The Flowers of Keiwha
Page 12
just that America is all about race in the end.”
FARMBOY looked at QUARTERBACK; both looked at TUSK. He shook his head.
"You know what the problem is, KANYE?” said JOHANN. “It’s those headphones. You put them on when someone is in the middle of talking to you. That’s annoying. And you’ve missed so much in the class because you’re just listening to music all the time.”
JOHANN is also able to position TUSK awkwardly in terms of social dynamics. “You seem kind of over-sexed. Are you also gay?”
"No, man. That’s a joke.”
"Is kissing boys okay?”
"Dude, I’m from New York City. Be cool about kisses.”
But of course none of the Japanese girls agreed.
"My philosophy,” elucidated JOHANN later, “is about centering. TUSK was all about masks, truth and lies. KANYE ultimately had nothing to say in the end except about race. Put yourself between people, make them come to you. And watch out for photographs because they are amusing. But of course in Germany we would normally sit and watch for even six weeks before doing anything socially.”
"Centering” along with repeating words back to the speaker was one of JOHANN’s tricks. A person could be led to argue with themselves. A photograph of KANYE holding a knife in mock rage to JOHANN was published to Facebook—and Facebook itself took off this week, with perhaps the subtlest play being JOHANN’s research on it to realize TUSK’s elite academic background and motivate his ‘Hyung-neem’ play. “You should have brought it out; not like this” (hand pushed forward) “but like this.” (hand coming in from the side.)
"The girls will learn about it in five years. And then it will be one last ding.”
"You also need to lose a little weight. Cut those nose hairs.”
"Thanks, boss.”
One of the things JOHANN didn’t know was that TUSK was getting better and better at interrogation. Some students applying to U.S. universities are actually in fact Korean but behave American or have American passports in order to get the better financial package. Repeated interrogation of one’s name would sometimes break that individual.
"What is your name?”
"Sarah Park.”
"What is your name?”
"Sarah Park.”
"What is your name?”
"My name is Sarah Park, please stop asking me that question.”
"What is your real name.”
"Okay fine I am Bak Shim-yong, I use Sarah because it’s more convenient.”
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The first week’s events lent themselves to Symbolic and Freudian analysis. Week two, having now covered status changes and relational matters, allows an easy Marxist interpretation that goes beyond the facile simplistic Marxism of calling ROLLER “Christianity-opiated worker who supports the very structures of her oppression” (ROLLER liked MB2) or merely pointing out that the security guards, the floor cleaners, the textbook writers were all speechless and unrecorded in twenty thousand words.
Here is the sophisticated Marxist interpretation: this work, as it exists, is a celebration of elite values written by a member of that elite. It is as if in the year 1010 two German aristocrats wrote a book talking about their last battle, noting how the revolting farmers made their mistake here, here, and here, ignoring the fact that the battle between the landed knights and the peasant farmers was not a collision of equals but a group of terrified pitch-fork wielding amateur fighters against a professional fighting class. The farmers didn’t strategize incorrectly in placing their numbers on the hollow near the forest; they were scared out of their wits and wanted an escape route into the woods. The professional fighters knew the high ground was more important; took it; and then routed the band of agriculturalists. In this sense JOHANN-TUSK have already begun to win social warfare against the mass of Japanese-only Japanese and English-only Americans, but only because their educational background permitted them to have multiple languages in the first place. Similarly, critique of DEADBOLT and LINGLING as having “bad personalities” ignores the fact that both girls may have come from working-class backgrounds. Taught from an early age to obey rather than command, fearful of all the manifold dangers of the world, they were presented in manuscript as being introverted, fearful and uninvolved, but they were always vulnerable, they never could have tangled with the JOHANNs of the world without coming out on the bottom—every single time. The war is always determined before the first shots are fired and that is why class-consciousness and historical material dialectialism is important.
Marxist interpretation falls only in recourse to a universalist standard of beauty. Under this argument, LINGLING deserved to be cut out of the 2nd week’s adventures because she was too extroverted, forward, and thus aggressive when she was not by any means a top 20% or even top 60% beauty. Even ROLLER picked on her. And the girls—at this point in the text by which some are demanding pictures of—were in the end only 6s, 7s and 8s (SHINO a possible 9?) and should be grateful to have been included in such sophisticated love gaming by the internationalist gentlemen of the world. Out of 180 girls at the programme, they were lucky enough to be in the internationalist class; in reality, neither TABUN, AKEMI, nor ERI really have a chance with JOHANN or TUSK, so a little emotional pain is a good thing, a present from senior to junior.
Marxism as it exists becomes more complicated when individuals live in a society that includes Marxism. LINGLING from a Marxist state made common cause with RITSUKO, months before the programme, and this alliance holds promise for a true internationalist proletarian position, one in which educational opportunities are equal. Against such a front, with sympathies from KANYE, AJ-3, MIKI, MEDIA-CHAN, COPENHAGEN and perhaps even TABUN, JOHANN/ROLLER/TUSK/ERI would quickly be put to paid. It’s a simple matter of numbers after all 8 v. 4. Such is the implied strength of Marxism. To add one final complexity to the class war, RITSUKO wore a kaffiyah all week 2 and MIKI’s sister majored in Islamic rather than classical finance at Kyoto University. A one-two punch of Sino-European Marxism and Islamic cell terror? That is the nightmare of the West and former Imperial powers, the anxiety that keeps them awake at night. In the new glorious aftermath of the fallen Colonialists, Red will fight Green, but the people will triumph regardless.
KEIWHA itself was not immune to these forces. The tallest building on campus (and at other elite Korean universities) was the labor building, built in the aftermath of those 80s student revolts that brought down the Fifth Republic. “ Democracy Square ” they called it over at Koryo; in KEIWHA the sentiment was a switch from Capital Economics to Labor Economics, the movement of certain professors from positions of power to positions of consultation. While the bus stop in front of Keiwha would continue to bear the name of one of TUSK’s grandparents, in time the sign would grow weathered and old and eventually the laborists would triumph. Every summer Sunday brought out the crowds and the government of South Korea itself was becoming more and more riddled with Chinese informants. Massive bureaucratic power of the U.S. military would physically move its main base from central Seoul to Osan, but if one noticed carefully, there were half a dozen Chinese products stores and TCM franchises than a few years prior. Huntington —he of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ hypothesis—would be proven right.
Finally there was one last irony. Nothing exists totally in a vacuum and these three weeks happened to coincide with TUSK reestablishing contact with his primary school best friend. The friend, only son of a Mitsubishi manager and housewife, got wildly drunk with TUSK just a few weeks prior and revealed something that had been hidden for a long time. “My parents are Communists. We voted Communist in every Diet election for the last twenty years.” These lurking forces, to the naïve observer present only in the true working class or dispossessed, existed even in the highest reaches of Japanese elites. A Japanese princess, it is rumored, one whose name is sufficiently royal to have the ‘no-miya’ ending thinks of nothin
g but Red revolt. The Heian-era aristocrats listless in their Kyoto constructed gardens and dark-wood retreats would have toyed with Marxism—if only it existed in their era. Here was also the motivation behind Keiwha putting all three Chinese-residents in one class and having a Korean teacher who knew Mandarin in the class. Here was why LINGLING used no less than three names, despite her easy going familiarity, and why TUSK waited three days before even talking to her. Compared to the overt self-promotion of the U.S. or even the friendly stated positions of the Franco-British, Asia was riven with cliques, factions, layers, blackguards and Red, family clans and school loyalties. A Korean president seized power by first establishing a secret society at his military academy and TUSK’s great-uncle was driven from power, to hide shivering in a convent, by a strict military revolt. But TUSK had no shame about the cowardice of his family. His grandparents were literaturists. His father was a literaturist. He himself, in the end, was a literaturist. “We hide with pride” was the family motto, and world wars, revolts, no political occurrence whatsoever could ever destroy the sheer asinine power of those who believed their only function in the world was to write about it. Come Red revolution or Green, come the rise of the Caliphate or the