Dialogue: Get real: Real TV doesn't mean the end of the world

I remember very well my first taste of Japanese mass culture. So, perhaps, would anyone.

It was a television game-show featuring some hapless local in nappies dragging a bunch of guys in a pram up a lubed wind tunnel by a couple of nipples that weren't up to it for long at all.

I was about seven when I caught this one on Tokyo television. I remember being fascinated by the degree to which the guy was suffering, as well as the extent to which you got to watch.

He wasn't enjoying himself much. His nipples really weren't taking the strain. They were kind of leaving his chest. I can't remember if they did or not - possibly, that means they didn't.

No matter, though - there was plenty of S&M going on other channels. People were always being beaten up, molested, watched every step of the way and so on in game-shows in that marvellous, functional nation.

In a kinky way, there was something almost healthy about it. It was sort of an acknowledgement of the fact that the mass culture believes there is no real harm in televised harm.

Certainly the mass culture was a place in which the righteous had no place. You got to do things that you'd be stoned for in the West.

I mean it, too. A friend of mine, who was a very pretty, blonde girl of about eight, used to pose, in little sequinned leotards, for posters with rock stars. I remember this well, because I was very keen to pose myself. The line seemed perfectly glamorous.

My friend's name was Antonia and she looked a lot like JonBenet. Alas, my chance to establish myself as New Zealand's answer never came.

A lot of parents were shocked by Antonia's posters. Antonia's weren't, though. Far from it. They understood that the mass culture in their adopted nation was a place in which anyone who wanted could come out and play, and with whatever they liked.

And it was. On the train every morning, every second guy would be reading a pornographic paper. I remember this because we'd usually be sitting across from one of these guys, reading the back page when he wasn't.

It all seemed a long way away from Lower Hutt. It also seemed rather a long way away from Japan, or, at least, the Japan we'd read about back in Lower Hutt - the Japan of kimonos, shrines, tea-ceremonies, low-key locals and so on.

You had to make an effort to get to most of that. The mass culture was much more immediate, and in your face, to say the very least.

RealTV and voyeurism - other countries and cultures have been into all that for years. Only the West thinks that sort of stuff is the end of the world. It certainly wasn't the end of the world in Japan.

Japan remains the most civilised place I've ever been to. People were pragmatic, friendly, helpful, welcoming, and genuine in all of the above. They knew how to make their country work.

Things have probably changed a bit now, but it was all go then. You could walk the streets at any hour without being mugged, or ambushed by a weirdo. Anything you lost was always returned (even stuff you lost on purpose always came back).

And everyone worked hard. Everyone had a regular job, or went to school, or took care of their family, or whatever.

The local television shows were the sickest on earth but the locals seemed to expect society to function despite that. Certainly, people saw no reason to panic that I am able to remember. The understanding was that the more immoderate aspects of the mass culture simply indicated that the masses sometimes needed to let off steam.

People had something of a Paglian take on mass behaviour there. They saw a sort of beauty in it, or, at least, conceded that the masses had the right to like what they liked and that the masses found a sort of healthy release in porn and voyeurism.

I've been thinking about all this a lot of late. I wonder why the advent of Real TV has brought such panic with it. Surely, nobody who is truly civilised cares.