Bodies, borders, and screens: The techno-organic merger in Japan-American popular culture

In the last half of the twentieth century Japan and the United States have been jointly creating postmodern popular culture. Appearing primarily on screens, postmodern popular culture is hybridic, both at the level of the media it embraces and the national traditions it includes. This study traces the evolution of these hybrid forms by focusing on key movie, television, and video game narratives that have been popular in both cultures since the early 1950s. The introductory chapter provides a theoretical justification for my approach to popular culture. Drawing on materialist cultural theory I treat popular culture as a superstructural manifestation of changes occurring in the global economic substructure. In their narratives postmodern screen products reflect the changes that late capitalism and advanced technologies have made on the global economy. Japan-American popular culture is a superstructural manifestation of the merging that the two nations are experiencing at the substructural level. The following three chapters each examine a particular screen medium. Chapter Two focuses on cinematic narratives which have become "cult classics" in Japan as well as the United States. Ranging from Godzilla to Ghost in the Shell, these films have established the narrative conventions for postmodern screen culture, creating monstrous hybrid beasts as well as pleasure in the confusion of boundaries. Chapter Three focuses on animated television and video narratives. By highlighting the video cassette recorder as a technological development which encourages the participation of the viewer, I that Generation X, and its Japanese equivalent, the shinjinrui are not merely passive media consumers, but are actively creating otaku (fan) culture by collecting and redistributing anime. Chapter Four focuses on digital screens as the first popular culture form to be created exclusively in the postmodern era. The medium and message of contemporary digital video games reflect the merging of hardware and software, player and interface, and ultimately, the microelectronics industry of Japan and the United States. In the final chapter I discuss the impact of the digital revolution on representations of the body, the perceived economic and cultural borders between the United States and Japan, and the future of screen media.