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.

The strange double life of the Barilla jingle in Lebanese pop culture

Credit: Lebanon Dikkene

That Barilla jingle! The one drilled into the collective memory of the Lebanese population. Yes, that one! One of the many many achievements of multi-hyphenate creative Elias Rahbani who left us at the beginning of this year. But you know how it happens, a musician produces a hit song, the song gets used in an ad - it happened gazillions of times.

But what if I told you the reverse happened in this instance. Case in point? Our legendary diva Sabah and her own hit single "wa3douni w nattarouni" - you will realize that it is the exact same beat as Barilla.

Usually this means that the hit was produced (by Elias Rahbani) and he was commissioned by Barilla to put new lyrics to it (side note - Rahbani who composed "Tafta hindi" for Raja Badr did exactly that for Niers luncheon meat in an ad starring Dalida Baroud when she was still at LBC in the 80s). Actually, in the case of Barilla, Sabah who had an ear for potential hits and a great sense of hype, heard the Barilla jingle and asked Rahbani to pen a song on the same music. Naturally, a mega hit was born. But as I said, it was born "the other way around" - with the advertising coming first.

Elias Rahbani RIP

 

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Elias Rahbani passed way. Really I cannot even begin to state what this man did to popular Arabic music. I am not a musicologist but I am a researcher in pop culture and his influence cannot even begin to be measured, and no, not just the Fairouz repertoire - I am talking everyone else, the whole artists he fostered and those whose careers he pampered, or the greats he collaborated with (many of the late Sabah songs were his compositions!) not to mention advertising jingles galore (Barilla anyone?), or the songs he made for children (3ammi bou massoud) or the eternal theme songs (Allo? Hayete) and the list goes on!

And what if Pepsi is the answer? Pop culture as a bridge to peace

And what if Pepsi is the answer?

It seems someone tried to imitate the now infamous Kendal Jenner Pepsi ad  by actually offering the soda drink to the police (or law enforcement officers) to diffuse the tense situation. Now on the face of  it, the original ad was a total misread of the situation so much that Pepsi pulled it, and what this person did seems a little too tacky to be believed.
But think about it - when you think of the US, one of the first things that come to your mind are McDonald's, Coke, Cadillac, Levi's, Madonna, Beyonce. Basically pop culture elements!
Actually this is what my project "The history of Lebanon: Simulacra and simulation." is all about.
Read the creative rationale below:
"Based on the philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard. This art project is an attempt to retrace the history of Lebanon through signs and signifiers.
Simulacra are defined as copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original, whereas simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.
Lebanon has not had a common official history book since before the war, students still study in archaic books that end somewhere around 1972. The reason for that is simple, since history is not the real version of the events but simply the narrative dictated by the winner, and since there was no clear winner of the Lebanese war at the abrupt end of it, then the saying by Bill Farrell - the late New York Times reporter in Lebanon - "there's no truth in Beirut, only versions" still holds.
To make things worse, the same political families which ruled Lebanon during the war, are still there and refusing to look at their past and be able to understand what they did wrong or assess their legacies in the bloody events. Still, all is not lost, for - no matter in which shelter one was in the Lebanese war - we were all listening to the same ads, jingles, watching the same soap operas, using the same products, going to (different) cinemas which were showing the same movies, enjoying the same heartthrobs - be they in roman photo (translated Italian photoromanze) or singing sensations, and the list goes on.
Only the signs and signals of pop culture of Lebanon will be able to join us when "politics" divides us. Politics stems from the two Greek words, "polis" and "ethos" - polis or the "heart of the fortress" and ethos which means ethics. So the original meaning of the word meant "the ethics of living in a community" and if that had to go through advertising jingles, then so be it.
The project aims to use pop culture, in terms of symbols, names, catchphrases as a way to unify the Lebanese around the same concepts and ideas, and using the said elements as emotional triggers to help preserve memories both personal and collective.
Baudrillard has said about the iconoclasts: "One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn't conceal anything at all". Should this be true then the images of this project do not conceal anything either.
The project is composed of "episodes" each being a video art 13,5 seconds long, with each video containing 9 high resolution related images (thematically, geographically or time wise) with a total time of 90 minutes. Along with a two-hour long soundtrack which explores the Lebanese collective memory in terms of audio rarities and songs (specifically related to the war era)."

Suburbutopia: George Floyd, the Pet Shop Boys and sanitized pop culture.

Bill Reed: 
Arraignment of 18 of 21 men implicated in the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner

"President Bush announced tonight that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have a free and fair voting. Iraq? We can't even get this in Florida." -Jay Leno

I remember this old Jay Leno joke - back when LBC used to run his show. Pirated, I believe.

I am of the generation that grew up in the 80s, surrounded by - mostly American pop cultural items and social status elements. Think A Team, Dallas, Dynasty, Michael Jackson, Jeans, Sebago docksides and the list continues. The United States was aspirational.

Truth be told, the whole western world was - because added to the American pop culture, many "European" items/brands could easily be added: Duran Duran, Kim Wilde, Vanessa Paradis, Swatch, Benetton, Naf Naf, etc...

But naturally, that was an over-simplification.

I distinctly remember when the Pet Shop Boys came up with the Suburbia TV clip, we - by that I mean my peers and myself - "there's nothing wrong about living in such a place". We wanted to be there.

Little did we know that the partial inspiration of the song's video were the 1984 Los Angeles riots (the song came out in 1986). 

As the death/murder of George Floyd has set the United States ablaze with protests, TMZ (the site that specializes in what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast and ergo the most trusted gauge of the average American opinion) ran a survey - below are some of the answers:

Is America as racist as it was 50 years ago? 

57% Just As Racist As 50 Years Ago, 43% We've Gotten A Lot Better (74,451 total votes)

Do people trust the police?

43%Yes 57% No (74,078 total votes)

Is the country is heading toward a civil war?

55% Yes and 45% No (73,462 total votes).

To go back to the lyrics of Mr. Neil Tennant himself:

"Break the window by the town hall

Listen! A siren screams
there in the distance like a roll call

Of all the suburban dreams."

Lebanon: Identity with an Arab(esque) face (video art by Tarek Chemaly)

Still from "Lebanon: Identity with an Arab(esque) face"

A new video art has been launched by Tarek Chemaly. Please watch it here.
Lebanon always had an issue with its Arab identity, so much that in the original 1943 constitution, Lebanon was called a country with an "Arab face" (only for this to be changed in the Taef agreement which ended the 1975-1990 war and which became the new constitution in which Lebanon became an "Arab country").
By applying arabesque (with its link to Islamic culture)  to Lebanese "iconic" buildings/old stamps/vintage postcards/historic tiles... - according to a complex mathematical algorithm I constructed - and by using the act of repetition (yet with variants despite the uniformity), made me look back at our history as a chequered past - as a both personal and collective narrative - in a new fragmented (as opposed to linear) way, especially since writing history (specifically that of the war years) is almost impossible in Lebanon).
Interestingly, the whole exercise was done by hand through painstaking use of the rudimentary Microsoft Paintbrush rather than Photoshop (joining technology with the folk movement championed by the likes of Soetsu Yanagi).