Globalizing East Asian Popular Culture

ANGN100, Spring 2005

 

COURSE SYLLABUS

 

Course Information

 

         Instructor:   Dr. Shawn Bender

           Lectures:   MWF 2-2:50 Center 214

                Office:   SSB #275

    Office Hours:   MW 3:30-4:30

                Email:   smbender@ucsd.edu        

            Website:   http://anthro.ucsd.edu/~sbender

 

Course Description

 

Over the past thirty years, material products exported from the countries of East Asia have become increasingly visible in the daily lives of Americans and Europeans.  A casual look around at the products we use, such as cars, motorcycles, consumer electronics, even the heavy machinery used in construction, provides ample evidence of Asian economic influence in the West. 

 

It is more recently that the immaterial products of East Asia – in other words, its cultural products – have begun to permeate the daily lives of westerners in a similar fashion.  Films, TV, anime, and graphic novels (manga), particularly but not exclusively from Japan, have become increasingly desirable items of consumption by westerners.  Previously the dominion of so-called “nerds,” the consumer culture of Asia has achieved a degree of popular legitimacy in the West that, it can be assumed, will only continue to grow into the future.

 

More important for the residents of East Asia, the growing influence of Asian popular culture in the West has been accompanied by a similar circulation of cultural products within their home region.  This circulation of cultural products has given rise to new patterns of desire and consumption within the region as well as a heightened sense of identity and affinity among its residents.

 

This course attempts to understand from an anthropological perspective what this increased “traffic in culture” within and beyond East Asia means.  We will analyze how popular culture and its consumption reflect and express the condition of modernity in contemporary East Asia.  We will also examine the impact of local cultural traffic on regional consciousness, national identity, and gender roles in Asia, while keeping a close eye on how these local flows interact with global cultural currents.

Course Materials

 

Course readings will be drawn from the following three sources:

 

  1. Book – The following required text is available for purchase at the UCSD Bookstore.

 

Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

 

  1. Course Reader – There is also a course reader for this class, which will be on sale outside of class during the first two weeks.  The reader is available for purchase from University Readers.  After the first two weeks of class, you should contact University Readers for copies directly at http://www.universityreaders.com.

 

  1. Electronic Reserves – Optional readings for the course as well as some required readings are accessible on electronic reserves.  To access electronic reserves, go to http://reserves.ucsd.edu and follow the instructions.  Course reserves can be accessed off-campus provided that you configure your browser to access the library via a proxy server. Information regarding browser configuration can be found at http://libraries.ucsd.edu/services/remote.html.

 

Copies of the Reader and the Iwabuchi book will be placed on reserve at the Social Sciences and Humanities library.  Whenever possible, films and song selections played in class will also be placed on reserve OR made available for listening on the course website.

 

Note: As this is a course on popular culture, we will devote significant class time to the analysis of media used in class.  Even if you are familiar with these media products, I recommend that you view them with the class.  Our perspective will likely be different than what you have encountered previously.

 

Course Grading

 

Your grade in this course will be based on three written exams, all of which will be in take-home format.  Due dates are marked in the following schedule of assignments and readings.  Course grades will be weighted as follows.

 

                Exam I   20%

              Exam II   40%

         Final Exam   40%

 

You must complete all assignments to receive a grade for the course. Cheating on any part of the course will be penalized to the fullest extent possible under university policies.

Schedule of Assignments and Readings

Readings marked with an asterisk (*) are optional.

The symbol  indicates that the reading is available on electronic reserve.

 

 

Week One

3/28 Mon              Introduction & Pop Culture

Storey, John. 2001. “What is Popular Culture?” In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Harlow, England; New York: Prentice Hall, pp. 1-16.

 

 

3/30 Wed              Theories of Globalization

 

Beynon, John and David Dunkerley. 2000. “General Introduction.” In Globalization: The Reader. Edited by John Beynon and David Dunkerley. London: The Athlone Press, pp. 1-31.

 

Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Public Culture. 2(2): 1-24.

 

 

4/1 Fri                   America In Japan

 

Stanlaw, James. 1992. “‘For Beautiful Human Life’: The Use of English in Japan.” In Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. Edited by Joseph Tobin. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 58-76.

 

Film: The Japanese Version

 

 

Week Two

4/4 Mon                Americanization Reconsidered

 

Bak, Sangmee. 1997. “McDonald’s in Seoul: Food Choices, Identity, and Nationalism.” In Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. Edited by James l. Watson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 136-160.

 

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. 1997. “McDonald’s in Japan: Changing Manners and Etiquette.” In Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. Edited by James l. Watson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 161-182.

 

 

4/6 Wed                East Asian Society I

 

Kim, Seung-Kuk. 2000. “Changing Lifestyles and Consumption Patterns of the South Korean Middle Class and New Generations.” In Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities. Edited by Chua Beng-Huat. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 61-81

 

 

4/8 Fri                   East Asian Society II

 

Iwabuchi, Koichi.  Chapter One. Recentering Globalization, pp. 23-50.

 

 

Week Three

4/11 Mon              Recentering Globalization

 

Iwabuchi, Koichi. Chapter Two. Recentering Globalization. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 51-84.

 

** McGray, Douglas. 2002. “Japan’s Gross National Cool.” Foreign Policy. May/June: 45-54. 84.

 

 

4/13 Wed              Exporting Media: The Message

 

Iwabuchi, Koichi.  Chapter Four, pp. 121-157.

 

Lee, Dong-Hoo. 2004. “Cultural Contact with Japanese TV Dramas: Modes of Reception and Narrative Transparency.” In Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas. Edited by Koichi Iwabuchi. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 251-274.

 

 

4/15 Fri                 Media and Trans/National Consciousness: The Medium

 

Fujitani, Takashi. 1992. “Electronic Pageantry and Japan's ‘Symbolic Emperor’.” The Journal of Asian Studies. 51(4): 824-850.

 

Yang, Mayfair. 2002. “Mass Media and Transnational Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on (Re)Cosmopolitanism in a Chinese Metropolis.” In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Edited by Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin.  Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 189-210.

 

** Painter, Andrew. 1996. “Japanese Daytime Television, Popular Culture, and Ideology.”  In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture. Edited by John Whittier Treat. 197-234.

 

 

Week Four

4/18 Mon              Hong Kong Film and Regional Identity

 

Gladney, Dru. 1999. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” In Consuming Ethnicity and Nationalism: Asian Experiences. Edited by Kosaku Yoshino. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 48-88.

 

Film: Born to be King

Exam I DUE

 

4/20 Wed              Hong Kong Film and Regional Identity II

 

Ryan, Barbara. 1995. “Blood, Brothers, and Hong Kong Gangster Movies: Pop Culture Commentary on ‘One China’.” In Asian Popular Culture. Edited by John Lent. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, pp. 61-76.

 

Film: Born to be King, cont.

 

 

4/22 Fri                 Hong Kong Film and Regional Identity III

 

** Desser, David. 2003. “Consuming Asia: Chinese and Japanese Popular Culture and the American Imaginary.” In Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia. Edited by Jenny Kwok Wah Lau. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 179-199.

 

Film: Born to be King, cont.

 

 

Week Five

4/25 Mon              Indigenous Asian Culture in the Global Music Marketplace

 

Upton, Janet. 2002. “The Politics and Poetics of Sister Drum: ‘Tibetan’ Music in the Global Marketplace.” In Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia. Timothy J. Craig and Richard King (eds.). Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 99-119.

 

 

4/27 Wed              Japan’s Past/Japan’s Present: Country and City       

 

* Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. “Itineraries of Knowledge: Trans-Figuring Japan.” Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 29-67. (This is difficult reading. Take notes and focus on the main points.)

 

Yano, Christine. 1999. “Distant Homelands: Nation as Place in Japanese Popular Song.” In Consuming Ethnicity and Nationalism: Asian Experiences. Edited by Kosaku Yoshino. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 158-176.

 

 

4/29 Fri                 Taiko, Pop Culture, and Transnationalism

 

Wong, Deborah. 2004. “Taiko in Asian America.” Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 195-231.

 

 

Week Six

5/2 Mon                Animating the Japanese Past

 

Film: Princess Mononoke

 

 

5/4 Wed                Animating the Japanese Past II

 

* Napier, Susan J. 2001. “Confronting Master Narratives: History As Vision in Miyazaki Hayao’s Cinema of De-assurance.” Positions. 9(2): 467-493.

 

Film: Princess Mononoke, cont.

 

 

5/6 Fri                   Asia in Japan

 

Iwabuchi, Koichi.  Chapter Five. Recentering Globalization, pp. 158-198.

 

** Yano, Christine. 2004. “Raising the Ante of Desire: Foreign Female Singers in a Japanese Pop Music World.” In Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries. Edited by Allen Chun, New Rossiter, and Brian Shoesmith. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 159-172.

 

 

Week Seven

5/9 Mon                Japan (and the Other) in Asia

 

Howard, Keith. 2002. “Exploding Ballads: The Transformation of Korean Pop Music.” in Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia. Edited by Timothy J. Craig and Richard King. Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 80-95.

 

Stokes, David. 2004. “Popping the Myth of Chinese Rock.” In Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries. Edited by Allen Chun, New Rossiter, and Brian Shoesmith. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 32-48.

 

Taylor, Jeremy. 2004. “Pop Music as Postcolonial Nostalgia in Taiwan.” In Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries. Edited by Allen Chun, New Rossiter, and Brian Shoesmith. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 173-182.

 

** De Kloet, Jeroen. 2000. “ ‘Let Him Fucking See the Green Smoke Beneath My Groin’: The Mythology of Chinese Rock.” In Postmodernism and China. Edited by Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 239-274.

 

 

5/11 Wed              The Real and the Unreal: Idol Singers

 

Film: Perfect Blue (Caution: This film at times graphic.)

 

Exam II DUE

 

 

5/13 Fri                 The Real and the Unreal: Idol Singers

 

Aoyagi, Hiroshi. 2000. “Pop Idols and the Asian Identity.” In Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture. Edited by Timothy J. Craig. London: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 309-326.

 

Film: Perfect Blue (Caution: This film is at times graphic.)

 

 

Week Eight

5/16 Mon              Gender in Asian Pop Culture: Cuties

 

Kinsella, Sharon. “Cuties in Japan.” In Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan. Edited by Lisa Skov and Brian Moeran. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 220-254.

 

 

5/18 Wed              Gender in Asian Pop Culture: Ero-manga

 

* Allison, Anne. 2000 [1996]. “Cartooning Erotics: Japanese Ero Manga.” Permitted and Prohibited Desires. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 51-79.

 

** Nakazawa, Kenji. 1988. “Barefoot Gen.” In Manga!Manga! The World Of Japanese Comics. Translated by Frederick Schodt. Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, pp. 238-255.

 

 

5/20 Fri                 Asian Femininity Goes Global

 

Allison, Anne. 2000. “Sailor Moon: Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls.” In Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture. Edited by Timothy J. Craig. London: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 259-278.

 

Napier, Susan. 1998. “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the Young Female in Japanese Popular Culture.” In The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures. Edited by D.P. Martinez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 91-109.

 

 

Week Nine

5/23 Mon              Gender Trouble in China

 

Film: Chinese Ghost Story

 

 

5/25 Wed              Gender Trouble in China II

 

Moskowitz, Marc L. 2004. “Yang-Sucking She-Demons: Penetration, Fear of Castration, and Other Freudian Angst in Modern Chinese Cinema.” In The Minor Arts of Daily Life: Popular Culture in Taiwan. Edited by David K. Jordan, Andrew D. Morris, and Marc L. Moskowitz. Hawaii: The University of Hawaii Press, pp. 204-217.

 

Film: Chinese Ghost Story, cont.

5/27 Fri                 Gender Trouble in Asia

 

* Miller, Laura. “Male Beauty Work in Japan.” in Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. Edited by James E. Roberson and Nobue Suzuki. London and New York: Routledge.

 

 

Week Ten

5/30 Mon              MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY (No Class)

 

 

6/1 Wed                When Japanimation Attacks

 

Allison, Anne. 2004. “Cuteness as Japan’s Millenial Product.” In Pikachu’s Global Adventure. Edited by Joseph J. Tobin. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 34-49.

 

Yano, Christine. 2004. “Panic Attacks: Anti-Pokémon Voices in Global Markets.” In Pikachu’s Global Adventure. Edited by Joseph J. Tobin. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 108-138.

 

 

6/6 Mon                FINAL EXAM DUE in Instructor’s Office from 3-6 pm

 

 

Schedule is subject to change with prior notice of instructor