What Happens To Pop Culture When Economies Enter Long Decline?
Per an earlier tweet (what, you don’t hang on every tweet in your feed??), Neojapanisme is offering a 5 part analysis of the decline of Japanese pop culture and what emerged afterwards. They’re up to part three as of now.
The collapse of spending on popular culture in Japan makes the country an important laboratory for understanding how a “cultural ecosystem” of consumers, producers, distributors, media, trend-spotters, and advertisers operates when market activity decreases. In this context, we must first look at the degree to which middle class consumers made up and then retreated from markets for cultural goods.
We’d agree. We’ve been tracking the decline they describe since we noticed it in the late 1990s. And certainly Japan is atypical in so many ways as to render casual analogies moot.
Yet still, we wonder.
Blinking On A Thursday Night, Light Blogging
The Doctor’s warning never more timely. From the classic episode, er, “Blink.”
Tonight’s a light night on the blog. Spending time with the guitars and amps. Mostly on the Les Paul. And finally got around to picking up Keith Richards’ memoirs. Probably a quick skim read.
Some of you may have noticed the Ragin’ Cajun’s kerfuffle calling on Obama to fire people, indict others and oh, fight. By September 2011 it’s almost bleating plaintiveness.
A tempest in a teapot for the Chattering Classes, naturally. Political structures will not change. We smiled seeing Carville’s reference to Chuikov’s stand at Stalingrad.
People often ask me what advice I would give the White House about various things. Today I was mulling over election results from New York and Nevada while thinking about that very question. What should the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic. . . .
1. Fire somebody. No — fire a lot of people. This may be news to you but this is not going well. For precedent, see Russian Army 64th division at Stalingrad. There were enough deaths at Stalingrad to make the entire tea party collectively orgasm.
He probably meant the Soviet 62nd and 64th *Armies* which were all but obliterated there, but historical detail is not his forte. Stalingrad as an operational and strategic analogy to today’s political environment not even worth typing about, is it? Still, Carville gets points for trying to float the AgitProp meme ‘Fire. Indict. Fight.’ At least one Democrat stumbles on to what we’ve all discussed for some time as AgitProp 101 – simplicity. We’ve all specifically cited the effectiveness of ‘Peace. Bread. Land’, etc. Particularly for a demotic-oligarchical hybrid.
Still. Between Carville’s call and the Doctor’s advice? Go with the Doctor: ‘Don’t blink.’
Natural Disaster Summer Of Fear Edition
Share what’s on your mind. D.C. is rattled at the moment. The recent earthquake itself relatively minor. As a social lubricant? Big stuff — better than the Redskins. Plus, the upcoming hurricanes make for easy TV.
A more pervasive fear adds to tension. Only in August 2011 did the Imperial City Nomenklatura learn they are economically mortal. Their comfort while the Nation collapsed at risk. They may even be forced to share the indignity of lay offs with their subjects fellow Americans. There’s almost something biblical about the approaching reckoning.
We’ll spend some time working out initial ideas for a “The Summer of Fear” theme song. Or the Star Trek movie (Stiftung Style) we’ve mentioned before. And watch the weekend’s rain, mindful of the real oncoming storm.
Our mutual friend JWB kindly shares his initial mix of a Summer of Fear theme song. As he explains in the comments, he created this loop with specific political commentary in mind. Check it out.
Simulation of IJN Center Force vs. USN Task Force 34 Off Samar, Oct. 25, 1944
Will be setting up a simulation of this ‘What If?’ from the Battle of Leyte Gulf. There, Japanese battleships and cruisers missed their American counterparts. Here it will happen.
We are setting the Japanese force assuming Kurita’s fleet as attrited in the Sibuyan Sea on the 24th. When the Japanese fleet exits the San Bernardino strait off Samar to attack the American landing operation, instead of running into the unbelievably valiant but hopelessly overmatched Taffy 3 escort carriers and their handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts, now they encounter the American fast battleships of Task Force 34.
In history, Halsey took Task Force 34 with him away from Leyte Gulf on a goose chase after empty Japanese carriers. This left the incredibly brave and determined men of Taffy 3 to stand between Japanese battleships and landing area. If you saw ‘Hunt for Red October’, this is what the Scottish/Russian captain meant when he says to a young and thin Alec Baldwin that Halsey acted foolishly. (Adding to the ‘What If’ mix, Kinkaid now sends Oldendorf’s 77.2 battle line north behind Task Force 34 as a reserve (the old battlewagons had more AP shells than let on)).
Light posting/tweeting Friday night.
The Japanese fleet commander’s state of mind was critical to the American victory. Some overview discussion here. The references to Evan Thomas there are harmless. Kurita’s official post-war de-brief is also interesting between the lines.
Fortunately, it’s a non-issue now. In this simulation, the Center Force is programmed to seek the beach head decisively.
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