Love & Pop

[Aaron Gerow]

Nice to see an energetic discussion on a film on the list.  

But what I have found curious about much of the discussion of _Love & 
Pop_ is that, regardless of how good or bad that film is, many who 
criticize it have put forward Harada Masato's _Bounce KoGALS_ as a 
positive alternative.  Only Mark seems to want to reverse the that 
comparison (an honest thing to do, since Mark tends to favor Harada's 
work), but I would also like to question the opinion that that film is 
any more realistic or honest in its approach to the subject.  In fact, 
what annoyed me about the film was precisely the "Hollywood" approach 
which Mark cited.  Frankly, while I respect Harada as a technician and 
story-teller, I still find his approach to characterization categorical 
and, if you may, stereotypical.  Just as in _Jubaku_, where the camps are 
all rather clearly delineated (especially through art direction) and the 
people we are meant to side with are essentially "good" (in the end, the 
regular "salaryman" is exempted from criticism), _Bounce_ cannot seem to 
present the dark side, or, I would stress, the ambivalent side of its 
three heroines.  Essentially, they all end up looking like good girls we 
can sympathize with.  That helps Harada criticize the society that 
victimizes them, but it prevents him from exploring the profound 
emptiness, ambivalence, or loss of place that seems to be the hallmark of 
this generation, and which other directors like Aoyama Shinji, Tsukamoto 
Shinya, or Kurosawa Kiyoshi are exploring.  Frankly, he imposes morality 
on a situation in which morality itself is under question (for many of 
the reasons people have cited: commercialism, patriarchy, consumerism, 
etc.).  While it may be important to condemn these practices, it rings 
false not only to me but also to many of the people I know to preach 
values without exploring why values themselves are being reduced to 
nothing, or why they don't seem to fit the real lives of many young 
people.  This relates to the aversion against sixties or seventies 
politics many young people hold today: it all seems like preaching based 
on certainties which no longer exist today.  That does not mean that 
anything goes, but rather that the point is to in some ways return to 
ground zero and try to build up values and relationships on your own in 
relation to present-day lived experience.  That I think is a common theme 
in the better work that's coming out these days.

This also relates to the issue of whether or not a director should 
comment upon his or her subject.  I had a long talk with Aoyama last 
weekend before he goes off to Cannes (ganbare!), but in our discussions, 
he was stressing that the issue he and most of his filmmaker friends 
(Kurosawa, Shiota, Zeze, Izuchi, etc.) are talking about recently is 
unrepresentability.  This issue is first a product of their debt to 
Hasumi, but it is also a stance both cinematic and realist.  First, they 
are all averse to forms of cinema (or TV for that matter) that explain or 
make things obvious. Cinema, they think, should not only leave more up to 
the viewer, but it should value the fact that images are not always clear 
and understandable.  (Their insistance on this is partially a form of 
resistance: seeing _Space Travelers_, with its incessant explanatory 
editing, reminded me of how much such works--which still dominate the box 
office--are both an affront to the viewer's intelligence and a refusal to 
explore cinematic possibilities.)  That's one reason why many recent 
filmmakers opt for what I call a "detached style" defined by long shots 
and long takes which refrains from explanatory editing.  But I also think 
this option is based on an attitude towards reality: simply, that reality 
these days cannot be easily explained.  Why does Kenji kill in 
_Helpless_?  Frankly, in the end, there is no explanation.  To offer one 
(because he's rebellious, because he's distraught, etc.) would not only 
"justify" it (if you really think killing is bad, then there should never 
be a reason for it), it would reduce the complexity of reality to easy 
solutions (like the ones the wide shows give for all the recent youth 
murderers).  Such moments are, in part, unrepresentable: we frankly 
cannot get into the mind of other people to learn why they do things.  
The problem then for cinema is how to deal with this unrepresentability: 
to acknowledge it while also to try to build structures (moral or 
cinematic) which enable representation amidst the impossibility of 
certainty, and facilitate contact/communication with the Other, that most 
unknowable of entities.  That, I think, is the challenge of much of the 
more interesting examples of recent Japanese cinema.

It is, again, in this regard that I find the simplicity of Harada's 
characterization grating, but I would say the same thing of Anno (the 
simplicity of the ending of _Evangelion_).  I still await a film on enjo 
kosai which not only refuses to make its characters sympathetic (i.e., 
one that detaches us from the subjects), but which challenges us with the 
very possibility of clearly understanding what's going on, which 
confronts us with the inherent ambivalence of the phenomenon and, instead 
of offering us clear moral opinions, asks us what we should do given that 
ambivalent emptiness.  

Some interested in these issues of representing the young generation 
might want look at the interview I did with Tsuchiya Yutaka in 
_Documentary Box_ #15, which has just come off the presses and which will 
eventually appear on the Yamagata Film Festival site.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171