American politics as a transnational popular narrative : narratological structures of shōnen manga and their cross-cultural readings in Kaiji Kawaguchi's Eagle (1997-2001)

Hernandez Perez, Manuel

Abstract

American cinema and television have been very present in the expansion of Creative industries on a global scale and have become a model for other systems of transnational production. One consequence of their influence is the popularization of content that could, at first sight, be considered "domestic" or originally directed to local audiences. The stories inspired by American politics are well-known examples of this general tendency with great successes in the last years, especially in the television panorama (Scandal, 2012, House of Cards, 2013, Madame Secretary, 2014). Among these themes, the portrait of political campaigns has been quite popular, a genre that has some relationship with the biopic but also shows, not unfrequently, features of thriller and even comedy. The permeability of these narratives in other transnational narratives is a fact that, though certain, is not always easy to explain. My research points to the Japanese entertainment industry and particularly manga industry its main content generator and how this has been interested in American politics. Researchers have highlighted the idiosyncrasy of Japan, its literature and visual arts in the recreation of political narratives inspired by its historical past. However, in opposition to these historical-political approaches, the article will incorporate a narrative theory and structuralism based perspective. Its final objective will be to examine the influence of these political genres and their possible adaptation / domestication to the fictional narratives of the manga, strongly determined by the conditioning factors and the long prescriptive tradition of manga industry. To do this, a transnational and transmedia approach of the different genres mentioned (mainly the political cinema) will be adopted. Finally, as case study, the work of Kaiji Kawaguchi (1948) will be examined, with special attention to Eagle (1997-2001), which narrates the presidential campaign of an American candidate with Asian ethnical background.

Citation

Hernandez Perez, M. (2017, August). American politics as a transnational popular narrative : narratological structures of shōnen manga and their cross-cultural readings in Kaiji Kawaguchi's Eagle (1997-2001). Presented at International Workshop on Reflective Transitions of Politics in Japanese Art, University of East Anglia

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: International Workshop on Reflective Transitions of Politics in Japanese Art
• Conference Location: University of East Anglia
• Start Date: Aug 24, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jun 2, 2021
• Additional Information: Event Type : Workshop