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The World and Japan: Animated Anxiety in a Global Age

作者
John Lance Griffith
Author
摘要

The spread of pop culture productions out from one coumtry across the world is the very expression of globalism. The significance of Japanese anime and manga in America is becoming increasingly appearent; that it is no longer simply a produst for the Japanese market, for the exclusive consumption of its particular culture, means that that it has placed itself within and recognized itself as part of that globalized world. On the one hand, the positioning of anime within the large world has its advantages for its writers and the culture at large, by providing Japan a voice in that world. On the other hand, despite anime's spread acress the world and the potential benefits of globalization, within the narratives of an-ime itself there persists a strain od anxiety and suspicion regarding the prospect of increased economic and culture globalism. In anime's villainous multi-mational corporations and its frequent depiction of a de-humanizing internet (Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain), we see a fear that integration of economy and the melding of culture threatens identity at level of the individual and the nation. This es-say analyzes the ambivalent representation (narratives and images) of globalism in literature (the novel of Haruki Murakami) and also more popular forms of culture such as anime; and it considers both in light of sociologist Niklas Luhmann's system theory, in order to explore how these narratives articulate their anxiety about the impact of the global system on the individual and about the formation of identity in a global age.

Abstract

全球化的表現之一就是通俗文化從一個國家擴散到另一個國家。日本動漫與漫畫在美國的重要性日趨明顯;它不再是僅為日本市場的產,不僅是為此一特定文化的消費,這些事實顯示出它將自身置於一全球化世界之中並且視其自身為此一世界之一部分。一方面來說,動漫自我定位於更大的世界,對於期創作者與其特定文化,有其一定優勢,亦即提供日本在世界的一個發聲地位。但另一方面,儘管動漫在世界上的擴張以及全球化潛在的收穫,在動漫敘本身之內,持續存在著揮之不去的焦慮與疑惑,針對不斷強化的經濟與文化的全球化 。在動漫之中,如邪惡的跨國公司以及常見對於非人質的網路﹝《攻殼機動隊》(Ghost in the shell) 與《玲音》(Serial Experimen Lain)﹞,其中我們看到經濟的統整與文化的匯合對於格人與國家身分的威脅之恐懼。本論文分析針對文學作品(村上春樹的小說)中有關全球化愛恨交織(敘事與意象)的再現,同時亦將論及其他更通俗的形式,如動漫;再者,論文將援引社會學家魯曼(Niklas Luhman)系統理論,以便能夠探討敘事如何能表達對於全球系統在此全球化年代對於他們個人以及其身分形成之衝擊的焦慮。