Transmedia storytelling and transmediated bodies in Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)

Asian Cinema ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
Kukhee Choo
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Racial Performance ◽  
Live Action ◽  
Globally Distributed

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist) (2001, Hagaren in short) is a Japanese comic book franchise that not only expanded into a larger supersystem through its transmedia storytelling on multimedia platforms, but also through the global fandom of cosplay (the Japanese term for costume play), a form of popular culture that is heavily promoted by the Japanese government’s Cool Japan policy. Hagaren is set in an unidentifiable European landscape, a common depiction in many Japanese manga and anime, yet, in the 2017 live-action film that was globally distributed on Netflix, audiences witness a full Japanese cast performing European characters. This cross-racial performance, or yellow washing, challenges the border-crossing narrative and global viewership of the Hagaren’s manga and anime franchise. By examining how Hagaren’s supersystem developed out of the interplays of media industries, fan culture and broader governmental policies, this article aims to excavate the multifaceted politics of not only cross-border consumer identities, but also cross-racial performances propagated by the transmediation of Japanese popular culture on the global stage.

scholarly journals The Hybridization Of The Noir Genre As Expression Of Ethnic Heritage: Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Anna Marta Marini
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
American Film ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Film Genres ◽  
Fundamental Reference

In his ongoing comic book series Sonambulo, versatile artist Rafael Navarro has been able to channel his Mexican American cultural heritage by creating a unique blend of narrative genres. In his work, Navarro exploits classic American film noir as a fundamental reference and hybridizes it with elements distinctive to a shared Chicanx heritage, such as lucha libre cinema, horror folktales, and border-crossing metaphors; the construction of an oneiric dimension helps bring the narrative together, marking it with a peculiar ambiance. Drawing heavily on a diverse range of film genres, as well as ethnocultural pivots, this comic book series carves out a definite space in the panorama of the Mexican American production of popular culture, adding a powerful voice to the expression of US ethnic minorities.

Ghosts in Their Shells

Persons ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 326-333
Author(s):  
Sylvia Shin Huey Chong
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Action Film ◽  
A Site ◽  
Live Action ◽  
Representational Form

Science fiction has often been a site for interrogating the possibilities and limits of the human, through such stock inventions as robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence. This reflection focuses on three versions of a single science fiction story, Ghost in the Shell, all involving a different medium of expression: comic book, animation, and live-action film. Not only does this story, about a cyborg military agent battling a disembodied artificial intelligence villain, raise the usual questions about humanness as embodiment, memory, self-consciousness, and political rights, but the three different versions reveal the various ways that representational form also imbues its characters with humanness, through movement, dialogue, psychological depth, historical background, and visual richness.

scholarly journals Appropriation, Rewriting and Alienation: A Postcolonial Critique of Mulan

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Cheng Yali ◽  
Chen Kaiju
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
The Other ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Cultural Industry ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Live Action ◽  
Target Culture

Released in September, 2020, Mulan, a live-action film starring Liu Yifei, was adapted by Disney from the Ballad of Mulan[1]. The film was produced from its animated version Mulan (1998) which hit global box office amounting to 304 million with marvelous reputation. However, the live-action movie Mulan did not continue the brilliant results of the previous work. Instead, Mulan (2020) disappointed most Chinese audience[2] because historical facts and cultural values about Mulan were excessively appropriated, rewritten and alienated. Applying theories of Postcolonialism, this essay analyzes the live-action movie Mulan revealing the ethnocentric abuse of the target culture as the “other”: arbitrary appropriation, rewriting and distortion of its historical events and traditional values. Also, theories of popular culture will be used to analyze the cultural industry strategies applied in this unsuccessful film.[1]the Ballad of Mulan (Chinese: 木兰辞; pinyin: Mù lán cí), a famous folk song of the Northern Dynasty in China.[2]The investment in the live-action film Mulan is as high as US$200 million (about 1.4 billion RMB). As a result, the global box office is less than US$70 million. Also, the score in Douban is only 5.0 points. (the full mark is 10.)Sources:https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20201102A0J6EO00,https://movie.douban.com/subject/26357307/

Working at the Crossroads: A Guide for Border Crossing

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Mckiernan-González
Keyword(s):  
American Studies ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Keynote Address ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Academic Labor ◽  
Boyle Heights ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

This article discusses the impact of George J. Sánchez’s keynote address “Working at the Crossroads” in making collaborative cross-border projects more academically legitimate in American studies and associated disciplines. The keynote and his ongoing administrative labor model the power of public collaborative work to shift research narratives. “Working at the Crossroads” demonstrated how historians can be involved—as historians—in a variety of social movements, and pointed to the ways these interactions can, and maybe should, shape research trajectories. It provided a key blueprint and key examples for doing historically informed Latina/o studies scholarship with people working outside the university. Judging by the success of Sánchez’s work with Boyle Heights and East LA, projects need to establish multiple entry points, reward participants at all levels, and connect people across generations.I then discuss how I sought to emulate George Sánchez’s proposals in my own work through partnering with labor organizations, developing biographical public art projects with students, and archiving social and cultural histories. His keynote address made a back-and-forth movement between home communities and academic labor seem easy and professionally rewarding as well as politically necessary, especially in public universities. 

Visual affect in films: a semiotic approach

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (239) ◽  
pp. 99-124
Author(s):  
Yi Jing
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Meaning Potential ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Live Action

Abstract This study investigates affective meanings expressed in facial expressions and bodily gestures from a semiotic perspective. Particularly, the study focuses on disentangling relations of affective meanings and exploring the meaning potential of facial expressions and bodily gestures. Based on the analysis of over three hundred screenshots from two films (one animation and one live-action film), this study proposes a system of visual affect, as well as a system of visual resources involved in the expression of visual affect. The system of visual affect makes a further step in the investigation of affective meanings afforded by facial expressions and bodily gestures, and can provide methodological insights into the examination of affective meanings expressed visually. The system of visual resources provides a more meaning-motivated framework for systematic tracking of the visual resources, which may be applied to the analysis of other visual media apart from films.

scholarly journals Borders and resilience: Asylum seeker reception at the securitized Finnish-Swedish border

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110000
Author(s):  
Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
And Control ◽  
Cross Border Cooperation

The past decade has witnessed a shift from “open borders” policies and cross-border cooperation towards heightened border securitization and the building of border walls. In the EU context, since the migration influx of 2015–2016, many Member States have retained the re-instituted Schengen border controls intended to be temporary. Such heightened border securitization has produced high levels of anxiety among various populations and increased societal polarization. This paper focuses on the processes underpinning asylum seeker reception at the re-bordered Finnish-Swedish border and in the Finnish border town of Tornio. The asylum process is studied from the perspective of local authorities and NGO actors active in the everyday reception, care and control practices in the border securitization environment enacted in Tornio in 2015. The analysis highlights how the ‘success’ of everyday reception work at the Tornio border crossing was bound to the historical openness of the border and pre-existing relations of trust and cooperation between different actors at various scales. The paper thus provides a new understanding of the significance of borders and border crossings from the perspective of resilience and highlights some of the paradoxes of border securitization. It notes that although border closures are commonly envisioned as a direct response to forced migration, the everyday practices and capacities of the asylum reception at the Finnish-Swedish border are themselves highly dependent on pre-existing border crossings and cross-border cooperation.

scholarly journals Repackaging Popular Culture: Commentary and Critique in Community

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tully Barnett ◽  
Ben Kooyman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nerd Culture ◽  
The Big Bang

Contemporaneous with the collision of Science Fiction/Fantasy with the mainstream evident in the success of nerd culture show The Big Bang Theory (2007- ), Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012), the growth of Comic Con audiences and so on, Dan Harmon developed Community (2009- ), a sitcom depicting a study group at a second-rate community college. The show exemplifies a recent gravitation away from the multi-camera, laugh-track driven sitcom formula, alternating between “straight” episodes dealing with traditional sitcom premises, though always inflected with self-aware acumen, and more ambitious, unconventional episodes featuring outlandish premises, often infused with the trappings of genre and geek fandom. The show presents apocalyptic action- and Western-style paintball wars, epidemics that evoke zombie cinema, a Yahtzee game that spirals into alternate timelines, and a high-stakes Dungeons and Dragons game that blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.  Both the straight and the unconventional episodes ultimately serve the same purpose, examining the intersection between nerd culture and everyday life. This essay discusses a number of episodes which exemplify Community’s intersections between everyday life and popular culture, charting the show’s evolving preoccupation with pop culture and intertwining of reality and fantasy. It discusses Community’s self-referentiality as a sitcom, its ambitious and elaborate recreations of and homages to pop culture artefacts, and its explicit gravitation towards Science Fiction and Telefantasy in its third season. Through its various homages to popular culture and ongoing depiction of fan culture, we posit that the show is both a work of fandom and a work about fandom, advocating for the pivotal role of fandom in everyday life and for popular culture as a tool for interpreting, comprehending and navigating life. In this respect, the show contributes to the long history of both the sitcom and Telefantasy as vehicles for cultural commentary.

Aestheticizing Violence Within Transmedia Storytelling Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 484-500
Author(s):  
Ferhat Zengin ◽  
Bahadır Kapır
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Social ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
V For Vendetta

In this study, V for Vendetta (2006) directed by James McTeigue, is analysed based on Henry Jenkins's transmedia storytelling terms. Henry Jenkins defines re-creating a story with different media tools as “transmedia storytelling” and evaluates this new storytelling form that emerged in the digital age as a new aesthetic linked with active participation that creates new demands on the consumer. V for Vendetta with a large fan audience has a story that became the symbol of the social movements that emerged against totalitarian regimes created in the modern state and social organisation. The story V for Vendetta that was first published at the beginning of 1980s as a dystopic comic book prioritising violence and terror experienced changes in the story with the effect of different narrative media. Within this context, this study with Henry Jenkins's transmedia storytelling theoretical basis analyzes how the main narrative elements of the story such as terror, violence, fear, and freedom are reflected in the V for Vendetta movie by using semiotic methods.

Linguistic Chaos

queerqueen ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 87-115
Author(s):  
Claire Maree
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Television Broadcasting ◽  
The World ◽  
Animated Characters ◽  
Media Mix ◽  
Live Action ◽  
The Voice

Chapter 4 illustrates how, as an enregistered style, queerqueen talk is co-opted into popular culture. It analyzes the Mori Mori Cooking segment of the animated series The World of GOLDEN EGGS (Plus Heads, Inc.) which is hosted by Rose and Mary—animated characters and mascot-like queen-personalities who traverse into the hyper-connected world of media-mix products. The sonic qualities of the okama (fag)-twins as embodied by twins Osugi and Peeco in the late 1970s, and the transformational powers of the queen-personality emanating from makeover genres of the early 2000s are laminated onto the voice performances of Rose and Mary. The highly stylized ventriloquism of queerqueen talk is emblematic of the chaotic language that permeates the Golden Eggs series. Within its multi-platform incarnations, the queerqueen mascot functions as a conduit of knowledge and culinary skills who looks onto the “real world live action” of cooking yet consistently flaunts the dictates of contemporary television broadcasting.

From Claude Bernard to the Batcave and beyond: using Batman as a hook for physiology education

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Paul Zehr
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
General Public ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Scientific Concepts ◽  
Exercise Science ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Claude Bernard

Communicating physiology to the general public and popularizing science can be tremendously rewarding activities. Providing relevant and compelling points of linkage, however, between the scientific experiences and the interests of the general public can be challenging. One avenue for popularizing science is to link scientific concepts to images, personalities, and icons in popular culture. Currently, comic book superhero movies and television shows are extremely popular, and Batman was used as the vehicle for popularizing concepts of exercise science, neuroscience, and physiology in my recent book, Becoming Batman: the Possibility of a Superhero. The objective of this book was to bring scientific understanding to the broader public by using the physical image and impression everyone has of Batman and his abilities and then connecting this to the underlying science. The objective of this article is to share some of the details of the process and the positive and negative outcomes of using such an approach with other academics who may be interested in similar activities. It is my goal that by sharing this experience I may stimulate like-minded readers to initiate their own similar projects and to also be emboldened to try and integrate popular culture touchstones in their own teaching practice.

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