Tokyo Idols

A little repetitive, and could undoubtedly have penetrated deeper, but the phenomenon itself is of intrinsic interest for anyone who wishes to understand contemporary deformations of desire. The book that tries to understand such questions on the basis of a fundamental reconsideration of the roots of desire and sexuality remains to be written. Were it to be so, Japanese dysfunction would surely feature significantly in its pages. Here, the suffering and desperation on all sides are plain to see.

Idol industry as a bubble of safety, warmth and attachment for both the idols and their fans, who find it hard to participate and feel any sense of belonging in outside world and without the pampering of their little sphere could well go for violence, even though this bubble tends to make them incapable of questioning what produces their suffering, the system that produces both an exclusion of losers in profit games and an absorption of those who are lost as fuel into the profit machine.

All politics aside, a decent non judgemental doco that has enough info to allow the viewer to decide on the merits or otherwise of the strangeness of the Japanese Idol culture.