An Examination of Japanese Anime in Post-Dictatorial Argentina THESIS Presented in Partial Fulf
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Television and Transculturation: An Examination of Japanese Anime in Post-Dictatorial Argentina THESIS Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jonathan Gillett, B.A. Graduate Program in Film Studies The Ohio State University 2019 Master’s Examination Committee: Laura Podalsky, Advisor Margaret Flinn James Genova Copyrighted by Jonathan Gillett 2019 Abstract In this paper I examine an Argentine special-interest magazine dedicated to imported, localized Japanese anime that appeared on broadcast television in Latin America at the turn of the century. In doing so, I focus primarily on the authorial role of its editor, Leandro Oberto, and his role as gatekeeper of an emergent subculture in post-dictatorial Argentina. The entrepreneurial, political, and personal agendas of Oberto at this time are demonstrated by samples of his own articles and letters from the editor, as well as accompanying interviews from Argentine news outlets. Selected letters to the editor are also featured in order to reveal Oberto’s engagement with his readership. In order to explore and explain these complex, mediated interactions and the subculture in which they take place, I utilize established concepts of transculturation as coined by Fernando Ortiz. Emphasizing the transactional component of transculturation in a global marketplace, I draw upon newer methodologies put forth by Elizabeth Kath so as to better account for the profit-driven exchange of culture and ideas that occur through media such as television and the internet rather than face-to-face interactions. In doing so, I demonstrate a previously unused application of transculturation which may also be modeled in comparable circumstances involving other media within different localities. I also provide a complement to the overall history of Argentine cinema as adeptly described by Tamara Falicov, whose work denoting the cultural divide between the middle class and working class as evidenced by viewing habits proved insightful. ii Vita 2009................................................................North Platte High School 2013................................................................B.A. Film Studies, University of Nebraska– Lincoln 2018 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Film Studies, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Film Studies iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Vita ..................................................................................................................................... iii Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Anime and Private Enterprise in Argentina ...................................................... 7 Chapter 3: Patriot or Pariah? Leandro Oberto’s Flirtation with Controversy....................21 Chapter 4: Conclusion........................................................................................................36 References ......................................................................................................................... 44 iv Chapter 1: Introduction To quote Elizabeth Kath, the coinage of the concept of transculturation (transculturación) by Fernando Ortiz circa 1940 “was a significant intervention in that it acknowledged the mutually influential relationships between cultures, and the diverse, nonlinear and multidirectional processes of cultural identity formation” (25). Kath rightly points out that Ortiz’s epiphany—that culture is ephemeral, unstable, and incomplete, constantly in flux and transmuting across both time and space—was “essentially a theory of globalization, long before the intensified and self-consciously global era in which we now live” (26). Understood in this sense, a study consisting of or employing transculturation is inevitably an examination of continuously renegotiated relationships in which any subject of scrutiny is destined to be a proverbial moving target. Such studies, therefore, are problematic: as Catherine Poupeney-Hart puts it, “Ortiz presents us with the destabilizing measure of a process that is to be perceived as an effervescence, as a boiling process, but not as the achievement of synthesis” (43). Transculturation itself, therefore, ought to be seen as an eternally unfinished process rather than an achievable end goal. Bearing this in mind, transculturation becomes useful as a lens through which various cultural collisions—for instance, those intrinsic to transnational, globalized television—can be observed and articulated. 1 Latin America has long been viewed as fertile ground for discourse rooted in concepts of mestizaje, or mixture, as it relates to miscegenation and cultural fusion in colonialist contexts. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, interrelated theories of cross-cultural exchanges expressed in a multitude of ways—with words like creolization, heterogeneity, hybridity, and syncretism, as well as transculturation—have been further abstracted, emerging in or being reintroduced to various academic lexicons to describe, defend, or even repudiate certain aspects of globalism. Without exhuming or rehashing all of these ongoing debates, it can be said that the technology-driven exchange of cultures around the world at the turn of the century has occurred largely through the medium of television; additionally, in the case of Latin American countries, preexisting conceptual frameworks for reconciling clashing, competing, or even contradictory identities have offered a firm foundation upon which to build contemporary paradigms relating to selfhood at local, national, and international levels. Latin America is thus an ideal locus for studying transculturación not simply because tribute is owed to the region that gave birth to the concept, but in part due to its historical significance as the progenitor of Third Cinema (Tercer Cine) which aesthetically and politically contrasted with Hollywood commercialism. While neither the historical specificity nor the noncommercial impetus of this movement constitutes the present focus, Latin America itself provides continued opportunity to subvert or problematize the Hollywood hegemony in order to foster new or neglected theoretical frameworks in a similar style as has been attempted (and achieved) in the past. Yet even in such cases, whenever topics of cultural influence have been explored in terms of more 2 recent visual media it has often been according to a familiar paradigm of Anglo- American dominance bearing down on decidedly weaker indigenous cultures or acquiescent Hispanic countries. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam call for more comparative investigations that exclude the United States altogether in order to counteract its ubiquity within film and media studies: In a globalized world, it is perhaps time to think in terms of comparative and transnational multiculturalism, of relational studies that do not always pass through the putative center. Such studies would go a long way toward deprovincializing a discussion that has too often focused only on United Statesian issues and Hollywood representations. (4) Such is the spirit in which I initially approached my research. But while a Latin American location seemed desirable as a setting for an application of transculturation, I would potentially be retreading the very conceptual ground Shohat and Stram wished to avoid since most of these countries are importers of American-produced film and television. Though it is arguably the world’s most influential economic and cultural force in terms of entertainment, the United States is not the only nation aggressively exporting its pop culture: in the latter half of the twentieth century, Japan has pushed its own televised animations across the globe, including the Hispanophone world. As business-minded entities quickly discovered, the limited-animation techniques often utilized in Japanese animated productions have proven to be both cost-effective and conducive to localized dubbing into other regional languages. Known to importing countries as anime (sometimes transcribed as ánime or animé in Spanish-speaking communities), which 3 stems from the Japanese loanword for animation in general, Japanese animation has come to be broadly recognized both aesthetically and generically as often as it has been appreciated culturally or nationalistically. This is not to say that anime is a uniform medium, style, or genre; as Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano outlines, the term anime as a container is itself problematic when examined more closely. The television shows, feature-length films, and direct-to-video OVA (original video animation) formats which constitute anime are often drastically different from one another, and analyses of any given production should include factors like temporality and locality: Most problematically, equating anime with Japanese animation reifies it as a uniquely Japanese cultural product tied to an imagined pictorial tradition rather than the industrial and economic contexts of late 1970s TV. Indeed, many of the discourses surrounding anime tend to conflate historical contexts, collapsing broad cultural movements to reveal the Japanese national traits underpinning anime texts. (244) Indeed, the perceived homogeneity