Posted on by qscrisp

magibon

It's no secret that I filch most of my content for this blog from Momus's blog, Click Opera. I'd never heard of Magibon, until I read this post. Magibon is an American Japanophile who has apparently become famous on Youtube for doing 'nothing' in front of a camera, but has also (apparently) blown her image by allowing herself to appear in front of someone else's cameras, thus relinquishing control of how that image is mediated.

This is not going to be a very focused post, I'm afraid, because I'm about to pack for London.

I'll just try and jot down a few random thoughts.

She is, indeed, very good at doing nothing. I find this to be a far more artful nothing than that peddled by Andy Warhol back in the sixties. When I say artful, perhaps I mean artless. Warhol's nothing was stilted; this isn't.

I was surprised at the incredible amount of hatred directed at this girl. For doing what? For doing nothing. Look in the comments and you will find rage. Now, if I were on a train or a bus and I waved and smiled out of the window, would I expect someone to spit back at me and make an obscene gesture? Well… I feel like that's what's happening here.

I suppose it might seem a bit rich for me to criticise people for expressing hatred. I seem to express hatred quite often on this blog. Perhaps my blog would be improved if it more closely resembled Magibon's Youtube posts.

Nonetheless, I do at least feel my hatred is a notch above the hatred on offer here. Nothingness. It's almost like a Rorscharch test. What are you going to see in this nothingness? I see an intelligent, unassuming girl who, in a modest way, is adding some beauty to the world.

Others, it seems, immediately see, well, this sort of thing:

It was finally revealed that Magi is nothing more than a hick with one very fucked up pair of chompers, who fooled millions of pedos into thinking she was hot jailbait using clever camera angles and flattering lighting.

How tiresome.

That particular piece of foul hatred was referring to this, [inevitably, the Youtube clip in question has been taken down, but here is a clip from the same show that someone has pointlessly and annoyingly tampered with… ah, this clip appears to be a bit better] the television appearance in which, supposedly, Magibon's image was ruined. She seemed to me like what I have described, an intelligent and unassuming girl. A normal girl, in a good way. No damage done in my eyes, whatsoever.

I think one reason that Magibon is the target of so much hatred is that she is doing something that is actually incomprehensible to Americans and the Anglo-Saxon world generally. I suppose they imagine that if she were talking and giving some kind of content about, I don't know, politics, or something, that would mean they weren't being cheated. They can't see anything outside of the fact that she's not giving them words. Apparently that makes her stupid or something.

No, Magibon is not stupid.

I'm rather worried now, however, to see how much I live in a world in which people cannot understand the wordless. If we cannot understand the wordless, then we truly are lost. That, to me, is the real stupidity.

It's amazing, too, isn't it, this Anglo-Saxon obsession with paedophilia. She looks child-like, so immediately their minds are full of 'paedophilia'. I would really hate to be imprisoned inside such a mind. I'm sure they're very seedy places.

Magibon's Japanese is not great, but considering it's self-taught, and she had never even been to Japan until recently, it's pretty damned good. I have studied Japanese. I know the world of the Japanophile. I know girls like Magibon. I look at these clips, and I recognise them in her. I understand what she's doing. She does not deserve to be hated. She's only doodling cute cartoons in her scrapbook, that's all.

8 Replies to “magibon”

  1. Justin Isis writes:

    She likes MoMusu, so I’d have to defend her no matter what. (the “bon” in her name is taken from “Aibon”)It’s weird, I mean, millions of people worldwide have seen clips from Hello! Morning in things like the ‘Dramatic Chipmunk’ video, but they don’t even realize what it’s from. I remember reading in a Youtube comment that Marippe had been in 3 of the highest-rated and visited Youtube videos ever, or something like that, but probably 99% of the non-Japanese who’ve watched them don’t know who she is or what it is they’re actually watching. It’s like Golden Age-era Hello! Project has stealth-infiltrated the world in these little clips and fragments. I just wish more people would follow the trail of clues and find out how much goodness is really there. Okay, I’m actually enough of an asshole that I like not that many people knowing about things I like. So maybe this under-the-radar level of fame, at least in the Anglosphere, is just about right.

  2. I’m thinking of maybe changing the entire style of my blog, to give it a more positive vibe, and changing my name to ‘Quentibon’, or just ‘Q-bon’.

  3. Justin Isis writes:

    The name of this blog must be changed to one of the following:’Bokura ga Ikiru MY ENGLAND”‘Bungaku Revolution 21”THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE! ~Koi no Morrissey~’-Juscchin

  5. “‘THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE! ~Koi no Morrissey~'”How can they see the look in my blepharoplastic eyesAnd still they don’t believe me?How can they see the love in Magibon’s eyesAnd still they don’t believe her?And after all this timeThey don’t want to believe us.The Q-bon with a thorn in his sideBehind the hatred there liesA Wota-like desire for rabu-rabu love.Etc. I might go with ‘Bokura ga ikiru MY ENGLAND’.The Moz has never surpassed the yodelling here:http://youtube.com/watch?v=DYp2LGKOF_M

  6. Travis Mamone writes:

    Hey it’s me Travis, the Boy with the Thorn in His Side.I never understood the hatred towards Magibon either. My motto has always been if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Who cares if she’s “fake” or not?

  7. Hello.Thanks for commenting.I don’t get the ‘fake’ thing. It begs the question, what is real? What is it these people believe that Magibon is trying to put forward as real?There’s this kind of thing, for instance, titled, ‘Magibon is not real’:http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jnot0LlMq98There's an explanation:”tribute to showing people just how simple minded one can be.”Hmmm. Magibon is not real? Does that mean she doesn’t actually exist? What’s he trying to get at exactly? My guess is, because she’s had so many hits, what he’s trying to say is that she’s a sphinx without a secret, that there’s no actual reason for her ‘success’. And yet clearly he’s trying to siphon off some of that success for himself by using Magibon’s name and so on. He, like many others, is trying far too hard to ‘get’ what Magibon is doing, which is why he’ll never get it, and that is what I would call simple-minded. Magibon’s videos have a simple, positive vibe. His video has an unpleasant, envious, unintelligent vibe, particularly in his choice of music. It really has surprised me to Google and find so much in this vein about Magibon, as if people can’t stand the fact that there’s something they don’t understand, so they have to try and destroy it. It’s very like being in a pub and smiling at them, and having them say, “What the fuck are you smiling at?” It’s that level of psychosis, and it saddens and worries me to see how common it is.Anyway, that’s how it seems to me.’Who cares if she’s “fake” or not?’Actually, that’s much more succinct than I’ve just put it. I liked your blog post, too. I’ll put a link to it here for the curious:http://tmamone.blogspot.com/2008/03/magibon-rules.htmlAlso, your youtube clip has a good Magibon vibe, unlike that of the guy above.

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