Artwork from Takashi Murakami at the Hong Kong art fair 2010

Sailor Moon (1992 – 1997) transcended Japanese anime and reached a pure state of corrosiveness. Sailor Moon is an artificial flavouring substance: depthless, highly satisfying and addictive. It is more than any artwork of Takashi Murakami the best illustration of his superflat art movement, depicting “the shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture”. The original manga is a little different from the anime and somehow more spiritual. The anime version expunged its scenario of any particularity, leading to the ultimate stereotype of the Japanese girl, flanked with kitsch accessories ready for merchandising, cheap love stories and consumerist lifestyles. The characters were designed as for any animes to appeal both to girls and perverts thanks to a quota of ‘subliminal’ underwear scenes. Their transformations into self-centred wonder women are the climax of every episodes (otherwise rather mediocre in their drawings). The same scenes of transformations are shown again and again, becoming objects of cult, obsessing and hypnotic. They saturate the narrative with their superflat symbolic.

There is a before and an after Sailor Moon, the series imitated many other predecessors, and has been often imitated, but it was the first to reach that level of depthless consumerism worship.

Walt Disney Studios in Paris opened last year a new section called “Toy Story Playland”, which will also be launched soon in Disneyland Hong Kong. The area features a series of rides designed for children and based on the characters of the Toy Story franchise: RC Racer, Slinky Dog ZigZag Spin and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. Why choosing Toy Story for a new section of a theme park instead of the many other Disney franchises? There are many good reasons to pick it up, such as its popularity and the obvious merchandising opportunities of its toys. I would like to speculate here one more reason that might have led to that choice. Disney did consciously or not a very subtle cultural exercise in promoting cars, consumerism and the American army, in a politically correct way of course.

Promoting cars is not new for Disney theme parks; they did it openly and multiple times in rides such as Test track (Epcot) or the coming Cars Land (Disney California Adventure). It was thus not surprising to see the RC Racer ride in the Toy Story Playland. I can only regret this American obsession with cars and the disastrous environmental consequences it will have on our future. Disney is visibly committed to glorify this mode of transportation to children all over the world, at least as long as it pays off with sponsors. Parents seem neither to realize nor to object to that vision.

Promoting consumerism has always been an implicit and powerful message in all Disney theme parks. Toy Story Playland is about toys, and children encounter consumerism for the first time with toys. It is coherent for Disney to encourage consumption of its products by emphasizing the pleasure that kids get from their toys. It is a logical and predictable consequence of the commercial nature of the Disney corporation.

The novelty comes from the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. As far as I know, Disney theme parks never tried before to glorify the image of the American army. The subject is too difficult, associated with war and violence. It could not be addressed directly. Toy Story is a very clever idea in that respect because it adds layers of abstraction. The film is not showing the army, but a toy about war and the army. The Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop ride is not about the army, but is a ride about a film about a toy that is about war and the army. The three layers of abstraction make the connection with war barely noticeable and allow Disney to treat the subject without any problems. An entertaining representation of military forces is presented to children and parents. The ride is not meant to be taken seriously of course. People enjoy the association made with the green colours of military uniforms. The positive experience helps undoubtedly building a positive image of the (American) army for children and their parents.  Magnificent!

The movie confronts the reality of human condition to its modern idealization, culminating in a final scene where jazz and spiritedness defeat the order so preciously orchestrated, at least for the time of a dance. Play Time is a post-modernist masterpiece because it plays with the paradoxes of human existence; humour and derision being the only possible postures.

The Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Köln gave recently a series of lectures in the context of its excellent afropolis exhibition. I had the opportunity to attend one of them: “Envisaging New Urban Futures for Kinshasa” presented by Prof. Filip de Boeck. It turned out to be somehow connected to the paper I wrote few months ago advocating a nomadic approach to the appropriation of space.

Kinshasa is growing organically and informally. The ownership of many of its habitations is contested between the owners of the land and the residents. According to prof. Filip de Boeck, conflicts are so frequent that many inhabitants move constantly from one habitation to another, avoiding any investment in their temporary locations. The living conditions are bad and unacceptable, but it would be misleading to apply too rapidly traditional concepts of home and ownership. A semi-nomadic lifestyle has its pros and cons and not having a permanent home is not necessary a synonym of promiscuity. It offers more flexibility; it forces a dialogue that can also lead to the emergence of neighbourhood networks.  Kinshasa is dreaming of a modern and pre-planned city, a little like Dubai, called “La cité du fleuve”. Would it not be more suitable to encourage instead an organic development of the city that would address the needs of its inhabitants?

“Envisaging New Urban Futures for Kinshasa”
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Filip de Boeck, Leuven
Organized in co-operation with the Cologne African Studies Centre (CASC) at the University of Cologne
This lecture addresses the tensions between life as lived on the ground by millions of urban residents in Kinshasa and the official attempts which are currently being launched by the Congolese government to create a new -but exclusionist- urban environment. In order to illustrate this tension two concrete cases are introduced: a first case focuses on current modes of ‘informal’ urban expansion and random occupation of space in the city. The second case deals with the development of a new urban project, the ‘Cité du Fleuve’, which fully illustrates the official vision of Kinshasa’s urban future.

The Hermitage is a massive residential property under construction in Kowloon (Hong Kong). I was living just next to its location, so I could see the progress of its development and I was very intrigued by the inside. Few weeks ago, I was walking in the adjacent Olympian shopping mall and I discovered that The Hermitage opened its showroom to the public. It went beyond all my expectations and was by far the craziest thing I have seen during my stay in Hong Kong, The showroom is completely out of reality, immersing visitors into a manufactured ‘dream’-like experience.

People from Hong Kong and Asia more generally associate romantic western imagery with luxury. The Hermitage gives them all that on steroids. The showroom is entirely in marble, fake gold, crystals and mirrors. Space is very expensive in Hong Kong and most of the apartments on sale are actually very small, but no trick is spared to make the flats look bigger: lights, mirrors, smaller than usual furniture. The Hermitage showroom plays a soundtrack which is a condensed version of cheesy opera music, at the moment when the princess falls in love with the prince. They also made a dream like movie introducing the property; again everything is in gold.

Associations with symbols of prestige are heavily used to promote the apartments. Real Rolls-Royces from Europe are on display in the showroom and in the huge ads flooding the Hong Kong subway. But the most surprising is the collection of authentic Russian golden accessories displayed in introduction to one of the showroom. Models of high end apartments made of crystal-like material are then presented in the same fashion than the golden artefacts, in case someone didn’t appreciate well enough there intrinsic value. Videos mix images of the property and the original Hermitage in St Petersburg, making it somehow confusing, but the point is of course not to make it all rational, we are in a dream. The property is not so central in Hong Kong but the issue has been cleverly resolved by introducing the concept of ‘golden circle’ which happens to enclose the Hermitage property and the most famous central landmarks, a wonderful marketing imagery.

Tens of clerks and estate agents stand in the many showrooms, all very polite and nice. One was explaining to a potential buyer that the Hermitage is also the biggest museum in Paris, not so right, but who cares anyway.

The showroom itself is not even in The Hermitage building, it is just a temporary site reproducing with some liberty the final product, and you can even visit reproductions of the lifts! When you visit the fake flats all decorated in a very heavy romantic style, red sections are displayed on the floor to indicate space that will actually not be part of the asset on sale, so potential buyers still get the correct information, but from a manufactured dream that can completely submerge them. It is a fake of a fake to use postmodernist terminology. I would recommend anyone to visit the showroom, you will have a great time and it is even better than Hong Kong Disneyland or casinos from Macau!

Ok, this entertainment complex is clearly fake and tasteless.

Here are some nice Portuguese ceramic tiles on a concrete building.

The Lisboa casino dates from the 60s. Its retro architecture is refreshing and its name is directly related to the history of Macau.

Its recent extension, the Grand Lisboa looks more like a building coming from space, and the inside is not so interesting.

Here is a view of Macau mixing old and new.

Macau is not only about Portuguese vestiges, you can also find some nice examples of Chinese architecture, such as in the A-Ma temple. Its history is by the way wonderfully illustrated in the Maritime museum just next door.

I like the way they restored the St Dominic’s Church, they kept its relative simplicity.

Here is the Venetian casino and hotel in Macau, similar to the one in Las Vegas, but bigger. The one in Las Vegas is still a little better I think; its sections are a little more diverse. It is a fake reproduction of Venice of course, and its theme has not any connection with Macau, at the opposite of the Lisboa casino. It features however an amazing number of details that reproduce relatively faithfully the ones in Venice. The entertainments inside the casino such as opera acts and classical music are of good quality and not fake at all. I’m not saying it is like Venice, but it is not a totally fake place.

If you are interested in the idea of travelling in fake places, you can also check out the artistic video I did a while ago about Las Vegas..

Thanks to the team of the Philosophy Now magazine for having kindly accepted to publish my paper and for their extremely professional proofreading!

]]> http://bruchansky.name/2010/02/18/publication-the-heterotopia-of-disney-world/feed/ 0 http://bruchansky.name/2009/06/20/2-apocalyptic-art-videos/ http://bruchansky.name/2009/06/20/2-apocalyptic-art-videos/#comments Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:45:22 +0000 Christophe Bruchansky http://bruchansky.name/?p=304 2 videos found while preparing the Dreams of Progress video art exhibition.

“Slurb” by Marina Zurkow, 2009

“Forest of Cement” by Jisoo Kim, 2007

The exhibition ‘Dreams of Progress’ held in July at the Westminster Reference Library is looking at our past ideals. I’m curating the exhibition and I am reading a lot of books related to the subject of Progress. We don’t fully realize today how the idea of a European Union was one of the most important ideal of the 20^th century. People suffered of centuries of wars in Europe, tried so many times to stop what seemed an inexorable repetition of bloody confrontations. Not long after the First and the Second World wars, what has probably been the lowest point of history, came the most ambitious project, the only one that could cure Europe for good, the European Union. We take now for granted peace in Europe. It appears so fundamental and natural. The project of the European Union has not been built by romantic people bored in their bourgeois living rooms. It has been made by necessity. The real ideal behind the euro is not to make international corporations richer, it is that commerce between nations prevent them from going to war. Democracy and freedom is not so much about individualistic rhetoric, but is an effective way to prevent a country’s elite to declare war without a real necessity for its population. The point is that all of this is working! After centuries of blood, we have now found a way to prevent war. It has not been easy to force nations to cooperate, especially the nations, or should I say the past Empires, of Europe. So, after generations of people painfully building this great project, what is our vision?

In his book “The Divided West”, Jürgen Habermas defines the following identity founding characteristics of Europe:

• Commitment to peace as a result of the historical experience of loss
• Social privatization of faith: The only way for Europe to escape war is the strict separation between nations and religions. For those who don’t understand why, look at the history.
• The priority of the state to the market: free market is perceived more as a mean for social wealth than as an end by itself. States embody the more important concepts of citizenship, justice and freedom.
• The primacy of social solidarity over “merit”, inherited from labour movement and Christian social thought.
• Sensitivity for violations of personal and bodily integrity (e.g. rejection of death penalty)
• Reflexive distance toward nationalism, resulting from the growing distance from imperial domination and colonialism
• Awareness of the paradoxes of progress. Europe has a rich history of traditions. ‘Progress’ resulted in the extinction of many traditions, some being more beneficial than what they have been replaced with. There is thus this awareness among Europeans that technological progress doesn’t always mean better living.

As it is explained in this article from Le Monde (in French), the young French generation is naturally European. I assume it is also the case for all young generations in Europe. It’s culture is European, it constantly travels across Europe and makes connections way beyond the borders of nations. The  identity characteristics listed above are I think shared by most European citizens. I believe in them. But what I saw this weekend is a lazy, spoiled, old and selfish continent. What is your opinion?

In his book “Vinyl Leaves, Walt Disney World and America”, Stephen M. Fjellman analyses Disney World and how it incarnates a postmodern society based on consumerism. Here is a summary of his thoughts.

In the introduction, Mr. Fjellman makes a reference to the book “Brave New World” from Aldous Huxley. The book describes an utopian dictatorship of happiness. “A good way to make sure that people police themselves is to get them to believe essentially the same stories about what the world is and why the way it is is good, true and beautiful. The world needs to be described, and it needs to be justified by arguments about nature, philosophical principle, history, or the gods. People will find their place in such a world. They will learn what hopes they might reasonably hold for themselves.” The argument of Mr. Fjellman is that it is exactly what our society is trying to achieve, not necessary consciously, but as a matter of fact. His description of Disney World might seem harsh, but it doesn’t contain any anger – the author seems actually to be a fan of Disney World – it is just a realistic description from an anthropologist point of view, not trying to point out guilty corporations, but just stating the facts and how society works.

A Disney shop

Disney is a major corporation that has a vested interest in promoting a consumerist society. Disney World is not merely a collection of fantasies for children, it is actively advocating the utopia of happy consumerism.  “Our lives can only be well lived (or live at all) through the purchase of commodities. As the commodity form becomes a central part of culture, so culture becomes available for use in the interest of commodification, as a legitimation for the entire system. We must be taught that it is good, reasonable, just, and natural that the means necessary for life are available only through the market”.  In this context, here is how Disney world is defined: “Walt Disney World produces, packages and sells experiences and memories as commodities.” Visitors know that when going in Disney World, they get into a place where all their activities are controlled and conditioned (e.g. queues, soundtracks all over the parks, visual magnets like the Cinderella castle) . They know that their experiences and souvenirs will be manufactured and probably not so different from the ones of another visitor. But they still buy the package because they know they will get a very enjoyable experience.

Queues in the Epcot Test Track ride sponsored by GM

Stephen M. Fjellman notices the following:

• Rides are often experiences during which the visitors are inactive. The only way for visitors to do something, take part in the magic, is at the exit, when they land to the souvenir shops. What is purchased then is not only the souvenir, but the only mean for the visitor to take an active part in the magical experience.
• The sentence “If we can dream it, we can do it” from the EPCOT Future world is ambiguous. Who is the ‘we’? Mr. Fjellman argues that the first ‘we’ means us, but that the second one most probably means ‘corporations’. EPCOT is promoting the pursue of new technologies for human good (if not, goods), but even if we dream it, most of us will not build the new technologies, only the corporations having the ability to do so will. So, the message is actually to trust corporations and their technologies.
• Often at Disney World, rides about the future are actually about the past future: the future as it was imagined few decades ago (e.g. space mountain, Spaceship earth). This paradox is tolerated by the otherwise perfectionism of the Disney imagineers because it achieves one objective: provide reasonable credibility to the statement that corporate technology is good for humanity.  Real future technologies are too controversial, old ones are better suited.
• Animatronics are part of the Disney World experience since its creation. Why are they so important to Disney? The idea to imitate humans with robots could be seen as frightening. But again, the goal of Disney is to promote industrial consumerism. Many of its rides are sponsored by corporations such as GM, Exxon and Kraft. All are heavily involved in high technology. So, the human face of animatronics and their harmless appearance makes technology friendly and acceptable to consumers.
• The Disney movies and the Disney rides often alternate scaring or frightening scenes with cute and happy ones. Bruno Bettelheim made the point that this technique used in fairytales is useful for the kids education, it is a “symbolic presentation of difficult and dangerous psychosocial contradictions”. But the goal of Disney is not to educate kids, it is to make money.  Scaring children to then make them happier is a good way to sell more cinema tickets and merchandising .

Vinyl leaves from Animal Kingdom

How come these kind of messages are not consciously detected by visitors? According to the book, it is thanks to cognitive overload and decontextualization.

• Someone is constantly overloaded by stimuli in Disney World, “it is with the overriding of visitors’ capacities for making discriminations that Disney metathemes may take effect.”
• Disney World is a patchwork of enchanted medieval castles, colonial history, future technologies, Moroccan markets, zoos, characters from Disney cartoons, American presidents, rides sponsored by car manufacturers, Mt Everest, astronomy, dinosaurs and so on. It is the world summarized. But the trick is that if you remove an element from its context, it loses a lot of its meaning. “By pulling meanings out of their contexts and repackaging them in bounded informational packets, decontextualization makes it difficult for people to maintain a coherent understanding about how things work.” It is then easier to tell the Disney history: “Idealized United States as heaven, history is decoration. Colonialism was fun, the colonized cute (but a little stupid). How nice if they could all be like us – with kids, a dog, and GE appliances – in a world whose only problems are avoiding Captain Hook, the witch’s apple.”
• “The Disney strategy is to juxtapose the real and the fantastic (real birds mixed with fake sounds of birds), surrounding us with the mix until it becomes difficult to tell which is which.  A kind of euphoric disorientation is supposed to set in as we progressively accept the Disney definition of things. We are asked to submit to a wilful suspension of disbelieve in the ostensible interest of a complete entertainment experience.”

I personally love Disney world. I agree with the analysis of Mr. Fjellman, but after all, this is not so shocking for someone already leaving in such a consumerist society. What is much more worrying is the trend to build everything like Disney World: hotels, cities, even museums. The risk is to forget that Disney World is only one vision of an utopian society of happiness, a corporate one. Life is so much more than that.

Do you think this article is fair to Disney World? Would you like to defend the park against some of the claims made here? Or do you think the reality is even darker?