Five.

Spot Liberty? My mind is in this mess. How can you not be in the world today?

In just 5 weeks enrolled in school for my MA course, I have gotten all my curiosities and answers I needed about life, culture, and of Japan (as my specialist region lies in Asia, Japan was my ultimate source of curiosity and inspiration to why they are the 'finest' breeds of all society in Asia).

6 hours of class per week, the entire week dedication of borrowing and reading books from the reading week.

My life-deepening curiosities were (some related to how to rise cultural capital and creative industries):
1. How Japan rose and became 'The Asia' and be in par with the benchmark against Western 'culture'
2. Why is the world is as is today?
3. The vulnerability of the now generation and the bleak future for the next gen
4. Why is the no. 1 media and entertainment content has and always been America? Is it because its in English?

And, I found those and found much, much, much more to put me into insanity

I'm currently enrolled at SOAS in the MA GCCI course.

What I expected to delve into was to organise and understand the systems of the creative industries which as been a hot topic and an optimistic slice from the bleak economy.Dr Charles Landry was the hero in idealising this.

What I didn't expect that the foundational studies or what creative industries was the breakout of people that started to question their existential being in the society - how culture was made, developed under political views that I've never honestly cared about before. *Why meeeee* (╯°□°╯^* ┻━┻)


1. On Japan, which is indeed I herald them as the society which are above all else, they've got an entirely and completely different dimension in life and way of thinking of their own like no other.

They've always been somewhat the one who took the innovative turn before most around the world; to have thought of things in such a way. Easy examples include Japanese movies which are then taken the ideas of and Hollywood directors getting the credit of fame (the connection with question no. 5). Although in remindance that nothing is original today; to make is to imitate and practice until you find your own style.

Movie Paprika (2006) and Inception (2010) (a discussion  here but since I'm biasedly towards the anime you can read the biased view here hehe)
Movie Battle Royale (2000) and The Hunger Games (2011) (discussion here)

And, Christopher Nolan DID STATE about it: "Christopher Nolan cites [Paprika] as one of the principal influences and was inspired by its main character to flesh out his character played by Ellen Page, a 'spirit architect' named Ariadne." source

&You get the gist, those two will leave you hanging and with a lot of homework of research and rewatching the movies several times. Similarities were both Japanese movies were from a novel. But the latter movies, most arguments say it isn't a novel idea but taken from the act of gladiators. Both had different direction of outcome (BR in 'saving the society', HG is about rebellion against authority).

Then on why Japan is Japan today, as  "The Asia" before the rise of internet (that opened all doors)? Why the whole world knew about Japanese culture as "Asia", quoted from Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture by Richard Gid Powers and Hidetoshi Kato:

a) To bring the nation up, their own nation must have pride in their nation, comes Nihonjinron
b) Owe's their brilliantness and the then-leading country in technology for the emperors in the Meiji Era, read below in the image cap:

Click to enlarge, excerpt from In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore. About Japan.

 YOU CAN SCREAM "AHA!" NOW.


Admit it: Japanese people are always the most amazing and this class I'm in testifies to that too. (I must have been a Japanese in my past life being so pos about them)


2. I'm blaming the root of all causes is by the mass/popular culture and mass media, which of course is 'run' by America.

"Popular entertainment, particularly on television, is truly a wasteland in T.S. Eliot's sense of the term as well as Newton Minow's: a junk heap populated with fragments of once-vigorous cultural forms, now detached from their communities and belief systems and turnedinto mindless diversions, sometimes narcotic, other times stimulant" (Introduction, page xi, Popular Handbook of Japanese Culture)

It's ultimately your choice to not or stay in tuned with it. However the choices we are given are also part of control and capitalism. However you don't have to think so far, as I do think until all ends like a grandma and you only live once so enjoy it anyways. I shunned it off since 2006 to switch to Asian content (because I also wouldnt understand the language even though it might be profane but visuals and graphics were then respecting the Eastern heritage of modesty). I won't argue now that it's as corrupted as any other because of the benchmark, case no. 4. (There's hefty more to keep you mindfugged and delusional but I'll just leave it here as it's already written in my essay instead)

Dimensions, choices, decisions...

3. Internet, vulnerability, can anyone tell me what has technology ever done good for nature?
And it branches out that internet is a virtual platform where there was once a time we can only watch 1 person at a time in a big stage; now the whole world's a stage and anyone can climb up to the stage. Welcome to the open stage of the internet to share what was once something you only do in private to be everybody's amusement. I've never thought internet as the best thing in the world that has ever happened. It might've struck a chord to break out of capitalism but yet it returns to it once again.

Add No. 2 and No.3 together and it makes the world amass: all hell breaks loose as it is today, thank you.

4. Nope, I haven't found the answer to this yet, I'm very intrigued to what I will find soon because I honestly want to know why the whole world is watching Transformers franchise series instead of movies made in France, China, Vietnam, whatever. Why? Someone out there must know, pray do tell below!


OK, I've come to the end reading your view, so what's the solution?

I agree to the plot where Battle Royale is about "Life is a game, so fight for survival and find out if you’re worth it!” and that was exactly what I thought to save Earth. Because too much of everything isn't good - imagine that everyone is all urbanised and wants to be educated, no one wants to work as a farmer and what are we eating, artificial vegetables? You'll die faster anyway ruining bodies because everyone wants to work in the city and not caring less about the space of forests and lands when the Earth needs to breathe and have time to grow what it can for normal food.

Why do we need a lot of food and artificially made food? Because there's too much people in the world. So, we'd have to eliminate ones just uselessly taking up space and not doing anything and keep the ones who are "worth it". Hitler in my head.


Back to No.1's movie discussion: It's without question inhumane. But, do you agree or disagree? Justify first as it took me countless [just] days to think of a solution to make Earth breathe again.

This made me insane for sure, thinking how you could be so ignorant with the world today and still live like there's a bright tomorrow. I had indeed kept my saneness because I had faith.

Exactly. Going out ot sanity.

As it happens, that’s advice offered to the young from an old man: the film’s director, Kinji Fukasaku, was seventy when he made “Battle Royale.” “Those were my words to the next generation of young people,” he explained to an interviewer. In a conversation with Steve Rose of The Guardian, Fukasaku explains that, as a boy during the Second World War, he worked with other kids in a munitions factory; when Allied bombs fell, they would use each other as human shields, then work together to clear the bodies afterwards. “We didn’t really blame each other,” he said, “but it made me understand about the limits of friendship.”

Source quote above from New Yorker

All pictures from the movie still Paprika, various sources

I'm done for the timebeing but being a student the journey still continues on... new page category!

Putting it 10 words and less...

MINDFUGGED. MINDFAKQ. How can everyone still live after all this.