Category: Rock

KUU KUU HARAJUKU: ON GROWING UP WITH GWEN STEFANI, JAPAN STREET FASHION + CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

http://1025kiss.com/kuu-kuu-harajuku-on-growing-up-with-gwen-stefani-japan-street-fashion-cultural-appropriation/

“Like an echo pedal, she repeats herself: Stefani’s executive-producing a new animated show, Kuu Kuu Harajuku, for Nickelodeon. Much like her fashion line and fragrances, it selectively borrows from authentic Harajuku fashion and Tokyo street culture. Unsurprisingly, the show also doesn’t seem to have any official Japanese showrunners at its helm either, and all but one player — Filipino-Australian actress Charlotte Nicdao — on its primary voice cast is white.

Similar to the plot and stylings of Cartoon Network’s also American-made Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Show (which was, at least, based off the actual J-pop band and included them in some form), the series follows a band called HJ5—led by G, a blonde stand-in for Gwen Stefani of course, who positions herself as a leader of all things deemed “Harajuku.”

“Stefani [has always had a] love of pop art and lifelong admiration for the street fashion and creative youth culture found in the renowned Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan,” a press release for the show states, according to Us Weekly. “It was while writing her first solo album that Stefani created the original Harajuku Girl characters as a celebration of the creativity and individualism she saw and loved in the Harajuku District.””

Looking Back at Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani's Racist Pop Frankenstein, Ten Years Later:The album is simultaneously a racist mess, a lyrical car crash, and a treasure chest containing champagne kisses.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnqmam/revisiting-gwen-stefanis-racist-pop-frankenstein-ten-years-later-567

Margaret Cho's response to the "Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls"

10.31.2005

“I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don’t want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos ‘n Andy had lots of fans, didn’t they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there.

It is weird being Asian American right now, because I don’t exactly know what my place is. America is supposed to be for everyone, and people are supposed to treat me like I belong here, and yet you would never know that from watching tv or movies. I still get the questions about where I am really from. Then when I try to explain this feeling of invisibility to those whose every move and moment is entirely visible, they come back at me with, “Maybe Asian Americans don’t want to be in entertainment!” Yes he really said that. I just screamed, because there was no other way I could answer without hitting him.

Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day, we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time, we weren’t there.”

Some..questionable comparisons however she made an effort to speak on this issue concerning the Harajuku Girls in a time when not many other dared and before “cultural appropriation” was a house hold term and with that in mind the context of what she said and how she said it makes more sense to me.

I related much more to both of these articles and their shared experiences than I would honestly care to admit, but the truth of the matter is that this was one of my first exposures I had as a kid seeing girls who looked like me in the national spotlight of music in mainstream pop culture.  It felt like a confused type of validation that at the time I had no way of comprehending. Unfortunately the experience of grow up only to realize that the characters we idolized and adored in our childhood are actually racist stereotypes.. is nothing new.  The real challenge follows this internal awakening, with two choice. Option 1 is to take the blue pill and to retire our decade old relationship with these characters and reflect on how these popular images shaped our identity and perspectives of the self or try our best to remember them fondly while still analyzing and critiquing.  Or option 2 you can take the red pill and stay in a state of blissful ignorance and happily enjoy these oppressive representations without the feeling of consequence.

As kid of the 90’s era who is slowly realizing that surreal reality of creeping adulthood, I find myself more frequently grasping for artifacts of my childhood nostalgia.  Sailor Moon for instance has always felt like one of those staple shows for me that take me back to Saturday mornings at Grandmas house fighting for the best seat in front of the TV with my cousins while, multitasking between a mouth full coco puffs and calling dibs on which characters we were.  As a kid I knew my powerful magical girl role model as Serena Tsukino and now as  an adult by Tsukino Usagi.  The American adaptation of this beloved 90’s cartoon had in some very vital ways stripped away the powerful representation that the original embodied concerning issues of authenticity, white washing, dubbing and censoring (one of the most notable being that sailor neptune + sailor uranus going from girlfriends to cousins..)

Americanization of the show: ”

In addition to the Americaization of the names in the show, the America broadcasts also cut out most references to Japanese culture, both in the audio and on the screen. So if a character was standing next to, say, signs written in kanji, they would become blank signs instead. Also, when the bus crashes, the door opens on the other side, which would be considered correct in Japan and wrong for America. Also, whenever Japanese yen was used for prices in the anime, the English dub would refer to the money as dollars.

Another example of Americanization is in the episode “Time Bomb.” In Japan, people drive on the left side of the road, which you see in the original Japanese episode. However, the English dub flip scenes where Serena is on a bus to make it look like the bus is driving on the right side of the road, emulating American roads. However, this is extremely noticeable as viewers can see letters are backwards on signs the bus passes.

One other Americanization of the anime is Darien’s nickname for Serena. He originally called her “dumpling head.” In Japanese, dumpling translates to “Odango,” which is a reference to how some women wear their hair in spherical buns on the sides of their head, reminiscent of dumplings. Since this cultural reference would be lost on Americans, the English dub changed Darien’s nickname for Serena to the more American “meatball head.””

*Additionally the Sailor Moon Stars that feature trans characters were never released at all in the U.S.

Sailor Moon: 15 Ways It Was Censored In America

Vice Documentary looks into Sailor Moon as a fandom from a American queer lens: (mainly from a white perspective) still informative but lacks intersections of race related complexities.

I highly recommend this afropunk article! ( http://afropunk.com/2017/09/loving-magical-girls-black-non-binary- )It makes mentions of Sailor Moon as well as other beloved works of art in the magical girl genre including Revolutionary Girl Utena and webcomics Princess Love Pon & Magical How?.  They touch on the intersections of colorism, representation, black girl magic, trans/non-binary empowerment and femphobia.

Quote from the article:

“Although the magical girl genre inspires cisgender girls and women, the genre also has the potential to do the same for transgender and non-binary people. To avoid causing dysphoria, it is important to have more magical girl media with trans and non-binary representation. The magical girl genre shouldn’t only be for cisgender girls. If gender isn’t binary, then being magical isn’t either.”

Revolutionary Girl Utena

there is a photo on the fridge back home of me at
maybe eight or nine wearing a cardigan, a plaid tie,
and matching dimples.

this is the kind of photo
my family has selected for commemoration because it’s
a type of nostalgia that reminds grownups of words like innocence.
the type of photo you can mail back home across the ocean say,
“look how happy we are here”  “we made it”

this photo was taken during my elementary school’s living history
museum where students dressed up like some famous person and stood like a statue until parents came and pressed a button
then we’d come to life and narrate our stories.

i chose martin luther king.
so when families pressed my button
i said something like

“long ago this country used to be racist but
then i came along and made it better”

all of them clapped – my family too – and they took this photo
and put it on the fridge because they were proud of me
for doing a good job
and i believed them

so when beatrice got suspended for bringing a knife to slice her pear
— the same day my math teacher told my parents i “might be a genius”
so after 9/11 when i found myself equally brown and ashamed
— the same day my hindu temple made a shirt that said “proud to be american”
so when i became the darkest face in all my advanced classes
— the same day there was a shooting at the other school

my father taught me how to tie a tie
and recite our
pledge of assimilation:
“long ago this country used to be racist but
then i came along and made it better”

when you rinse brown across a blue ocean
does it get lighter or darker?
(your choice)

in 1958 my grandfather moved from india to pursue a phd in english
i wonder what his colleagues wrote in his letters of recommendation
how remarkable it was for a brown man to emerge from a fractured lung mistaken
as country and breath english so poetically
(footnote: why can’t the black people speak like that too)

in 1964 the civil rights act banned discrimination against racial minorities
(footnote: when you throw a piece of paper in a pool of blood – who wins?)

in 1965 the immigration act instituted a system that gave preferential treatment to immigrants with skills
(footnote: bring in brown to keep black down)

my grandfather tells me that he
always respected martin luther king
and was sad to hear about his assassination.

i have never asked him if
he left his library to the streets,

because i know the answer the way i
know my people
the way we are
too busy reading rather than revolting
the way we will develop theories about revolution
for someone else to fight
the way that we have been trained to
keep quiet,
smile back

when the white man said jump
we said:
how many grades?

said work harder!
so we had to cheat to keep up
stole the words straight from their tongues
said: “hello my name is martin luther king
and i have a dream that one day asian americans
will appropriate the Black struggle for our own advancement
and blame Black people for not working as hard”

almost fifty years later
this model minority holds a scantron like a mirror
recognizes that their body has always been filled in as an answer

and i am sitting in my gentrified apartment
in my gentrified skin writing poetry with big words that i learned in private school like
‘white supremacy’ which means that i could you tell about how there
is a long history of white people painting themselves black
but i am looking at a photo of myself from
when i was eight or nine and put on martin luther king
used the black struggle to legitimize my difference
to my white peers growing up
which feels like its own form of
blackface

press my button,
see what happens

bring in brown to keep black down:
when i speak about how my people were colonized by the british
but not mention how they gave some of their ties, titles, and guns
and we used all three against our own
hide all the blood we made beneath the
brown

bring in brown to keep black down:
when i cry about diaspora and missing my homeland
did not mention the countless bodies we
stepped on when we got here
just to get close enough to kneel
for a white man – dick or
degree is there a difference —
carry both on your tongue

bring in brown to keep black down:
when white people use one hand to give us medals
and the other to give them handcuffs
ask them why they can’t be as
hard working as us?

bring in brown to keep black down:
when we post facebook statuses about
how police brutality affects people of color
while on the block next door
a man two bullets darker gets arrested
by a night three shades
lighter.

what i mean to say is
go back home and look at the fridge
what images have the privilege of nostalgia?

in one story
black is forcibly transported across an ocean in a ship
as they put a collar around her neck

in another story
brown books the next ship out as they
put a tie around his

“long ago this country used to be racist (but then
white people brought us here to make it seem better)”

and we have done little to make them
think otherwise since.

https://www.alokvmenon.com/blog/2014/2/11/bring-in-brown-to-keep-black-down

I came across Dark Matter quite some time ago, around 3 years prior.  They spoke with a bladed tongue slicing up stereotypes and expectations left and right. This poem to me has always been a stepping stone into my examination/self-reflect of my own identity as an “Asian American.”  It confronts the benefits/downfalls of “positive” stereotyping.

Debunking the myth of Hawaii as a “racial paradise”

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/15/377197729/hawaii-as-racial-paradise-bid-for-obama-library-invokes-a-complex-past

An important conversation that hurts to have (Who gets to be hapa?)

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/08/08/487821049/who-gets-to-be-hapa