a post-blog
This is poster #2 in the series. My earlier post kind of mildly poked fun at the total non-issue of bad subway etiquette, but I kind of missed a broader social observation: they are using stuffed animals to target deviant behavior!
Can you imagine the New York City subways using a teddy bear ad to stop gate jumpers at Essex St./Delancy? Or cartoons of knitted bunny rabbits to stop people from carving their names into the windows?
The implications of this may wander into some kind of neo-Social Darwinism, but Japan is clearly a way more infantile society. I don't mean this is as a put-down - as in the WWII-era argument that Japan is a childlike country compared to the adult nations of the West. But the relative lack of poverty and crime in Japan and the perpetual myth that "everyone is the same" has made the entire country operate like a kindergarden class. There isn't an authoritarianism of violent power - just a kind of teacher-student relationship between the top administrators and the people below.
I doubt, however, that these ads are actually effective in triggering the guilt/shame complexes of the subway's soft-criminals. 1995 was the watershed year for the exposure of Japan's dark underbelly, and I doubt people since then have felt that the country is still such a warm and fuzzy place. Apparently, however, the authorities still believe that the best way to get across messages is to treat them like children.
Posted by marxy at October 29, 2004 11:27 PMwell, one could argue that, such petty subway crimes.. like laying on the sets.. is a child like behaviour. fundamentaly a "it's mine!" act. , so why justify it with anything but a responce for a child? america sorta use's the, "you wanted to be treated like an adult." trick on everyone. though i doubt anyone can really handle it. so fear is used as the tool of control, verse education. when a kids takes something from another kid, you attempt to teach them why not to do that. here, you just stick them in the corner with no explination. no one is held to any level of responsiblitly..
Posted by: trevor at October 30, 2004 3:35 AMBy the way, there's a good part in Dogs and Demons discussing the same themes around page 312.
Posted by: marxy at November 12, 2004 6:34 PM