Frank Kogan

Read that "Why Jpop? Part Five: The Cult of Authenticity" article you linked, and I think its analysis of the "Cult Of Authenticity" is way too shallow. E.g., "In most cases, [the cult of authenticity] is a person's desire to exoticize a cultural experience based on how accurately it reflects a 'real' or 'actual' source - that source being a different culture far removed from the daily experience of the person, which the person considers a more spiritual or more humane or more enlightened culture than his own." Now, this is an unbelievably bad explanation of why beats liked bebop in the '40s and '50s or of why Brits played rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll in the early '60s or of why the Eminem types were inspired by NWA and so forth. It leaves out the content of the music that's being used and the behavior (and art) of the people who are using it. Now Ray Mescallado, the author of the article, could say, "Wait, I said 'in most cases,' not 'in all cases,'" but he cited two of those three in his post, and I don't see how you can avoid taking those three cases as among the most potent. He's not wrong in saying that people like this — like me! — want to get beyond themselves, but that's hardly the entire story. They are, after all, living their lives, not living in the pure and far away, and the stances and actions they take put them in direct relation with the people directly around them. Not to say I don't like some of Ray's own stances — he's wise enough to see that he's not against authenticity per se; he's actually in effect saying that the authenticity people are inauthentic and that this is a flaw — but there are some easy dots to connect that he somehow misses: "[J-pop] is about larger than life figures, of idols. There's a standard they live up to, of how they should look and perform and of the personality they're supposed to project." Well, when a white suburban kid — or a white urban kid, or a black urban kid, for that matter — decides to go gangsta, how is that not about standards they live up to, of how they should look and perform and of the personality they're supposed to project? Of course, one can argue that the gangstas, or punks, or beats, in keeping it real, are/were actually settling for too little (I think that's the argument Ray ought to be making), but that's not at all an argument against keeping it real. It's an argument against settling for too little.

So far I don't get J-pop much at all; but I'm presuming that it's not able to avoid the necessity of keeping it real — a precondition of keeping it real is that you're not born into a role but have to find one, i.e., that you are born into the modern world, a world of choices — but that where it chases real may be somewhat different from where gangsta does.