9 March 2007

I caught the last half of Nightly Business Report on PBS this evening and became very intrigued with their segment on “Ranking RanQueen” – a store in Tokyo that sells products geared towards young women.  However, this store sells with a twist.  Like a weekly “Top Ten” on your favorite radio station, “Ranking RanQueen” ranks the top three products of each category – from chocolate snacks and weight loss beverages to tweezers, CDs, DVDs, and books – and prides itself on their rankings.  To understand better the motivation behind the store, the reporter explains away (rather dismissively) the need for sales-by-rankings on the inherent hierarchical structure of Japanese culture.

Think about this.

Prestige by hierarchy.  Sales by rankings.  Branding.  The cult of fame.  Anything familiar?

In D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, we are greeted with the notorious adage: “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”.  Not so today!

 “Ranking RanQueen” is really no different from the music we listen to on the radio, the television shows we watch on television, and the mainstream formulaic movies we are bombarded with in the cinema.  Programming.  It seems all entertainment programming is offered by way of rankings – but whose ranking?  A mysterious person/corporation decides for the American public what it should purchase, what it should hear, what it should watch, and indeed, what it should read.  Have you seen the news lately?  I shudder at it because the last bastion of ‘honesty’ has been perverted with advertisements and corporate tastes.  No wonder user-generated content is so popular and no wonder the internet is our last haven of choice, expression, and communication.  And yes, this haven is soon corrupting into piecemeal virtual property of corporate controls.    Both inside and outside the net, there is just too much controversy. 

But I digress.

Ranking is ironically a very American attribute.  Our society unfortunately is bastardized by the cult of celebrity with an insatiable thirst for fame.  Today, in an increasing globalizing world, we really can not explain away phenomena on differences between “East” and “West”, especially when the East is becoming more West than Westerners and the West has carried forward acts more East than Easterners.  When will we shatter the glass of difference that is our red herring?  When will recognize and acknowledge ourselves in others?

When will be break through the hyphenation paradox and reverse our self-deception?