the Christmas factory

26Dec10

Today it’s Christmas in Osaka and, appropriately enough, this afternoon we had the first flurries of snow of the winter season.  Not really enough to stick, but it’s still nice to go stand outside while the soft, white flakes slowly navigate their way to the ground. Since it’s the Christmas season I’ve been teaching Dickens’s […]

Filed under: culture, economy, literature, religion, society   |  4 Comments
Tags: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, child labor, Christmas, Christmas toys, consumerism, dark side of Christmas, exploitation of labor, factories, industrialism, Krampus, poverty, Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus

honeyland and alienation — a cartoon rhapsody

18Nov09

Múm’s video for Rhubarbidoo (off Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy, their latest album) is one of the most re-enchanting videos that I’ve seen for a long time.  If, as Max Weber has argued, Enlightenment rationalization, especially as it manifests itself in the bureaucratized capitalism of Western society, results in a disenchanted world where we […]

Filed under: animation, art, cinema, culture, film, history, music, nature, philosophy, society, technology, video   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Adorno, alienated labor, alienation, American farming, animation, Aya Yamasaki Brown, bee society, Beholden, capitalism, cartoons, childhood, consumerism, creation, creative destruction, Dialectic of Enlightenment, disenchantment, Disney, Enlightenment, Enlightenment thought, exploration, Fantastic Planet, fantasy, Flowers and Trees, Gulliver's Travels, hive as factory, homo ludens, Honeyland, Horkheimer, imagination, industrial militarism, industrialism, industrialization of American Farming, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, invention, iron cage, Jason Malcolm Brown, Lilliputians, Max Weber, Múm, montage, natural world, nature, play, re-enchantment, Rhubarbidoo, Rockwell, science fiction, social control, social unconscious, They Made Frogs Smoke 'til They Exploded, totalizing systems of control

mobile suit gundam, earth protector

08Oct09

Tokyo may have failed in its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games, but at least it has an 18-meter Gundam statue to show for it.  According to the Japan Times, the “35-ton fiberglass and steel monolith is the centerpiece of the Green Tokyo Gundam Project intended to raise environmental awareness.”  While there are certainly […]

Filed under: animation, architecture, art, culture, design, Japan, manga, philosophy, politics, society, technology, travel   |  2 Comments
Tags: aesthetics of futurism, architecture, お台場, ガンダム, フジテレビ本社ビル, consumerism, costume, creature, enjoyment, Fuji Television Building, future, futurism, futuristic, futuristic style, giant robot, Gundam, Kenzo Tange, mascot, mobile suit, Odaiba, pink rabbit-elf, planetary crisis, pleasure, robot, Tange Kenzo, Tokyo, 東京, 丹下健三

Sigmar Polke with Vava and Ida

28May06

In the last part of April, I went to the Osaka National Museum of Art with my friends Ida-san and Vava-san to see the Sigmar Polke exhibit, which was really great. The pieces on display were from Polke’s own collection and personally chosen by him as representative of his life and work, which is a […]

Filed under: art, culture, Japan, Kansai, Osaka, politics, society   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: anti-capitalism, anti-fascist, art, Capitalist Realism, commercialism, commodification, consumerism, exhibit, fantasy, Gerhard Richter, imagination, museum, Osaka, Osaka National Museum of Art, painting, pop, pop art, product, Red Army Faction, Roy Lichtenstein, Sigmar Polke, Uniqlo, 国立国際美術館, 大阪