Pleasure Principled

Revealingly Articulate Idol Worship

Fans of Japanese idol music are no strangers to the concept of a love song. Nearly every release to come out of Morning Musume, AKB48, and other units concerns love in some way or another. If it’s not the simple idea of being in love, it’s usually something slightly more complicated (but still easy enough to explain in the span of a four minute pop song). “I like you but I’m too shy to say anything,” “we’re dating but you actually don’t like me at all” (the hell?), “I have no clue how you feel about me so I’m just going to sing about it instead of asking,” “I love you but you’re a total dick, and get off your cell phone for Christ’s sake”… you get the idea. Love is a multi-faceted emotion, which is probably why most of us still aren’t tired of listening to this kind of music: either because there’s so many factors to love that can be explained and explored in music, or because we’re in love with Ishikawa Rika’s chest or something.

Interestingly enough, though, as often as we listen to prepubescent girls sing about “like” and “love” (and even “lust,” in some more extreme circumstances), there’s a big disconnect between the ideas they’re describing and what we’re presented visually in promotional videos. Lots and lots of Hello! Project PVs have been produced, and lots and lots of them just don’t match up with the song in question. The same goes for AKB48, and even less idol-y groups like Stereopony or HALCALI. Promotional videos are meant to promote a song, but it seems a little odd to attempt promotion when your song about a “long kiss goodbye” involves glow-in-the-dark sweatshirts, awkward dancing, and yet another shot of Tokyo Tower looming over us, the viewers, like “you will never get rid of me, fuckers!”

Let’s look at a more concrete example. To continue with the Morning Musume release I’ve already sort of referenced, “Shabondama”: this song is about a total dickwad of a boyfriend who can’t even get off his phone long enough to realize that his girlfriend is practically shoving her chest in his face and telling him to “hold onto her,” which we all know means something else entirely. The song calls for a video to fit it, complete with the cheating boy being slapped around by the (then brand new) nervous, underaged sixth generation members while Ishikawa Rika and Yoshizawa Hitomi make out or something. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself with that one. Anyway, we’re expecting that, and what do we get? Sixteen girls writhing around in water. Sure, they’re writhing hard, and god bless their little Japanese hearts for being so damn fierce about a song titled after bubbles, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Okay, so what about AKB48? “Boku no Taiyou” is such a sweet song, probably sweet enough to give me a full mouth of cavities, but instead of presenting us with the objects of these girls’ affections, we’re given… wait for it… a whole room of idols writhing about in pretty dresses. Alright, and “BINGO!” … more writhing in pretty dresses. On a beach this time. Oh, and did I mention they were stowaways on a ship or something? For like a minute? I guess that’s not important here. (They’ve got such pretty dresses, after all!) The point is, instead of being sold the story, we’re being sold the idols. All these songs about love and relationships are being promoted to fans or even casual viewers with videos that have no relation to what is actually going on in the lyrics.

The question at hand, now, is this: if all these songs are about love, and I’m assuming the love between a boy and a girl, and all these videos have dozens (literally!) of girls singing about love… assuming the intention of a promotional video is to accurately depict a song’s theme, then where the fuck are the boys?!

There aren’t any, not in idol videos. Think about it: when is the last time you watched a Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, C-ute, AKB48, or Perfume video with a male in it? (Don’t answer that yet.) Stretching it even further, out to the less mainstream idol groups, most of which have ceased to exist - when did a male ever enter a PV for, say, Whiteberry? The answer isn’t “never,” but “almost never,” which is close enough. For all this talk about crushes, love, sex, and breakups, we almost never see idol PVs put a face to the idea aside from those of the idols. Even in the short timespan of a three to five minute video, even if the idols themselves take on “roles”, we rarely, if ever, see a romantic male figure (again, assuming we’re dealing with a male/female relationship here) enter to represent the other half of this mysterious, complex feeling. Why is that?

There is a simple marketing concept behind Japanese idol music. I mean, simple to the point of almost brainless. It’s this: boys (and men) like pretty girls. That’s really what it boils down to, a fairly uncomplicated matter at the root of things. This isn’t meant to undermine the other factors involved- idols do better sales-wise when they have personality as well as good looks, and a girl who can’t sing is probably not going to accomplish much in her career (unless you’re Michishige Sayumi… or Ishikawa Rika… or - you know, forget it, scratch that one). But the heart of it is good-looking girls promoting themselves to boys, men, and even other girls or women who enjoy their appearances, personalities, concert antics, and (maybe) vocal talent.

To dig a little deeper here, we all know that a big factor in an idol’s career is their supposed purity. Yes, we are definitely all lying to ourselves if we really think that these girls don’t have boyfriends and aren’t doing the nasty every other night while their managers look the other way and ask Nakazawa Yuuko when the hell she’s going to get married. (Double standard!) So the marketing concept then becomes “men like pretty girls who don’t have boyfriends.” When there’s a boyfriend-related scandal, or even a rumor of one, the more, um, “involved” fans - the wota - tend to go berserk. A lot of you have probably seen the snapshots passed around 2ch and other Japanese image boards, those of smashed, burned, or otherwise destroyed CDs, pictures, and other fan merchandise. Most of us who see these images acknowledge them as a massive waste of money, but the wota see it as a protest against what is “wrong” in the idol world. They become protective, even possessive of their favorites, and any interference with the romantic life of an idol is a clear wakeup call to the fans who would rather blur the line between reality and fantasy and think of a girl as theirs, not someone else’s, and maybe not even the public’s.

So… going by this train of thought, wota see boys as a threat to idols. They don’t include themselves in this idea, because all a wota seems to want to do is love tenderly, from a distance, offering support and satisfying themselves with their own fantasies. Wota do not see themselves or other wota as threats, because there is still a tiny bit of reality in their consciousness: they seem to at least realize that there is no chance of their “relationship” with an idol becoming real. But at the same time, this sliver of logical thought isn’t going to keep them from seeing everyone else - everyone in the real world, people who can actually interact with idols - as potential or recognized threats. And that brings us right back to the question of why we don’t see romantic figures in female idol videos.

A promotional video is supposedly supposed to promote a song. For most musicians, this means presenting a visual storyline to follow whatever is going on in the lyrics. Obviously, this isn’t always what happens, or may not even be the norm - refer to my HALCALI example above. There are lots of PVs that have nothing to do with the song they are marketing, but these are the ones typically produced by major-label bands who can “get away with it,” so to speak, and still manage high sales. Idols have to push harder, promote more, be almost relentless with their activities. For idols, because their videos are meant to promote a person (or group) before anything else - idols sell themselves, not their music - a story is far less likely to be told. Lots of PVs are just going to have girls smiling sweetly into the camera, lights reflected in their eyes, mouthing along to words they probably did not pen themselves and are being paid graciously to memorize and reproduce.

Wota aren’t watching these videos to gain a better understanding of the meaning behind Tsunku’s idea of a “sexy island” or something - they want that smile-and-sing experience, because they want to better understand their idols and the kinds of people they are. What they are expecting is a pleasant and - more importantly - pure experience, one-on-one time with the viewer and the viewed, with nothing else mucking it up. Sure, you can put the girls in situations, like the AKB48 girls jumping out of boats and washing up on a beach, but it’s still Itano Tomomi washing up on that beach and sniffling at her wet pants. You can stuff Sugaya Risako into as many high school uniforms as you want, but that still isn’t going to change the fact that there’s no storyline to go along with her being in the uniform in the first place. She’s just there in her shirt, skirt, and knee-high socks, no boys in sight, being Risako.

No matter how hard a producer might struggle to introduce a “plot” to an idol video, any male character directly involved with an idol is ultimately going to be seen as a threat. Wota don’t want to receive that “she might be dating!” wakeup call, or live through even a four minute scenario where the girls from Perfume have found technopop-loving boyfriends and are simply sitting on a couch gazing into their eyes or something. The male element in a female idol video is a reminder of a reality that they do not want to face. Just imagine plopping a boy or two in a C-ute video. His appearance might trigger the thought that wow, Umeda Erika is starting to really look like an adult, and what happens if she gets a boyfriend like that one? Or it might even remind the wota that hey, Suzuki Airi might really be interested in boys, and doesn’t intend to devote her entire life to her (much older) fans. If a wota sees a realistic scenario, even in the context of a PV, they lose the pure, boyfriend-free fantasies they experience with that idol. They realize that they have no control and no say in the matter. They get angry, they lose interest, and the company loses sales. It’s as simple as that. We don’t see males in female idol videos because they - just like real boyfriends - infringe on the idea of an idol being both pure and free of attachment.

“But pengie!” you might cry, “what about that video where all the AKB girls are prostitutes? There are boys in it!” Yes, “Seifuku ga Jama wo Suru” does break the mold quite a bit, in that the girls are most definitely playing roles, and there are male characters among the cast who are directly and intimately involved with the idols during the video. But this is a completely different situation, and wota aren’t going to view these men as threats, either. Why? Because it’s unrealistic. Maybe with the exception of that Ohori Megumi chick, I’m fairly sure none of the AKB girls have to stoop to selling themselves on the streets for a quick buck. (Or record sales.) Wota may have a questionable grasp on reality at best, but they aren’t stupid. They know when something is so “out there” as to be nonthreatening, and that’s what allows them to appreciate the “Seifuku” PV as an act of art (or maybe a public message? “Don’t whore yourself out, kiddos!”) instead of responding to it with disgust.

“And what about the male office worker in that Berryz Koubou PV?” you ask? Well, what about him? He’s an office worker, and has basically no interaction with the girls. He’s just there for scenery - he isn’t a threat. You could litter the next Morning Musume PV with a whole score of guys, maybe even attractive ones, but if they were just milling about in the background minding their own business, nobody would care. Sure, someone might think on things a little too hard and wonder if Reina might have serviced them all after the video shoot was done, but if there’s no threat presented in the limited frame of the PV itself, the wota aren’t likely to react or feel the jealousy that triggers their intense, sale-affecting reactions.

“But there’s that SweetS PV…” Yes, interestingly enough. But SweetS is dead and gone, as painful as that is to admit, and we’re looking at this lack of males in the current context of idols. When SweetS was around, idols didn’t have to try quite as hard. Their sales and popularity didn’t rely entirely on male fans. So the admittance of a lone romantic male figure wasn’t going to start the apocalypse for these girls - it was just “some” of the fans who could have gotten mad over this, not all of them. Sure, there are female fans of idol groups, I can’t deny that (I am one, after all) but the majority of that market now, more than ever, is made up of lonely, bitter males. It’s a lot easier to toss something in there once, and pass it off as a gimmick, when you know you won’t be isolating your entire market by doing it.

The same could be said for that big fat ukulele player, Takagi Boo - you know the one, the guy who came in out of nowhere and strummed out some Morning Musume stuff while the girls crooned along. Boo is a big huggable bear of a guy, and in the present day, he could easily be seen as a threat to the wota… but in 2002, people were far more inclined to take it as a gimmick and move on with their lives. Seven years later, now that the idol market has declined into its present state - teenage girls whose careers rest almost solely on the unstable shoulders of a few thousand Japanese males - things would probably be different. Boo would be drawn and quartered before sundown. (How dare he play his ukulele at Aika like that?!)

Romantic male figures just aren’t allowed in female idol videos. They present too much of a threat to the wota, who want so desperately to think of idols as their “own,” and can’t handle the idea, suggested or real, of a girl coming of age and finding a boyfriend. If sales weren’t so dependent on these fans, the situation might be different… but as it stands right now, idols must be positioned in such a way that their every move is “approved” by the dedicated, slightly delusional men who follow them around. Idol groups can produce as many songs about love and relationships as they want… but if they even think about “acting out” the lyrics in the frame of a promotional video, they’d better be prepared for a backlash.