Curation Presentation

http://prezi.com/vfloppwxfadh/princess-culture/

Cool or weird

To decide what is cool seems very difficult and a boundary between cool and weird seems very subtle. From the articles, being different can be considered as cool. However, at the same time, it can be risky to be different, because those who are different can be also hated. However, I think this is also related to their ideas or beliefs behind the surfaces.

For example, a singer Lady Gaga has been considered both good role model and just weird. Her outfits were often very different from majority. Someone might say she is cool, because she is different from others. On the other hand, someone might say she is weird, because she is different from others. People react what they are not familiar with. Being different can be cool, but if people are “too different”, they might be discriminated or segregated. People who are with her way of expression seem to argue over not how her outfits look nice or good, but what she expresses by outfits. Her thought or belief captures some people’s mind, and they support her. I think this seems just like branding. People act for something or someone because of “the ideas rather than the products”. I think people also tend to praise her courage that she is not afraid of being different from others, because probably they know being minority is hard to be in our society.

It is interesting that many icons in media have perspectives of what we have talked about in class. We might not be so surprised even if people copy her outfits because of her belief and it becomes main stream.

 

Link: http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/fashion/celebrity-fashion/2010/04/15/lady-gagas-weirdest-outfits#!image-number=31

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Lady_Gaga_a_good_or_bad_role_model?#slide=1

“Yaoi” in Japan

There is a genre, “yaoi” or “Boys Love (BL)”, in Japanese popular culture, such as comic books, books, cartoons. I don’t know how famous it is or if anyone in our class knows it. Gay depiction in popular culture, “Ellen”, reminded me of this. To explain it briefly, its storyline is mostly relationship between male couple, and it often includes sexual depiction. As “Ellen” failed, this genre has not caused political change, I guess even personal struggles with family is rarely described.

I think the pioneer of this genre was a comic book, “Kaze to Ki no Uta”, which was published in 1976 and awarded in 1979. Unfortunately I’ve never read this. So I can’t explain about it well, but it seems to depict a relationship between boy couple seriously.

Nowadays this “yaoi” genre is, I think, basically just love story and very popular among girls who are not lesbian. It might be prejudice, but I think these girls are likely to be “otaku”, kind of nerd. Authors are mostly female as well. So this genre is made by women, and made for women. Although this genre got big fans, it’s not really “public genre”. I don’t know about when “Kaze to Ki no Uta” was published, but now this “yaoi” genre seems to be for selling products or just for fun, not for sending message.

I think it’s interesting that even though gay society has not permeated in Japanese society, our popular culture established one genre about it, and it has big fans among certain people, not among gay male but female.

Acceptance of gay in America and Japan

I thought gays are still very minority in Japan compared to America. However, I found statistic numbers about this. The percentage of American adults LGBT is about 3.8% in 2011, and thepercentage of Japanese adults LGBT is about 4% in 2007 (I’m sorry Japanese data is written in Japanese). These numbers don’t look very different, which is surprising to me. But still I don’t feel it is as common to recognize LGBT people in Japan as in America. The reason for this, that I suppose, is those people are less acceptable in Japan than in America. Even if people are LGBT, most of them may not be able to come out.

I learned America is based on individualism culture and Japan is based on collectivism culture. I guess many parts of Japanese system or thoughts are originated from this culture. If one’s parent find out their son or daughter is gay, I guess they tend prevent to reveal it to others, like neighbors relatives. I guess people can feel shame about it. I don’t mean that this doesn’t happen in America. I think, of course, this kind of problem can happen in America too, like Ellen has with her parent, but I think situation is a bit different and it’s more likely to happen in Japan. I wonder this situation causes the difference of my feeling about gay people between America and Japan.

Even though the article’s author indicates that “Ellen” deals with problem about gay as “personal” problem rather than “politics”, I think “Ellen” can be effective to spread the image of family accepting their gay daughter. Many people might just be afraid of those people who they are not used to see, just like blog or jazz.

Branding and leadership

Considering my personal experience, I don’t think I’ve chosen certain brands on purpose to support or follow their ideas, but I think I might have chosen them because of their ideas unconsciously. I sometimes see a brand cool, good, pretty for some reason. The commercial of RedBull we watched in the class made me feel “this is something cool”. So I think these ideas or images affect our feeling anyway.

I think brands can be examples of leaderships. I found one interesting video from TED. This speaker says some people, like Apple, success to lead people, and they approach people by showing not what they have but why or what they believe. I think the speaker is talking about exactly same as branding, “about the idea rather than branding”. He also talks about brain. People use the same part of brain when they do this action as decision making. That’s why I think appealing to people’s feeling has very strong power. As he talks about marketing, there are early adaptor who buy products in early period for proof of what they believe. I think these people might look for something “cool”, something different from others and matches what they believe.

I think what should be admired by people is the interesting point. We probably see something and judge them by some criteria. There might be certain tendency in these criteria that has existed from old days, and also there might be new factors because people seem to be looking for something special, cool.

 

Video Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action