Communicate gets a new website

First full disclosure, yes I am the editor in chief of Communicate, and yes, I am bragging. But there is reason. Communicate just got its new revamped website (here). The website is sleek, minimal, a little Bauhausian (form following function), and is incredibly easy to navigate. You remember that Nike Atlanta Olympics in 1996 "don't insult our intelligence, tell us what it is, tell us what it does and don't play the national anthem while you do it". And we are not playing the national anthem. In French they say "c'est complique de faire simple" (it is complicated to do something simple). But of course to give credit where credit is due I wish to thank Obeida, Hoor, Carla, Tonina, Amani and our external consultants Charbel and Wissam. And whereas I have a hint some thought I was too stubborn during the negotiations but that was because I knew from the get-go where I wished things to end. And here we are indeed! 

A luxury that has lived a life - editorial for Communicate 183

This is my editorial for the issue number 183 of Communicate, enjoy!
 

In 2010, while I was visiting a friend in San Francisco, and on a whim, we went into thrift store. John, my friend who is the CEO of a huge company, absent-mindedly rummaged briefly through the racks and decided he did not want anything. I threw an eagle-eyed look at the store, went to that basket near the cashier, and immediately took out a tie. I paid 6,25 USD Dollars for it. Showed it to John, his jaw dropped. “Would you gift it to me? Please?” He said. Or rather pleaded. The tie in question was the ultra-rare, obnoxiously expensive vintage Versace Miami print in mint condition. He wore it the next day to his board meeting and returned with giddy glee to the rave reviews he received.

Another time, I was at a second-hand store in Beirut. I saw a pair of shoes, instinctively knew what they were and casually strolled to get them. Before I reached for them another woman grabbed them, and although they were in pristine condition, she – thankfully – decided against them and threw them back carelessly. I took the pair without even trying them on, went and paid for them – 2 USD if you want to know – and bang! Their original price was 340 Euros. The lady tried to buy them back from me at the store door (apparently she checked them online) and I kindly declined.

These are not isolated stories. My life – or rather closet and house - are full of them. In today’s world, the word luxury is loaded. Its meaning shifting and morphing from one generation to the next. Originally, and according to the Oxford dictionary, the word means “a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense.”

Yet, paradoxically, Hermes artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas says that the brand is costly, not expensive. “Expensive is a product, which is not delivering what it is supposed to deliver, but you paid quite a large amount of money for it, and then it betrays you”. It feels as if this hinges on a technically. Yet, in 2024, major “luxury brands” were embroiled in a sweatshop scandal – in Italy no less - whereby a 2600 Euros bag was costing 53 Euros to make while using workers toiling in abominable conditions.

Speaking of Hermes, somewhere between Chirstmas and New Year’s Walmart, the discount department stores in the US, sold – what is technically a “dupe”. A product which looks like very expensive designer item is but is a copy, which is a tendency that invaded the markets when people could not afford the originals. The dupe in question was dubbed the Wirkin, or Walmart Birkin, for the price of 78 USD for the regular leather and 200 USD for its premium leather – literally at the 1/100^th of the price of the original.

Right now, the world of luxury brands however, is in full crisis. The Chinese – often the backbone of the clientele - found themselves in a wave of real estate crash and wave of youth unemployment. Currently, major houses, including LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), Kering, and other such empires find themselves playing catch-up for having lost 60 million “aspiring shoppers” and concentrating on their Very Important Clients (VIPs) who still found themselves short-thrifted on experience and treatment when compared to how much they were buying. Only Hermes rode the crisis high, still producing its extremely “costly” bags – the Kelly and the Birkin – and still enjoying the aura of their exclusiveness.

The more we delve into the word, the more complicated in becomes. If “vintage” is indeed luxury, then no wonder the world of second-hand, deadstock merchandise, upcycling, thrifting, and pre-loved is booming throughout the world. The value of that market is supposed to reach 113.2 Billion USD by 2030 up from 42.5 Billion in 2023. So much that major brands are initiating second-hand lines from their overstock, archive pieces or garments and accessories cosigned by their clients from previous collections.

Mona Ayoub, who in 2023 auctioned many items of her haute couture Chanel wardrobe, said of her coat which took 800 hours to make and embroider and which sold at 312000 Dollars: “I wore it at a venue when Karl [Lagerfeld – former chanel designer] was present”. She styled it open “over a turtleneck and a pair of pants. “When Karl saw me he was so shocked and asked me how could I do that. I told him that I gained weight and can’t close it. He then laughed and said to me, ‘join the club’.” Because even owning such exclusive pieces cannot negate you from gaining weight and not fitting into them.

Luxury is so multifaceted, it could be a nice meal, a good night’s sleep, a treasured sweater from high school, a simple wedding band with sentimental value, time spent with family (or “chosen family” as the expression goes), or time alone.

Speaking of time, in 1988, watchmaker Piaget came up with a series of ads which went "La plus belle facon de porter une Piaget c'est de n'en rien montrer" – “the most beautiful way to wear a piaget, is not to show any of it”. Because you are wearing it for yourself, not for bragging. Because self-appreciation beats all show-off.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s lovely book “The Little Prince”, the titular hero meets up with a merchant selling pills that quench thirst. You only needed to take one per week and feel no need to drink. Apparently this saved 53 minutes a week. The prince, in his own logic said, “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”

Because walking at one’s leisure toward a spring of fresh water is, indeed a luxury.

Anime as a distilled version of Japanese culture

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

In case you missed it yesterday in Communicate Online, here it is on my blog:

The fact that anime [animated work originating from Japan] is apparently seeing a huge resurgence in the Arab region, has been attributed to many factors – nostalgia, a longing for simpler times, etc. Yet, one of the driving elements behind this resurgence is the generational aspect of anime, which means different things to different people in the Arab region.

It goes without saying that one of the most important mainstays of anime is Grendizer (or Goldorak in Europe) [created by manga artist Go Nagai and produced by Toei Doga and Dynamic Planning in 1975]. Dismissing it as “something for children” only lessens what it meant for a full generation of Arab people – it was, simultaneously, a representative of the Palestinian cause, a savior for children in need of refuge (especially in war-torn countries such as Lebanon), a Deus ex Machina whereby things would be set to right at the 11^th hour.

And, of course, the deeper lesson is that each of its four protagonists (Daisky, Koji, Hikaru, and Maria, as they were called in Arabic) could never beat [archvillain] Vega and its moon colony on their own and had to team up – which instilled the notion of teamwork in the impressible minds of young Arab children. Do note that the Arab culture favors competition rather than collaboration; so, here was a major new value system for Arab audiences, at odds with what society at large was trying to pin on them.

Yes, the Arabic version was re-edited to suit local audiences. However, honestly, how can a child understand that Daisky’s former fiancée was Vega’s own daughter who died, got resuscitated, brainwashed, then sent in one of those Vega monsters (the classic “wa7ch” in Arabic) to fight Grendizer? Actually, in the same episode in the original version, Hikaru who was madly in love with Daisky, saw the latter kiss his former fiancée on the mouth (seriously, a total taboo in Arab societies!), and was so jealous she contemplated joining the Vega forces to fight Grendizer. So yes, explaining this to a child might be a tad too much. But still, despite all the editing and story reshuffling, Grendizer managed to inhabit the imagination of a full generation of Arab children.

This is why, when Astroganga (commonly known in Arabic as Jonger) came to the screens barely half a decade after Grendizer, it targeted a completely different generation – which is one of the main characteristics of anime in the Arab work: its generational aspects.

Indeed, by the time Sasuki came to the screens, or indeed much later Yu-Gi-Yoh, the generational gap was too outstanding to be lumped into one definition or one meaning. Interestingly, “censorship” to what is fitting for children to see also took a different course. While a kiss on the mouth in Grendizer was a complete no-go, one episode of Yu-Gi-Yoh had a full explanation of sadomasochism and the philosophy of leather-bondage.

Taking anime away from the socio-political environment would be diminishing its value. And simply putting it under the guise of “childhood nostalgia” is, sadly, stripping it from the many values it upheld. For example, Spirited Away, by Studio Ghibli, could easily be one of the most pointed critiques of consumerism, but this brings us to the realm of anime as films and not just TV episodes, which, to many Arab audiences, is not covered by the definition of anime.

Anime is, actually, the distillation of the Japanese value system and not simply trying to look at life through rose spectacles. And the sooner we admit that, the sooner we can understand the very complex world it tries to build within its images and storytelling.