Fabienne Darling-Wolf

HOLIER THAN THOU

This study investigates how the French and American press handled the representation of racial tensions both internally and in relationship to each other in the aftermath of two events of international proportions: Hurricane Katrina and the social unrest that shook France in the Fall of 2005. By comparing coverage in The New York Times and Le Monde, it explores how each newspaper negotiated their nations handling of race relations not only through their reporting of events at home (Katrina in The New York Times and the riots in Le Monde), but also through their characterization of foreign events (Katrina in Le Monde and the riots in The New York Times). This analysis concludes that the two newspapers coverage, while often critical of authorities in charge, ultimately served to position the cultural environment in which each newspaper is located as better equipped to deal with racial tensions than the other “foreign” environment.

Virtually Multicultural: Trans-Asian Identity and Gender in an International Fan Community of a Japanese Star

While recent analyses have helped to challenge commonly-held stereotypes of fans of popular cultural texts as freakish individuals ‘without a life’, few studies have focused on texts produced and/or consumed outside the United States and Europe. Even fewer have considered the particular significance of the advent of the internet as a tool for intercultural fan activity. This is what this study attempts to accomplish through an ethnographic and textual analysis of an online community of fans of Kimura Takuya - one of the most popular Japanese male celebrities of the moment - dispersed across 14 countries. It explores, in particular, how participants defined their fan, gendered and cultural/global identities through their involvement with each other and with their favorite star, and negotiated as a group the complex process of virtual cross-cultural identity formation.

Sites of attractiveness: Japanese women and westernized representations of feminine beauty

Ever since Japans entry into global geopolitics, scholars have identified Japanese popular cultural texts as a terrain on which this countrys complex relationship to the West is negotiated. Few studies, however, have adequately addressed how such texts—and Western influence in general—might be experienced differently by different groups and/or strata of Japanese society. Inspired by the work of postcolonial feminist scholars who argue that gender, race, class, and cultural identity must be examined in relationship to each other, this study focuses on a group of 29 women with whom the author conducted interviews and extensive participant observation during eight months of fieldwork in a small Japanese community. It examines, in particular, how these women negotiated Westernized representations of feminine beauty omnipresent in the Japanese media. This article argues that even though informants assertively critiqued and actively negotiated media representations, their own conceptions of attractiveness—and their daily relationships to their physical selves—matched those of the Westernized media‐defined ideals. In view of these findings, it concludes with a call for a more systematic and critical assessment of gender in transcultural relations.

SMAP, Sex, and Masculinity: Constructing the Perfect Female Fantasy in Japanese Popular Music

They can be seen on billboards, vending machines, cup-noodle packages, comic books, diaper ads, T-shirts, and all over the television screen. Young women wait eagerly through a lottery process to determine who will be allowed to buy tickets to their concerts—the unlucky ones gather up at the venue anyway in the hope of catching a glimpse of their favorite idol. Most Japanese media consumers would nevertheless agree that even among the most celebrated Japanese contemporary popular singers, the majority simply cannot hold a tune. What can explain, then, the hordes of fans and enormous revenues these singers generate, not only in Japan but throughout Asia? A closer look at some of Japan’s most popular celebrities might provide possible answers. This essay focuses on SMAP, an all-male band which I believe is representative of current trends on the larger Japanese media scene, and which is particularly interesting in its phenomenal success. I chose a male band to concentrate on here—even though female bands are certainly present and thriving on the Japanese popular cultural scene—because, as I will later argue, I see the carefully crafted constructions of masculinity in Japanese contemporary popular music as one possibly important component of its growing attraction. The conclusions drawn here grew out of an extensive textual analysis of SMAP’s weekly television appearances, the television dramas in which its members have starred, and videos of their annual concert tours. Magazine articles about the stars, websites designed by fans, and recordings of their most popular hits were also used as supportive evidence. This study is further informed by my own involvement with the band as a fan of several years and my familiarity with the Japanese popular cultural environment developed through years of fieldwork in Japan.

Texts in Context: Intertextuality, Hybridity, and the Negotiation of Cultural Identity in Japan:

Based on insights collected during eight months of fieldwork recently conducted in rural southern Japan and the urban center of Kyoto, this article explores how Western cultural texts are adopted, adapted, and interpreted within the Japanese popular cultural environment. It first examines the theoretical development of the concept of Western cultural influence—from discourses of cultural imperialism to more recent interpretations of culture as hybrid and ever changing—and its particular significance to Japanese culture. It then attempts to locate Western texts and Western imagery within the larger Japanese cultural, historical, and media environment into which such texts are exported and consumed.

Male Bonding and Female Pleasure: Refining Masculinity in Japanese Popular Cultural Texts

Over the past few decades, alternative constructions of masculinity have entered the Japanese popular cultural scene. These definitions are slowly chipping away at traditional constructions of gender and creating new subjectivities through which men and women may choose to define their gendered identities. This article explores some of these changing constructions through a case study of 1 particularly popular male celebrity, young male actor and singer Kimura Takuya. Examining his appearances on various Japanese media sites-from television dramas, to popular magazines, to concert videos-this article attempts to identify the different codes of masculinity emerging from Kimuras diverse characters, and considers their possible significance within the larger Japanese popular cultural environment in which they are distributed and consumed.

Media, class, and western influence in Japanese women's conceptions of attractiveness

Even though recent investigations of the process of globalization of media technologies have usefully problematized the concept of “cultural imperialism,” scholars are yet to fully and adequately address the impact of gender, class, and/or minority status on individuals’ interpretations of processes of cultural influence. Despite the theoretical recognition of the complexity of national and individual identity formation, relatively few studies so far have attempted to determine how members of marginalized groups might experience processes of globalization identified by scholars as a significant aspect of our current historical moment. This is particularly true of studies of the Japanese cultural environment. While the significance of Western influence on Japanese culture and the complexity of Japan’s relationship to the West have been well acknowledged and discussed (see, e.g., S. N. Eisenstadt 1996; Andrew Gordon 1993; Ezra Vogel 1988), little attention has been given to the fact that such processes might be interpreted differently by different groups and strata of society. History suggests, however, that Japanese women may have benefited and suffered from Japan’s engagement with Western cultures differently from their male counterparts. For instance, it is exposure to Western civilization that initially sparked concern with women’s rights in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century (Janet Hunter 1989). The constitution drafted by American occupation leaders in 1946 gave Japanese women the right to vote and guaranteed them equality before the law (Frank Upham 1993). More generally, Japan’s desire to improve international relations has had positive side-effects on Japanese women’s official status (Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda 1995; Kazuko Tanaka 1995). Furthermore, stereotypical gender constructions are significantly implicated in the process of Western influence itself. Western nations have historically justified their imperialist aggression by defining themselves as liberators of non-Western women from the particularly severe oppression of “their” men, and Japan has certainly not been excluded from such rhetoric (Akira Iriye 1967). Inversely, charges of Western manipulation have been used against Japanese women struggling to redefine gender roles. The Japanese feminist movement has been dismissed by the Japanese media as just another fashion from the West (Kazuko Tanaka 1995), even though it is “quite distinct from similar movements in other countries” (Mioko Fujieda and Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow 1995: 159). In other

Readers' interpretations of visual and verbal narratives of a National Geographic story on Saudi Arabia

Using a National Geographic magazine story on Saudi Arabia as a case study, this article examines how pictures and text in a photo story interact to produce meaning for readers. Specifically, it investigates how participants’ perceptions of Saudi Arabia differed when they were exposed only to the text of the article, only to its photographs, or to both text and photographs, using focus group interviews. Participants exposed only to the text saw it as a cohesive narrative. The ‘photos only’ groups tended to jump between photographs without a linear pattern. The ‘text and photos’ groups perceived the photo story as composed of two competing narratives, which made them uncomfortable. In addition, readers exposed to the visual narrative — even when combined with the textual narrative — expressed more stereotypical views of the subjects than those exposed to the text only. The photographs appeared to detract from the text’s ability to generate a more complex understanding of Saudi culture.

On the Possibility of Communicating: Feminism and Social Position

This article sorts out some of the theoretical dilemmas related to issues of identity, difference, and location that have arisen on the horizon of critical and cultural communication studies in the past few decades. Tracing the origins of the belief in the epistemological significance of social position to early criticaltheorists, it explores the further development of this concept in feminist scholarship. Using the feminist struggle with standpoint epistemology as an example, this work explores some of the dangers associated with the assumption that membership in a subordinated group affords one privileged knowledge about oppression, and critically examines the practical difficulties of applying a theoretically sophisticated understanding of the role of social position to politically grounded research.

The Men and Women of non-no: Gender, Race, and Hybridity in Two Japanese Magazines

This article compares the hybrid constructions of race, gender, and culture offered by two Japanese magazines very similar in nature, although one is targeted at men, the other at women. Locating non-no and Mens non-no within a larger transcultural discourse of commodified cultural representation, this comparison reveals significant differences in the magazines’ constructions. While the magazines’ hybridities may offer opportunities for subversive gestures, their representations of race and gender are ultimately likely to legitimize longstanding power relations, both globally and locally.