By now its likely that most people reading this blog have heard of Hatsune Miku, the ‘pop star who is a hologram!!!’
Chatter and concern about Miku has been circulating around these and those websites, blogs and other cubby holes of the internet with enough speed and zeal to render an introduction unnecessary. Her videos average around a million views, (the one linked above has 11 million!) and with good reason: she’s fucking cool. There are all sorts of ‘kids react to Hatsune Miku’ with varying degrees of hilarity and disbelief. What you notice clicking through these ‘reaction vids’ is that most responses to Miku fall under one of two extremes—fascination or panic, confused terror or adoration. It’s like what happens when really, really old people are given an iphone, or when a pilgrim showed a native how a gun works; Hatsune Miku usually just messes with people’s world orientations. But for every one person who is stricken with suspicious hatred of the hologram, there are probably two who really love her. One of the things that sets Hatsune Miku apart from other virtual memes is that she is also a physically traceable phenomenon with a touring schedule and a huge fan base that buys real paper tickets and are also apparently required to purchase glow sticks to be allowed into the show.
Hatsune Miku is the among the most popular and first to emerge of what are now swarming legions of ‘vocaloids’—singers and performers with voices produced by running a living ‘voice actors’ voice and through a software program that allows the ‘composer’ to use of the actor’s tone and syllable range to make the vocaloid sing, say or do whatever the producers think would be fun and cool, or creative and beautiful, take your pick.
The point is that the vocaloid is, in a way that is almost comical, a perfectly literal expression of what everybody already knew a pop star is; the conglomerate efforts of a marketing team, choreographer, make up artist, assorted ghost writers, invisible backup musicians. So what hatsune miku does, by being ‘not a real person’ just seems like the next logical step. I mean, watch this and consider any differences between the the ‘real pop star’ and the hologram that aren’t only skin deep.
Of course, the concept of a vocaloid is, upon first examination at least, a pretty flustering thing. “What! That pop star isn’t a REAL PERSON?” “Japanese people are so0o0o crazy!” Right, it sort of is crazy, and it gets a lot crazier when, because the subject of mass devotees’ attention isnt, by technical standards, “a real person”, the pop star’s physical form isn’t her own in anymore either. Fans are given the license, and as fanboys, a duty, to not only ‘read’, but ‘write’ Hatsune Miku:
A Chinese fan decides to have her perform a routine to a Li Po (Bai) poem. this is funny because it would be like making Britney Spears recite ‘shall i compare thee to a summer’s day?’
Someone made use of the miku miku dance software so that hatsune sing a polka and wave that leek around… seems like a fun thing to do.
Someone else gets Soviet Union nostalgia and changes Miku’s haircut so that she looks comparatively disheveled, grumpy; a prudent decision; ‘the march of the motherland’ isn’t the sort of song that you are allowed to sing with ass-length green hair.
An inevitable bi-product of hatsune miko’s popularity, i’ve always been made sort of uncomfortable by cosplay people, but do your thing folks.
So cool, great. People are just having tons of fun with Hatsune Miku and making it really her own, its kind of nice. Sure you can’t give Hatsune Miku a hug, but you can’t hug Britney Spears either unless you want to go to jail or get a smack in the jaw from an obese K-Fed, or whoever she’s dating now, and maybe Japanese people seem to have an exceptional amount of problems with negotiating human affection and sexuality. But its pretty alright with me that importing the heavenly idol of the pop star to the all-accessible domains of the internet and cyber-tinkering means that now everybody can have some say in the dynamic identity of a big famous pop star.
