Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Contrasting visual linkings"

There exists a long-standing debate regarding whether small and large numerosities engage different networks of processing. The ability to rapidly enumerate small (1–4) numerosities is referred to as “subitizing” and is thought to be qualitatively different from large numerosity processing. Functional neuro-imaging studies have attempted to dissociate neural correlates of small and large number processing by contrasting subitizing with counting of numerosities just outside the subitizing range. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to contrast the processing of numerosities in the “subitizing range” with numerosities requiring estimation. Participants compared sequentially presented slides of either dots or Arabic numerals for their relative magnitude. We show that comparison of nonsymbolic numerosities in the subitizing range led to activation of the right temporo-parietal junction, while at the same time this region was found to be suppressed during large numerosity processing. Furthermore, relative suppression of this region was strongly associated with faster response times. In previous studies, this region has been implicated in stimulus-driven attention.We therefore contend that activation of the temporo-parietal junction during small number processing and the suppression thereof during large numerosity comparisons reflects differential reliance on stimulus-driven versus goal-directed attentional networks in the brain.

Our senses interact in daily life through multisensory integration, facilitating perceptual processes and behavioral responses. Numerous multisensory regions have been identified in humans and animals, raising the question of whether a single mechanism can support the dynamic range of experiences and behaviors multisensory processing engenders. The most common neural mechanisms proposed to underlie multisensory processing include anatomical connections directly linking early sensory areas, indirect connections to higher-order multisensory regions, and functional connectivity between cortical areas. Here we examine the relationship between white matter connectivity, as assessed with diffusion tensor imaging and individual differences in two divergent forms of multisensory processing: the redundant-target effect (RTE), in which subjects’ behavior is facilitated by congruent multisensory information, and the sound-induced illusory flash (SIIF) paradigm, in which incongruent multisensory information elicits a novel percept. Behavioral results demonstrated strong intra-subject reliability of the RTE and SIIF paradigms, but no correlation in performance between the two tasks. Consistent with this behavioral finding, we identified distinct anatomical networks underlying these two forms of multisensory processing. Using a whole-brain analysis and contrasting anatomical models of multisensory processing, increased behavioral performance on the RTE was associated with increased connectivity between the superior parietal lobe and early sensory regions. Conversely, increased incidence of illusion on the SIIF paradigm was associated with increased connectivity directly between early auditory and visual areas. These results implicate a broad network of anatomical connections involved in task-dependent multisensory processes.

IntroductionWithin social media visibility campaigns, selfie captions usually work to produce coherent identity categories, linking disparate selfies together through hashtags. Furthering visibility politics, such selfie captions claim that authentic identities can be made visible through selfies and can be described and defined by these captions. However, selfie captions by the trans artist Alok Vaid-Menon challenge the assumption that selfies and their captions can make authentic identity legible. Through hashtags, emojis, and punning text, Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions interrogate visibility politics from within one of visibility politics most popular contemporary tools, demonstrating how social media can be used to theorize representation. Coherence, Visibility, and Authenticity through HashtagsMobilising and organising identitarian counterpublics through hashtags—from #DisabledAndCute (Wade) to #GirlsLikeUs (Jackson, Bailey, and Welles 2)—these captions operate as hyperlinks that lead users to collections of all the images similarly tagged or captioned. This draws attention to certain aspects of the images, and produces coherence and similarity, despite the actual diversity of the individuals participating in these projects of visibility. These captions also question the over-determination of visibility with authenticity in dominant discourse, and the assumption that visibility can guarantee authenticity. For example, this is apparent in the Human Rights Campaign’s 2014 publication Transgender Visibility: A Guide to Being You, which offers visibility as a critical strategy for “living as authentically as possible” (quoted in David 28).Further, as images that seem to enable direct, unmediated, and hence “authentic,” self-expression (Lorbinger and Brantner 1848), selfies are described as ideally designed for visibility politics (Duguay 4). Visibility politics relies on aesthetic representation to expand the boundaries of commonsense to include those who were previously excluded—all without challenging the underlying logic that produces the inclusion of some through the exclusion of others (Rancière 141–3). In social media visibility campaigns, selfie captions are therefore a critical tool, for they not only use hashtags to create webs of interconnected selfies that produce a coherent, visible identity category, but through doing so, they reinforce the illusion that selfies—as photographs—exhibit an unmediated relationship between sign and signified, offering a visual authentication of identity. Thus, social media visibility campaigns presume that the authentic self can be made legible through selfies and their captions, reiterating, as C. Riley Snorton writes, the “popular, long-held myth—that both the truth of race and the truth of sex are obvious, transparent, and written on the body” (3).Because visible markers of gender and race are assumed to offer access to the “truth” of identity (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 178), visibility politics are usually heavily invested in this idea of visible authenticity—they also, ultimately, provide a critical avenue for commodification, branding, and consumerism (Banet-Weiser 35; David 30). However, in direct contrast to this, the trans artist Alok Vaid-Menon—a non-binary South Asian performance artist whose pronouns are they/them—uses selfie captions to expose and explode the insufficiency of visibility politics, albeit while promoting their personal brand.Vaid-Menon: Captions, Hashtags, and Intersectional IdentitiesIn Instagram posts that include both still and video selfies, their punning captions undermine any direct relationship between sign and signified, and use playful language to challenge the logic that selfies can transparently communicate authentic identity. Instead of producing coherence, Vaid-Menon uses hashtags to insert charged, political posts within supposedly apolitical series, disrupting any claims to similarity. For example, although Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions draw attention to particular elements within the image, they highlight those aspects of the visual field that make it impossible to identify a single, unified identity.It is also worth discussing here how this plays out in a specifically visual medium such as Instagram. Drawing on the resources of this platform, these selfie captions include emojis, thereby doubling the elements of the visual field within the space of the caption, and emphasising the symbolic function of cultural signifiers of identity. Thus, Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions demonstrate that social media platforms are not merely conduits for visibility politics, but instead offer rich resources for interrogating and contesting the politics of representation.Throughout Vaid-Menon’s Instagram selfies, punning captions appear—examples include “beach the change you want to see in the world” and “fifty shades of gay.” In these captions, puns not only draw attention to the texture and flexibility of language—a linguistic playfulness that is always already present in social media platforms through ludic hashtags (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 187)—but also highlight elements within the image that put pressure on the idea of coherent and unified identity. By doing this, these captions explicitly declare that identity work is self-consciously performative, producing identities that are not a question of authenticity—even within the framework of “branded authenticity” (Banet-Weiser 11)—but that might instead be read through the more ambivalent notion of “sincerity” (Jackson 15).An example of this can be seen accompanying a slow-motion video selfie of Vaid-Menon in a blonde wig (AlokVMenon, 9 January 2016a). The significance of body hair for South Asian women and femmes is a reoccurring theme throughout Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions. They are vocal about the political significance of body hair, and use hashtags and text captions to address how body hair complicates their ability to communicate the truth(s) of their identity. In the video, brightly painted lips parted, Vaid-Menon twirls the blonde curls around their fingers, while the slow-motion effect emphasises the movement of each lock of hair. Simultaneously, Vaid-Menon’s dark body hair is prominent and visible, including chest hair, the shadow of a beard, and thick eyebrows.The image is accompanied by a caption which asserts punningly “gender is racial construct: blondes have more funding”, thereby transforming the gender studies dogma that “gender is a social construct” and the popular culture slogan that “blondes have more fun.” The caption uses this wording to point out that the gendering of body hair as masculine delimits femininity as whiteness, and also privileges white (cis) femininity within capitalism. Like the caption, the image also reveals how “gender is a racial construct,” staging the tensions between Vaid-Menon’s “natural” dark body hair (gendered masculine) and the bright, blonde wig they wear (gendered feminine, but racialised as white). Further, within late capitalism, the caption “blondes have more funding” lays claim to a possibility that the image forecloses—because “gender is a racial construct,” this increased funding is likely to be out of reach for brown trans femmes who look like Vaid-Menon. Together, the caption and the image suggest that hair is both the solution and the problem for Vaid-Menon—although “blondes have more funding,” the blondes who get funded are white, and definitely not covered in thick, dark body hair.Posting selfies that show off their body hair, Vaid-Menon regularly captions these images with the hashtag #TGIF (AlokVMenon, 19 August 2016) thereby taking advantage of the cross-platform utility and democratising function of hashtags (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 176) to insert these images into a space that is not usually one of critical race and gender analysis. Popular on Fridays, the hashtag #TGIF usually stands for “thank God it’s Friday,” but Vaid-Menon uses the ubiquitous hashtag to mean “thank goddess I’m femme.” As a result, the “thank god it’s Friday” hashtag introduces unsuspecting users to Vaid-Menon’s #TGIF selfies and their interrogation of the racialised politics of hair. Through inserting critical analysis of race and gender within such a light-hearted, non-serious hashtag, that is, by capitalising on the popularity of #TGIF, Vaid-Menon appears to defy the norms of discursive consistency within social media discourse (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 187) while simultaneously enhancing their personal brand (Banet-Weiser 59). Beyond hashtags, Vaid-Menon’s captions elaborate on the distinct pressures they experience around body hair, discussing how their body hair simultaneously obscures their ability to be recognised as femme and makes their race hyper-visible. In the caption on one #TGIF post, Vaid-Menon writes that, when they began shaving at age 13, it was an attempt at “becoming white.” Now, they write, they face pressure to authenticate their transfemininity by shaving, noting that, in this case, authenticity requires “invisibilization” (AlokVMenon, 15 November 2016).Vaid-Menon continues this theme in another selfie post, again problematising the supposedly direct relationship between authenticity and visibility. This example—in which Vaid-Menon poses against a violet background wearing a curly, blonde wig (AlokVMenon, 9 January 2016 b) their thick, dark hair contrasting strongly with the wig’s light gold—aims to critique the signifying power of the blonde wig.From the hyper-saturated colours, to the bright gold nose rings, to Vaid-Menon’s body hair, the selfie combines—and emphasises—markers of artifice and authenticity, femininity and masculinity. Reinforcing these contradictions, the caption interrogates the relationship between authenticity and visibility, stating “authenticity is a fraught project in a world that ritualizes your invisibilization.” Bringing together weighty concepts that occur in time, the caption speaks of ritual, the project of authenticity, and the process of invisibilisation, yet the selfie itself is a frozen instant, with nothing in the post clarifying what point of these processes, if any, it captures. In the selfie, the hyper-saturated colours highlight the wealth of information that the visual field makes available, but the image itself cannot answer the question of what visible markers, if any, communicate the truth of Vaid-Menon’s authentic identity. As the caption states, also foreclosing any answers, “authenticity is a fraught project,” and, moreover, that authenticity is threatened by what is not visible. While authenticity discourse presumes that the visual field offers the firmest epistemological grounds for assessing and legitimating identity, the visible may not convey the full reality of identity nor experience (Jackson 159). Furthermore, within selfie conventions, visual imperfection usually signifies authenticity (Lobinger and Brantner 1849), but this selfie has characteristics of professional photography, including the studio background, further marking it as a hybrid of authenticity and artifice.Through the intersection of the caption and the selfie, Vaid-Menon therefore casts into question the ability of the visual to successfully signify authentic identity. Thus, the caption reinforces and extends the work that the selfie does to trouble the coherence of Vaid-Menon’s identity. It should be noted, however, that this caption simultaneously participates in the production of Vaid-Menon’s personal brand, investing in a distinct mode of authenticity that Sarah Banet-Weiser has dubbed “AuthenticityTM,” an authenticity that is available to artists precisely through their creative and performative rejection of social norms (119–20). Refusing such normative assumptions about the relationship between hair, race, and gender, the caption and the selfie therefore position the blonde wig as simultaneously artificial and authentic.The tension between artifice and authenticity is explored further by Vaid-Menon in a set of two videos exploring the symbolism of the blonde wig, both captioned with an emoji of a blonde, white woman (AlokVMenon, 11 January 2016; 12 January 2016). By doubling the image of blonde hair within the caption—through the emoji that operates, rebus-like, as a substitute for language—these two captions shift the function of the blonde wig from a tactile, experiential object to an abstracted symbol of white womanhood. In the videos, Vaid-Menon, in character as “Becky” (Kelly) plays with the wig while delivering a monologue full of stereotypes about white women, a monologue that is summed up by the static, cartoonish emoji. As the visual spreads from the photograph into the space of the caption, the caption emphasises the symbolic—as opposed to the tactile or realist—function of the photographed wig.Across the series with the blonde wig, this shift from experiential object to abstract symbol happens primarily through the captions, although it also extends to the images. For example, accompanying the slow-motion video, the first caption puns “blondes have more funding” as the slow-motion video shows Vaid-Menon enjoying the physical sensation of the blonde curls. The slow-motion video creates an endless, looping present as its 7-second runtime repeats over and over, drawing our attention to the materiality of time and touch through the slow-motion effect. In the close, frontal framing of the video, the viewer does not see the pleasure of Vaid-Menon’s hand touching the wig itself, but rather its effect, as the curls fall slowly against Vaid-Menon’s cheek. Meanwhile, the punning caption is also concerned with texture, experience, and effect, drawing the viewer in to the texture of language. While the video stages an intimate, haptic pleasure, the selfie, posted later that same day, displays the wig, stressing what it might represent, rather than how it moves or how it feels. In the selfie, Vaid-Menon poses with one hand raised, caught in the act of twirling a curl, and the caption moves away from the pleasures of wordplay to a more overt political stance—“authenticity is fraught.” Here, their hand seems to pull the hair away from Vaid-Menon’s face, interrupting the sensuous intimacy of curls against their face.These selfie captions assert not only that cultural constructs make authentic visibility fraught for minoritised subjects, but, through the “transparent and economical” emoji (Bloom 248), these selfie videos and their emoji captions also serve to mediate blonde, white womanhood. As the image of the blonde wig proliferates, moving into the space of the caption, the final video selfie also introduces a second character, a white woman, presumably cisgender, wearing a different blonde wig, who appears suddenly behind Vaid-Menon.This tall, skinny woman with corkscrew blonde curls approaches the viewer with curiosity, swaying her body as she walks forward, with her eyes fixed on the camera. Pursing her lips, she produces the facial expression commonly described as “duckface,” a feminised facial expression that is common in selfies and marks the performative—rather than unmediated—self-expression they make possible. As she approaches Vaid-Menon and the camera, she ends up half-in and half-out of frame, lingering at the edge of our vision. Her presence has a disquieting and jarring effect, as Vaid-Menon continues their monologue without acknowledging her, despite the fact that she must be visible to Vaid-Menon on their cell phone screen. Then, because the video is a loop, the monologue ends abruptly, and the video restarts. As Vaid-Menon performs the role of Becky, the white woman who hovers eerily behind Vaid-Menon in the final video is pushed to the edge of the frame and ultimately vanishes at the moment of the loop. The structure of the loop is a provocative approach to questions of visibility, given that visibility politics asserts that visibility is teleologically directed toward future change, while in fact visibility politics reproduces the status quo that it makes visible (Keeling 33). Here, since Vaid-Menon only manages to displace “Becky” by enacting her (over and over), the final result is not (yet) an uncomplicated or uncompromised brown trans femme visibility.By staging the incoherence of claims to visible authenticity, Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions foreclose the possibility of successfully “passing” into coherent identity categories. In the series of posts with the blonde wig, Vaid-Menon never succeeds in seamlessly embodying any single identity category, and these tensions appear within the images as well as in the relationship between image and caption. This failure to “pass” is political, and as J. Jack Halberstam writes, there is a queer art to failure, for “under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world” (2–3).Failure is also a critical aesthetic element in social media humour, with the hashtag #fail curating posts that ironically celebrate mistakes and failures (Zappavigna 152). In selfies and selfie captions, Vaid-Menon revels in the queer art of social media failure. For example, in a selfie posted on 23 December 2016, Vaid-Menon stares solemnly past the camera, wearing vibrant, contrasting colours, including a bobbed purple wig, bright yellow lipstick, and a dress covered with bright, multi-coloured polka dots. The caption on this colourful, clearly queer, photograph proclaims that Vaid-Menon is “str8 acting looking for same #discrete” (AlokVMenon, 23 December 2016).Everything in the caption operates as a promise that will never be fulfilled, as even the hashtag—#discrete—fails to connect the selfie to other, similar images, as this hashtag is populated by a wildly heterogenous mix of images ranging from sexual images, to landscape photography, to images of fashionable, modern homes. Here, Vaid-Menon participates in a common social media practice, subverting the utility of hashtags and using them as paratextual commentary rather than as tools for networked cataloguing. In this post, Vaid-Menon’s failure to conform to the standards of homonormativity—which would require Vaid-Menon to appear “straight-acting” and to be able to promise discretion to a lover—is pushed to excess, producing a glorious rainbow of queer failure. Similarly, in the series of posts featuring the blonde wig, Vaid-Menon’s campy, parodic version of blonde, white womanhood does not simply demonstrate soberly that the standards imposed by white supremacy and heterocispatriarchy are unreachable. Instead, the series produces this attempt to pass into acceptable white femininity as a strange, delirious failure, accompanied by brilliant colours, strobing slow-motion, and punning, incisive captions.ConclusionIn Vaid-Menon’s Instagram posts, selfies and their captions interrogate and challenge the assumption that authentic identity can transparently be made legible through selfies. Through hashtags, Vaid-Menon’s captions draw upon the resources of the social media platform to connect their selfies to a network of other—not necessarily similar—images, inserting their “thank goddess I’m femme” selfies amid the wealth of “thank god it’s Friday” Instagram posts. And, by using emojis as captions, Vaid-Menon undermines the ability of the caption to anchor the visual to coherent meaning by substituting images for language.Through images and captions, Vaid-Menon’s Instagram selfies restage the act of direct, immediate self-expression as a complicated negotiation of the mediating pressures of language, social media platforms, digital photography, and, ultimately, culture. Furthermore, although selfies are celebrated in popular culture and online activism for the “visibility” they seem to make possible, Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions indicate that social media can do far more than simply promulgate visibility politics. This is necessary, for, despite its compelling lure, visibility politics not only neglects to imagine alternative futures, but actually limits future possibilities through its focus on the present, which is inevitably shaped by the past (Keeling 23). Instead, while building their personal brand on Instagram, Vaid-Menon simultaneously uses selfies and selfie captions to interrogate visibility politics from within one of its most popular contemporary tools, exposing the limitations and compromises of “visibility.” Rather than merely a tool for representation, Vaid-Menon’s work demonstrates how selfies and selfie captions can produce theories of, and about, representation.ReferencesAlokVMenon. Instagram post. 9 January 2016 a. <https://www.instagram.com/p/BAVG-Q3Olqs>.AlokVMenon. Instagram post. 9 January 2016 b. <https://www.instagram.com/p/BAVSkAoOlmF>.AlokVMenon. Instagram post. 11 January 2016. <https://www.instagram.com/p/BAa-CXnOlla>.AlokVMenon. 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Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.Jackson, Sarah J., Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles. “#GirlsLikeUs: Trans Advocacy and Community Building Online.” New Media & Society (2017), 1–21. DOI: 10.1177/1461444817709276.Keeling, Kara. The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.Kelly, Cara. “What Does Becky Mean? Here's the History behind Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' Lyric That Sparked a Firestorm.” USA Today 27 April 2016. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/04/27/what-does-becky-mean-heres-history-behind-beyoncs-lemonade-lyric-sparked-firestorm/83555996>.Lobinger, K., and C. Brantner. “In the Eye of the Beholder: Subjective Views on the Authenticity of Selfies.” International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 1848–1860.Rancière, Jacques. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.Rightler-McDaniels, Jodi L., and Elizabeth M. Hendrickson. “Hoes and Hashtags: Constructions of Gender and Race in Trending Topics.” Social Semiotics 24.2 (2013): 175-190.Snorton, C. Riley. Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2014.Wade, Carrie. “’I Want to Be Visible’: A Queer #DisabledAndCute Photo Gallery.” Autostraddle.com. 20 Feb. 2017 <https://www.autostraddle.com/i-want-to-be-visible-a-queer-disabledandcute-photo-gallery-369532>Zappavigna, Michele. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum, 2012.

Representation of Aboriginality in National Geographic In trafficking images of cultural difference, National Geographic has an unrivalled worldwide reach to over 37 million people per issue. Over the past 25 years, 48 photographs of Aboriginal Australians have appeared in 11 articles in the magazine. This article first examines how the magazine has exoticised, naturalised and sexualised Aboriginal Australians. By deploying the standard evolutionary model, National Geographic typically represents Aboriginal Australians as Black savages relegated to the Stone Age. In the remote outback "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime" (Scollay & Tweedie 645). In "Journey into Dreamtime" (Arden & Abell 8) an Aboriginal man is "triumphant with his kill of a wild turkey [and] leads a small group of Aborigines who have returned to some of the old ways of their nomadic ancestors in the Great Sandy Desert". The article concludes that the Stone Age encounter with modernity depicted in the magazine became a journey through time from location past to location present. Exoticisation The world of the Aboriginal Australians is male through the eyes of National Geographic. This stems from the Western cultural pattern that assigns things masculine to the cultural and things feminine to the natural realm (Ortner). The male Aboriginal performer of an initiation ritual in "Leapingin tribute" (Scollay & Tweedie 656-7) is represented as rooted in tradition and living in a sacred yet superstitious world. Portraits abound of men with painted faces, as in "Surging energy" (Scollay & Tweedie 648). Male finery and self-display become salient markers, Aboriginal "Boys summon courage" in male initiation focussing on bloodletting (Scollay & Tweedie 656). Such images convey the impression that the region is one of nature, taboo, danger and adventure and that it is a land out of time. The enchantment with ritual stems from it being a key to the past and indicative of photographer and writer having travelled through space to travel through time, similar to the connection made by Victorian evolutionary anthropologists last century (see Fabian). Naturalisation The naturalised Aboriginal Australians appearing in National Geographic are characterised by having timeless societies and personalities, what Wolf identifies as people without history. Routine location narratives naturalise Aboriginal Australians through their remote landscapes and seascapes ("blazing bushfire", Scollay & Tweedie 652-3; "conjuring an image as old as his ancestors", "scorched in one season, sodden in the next" Newman & Abell 3-9). In the West the cultural appropriation of nature is the object of labour, whereas for Aboriginal Australians it is the subject of labour. Aboriginal men are hunters ("triumphant with his kill", Arden & Abell 9; "the earth and sea of their own accord furnish them with all the things necessary for life", Newman & Abell 14-5). Thus, in National Geographic the productive world of work further naturalises the Aboriginal 'Other'. Sexualisation Naked Black women provide the hallmark National Geographic imagery of the sexualized 'Other'. By purveying the nude Aboriginal female, the magazine develops Western ideas about race, gender and sexuality, subcategorised in each case as black, female and unrepressed (Lutz & Collins 115). Women are white, men are Black and Black women are invisible in popular visual representations of motherhood in Western culture. In trafficking in photographs of Black women for an overwhelmingly white readership, National Geographic is clearly linking narrative threads of gender and race (Lutz & Collins166). As the readers' gaze focusses on the Aboriginal child they become the site for dealing with racial anxieties through creating the Black love object ("an appetite for learning", Scollay & Tweedie 654; "mud mates", Ellis & Austen 8-9). National Geographic's nickname for mother-child photos is 'tits and tots' (Meltzer) and they are a romantic staple in the magazine. Aboriginal mothering in "marriages of diplomacy" is idealised as the foundation of human social life (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). However, with "seven of Johnny Bungawuy's 11 wives and a handful of his 52 children" this marriage is exotic enough to make cultural difference an issue because it depicts the unusually large number of plural marriage partners available to Aboriginal men in their practice of polygyny. The attribution of erotic qualities and sexual license to Aboriginal women is a result of displaying their bodies for close examination. The naked Aboriginal women in "marriages of diplomacy" represent the nude stylised as ethnographic fact (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). The addition of a woman in the "marriages of diplomacy" photograph commoditises the practice of polygyny and illustrates that women have traditionally been seen as objects to be possessed, owned and adornments to the lives of men (Pollack). Location Past to Location Present Idealisation of the Aboriginal 'Other' allows for detemporalisation to be played out in alluring images of a simpler, natural Aboriginal world only now tentatively facing the throes of modernisation. Social Darwinism counterpoises superstition/ritual with science/technology and darker skin/exotic clothes with lighter skin/Western clothes. The Aboriginal guide bearing a "striking resemblance to his counterpart on the Burke-Wills journey" facilitates a form of ancestor worship that relates to what Rosaldo calls imperialist nostalgia for the passing of what we ourselves have destroyed (Judge & Scherschel 165). Photographs of the Aboriginal Australians are organised into a story about cultural evolution couched in normative discourse of modernisation and development as progress. In photographs contrasting the premodern with the modern the commodity stands for the future: "soda, soap, and spears in the arms of an [Aboriginal] father and daughter demonstrate their coexistence with white society" (Scollay & Tweedie 662). While for the Aboriginal father in "keeping faith with past and future" his "son enters an era that will inevitably propel his people into modern society" (MacLeish & Nebbia 171). Commodities in these contrasting representations are to be seen simply as a stage on the way to Westernisation. Dynamism, change and agency are apportioned to the Western centre, while Aboriginal Australians are just responding to the onslaught of modernisation on the periphery. Aboriginal masculinisation of modernity is situated in a series of photographs depicting the expansive frontier outback where Aboriginal stockmen are content to muster the cattle of white station owners. In "boiling the red dust" the Aboriginal stockman strums his guitar but sometimes "lapses into tradition and roams on walkabout" (Walker & Scherschel 457). Another Aboriginal stockman, in "saga of beef or bust", "uses his tracking ability to run down strays and cleanskins -- unbranded beasts" (MacLeish & Nebbia 161). "Other than his boots and a jug of water all he owns is rolled into the swag", the Aboriginal stockman must compete with the modern helicopter ("pesky as a giant fly", MacLeish & Stanfield 165); alternatively, "with a wager on the line, an Aboriginal stockman whoops it up at the annual Bedourie Race Meeting" (Ellis & Austen 3). The idealised image is one of the rugged yet happy lives of the Aboriginal stockman in transition to modernity. Social evolutionary theory "saw women in non-Western societies as oppressed and servile creatures, beasts of burden, chattels who could be bought and sold, eventually to be liberated by 'civilisation' or 'progress', thus attaining the enviable position of women in Western society" (Etienne & Leacock 1). Aboriginal feminisation of modernity is told through stories about the premodern helpmate to husband work of Aboriginal women. "Sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is gendered with vulnerability, primitivity, superstition and the constraints of tradition (Newman & Abell 24-5). The ambivalent message represented in "sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is complicated by the Aboriginal woman's stockman partner being white. Western ideological understanding of women's work has changed since WWII from helpmate to husband to self-realisation and independence (Chafe). However, images of Aboriginal women in modern work are conspicuously absent. Dispossessed Aboriginal prospectors earn money by 'yandying' ("Paddy Blair's no Irishman", MacLeish & Stanfield 166) -- "winnowing by tossing handfuls of ore into the wind to separate dirt from tin or gold" and 'noodling' -- "poking through rubble" ("selling water and renting bulldozers", Moore & Tweedie 569). Abject "down-and-outs addicted to cheap, poisonous wood alcohol" end up as dispossessed fringe-dwelling 'goomies' in Redfern ("matron saint", Starbird & Madden 224-5). Resistance through situationally motivated undertaking by Indigenous people against expropriation of land and resources is rarely represented in the media (see Drinnon), and National Geographic first attempts such a representation in the 1980s with "heads of several clans" (Scollay & Tweedie 653). Aboriginal men attempt to block a government mining survey crew. But the six Aboriginal men gaze off in different directions and only one is clearly focussed on something in the frame, thus the assembled men assume a disconnected, uncoordinated look. In the 1990s National Geographic story "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula", Aboriginality is equated with caring for the land (Newman & Abell). Aboriginal peoples of Cape York Peninsula are portrayed as conservators valuable for their preservation of biocultural diversity ("the richlytextured landscape", Newman & Abell 17). Aboriginal "white sand people" of Cape York Peninsula are "on a sacred mission" when they "return an ancestor's skull to their homeland at Shelbourne Bay (Newman & Abell 32-3). After years of frustrated efforts to win back their lost domain, the peninsula's native people are at last gaining ground". Aboriginal Australian uses of land and resources are idealised as non-destructive and caring in contrast to rapacious postcolonial development aggression. National Geographic images of Aboriginal Australians have moved from the exoticised, naturalised and sexualised location past. Images in the location present of Cape York mirror the postcolonial transition from Aboriginal dispossession informed by terra nullius to their contemporary empowerment informed by native title. References Arden, H., and S. Abell. "Journey into Dreamtime: The Land of Northwest Australia." National Geographic 179 (Jan. 1991): 8-42. Chafe, W. "Social Change and the American Woman, 1940-70". A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. Eds. W. Chafe and H. Sitkoff. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. 157-65. Drinnon, R. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980. Ellis, W., and D. Austen. "Queensland: Broad Shoulder of Australia." National Geographic 169 (Jan. 1986): 2-39. Etienne, M. and E. Leacock, eds. Women and Colonisation: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. Fabian, J. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Judge, J., and J. Scherschel. "The Journey of Burke and Wills: First across Australia." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 52-91. Lutz, C., and J. Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. MacLeish, K., and T. Nebbia. "The Top End Down Under." National Geographic Feb. (1993): 143-73. MacLeish, K. and J. Stanfield. "Western Australia: The Big Country." National Geographic Feb. (1975): 147-87. Meltzer, M. Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life. NewYork: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978. Moore, K., and P. Tweedie. "Coober Pedy: Opal Capital of Australia's Outback." National Geographic Oct. (1976): 560-71. Newman, C., and S. Abell. "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula." National Geographic June (1996 ): 2-33. Ortner, S. "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" Woman, Culture, and Society. Eds. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1974. 67-88. Pollack, G. "What's Wrong with Images of Women?" Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and the Media. Ed. R. Betterton. London: Pandora, 1987. 40-8. Rosaldo, R. Culture and Truth. Boston: Beacon P, 1989. Scollay, C., and P. Tweedie. "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime." National Geographic Nov. (1980): 645-61. Starbird, E., and R. Madden. "Sydney: Big, Breezy, and a Bloomin' Good Show." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 211-36. Walker, H., and J. Scherschel. "South Australia, Gateway to the Great Outback." National Geographic April (1970): 441-81. Wolf, E. Europe and the People without History.Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Hyndman. "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php>. Chicago style: David Hyndman, "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Hyndman. (2000) Postcolonial representation of Aboriginal Australian culture: location past to location present in National Geographic. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction Japan has long been cited as a major source of cute (kawaii) culture as it has spread around the world, as encapsulated in Christine R. Yano’s phrase ‘Pink Globalization’. This essay charts recent developments in Japanese society through the cute character Rilakkuma, a character produced by San-X (a competitor to Sanrio, which produces the famed Hello Kitty). His name means ‘relaxed bear’, and Rilakkuma and friends are featured in comics, games and other products, called kyarakutā shōhin (also kyarakutā guzzu, which both mean ‘character goods’). Rilakkuma is pictured relaxing, sleeping, eating sweets, and listening to music; he is not only lazy, but he is also unproductive in socio-economic terms. Yet, he is never censured for this lifestyle. He provides visual pleasure to those who buy these goods, but more importantly, Rilakkuma’s story charitably portrays a lifestyle that is fully consumptive with very little, if any, productivity. Rilakkuma’s reified consumption is certainly in line with many earlier analyses of shōjo (young girl) culture in Japan, where consumerism is considered ‘detached from the productive economy of heterosexual reproduction’ (Treat, 281) and valued as an end in itself. Young girl culture in Japan has been both critiqued and celebrated in in opposition to the economic productivity as well as the emotional emptiness and weakening social prestige of the salaried man (Roberson and Suzuki, 9-10). In recent years, ideal masculinity has been further critiqued with the rise of the sōshokukei danshi (‘grass-eating men’) image: today’s Japanese male youth appear to have no appetite for the ‘meat’ associated with heteronormative, competitively capitalistic male roles (Steger 2013). That is not to say all gender roles have vanished; instead, social and economic precarity has created a space for young people to subvert them. Whether by design or by accident, Rilakkuma has come to represent a Japanese consumer maintaining some standard of emotional equilibrium in the face of the instability that followed the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in early 2011. A Relaxed Bear in a Precarious Japan Certainly much has been written about the ‘lost decade(s)’ in Japan, or the unraveling of the Japanese postwar miracle since the early 1990s in a variety of unsettling ways. The burst of the ‘bubble economy’ in 1991 led to a period of low or no economic growth, uncertain employment conditions and deflation. Because of Japan’s relative wealth and mature economic system, this was seen a gradual process that Mark Driscoll calls a shift from the ‘so-called Japan Inc. of the 1980s’ to ‘“Japan Shrink” of the 2010s and 2020s’ (165). The Japanese economy was further troubled by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and then the Tōhoku disasters. These events have contributed to Japan’s state of ambivalence, as viewed by both its citizens and by external observers. Despite its relative wealth, the nation continues to struggle with deflation (and its corresponding stagnation of wages), a deepening chasm between the two-tier employment system of permanent and casual work, and a deepening public mistrust of corporate and governing authorities. Some of this story is not ‘new’; dual employment practices have existed throughout Japan’s postwar history. What has changed, however, is the attitudes of casual workers; it is now thought to be much more difficult, if not impossible, to shift from low paid, insecure casual labour to permanent, secure positions. The overall unemployment rate remains low precisely because the number of temporary and part time workers has increased, as much as one third of all workers in 2012 (The Japan Times). The Japanese government now concedes that ‘the balance of working conditions between regular and non-regular workers have therefore become important issues’ (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare); many see this is not only a distinction between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, but also of a generational shift of those who achieved secure positions before the ‘lost decade’, and those who came after. Economic, political, environmental and social insecurity have given rise to a certain level public malaise, not conducive to a robust consumer culture. Enter Rilakkuma: he, like many other cute characters in Japan, entices the consumer to feel good about spending – or perhaps, to feel okay about spending? – in this precarious time of underemployment and uncertainty about the future. ‘Cute’ Characters: Attracting as Well as Attractive Cute (‘kawaii’) culture in Japan is not just aesthetic; it includes ‘a turn to emotion and even sentimentality, in some of the least likely places’ (Yano, 7). Cute kyarakutā are not just sentimentally attractive; they are more precisely attracting images which are used to sell these character goods: toys, household objects, clothing and stationery. Occhi writes that many kyarakutā are the result of an ‘anthropomorphization’ of objects or creatures which ‘guide the user towards specific [consumer] behaviors’ (78). While kyarakutā would be created first to sell a product, in the end, the character’s popularity at times can eclipse the product’s value, and the character thus becomes ‘pure product’, as in the case of Hello Kitty (Yano, 10). Most characters, however, merely function as ‘specific representatives of a product or service rendered mentally “sticky” through narratives, wordplay and other specialized aspects of their design’ (Occhi, 86). Miller refers to this phenomenon as ‘Japan’s zoomorphic urge’, and argues that etiquette guides and public service posters, which frequently use cute and cuddly animals in the place of humans, is done to ‘render […] potentially dangerous or sensitive topics as safe and acceptable’ (69). Cuteness instrumentally turns away from negative aspects of society, whether it is the demonstration of etiquette rules in public, or the portrayal of an underemployed or unemployed person watching TV at home, as in Rilakkuma. Thus we see a revitalization of the cute zeitgeist in Japanese consumerism in products such as the Rilakkuma franchise, produced by San-X, a company that produces and distributes ‘stationary [sic], sundry goods, merchandises [sic], and paper products with original design.’ (San-X Net). Who Is Rilakkuma? According to the company’s ‘fan’ books, written in response to the popularity of Rilakkuma’s character goods (Nakazawa), the background story of Rilakkuma is as follows: one day, a smallish bear found its way unexplained into the apartment of a Japanese OL (office lady) named Kaoru. He spends his time ‘being of no use to Kaoru, and is actually a pest by lying around all day doing nothing… his main concerns are meals and snacks. He seems to hate the summer [heat].’ Other activities include watching television, listening to music, taking long baths, and tossing balls of paper into the rubbish bin (Nakazawa, 4). His comrades are Korilakkuma (loosely translated as ‘Little Rilakkuma’) and Kiiroitori (simply, ‘Yellow Bird’). Korilakkuma is a smaller and paler version of Rilakkuma; like her friend, she appears in Kaoru’s apartment for no reason. She is described as liking to pull pranks (itazuradaisuki) and is comparatively more energetic (genki) than Rilakkuma; her main activities are imitating Rilakkuma and looking for someone with whom to play (6). Lastly, Kiiroitori is a small yellow bird resembling a chick, and seems to be the only character of the three who has any ‘right’ to reside in Kaoru’s apartment. Kiiroitori was a pet bird residing in cage before the appearance of these two bears, but after Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma set themselves up in her small apartment, Kiiroitori was liberated from his cage and flies in the faces of lazy Rilakkuma and mischievous Korilakkuma (7). Kiiroitori likes tidiness, and is frequently cleaning up after the lazy bears, and he can be short tempered about this (ibid). Kiiroitori’s interests include the charming but rather thrifty ‘finding spare change while cleaning up’ and ‘bear climbing’, which is enjoyed primarily for its annoyance to the bears (ibid). Fig. 1: Korilakkuma, Rilakkuma and Kiiroitori, in 10-year anniversary attire (photo by author). This narrative behind these character goods is yet another aspect of their commodification (in other words, their management, distribution and copyright protection). The information presented ­– the minute details of the characters’ existence, illustrated with cute drawings and calligraphy – enriches the consumer process by deepening the consumers’ interaction with the product. How does the story become as attractive as the cute character? One of the striking characteristics of the ‘official’ Rilakkuma discourse is the sense of ‘ikinari yattekita’ (things happening ‘out of the blue’; Nakazawa 22), or ‘naru yō ni narimasu’ (‘whatever will be will be’; 23) reasoning behind the narrative. Buyers want to know how and why these cute characters come into being, but there is no answer. To some extent, this vagueness reflects the reality of authorship: the characters were first conceptualized by a designer at San-X named Kondō Aki, who left the company soon after Rilakkuma’s debut in 2003 (Akibako). But this ‘out of the blue’ quality of the characters strikes a chord in many consumers’ view of their own lives: why are we here? what are we doing, and why do we do it? The existence of these characters and the reasons for their traits and preferences are inexplicable. There is no reason why or how Rilakkuma came to be – instead, readers are told that to just relax, ‘go with the flow’, and ‘what can be done today can always be done tomorrow’. Procrastination would normally be considered meiwaku, or bothersome to others who depend on you. In Productive Japan, this behavior is not valued. In Precarious Japan, however, underemployment and nonproductivity takes the pressure away from individuals to judge this behavior as negative. Procrastination shifts from meiwaku to normality, and to be transformed into kawaii culture, accepted and even celebrated as such. Rilakkuma is not the first Japanese pop cultural character to rub up against the hyper productive, gambaru (fight!) attitude associated with previous generations, with their associated tropes of the juken jikoku (exam preparation hell) for students, or the karōshi (death from overwork) salaried worker. An early example of this would be Chibi Marukochan (‘Little Maruko’), a comic character created in 1986 but whose popularity peaked in the 1990s. Maruko is an endearing but flawed primary school student who is cute and amusing, but also annoying and short tempered (Sakura). Flawed characters were frequently featured in Japanese popular culture, but Maruko was one of the first featured as heroine, not a jester-like sidekick. As an early example of Japanese cute, subversive characters, Maruko was often annoying and lazy, but she at least aspired to traits such as doing well in school and being a good daughter in her extended family. Rilakkuma, perhaps, demonstrates the extension of this cute but subversive hero/ine: when the stakes are lower (or at their lowest), so is the need for stress and anxiety. Taking it easy is the best option. Rilakkuma’s ‘charm point’ (chāmu pointo, which describes one’s personal appeal), is his transgressive cuteness, and this has paid off for San-X over the years in successful sales of his comic books as well as a variety of products (see fig. 2). Fig. 2: An example of some of the goods for sale in early 2014: a fleecy blanket, a 3d puzzle, note pads and stickers, decorative toggles for a school bag or purse, comic and ‘fan’ books, and a toy car (photo by the author). Over the decade between 2003 and 2013, San X has produced 51 volumes of Rilakkuma comics (Tonozuka, 37 – 42) and over 20 different series of stuffed animals (43 – 45); plus cushions, tote bags, tableware, stationery, and variety goods such as toilet paper holders, umbrellas and contact lens cases (46 – 52). While visiting the Rilakkuma themed shop in Tokyo Station in October 2013, a newly featured and popular product was the Rilakkuma ‘onesie’, a unisex and multipurpose outfit for adults. These products’ diversity are created to meet the consumer desires of Rilakkuma’s significant following in Japan; in a small-scale study of Japanese university students, researchers found that Rilakkuma was the number one nominated ‘favorite character’ (Nosu and Tanaka, 535). Furthermore, students claimed that the attractiveness of favorite characters were judged not just on their appearance, but also due to specific characteristics: ‘characters that are always idle, relaxed, stress-free’ and those ‘that have unusual behavior or stray from the right path’ (ibid) were cited as especially attractive/attracting. Just like Rilakkuma, these researchers found that young Japanese people – the demographic perhaps most troubled by an insecure economic future – are attracted to ‘characters that have flaws in some ways and are not merely cute’ (536). Where to, Rilakkuma? Miller, in her discussion of Japanese animal characters in a variety of cute cultural settings writes Non-human animals emerge as useful metaphors for humans, yet […] it is this aesthetic load rather than the lesson or the ideology behind the image that often becomes the center of our attention. […] However, I think it is useful to separate our analysis of zoomorphic images as vehicles for cuteness from their other possible uses and possible utility in many areas of culture (70). Similarly, we need to look beyond cute, and see what Miller terms as ‘the lesson’ behind the ‘aesthetic load’: here, how cuteness disguises social malaise and eases the shift from ‘Japan Inc.’ to ‘Japan Shrink’. When particular goods are ‘tied’ to other products, the message behind the ‘aesthetic load’ are complicated and deepened. Rilakkuma’s recent commercial (in)activity has been characterized by a variety of ‘tai uppu’ (tie ups), or promotional links between the Rilakkuma image and other similarly aligned products. Traditionally, tie ups in Japan have been most successful when formed between products that were associated with similar audiences and similar aesthetic preferences. We have seen tie ups, for example, between Hello Kitty and McDonald’s (targeting youthful fast food customers) since 1999 (Yano, 129). In ‘Japan Shrink’s’ competitive consumer market, tie ups are becoming more strategic, and all the more interesting. One of the troubled markets in Japan, as elsewhere, is the music industry. Shrinking expendable income coupled with a variety of downloading practices means the traditional popular music industry (primarily in the form of CDs) is in decline. In 2009, Rilakkuma began a co-badged campaign with Tower Records Japan – after all, listening to music is one of Rilakkuma’s listed favourite past times. TRJ was then independent from its failed US counterpart, and a major figure in the music retail scene despite disappointing CD sales since the late 1990s (Stevens, 85). To stir up consumer interest, TRJ offered objects, such as small dolls, towels and shopping bags, festooned with Rilakkuma images and phrases such as ‘Rilakkuma loves Tower Records’ and ‘Relaxed Tour 2012’ (Tonozuka, 72 – 73). Rilakkuma, in a familiar pose lying back with his arms crossed behind his head, but surrounded by musical notes and the phrase ‘No Music, No Life’ (72), presents compact image of the consumer zeitgeist of the day: one’s ikigai (reason for living) is clearly contingent on personal enjoyment, despite Japan’s music industry woes. Rilakkuma also enjoys a close relationship with the ubiquitous convenience store Lawson, which has over 11,000 individual stores throughout Japan and hundreds more overseas (Lawson, Corporate Information). Japanese konbini (the Japanese term for convenience stores), unlike their North American or Australian counterparts, enjoy a higher consumer image in terms of the quality and variety of their products, thus symbolize a certain relaxed lifestyle, as per Merry I. White’s description of the ‘no hands housewife’ breezing through the evening meal preparations thanks to ready made dishes purchased at konbini (72). Japanese convenience stores sell a variety of products, but sweets (Rilakkuma’s favourite) take up a large proportion of shelf space in many stores. The most current ‘Rilakkuma x Lawson campaign’ was undertaken between September and November 2013. During this period, customers earned points to receive a free teacup; certainly Rilakkuma’s cuteness motivated consumers to visit the store to get the prize. All was not well with this tie up, however; complaints about cracked teacups resulted in an external investigation. Finding no causal relationship between construction and fault, Lawson still apologized and offered to exchange any of the approximately 1.73 million cups with an alternate prize for any consumers who so wished (Lawson, An Apology). The alternate prize was still cute in its pink colouring and kawaii character pattern, but it was a larger and much sturdier commuter type mug. Here we see that while Rilakkuma is relaxed, he is still aware of corporate Japan’s increasing sense of corporate accountability and public health. One last tie up demonstrates an unusual alliance between the Rilakkuma franchise and other cultural icons. 2013 marked the ten-year anniversary of Rilakkuma and friends, and this was marked by several prominent campaigns. In Kyoto, we saw Rilakkuma and friends adorning o-mamori (religious amulets) at the famed Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), a major temple in Kyoto (see fig. 3a). The ‘languid dream’ of the lazy bear is a double-edged symbol, contrasting with the disciplined practice of Buddhism and complying with a Zen-like dream state of the beauty of the grounds. Another ten-year anniversary campaign was the tie up between Rilakkuma and the 50 year anniversary of JR’s Yamanote Line, the ‘city loop’ in Tokyo. Fig. 3a: Kiiroitori sits atop Rilakkuma with Korilakkuma by their side at the Golden Pavillion, Kyoto. The top caption reads: ‘Relaxed bear, Languid at the Golden Pavilion; Languid Dream Travelogue’Fig. 3b: a key chain made to celebrate Rilakkuma’s appointment to the JR Line; still lazy, Rilakkuma lies on his side but wears a conductor’s cap. This tie up was certainly a coup, for the Yamanote Line is a significant part of 13 million Tokyo residents’ lives, as well as a visible fixture in the cultural landscape since the early postwar period. The Yamanote, with its distinctive light green coloring (uguisuiro, which translates literally to ‘nightingale [bird] colour’) has its own aesthetic: as one of the first modern train lines in the capital, it runs through all the major leisure districts and is featured in many popular songs and even has its own drinking game. This nostalgia for the past, coupled with the masculine, super-efficient former national railway’s system is thus juxtaposed with the lazy, feminized teddy bear (Rilakkuma is male, but his domain is feminine), linking a longing for the past with gendered images of production and consumption in the present. In figure 3b, we see Rilakkuma riding the Yamanote on his own terms (lying on his side, propped up by one elbow – a pose we would never see a JR employee take in public). This cheeky cuteness increases the iconic train’s appeal to its everyday consumers, for despite its efficiency, this line is severely overcrowded during peak hours and suffers from user malaise with respect to etiquette and safety issues. Life in contemporary Japan is no longer the bright, shiny ‘bubble’ of the 1980s. Japan is wrestling with internal and external demons: the nuclear crisis, the lagging economy, deteriorating relations with China, and a generation of young people who have never experienced the optimism of their parents’ generation. Dreamlike, Japan’s denizens move through the contours of their daily lives much as they have in the past, for major social structures remain for the most part in tact; instead, it is the vision of the future that has altered. In this environment, we can argue that kawaii aesthetics are all the more important, for if we are uncomfortable thinking about negative or depressing topics such as industries in decline, questionable consumer safety standards, and overcrowded trains, a cute bear can make it much more ‘bear’-able.ReferencesDriscoll, Mark. “Debt and Denunciation in Post-Bubble Japan: On the Two Freeters.” Cultural Critique 65 (2007): 164-187. Kondō Aki - akibako. “Profile [of Designer Aki Kondō].” 6 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.akibako.jp/profile/›. Lawson. “Kigyō Jōhō: Kaisha Gaiyō [Corporate Information: Company Overview].” Feb. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/company/corporate/about.html/›. Lawson. “Owabi to Oshirase: Rōson aki no rilakkuma fea keihin ‘rilakkuma tei magu’ hason no osore [An Apology and Announcement: Lawson’s Autumn Rilakkuma Fair Giveaway ‘Rilakkuma Tea Mug’ Concern for Damage.” 2 Dec. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/emergency/detail/detail_84331.html›. 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