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License to Play
Play is one of the most powerful cultural forces in contemporary Japan and in other late modern societies. In this notable contribution to our understanding of play, Michal Daliot-Bul explores the intricate and dynamic transformations of culture and play (asobi) in Japan. Along the way, she takes readers on a theoretically informed journey to better comprehend what makes play a significant cultural function, asking such questions as “How can we explain the dialectics between play as a biological instinct and play as a culturally specific activity? What defines the best player? How is creativity related to play? What is the difference between play and playfulness? Are some cultures more pla...
The Anime Boom in the United States
Drawing on in-depth interviews with animation professionals, field research, and a wide-scale market survey, The Anime Boom in the United States investigates the Japanese export of anime television and film to the United States. This story carries broad significance for those interested in understanding the cultural and media globalization.
The Anime Boom in the United States
The Anime Boom in the United States is a comprehensive and empirically grounded study of the expansion of anime marketing and sales into the United States. It explores the transnational networks of anime production and marketing while also investigating the cultural and artistic processes the art form inspired.
Project(ing) Human: Representations of Disability in Science Fiction
This edited volume examines representations of disability within popular science fiction, using examples from television, film, literature, and gaming to explore how the genre of science fiction shapes cultural understanding of disability experience. Science fiction texts typically grapple with concepts such as transhumanism, embodiment, and autonomy more directly than do those of other genres. In doing so, they raise significant questions about the experience of disability. More broadly, they often convey the place of disability in not only the future but also the world of today. Through critical research, the chapters within this interdisciplinary collection explore what science fiction te...
Popular Culture in Asia
Popular Culture in Asia consists studies of film, music, architecture, television, and computer-mediated communication in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, addressing three topics: urban modernities; modernity, celebrity, and fan culture; and memory and modernity.
Irresistible
Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters? Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have - the ones that elicit our care and protection - but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards. Joshua Paul Dale, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cuteness studies, explains how the cute aesthetic spread around the globe, from pop brands to Lolita fashion, kids' cartoons and the unstoppable rise of Hello Kitty. Irresistible delves into the surprisingly ancient origins of Japan's kawaii culture, and uncovers the cross-cultural pollination of the globalised world. If adorable things really do rewire our brains, it can help answer some of the biggest questions we have about our evolutionary history and the mysterious origins of animal domestication. This is the fascinating cultural history of cuteness, and a revealing look at how our most powerful psychological impulses have remade global style and culture.
Pink Globalization
In Pink Globalization, Christine R. Yano examines the creation and rise of Hello Kitty as a part of Japanese Cute-Cool culture. Yano argues that the international popularity of Hello Kitty is one aspect of what she calls pink globalization—the spread of goods and images labeled cute (kawaii) from Japan to other parts of the industrial world. The concept of pink globalization connects the expansion of Japanese companies to overseas markets, the enhanced distribution of Japanese products, and the rise of Japan's national cool as suggested by the spread of manga and anime. Yano analyzes the changing complex of relations and identities surrounding the global reach of Hello Kitty's cute culture...
Race and the Animated Bodyscape
Race does not exist in animation—it must instead be constructed and ascribed. Yet, over the past few years, there has been growing discourse on the intersection of these two subjects within both academic and popular circles. In Race and the Animated Bodyscape: Constructing and Ascribing a Racialized Asian Identity in "Avatar" and "Korra," author Francis M. Agnoli introduces and illustrates the concept of the animated bodyscape, looking specifically at the US television series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra. Rather than consider animated figures as unified wholes, Agnoli views them as complexes of signs, made up of visual, aural, and narrative components that...
Puppets, Gods, and Brands
The early twenty-first century has seen an explosion of animation. Cartoon characters are everywhere—in cinema, television, and video games and as brand logos. There are new technological objects that seem to have lives of their own—from Facebook algorithms that suggest products for us to buy to robots that respond to human facial expressions. The ubiquity of animation is not a trivial side-effect of the development of digital technologies and the globalization of media markets. Rather, it points to a paradigm shift. In the last century, performance became a key term in academic and popular discourse: The idea that we construct identities through our gestures and speech proved extremely ...
Societies in Space
Science fiction films and television programs about space travel have undergone a significant transformation since their inception. In contrast to the early depictions of small spaceship crews on exploratory missions, recent film and television portrayals depict much larger societies in space as well as the obstacles that arise with them. This collection of essays examines many aspects of making space travel films, from the process of screenwriting to the impact of Greek myth on modern film, with illuminating commentary on contemporary problems including class distinction, racism, and sexism. Contributors to this volume, including several extensively published scholars and science fiction writers, analyze a wide variety of relevant science fiction films and television programs ranging from Star Trek, Silent Running, the Alien films and Japanese anime to more recent works like Battlestar Galactica, Avatar, Elysium, The Martian, Passengers, and Ad Astra.
