A fool and her yen...
Via the awesome TokyoMango, comes The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, a documentary about host-club workers, the hard drinkin', smokin' and hair-sprayin' young men that entertain women for money. The male equivalent of the hostess bar, a Japanese phenomema that Westerners already have a hard time understanding, it seems even more strange to many over here that women would pay for such companionship.
The documentary is great in how it peels the layers of the onion off the 'glamorous life' facade. And the twist that comes 30 or so minutes in was a complete and brilliant suprise. The closing shots of one worker drunkenly wobbling away on his bicycle in the early morning are a brilliant close to the film.
Watch documentary in full (~1hr) here.
The documentary is great in how it peels the layers of the onion off the 'glamorous life' facade. And the twist that comes 30 or so minutes in was a complete and brilliant suprise. The closing shots of one worker drunkenly wobbling away on his bicycle in the early morning are a brilliant close to the film.
Watch documentary in full (~1hr) here.
[BTW, the movie is worth watching for the HAIR alone. This would make a list of 'top ten best hair movies', ranking alongside Saturday Night Fever, Gumball Rally, etc]
Labels:
Documentary,
HostClub,
HostessClub,
Japan
5 comments:
You are no longer a closet metrosexual... instead you are fully exposed and prancing (preening?) about... you may actually have a "hair" category for movies. Yow.
And yet you have an opinion and play first person shooters such as Halo and Gears of War (and other similarly manly video games)... truly you are an enigma.
Can't wait for the anime.
I suspect many of the same techniques of immersion and acclimitization that drive people to impulse buy virtual goods are at work driving sales volume in these clubs. Different chemicals maybe, or at least a different chemical cocktail, but same propagandizing through play.
Fascade is right. What a bunch of degenerates! What if one of those girls was one of our daughters?
It's a sad commentary on the state of japanese young people. If that is any indicator of the future of our young folks, I'm glad I'll be dead.
The game of love, played by professionals.
It's a sad commentary on the state of the games industry that I can't be playing a game centered around the business of love that is as twisted, lonely, lovely, cynical, earnest, tragic, tactical, human, and just plain fascinating as that doc was.
wow kim, this is awesome! thank you. there was actually a really good article in JANE magazine (no relation) about a year ago on this topic - this really sad story about a girl who was also a hostess, who was dating a host, but she had to pay for his time, and it was clear that he was just kind of playing her and she was deluded - oh, tragic. the state of relations b/n men and women is so fucked up in japan right now.
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