Japan and the Bronx

The Harajuku Barbie has had a truly global trajectory, if by global we mean a process that is highly non-linear, a random coalescing of cultural fragments that are essentially trans-identarian (transcends the traditional notions of identity and nation).

The Harajuku Barbie is the invention of the Bronx's very own Nicki Minaj, the hip-hop phenom who is also a pioneer in that she is about the only female hip-hop star on the horizon.

Harajuku is indeed a city in Japan but they don't have a particular Barbie from there. The Japanese doll, that looks like an anime, is Minaj's alter ego in her videos.

The inspiration for the Harajuku Barbie is not got from Harajuku but from Gwen Stefani who was notorious for using fake Japanese "Harajuku girls" as background dancers.

Now Matell has a real Harajuku Barbie; each piece sells for $1000.

Fragmenting Marx

Karl Marx, misunderstood in America, as the founder of Communism, is the bette noire of Capitalism.

Yet Marxian observations free-float everywhere in such fragmented forms that often they cannot be traced back to the originator.

The Marxian idiom, "All that is solid melts...all that is sacred is profaned...", like Mona Lisa, continues to be wrenched from its context and used to explain things that have little to do with the process of history.

Author Flannery O' Connor had said something like "in capitalism everything that rises must converge."

In his observation on the direction that the Bronx-born hip-hop has taken in recent times, Brent Staples co opts Marx via O'Connor to explain that operating within the ideology of capitalism, hip-hop has now converged with pop thereby losing its edginess.