Globalization and the emergence of Japanese influence in American popular culture
Creators: name: O'Melia, Gina
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2016

description: The contemporary and prevailing theories that critique globalization often focus on a central concept of the United States having an exceptional and pivotal role in the mechanisms of globalization.   However, while Hegemonic Imperialism scholarship focuses on the concept of the United States exporting its cultural wares in order to transform foreign cultures into a homogeneous one, the fact that the United States’ own popular culture is being transformed by globalization is often overlooked.  As better predicted by theories outside of this hegemonic imperialistic lens, American popular culture has been and continues to be influenced by Japanese cultural products.    This study sought to explore this influence through a series of approaches.  The first was through a brief survey of the shared American-Japanese historical and media relationships.  Saturday Morning cartoons were then analyzed through both a quantitative content analysis and qualitative genre based analysis from 1987-2012. After establishing what changes occurred during this time period, cartoons outside of Saturday Morning, televisions programs meant for adults and Hollywood blockbuster films were analyzed to see how the changes found on Saturday Morning spread to other American media.    What this study found was that Japanese influence became dominant in American children’s programming and is becoming influential in other forms of American popular media.  This transition was facilitated by a gradual inclusion of Japanese influences on Saturday Morning beginning in 1993, allowing American children to become accustomed to Japanese programs due to them being comparable and resonating with other popular programs at the time of their debuts.  By 2012, the Saturday Morning schedule presented only Japanese content and traditional American cartoons became displaced.   Due to this integrated Japanese influence, children’s programming has become darker, more complicated and more inclusive than traditional American cartoons.  Further, the Japanese conventions dominating children’s programming have begun to appear in primetime television dramas and in Hollywood blockbuster films, demonstrating a pervasive Japanese influence throughout American popular media.  Since as early as 2013, Hollywood films, in particular, have contained an increased trend of including Japanese-influenced conventions. This is especially significant due to the perceived influence of Hollywood films on cultures outside of the United States.      In conducting this study, I hope to firmly establish the idea that the narrative often ascribed to globalization is lacking.  The United States has been influenced and transformed in a similar manner to other nations all over the world in ways that correspond more greatly with hybridity and the expectations of Global Media literature than the assumptions that underlie theories based on American hegemony.  The fact that this is often overlooked is detrimental to a full understanding of the phenomenon of globalization in general.