What are we to make of Pharrell Williams’s latest video for “It Girl,” which features the hip-hop star singing, “Hold my hand, and moan again, I’ma hold that ass” to images of what appears to be a prepubescent cartoon girl? Although seemingly well received (it has been viewed more than two and a half million times on YouTube since its release on September 30th), the video has left some American critics struggling to describe the experience of watching it. Pitchfork lauded the work as “an animated epic,” while a more cautious Rolling Stone dubbed it, incongruously, “Pokémon-inspired.” It seems to have bewildered fans, too. Debates have sprung up on various blogs: “Why did he choose such young characters?” wondered one viewer on Tumblr, who declared the video “creepy.”

The confusion shouldn’t be surprising. While Pharrell’s breezy tune is steeped in the idioms of American hip-hop and dance culture, the video for “It Girl” comes from the world of Japanese otaku—obsessive fans of anime, manga, and video games. The co-directors and creative architects of the video are a pseudonymous pair of Japanese artists: the textile designer Fantasista Utamaro and the secretive painter known only as Mr. The latter is a protégé of the pop artist Takashi Murakami and a core collaborator in Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki art collective, under whose banner the video was produced. Born in 1969, Mr. rose to prominence as a contributor to Murakami’s 2001 travelling exhibition “Superflat” and its successful 2005 follow up, “Little Boy.” He also happens to be, by his own admission, a lolicon.

A Japanese term derived from the English phrase “Lolita complex,” lolicon describes a fascination with cartoons of very young-looking girls engaged in varying degrees of erotic behavior. (The word can be used to describe both the genre and its aficionados.) What can really confuse non-Japanese is that lolicons, who exist in large numbers in Japan, actually prefer illustrated art over real or photographic portrayals of girls, a predilection that’s known as a “2D complex.” This one-step removal from reality is the genre’s key feature, and it’s what keeps lolicon legal—if still, as non-fans note, “creepy.” Almost all of Mr.’s work is related to lolicon; in a 2007 interview, he described his efforts as a sort of safety valve, “releasing my fantasy world through my work instead of acting it out in real life.”

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/pharrell-williamss-lolicon-girl

I'm not a big lolicon/anime guy, but I liked the video and the song, and it's kinda cool that he's representing girl love culture in a way. You can watch the music video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPZDBF0kei0






• ( http link ) Pharrell Williams Goes Loli With 'It Girl'
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