New God in Berlin

[GavinRees at aol.com]

In a message dated 29/2/00 5:08:05 am, Janine wrote:

<< In his report Tsuchiya quotes one spectator who
said something to the effect that changing from the political right to
the left rather seemed like switching the brand of ones car. That sounds
like a very accurate metaphor to me. Right or left becomes a decision
made according to the simple question of what (in this case emotional)
reward does one get from belonging to (read: consuming) this or that
group. So then, where's the difference between an ideology and a car
when both are treated as a consumer article that you either throw away
after use or resale it by taking part in a documentary?>>



I saw the New God in Yamagata, and in a predominantly Japanese audience. I am 
not surprised in Berlin that somebody made the point that ideology seemed to 
be reduced to consumer choice. The situations in the film: ultra-nationalist 
punk meets left wing intellectual, gets bored with fascist sugar daddy, hangs 
out with the red army, then falls in love,  have the kind of comic madness 
about them that smacks of a British advertising campaign, or a very ironic 
British caper movie.   Nothing appears real or deeply lived. 

The thing is, though,  history in Japan isn"t deeply lived, and digested in 
the way it is in some where like Germany. Japanese history teaching in 
schools has to be amongst the most selective and incompetent in the 
indusialised world, perhaps even as bad as English teaching there. 
Impressions and storys from the past come to most teenagers in a garbled 
distorted fashion. If they arrive at all,  they appear like heavily retouched 
or romanticised photos, thema for manga.  I think the strength of the New God 
is that it catches this. The  characters are searching for identity when 
everything appears false, when ideologies have been reduced to brands. They 
are aware of losing something. One of the difficulties they face in the film 
is not knowing how to articulate those ideas purely with reference to 
themselves. They try and define who they are through the groups around them, 
but become lost in the realisation that Japan as a national identity, be it 
left or right, can"t shoulder all, or even most of, the burden of defining 
them as individuals. (My suspicion is that because that Japanese people tend 
to be brought up as group orientated, is that when there are individual 
crises of identity, that they more readily use the nation as a metaphor for 
this than other communities. Though, of course, all do to some extent.)  At 
the heart of the film there is  a deep confusion and loneliness. 

To get back to the point I suspect it is hard for  a German audience to 
understand that in Japan ideleologies really do feel a little like brands, or 
fashion  choices, even if people devote themselves to them with an all 
consuming energy. You can't translate the categories in a simple linear way.

Gavin