GLOBALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF JAPANESE INFLUENCE IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE By GINA CELESTE O’MELIA A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Global Affairs Written under the direction of R. Brian Ferguson And approved by ________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Newark, New Jersey May 2016 © 2016 Gina O’Melia All Rights Reserved Images appearing in “Appendix A” belong to their respective copyright holders and are being used under the precepts of Fair Use found in Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Globalization and the Emergence of Japanese Influence in American Popular Culture By Gina Celeste O’Melia Dissertation Director: Dr. R. Brian Ferguson The contemporary and prevailing theories that critique globalization often focus on a central concept of the United States having an exceptional and pivotal role in the mechanisms of globalization. However, while Hegemonic Imperialism scholarship focuses on the concept of the United States exporting its cultural wares in order to transform foreign cultures into a homogeneous one, the fact that the United States’ own popular culture is being transformed by globalization is often overlooked. As better predicted by theories outside of this hegemonic imperialistic lens, American popular culture has been and continues to be influenced by Japanese cultural products. This study sought to explore this influence through a series of approaches. The first was through a brief survey of the shared American-Japanese historical and media relationships. Saturday Morning cartoons were then analyzed through both a quantitative content analysis and qualitative genre based analysis from 1987-2012. After establishing what changes occurred during this time period, cartoons outside of Saturday Morning, televisions programs meant for adults and Hollywood blockbuster films were analyzed to see how the changes found on Saturday Morning spread to other American media. ii What this study found was that Japanese influence became dominant in American children’s programming and is becoming influential in other forms of American popular media. This transition was facilitated by a gradual inclusion of Japanese influences on Saturday Morning beginning in 1993, allowing American children to become accustomed to Japanese programs due to them being comparable and resonating with other popular programs at the time of their debuts. By 2012, the Saturday Morning schedule presented only Japanese content and traditional American cartoons became displaced. Due to this integrated Japanese influence, children’s programming has become darker, more complicated and more inclusive than traditional American cartoons. Further, the Japanese conventions dominating children’s programming have begun to appear in primetime television dramas and in Hollywood blockbuster films, demonstrating a pervasive Japanese influence throughout American popular media. Since as early as 2013, Hollywood films, in particular, have contained an increased trend of including Japanese-influenced conventions. This is especially significant due to the perceived influence of Hollywood films on cultures outside of the United States. In conducting this study, I hope to firmly establish the idea that the narrative often ascribed to globalization is lacking. The United States has been influenced and transformed in a similar manner to other nations all over the world in ways that correspond more greatly with hybridity and the expectations of Global Media literature than the assumptions that underlie theories based on American hegemony. The fact that this is often overlooked is detrimental to a full understanding of the phenomenon of globalization in general. iii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge first, Dr. R. Brian Ferguson, my dissertation director, and thank him for allowing me to tackle a concept like globalization being demonstrated through cartoons and films and guiding me patiently along the way. I would also like to acknowledge my committee, Dr. Susan Carruthers, Dr. David Greenberg and Dr. Fabienne Darling-Wolf for approving my academic endeavor and for all their advice that made this possible. Third, I would like to acknowledge and thank Timothy J. Applegate, Michael E. Rovner and Abigail Levinson for their support, along with my family as I researched and prepared this dissertation. Lastly, I would like the thank Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth Ann, Jude, Miriam and Mark, as well as anyone I may have forgotten, for all their spiritual support. iv Table of Contents - Abstract of the Dissertation ii - Acknowledgements iv - Chapter One: Introduction to the Topic, Histories & Literature 1 - The Historical Relationship Between the United States & Japan 6 - Japanese-American Media Exchange History 15 - Tetsuwan Atomu to Robocop – Inspiration Traded Back and Forth 21 - Literature Review 25 - Chapter Two: Methodology – How will this study be conducted? 53 - Technical Summary 54 - The analysis of “children's programming” 54 - Detailed Methodological Approach 56 - Chapter Three: Saturday Morning Conquered – How It Occurred 70 - The Nature of Saturday Morning Before Japanese Imports 72 - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Stage One – A Slow Beginning 76 - The FOX/WB Rivalry: How Japanese Content Would Multiply 81 - Pokémon: Stage Two – Both Channels Would Use Anime as a Battlefield 84 - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Stage Three – No Turning Back 89 - FOX/WB Rivalry and 4Kids Entertainment 91 - Outside the FOX/WB Rivalry – How the other networks assisted in the Japanese Conquest 96 - The Trends Mathematically Explored 104 - Chapter Four: Saturday Morning’s Transformation in Review 110 - Foundation: What Saturday Morning Looked Like Before Japanese Imports 111 - Looney Tunes 112 - Garfield and Friends 115 - The Real Ghostbusters 118 - Saved By the Bell 123 - Conclusions and Conventions Based on Looney Tunes, Garfield & Friends, The Real Ghostbusters and Saved by the Bell Together 126 - The Emergence of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 128 - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 128 - Big Bad Beetleborgs 137 - Superman: The Animated Series 141 v - Pokémon: “Gotta Catch All the Success” 148 - Pokémon 148 - Jackie Chan Adventures 154 - Digimon 160 - Yu-Gi-Oh!: The King of Games becomes the Conquering King of Saturday Morning 165 - Yu-Gi-Oh! 166 - Dragonball Z Kai 170 - Teen Titans 176 - 2012: Total Conquest 182 - Chapter Five: Japanese Influence Spreads Outside Saturday Morning 185 - Cartoons Outside of the Saturday Morning Schedule 187 - Anime Outside of the Saturday Morning Schedule 187 - Overt References in Other Cartoons 191 - “American Anime” 196 - Not Limited to Cartoons –American Prime Time Television 199 - Hollywood 210 - How does all of this relate to theory? 246 - Chapter Six: Conclusions 250 - The Legacy of Saturday Morning, Its Fate and the Japanese Spread Beyond It 252 - A Final Return to the Literature 263 - Final Thoughts 272 - References 274 - Appendix A: Visual Comparisons 285 - Image 3.1 286 - Image 3.2 288 - Image 3.3 290 - Image 3.4 292 - Image 3.5 294 - Image 3.6 296 - Image 3.7 298 - Image 3.8 300 - Image 3.9 302 - Image 3.10 303 - Image 4.1 305 - Image 4.2 306 - Image 4.3 307 - Image 4.4 308 - Image 4.5 310 - Image 4.6 311 - Image 4.7 313 vi - Image 4.8 314 - Image 5.1 316 - Image 5.2 317 - Visual References 318 - Appendix B 320 - Table 1.B: Broad Coding Table 321 - Table 2.B : Detailed Coding for FOX and WB 341 - Table 3.B : New Acquisition Trend Average Percentages Per Year (All Channels) 359 - Table 4.B : New Acquisition Trend Average Percentages Per Year (FOX & WB) with Japanese Percent Airing Per Year 363 - Table 5.B : Statistically Outputs Based on Appendix B: Table 4.B 366 - Table 6.B : Charts Based on Appendix B: Table 3.B & 4.B 373 - Appendix B Notes 381 - Works Referenced to Determine Inclusion in Dataset 385 - Bibliography 394 - Visual Bibliography for Appendix A 414 vii 1 Chapter One: Introduction to the Topic, Histories & Literature There is a divide in globalization theory amongst academic scholars. One prevailing theory is that globalization is a force of transformation wielded by the United States against indigenous cultures, entertainment, religions and businesses across the globe. In this context, if globalization is allowed to continue uncontested, the general assumption follows that the globe will become homogeneous with the United States as its model and all other identities will be subsumed. Jean-Pierre Lehmann explained in 1988 that “Modern political theory has generally accepted the premise … that as nations industrialized and hence their economics became more similar, their superstructure, or cultures, would equally become more similar: they would in fact converge.”1 Almost thirty years later, this cultural convergence is still often taken for granted to be Western. It is these assumptions that give rise to many globalization critiques that assert that the United States is acting as an imperialist and hegemonic ruler over the global system. These critiques about American hegemony and influence over the “neoliberal” economic model are major influences in globalization literature. The assumption that the United States is an imperialist hegemon over the global system creates an incomplete picture of globalization, one that scholars