Posted on 04/27/2014 11:38:10 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
While Avril could have portrayed Japan in a more nuanced, less stereotypical fashion, it’s not surprising that a song about making out at sleepovers has an inane and clichéd video.
Due to what we can only surmise is a rift in the space-time continuum, a blonde, ageless pop star has just released a Harajuku Girl-inspired music video rife with cultural appropriation. Apparently, Avril Lavigne's eyelids were entirely weighed down with eyeliner throughout the early 2000s—there's no other explanation for "Hello Kitty", Lavigne's new single and accompanying music video, which is essentially a carbon copy of Gwen Stefani's 2005 hit, “Hollaback Girl.”
Stefani was using Japanese girls as props, making blank faces at the camera, and repeating meaningless consonant and vowel combinations over a synthetic beat when Avril was still stealing her dad's ties and huffing glue in the bathroom of a Tim Hortons. Unfortunately, Stefani never found a way to trademark white girl insensitivity, meaning we all get to watch Harajuku history repeat itself. The critical response to Lavigne's new single has been swift and harsh—like its pop precursor, the video was condemned for its "pick and choose" approach to Japanese culture, which reduces an entire nation's vibrant aesthetic to sushi, bangs, and enthusiastic Fujifilm product placement.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
The video was posted briefly on YouTube before it was pulled down
Not my type of music, but she is HUGE in Japan, and loves it there.
She made the video in Japan, with a Japanese director, Japanese choreographers, and Japanese extras, and she still gets accused of racism??
Lavigne is attractive and has stage presence.
The Japanese say it was ok.
http://unrealitymag.bcmediagroup.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/makeup9.jpg
(thanks from TMZ)
Yes, thats just stupid. And its this Amy Zimmerman loser that seems to be obsessed with Avril.
Do any actual Japanese in Japan find any problem with this video? As opposed to the lidless eyes of the USA racemongering industrial complex? Not that I like any kind of modern pop culture anywhere, but this just seems a nothingburger.
“Lavigne is attractive and has stage presence.”
If that’s all it takes she could be the next Canadian Prime Minister (or President of the United States for that matter).
Isn’t she getting a little old to do teeny bopper songs?
“Tell me
Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwJ1SmYd12s
The [Japanese embassy] spokesman added ... they "would be happy if the discussions surrounding her song and music video results in more people discovering the beautiful and rich culture of Japan."
I'm afraid that cutesy and pastel things like Hello, Kitty, or, worse, animé, won't draw me into discovering any more of Japanese culture. I'm sure there is rich culture in Japan--Hello, Kitty just isn't it.
I never got the lesbianism in the song because I couldn’t stand to listen to more than a few seconds of it.
It’s pure garbage, and anything Ms. Zimmer compares it with must also be pure garbage, though I will never have the displeasure of voluntarily hearing any of it.
She made the video in Japan, with a Japanese director, Japanese choreographers, and Japanese extras, and she still gets accused of racism??
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Beat me to it! I was just about to post similar comments.
This Politically Correct crap and Race Card Playing has to end.
Hey that was excellent. Avril is darling and gorgeous.
That doesn’t matter to the left. American Indians say Indian mascots are ok (leaving aside those who are leftists first and Native Americans second in their political and intellectual commitments).
You see multiculturalism isn’t about embracing other cultures, it’s about beating up Christendom. White folks embracing another culture is “cultural appropriation” and it’s bad. The only thing you’re supposed to do if your ancestors came from Europe is grovel before other cultures and wail about how evil Christian culture was/is.
The song is pretty typical J-Pop, but with the usual proportion of Japanese and English in the lyrics of a macaronic J-Pop song reversed, and the same for the video, but with an actual Caucasian instead of the often seen Japanese with hair bleached and dyed to look Caucasian or bizarre colors and eye-makeup and contact lenses to look more Caucasian. A lot of anime is set in a fantasy Japan inhabited entirely by Caucasian-looking people. Looking more Caucasian, at least in their own minds, is something the Japanese have been doing since the Meiji restoration, or at least the Russo-Japanese War, the Meiji-era Japanese educational system was copied from the British, their military system from the Prussians, and a lot of their commercial institutions from America, but no one on the left whines about the Japanese engaging in “cultural appropriation”
It doesn’t get any better than this.
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