Page 162 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Spiraling into Apocalypse 149

transpiring across Tokyo with segments from a television advertisement
in which the young pop idols cheerfully cavort about a city street while
perkily schilling their very own candy bar. Finally, though it appears only
once in the film, the spelling, ‘Dessret’, through its phonetic proximity to
the English term ‘Death Threat’, cleverly alludes to the band’s underlying
function as a harbinger of destruction.
In addition, Desert/Dessert/Dessret’s ubiquity suggests that
ultimately, given their enthusiastic reception by a wide cross-section of
the film’s characters, the band performs a social function akin to that of
any fad, including one as extreme as suicide. Consider, for instance, the
analysis of Japanese pop bands put forth by Hiroshi Aoyagi in his essay,
‘Pop Idols and the Asian Identity’. Reminiscent of Richie and Wolfe’s
recognition of the inherent contradictions evidenced in the cultural impact
of many Japanese fads, Aoyagi explains that carefully designed
marketing strategies inevitably co-opt any revolutionary potential that
Japanese pop idols may possess. As such, ‘Japanese idols…typically
depict images that are “fairly standard”’, providing the illusion that
anyone with enough drive may achieve a similar cultural status and
extensive degree of public exposure (2000: 311):

Playing on young people’s social needs, Japan’s…pop idols are produced and
marketed as personifiers of a typical “girl or boy next door,” chosen to become
“lucky stars” to represent their generation. Sociologist Hiroshi Ogawa calls
them “quasi-companions” (gititeki-nakama), who provide their teenage
followers with a virtual sense of intimacy…although this companionship is
understood to be artificial and impervious, and thus realized only in fantasy,
the intimacy it evokes can be as strong as, or even stronger than, that shared
among school friends. (316)

In this sense, Desert/Dessert/Dessret’s mediated image and vast ‘real
world’ following contributes mightily to Sono’s aesthetic and political
agenda in Suicide Circle. Their flashy if derivative and overtly
manufactured façade speaks volumes regarding their role as components
of a commodity-driven culture, while their overwhelming popularity
provides a forum for an alienated and disconnected populace to
experience the illusion of participating in a larger, communal event.