Asian Popular Culture

The Global (Dis)continuity

Anthony Y.H. Fung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134090020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines different aspects of Asian popular culture, including films, TV, music, comedy, folklore, cultural icons, the Internet and theme parks. It raises important questions such as – What are the implications of popularity of Asian popular culture for globalization? Do regional forces impede the globalizing of cultures? Or does the Asian popular culture flow act as a catalyst or conveying channel for cultural globalization? Does the globalization of culture pose a threat to local culture? It addresses two seemingly contradictory and yet parallel processes in the circulation of Asian popular culture: the interconnectedness between Asian popular culture and western culture in an era of cultural globalization that turns subjects such as Pokémon, Hip Hop or Cosmopolitan into truly global phenomena, and the local derivatives and versions of global culture that are necessarily disconnected from their origins in order to cater for the local market. It thereby presents a collective argument that, whilst local social formations, and patterns of consumption and participation in Asia are still very much dependent on global cultural developments and the phenomena of modernity, yet such dependence is often concretized, reshaped and distorted by the local media to cater for the local market.

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INTRODUCTION

Asian popular culture:
the global (dis)continuity

Anthony Y. H. Fung

What is Asian popular culture? The chimera of Asian pop culture is perhaps perceived as something cute, something eerie, something fancy, and something exotic as opposed to the complex and well-established symbols and icons of western popular imaginaries such as Batman, Snoopy, E.T., the psychedelic pop music of the Beatles, and Hollywood. We as academics understand that this stereotypic understanding of Asian popular culture is not intellectually true, and therefore we tend to rebuff it and vilipend it ad rem. Yet, this attitude, at the same time, may compel us to easily brush off any debate on the core nature of Asian popular culture. In other words, despite imprecision and apocrypha, arguably we could use such characterizations, stereotypes, and even misrepresentations as a departure to help us understand the current phenomena and trajectories in Asian pop culture developments. In reality, it is evident that we do witness the lopsided flow of Hollywood cultures (such as Disney) to Asia. Very few made-in-Asia commercial imaginaries are sold and distributed in Europe or North America as they are believed to be unable to satisfy the appetites of those audiences, at least in the eyes of many distributors and producers. In this globalizing age in which transnational media industries predominantly control the flow of most pop culture imaginar-ies, the importation of pop culture from the “other global worlds” to Asia is the unpenetrable commercial strategy, while the reverse is always regarded as exceptional and something against the commercial, and perhaps cultural, norm. The formation of popular culture in Asia, therefore, has more or less been evolving in response to the globalizing culture that is imposed upon them (e.g. Allen and Sakamoto's analysis of the Japanese pop culture, 2006). That active global continuity used to largely define what Asian pop culture is, but what is emphasized in this volume, is that this phenomenon is changing.

What we find in Asia today are numerous and diverse forms of popular culture; those mainly connected to global production, a few culturally indigenous forms that consciously disconnect and distinguish themselves from the West and stand out in the global market, many hybrid forms that lie in between the continuum of global-local production and circulation networks, and even some elaborate cultural forms and products that can be converted to something global for certain situations. This book does not present a definition of Asian pop culture—which may practically be unfeasible owing to the diversity of Asian cultural products—but presents the readers cases of highly popular Asian pop imaginaries that can be connected to the discourse of globalization under the current theme of global (dis)continuity of the political economy.

In this volume, global (dis)continuity specifically refers to the degree of continuity of the modes and structures of operation of transnational cultural corporations, which conventionally dominate in the transplant of cultural products from the West to Asia in which local adaptations and modifications arise. In this changing political economic milieu, such political and social hierarchies, however, have experienced an about-face. We now see new forms and structures of operation that we have never seen before in processes of cultural globalization, including production, circulation, and consumption. What is occurring is not only changes in the cultural logic of globalization and localization of popular cultural forms, but also changes in concrete strategies, with large corporations now building up production capacity and distribution networks to generate a reserve global flow from Asia to the rest of the world. Some locales in Asia, including China and Japan, have become stable hubs or the nexus of global media, and are subsequently able to market culture to regional areas, as well as in their own market. It is by and through these global transnational corporations that Asia is being connected and reconnected to the rest of the world and within its own region.

With such a framework set, this anthology explicates the structure of the production, distribution, circulation, and consumption of Asian pop culture, and bases all the analyses from different Asian cities (including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand) on real historical contexts with the common thread of theoretical inquiry on cultural and media globalization. Thus, many chapters begin with a macro semi-political economic analysis of the context in which these Asian popular cultures are grounded and, then, depending upon the disciplinary approaches of the authors, are followed with structural analysis, cultural studies of text, or studies on audiences and consumption. All these cases converge on the central theme of global (dis)continuity, thereby adding to and encouraging academic discussion on the subject matters concerned. There are case discussions that should be familiar to global consumers, ranging from the discussion of pop music (e.g. hip-hop and reggae), fashion magazines (e.g. GQ, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan), Hollywood movies (e.g. Harry Potter), to cultural brands such as Disneyland and its related commodities—the production, reproduction, or circulation of which have spanned across Asia and the other global worlds. They might or might not be Asian origins, but these culture imaginaries are disseminated and circulated from and to Asia. They not only have strong cultural implications to the local Asian societies they are disseminated in, but they are also vivid examples that characterize the phenomenon of global continuity of the geopolitical, political, and economic models. Strong evidence of cultural discontinuity is also documented and discussed, with comics and animations from Asia, such as Pokémon, serving as an example of how cultural products can be stripped of their Asian identity and marketed to the Americas and Europe. Select cases of Asian popular culture in this study can therefore be seen as a cultural interface between the impetus of cultural globalization, in terms of production and circulation, and the markets and audiences that receive the global products. Global continuity or discontinuity can result in the possibility of cultural connection or the elusion of it, and also reconnection or disconnection between Asia and the rest of the world on various levels.

On the production side, the studies in this book illustrate the concrete mechanism of the global flows, or the import and export of such cultural products and commodities, which in turn elucidate the cultural logic of such perceived needs for a global connection in Asia. Evidently, the entire structure of the continuity of globalization is unnatural, and is manipulated and driven commercially by transnational, regional, and local cultural corporations and/or politically controlled by governments or semi-official bodies who control their local media and access to it. On a macro level, with the worsening global economy, it seems that the political-economic forces coming from the major cultural power centers of the world also are pushing for a boundary-free and seemingly more oracular version of globalization in the hope of reaping more profit from global markets. A decade earlier, cultural globalization perhaps was merely an extension of soft power, asides from economic interests. However, with the recent financial crisis in the USA, globalization is now, more often than not, seen as an economic panacea for its national economy. Thus, the world will see more of the pushing forces of globalization than ever before, and this global structure has been perpetuated and continuously strengthened. These trends have also been occurring in Asian nation states that are attempting to globalize their cultural products, including Korea, Japan, and China.

While there is global cultural continuity, discontinuity of conventional practices can be seen as another economic means steered by transnational cultural corporations; these practices are viewed as the set up of an alternate route for cultural flows to flow from Asia to the West, the origins of these transnational corporations. As illustrated by Anne Allison in Chapter 11, Japan serves as the nexus for this new trend. Allison's analysis of the cultural product Pokémon illustrates that it is not just about Japan's national capabilities of reversing the flow of globalization by conquering the western markets, but the entirely new cultural flow is in fact a conscious effort of the global cultural corporations to invent and prescribe a new structure of cultural business. Such discontinuity of their conventional business models does, however, create new forms of cultural connection between Asia and non-Asian countries, but merely in different forms.

In this book, there is a specific type of cultural discontinuity that is taking shape. Michael Curtin suggests (Chapter 14) that within Asia, China is often seen as a rising global power that has accumulated a vast amount of media capital, such new business models, despite being under the influence of global capital, do not necessarily yield greater cultural connections between Asia and the rest of the world. China is more of a regional media exporter, or an exporter of media to other Asian nations. These regional flows (which have yet to be seen) would be a contestation between regional forces and global forces, controlled by China and global capitals respectively. Will local musicians in Singapore abandon the production of hip-hop and instead choose to go back to their ethnic roots by incorporating Chinese musical elements into their local productions of music? Will Korea continue to be shaped by Hollywood aesthetics or will it adopt a more distinctly regional taste in the future? In the long run, the new regionally/globally involved production structure may destabilize the cultural absorption of western popular culture in Asia.

The framework of global (dis)continuity is also applicable to the study of cultural consumption and aesthetics. Global cultural artifacts, icons, images, and brands have strong and long-term appeal to the Asian consumers who aspire to ‘catch up’ to global trends and modernity. To better target and serve local Asian markets, global cultural corporations have localized their global cultural forms, ideas, and products. In practice, the decentered locale of production and circulation enables fashion magazine producers, film distributors, game developers, music composers, and theme park managers to undertake a post-Fordist and neo-institutionalist logic in which they can select, modify, and distort global cultures for local Asian audiences. The extent to which the local consumption aligns with or disconnects from the global taste and aesthetic shows the tensions, ambivalence, and conflicts between the global and the local. Therefore, it is necessary to undertake a concrete analysis of how market forces interrupt the continuity of the operating structures of global corporations. On a micro level, what should then be examined is how these cultural products are localized and adapted to cater to local needs.

These illustrations of cultural connection, reconnection, or disconnection caused by changes in global structures of production in response to market and consumer needs goes beyond simple patterns of consumer reception and interpretation. The increasing hybridization of popular culture in terms of the differential cultural expressions and rituals of youth under different contexts begets various values such as modernity, cosmopolitanism, and homogenization (Wise, 2008). While some may be uncritical of globalization and perceive it to be a celebration of the uniqueness of different social, political, and cultural formations, there undeniably has also been growing resistance and criticism against this (perhaps disguised) form of capitalist expansion, transnational universalism, and even political dominance (Hopper, 2007). However, contrary to such anti-globalization arguments, global popular culture in Asia (such as the Disneyland theme park in Hong Kong) limits while also enables the preservation of cultural or regional autonomy under special circumstances (Rethman et al., 2010). With similar colonial and imperial legacies, the widely circulated global popular cultures have become the resources for youth in disparate Asian communities to articulate and express their identities in regards to social formation, including gender, class, generational, and cultural identities; at times, these expressions can become quite independent of the com-modifying nature of global capital (Rodriques and Smaill, 2008).

With this set of phenomena as its core emphasis, two different versions of cultural circulation and consumption of Asian pop culture are observed: first, the interconnectedness between Asian popular culture and global (mainly western) cultures in an era of cultural globalization and, second, the local derivatives of global cultures that are purposely disconnected from their origins in order to cater to local/regional markets. Different situations therefore form into a collective argument; whilst local social formations, patterns of consumption, and participation in Asia are still very much dependent on global cultural developments and the phenomena of modernity (a discourse of cultural continuity), such dependence is often reshaped and distorted by the decentered local media for the local market or to create local hype among unsettled fans. This is a practical and economic concern that tends to result in cultural (dis)connections in varying degrees between the global culture and the consumer. However, some authors emphasize the “rising Asia thesis.” These authors believe that Asia is also capable of creating a popular culture of its own which is a disjuncture of the global discourse, and is sometimes even able to reverse the traditional globalization flows by exporting to other nations, regionally and globally.

The proposed framework then can be used to engage in discussion with current globalization literature, in particular, with studies that emphasize hybrid formations. Authors such as Berger and Huntington (2003) describe the globalization phenomenon as “many globalizations,” a term that unerringly captures the different levels, variations, and versions of globalization—partial, hybrid, or reverse globalization as they exist today in Asia. This culture of hybridization, or global mélange as Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2009) puts it, produces new regional and/or international cultural interactions, permutations, differences, and even hierarchies, as well as discord and frictions within the region and local audiences. It is perhaps undeniable that the sources of these globalized cultures are mainly of American origin, but the processes and consequences of globalization-localization is far from Americanization or cultural imperialism (Berger and Huntington, 2003). The different cultural forms produced pertaining to the process of globalization could be better described by how much the global cultural corporations, the local market, and/or regional forces have collectively connected or disconnected themselves. By indexing the degree of connection between the global and the local along a continuum, a framework of cultural (dis)continuity could be established and explicate why and how this phenomena of popular culture in Asia exists and thrives.

The book then divides the discussion of such cultural dis(continuity) into four different modes under which global culture is being disconnected, connected, or reconnected to Asian popular culture, either unwittingly or willfully. Of course, these four modes are just quick ways to conceptualize these diverse permutations; admittedly, there are many other variations. What has been emphasized here is the fact that there are multiple possibilities in which these hybrid cultural forms exist.

The dominance of global continuity: cultural localization and adaptation

Part I of the book deals with the dominant paradigm of global-Asian interconnect-edness in the context of the structures and operations of global cultural business practices already in place. It describes and prescribes how global popular culture is being transplanted in Asia; it is perhaps perceived as Americanization or western modernization. The popular culture being transplanted generally retains its original nature and global content; the cultural permutations mainly occur on a level of adaptation, meaning there are different interpretations and appropriations of the culture. While the forces of localization can be attributed to economic and/or political interest, the processes of cultural adaptation and glocalization is active and dynamic. In some cases, the nature of the original global products ends up being compromised. This cultural adaptation demonstrates a negotiated outcome between the forces of globalization and market needs.

The part begins with John Nguyet Erni's study of Harry Potter consumers (Chapter 2). In Erni's empirical study there is an examination of the “Pottermania” craze by middle-class Chinese youth in a Chinese society and economy that has developed exponentially in recent decades. What Erni discovers is that the Pottermania trend is more than just a phase in Chinese popular culture; it demonstrates that these Chinese youth are subject to an identity in progress of aspiring to become global, resisting ideas of previous generations, and becoming middle class. Through the examination of the Chinese youth's consumption and translation of the Harry Potter series, it is evident that the youth counterproject the Harry Potter characters through two planes. First, the youth frequently compare their own character qualities to those of the Harry Potter characters and, second, they relate the magical world of Harry Potter as something akin to the West, while the “muggle” world is related back to Chinese society.

New consumption patterns have cropped up in Chinese society—consumption has become like an ideology that represents a new, liberal generation against the social and economic restrictions of the previous Maoist generation. The rise of a middle-class culture and material consumption in China, therefore, inevitably leads to the formation of an ambivalent cultural positivity that alternates between embracing elitist, middle-class culture to criticizing the idealization of a “well-off society.” Ironically, Chinese authorities have shown their implicit approval of using western cultural imports such as Harry Potter to encourage idealizing well-off societies, middle-class culture, and material consumption. Harry Potter in China is ultimately viewed as a symbol of power, liberation, creativity, and, above all, a world of fantasy that provides the Chinese an escape from their own stifling social environment. This temporarily resolves the social contradictions that the Chinese authorities may be unable to permanently solve at the moment.

The side effect of the consumption of and identification with the Harry Potter series by Chinese youth is the youth's connection to global culture, and the development of the belief that “becoming global” is something inevitab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction Asian popular culture: the global (dis)continuity
• Part I The dominance of global continuity: cultural localization and adaptation
• Part II Global discontinuity: the local absorption of global culture
• Part III Cultural domestication: a new form of global continuity
• Part IV China as a rising market: cultural antagonism and globalization
• Index