[PREV - SO_MISUNDERSTOOD]    [TOP]

JUNDER_JOVER

                                                             November 14, 2017

  This is a minor point, but it's surprisingly
  hard to sort out in any rigorous way:
                                                      INFLUENCE
      In America, is Japanese pop culture a major,
      recognized element, or is it an underground
      influence that only occasional penetrates
      popular consciousness?

      It's clearly a large element
      of geek culture, which itself
      constantly threatens to                 Geeks are cool!
      overwhelm the mainstream, at            They get rich!
      least in an attenuated form.            Sometimes.

      There are elements of the
      j-cult that occasionally
      become hits (or, fairly big
      phenomena) in the American
      mainstream: the way you
      answer this question may
      depend on whether one of
      them was a big deal when
      you were a kid.               Still another
                                    complication is how     A friend comments
      One of my nieces was          are these things        that he was into
      a big fan of "Neon            *perceived* by the      "Battle of the
      Genesis Evangelion"           audience.  "Speed       Planets" and only
      when she was young.           Racer" was a big        learned later where
      Now that she's in             deal on television      it came from.
      her thirties, are             when I was a kid,
      her kids growing up           but it was dubbed
      in a world where              animation that
      there's an identifiable       wasn't at all
      phenomena like that?          marketed as a
                                    Japanese product.
      But then, someone who
      was growing up in 2011                  Godzilla's province was a little
      might remember it as                    harder to conceal, and those
      the year that Kyary                     movies were probably what I
      Pamyu Pamyu broke.                      would've pointed to as "Japanese
                                              stuff" when I was a kid.
              KYARY

      A teenage movie freak these
      days might think of the        WHITEGHOST
      ScarJo "Ghost" as evidence
      of Japanese Influence, but
      that movie itself is going             This issue is also
      to be forgotten so quickly             complicated by the common
      it isn't going to register             feeling that post-Internet
      that way for long.                     culture is smeared out and
                                             blended together in an odd
                                             way.  Everything is
                                             available, and nothing is
                                             really a Big Hit.

                                             POTENTIAL_DIFFERENCE

                                             
      It's often seemed to me that many      
      Americans are ignorant of the sheer         
      scale of production of Japanese             
      culture.  Someone who's familiar with a        A funny phenomena I've
      half dozen titles feels like they know         noticed among college
      about anime, but there are ten times           radio DJs: we tend to
      that many released *every season*.             treat the musics of
                                                     foreign cultures or
                                                     times in the same way as
           And then there are the people who         a novelty hit.  One
           think that anime is the limit:            year, "Gregorian Chants"
           they're completely unaware of             are cool, and everyone
           live-action comedy and drama, not         is playing that new CD
           to mention modern novels, manga,          release.  Then in the
           "light novels", pop music,                next few years there's
           underground music...                      another Gregorian Chants
                                                     disk, and another after
                                                     that, and that old
       "Sure, I know about J-pop.                    enthusiasm turns to "oh,
       I saw Shoenen Knife perform                   another one of *those*
       once."  But qutie a lot of                    things".  Those ancient
       J-pop has been recorded                       monks are *so* passe'.
       after Shoenen Knife, and                      
       quite a bit from before...                    
                                            
                                           
       
       

--------
[NEXT - JPOP_SUMMIT]