TV in Japan

[S.A. Thornton]

Aaron, thanks for your comments.  I would like to respond to a few:  

> I'm afraid SAT, as Michael seems to emphasize, is confusing terms here
> (or at least is using a very different definition from mine) and I think
> we need to clarify the difference between such terms as "cliche,"
> "formula" "strategies," and "convention" before we proceed any further.
> 
> Cliche is, by most usage (including my own), an overused device, one that
> is so recognizable it stands out as such and in some ways has lost its
> semiotic power.  The use of the term can be academic (referring to a
> certain historical moment in the use of a narrative style), but it is
> most often evaluative.
> 
> A cliche is not a formula, though it may be what a formula turns into.  A
> formula is a set of strategies which work, either to ensure narrative or
> box office success.  Usually, the conception is that if a formula becomes
> cliched, it no longer works.  Formulaic is often an evaluative term, but
> formula usually is not.
> 
> Technically, formulae and conventions are different.  The latter refers
> to a contract between the sender and receiver of a message in which they
> agree on what signs or sign structures are to denote/connote what
> meaning.  The implication, as with the notion of a conventional language,
> is that conventions establish artificial sign-meaning relationships.  A
> formula is less a question of semiosis than effect: a combination which
> produces a bang.  Cliches are definitely conventions, but one could argue
> that they are ones that have lost a substantial amount of "receiver"
> agreement as to their operation.  Not all conventions are cliches.  When
> we discuss any form of semiotic production that involves conventions (and
> all do) we are in general NOT talking about cliches.  These are very
> different issues.


This is a semiotic interpretation.  In oral tradition studies
(Parry/Lord/Foley) cliche is a perjorative word for formula that comes
out of Victorian criticism and the favoring of "originality" over other,
traditional forms of narrative.  The question is not whether one likes
it but whether it works in constructing and performing the narrative.
"Formula" and "formulaic" are both technical terms without evaluative
connotations. 

The question is when and why and for whom the formula "no longer
works."  It obviously works for the producer as performer of the
particular TV broadcast.  It doesn't work for certain segments of the
actual if not perceived or intended viewing audience, including
westerners and critics heavily influenced by western
narratives/narrative theory and convinced of their superiority. I think
we are both agreed that changes have occurred in the Japanese audience
as demographic group--whether the producers of TV shows want to
acknowledge that is a different matter.  Perhaps the developments in
media reflect not a change in the audience but a resistance to it.  

> Thus I would disagree with SAT's statement that cliches are at the core
> of narrative strategies.  I would agree that conventions are, but that is
> an entirely different issue.  Perhaps it would be best to argue that
> cliches appear when narrative strategies are beginning to break down.
> SAT's call for us to consider how these strategies are used is right on
> the mark.  I would just never use the word cliche in that context without
> clarifying its meaning.

Again, I would say that "cliche" is evaluative; it indicates a
resistance to the culturally determined tradition of narrative and
performance.  I am not saying that I like them any more than you do: 
but I recognize that my inability to like Japanese TV is the based on
the same fact as that for my inability to like American TV: I am not
part of the projected audience, the market.  I understand the narrative
strategy; I just don't like it. Again, however, since I regard "cliche"
as a pejorative for those units of performing, transmitting, and storing
narrative, formulas, they are the core of narrative strategy,
technically speaking, in oral tradition studies.    

> >Just because these narrative strategies are not American does not mean
> >that they have no value in their own culture.  I thought that the
> >prupose of studying Japanese film/TV was to figure out what the Japanese
> >were doing? The American model has to be addressed and then dropped.
> >Japanese cultures and traditions get ignored by American
> >specialists/scholars of Film/tv and we all lose by it.
> 
> I wholly agree with this, and I hope my previous messages have shown
> this.  I don't think, however, I have ever once argued that these
> narrative strategies have no value because they are not American.  I have
> argued the opposite.  However, the citing of cliches brings up issues
> which can be completely different than the issue of ethnocentrism which
> SAT is right to be concerned about.  Again there are problems with her
> use of the word cliche, but I do want to consider what it would mean to
> have a Japanese term Japanese TV cliched.  Certainly this could not be
> reduced to an East-West issue.  It would rather indicate that there exist
> evaluative strategies that are in oppostion to certain narrative
> strategies dominant in a genre.  Dare I say that it means that one is
> witnessing competing Japanese cultures?  That is why I have a problem
> with another of SAT's comments:
> 
> >These cliches, as the path of least resistance in production, are Japanese
> >culture.  If the Japanese themselves don't like it anymore, then that
> >means that something is happening to change the tastes of the Japanese.
> 
> Apart from the repeated problem with the term cliche, I always get the
> feeling it is not very useful talking about Japanese culture.  There are
> Japanese cultureS.  "The Japanese" is also a problematic concept which,
> with the critiques of nihonjinron, etc., should also be used with care.
> I think the issue of the cliche is crucial because it shows how narrative
> strategies are both historical and particular, that they change over time
> and rarely have hold over an entire "culture."  When someone calls
> something cliched, they are asserting their culture against another.  I
> just want to emphasis that this occurs between Japanese as much as it
> does between Japanese and Westerners and we should never lose sight of
> this.

I am in perfect agreement.  I think it important to trace more precisely
and correlate resistance to certain media with demographic, social,
economic, and especially educational background. I wouldn't depend
entirely on the critics to represent "the Japanese audience."

> 
> SAT is right to point to the issue of change, but we should start
> thinking about our model of culture and the nation.  Are we talking about
> a single entity that metamorphized like a caterpillar, or are we talking
> about multiple cultures within a national sphere that are competing for
> hegemony?
> 
> This relates to one of Dick's points:
> 
> >P.P.S.  And another post in from S.A. Thornton which seems to resonate
> >nicely with a point above, namely >>  And I think that the cliche of the
> >fast talking male "presenter" and his purely decorative and adoring female
> >sidekick has a long history in Japanese folk and folk religious
> >performing arts, not to mention monologue conversation patterns.  These
> >cliches, as the path of least resistance in production, are Japanese
> >culture. <<  I think that when one starts looking for these cross-media
> >connections, the stated awfulness is transformed into something else,
> >something "better."  Try looking at 400 hours of home movies...
> 
> I like Dick's emphasis on cross-media connections.  They certainly are
> worth investigating and, if not helping make something look "better," can
> at least help us understand the intertexts that many readers are using to
> understand or appropriate works.  SAT's example is one, but we should
> again be aware of the complex and varied nature of reading through
> intertexts.  Some viewers may read the newscaster structure in terms of
> the traditions SAT cites, but many who are unfamiliar with those
> traditions do not.  Even those, like feminist critics, who know such
> traditions, look at that structure in relation to other cultures which
> make it seem "cliched."

Here I would make the same point.  It doesn't matter whether one knows
the history of Japanese performing arts to understand the function of
"the formula."  One has only to see it often enough to understand how it
works.  And there are repetitions and replications enough to learn and
to understand the formula in one medium. One doesn't have to go far to
find the "extended text."

> What then does it mean when I use the term "cliche"?  Certainly I must
> beware of an ethnocentric attitude and I thank SAT for warning me about
> it.  I do defend any non-evaluative use I was making of the term: I think
> it is important to point out the fact that some television conventions
> are "tired" because underlines the existence of other strategies.  Noel
> Burch may argue that Japanese art valorized repetition over originality,
> but even if that it was valid for the pre-Meiji, it certainly was not the
> case for Japanese film criticism after 1920, which has laid a heavy
> emphasis on originality.  Thus the citation of "cliches" has been an
> important part of the struggle over taste and culture in the 20th
> century.  Filmmakers themselves, by polemically opposing their styles to
> others, are often also complaining about the cliched nature of other
> directors (e.g. Masumura or Oshima critiquing Ozu and Kinoshita) in order
> to found a "new" style.  If we follow Juri Lotman, the history of cinema
> is defined by the conflicts.

But film criticism is not "the audience." There has always been a
tension--or disconnect-- between what the mass audience expected and
what directors wanted to produce.  Before proceeding with any discussion
of "the audience," I want to see not only the film criticism, which is
primarily western-derived, but the box-office receipts, the fan letters,
etc.

I fully agree that there are many audiences--both the fragmented
Japanese audience and the non-Japanese.  The question is whether the
producers know or care.
> 
> 
> In the end, however, I prefer arguments about how and why over what's
> good and bad.  That's the sense I think I get from others, so maybe we
> can start moving the discussion there.

One thing I should like to add.  Pleasure is present in an experience in
which one's skills are in direct correspondence with the demands of the
task at hand. .  We're just plain overqualified for the task at hand.

And one last question.  Just how do we determine which films/TV shows
are worth watching, i.e., good?

This has been fun.  Haven't had much time to join in the conversations
before.  Hope some of this is comprehensible.

SAT
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> YNU
> 
> P.S. Sorry for the rambling comments.  While I have a deadline tomorrow,
> I thought I should say something soon.