Satchi

[Aaron Gerow]

Michael wrote,

>There are "real 
>news" shows on during the day so any housewife who wishes to can keep 
>up with the "important" events. But then who am I to say what is 
>important for the largely female daytime audience, the spirited 
>discussions inspired by the Satchi affair often seem to be fueled by 
>issues of morality, proper behavior of a Japanese woman, privacy, and 
>the conduct of the press. These may be far more important subjects to a 
>wideshow audience than much of what is on the respectable news 
>programs, and I will bet that a lot of them will tell you that these are 
>issues with much greater impact on their lives than, say, the suicide of 
>Eto Jun.

Trying to be neutral yet provoke discussion, I haven't really put forward 
my views of wideshows, but the general tone of my language probably 
belies a general dislike of the format.  While I can watch them and not 
infrequently see interesting stories (if not intellectually interesting 
cultural problems), stories like the Satchi affair still make me worried 
about the power of the media, their definition of privacy, the morality 
of journalism, and the construction of subjectivity.  Frankly, I found 
the scenes of reporters hounding Satchi around the train station 
offensive and repulsive and a clear demonstration of the dangers of the 
violence of the camera (which any good documentarist from Hara to Koreeda 
is conscious of).  I question the morality of anyone who makes such 
things and who likes watching it.  Koreeda and others on the production 
side have been trying to warn people a lot lately about the complete lack 
of action on media ethics within the TV industry in Japan (as Koreeda 
said in a Doc Box interview I did with him, every time a scandal occurs, 
nothing is solved), but we also have to wonder about the viewer culture 
that supports these problems.

This is my emotional response, and feel free to analyze it if you want, 
but Michael thankfully does remind me that both the situation and my 
reaction to it are more complex.  There are actually features to the 
wideshows which I actually liked.  Before the demise of the TBS 
wideshows, the morning show reserved from 30 minutes to an hour on 
Fridays just to discuss contemporary issues in often interesting ways.  
Wideshows, I should remind people, did some of the better and earlier 
reporting on the AIDS scandal.  And as Michael emphasizes, quite a few 
still devote a lot of time to discussions of social, famialial, and moral 
issues.

But there are still many problems worthy of discussion.  First, while it 
is clear we cannot easily divide TV news into afternoon and evening 
formats, there nonetheless are distinctions in the way news is defined 
and delivered on TV. While in the afternoon, hard news is offered on NHK 
and the 11:30 news sports and in market news on TV Tokyo, the way these 
programs are constructed, their tone, point of view and content all 
differ from the news breaks seen on some of the afternoon shows, or on 
the actual programming of the wideshows.  Not all can be reduced to a 
male vs. female audience, but many shows very literally present their 
news as "okusama no tame ni" and construct it according to their views of 
what this audience is and wants.  As I discuss below, the problem arises 
when these definitions of viewership are not merely passive responses to 
actualy viewer desires, but serve to shape those desires--and 
subjectitivites--themselves.

Second, as we can tell from the kind of responses to the Satchi affair 
seen on this list, there is the fear that whatever issues are discussed 
on the wideshows are often presented in a conservative way which 
reinforces dominant ideologies.  Much of the time the discussions reveal 
major fissures in such ideology (e.g., the simultaneous love and hate of 
bossy women), but there is the fear that the "consensus" over what is 
"natural" and "common sense" (something very evident in the Satchi 
affair) is a mode of power and social control.

>I'm sure Aaron already knows this, but for the benefit of others I will 
>close with my first rule of Japanese television: Never underestimate the 
>intelligence of the audience - no matter how simple-minded the 
>programming may look to you. Come to think of it, Aaron has to agree with 
>this, given some of the shows he admits to watching!

Actually, Michael, I've said the same things many times on this list.  
But I do think we in Japanese TV and film studies still have a lot of 
work to do on audiences, industry, and ideology.  We are all aware of the 
Fiskean, cultural studies point of view which emphasizes how audiences 
appropriate and use popular cultural texts for their own ends.  There are 
clear cases where audiences do take "dominant ideological" texts and 
effectively rework them according to their needs, making them important 
to their lives.  There is more than a strong possibility many wideshow 
viewers are critically working with the texts in ways we should not 
desparage.

But at the same time, there are many people in cultural studies who 
remind us that texts contain many devices which, if not forcing, at least 
encourage "proper" readings.  My research on prewar film reception 
indicates that there is a long history of efforts to promote, control, 
and regulate the kinds of meanings people produce from movies.  Without 
having to follow Adorno precisely, we also have to recognize there are 
industrial factors which encourage companies to find means to prevent 
alternative readings and uses of its cultural products. With this 
historical, cultural, and industrial background, we have plenty of 
evidence to lead us to conclude that many wideshows (as well as many 
shows in general, and many films) are constructed to prevent a critical 
response/use on the part of the audience and that most audiences follow 
along with that.  It is there when the issues of ideology and control 
arise.

Clearly neither extreme is right, but there remains a lot of work to be 
done in work on popular culture in Japan to understand that culture as 
neither liberatory nor oppressive, but as a complex struggle over meaning 
and power which involves dominant corporate and state structures as well 
as amorphous spectator fields and reception contexts.  I've only started 
thinking about it, but looking at the ease with which the 
Kimigayo/Hinomaru, defense guidelines, and wiretapping legislation passed 
the Diet without any discussion, I tend towards the skeptical side.  

Any comments?

Aaron Gerow
YNU