4/30/15

Thinking back, thee first thing i took away from this course was the gaze. Now, i had studied this in various other Mizenko classes but this was a new institution for me. In this aspect, i found the idea of the globetrotters and their interpretations bizarre and yet understandably. the idea of viewing this "mystical orient" as something completely other and alien brings with it massive culture shock. For those people, it forced their minds to recoil back upon their western seat of "cultural superiority" as they saw early Japanese as uncivilized and seemingly one with nature. 

second, was my concept of art. As an individual  who knows nothing of the aft world and it's history beyond anime and manga, i assumed that art was simply renascence work or irritating modern stuff (no offence). 

However, murokami's work absolutely blew me away. from the forms, to the s\colors, to the hours i spent talking with friends, ultimately repeating  "what the hell is superflat", everything i thought i knew about "art" was changed. His, along with Takano's showed me two things: that art can be pulled from more than classical depictions, and that what is thought to be appropriate is largely subjective ; a lot of the shock that came from viewers on things like  "lonesome cowboy" were in accordance with individual societal norms.

Lastly, i found the conversation of styles to be personally challenging. At several points in my life, i had had negative experiences on the topic of race and racial presentation. as such, i had lived most of my life ignoring such things, And even negating my own ethnicity thinking "what does it matter". So, when we saw such things in class as b-girl and Ganguro , i'm still not entirely sure how to feel. being that this is a Visual Culture studies class, i had been prying my eyes open, to look deeper into the Japanese relationship to it to question weather or not it's realistic to be offended by this sort of thing of if it is simply my personal interactions with the original context (ghetto style before b-gal). Nevertheless, for better or worse, the discussions of Japanese street fission fascinated me and was deeply thought-provoking ーありがとうございました。