power imbalance, the perceived imbalance nevertheless remains.

Thora Wrote:

vileru Wrote:why direct our moral outrage at particular ideals of beauty rather than how we as a society think about beauty? Beauty, in all its forms and not just whatever is in vogue, should be recognized.

Gender roles that perpetuate inequality aren't really about what's "in vogue". Men don't experience pressure to be all the "manly" things because they happen to be trendy right now. People believe many of these traits are essential. These beliefs will be in flux for a while as other things change. It's an ongoing interdependent process. If only we could just decide everything.

Yes, the trends are not the source of the pressure, but they leave footprints for us to find it. That's besides the point, though. What I want to emphasize is that gender inequality won't be eliminated by attacking certain attitudes or roles, but rather by attacking how we think about and how we approach those attitudes and roles, that is, our perspective of them. It's counterproductive (and maybe even wishful thinking) to try and erase certain character traits. Instead, we should transform them so as to eliminate or at least minimize their negative effects. How else do we transform the way society views and responds to certain attitudes and roles other than by changing society's perspective?

Thora Wrote:

vileru Wrote:Therefore, a woman who sincerely does not live according to what society perceives as adult-like, i.e. an innocent and child-like woman, should not be disparaged for being who she is. The problem is when women are forced into roles, such as the innocent girl or waif-like model. The roles themselves are not the problem.

Never mind "sincerely" (without choosing?), I wouldn't disparage individual women or men for intentionally assuming gendered roles that are still to varying degrees expected. We're talking about social change. I do see the roles themselves as a problem, however. In some ideal future society, men and women will be able chose to be who they want to be without adverse consequence. But in meantime, both men and women face pressure to assume certain roles. We can critically discuss the significance of those roles without passing judgment on individual choice.

If we agree with the argument that social attitudes influence actual behavior (e.g. sexual attraction to innocence leads to the sexualization of children), then it follows that criticisms and shunning of character traits (e.g. innocence) will influence how people with those character traits are treated. Therefore, if society looks down on innocence in adults, then society also looks down on innocent adults as well. This is why I think the roles are not the issue, but rather the issue is how society views, negotiates, and assigns them.

Thora Wrote:Besides, what I was describing was not a lovely woman with a natural child-like manner, but something more mutually manipulative for the sake of fame and money at the expense of womankind. That's also universal. ;-p

This captures exactly my motivation for playing devil's advocate: I wanted to clarify our reasoning and make sharper distinctions. I agree with you that innocence and other attitudes are problematic. However, I don't like a good idea to be left like an unpolished gem. I'll use IceCream's response to my post as an example of what I mean by making sharper distinctions (as well as an opportunity to reply):

IceCream Wrote:The problem with innocence as the portrayal of ideal sexiness are multitude. It's not about looking down on innocence, everyone is innocent at some point. However! Sexual innocence on average lasts until a girl is 16. If the sexual ideal is innocence and naivety, it thereore ends up sexualising children.

Not to mention the fact that most 16 year old boys actually aren't all that into the innocence and naivety thing, it's very much more a trend among older men, which plays into problems like the enjou kosai and childhood prostitution problems.
The attraction to sullying some pure beauty also plays into schoolgirl rape fantasy, and assault of schoolgirls on trains, like Thora mentioned.

Finally, innocence as a sexual ideal, by it's nature puts women into a submissive position. The whole point about innocence and naivety is that that person knows and has experienced less of the world than their partner, putting them in the dominant position.

Clearly, IceCream has a very specific notion of innocence in mind that mirrors the one you emphasized. In particular, IceCream is referring to sexual innocence that stresses sexual inexperience. Now that we have this distinction, we can take a closer look at whether sexual innocence stressing inexperience is entirely problematic or not. And although I've love to examine this issue, I've also already spent an excessive amount of time reading and responding to this thread and this post is already too long anyway, so I won't delve any deeper.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Could you please define "creepy", explain why it is creepy, and whether you think it should be illegal for an older man to like AKB48?

AKB48's music should be illegal.
and all discussions about them, for that matter.

:O

kainzero Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:However... i find it hard to take 制服が邪魔をする as anything but appealing to the guys involved in enjo-kosai.

Actually, with Akimoto's line on it, it seems like he doesn't even deny it here.

Anyway, here's why:
* The lyrics of the song. There's absolutely nothing unfavourable or sad about enjo kosai in them. Perhaps there is... that they're sad that nobody understands why they want to sleep with old dudes.
* The lyrics themselves say nothing directly about enjo-kosai or older men, but the video puts it in that setting.

The PV doesn't really do that. The only thing that suggests 援助交際 is the end, when 前田敦子 meets with a faceless guy in a business suit, then time passes and shows a creepy smile.
All the other guys depicted in the video look like they're in their 20s... and if I can take TV dramas at face value, high schoolers tend to "play" with people in that age because they have money and they're young.

Well, though there are a couple of 20ish year olds pictured, it's kind of the overall tone and images of the video that puts it in that setting. It's the very fact that the video IS dark, and makes you think of a dark, seedy, very adult world that these girls want to experience. I mean, the video certainly doesn't give off any of the imagery you'd expect if it was about experiencing young love, or even just playing around with guys or having sex for the first time, because those things really aren't at all such dark or seedy things, are they? Sure, college guys are going to be popular with the older highschool girls, but again, that hardly makes you think of dark and creepy things either, does it?

i mean, it is possible that i'm reading too much into it because i read that it was about enjo-kousai before i watched the video. But, then, that also IS what the majority of imagery in the video suggests, i think...

At the very least, it's pretty hypocritical to be singing lyrics like that, while at the same time being denied the right to experience ANY kind of love or sex by the industry.

Quote:

Quote:* Yes, the video doesn't come across as "happy", but i think Akimoto knows that directly supporting enjo-kosai would be going way too far given the mainstream view on it. Again, it's the thing where he can appeal to the older guy audience and make them believe they are really desirable by these girls, while claiming plausible deniability and not destroying the wider image for AKB.

I don't think there's anything that supports 援助交際。I interpret it as either stating that it exists, or given all the dark imagery, that maybe it's not so good after all.

Right, i mean, i don't think it is openly supporting it. But, given the lyrics of the song, placed in the setting of that video, regardless of the specific morality of enjou kosai, it gives off the impression that young girls DO in fact find much older guys who inhabit this dark, seedy, entirely adult world intensely desirable. If the lyrics had addressed the issues differently, it would have given off a very different impression...

Then again, this video is slightly different than their sexy in an innocent/cute way ones, so i can see where Ginganinja is coming from when he says that they were trying out different things to capture their audience at that time.

Quote:

Quote:There are a ton of porn tropes in ヘビーローテーション, right from the beginning, with the being spied on through a keyhole and being caught undressing, to the girls eating the same cake together (and their costumes), to the sperm-in-face thing, to the teddy bears & cute girly room. That's what i meant earlier when i said that Ninagawa Mika had used a ton of very stereotyped sexual imagery in that video... it's directly taken from well known porn themes.

It's definitely me but I really can't see it. I don't know, when I think of sexiness I'm more likely to think of things like Rihanna's Umbrella (19 when she was filmed, which would put her at the same age as AKB during Heavy Rotation) or . In the Japanese side, maybe [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4wpmNkCdo]AAA's 唇からロマンチカ。 So when I think of stuff like Heavy Rotation it's like... dumb stupid kiddy stuff, regardless of what they're wearing, and why I was unable to see the money shot for what it is.

hahah, well, i beleive you i'm not trying to put you down for not having spent enough time on rubbish pornsites lol!!!

Quote:

Quote:You seem like a really sweet guy Kainzero though, and the type of person the AKB girls would probably be happy and comfortable with having as a fan

I don't know. There's always crap in the back of mind always wondering "Is this right?" as I watch them, as I casually discard all their bikini shots, watch another lip synched performance, and watched 13-year-olds suffer as they're forced to bungee jump in the name of entertainment. I'm already 27, and I'm not sure how long I can keep this up.
Ironically, when I explain to my Japanese friends that it's embarrassing to admit that I'm a fan of idols, they're like "No, no, it's perfectly normal, it's common for people in their 20s and 30s to like them. 40s might be pushing it though."
I've also seen how their typical fans act like. Even though they're not all middle aged old men, it's still reminiscent of Black Friday crowds. If hobbies are a thing that I can enjoy collectively as a group, it's getting more and more difficult to find those people.

Although this thread's been quite focused on the bad side of things, i can see why people would like AKB48 for other reasons too... there are good things, along with the bad. It's also worth remembering that we could have had a similar discussion about almost any kind of manufactured entertainment, from any country. There would have been a different set of problems brought up, but still fairly deep and sensitive issues. The point isn't that it's "wrong" to like these groups, but just to be aware of what it is that's being sold, and the wider implications, i guess. It's not like you have to avoid all their bikini stuff unless you're not into it, since they are overage now. And you CAN pick and choose what kind of stuff you want to take from them, because they do do more than just that. As long as you're not one of the creepy guys yourself, or go and buy any of their creepier / more damaging stuff (dl or online if you need to see it to find out if it is first), i don't think it really matters too much. And, you do score an absolute 0 on my creepyness scale, at least

I think one of the things that AKB has managed to tap into, more than most manufactured entertainment, is the more human side of things. I mean, i think there would be a demand to just see a group of girls who are funny, intelligent, cool, generally normal girls. I mean, that's who guys the world all over fall in love with, right? When you contrast it with America / Britain, where most manufactured groups generally sell on the basis of highly sexualised stuff like the videos you posted earlier, and the omnipresent crotch thrusting shots, i can see why a lot of guys would be more into an AKB style thing than that. It is more realistic, varied, and interesting.

Anyway, i don't think 27 is quite over the hill yet. At some point, it will become too creepy for you, but perhaps once the girls you particularly like are no longer there cos they've graduated, and new and younger girls drawn from the kenkyuusei, you'll probably find yourself becoming less interested as you get older naturally anyway...

Quote:

The world Japan is bucked. Love it

IceCream Wrote:Well, though there are a couple of 20ish year olds pictured, it's kind of the overall tone and images of the video that puts it in that setting. It's the very fact that the video IS dark, and makes you think of a dark, seedy, very adult world that these girls want to experience. I mean, the video certainly doesn't give off any of the imagery you'd expect if it was about experiencing young love, or even just playing around with guys or having sex for the first time, because those things really aren't at all such dark or seedy things, are they? Sure, college guys are going to be popular with the older highschool girls, but again, that hardly makes you think of dark and creepy things either, does it?

Then you get to the live version and the dark imagery kinda gets lost...

IceCream Wrote:i mean, it is possible that i'm reading too much into it because i read that it was about enjo-kousai before i watched the video. But, then, that also IS what the majority of imagery in the video suggests, i think...

You're hardly the first to think of 援助交際. The english wikipedia page for 援助交際 links to the song and the song links to 援助交際.

i've not got anything better to do right now, so i'll just reply to a couple of Qwerty's points that weren't taken up earlier.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:how come if someone makes money by using their looks, it's immediately labelled as exploitation?

The other thing I'd like to ask related to the above statement. Why is it immoral or inappropriate to "exploit" the youthful bodies and looks of young Japanese women (AKB48) but it is universally accepted and unquestioned for the youthful bodies of similar-age sportspeople to be exploited?

The short answer is: it's not universally accepted and unquestioned. There are many situations where young sportspeople are exploited or harmed by their managers. Exploitation isn't restricted to sexual exploitation, and neither is it the case that any form of making money from someone's body is exploitation, as mentioned earlier in the thread. If you're interested in the more philosophical side of that, a good place to start is here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/

***
re: your point about beckii cruel vs. your counterexample video both being watched most frequently by guys of the same agegroups, you don't really have to read very far in the comments section to figure out what the guys watching the videos are thinking about when watching each, so it's not much of a couterexample, is it...
***

i changed some words for you here. How does your argument look now?

qwerty Wrote:Assuming she had a choice, is it realistic to expect a 50 year old female to be truly and honestly sexually attracted to a 50 year old male as opposed to a man in his early 20s who looks 5 years younger?

I'm not in the field of biology, but I thought that most females would gravitate towards younger males (regardless of the female's current age). Some might even argue that a 40-50 year old man is well past his use-by date (apologies for the politically incorrect terminology).

Right, so there are evolutionary arguments that give plausible reasons for why men are attracted to younger women. On the other side, there are also plausible arguments for why the majority of people find intergenerational sex creepy... because it increases the chances of incest. The balancing point is that most people are going to be most attracted to people of their own generation.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:Lol, if you seriously are trying to suggest that 75% of people would go "Suuuree, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a 46 year old taking a 15 year old home, having a nice dinner, and then getting a little some'thin-some'thin after that."

Change that number to 16 and I imagine the responses will change a fair bit. Ditto with 17 and 18.

I think if you did do a survey, you wouldn't find that the responses would change that much. Just because it's legal after 16 to have sex with someone doesn't make it a free for all for all men up to 100 to try and have sex with or even just perv on 16 year olds. Most people do find that concept gross, not least 16 year old girls. i mean, sure, there's gerontophilia, just like there's pedophilia, but unluckily for you, not that many 16 year old girls have it. (this also makes any man forever stuck on sexual attraction to teenagers evolutionarily maladaptive, unless the social setting is one where the man has all the power in choosing his partner... which our society isn't.).

Not everything is about you and your own desires. How many legal teenagers -> women in their early 20's do you know who would really want to be perved on by 40+ creeps?

IceCream Wrote:Well, though there are a couple of 20ish year olds pictured, it's kind of the overall tone and images of the video that puts it in that setting. It's the very fact that the video IS dark, and makes you think of a dark, seedy, very adult world that these girls want to experience. I mean, the video certainly doesn't give off any of the imagery you'd expect if it was about experiencing young love, or even just playing around with guys or having sex for the first time, because those things really aren't at all such dark or seedy things, are they? Sure, college guys are going to be popular with the older highschool girls, but again, that hardly makes you think of dark and creepy things either, does it?

Well, I'm saying the college guys don't participate in 援助交際、 or at least I don't think they do. I thought it was more for late 20's/middle aged guys.
I agree that the end does hint at 援助交際, but I don't think it is the prevailing theme, nor do I believe the song supports it.
It may be that 援助交際 is one of the ways that they want to free themselves. I don't know. I still don't know if I'd look at anything in the video as a positive light, or anything that says it's okay or desirable. It's also strange that they release songs that tell you to do the opposite too, like NMB48's 『純情U-19』。
Personally I think it's a result of how tired and crappy lyrics are in most J-Pop. The last two AKB48 summer singles have been about comparing love to hair ornaments.

Quote:At the very least, it's pretty hypocritical to be singing lyrics like that, while at the same time being denied the right to experience ANY kind of love or sex by the industry.

I agree with this. I was watching a music show that had AKB48 as well as Jennifer Hudson. Of course, she was aghast at the rule, but the female commentator was saying, "Well, I think it's good because it means they can sing their love songs with purity..."
I laughed because for one, they don't even really sing, and for two, I don't think you can really sing something you're experienced with... and I was slightly enraged that an older woman would say those things.

Quote:The point isn't that it's "wrong" to like these groups, but just to be aware of what it is that's being sold, and the wider implications, i guess. It's not like you have to avoid all their bikini stuff unless you're not into it, since they are overage now. And you CAN pick and choose what kind of stuff you want to take from them, because they do do more than just that. As long as you're not one of the creepy guys yourself, or go and buy any of their creepier / more damaging stuff (dl or online if you need to see it to find out if it is first), i don't think it really matters too much. And, you do score an absolute 0 on my creepyness scale, at least

What I'm constantly thinking about is where to draw the line.
For example, two of the members I like from NMB48 are 13 years old. （木下春菜、城恵理子） I think they're hilarious. One of them has an absolutely adorable smile. (I don't harbor any sexual intent/surrogate girlfriend or daughter attitude towards them. That thought disturbs me.)
Is that okay at my age? Is it any less okay for a 40 year old guy to watch a 13-year-old girl perform some amateur 漫才? Can he even give off the image that he's just watching them for the humor? I don't know.
And I don't even know where to put someone like 木下百花、a 15-year-old 自称変体 whose favorite art-style is グロ。 At least she's being honest? I have no idea. :lol:
The other thing, of course, is that whatever you do you're lumped in with the majority. It's similar to how people assume that because you're studying Japanese, you probably like anime. To be honest I'm fine being a fan in the US, but when I visit Japan I try to be really obscure about it because it carries a different image, one that I don't really want. With people here I can say, "Well, you don't understand some of their stuff doing because it's not in English, it's not all Heavy Rotation/Seifuku Jama, there's TV shows and humor and other things," but in Japan they're pretty well aware of everything that's going on.

Speaking of reality, here's the メイキング of that earlier video of the dating game...

It's kinda strange that they're selling both the reality and the fantasy in the same package, lol.

kainzero Wrote:Well, I'm saying the college guys don't participate in 援助交際、 or at least I don't think they do. I thought it was more for late 20's/middle aged guys.
I agree that the end does hint at 援助交際, but I don't think it is the prevailing theme, nor do I believe the song supports it.
It may be that 援助交際 is one of the ways that they want to free themselves. I don't know. I still don't know if I'd look at anything in the video as a positive light, or anything that says it's okay or desirable.

lol, i think you may be advertising / marketing "challenged", if such a thing exists. It's all lost on you...

I'm gonna prescribe you everything charlie brooker has ever made, e.g. "How TV ruined your life"

and Adam Curtis' "the century of the self" (4 parts)

Yeah, i don't think college guys are participating in 援助交際 either... they wouldn't really need to. The point wasn't that they were, the point was that if the song / video was supposed to realllly give the impression it was talking about sex with college guys, they wouldn't have used such dark imagery in the first place. Sex with college guys isn't really so dark and creepy, is it...

kainzero Wrote:It's also strange that they release songs that tell you to do the opposite too, like NMB48's 『純情U-19』。

... i think we've already established that Akimoto will do anything that sells. So perhaps he's realised that there's lots of people who are questioning the age of these girls, and came out with something like this. He wants to capture the lucrative female audience too, and he can't do that if it's ALL young girls bouncing around in bikinis.
So, he has them bounce around in knee high boots and short skirts giving come hither looks while singing about how they have 鉄のパンツ instead, lol. Everyone wins. Once done, everyone can point to this song if it's suggested that he's sexualising 11 year olds, and then they're free to sing 制服が邪魔をする to their hearts content. Plus, he's already got SNB for the adult market and AKB for the softcore market, so why not try a different image for this group, and see how it sticks? Who knows what his motivation is really, but there always will be a selling point, and a reason.

... am i being too cynical?? I don't trust marketing guys, one bit. It's their job to come up with stuff like this.

Besides which, i don't think 鉄のパンツ is a particularly better message for teenagers than any other manufactured one. It's all manipulation, one way or another, because none of it has anything to do with what those girls really think, believe or want to sing about.

Quote:What I'm constantly thinking about is where to draw the line.
For example, two of the members I like from NMB48 are 13 years old. （木下春菜、城恵理子） I think they're hilarious. One of them has an absolutely adorable smile. (I don't harbor any sexual intent/surrogate girlfriend or daughter attitude towards them. That thought disturbs me.)
Is that okay at my age? Is it any less okay for a 40 year old guy to watch a 13-year-old girl perform some amateur 漫才? Can he even give off the image that he's just watching them for the humor? I don't know.
And I don't even know where to put someone like 木下百花、a 15-year-old 自称変体 whose favorite art-style is グロ。 At least she's being honest? I have no idea. :lol:
The other thing, of course, is that whatever you do you're lumped in with the majority. It's similar to how people assume that because you're studying Japanese, you probably like anime. To be honest I'm fine being a fan in the US, but when I visit Japan I try to be really obscure about it because it carries a different image, one that I don't really want. With people here I can say, "Well, you don't understand some of their stuff doing because it's not in English, it's not all Heavy Rotation/Seifuku Jama, there's TV shows and humor and other things," but in Japan they're pretty well aware of everything that's going on.

hmm, i dunno, it's difficult, isn't it? Drawing a line always is...

In some ways, it would an easier decision if you were sexually attracted to those 13 year olds, because then you could just go, wait, this is creepy, and stop watching it. As lots of people have pointed out before, it's not like a 14 year old that looks like a 19 year old is less attractive than a 19 year old, (or, in the case of Sarya Irie, an 11 year old that looks like a 19 year old), it's that, well, you know the girl is so young, so you just don't watch it or support it... you go and find something with actual 19 year olds in instead.

On the other hand, it's really not so creepy if it really is just that they're adorable and funny, is it?

I mean, there was this little girl who debuted in Britain when she was 5 or 6 on "Britain's got Talent" (i don't watch Britain's got talent lol, but i came across the clip on youtube). Anyway, i was astounded at the voice that came out of her mouth for such a tiny girl:

Well, nowadays she's 11 or so, & has her own youtube channel. I don't even like the type of music she sings, but occasionally i go to her channel to see how she's progressed. (she wasn't taken on by a record label because Simon Cowell thought she was too young and wanted to let her grow up on her own. So it's all done in her own home, without any pressure.)
She is an adorable little girl, and has an amazing talent.
So, if i don't think I'm creepy, why should i think a guy my age doing the same is creepy? Or a 40 year old guy, or a 90 year old guy, for that matter. Not everything in the world IS sexual, and sweet, talented kids ARE interesting to watch, i think.

Now, supposing Connie was a little boy with an amazing talent, i'd feel the same (as in, it wouldn't change the fact that it's not sexual just cos it's a boy instead of a girl). For example, Akim Camara:

... ok, i can barely stand to listen to this, but he's certainly someone i want to keep checking back on and see how he does in the future. (He's 10 now).

How about you, would you feel any less inclined to watch a cute boy of the same age doing amateur manzai? If so, you should maybe ask yourself why, i guess.

On the other hand, it's really not something i think about or look at on a day to day level, only when i'm reminded of it. Perhaps if i was constantly watching these kids or cared about it to any real extent, i would find it creepy.

Although, there's all the surrounding creepiness of the situation with NMB for you to think about, as well.

I dunno, it really is quite difficult where to draw the line, isn't it? I guess you just have to go with your instincts in the end...

There is a lot of fear in the foreign fan base of how they are looked at. Anyone who even mentions anything inappropriate is ostracised rather quickly. I think because some of the stuff can be borderline, people can be really defensive over it. It's already seen as odd enough that you'd be listening to foreign music, and then especially because its pop.. then it's female.. then they sometimes are quite young.. and yeah it's a slippery slope.
So there is a lot of defensiveness because they don't want any negative connotations, it can be hard enough to justify without any of that stuff.

Before I even considered myself a fan, I went to see NMB perform, being in Osaka at the time, and at 900 yen, it was worth the punt to see what the fuss was about. I did tell my girlfriend first, because I didn't want her to think I was going to some kind of weird porn/fettish show or something. So even I can be really defensive.
The fans at the theatre I'd say was 66% male 33% female (there are specific female only tickets that can be applied for) but the age range was huge.. from middle school age to old couples (you can get couples tickets too... romantic night out? hmm..possibly not) that surprised me, I had expected it to be like the stereotype of 40yr+ salarymen. So while predominantly men, there was a large range.

about drawing the line.. as an Adult, providing your "normal" for whatever that might entail... I think you should know where the line is. As has been mentioned, they produce so much content, that if you don't want to see any stuff that even worries you slightly, you can ignore it, vote with your wallet as such. Maybe they'll get the hint.
Should it be produced? well its certainly not as bad any of that junior gravure stuff mentioned a couple pages back.. that requires mentally scrubbing your mind after seeing that. One thing i'll say, a lot of the time in photo shoots the younger members are more covered than the older members, so they can join in but are protected more, and it's always the older members involved in the slightly more risque stuff.

PS.. the Junjou U-19 NMB single, I'm pretty sure that was management trolling the members over the scandels a few months earlier.. 4 of the members being disciplined over boy infractions, having to sing about protecting their virtue...

IceCream Wrote:I'm gonna prescribe you everything charlie brooker has ever made, e.g. "How TV ruined your life"

and Adam Curtis' "the century of the self" (4 parts)

Dammit IceCream, I'm at a point where I really need to focus on schoolwork and have enough distractions as is, but both of these look really good. "The Century of the Self" so far is just confirming everything my dad ever said about marketing. One of my friends also harps on this a lot too. I can remember that he once said advertisements used to be like: "Shovels are useful tools to have around. You can dig holes with them." Now ads are like: "Pride. Tradition. Family. SHOVEL."

IceCream Wrote:I'm gonna prescribe you everything charlie brooker has ever made, e.g. "How TV ruined your life"

and Adam Curtis' "the century of the self" (4 parts)

I've only started Century of the Self and don't have much time to sit down and watch it at the moment, but I already hate it for the same reason that I always hated most of the start of Psychology classes. Freud's ideas are primarily crap, psychoanalysis is crap, and anyone trying to draw conclusions from them is fooling themselves. The only major thing that Freud brought to the world was the idea that you can study the human mind of others from the outside. Its a foundation of psychology, but its a shaking one at that. It lacks any real scientific rigor to it. Its crap.

Have any of you seen this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...litas.html

Child pageants are pretty close to what AKB is doing in terms of sexualizing teenagers. I think it's not a bad idea to make this kind of thing illegal before 16-18 years old. Why not have girls that are slightly older? Would AKB really not be as interesting with a bunch of 20+ years old? It's not like they would be past their prime at that point. I just don't see what's the point of dragging girls into this when they're that young.

Similar article in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar...sfeed=true

I'm so sad... a picture of sashihara and maeda atsuko smoking came out....
I was such a fan of sasihara... not much of a fan for maeda atsuko.


<< http://urageispo.com/archives/4132519.html

I remember when morimoto from hey say jump had those pictures come out... he's like gone now (I tihnk he was 14 in the smoking pictures and like 16 or something when they came out and both ages are below 20)

oh but they're over 20... which is the legal age so I don't think they'll get fired

IceCream Wrote:lol, i think you may be advertising / marketing "challenged", if such a thing exists. It's all lost on you...

isn't that a good thing?
to some extent i feel like i learned this behavior from 1Q84, when i finished the book and wondered what all the stuff really meant, so i looked online and it turns out there was no real answer. at which point i started questioning whether a work of entertainment exists as the creation of the author or the creation of the observer. and even then, the observer exists as a collection of biases that he accumulated over the years.
i also read a lot of pop psychology books for fun.
i watched the first of that charlie brooker series and it didn't really tell me anything new, just that TV likes to carve crazy romantic ideas. and in a university acting class, i've more or less learned that effective acting is exaggerated behavior of real life.

Quote:... am i being too cynical?? I don't trust marketing guys, one bit. It's their job to come up with stuff like this.

i, on the other hand, just believe that j-pop lyrics are so cliched that they can practically sing about anything and it doesn't matter and no one will really care.
i mean, they're singing about keeping their virginity, yet they're dressed up and doing a dance that's pretty hot... and then you watch the music video and it's about a circus in the locker of their school?

Quote:So, if i don't think I'm creepy, why should i think a guy my age doing the same is creepy? Or a 40 year old guy, or a 90 year old guy, for that matter. Not everything in the world IS sexual, and sweet, talented kids ARE interesting to watch, i think.

the thing is, the amateur manzai is done in tandem with say, bikini photoshoots.
(the girls on the cover from left to right at the time of the shoot are 13/19/18/16/14. it's good to see that the younger girls are more covered up, but still...)
you can watch an 11-year-old singer, but if she also did some of that junior-idol stuff on the side, can you reject that while supporting her singing career? can you stand next to fans at the concert who attended mostly because they like the junior-idol stuff? and as you get older, how does that look? i think that's the situation that i face as a non-japanese fan. i suppose in japan it's actually okay, which is strange because my attitude in japan is utter terror and in the US i'm comfortable with being a fan.

Eikyu Wrote:Child pageants are pretty close to what AKB is doing in terms of sexualizing teenagers. I think it's not a bad idea to make this kind of thing illegal before 16-18 years old. Why not have girls that are slightly older? Would AKB really not be as interesting with a bunch of 20+ years old?

Child pageants are nowhere close to what AKB is doing. Setting the limit to 16 years old wouldn't change a thing about AKB because when they start they're usually already around that age. The Vogue model is 10 and there are no 10 year olds in any of the 48 groups. Most fans aren't really into the young ones anyway; the 13 year old in the magazine cover I posted received an enormous push but isn't generating the expected results.

I think the reason they start young is so they can grab them while they have time to develop. If you go over to K-Pop, a lot of them draft young guys and girls, then train them for 2-3 years before seeing the light of day. J-idols are different in that they hardly train them before taking them public, and they're expected to train while they're in the public eye.
Given the way the career ladder is structured in Japan, it's easier to develop idols while they're young so that they can work on being entertainers instead of studying to get into university. Some girls in AKB are also university students, but it's rare for them to even go to a normal high school as opposed to one that's aimed towards entertainers.




I'm disappointed about Sashihara and Acchan smoking as I would be about any other person. Smoking sucks and it makes you and everything around you smell bad, lol. I really hate how they put ashtrays in arcades in Japan...

vix86 Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:I'm gonna prescribe you everything charlie brooker has ever made, e.g. "How TV ruined your life"

and Adam Curtis' "the century of the self" (4 parts)

I've only started Century of the Self and don't have much time to sit down and watch it at the moment, but I already hate it for the same reason that I always hated most of the start of Psychology classes. Freud's ideas are primarily crap, psychoanalysis is crap, and anyone trying to draw conclusions from them is fooling themselves. The only major thing that Freud brought to the world was the idea that you can study the human mind of others from the outside. Its a foundation of psychology, but its a shaking one at that. It lacks any real scientific rigor to it. Its crap.

I also think psychoanalysis is crap, but I think the documentary is mostly about mass marketing and not psychoanalysis. I'm skeptical about some of its claims, but still think it's interesting.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:The short answer is: it's not universally accepted and unquestioned. There are many situations where young sportspeople are exploited or harmed by their managers. Exploitation isn't restricted to sexual exploitation, and neither is it the case that any form of making money from someone's body is exploitation, as mentioned earlier in the thread.

If that is the case, where young sportspeople are exploited and harmed for their sports careers, then society's responses (or lack of) to it is deafening. Through my travels on the Internet, I hear so many responses and claims about sexual "exploitation" (this 7 page AKB48 thread for example), but I don't recall any similar long threads about sports exploitation. I can only assume that it's harder for people to get their panties in a bunch and outraged for that topic, than to sex-related topics.

More like, when some evidence of young sportspeople being exploited by their managers is brought up, there aren't generally people like you chiming in saying that it's fine to exploit them. Everyone just agrees that it's wrong, just like they agree that slavery is wrong. If there's nothing to disagree on, you don't get long threads. Plus, while there are many isolated incidents, it doesn't generally have a wider negative effect on more than half of the people in society. So yes, sexual exploitation is talked about more often.

re: beckii cruel, i didn't look at the comments before i posted, i should have. I remember seeing it when it first became big, and the type of comments she was getting then, so i didn't bother. It seems like there's a lot more negative views on now, along with the pedos. Anyway, i don't really care.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Aha! I'm glad you did that because now we can point out a fundamental generalized difference between men and women. Yes, it's a generalization, but generalizations exist for a reason: because they're true.

Okay so the point earlier I was making (the one you replaced words with your own in the above), was that males, whether they are 20, 40 or 60, would naturally gravitate towards females younger than themselves, assuming they had the ability or the opportunity. To what degree of youthfulness, depends on the individual but that's what men want. Why? Fertility and for sexual reasons. The older a woman, the sooner she is to her use-by date.

Ah, i'm glad you brought this up. Because this turns out to be bs when you think about it for more than 2 seconds.

We're talking in evolutionary terms, right? Because obviously, in cultural terms, it's not like you really care about fertility.

So, the story goes that men like young women because they are the most fertile. Since women's fertility begins dropping off after 40, but men are fertile at any age, women are attracted to men of any age, but men are attracted to the youngest woman possible.

In fact, this isn't a good evolutionary explanation for 2 reasons. The first is that teenage girls experience significantly more health problems with pregnancy than fully adult women. This will have led to lower survival rate of both them and their children.

What you might expect to see is most men going with the optimum "strategy", which would be to go with adult women, with a minority of others going with the strategy of choosing and trying to hang onto a younger girl, generally because they can't win over other males, who get to have the stronger, adult females.

***Before i go any further, i just want to point out that i don't buy into any of the evolutionary arguments on offer, i'm just trying to provide alternative explanations that seem to fit as least as well as the ones you're offering.

The 2nd reason is simply that, over the millions of years of human evolution, it's like yesterday that women even began living long enough for their fertility to really drop in their lifespans at all. They certainly wouldn't have lived long enough to go through the menopause. So, the difference in the length of fertility for men and women now is really irrelevent here.
One counterargument could be that a child would be less likely to survive with an older mother, which seems plausible, but there are too many societal factors here that we just have no clue about. Some animals take on the young of parents that have died through old age (there are cases of chimpanzees doing this), for example. If that was the case, you would expect this to have much less of an impact than a teenager dieing in childbirth along with the baby would.

Quote:

IceCream Wrote:Assuming she had a choice, is it realistic to expect a 50 year old female to be truly and honestly sexually attracted to a 50 year old male as opposed to a man in his early 20s who looks 5 years younger?

I assume you were expecting me to answer no, it is not realistic to expect a 50 year old woman to prefer the 20 year old man to the 50 year old man. Well actually, as far as looks go, I would say that yes, the 50 year old female prefers the fresh-faced 20 year old to the 50 year old male. But as I wrote above, the 50 year old female prioritizes financial stability over sexual appeal in males, so therefore would prefer the ugly 50 year old male with the comb-over hair.

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that women do like rich guys.

1. A 50 year old woman will have finished having all her kids, so doesn't need an ugly 50 year old man with comb over hair for anything at all.
2. What about a 20 year old woman? Well, why go for a 50 year old if she can go for a 25 year old who earns enough? The 25 year old man will be strong, fit, more attractive, will have more earning potential in the future, as well as being more likely to be alive until their children are full grown than the 50 year old man.
3. Regardless of richness, a man is more likely to stay and support a woman and his children if he keeps finding her attractive as she grows older, rather than if he's the type of guy who likes teenagers only and his tastes don't grow along with his age. So, who would you pick, if you were a woman?

Your generalisations are too oversimplified to make a working model, and neither are they supported by reality.

Again, i'm not trying to claim that the above arguments are "true". They are just alternative explanations. In truth, you find many different people pursing many different sexual strategies in society. However, even if we proved any of them were HOW we evolved, it doesn't make those strategies the right ones to pursue. We're perfectly capable of taking other information and using it too.

IceCream Wrote:Sorry but how the heck does intergenerational sex increase the chances of incest?

Well, because it exposes you to far more members of your family as potential partners. In your own generation, you have brothers/sisters and cousins, and that's it. If it's any generation, there are obviously far more family members you might end up having sex with. When the generations become blurred, there are then even more family members you might have sex with... if your grandad goes off with a new teen when you are 10, your aunt can now be younger than you are. Keeping track of such complex family relations is difficult without a tight knit social group, and hence increases the chances of incest.

There is a second reason that it might increase the chances of even closer, more evolutionarily dangerous incest, which is that, if you, at 40 haven't grown out of fancying 15 year olds, what stops you wanting to have sex with your daughters? Or your granddaughters at 60? There may be a seperate mechanism to stop this, just like there is with brothers and sisters, but it's not yet clear what it is.

qwerty Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:(this also makes any man forever stuck on sexual attraction to teenagers evolutionarily maladaptive, unless the social setting is one where the man has all the power in choosing his partner... which our society isn't.).

Well, 18 year old girls are still teenagers and if a 40 year old man managed to score one, I don't think he would be complaining.

As for power... well, money is power...

Something to think about.

So is being a decent human being. It's something i hear women are attracted to. Something to think about.

qwerty Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:Not everything is about you and your own desires.

Well, that's what this threads about, isn't it. [snip rant]

sigh. i knew you hadn't actually bothered to read the thread, just like you didn't bother to read the other one you came into with a bunch of bs.

kusterdu Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:I'm gonna prescribe you everything charlie brooker has ever made, e.g. "How TV ruined your life"

and Adam Curtis' "the century of the self" (4 parts)

I've only started Century of the Self and don't have much time to sit down and watch it at the moment, but I already hate it for the same reason that I always hated most of the start of Psychology classes. Freud's ideas are primarily crap, psychoanalysis is crap, and anyone trying to draw conclusions from them is fooling themselves. The only major thing that Freud brought to the world was the idea that you can study the human mind of others from the outside. Its a foundation of psychology, but its a shaking one at that. It lacks any real scientific rigor to it. Its crap.

I also think psychoanalysis is crap, but I think the documentary is mostly about mass marketing and not psychoanalysis. I'm skeptical about some of its claims, but still think it's interesting.

This. It's not supposed to be a critical analysis of Freud's theories, Freud comes into it because his nephew was Edward Bernays, as one of his influences.

i also think Freud was crap btw.

@kusterdu: i'm glad you liked it Adam Curtis has quite a different style of documentary making than most others... it's far more about presenting a narrative that pulls different cultural ideas and parts of history together into a story to draw out various links and connections that can be made than it is about presenting history as fact, i think. I don't want to pull you away from your schoolwork too much, but pretty much all his documentaries are really interesting.

p.s. pretty much all of your posts are pure gold lol, they make me crack up so often :lol:

I do like how people defend stuff like AKB48 by bringing up beauty pageants etc. That sorta works if they weren't focused on the act itself but were rather trying to make a point like "Japan is evil, look at this. We're far more wholesome in the West." But the fact that there are other similar (or worse) things elsewhere, in and of itself, is not a defence. If you get caught for burglary, you can't claim that other people are murderers, therefore what you did isn't really all that bad and they should let you go. I doubt the people complaining about AKB are fans of beauty pageants.

Having said that, personally, I don't think the songs or the videos are really a problem. I mean, they're pretty tame. Yeah, there's the occasional 14 year old there, but most of the girls are at least close to 18 and many are over 20. I mean, Britney Spears was 17 when this was released, and i don't have a problem with it either (other than it being a crap song). There are tonnes of 18 year olds that are outright porn stars. Dressing a bunch of girls in sexy school uniforms and having them sing about how they want to take them off is really pretty harmless. Even 14 year olds girls really aren't that innocent, or at least the 14 year olds i knew when i was that age weren't anyway.

Now, the "make a baby" and bikini shoots are a little creepier. The handshake events, while a massive part of the marketing, are a little weird too. I would hope that the really young ones at least are well sheltered from the more obsessive fans. But that's it really.

ok... this is probably my last post in this thread, cos reading fortnight starts tomorrow

kainzero Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:lol, i think you may be advertising / marketing "challenged", if such a thing exists. It's all lost on you...

isn't that a good thing?
to some extent i feel like i learned this behavior from 1Q84, when i finished the book and wondered what all the stuff really meant, so i looked online and it turns out there was no real answer. at which point i started questioning whether a work of entertainment exists as the creation of the author or the creation of the observer. and even then, the observer exists as a collection of biases that he accumulated over the years.
i also read a lot of pop psychology books for fun.
i watched the first of that charlie brooker series and it didn't really tell me anything new, just that TV likes to carve crazy romantic ideas. and in a university acting class, i've more or less learned that effective acting is exaggerated behavior of real life.

There was actually a Charlie Brooker one where he was talking about the use of words vs. use of symbolism in advertisements, but i watched all of his stuff at one time so i couldn't remember which one it was so anyway, i just posted one that was marginally related instead. But he is pretty hilarious, imo, regardless.

Right, i mean, i think what you said is true, for most works of art, literature, etc. So, you can study the symbolism within a work of literature, and you can find out that most of it's been drawn out afterwards, and isn't what the author intended anyway, and there is no real answer.

But advertising and manufactured entertainment is very different from this, because the point of the work isn't to make new meanings or make the viewer think, it's to tap directly into the collection of biases accumulated by the common observer to create a product that sells to them easily.

Suppose you watch a film... have you noticed how easily certain meanings get attached to certain images? You can feel the growing unease, or the sense that something terrible is going to happen in a horror movie just before it does, because they'll use well known imagery and sound to let you know. They'll use certain well known character types to let you know what kind of people you're dealing with. And have you ever wondered why, if you start watching a film without knowing what it's about, you will generally know what it's going to be about within the first 5 minutes, even if not that much has happened? These cultural "meanings" are easily absorbed and used time and again, until there becomes a sort of "language of film", which everyone understands.

Advertising takes the ease with which images are associated with meanings, and uses it to create appealing products. It's in the century of the self, but the way they first sold cigarettes to women was by making it into a symbol of women's freedom. Cigarettes were "torches of freedom". Later, they used images of beautiful women smoking, and over time, the image of a woman smoking became the image of something that they wanted to be... strong, free, beautiful, women who would be admired.

When Akimoto is marketing AKB, NMB, etc, he is using a visual language to sell a product. And, he's not doing too badly at it. So, the questions "who is the target market for this?", "what visual language is he using to sell it?" "why has he chosen those visual symbols rather than other ones? / what difference do these visual symbols make to the meaning?" "what effects might this have on the audience and wider society?" are all intertwined, and all important, i think. Because they are not newly created symbols, but ones that are already firmly entrenched in culture, they do have quite specific meanings, most of the time. So it's quite different to 1Q84.

Quote:the thing is, the amateur manzai is done in tandem with say, bikini photoshoots.
(the girls on the cover from left to right at the time of the shoot are 13/19/18/16/14. it's good to see that the younger girls are more covered up, but still...)
you can watch an 11-year-old singer, but if she also did some of that junior-idol stuff on the side, can you reject that while supporting her singing career? can you stand next to fans at the concert who attended mostly because they like the junior-idol stuff? and as you get older, how does that look? i think that's the situation that i face as a non-japanese fan. i suppose in japan it's actually okay, which is strange because my attitude in japan is utter terror and in the US i'm comfortable with being a fan.

i don't know... this is why it's difficult to draw the line. In the end, it really depends on how much harm you think is being done.
On a personal level, if the 11 year old singer was in the situation of the NMB girls, i don't think i would check back again, to be perfectly honest. It might be that she gets to 13 and something like that does happen, and i don't want to see it. It just wouldn't be worth it for me, because it's never been anything i really cared about. I couldn't stand with those kind of fans at a concert and watch them perform that kind of thing for them without feeling nauseous. I would try not to be worried too much about how i looked to others though, if i knew i wasn't into it for any of those reasons.

But, if i had a 11/13/15 year old daughter, i wouldn't want her to be directed to do those kinds of things in a public arena by someone who just wants to make money off her. I wouldn't want her to be part of spreading something that's problematic in society. I wouldn't want older men leering at her, and certainly wouldn't deliberately put her in a position where she experienced it or would be groomed for it before she could even make the choice herself. I wouldn't want her to be kept out of school and not have a choice in what she did later in life. I wouldn't want her to not be able to experience relationships in her own way, and in her own time. And i wouldn't have wanted any of those things for myself at that age, either. So, for me, there's no good reason to watch someone elses daughter (or son) do that either.

But, is it bad enough to actively avoid anything they ever do? I dunno. AKB also appear in some dramas, am i going to avoid those? Probably not if i like the drama. Whereas i would always avoid stuff like buying non fairtrade sugar where fairtrade's available. So... i dunno. The line is always hard when it's not you actively doing something to harm someone else, isn't it?

Anyway, that's my own assessment of the situation, from my own perspective, everyone has to make their own minds up on their own, really, don't they...

kainzero Wrote:I'm disappointed about Sashihara and Acchan smoking as I would be about any other person. Smoking sucks and it makes you and everything around you smell bad, lol. I really hate how they put ashtrays in arcades in Japan...

oh I think the picture is fake. the link used to be up on girlsreader.com but it's not anymore so i think it's fake.

I don't understand why they would kick them out if they smoked a cigarette. Is it that big of a deal?

oh it's just un-idol like (it's a bad example to little girls). I think they would only get kicked out if they were under 20 because 20 is when you can legally buy cigareettes in japan. BUT ANYWAYS that picture is fake... somebody edited it to make it look like that~~

it says 昨年、AKB48前田敦子の喫煙疑惑が持ち上がったが、それをネタにした前田敦子の喫煙コラ画像が作成され、ネット上で話題になっている。 on that blog I linked.

zigmonty Wrote:Now, the "make a baby" and bikini shoots are a little creepier. The handshake events, while a massive part of the marketing, are a little weird too. I would hope that the really young ones at least are well sheltered from the more obsessive fans. But that's it really.

i think the "make a baby" stuff didn't even go over well with fans either. if anything it's just some cheap image manipulation program.

are the handshake events really so weird? i can't really distinguish it between an autograph session or a meet-and-greet. or maybe a book signing. obviously there are some weird fans and they need to be controlled, but by nature it doesn't seem so bad.

IceCream Wrote:Right, i mean, i think what you said is true, for most works of art, literature, etc. So, you can study the symbolism within a work of literature, and you can find out that most of it's been drawn out afterwards, and isn't what the author intended anyway, and there is no real answer.

But advertising and manufactured entertainment is very different from this, because the point of the work isn't to make new meanings or make the viewer think, it's to tap directly into the collection of biases accumulated by the common observer to create a product that sells to them easily.

I think with advertising and manufactured entertainment, you can apply your own thoughts. So as with kusterdu's hilarious example of the shovel, I can say "Pride? No, screw that, it's a shovel and I don't need it."
When I see 制服が邪魔をする I kinda think along the same lines. You can approach it as "These young girls are hot and heavy and want your loving so please buy their CDs," definitely. But I choose to reject that, and in doing so, I see a different side of the song. (However, above all I really see it as a cheaply produced song with a superficial message that carries no depth or weight, and I chose not to purchase it.)

I actually don't know what I'm arguing about anymore. Maybe because of this terrible headache...

Eikyu Wrote:I don't understand why they would kick them out if they smoked a cigarette. Is it that big of a deal?

I think it was only underage smoking that was a big deal.
But even worse, people in entertainment have gotten suspended when pictures/blogs were unearthed of them regarding underage drinking/smoking, before they even joined the entertainment industry. Pretty stupid, but it's not exclusive to AKB or even idols, just Japan being backwards.

kainzero Wrote:are the handshake events really so weird? i can't really distinguish it between an autograph session or a meet-and-greet. or maybe a book signing. obviously there are some weird fans and they need to be controlled, but by nature it doesn't seem so bad.

Nah, it's more that it highlights the age groups involved. 40 year old men desperate to meet 15 year olds and getting all agitated in the queue is creepy. The event itself is pretty normal. It's the fans, or at least a small minority of them.

kainzero Wrote:When I see 制服が邪魔をする I kinda think along the same lines. You can approach it as "These young girls are hot and heavy and want your loving so please buy their CDs," definitely. But I choose to reject that, and in doing so, I see a different side of the song. (However, above all I really see it as a cheaply produced song with a superficial message that carries no depth or weight, and I chose not to purchase it.)

I actually think that's one of their better songs. Most of their songs i can't stand (mainly the over the top "happy" ones), whereas that one has a different tone to it. I have no problem with overtly sexual lyrics etc in general. If they released it now that they're all basically 16+ and a good chunk of them are in their 20s, i'd have no problem with it (even if a couple in the back were underage). They were all a lot younger when it was released though (like 5 years ago?), including the ones in the spotlight. That's really all that troubles me.

Basically,
Sexy girls dressed as school girls singing about sexy themes == fine.
Sexy school girls, who actually *are* like 15 years old, singing about sexy themes == maybe crosses the line.

Edit:

IceCream Wrote:But advertising and manufactured entertainment is very different from this, because the point of the work isn't to make new meanings or make the viewer think, it's to tap directly into the collection of biases accumulated by the common observer to create a product that sells to them easily.

Actually, this touches on something i've often wondered. Maybe this is because i'm an engineer but... Why is it ok for say Apple to engineer a product such as the iPhone to sell as well as possible, but when someone does it with music it's somehow a crime against art? The laptop i'm typing on has excellent industrial design. I don't care that it wasn't the product of some angsty artist out to satisfy no one but their own creative urges. I don't care that it's not an uncensored display of raw emotion. And frankly, i think the same of music. I don't care if the lyrics are written by a cynical middle aged man. If the end result is good, i'll listen to it.

zigmonty Wrote:Edit:

IceCream Wrote:But advertising and manufactured entertainment is very different from this, because the point of the work isn't to make new meanings or make the viewer think, it's to tap directly into the collection of biases accumulated by the common observer to create a product that sells to them easily.

Actually, this touches on something i've often wondered. Maybe this is because i'm an engineer but... Why is it ok for say Apple to engineer a product such as the iPhone to sell as well as possible, but when someone does it with music it's somehow a crime against art? The laptop i'm typing on has excellent industrial design. I don't care that it wasn't the product of some angsty artist out to satisfy no one but their own creative urges. I don't care that it's not an uncensored display of raw emotion. And frankly, i think the same of music. I don't care if the lyrics are written by a cynical middle aged man. If the end result is good, i'll listen to it.

Well, the reason it's ok for Apple to sell as well as possible is that they aren't harming anyone in the process.

i dunno, yknow. I mean, it's very easy to criticise when it's some 13 year old kid being made to look sexy. I mean, it's very clearly over the line, so there's not much to say about it.

But how about when they are 16/17? Is that really old enough to make that choice? I don't mean a personal choice to have sex or not, but a choice about whether to sell it, and the more widespread consequences of that.

Let's take Britney Spears as an example. So yeah, she was what, 16 when she did "Hit me baby one more time".
the imdb actually gives quite a good insight into her personality. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005453/bio
At the same time as she was singing "hit me" in a school uniform, she actually believed that she wanted to stay a virgin until marriage. She rejected some lyrics her manager gave her for "born to make you happy" saying that she was too young to be singing sexually explicit lyrics.

The two things, on one hand selling a song about sex in school uniform, and rejecting sexually explicit things don't really add up to me. Did she really get how sexual "baby one more time" was? What about the way it popularised school girls? She says that it's up to parents to teach their daughters that it's just an act to her, and she's not really what she's presenting. But it's not that teenage girls are quite that shallow. The effects are more subtle than that, in the way they are perceived and perceive themselves. Seems to me like she just wanted to be famous, but it didn't have to be in the way she did it, being presented in a way that was totally at odds with the things she believed in.

Of course, later, as is so often the case with stars who start out so young, later she became what the managers were selling her as, she started presenting herself as trashy, highly sexualised and dumb, and her personal life in her 20's was a wreck. The celebrity press is huge pressure. It does kind of say something when as a teenager she was thinking of studying entertainment law, but in her 20's she was pretending she thought Japan was somewhere in Africa.

Is it really ok? i dunno, i mean, she was overage wasn't she? Is it really ok to screw with peoples lives for entertainment purposes? Even if it clearly has a negative effect on their own lives? Even if it becomes the way other teenagers are perceived, regardless of how much of an act it is? I dunno. There is no clear line with that, is there. But personally, i don't like it.

EDIT: i don't mean to say that harm is restricted to manufactured music either though. My favourtie band when i was a young teenager was just as harmful, in a different way. I do think the music press should beware of selling people's personal problems as part of the music product too.