The regionalization of television and China

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Notes

^1. I use the phrase “Chinese languages pop culture” instead of the more conventional term “transnational Chinese popular culture” for several reasons. First, pop culture designates specifically profit-driven, commercially-produced cultural products for mass entertainment, whereas “popular culture” signifies a much larger cultural sphere of everyday cultural practices of the masses. Second, “Chinese languages pop culture” makes explicit the multilingual character of these texts, which is glossed over by references to “Chinese popular culture”. Third, pop culture can be produced in different Chinese languages in a single location; for example, Cantonese, Mandarin, and (in the 1950s) Hokkien films were produced in Hong Kong. Finally, I avoid the term “transnational” since it points to the circulation of products but not the pop culture in itself.

^2. Earlier Japanese influence had been in films in the 1960s (Yau, 2005).

^3. http://www.bunka.go.jp/english/index.html

^4. Conversely, as Iwabuchi points out, instead of an Asia desiring Japan, this situation is more symptomatic of Japanese nationalists' desire to “return” to embrace Asia, a desire that has been suppressed as Japan became culturally marginalized after being defeated in 1945 during the Pacific War (Iwabuchi, 2001).

^5. Hu Jintao's speech to the 17th Communist Party Congress, Beijing, 15-21 October, 2007.