Unintentional Cooperation

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-186
Author(s):  
Terry Kita
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Government Response ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Children

Abstract This study of the Friendship Doll Mission of 1926-1927 shows how, in the United States, the Japanese doll was part of the inescapable image of a kimono-clad little Japanese girl, and functioned to further existing anti-Japanese implications of that image. It further shows how an American popular-culture mission to improve relations with Japan by having American children exchange dolls with Japanese children, created an official, Japanese government response that presented the United States with Japanese dolls that were objects of Fine Art. Despite the different views of the Doll Mission in Japan and the US, an interchange resulted that, now nearly a century later, continues. The article uses Japanese dolls to demonstrate how genuine cultural exchange can occur even when the methods, approaches, and the very intent of those involved in it differ, in order to highlight the importance of considering both perspectives to understand phenomena such as Japonisme.

Anti-Americanism in Retreat: Jack Lang, Cultural Imperialism, and the Anti-Anti-Americans

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Kuisel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
American Film ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Movie Star

This chapter details the rise of anti-Americanism in France, in particular French socialist minister of culture Jack Lang's attack against American popular culture. Lang began by refusing to attend the American film festival at Deauville in September 1981; several months later he gave a notorious address denouncing American cultural imperialism at a UNESCO conference in Mexico City; and then he tried to organize a global “crusade” to combat cultural imports from the United States. Lang was a flamboyant young politician whose movie-star good looks, iconic pink jacket, dramatic initiatives, and hyperactive ways won him both admiration and ridicule. He presided over the Ministry of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1993.

The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Naomi Iwamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Tibetan Buddhism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Image ◽  
Dalai Lama ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
History Of

This chapter analyzes the history of representation that has contributed to the current image of the Dalai Lama. We “know” the Dalai Lama, not simply because of the fact that we may understand his views and admire his actions, but also because we are familiar with the particular role he plays in the popular consciousness of the United States—the type of icon he has become—the icon of the “Oriental Monk.” To get a sense of what makes the Dalai Lama so popular, we need to get a sense of the history of this icon and how it has been used to express and manage our sense of Asian religions. The chapter asks: How did the Dalai Lama come to represent all that he does for Americans? Indeed, what exactly does he represent? How have we come to “know” him? Is our ability to embrace someone and something (Tibetan Buddhism) once considered so foreign, anything other than a testimony to a newfound openness and progressive understanding?

US-Cuban Musical Relations before and after the Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-29
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Storhoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
The Us ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Trade Embargo ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter One provides the history and context for the rest of the book. The United States and Cuba had a vibrant musical relationship before the Cuban Revolution. When the United States instituted a trade embargo and travel ban on Cuba, musicians continued to seek opportunities for cultural exchange and pushed the boundaries of what travel policies permitted. The chapter outlines how the US-Cuban relationship has changed under various US Presidents, and how musical exchanges have been both stifled and briefly sanctioned under different administrations.

scholarly journals Picturing an Impossible American: Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Photographic Transfers in Portals (2016)

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Zelt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
The Us

Abstract This article considers artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s use of photographic transfers and popular culture in her 2016 painting “Portals” to craft an artwork specific to her experience across multiple points of social identification in the United States and Nigeria. Through close reading and the study of Crosby’s formal and conceptual strategies, Zelt investigates how varying degrees of recognition work through photographic references. “Portals” contests assimilationist definitions of American identity in favor of a representation which is multiplicitous, operating across geographies. By juxtaposing images from different times, in different directions, Crosby constructs “contact zones” and provokes a mode of looking that reflects a feeling dislocation from the country in which she stands, the United States, and the country with which she also identifies, Nigeria. After a brief introduction to the artist and her relationship to Nigerian national politics, the article explores how distance and recognition work through image references to express a particular form of transnational identity, followed by an examination of uses of popular culture references to engage with blackness and an interdependent “Nigerian-ness” and “American-ness.” It concludes by contextualizing the painting’s display amid waves of amplified nativist purity in the US.

The Biblical Theme of Covenant and American Popular Culture from Colonial Times to Comic Books

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-182
Author(s):  
Terry R. Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Christian Nationalism

American civil religion incorporates a nostalgic version of biblical Israel’s covenant with their patron deity, Yahweh, imagining the United States as a new Israel. This new myth reflects early Puritan hope for a new foray into a new wilderness of promise, while also promoting a romantic notion of the providential founding of the United States, national innocence, and national purpose, upholding an ideal of pure democracy and divine favor for establishing it universally. This form of Christian nationalism has a tendency toward a new form of imperialism in the modern era that is heavily supported (at least subconsciously) by a vast array of popular culture products. Yet some pop culture media (including comic books) occasionally call into question the concept of human beings living in a covenant relationship with a divine creator, as well as the validity of America’s status as a divinely chosen and divinely guided nation.

The Inclusion Solution? The Use of Blackface in Jordan Peele’s "Get Out"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Toka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Peculiar Form ◽  
The Us ◽  
Black Bodies

Jordan Peele’s 2017 social thriller Get Out depicts a peculiar form of body swap resulting from the uncanny desires of the Armitage family to seize captured black bodies and use them as carriers of their white minds. This paper offers a reading of the movie’s disturbing plot through the lens of the origins and cultural significance of blackface. For the sake of argument, in this article blackface is to be understood as a cultural phenomenon encompassing the symbolic role of black people basic to the US society, which articulates the ambiguity of celebration and exploitation of blackness in American popular culture. This article draws on the theoretical framework of blackface developed by Lott, Rogin, Ellison, and Gubar, in order to explore the Get Out’s complex commentary on the twenty-first century race relations in the United States. As a result, this paper turns the spotlight on the mechanisms of racist thinking in the United States, by showing the movie’s use of the apparatus underpinning blackface.

Blackness, Jazz, and Globalization

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Music ◽  
Race Politics ◽  
Pan African ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Over Time

The globalization of jazz was also the globalization of black US popular culture. This essay discloses, and provides a model for, the ambiguous dynamics of popular music migrations and the race politics that frame them. In diasporic destinations, those politics are generated by cultural histories very different from that of the United States, and which also exhibit their own synchronic and diachronic heterogeneities, thus introducing distinctive local complexities. In the context of the black-centered jazz canon, these circumstances have produced regional jazz narratives that are derived from the US model, but with often radically different inflections from place to place, and over time. Apart from documenting the perennial ubiquity of the blackness/jazz nexus, the study identifies a broad historical trajectory, in which the focus shifted from African American blackness to a pan-African model that anticipated the World Music phenomenon.

The Incidence of Pediatric Tracheostomy and Its Association Among Black Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 019459982094701
Author(s):  
Clarice Brown ◽  
Gopi B. Shah ◽  
Ron B. Mitchell ◽  
Felicity Lenes-Voit ◽  
Romaine F. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Children ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Hospital ◽  
Principal Diagnosis ◽  
Laryngeal Stenosis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Extended Length ◽  
American Children ◽  
Inpatient Database

Objective In 2012, Black or African American children constituted 21% of pediatric tracheostomies while representing approximately 15% of the US population. It is unclear if this discrepancy is due to differences in associated diagnoses. This study aimed to analyze the incidence of pediatric tracheostomy in the United States from 2003 to 2016 and to determine the odds of placement among Black children when compared with other children. Study Design Retrospective. Setting Academic hospital. Subjects and Methods We used the 2003 to 2016 Kid Inpatient Database to determine the incidence of pediatric tracheostomy in the United States and determine the odds of tracheostomy placement in Black children when compared with other children. Results A total of 26,034 pediatric tracheostomies were performed between 2003 and 2016, among which, 21% were Black children. The median age was 7 years (interquartile range [IQR] = 0 to 17); 43% were ≤2 years old, and 62% were male. The most common principal diagnosis was respiratory failure (72%). When compared with other children, Black children were more likely to undergo tracheostomy (odds ratio [OR] = 1.2; 95% CI, 1.1-1.3), which increased among children younger than 2 years old (OR = 1.5; 95% CI, 1.4-1.5). Black children with tracheostomies were also more likely to be diagnosed with laryngeal stenosis and bronchopulmonary dysplasia and to have an extended length of stay ( P < .001). Conclusion Black children are 1.2 times more likely to undergo tracheostomy in the United States compared with other children. Further investigation is warranted to evaluate if there are underlying anatomical, environmental, or psychosocial factors that contribute to this discrepancy.

Vietnamese Are Not Genetically Short

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 76 (6) ◽  
pp. 1024-1024
Author(s):  
AMOS S. DEINARD
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Growth Curves ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Commentary ◽  
American Children

To the Editor.— Dr Stickler, in a recent commentary (Pediatrics 1984;74:559), mentions as an example of genetic short stature the child of a Vietnamese refugee. My experience during the past 5 years with the Vietnamese as well as the other Southeast Asian groups (lowland Lao, Hmong, and Cambodian) who have immigrated to the United States since 1979 suggests that their growth may be no different from that of post-World War II Japanese children, ie, with good maternal and postnatal medical care and nutrition, children will grow at levels comparable to American children on whom the growth curves were normed.

Danny Almonte: Discursive Construction(s) of (Im)migrant Citizenship in Neoliberal America

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan King-White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Little League

In this project I will trace former Little League Baseball star, Danny Almonte’s, celebrity identity and flexible citizenship with particular regard to the way that he has been used as both an exemplary Dominican immigrant and later a cautionary tale. As such this critical biography of Almonte’s rise and fall in American popular culture—informed by Henry Giroux’s extensive theorizing on youth culture, Ong’s concept of flexible citizenship, and Steven Jackson’s understanding of “twisting”—will critically interrogate the mediated discourses used to describe, define, and make Almonte into a symbol of a (stereo)typical Dominican male. In accordance with contemporaneous hyper-conservative and neoliberal rhetoric pervasive throughout the United States, I posit the notion that Almonte’s contested celebrity was formulated within the popular media as the embodiment of the minority “assault” on white privilege.

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