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HARAJUKU FASHION CULTURE – EPIPHANIES & ETHNOCENTRISM

TRANSCRIPT

“Compared to home the foreign is merely an are of projection because the foreign lacks the inner template home provides – the foreign is amorphous and unstructured – it does not allow for anticipation because we cannot read it, cannot interpret what is possible or impossible, attractive or repulsive – we lack the history of personal and cultural experiences – this lack of transparency holds potential for both euphoria and frustration” (Alsop 2002).

I have used this quote from Alsop’s (2002) text to describe previous auto-ethnographic experiences in this subject, but there is something about it that has really resonated with me this semester. I attempted to go into my auto-ethnographic experience with Harajuku Fashion Culture with this quote in mind, and challenge myself to ask ‘why do I feel this way towards certain elements of the culture?’ and ‘how has my upbringing shaped feeling this way?’ Unlike my…

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HARAJUKU FASHION CULTURE: MY LAST ACCOUNT OF MY AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIENCE

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Ok. So I wanted to start this blog post/field journal entry off by looking back at my last 2 posts on my autoethnographic experience with Harajuku Fashion culture thus far. I feel as though I have really engaged with the notion of Harajuku Fashion culture rather than engaged with the phenomena itself. I mean as much as I have enjoyed researching and viewing these fashion cultures, I have admittedly not starting dressing like a typical ‘Mori Kei’ girl.

I feel as though I have enjoyed my experience thus far, as I am an avid fashion lover. I am always trolling through fashion blogs (although I have admitted that these have been majority Western fashion blogs) and I am always captivated by the different trends and items that I see even though I might appreciate a particular style for its individuality or particular elements, I may never ever wear anything like that…

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Harajuku Fashion Culture: Delving A Little Deeper

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Ok.. So last week I viewed a YouTube clip that documented the 2015 Annual Harajuku Fashion Walk in Tokyo. To say that the outfits blew my mind would be an understatement. The outfits were so far-out, out of this world different from what I am used to seeing on the pages of Harpers Bazaar, or walking down the street’s in Sydney, that I was trying so hard to process and consume so much that was happening at the one time… that I had no time to reflect on what these outfits really represented. I truly was overwhelmed by the foreign and different, that I did not have time to break down some of the things that I saw.

The three things that shocked/surprised/excited me the most were:

Colour. Everywhere. There seemed to be no rules of matching and coordinating colour which goes against everything that Western Fashion publications and platforms…

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Harajuku Fashion Culture: My AutoEthnographic Experience

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I have always been infatuated with fashion and the industry in general – however, my interest has only really led me as far as what’s trending on the Western fashion circuit. Currently studying a subject surrounding the notion of ‘Digital Asia’, I decided to investigate the fashion culture of Harajuku in Tokyo, Japan. Up until this point, my only real knowledge/experience of Harajuku fashion culture has been extremely appropriated – Gwen Steffani, Ima looking at you. I knew that crazy outfits, clashing patterns and attaching children’s toys were the norm, but I had never looked into the culture surrounding these over-the-top dress choices.

After a few ‘Harajuku Fashion’ searches in Google, one thing kept popping up. The annual Harajuku Fashion Walk. I thought…. what better way to start looking into Harajuku Fashion, than an annual event that celebrates its very essence. I began my autoethnographic experience by watching the above…

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Looking At My Very Ethnocentric First Encounter with Gojira (1954)

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Well…. here we are again.

Looking back at my last two blog posts it clear to me that I felt out of my depth. In a class environment that is quite clearly so involved in aspects of Asian Digital Culture including films such as Godzilla, I felt my feelings towards the film were somewhat inferior…. Until it struck me. The point of this whole class is to reflect on MY experiences. To write about the way I felt while watching the film and how I came to feel these ways no matter what previous experience I had had with the film or Japanese Film.

I spoke in my last blog post about my disconnect with the film. After delving deeper into these feelings and why I possibly might have felt this way I put a large part of it down to production value and my lack of experience with Japanese…

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Looking at ‘My First Encounter with Gojira (1954)’

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OK….. TAKE TWO.

After looking at my initial reflections of Gojira, I did the typical Commerce student thing. I wrote a really long blog post, in essay style, attempting to deconstruct every little thing I deemed ‘foreign’. Boring. I made the typical connections with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (like every student did). I took to looking at the film in a, ‘I’m in a year 12 English class and I am going to deconstruct every camera angle’.

After looking further into what auto-ethnography actually is, and the way that it is written (Relax, Teagan, Relax!), I feel that I am looking at this post from a slightly more ‘I think I know what I’m doing… but I could be wrong’ angle.

So what was my initial blog post primarily about?

After stepping back and chatting with Chris and the DIGC330 class, the primary narrative of my initial auto-ethnographic response to the film…

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Experience & Reflection: Gojira 1954 [DIGC330]

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Thursday, 6th August. 1:30pm. Sitting in a shade drawn, dark class room. Hungry. The hum of 20 students. Relationship with Japanese Culture up until this point = almost 0. This is when I first encountered the original Godzilla movie, Gojira released in 1954.

A sea of Japanese script, over an ocean (literally) of black and white. The intense sound of the opening credit music. Totally foreign. Totally outside my realm of interest/understanding. Confusion doesn’t even begin to explain it. Up until this point, I had never seen Godzilla in any of its remediated forms. I mean I had heard of it, and let’s be honest… I immediately recalled the scene from Austin Powers below