Zoo, Furoshiki and Commodification

That last post sucked. So here's a baby elephant.

It's an elephant!

You're welcome.

I love elephants. From time to time my brain's like, "Hey, Brandon, you know what?" And when my brain starts conversations like this I get very wary. Anyway, so I'm like, "Umm, what, brain?"

"Elephants are awesome."

"Yes, brain, they are. Now go back to fiddling with your crazy math stuffs and leave me alone."

"No! We must go to the zoo."

"Hmm... That's actually not a bad idea."

So I somehow become convinced that going to the zoo will be an event of epic memories with lions, emus, and foxen.

Foxen, not foxes. And a snow fox to boot.

And despite the fact that such animals are indeed superlatively cool, inevitably the zoo turns into a match between the animals and me of who can turn their face into "pitifully morose" most convincingly. They always win.

You see, in convincing me that the zoo is "sahweeeet," my brain always conjures up images like the above fox or elephant, running in awe inspiring, perfect photographic moments in places that humans haven't touched foot for thousands of years. Or some such nonsense. And the majesty of three inch plate glass and steel bars is just an entirely different kind of majesty than I had gotten my hopes up for.

Nagoya arguably has a pretty praiseworthy zoo. Boasting camels, frogs and ice cream stands among other impressive lists of purportedly amazing things. It's just that the animals seem supremely bored. The sheer prevalence of them walking in neurotic circles or laying on the ground with precise I've-got-nothing-to-do-inside-this-3-square-foot-cell movements is plain... inhuman. 

Note, that's inhuman, not inhumane. No 'e'. The thing about zoos is that they say, "Hey, look, it's the wild," putting animals in neat pens with neat taxonomic classifications and neat descriptions of their neat behaviors. Wild? I say, "what the fuck?"

Seriously, the wild has no neat borders like this. A huge problem with zoos is that they not only chain up animals to 3 by 3 pins, but that they are us--doing the same thing to ourself. Have you ever watched a snow fox stalk a rabbit? Seen the fox foxing, the rabbit rabbiting? You see? We can go on Wikipedia, read all about snow foxes, see absolutely gorgeous photos of them, but it is not the snow fox. In a way, it has nothing to do with snow foxes.

Zoos play on these container of ideas we have about animals, habitats, the wild, and they thrust this upon the animals themselves. This is absolute thievery.

Zoos suck. And though I keep referring to zoos as "they" and "them" it'd be more proper to say "we" and "us." Hence my conversion from elation to moping upon entering zoo grounds.

(At this point I must insert a blurb about Jack Turner's The Abstract Wild which exposits eloquently on this matter and has undoubtedly touched my own words. Read it. Is excellent.)

This commodification bears a strong presence in Japanese society. One thing that comes to mind is the self-classification that Japanese perform with their own society. Ask several Japanese people about their own culture and the responses are likely to revolve around the same stereotypes.

For example, ambiguity. When talking about Japanese society, the concept that "Japanese always reply in indirect and often ambiguous ways" seems to be something of a doctrinized motif more than anything. As a matter of fact, when speaking Japanese in Japanese contexts, what's being called ambiguous doesn't seem to have anything to do with ambiguity. I'd even go as far to say that there's a strong sense of directness in Japanese culture, it's just that we place a high value on non-confrontation and softness here, where considering people's feelings often takes more import than practicality issues.

And yet, the same ol' labels get applied to Japanese culture over and again without critical consideration. Quite frankly, it's tiresome.

"Come on, let's really look at it and see what's going on!"

Truthfully, this ambiguity argument could be a thesis in its own right; however, let's take another example of Japanese commodification. TV. Rather, the contents of television programs. Of course you can find drama, explosions, sex and all that good stuff on TV, but I'm talking about the non-plot kind of shows.

What most of these consist of is a strong dose of comedy mixed with some sort of lesson or tidbit of information. And this tidbit gets presented in a small, convenient, highly polished package that's easily swallow-able. An example may elucidate, so let's pick jelly beans.

TV host person:            How do you think jelly beans are made?
Assortment of people:   (assorted answers)
TV host person:            Those are all interesting answers. Let's take a look how jelly beans
                                     are really made!
Important voice:            (Jelly Bean production explanation mumbo jumbo)
TV host person:            And now we know how jelly beans are made.

That last phrase there really hits the commodification thing right on the head. There's sort of the feeling that we now fully understand everything. Done. Finished. That's it.

What a load of crap. This kind of nice, pretty packaged thing shows up all over the place, such as interpersonal relations where people very quickly "figure out what kind of person you are" as well as in overusing the word-concepts "good" and "bad". It also shows up in absolutely beautiful ways, like furoshiki and kimono.

Furoshiki are cloths that get used as to wrap gifts, lunchboxes etc. It's all very pretty.

Not to mention the Japanese mastery of ceremony and ritual. Think tea ceremony.

If you ever get a chance, go to a Japanese tea ceremony.

These rules and lines are beautiful, just be sure not to tie a noose around your neck with them!