Satchi

[Barbara Hartley]

It seems to me that the whole Satchi thing is comparable to the press 
coverage of Hayashi Mayumi after the curry jiken last year.
Bizarre though the incident was it was nothing like the press coverage that
followed. I was travelling in Japan on work at the time and can't actually
recall any other current event that occurred since every time I turned the
tv on there was nothing but saturation coverage of Mayumi higaisha on
absolutely every station. There's undoubtedly a gender factor at work - and
a certain glee in dealing brutally with women who have stepped outside
defined parameters. The political demonisation is confirmed by candid shots
of the women looking stressed and tired and generally pretty dreadful, thus
'legitimising' the manner in which they are dealt with by the media as
deviant.
Not that I'm, advocating in any way for bumping off people who give you the
cold shoulder with a bowl of pesticided curry, or for not paying your bills
or whatever. But compare the press treatment of both Mayumi and Satchi with
the piddling little bit of coverage given to all those blokes who have been
involved in mega frauds and other scandals over the past few years. A bit of
a glimpse of them looking vaguely remorseful sandwiched in between two other
blokes in the back of a police car and that's about it. And with respect to
the unfortunate Satchi, how much more worthwhile had the media decided to
have a closer look at the bewigged chappy raking in a bucket by doing nips
and tucks, to say nothing of the whole cosmetic surgery industry in general.

By the way we've just had an incident in Australian where a prominent woman
politician, Carmen Lawrence - touted in the early nineties as a future prime
minister - has been the subject of a political witchhunt which resulted in
her being prosecuted for perjury. She was acquitted on Friday by a jury
which took less than an hour to make its decision. However, much of the
mainstream press (media and print) ran stories about her being 'let off' by
the judicial system and implying that she was undoubtedly guilty. The
hysteria is of a different tenor to that associated with Satchi. But the
message is the same. Beware if you're a women who is perceived as
transgressing.

And with regard to the boredom factor. You might get bored the with hard
sell coverage, but the manner in which that coverage is being orchestrated
is surely a topic that calls for inquiry and comment.

Barbara  Hartley


----------
>From: Aaron Gerow <gerow at ynu.ac.jp>
>To: "KineJapan" <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
>Subject: Re: Satchi
>Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 11:47 AM
>

> Yesterday, the Hinomaru/Kimigayo bill passed the Lower Diet and Eto Jun
> committed suicide, and still the morning wide shows all opened with
> Satchi...
>
>>What has also surprised me, since I can't read Japanese well enough to
>>follow it very well in Japanese papers myself, is how absent the issue has
>>been in the English-language press.  From TV and Japanese friends, I
>>understand how prevalent Japanese media coverage has been, but I've seen
>>almost nothing in English about it.  Granted, I primarily read the Yomiuri,
>>but why is it assumed that English-language readers will have NO interest in
>>this issue?
>
> I think part of the issue is not simply English language press vs.
> Japanese language press, but rather the definition of "news" that
> operates within different media organizations.  The major papers and TV
> news orgnizations like NHK as a rule do not consider celebrity news and
> gossip as news and frequently ignore stories that fill up space and time
> in weekly magazines and wideshows.  There are some differences (the
> Mainichi tends to cover geino news more often than the Asahi), but there
> is still a hierarchy within journalism over what is "really news."
>
> Satchi is one of the few cases (Aum and the Miura/LA jiken are others)
> where stories that originated in the wideshows and weeklies made their
> way into "respectable" journalism, but even then, the reporting on the
> Satchi affair in the major papers has still been very minimal.
>
> This does raise issues of gender and audience.  Since wideshows mostly
> have a female viewership, it is as if "news" for them is defined as
> Satchi, while "real news" is reserved for evening shows when the men come
> home (shows which don't cover Satchi (especially if it's NHK))--as if
> women would have no interest in learning about the Hinomaru issue in an
> afternoon show.  How is celebrity culture as a whole in fact "feminized"
> through such standards?  How does this relate to the "male" version of
> gossip found in weekly magazines like Asahi Geino, which are tied into
> late night TV culture of sexy idols (which we could call male celebrity
> culture).  Since this also revolves around issues of citizenship (the
> press and the public sphere), how does TV celebrity culture define
> Japanese citizenship and thus the nation across gender lines?  (Satchi is
> interesting in this regard since the issue directly involves political
> qualifications.)
>
> Just some more questions.
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Yokohama National University
> KineJapan list owner
> For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to
> listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
>
>