{"title":"Skank, or the Queer Fascination with Animalic Notes in Contemporary Niche Perfume","authors":"Lee Jensen","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.2.1.0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.2.1.0053","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at the popularity and overt foregrounding of animalic notes in contemporary niche perfume. Although the natural animal notes are rarely used in contemporary perfume and are usually replaced by synthetic aroma chemicals, the idea of them still intrigues. This article proposes the importance of understanding this desire for the animalic in terms of the psychology of disgust, theories of the abject, and a Western history of scatologic art. It examines some of the spaces and places in which the author encounters perfume and the related affects. The article also proposes that the fascination with animalic fragrance also speaks to the ontology of the sense of smell, a fragile ontology that rests on the unreliable narration of memory. The possibility of developing a queer understanding of this subjectively disrupting fascination with the animalic through the lens of postcontinental queer theories is examined.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"2 1","pages":"53 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41476601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letter from the Editors","authors":"Adam Geczy, Vicki Karaminas, P. Mountfort","doi":"10.1159/000229934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1159/000229934","url":null,"abstract":"It has only been in the last twenty years that men's fashion has gained attention as a discreet disciplinary area of study across the arts and humanities. Up until as late as 1994, when fashion studies entered the academy, information about men's fashion was not included in studies of masculinities; if anything, a cursory mention was made in an occasional book chapter or academic article. This was because fashion was considered frivolous and narcissistic, and not worthy of any serious scholarly attention, unless you were a woman or queer. Fashion was regulated to the domain of the feminine and the body, as opposed to art and architecture, which were deemed masculine and placed in the sphere of the mind and the psyche. Up until the mid-eighteenth century, men's clothing was made of plush fabrics, constructed silhouettes, and refined forms that signaled wealth and aristocratic status. Influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of reason and rationality, men's clothing became more utilitarian and functional, abandoning wigs, stockings, and high heels in favor of garments such as the suit. Exaggerated forms were left to women's fashion, as men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty and fashion became associated with femininity and frivolity. It was, as John Flügel claimed, the Great Male Renunciation that was to burden masculinity for the next four hundred years.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"2 1","pages":"1 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1159/000229934","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44747735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"True Crime: The Regular Reinvention of a Genre","authors":"R. Franks","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0239","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: True crime has become entrenched within the sphere of popular culture. As entertainment and information true crime has captured, and held, the public imagination, maintaining a place in our societies (as demonstrated through the consumption of true crime) through successfully navigating shifts across format and focus. This article argues the disruption this instability generates is mitigated by the genre’s capacity to regularly reinvent itself in response to social changes. Offering three examples of successful print-based reinventions in England and America, this research highlights how such reinventions serve as watershed moments in the genre’s history, allowing true crime to maintain a prominent position within the landscape of popular culture. These examples are: impacts of an increased application of capital punishment in 1720s England; introduction of the investigator as standard for the true crime tale in 1800s England; and the widespread incorporation of literary techniques into true crime storytelling in 1960s America.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"239 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43040539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tintin as Spectacle: The Backstory of a Popular Franchise and Late Capital","authors":"P. Mountfort","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0037","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article frames the Tintin franchise in terms of its evolving transmedia modes of cultural production and consumption as a story of commodification that is metonymic for key developments of the twentieth century, particularly in relation to capital and its inextricability from mass media. Drawing on elaborations of Marx's notion of commodity fetishism, it argues developments in the early to middle decades of the twentieth century can be viewed revealingly through John Crary's speculative explanation as to why Guy Debord chose 1927 as the precise birthdate of his Society of the Spectacle. Fredric Jameson's analysis of late capitalism's developmental phases through the Fifties to the Eighties supplies supplementary frames for the mid- to late twentieth century. I argue that Tintin's progressive conscription into late capitalist spectacle reflects and reinforces these broader processes of commodification within intermeshing global culture flows, and in doing so reinscribes the cultural dominants of the twentieth century itself.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"37 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49302049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sailor Style: Representations of the Mariner in Popular Culture and Contemporary Fashion","authors":"Adam Geczy, Vicki Karaminas, Justine Taylor","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0141","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Young and forced into celibacy during long months at sea, the sailor has become the archetype of sexual availability and a stable feature of popular culture and contemporary fashion. This article traces the emergence of the sailor’s uniform as a form of differentiation in the navy to the look of the hard muscular sailor’s body that has been made popular in the illustrations of Tom of Finland. Similarly, it will look at the sailor’s representation as a gay fantasy hero in the writings of Jean Genet and Thomas Mann as well as the sailor’s influence on contemporary fashion whose elements of design—striped of blue and white, cloth peaked cap, anchors and brass buttons have been translated into nautical themes by Coco Chanel, Kenzo, and Jean Paul Gaultier from couture collections to perfume.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"141 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44648677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fashionable Dunedin and \"Rooted Cosmopolitanism\" in the Twenty-First Century: NOM*d and Company of Strangers","authors":"H. Radner","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0057","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Typically, fashion has been associated with the large urban centers that are considered the hubs of contemporary culture, or \"fashion's world cities,\" to borrow from the title of an oft-quoted edited volume; however, in the twenty-first century, fashion may play a role at a local or regional level, even in relatively isolated contexts such as that provided by Dunedin, located in New Zealand, at the bottom of the South Island. The work of Dunedin designers such as Margarita Robertson and Sara Munro, creative directors for their respective clothing lines, NOM*d and Company of Strangers, illustrates Walter Benjamin's conceptualization of fashion as expressing utopian desires, in this case a form of \"rooted cosmopolitanism,\" to borrow from Kwame Anthony Appiah, while furthering an economic system dependent on commodity fetishism.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"57 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48222874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Facing the Fall: Humanism after Nihilism in Christos Tsiolkas’s Writing","authors":"N. Papastergiadis","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.2.0126","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: The novels of Christos Tsiolkas provide a powerful portrayal of the hollowing out of radical political ideologies and the disaggregation of cultural bonds. The struggle of living in a world where both Marxism and multiculturalism are seen as failures has been expressed through a narrative form that at first resulted in nihilism and more recently led to an evocation of a form of embodied solidarity with the other. In this article, I contrast the ambivalent resort to nihilism in Tsiolkas’s work with the theoretical commentary by Sloterdijk and Žižek.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"126 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42995827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Psychology of Cosplay","authors":"Adam Geczy","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0018","url":null,"abstract":"\"The Psychology of Cosplay\" seeks to explore the psychological motivation and structure of cosplay as distinct from general masquerade as it emerged from the late sixteenth century. While it is no doubt a form of othering, the key difference is the situating of the subject. In conventional masquerade there is still a locatable difference between self and costume, and self and myth. With cosplay, by distinction, there is no discernible myth, only a multitude or surfeit of myths. This requires ordering and rules in order for the illusion of sense to reign. As opposed to conventional masquerade which is to mobilize a certain erotic disorder, cosplay involves a disavowal of the subject, a self-nihilation, in order to give birth to the new other. As such cosplay ritualizes the posthumanist subject.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"18 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48511210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performing Lolita: The Japanese Gothic and Lolita Subculture and Constructing Identity through Virtual Space","authors":"Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0079","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article investigates the concept of constructing a \"Lolita\" identity in virtual space. It explores how members of the Japanese fashion-based Lolita subculture use the Internet to formulate images of their desired selves in order to gain acceptance, and establish an \"authentic\" presence, within worldwide Lolita communities. While members may be geographically separated, they are united in the virtual world. The affinity gained through online forms of interchange, especially social networking sites, is pertinent for Gothloli who live outside Japan, the movement's place of origin, especially if real-life interactions are made less possible by lack of local congregation. However, a downside of Internet visibility, and a consequence of the ability to hide behind an \"anonymous\" profile, is the prevalence of cyberbullying, due to pressures to \"fit in,\" and thus competition and jealousy. This article focuses on these paradoxes and the positive and negative influences on the Lolita subculture in virtual space.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"102 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49335585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Italian Fashion in the Latest Decades: From Its Original Features to the \"New Vocabulary\"","authors":"P. Calefato","doi":"10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JASIAPACIPOPCULT.1.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:\"Made in Italy\" is an indication of origin, recorded and rooted in history, society, and the imaginary world; it is a \"half-brand\" that, in the latest years of the twentieth century, aimed at characterizing Italian products and its tradition in a clear way. This article aims at pinpointing some elements of fashion theory with reference to Italy. After outlining certain historical original traits of the Italian style, I will point out the characteristics of the two \"long waves\" of the Made in Italy brand: the first one that dates from the Sixties to the Eighties, and the second one from the late Nineties to the present.","PeriodicalId":40211,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44803354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}