{"id":5392,"date":"2013-11-25T14:15:34","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T20:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nikkeiview.com\/blog\/?p=5392"},"modified":"2013-12-03T13:22:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T19:22:55","slug":"katy-perrys-faux-japanese-american-music-awards-performance-was-terrible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/katy-perrys-faux-japanese-american-music-awards-performance-was-terrible\/","title":{"rendered":"Katy Perry’s faux-Japanese American Music Awards performance was terrible"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Katy Perry opened the American Music Awards with an over-the-top performance of her song “Unconditionally,” dressed in a gaudy, faux-Japanese kimono (with Chinese-style mandarin collar and slits up the legs, as well as American-style exposed cleavage) and painted in hideous full-yellowface makeup to fake an “Oriental” look. <\/p>\n

The performance has sparked some outrage in both the blogosphere and mainstream media. Maybe that’s what she wanted. She’s probably pissed that Miley Cyrus has been getting all the media attention recently for her edgy, racy performances.<\/p>\n

The opening notes of the AMA segment (below), plucked out on shamisen<\/em>, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument, while a woman in kimono was silhouetted behind a Japanese shoji<\/em> screen, had me hopeful that something that showed respect, appreciation and understanding for Japanese culture was about to be broadcast.<\/p>\n

But no. <\/p>\n

As the screen is pulled away and the woman behind it — Perry in her fake kimono — started singing, my heart sank and my gut clenched. Here we go again, a cultural mishmash of what white people think is “Japanese” all thrown into one ugly, cluttered, throw-in-the-kitchen-sink four-minute nightmare.
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\nLook! There are paper cherry blossoms falling down like snowflakes! There’s a torii<\/em> gate, a symbol of the centuries-old Shinto religion! There’s Katy putting her hands together repeatedly in Shinto or Buddhist prayer! There are dancers also wearing fake kimonos flapping (very large) red fans! There are a variety of Chinese and Japanese lanterns hanging over the stage! There are kimono-clad dancers flying over the stage like an Asian Vegas-style Cirque du Soleil ripoff! There are bonsai trees all over the stage! There are two dudes beating a taiko drum (the more prominently featured one is a beefy white guy)! OMG, there are two “geishas” wearing kimono and bowing with enormous fans on their backs that evoke the Japanese artist Hokusai’s famous woodblock print of the giant wave with Mount Fuji<\/a> in the background! She’s twirling around a Japanese-looking parasol! There’s a backdrop with painted images of pagodas, temples and Mount Fuji!<\/p>\n

These are all semiotic<\/a> shortcuts that scream “exotic Japan!,” time-honored stereotypes that evoke emotional responses to a Western, Orientalized, idealized, whitified<\/em> vision of Japan and other Asian cultures. <\/p>\n

I think it’s possible to include some of these symbols in a way that is respectful and could even teach viewers something about Japanese culture. This five-ring circus act wasn’t it. It was visual vomitosis that barfed all over the screenwith half-baked “Japaneseisms” for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

Or, was there?<\/p>\n

My friend Jeff Yang, a great thought leader within the Asian American community, a sharp cultural demographic expert and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a terrific piece deconstructing Perry’s performance and drawing a line from “Unconditionally” straight back to “Miss Saigon<\/a>” and back a century and a few decades to “Madama Butterly<\/a>.” Both are “artistic” paragons of Orientalism, the fetishizing of Asian cultures, and especially, of Asian women. <\/p>\n

Yang proposes that taken as a whole with the mess of cultural references on stage and the lyrics of Perry’s hookless, uncatchy song (my rockcrit opinion), she’s making a not-so-subtle statement about how she unconditionally loves her man so much she’d kill herself if she can’t have him.<\/p>\n

I think that gives Perry too much credit for literary depth, misguided or not. But Yang hits the nail on the proverbial head when he notes:<\/p>\n

The problem with Miss Saigon, and with Madama Butterfly, and yes, with Katy Perry\u2019s \u201cUnconditionally\u201d performance, is fundamentally that they are all confabulations of Asia invented by non-Asian people, with little concern for cultural legitimacy and no attempt to offer historical context. And because there are so few authentically told stories with the size and dazzle of these, such spectacles have evolved into a kind of truth \u2014 imagined truth \u2014 and the fictional, fantastical \u201cfacts\u201d embedded within them have become mashed up with reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other media outlets have covered the racial outrage at the geeked-out geisha shtick: NY Daily News<\/a>, Vulture<\/a>, HuffPo<\/a>, Cosmopolitan<\/a>, and even Fox News<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Here’s a blog post from Kotaku<\/a>, a great site covering Japanese culture (mostly by non-Japanese writers living in Japan), that explains some of Perry’s messed-up cultural symbols from a Japanese perspective. He says people in Japan mix-and-match cultures all the time, saying it may be just superficial, not necessarily racist. OK, I’ll grant that. He also cites some Japanese tweets that thought the performance was “cute” or otherwise just fine. But that just affirms that Perry’s being shallow and gives her too much credit for understanding that’s how a real<\/i> Japanese person (not herself in a fake kimono) would see her performance.<\/p>\n

Stateside, social media including Twitter went all afire during the song questioning Perry and saying it was racist. <\/p>\n

In the end, I don’t think Perry’s racist — she’s probably even a Japanaophile and loves all things Japanese, for all I know. But I think the performance itself was misguided and tasteless bordering on racist, and showed no respect or appreciation for Asian or Japanese culture at all. I thought it was stupid.<\/p>\n

Here’s the performance. What do you think? (I’ve had to embed a different version of the video since the American Music Awards took theirs down. If this video is removed, go to YouTube and I’m sure someone else will have it uploaded. I’ll try to keep up and put new versions up if I need to.)
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