Enigma, LG6 and the influence from Japan pop culture

[TWICE on hatius 4,746]

Warning:

First, I want to say that I’m not a Japanese hence I bound to make false assumptions how pop culture look like in 2000s. And I am truly sorry if I offended anyone by any details in this thread. This is my own observation based on a limited knowledge of how Japan culture look like. I am willing to be corrected and open for discussion. That being said, thanks for putting up with me.

An observatory assumptions:

I don’t know if anyone noticed, especially Asian users. Enigma or even LG6 is heavily influenced by Japan pop culture in early 2000s.

Fashions

Her costume in Enigma is directly the perspective of a foreigner trying to create Tokyo street fashions. Her costumes are bright and colorful with big volume colorful hair. All of these aspects can be found four big contemporary trends in Japan at the moment: Lolita, Gyaru, Decora and Visual-kei. 

Technology utopia 

Furthermore, the futuristic technology concept is derived from the idea of how Japan recovered from their lost decade. Their rise of automation was creating short term unemployment at the moment, which was creating a lot of worries in working class of Japan. This phenomenon eventually impacted the pop culture perspective of technology.

Hence with fast rate of change in technology, the pop culture started to shape utopia fantasy around the rising technology. For examples, animes like ghosts in the shell, howl’s moving castle, royal battes had background setting that was set in mordern futuristic cities. And human in these fantasy tried to escape from the loop of technology, wars, etc. These movies consequently led to inspiration in Japan’s music at the moment. 

RnB/Electronica influences

In early 2000s when RnB was dominating western pop culture.  However, Jpop was dominated by rock and electronic music. This was due to the popularization of anime soundtracks, which as previously discussed had a dark futuristic theme. Hence, music for these movies was inherited from the electronica sound to portrait the atmosphere. In a mainstream landscape, Deep River, RainBow by 2 mega pop star Utada and Ayumi integrated RnB and Electronic music. These phenomena set the music tone for the rest decade which was full of experimental music from pop artists.

So what all of these things have to do with Gaga. As you can see, Gaga built Enigma based on “video-game” aesthetic. Specifically, its aesthetic is influenced by what I have discussed from the details above. This gives a vision that Gaga is going to follow Jpop in 2000s did: integrating either RnB or Pop and electronica into one. For reference, we may have expect to have our own track like this:

Or even this: 

 Conclusion:

I don’t claim that Gaga is indirectly or directly influenced by Japan culture. However, these exploration gave me an idea how enigma and potentially LG6 was created and why it’s so unconventional and controversial. As Japan pop culture was as well labeled as weird by westerners (watch the traveling for reference), which I don’t agree please don’t attack me.

P.s:

English is not my first language and I tried my best to describe what I have thought about this.

please approach this topic with an open-minded mindset, and avoid attacking me for being delusional as I mentioned I never claimed Gaga was thinking like this when she was creating her arts. 

Thank you.

[Antichrist 9,818]

inb4 she releases stupidu lah-vu and is canceled for kooltoral appropriation

[Guest]

First of all a sincere word of appreciation for your piece... I truly admire the dedication and attention some people put in here 👍

Second of all I can completely see what you're referring to and I'll add Japanese influences are something not new to Gaga's narrative, from the super tanned esthetic of her first looks to the harajuku inspired costume from ARTPOP tour to the Enigma world creation.

For what to come I think she's going for some Cyberpunk references maybe combined with 70s sci-fi fashion... Let's see 😘

[Doot 2]

I'm not one of the Enigma wig haters but by no means does that wig have big volume. 

[DC 25,164]

I mean, I thought that was kind of obvious, the whole show has like an anime vibe to it 

[Doot 2]

She's obviously been more inspired by Asian culture in recent years, with Enigma being a clear display of that, and honestly there's ton of stuff within artRave to support that too. Hatsune Miku is a prime example. 

but I think recently she's struggled to harness that inspiration in a way that's effective, and I honestly think that's because she has trouble navigating with PC Culture and appropriation. 

She wouldn't get away with the dreads, or hip hop vibes or the burqa or any of that these days. It, to me, is obvious that she's trying to not catch negative feedback because she's afraid she will be accuses of appropriation. 

[Sneaky Oliver 20,083]

8 minutes ago, Doot said:

She's obviously been more inspired by Asian culture in recent years, with Enigma being a clear display of that, and honestly there's ton of stuff within artRave to support that too. Hatsune Miku is a prime example. 

but I think recently she's struggled to harness that inspiration in a way that's effective, and I honestly think that's because she has trouble navigating with PC Culture and appropriation. 

She wouldn't get away with the dreads, or hip hop vibes or the burqa or any of that these days. It, to me, is obvious that she's trying to not catch negative feedback because she's afraid she will be accuses of appropriation. 

It’s not cultural appropriation to get influenced by Japan’s pop culture imagery though. It’s something that has become very well known world wide and trendy for decades now 
 

it’s not like she’s addressing Japanese traditional culture, that could be problematic 

[TWICE on hatius 4,746]

2 minutes ago, Sneaky Oliver said:

It’s not cultural appropriation to get influenced by Japan’s pop culture imagery though. It’s something that has become very well known world wide and trendy for decades now 
 

it’s not like she’s addressing Japanese traditional culture, that could be problematic 

The thing is the majority of Japan people are willing to share their modern culture with outsiders. However, dreads have much darker history with it. American Black people was and still are fighting against society for wearing it. And they should be the people who have a voice whether we can share that piece of culture with them. In the other hand, Japanese have been vocal and welcoming for foreigners to use theirs appropriately. I don’t think it is a problem Gaga takes inspiration or portrait her art from it. 

[Focz 1,765]

24 minutes ago, ProjectJoanne said:

I mean, I thought that was kind of obvious, the whole show has like an anime vibe to it 

Yeah, even the Naruto run 

[Seeka 12,372]

As someone who has been into lolita for a while, lolita isn't really big and neon. Well it's big, but it's not loud as Enigma is.  Also, really saying something that is found in all J-Fashions isn't really true. They all have have bigness. But like there's a difference in visual-kei, gyaru, and Lolita. The wigs aren't gonna be the same across all fashions. Also neon isn't a popular color outside of fairy kei and decora. 

[BetrayedSTAN 1,839]

Also this 

 

[NFRatwell 23,290]

1 hour ago, Sneaky Oliver said:

It’s not cultural appropriation to get influenced by Japan’s pop culture imagery though. It’s something that has become very well known world wide and trendy for decades now 
 

it’s not like she’s addressing Japanese traditional culture, that could be problematic 

This, America has definitely influenced Japanese pop culture