One of the strangest aspects of our society is that it’s normal for young women to fanatically obsess over pop stars. From the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys to Bieber, young women have been screaming together at concerts for our entire lives. And we all just shrug our shoulders and accept it.
I’m not ready to accept it. It is collective madness. For years, I assumed that it has something to do with the female psyche since we never see men going to concerts together and screaming for BeyoncŽ or Pink. Well, I was dead wrong. It isn’t just women who go insane for pop stars. In Japan, men do it too.
“Tokyo Idols” is an educational, eye-opening documentary. It teaches us about a different culture’s pop music scene. And it explores the troubled psyches of people who devote their lives to it.
Right now, there are hundreds of teenage girls in Japan who call themselves Idols. The Idols perform upbeat pop performances at clubs. If they get big enough, they record songs and music videos. They make most of their money by participating in well-organized meet-and-greet events, where they chat one-on-one with passionate supporters.
This all sounds pretty normal and pretty American, right? Absolutely not. All of the fans at the Idol meet-and-greet are men. Mostly older men. You would think that a documentary about Idol culture would condemn the participants or at least make fun of them. Director Kyoko Miyake does neither.
You can’t help but respect and root for Rio. When we meet Rio, she is 19. She is an aging elder statesman in the business and she knows it. Rio is trying to parlay her Idol fame into a serious singing career. At her core, though, she is a sensible hard-working young woman with a loving family and a growing bank account. Good for her.
Life is not going so well for her fans. Kyoko Miyake could have easily said: “Hey, look at these creepy old men who may or may not be pedophiles! They can’t tell the difference between an animŽ character and a real girl. Let’s judge them!” But to her credit, Miyake helps us understand how a normal Japanese man could grow up to become an Idol groupie.
Rio’s fans all have similar back stories. When they were Rio’s age, they were trying to lead a normal life. They had girlfriends, and they were trying to get promoted at work and save enough money to marry and start a family. Somewhere along the line, they gave up and dropped out of the Tokyo rat race.
They couldn’t handle the cost or the responsibility of taking care of a family. But they can handle the lesser challenge of filling a studio apartment with Idol merchandise and going to shows every night.
By the end of “Tokyo Idols,” I didn’t think most of the fans are creepy. They are just sad, lonely human beings. They are grasping onto the one thing in their life that brings them joy. In the end, I have to admit that there is nothing fundamentally wrong about going to concerts and screaming for your favorite pop star, whether you’re male or female. It is ridiculous and undignified, but it doesn’t hurt anybody. If you are still doing it at age 25, however, you probably need to reassess your life.