Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Tampopo

    I first got to see Tampopo at the 051 Cinema in Liverpool. It was a comedy, it had new wave vibes and I knew I could watch it several more times without getting bored. When I went to college a lecturer screened clips of it to emphasise the importance of observation as a market research tool – a lesson that has stuck with me to this day. Decades later I get Tampopo on Blu-Ray via Criterion Collection re-issue.

    Tampopo

    The print is way richer and better than what I saw a few times in Liverpool and it still holds my interest.

    Ramen western?

    Before we get into the film I want dispel the idea of the ramen western. Every magazine review you see of Tampopo will use the term ‘ramen western’ which was apparently coined by publicists during its international release. It’s a lazy phrase in the case of Tampopo for a number of reasons.

    Yes, one of the protagonists has some clothing that might evoke the image of a cowboy, but that’s like writing the entire film from a few curated still images. The clothing is more about evoking the rugged individuality of a truck driver, in a largely conformist society. Their neckerchief is more about lorry cabs having no air conditioning at the time.

    The best spaghetti westerns like A Fist Full of Dollars actually were adaptions of Japanese films. In the case of A Fist Full of Dollars, it’s the retelling in western setting of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo. So the Ramen Western reference is basically saying ‘it’s a Japanese interpretation set around a neighbourhood restaurant of an Italian plagarisation of a Japanese chambara film classic’.

    The reality is that Tampopo is more complex than the simplistic ramen western label would have you believe.

    Juzo Itami

    Director Juzo Itami was an auteur: actor, script writer and director. Tampopo was his second feature film and he would eventually direct eight more. Itami’s later films courted controversy with him being attacked by Yakuza members. His eventual suicide is widely believed to have been staged by members of the Goto-gumi to prevent a film that discussed the gang’s links with the Soka Gakkai buddhist movement.

    Back to Tampopo

    Tampopo revolves around food as art and food is also the MacGuffin for the film. In the main story, a widow is struggling to manage her ramen shop following the death of her husband the cook and shop owner.

    A jobbing truck driver and drivers mate stop to eat and get sucked into a quest. The widow who is named Tampopo (Dandelion), the truck driver and driver’s mate to make great ramen and rejuvenate the fortunes of the shop.

    So if Tampopo isn’t a ramen western, what is it?

    The simple answer would be an action comedy revolving around a ramen shop and the art of cooking. But there is so much more in the film.

    There is a second story about ‘the man in white’ which has heavy overtones of French new wave cinema and features a basket of European food fit for a decadent picnic. The fourth wall is broken and one of the characters speaks directly to the audience, adding an additional layer of complexity. We are both audience and (minor) character. Over new wave vignettes in the film include:

    • Salarymen having a meal at a French restaurant 
    • A women’s etiquette class on how to eat spaghetti silently in the European manner
    • Supermarket staff stopping an older woman with a compulsion to squeeze food
    • A con man uses an elaborate meal to lure a mark into an scam
    • A woman breast feeds her infant

    Torakku Yarō

    There are references due to the plot structure to the idea of the ronin – the unattached samurai helping out common people in the plot structure. But just as important the film references Japanese culture around that time. There is a clear parallel between Tampopo and a series of trucking related comedy films that were made from 1974 – 1979. Torakku Yarō (トラック野郎) roughly translates as Truck Guys or Truck Rascals. It is a series of ten films made over a four year period to cater for the popularity of the genre.

    The plots were standardised.

    1. Truck driver falls in love with woman he meets on the road.
    2. Truck driver through his actions actually helps her fall in love with another man.
    3. Truck driver ends up going on a quest to help reunite the star-crossed lovers under some sort of time restriction.

    In this case cooking ramen is substituted for the ‘other man’. The connections don’t stop at the plot structure, one of the main characters Pisken is played by Japanese Italian actor Rikiya Yasuoka – who appeared in the first instalment of the Torakku Yarō series.

    Torakku Yarō itself was based on an earlier series of comedies called Otoko wa Tsurai yo (男はつらいよ): translated as It’s tough being a man. 48 films were made in this series from 1969 to 1995 based around the same formula.

    1. Tora-san falls in love with a woman
    2. Tora-san argues with his extended family
    3. Tora-san’s love of the woman is not reciprocated and he leaves heart-broken

    While the humour may not fully come out from Tompopo, it’s a visual tour-de-force with great acting and a distinctive vision behind the film. I look forward to rewatching it again in the future.

    More film reviews here.

  • September 2023 newsletter – the difficult 2nd album

    September 2023 newsletter introduction

    The September 2023 newsletter time came around quickly. As I write this, it’s almost the end of September and it feels like no time since I curated the last edition. If you’re reading this, and it’s your first time welcome! If you read the pioneer issue; I hope that this isn’t the newsletter equivalent of the difficult second album.

    Strategic outcomes

    If this continues to go well I will put one out each month. You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    Things I’ve written.

    Rolex Submariner 5512
    Rolex Submariner 5512
    • Analysis on the Bucherer acquisition by Rolex – which shook up the luxury sector in the run up to the end of August.
    • Psychotherapy and culture. How psychotherapy has been mainstreamed via culture, and in turn influenced culture.
    • Digital abortion clinics. How tele-health businesses are trying to address the challenges posted by US state abortion bans and how these services should be doing a better job protecting their patients, in particular their privacy.

    Books that I have read.

    • The Code by Margaret O’Mara. O’Mara’s work like my last month’s recommendation Chip War is a history of Silicon Valley. The key difference is that O’Mara approaches the history through the lens of the American political environment, whereas Miller’s Chip War considered it more in terms of global geostrategic politics. You can read more of my take on The Code here.
    • Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre by Dana Thomas. Thomas’ book came out in 2008, but much of it is still relevant today, particularly around what my friend Jeremy dubbed the ‘Supremification’ of the luxury sector. You can read more of my take on Deluxe here.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    • Lately I have been listening to Kurena an album by Japanese jazz musician Kurena Ishikawa. I reviewed the album here. 
    • The Korean Cultural Centre in London has a series of rotating art exhibitions. I got to see Audible Garden by Jinjoon Lee. Lee is a multimedia artist. The exhibition usesculptures, drawings, a wall painting, prints, videos, and directional sound installation to create an experience that blends inside and outside landscapes. If you’re involved in creating experiences you’ll want to see it. The exhibition is on until October 13, 2023.
    • My friend Natalie Lowe runs The Orangeblowfish with her husband in Shanghai. One of the projects that they worked on was helping media agency Mindshare rethink their office space and employee brand through the power of comics.
    • We talk a lot about the benefits of neurodiversity in business thinking. But a less explored area is that of cognitive diversity. While Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an imperfect measure, this work by UCL and Sense Worldwidehighlights the benefits of cognitive diversity in envisioning new possibilities. 
    Cognitive diversity
    • Swatch Group continues with its Mondelēz International -like brand mash-ups (a la Cadburys Dairy Milk x Ritz crackers), this time Swatch x Blancpain. I wonder what this does to luxury brand caché? I imagine that there will be a short burst of hype tempered by existing customers concern about paying $800,000 for a watch from a brand that also puts its name on plastic tat. Omega were a well known premium watch brand, often seen as a cheaper alternative to Rolex. Blancpain is the oldest brand in Swiss watchmaking with the longest most storied history of horology. It is a brand for die-hard watch fans, they made the first automatic self winding wrist watch and still make sophisticated complications like the 1735 Grand Complication and the highly regarded Fifty Fathoms range which pioneered modern dive watches. The company slogan has been:

    Blancpain has never made a quartz watch and never will

    Blancpain
    swatch x blancpain

    It seems the resale value on these watches on secondary market platforms has dropped almost immediately after launch.

    Finally Alzheimers Research put out a fantastic animated film to illustrate the impact of dementia on a life.

    Things I have watched. 

    Moving on from the French new wave works of Jean-Pierre Melville that I viewed in August, this month I revisited works from the Hong Kong new wave. Chow Yun Fat’s performance in the John Woo-directed film The Killer blew me away when I first watched it on VHS tape and still moves me today, more on that here. I followed this up with John Woo’s second best well-known film Hard Boiled. Watching it for the first time in several years, gave me a slightly different perspective on the film – I can see obvious influence it would have had on 1990s Hollywood – in particular the Die Hard series; but the ‘new wave cinema’ elements felt like stylistic add-ons rather than a crucial part of the story. 

    Netflix has a couple of sleeper Japanese language series:

    • Sanctuary is about the journey of a young man from a broken family in the world of professional sumo.
    • Informa is a tale of revenge and assassination played out in modern day Japan highlighting the close links between the yakusa, local politicians, the construction industry and the media.

    Useful tools

    Small fridge magnets

    Working with colleagues who had a fantastic whiteboard, this whiteboard was vast like the rolling door on a freight carriage. Everything was brilliant but for the fact that Post-It notes wouldn’t adhere at all to the surface for some reason. Thankfully, I’d had a run through on the room a few days before and found this out by accident. So I got some fridge magnets that were ideal for using with Post-It notes on the day. I now have three dozen of them in my loadout for in-person workshops.

    Flight Delay Compensation

    If like me you’ve had problems with airline delays and cancellations, Moneysavingexpert have put together:

    • An explanation of your rights
    • Links to tools that make claiming comparatively painless

    More here.

    The sales pitch.

    Now taking bookings for strategic engagements. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my September 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • The Freshest Kids + more things

    The Freshest Kids

    The Freshest Kids tells the story of early breakdancing. My own attempts at breakdancing were very poor. My moonwalk was closer to John Hurt’s shuffle as part of his portrayal of John Merrick in The Elephant Man. Because of that I have a real appreciation of those people who can do breakdance properly. You can watch it here.

    RAYS Engineering

    I have a thing for manufacturing videos that shows how a product is made. RAYS Engineering alloy wheels are famous as providers of high quality after market wheels, particularly among fans of Japanese import vehicles. Their manufacturing process is unique. The forging process provides their wheels with superior properties to normal cast alloy wheels.

    Anjihood pop-up book

    Anjihood is the 32 square kilometre development (less than 3% the size of Hong Kong, or over 100 times bigger than Canary Wharf in London) outside Shanghai. It looks to blend the benefits of urban living with a more green environment – a 21st century analogue to the Victorian garden city concept. They commissioned Shanghai creative agency The Orangeblowfish to create a pop-up book that would convey the concepts behind Anjihood and the emotions they hope the development will evoke.

    Innovation in Japanese hospitals

    Japan is using a mix of robotics and machine learning tools to help assist staff in its hospitals cope with its aging population. NHK World goes in-depth in how a mix of commercial off the shelf solutions are being used in concert with each other.

    No to obsolescence

    Porsche Netherlands did this film to show no matter how old you’re Porsche, if they don’t have the relevant part available. They will go back to the original design drawings and remanufacture it for your vehicle.

    I am not too sure how this would hold up for electronics components which might not be able to get the relevant integrated circuits. But it’s an interesting commitment to make. In a low carbon economy, keeping existing vehicles on the road for longer is as important as a world full of Teslas.

    The Porsche 111 was first made some time in the early 1950s. Porsche only started building sports cars in 1948, but had been building tractors on and off since 1934 under the Porsche brand.

  • James A Micheners Writers Handbook

    Late on in his writing career a bestselling author created James A Micheners Writers Handbook. Now the stuff of thrift shops and the ‘for sale’ trolley in your local library, Michener was a bestselling author for over four decades. His paperback books were the size of doorstops, yet were sold in every airport for holiday reading.

    Writer’s handbook

    At the end of the first Gulf War, George W. Bush quoted one of Michener’s short stories in a celebration of the allied military effort. If you have ever watched the musical South Pacific, that was an adaption of Michener’s first book ‘Tales of the South Pacific‘. Ten of his works were adapted for film by Hollywood and there were a further five TV series or ‘mini-series’.

    Michener died in 1993, but during his life time his books sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide. There was a distinctive Michener fingerprint to his books:

    • Geography was at the route of everything, the setting was the hero of his books
    • Deep research: Michener would research the culture, history and geology of the setting
    • A common narrative rhythm to his writing
    • Despite running to 1,000+ pages, Michener’s books were easy to read

    The writer’s handbook

    James A Micheners Writers Handbook talks through the process that Michener went through in writing a couple of his works. He talks about using a cut-and-paste methodology, where he physically cut and pasted in paragraphs on to typed sheets. He discusses the move from hot metal typesetting to phototypesetting and its effect on the editorial process.

    Michener’s career saw him move his writing process from mechanical typewriter to word processor and he discusses how this became beneficial to his writing style.

    Michener shows the feedback that he received from the publisher, the editor and even legal review – laying open how once the original draft is submitted to the publisher, creating a novel then becomes a team sport. And that’s even before marketing gets involved.

    This is all laid out including photographs of original manuscript pages and proofing copies in a coffee table book.

    Creating an easy-to-read books was deceptively hard work. The refining process that Michener went through reminded me of creating propositions for a creative brief in my day job.

    At the back of the book is his advice for future writers in terms of paths to getting published. He admitted that getting published had become much harder for a number of reasons:

    • The opportunities to showcase your writing had diminished due to the demise of short story publications
    • Publishers now relied on agents to filter manuscripts on their behalf
    • Writing courses were considered a par for the course
    • Michener recommended a number of careers to kickstart a writing career including working in public relations rather than journalism – which surprised me

    James A Micheners Writers Handbook won’t tell you how to create great stories, but it is a lesson in writing as a multi-stage process of creation, followed by refinement and further simplification of the language. Michener’s idea of simplification is still far more advanced than we write for today in business, in advertising copy or culture.

    The book itself is a bit of a curate’s egg. I would recommend it, but not too sure about who I should recommend it to. More on the book here.

    You can find more book reviews here.

  • The Killer

    The media environment that drove the popularity of The Killer

    Before talking about The Killer, it makes sense to talk about the media landscape. The late 1980s and early 1990s was when consumers first started to buy video films rather than only rent them. Retail video sales had been pioneered in the UK by the music labels who sold video albums and recordings of live performances.

    The prices of films suddenly became much more accessible. Not cheap, but the price of a couple of CD albums at the time. Consumers were becoming more film literate. Curated series like:

    • Moviedrome
    • The Incredibly Strange Film Show
    • Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show
    • Jonathan Ross Presents for One Week Only

    These series were our film studies lecture theatre with Alex Cox and Jonathan Ross as our tutors.

    Young people’s expectations and interests expanded. Video companies started to address market needs. At first, video packaging was influenced by the rental market. The rental market needed display cases that would have hundreds of people handling a box. Durability and keeping things hygienic was the primary concern. But companies realised more consumer sales with nicer packaging. Companies like Tartan and Artificial Eye looked to people with niche interests.

    The video rights for these films were cheap and there was a ready audience to watch them. These cheap film rights were already well known, fuelling US grindhouse cinema in the 1970s & ’80s. So they were the ideal vanguard to get consumers to build their own video library.

    Magazines sprang up to address the need for consumer reviews. this included Anime UK, Empire (seen as the serious film buffs read), Shivers and The Dark Side.

    The Killer and I

    The Killer was one of a number of videos that I had bought at the time. It sat by my VCR (video cassette recorder) alongside Hard Boiled and A Better Tomorrow. All three were released on the ‘Made In Hong Kong’ video label. I also had a copy of the Japanese anime opus Akira. My collection was rounded out with a few spaghetti westerns including Keoma The Violent Breed. The westerns were released by Aktiv as part of The Spaghetti Western Collection. These were films that made a real impact on me and that I watched again and again.

    I was blown away by the visual experiences that both genres offered.

    Over time I have been building up my library of Blu Ray and DVD disks and managed to reacquire a copy of The Killer. Last week I watched The Killer for the first time in a few years.

    The perfect confection

    A perfect product is a mix of the right ingredients prepared in the right way for the right time. In the mid-to-late 1980s Hong Kong cinema was reaching its cultural peak.

    The Killer
    The original Hong Kong poster for The Killer

    The Killer is made up of layers. These layers were driven by a mix of:

    • Visionary directors
    • The febrile atmosphere in the run-up to re-colonisation by the Chinese communist government
    • A deep bench of talent
    • Hong Kong itself

    John Woo – visionary director

    Depending whose article you read on John Woo, you will get a number of different influences mentioned with regards to John Woo’s works of this period. This film has all of them on screen at once. John Woo is a Christian, and you see a lot of these motifs in The Killer‘s imagery and settings including the iconic church shootout.

    There is a stylistic nod to French new wave films directed by Jean-Pierre Melville like Le Samourai. Gun-fu was influenced by Japanese yakuza films with their honour code and no-holds barred violence. Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honour and Humanity series exemplified this genre. The pacing of his films owe much to Japanese chambara films like The Seven Samurai and classic Chinese novels.

    The reality is that the Triads were seldom rule bound or honourable isn’t allowed to get in the way of a good story.

    A combination of an appreciation of westerns and the works of Melville, with being in Hong Kong during the late 1960s and early 1970s meant that Woo entered the film world as a young script supervisor for Cathay Studios. He became an assistant directors at Shaw Studios. By the mid-1970s he made kung-fu films with fighting chereographed by Jackie Chan.

    In the mid-1980s he had a chance to pivot and take more creative control, which resulted in A Better Tomorrow.

    Much is commented on Woo’s use of white doves in The Killer and subsequent films. The dove is a Christian motif; Woo also referenced the white and black crows of the Spy vs. Spy comic strip. Finally pigeons and doves were kept in coops on the top of tenement apartment buildings in Hong Kong such as John Woo would have lived in after the Shek Kip Mei Fire burnt down his first Hong Kong home. They also end up on the menu at some of the city’s restaurants.

    Doves were also very much an 1980s cultural moment from Blade Runner‘s climatic rooftop scene to Prince. Though to my knowledge Woo never mentioned either of them as influences.

    Less commonly mentioned is the scene where the stray cat enters Jennie’s flat; it signals misfortune for the main characters in the film based on Chinese superstition.

    The febrile atmosphere

    The Hong Kong of the 1980s was a city with a sell by date. It had become a modern well-run city after reaching a nadir in the early 1970s but all that could be easily done away with. Hong Kongers moved freely around overseas Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Hong Kong and to a lesser extent Taiwan became media hubs. By the early 1970s, Hong Kong music was being sung in Cantonese around Asia, the films in Asian cinemas and Made in Hong Kong products were shipped around the world.

    Prior to 1984, there was a wide range of possibilities from the British muddling through and carrying on running Hong Kong to a Chinese invasion. Generations of Hong Kong emigres moved to the UK, Australia, Canada and America for education or a bolt hole if the worst happened. Post-1984 things became real.

    Vancouver’s Hong Kong community expanded during this time as middle class professionals followed the lead of ‘super man’ Li Ka shing and had their families based in the Canadian city while they visited from time to time. It also helped that Vancouver’s inner city core felt like the high density living of Hong Kong, as did the ocean edge.

    All this comings and goings meant that Hong Kongers were exposed to a variety of foreign and domestic influences like John Woo, rather than the more pedestrian content available in the UK at the time.

    The higher ‘moral’ values of The Killer were a line that connected modern Asia to an ancient Chinese past reassuring stability in a changing world.

    Star power – the deep bench of talent.

    The Killer was blessed with a strong cast of performers. Chow Yun-Fat had a perfect foil in Danny Lee. Sally Yeh is amazing in her performance as an actress and a musician. Taiwanese Canadian Yeh was already a successful Cantopop artist before acting in The Killer. The depth of talent in Hong Kong was down to the studio system operated by production companies and TV stations. Chow was a product of TVB’s actor training and made his name as a Cantonese television drama heart throb.

    Beyond the actors, you had a deep bench of technical talent to draw on such as cinematographer Peter Pau. Pau came up through the conveyor line approach to Hong Kong filmmaking and The Killer was his sixth film. Things needed to be done right first time, because films had very little shooting time in comparison to their western counterparts.

    People like Mr Pau are responsible for the professionalisation of the mainland Chinese film industry. The mainland-Hong Kong collaborations which snuffed out the Hong Kong film industry acted as a technical finishing school by Hong Kong filmmakers for their Chinese counterparts. In the same way that coercive technology transfer saw multinational companies train up their competitors.

    Hong Kong itself

    The Killer is one of the things that inspired me to move half way around the world. Hong Kong’s mix of claustrophobic yet homely flats in composite buildings, neon signage and the constant buzz of the city are something you won’t see anywhere else.

    the killer

    This contrasts with the small town feel of the islands. The Killer managed to shoot in locations like the busy Causeway Bay shopping district, which was done in just three hours.

    Just across the border mainland China feels too chaotic. Singapore too neat and ordered. Hong Kong got the mix just right, which is the reason why the anime Ghost In The Shell borrowed so much from the city’s mid-century architecture.

    All four elements come together to make a perfect confection:

    • Visionary directors
    • The febrile atmosphere in the run-up to re-colonisation by the Chinese communist government
    • A deep bench of talent
    • Hong Kong itself

    Impact

    The Killer‘s reception in the Hong Kong market was lukewarm at first, due the June 4th incident in Beijing. But by the end of the year it was a respectable 9th in Hong Kong box office earnings. What happened in the international markets was unprecedented for the time. The Killer was shown on the international festival circuit and became much more critically acclaimed outside of Hong Kong than within the city itself.

    If you’ve watched a Luc Besson film, you’ve seen a film influenced by The Killer, as have most Hollywood action directors making films in the mid-to-late 1990s like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… sampled the living daylights out of The Killer.

    Three decades on, The Killer still moves me. Given changes that have gone on in Hong Kong, we won’t see its like again.