Survive Style 5+ and the Ethics of Creative Advertising

Abstract

This paper examines an exemplary piece of Japanese postmodern cinema, Sekiguchi Gen’s Survive Style 5+ (2004), in relation to the ethical quandaries and tensions that emerged around the practice of advertising during the so-called “creative revolution” in Japan. Drawing on the concept of the fetish in Marxist and Freudian discourse, as well as anthropological research and theories of translation, it shows how the film critiques the idea that advertising can act as a universal translator of desire in contemporary consumer capitalism through its use of jokes, style, and celebrity culture.