International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
The Americanization of Pop Culture in Asia?
Allen CHUN
Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
[email protected]
1) Cricket is to British as Baseball is to American: What’s Culture Got to Do with It?
2) Americanization as Imperialism, Modernization and Acculturation: Is There a Difference?
3) The Hegemony of Pop Culture: The Culture Industry in the Context of Globalization
4) American Pop Music between Global and Local: A Note on the Ambiguity of Hybridity
American pop culture has been such an omnipresent phenomenon in postwar Asia that its
emergence, influence and routinization deserves scrutiny and problematization. I argue
that there are muddles in the models that have permeated the broader literature on
Westernization in different aspects of culture (including sport as well as media pop culture
of various sorts) that impinge on our imperfect understanding of the underlying operation
of ethnicization, culturalization, politicization and capitalization in the evolution of pop
cultural regimes in Asia. I propose to deal with the nature of this process in reference to
four issues: 1) The relevance of culture to Americanization: one should not take for granted
that Americanization (or Westernization of any sort) inherently invokes a process of
acculturation, and that I shall attempt to probe this by examining different aspects of “pop
culture” to question whether this might be a function of the nature of its activity and
enterprise rather than the categorization of culture as a peculiar field of human activity
vis-à-vis economics, politics, etc. 2) The nature of Americanization as sociologizing
process. The advent of modernization, acculturation and postcolonialism theories have
given an implicit spin on the diffusion of Americanization everywhere in the global ecumene
that tend to be more the projection of value judgments than objective accounts of
sociologizing process. Why one views certain kinds of diffusion (technological advances) as
modern rather than imperialist impositions (e.g. tastes in clothing, food or music) has in my
opinion more to do with the standards with which one defines and views different aspects
of culture. This has obvious relevance to the specific nature of pop culture and why one
might inherently view specific forms of pop culture as being susceptible to Americanizing
influence. 3) The hegemony of Americanization as cultural industry. The political
domination and hegemony of Americanization in the development of Asian pop culture
cannot be divorced from the way in which such influences are inculcated through industry
practices. Hollywoodization is not just the diffusion of Hollywood films but rather a
sophisticated machinery for inculcating culture in a specific social and historical context.
The same can be said for the music industry, which has had transformative effects on local
pop culture that transcend the material diffusion of culture. 4) The nature of global-local
flows. The literature on transnationalism in particular has placed much emphasis on the
advent of hybridity in the emergence of postmodern and postcolonial pop cultures. To the
contrary, hybridity is not a new phenomenon in human history, but the tensions between
cosmopolitanizing and hybridizing influences in any global-local context nonetheless points
to the importance of understanding the nature of cultural production and innovation, both
as politicizing, socializing and culturalizing processes. I hope to contrast different examples
from my own research on pop music in Taiwan with parallel phenomena elsewhere with
reference also culturalizing influences in film and their influences on mainstream (global)
culture to suggest how one can view Asian pop culture in a broader, more complex light.
1
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
The First Korean Television under Influence of the Golden Age
of U. S. Television and Cultural Diplomacy
Misook BAEK
Seoul National University, Korea
[email protected]
Myungkoo KANG
Seoul National University, Korea
[email protected]
The purpose of the study is two-fold: first of all, the study will examine how the first Korean
Television, HLKZ, started with the joint-investment of Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
Secondly, the study will look into how HLKZ-TV adopted American models of program
production as well as programming, and program formats, under the social and cultural
climates of Americanization of South Korea in the 1950s after the Korean War. The study is
an attempt to explore how the cultural diplomacy strategy under the Cold War was
articulated with the beginning of the first Korean (commercial) television broadcasting.
Based on interviews with the early broadcast professionals and documents, the study will
claim that early Korean broadcast professional attempted to adjust American styles and
ways of production into their poor conditions of organizational and human resources. As
well, it will reveal that the US cultural diplomacy strategies was one of major backgrounds
of the first Korean television.
2
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Growing up with Bits of American Culture
CHUA Beng Huat
Asia Research Institute & Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
Everyone growing up as a teenager in colonial Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s would
have come into contact with American pop cultures, although English was not then the
lingua franca that it is today and, with few exceptions, families and individuals were poor
and lacking in consumption power. Undoubtedly Chinese pop cultures in different Chinese
tongues were dominant then but American pop cultures were visible everywhere: rock and
roll music from Bill Hayley and the Comets, to Elvis Presley and later the Rolling Stones and
Beatles; Hollywood movies, particularly Westerns and Second World War films, with a wide
audience of not only elementary English speakers those who were unschooled and could
not pronounced the English names; American clothes were used by those who were stylish:
Malay youths were the first to wear uncomfortable jeans, followed by bell-bottom pants,
copied not from the pop musicians but American sailor suits. The better off would buy shirts
made in America, Arrow and Manhattan. And of course, there is cigarette, Lucky Strike. All
these were to come under attack as constitutive components of ‘Yellow Culture’ –
decadence - with the new locally elected government. Under the new government, the
left-leaning Chinese educated political leaders with mass grassroots appeal, along with
cultural practitioners and ‘organic’ intelligentsia of journalists and teachers, were dominant
in cultural matters, with a popular rhetoric that combined anti-colonialism with left
asceticism.
3
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
“America” in Japanese Women’s Magazines
during the Occupation Period 1945-1952
Hiroko MATSUDA
Academia Sinica, Taiwan
[email protected]
The history of post-WWII Japan began under the occupation of the Allied Forces. Having
recovered from the devastation, Japanese people struggled to rebuild their lives under the
great control of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
(SCAP).
MacArthur landed in Japan on August 30, 1945, with the ambition of democratizing Japan.
“Libration of Japanese women” was one of the top priorities of SCAP’s policies. Prior to the
occupation period, Japanese women were considered victims of the feudalistic traditions of
Japan. It was believed that Japan could truly achieve democratization only by destroying
the chauvinistic Japanese family system, and making women active agents of the
democratic society. Hence, women's suffrage was swiftly introduced, and a number of
gender-equal policies were legislated, initiated by the SCAP officers during the occupation
period. There has been a dominant view both in the U.S. and Japan that Japanese women's
“liberation" was one of the great achievements of the U.S occupation.
This study reconsiders the conventional understanding of American impact on Japanese
gender relations during the occupation period. It explores Japanese women’s magazines
published from 1945 to 1952 and examines the construction of American hegemony with
particular attention to common Japanese understanding of American life styles, including
family and gender relationships. Recent studies have revealed details of SCAP's gender
policies as well as American perspectives toward Japanese women of that time. However,
it is unclear how the American cultural hegemony was created through consent by the
Japanese, and how it resulted in long-term impact from the post-war Japanese society
onward.
Japanese women’s magazines were widely circulated across Japan since before WWII. It is
recorded that, in 1945, 17,570,000 copies of women’s magazines were sold, which was
ranked at the top among all kinds of magazines sold in Japan. As the Japanese military
government strictly regulated the mass-media industry, only four of the women’s
magazines survived, and others were abolished or merged. SCAP was well aware of the
influence of Japanese women’s magazines over the wide population. Hence, rather than
accusing them of supporting the military government, SCAP tried to make use of their
popularity. For example, “Shufu no tomo (Housewife’s Friend),” which was started in 1917,
had become one of the most popular magazines by featuring a variety of pragmatic life
issues; it survived war-time by propagating supra-nationalistic and militaristic ideas. After
the war, Housewife’s Friend not only featured pragmatic life matters, but also propagated
the democratic ideals and women’s participation in building the “peaceful nation.”
Furthermore, it frequently featured American life styles that were presented by American
women themselves. Although Housewife’s Friend was accused of its strong support for the
military government, SCAP cooperated with the publisher and used it for its own purpose.
It should be noted that Japanese publishers were not simply manipulated to support SCAP’s
policies. Many women’s magazines were newly published immediately after the war.
According to a recent survey, approximately 150 women’s magazines, excluding
specialized ones such as cooking, fashion and beauty magazines, were issued during the
occupation period. They covered a variety of issues and life matters; it can be assumed that
4
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
their relationships with the SCAP officers were diverse. Nonetheless, we can observe
considerable interest in America and Americans within these magazines. My research will
particularly examine how Japanese popular magazines represented "American women,"
"American family and partnership," and "American life style" as the reference points to the
common Japanese, who were searching for a new and democratic "life style" at that time.
It also examines how the SCAP intervened and controlled representations of "America"
which were published by the Japanese.
The paper first explores the SCAP’s policies and discourse of the “liberation of Japanese
women,” and explains the reasons why SCAP emphasized the gender-related policies.
Today, we observe that discourse of “women’s liberation” has been utilized to justify
American intervention in other countries. Therefore, this study has some implications not
only to modern Japanese history, but also to the American hegemony and gender-related
discourse across Asia. The second part demonstrates the methods and theoretical
framework of my study. Although a number of women's magazines were published in Japan
during the occupation period and have been well preserved until today, few scholars have
seriously examined them as historical documents. Furthermore, although there has been a
growing number of historical studies on pop-culture during the occupation period, few
scholars take the female audience and consumers seriously. This research critically
engages in contemporary studies on the occupation period by emphasizing female
subjectivities as well as the role of both American and Japanese women in the U.S.
occupation. Thirdly, based on my archival research, the paper explores how “America” and
the “American way of life” were represented in Japanese women’s magazines during that
time. The final part discusses how American hegemony was constructed through Japanese
women’s magazines and how it was associated with the SCAP’s gender- related policies.
5
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
“China is Quietly Changing Your Life”:
The Cultural Production of “Inquisitive” American Women
Staci FORD
Department of History, The University of Hong Kong
[email protected]
In his 1914 book America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat, Wu Tingfang
declared that, “A nation’s reputation depends upon the general character of its women, for
they form at least half, if not more, of the population.” While Wu was generally
complimentary of American women – characterizing them as “lively, open-hearted and
ingenuous” and also “fearless and independent,” - he worried about the “one fault” he
found with them; their inquisitiveness. “They have the knack of finding out things without
your being aware of it, and if they should want to know your history they will learn all about
it after a few minutes’ conversation. They are good detectives, and I think they should be
employed in that line more than they are.” If Wu were alive today, he would see many
exemplars of the inquisitive American woman in the globalized sphere of popular culture.
He would also note the increase in the number of American women who are curious about
China.
This paper considers (and places in historical context) several contemporary China-focused
“texts” (cultural production) written/created by “inquisitive American women.” These texts
enjoy a global readership/viewership as they are all circulating in the public sphere in
China, in the U.S., and beyond, particularly in the wake of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. From
books such as Sara Bongiorni’s, A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life
Adventure in the Global Economy and Robyn Meredith’s The Elephant and the Dragon: The
Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, to Anna Sophie Lowenberg’s
internet television show “Sexy Beijing” (a Beijing-centered look at life in China based on the
HBO series “Sex in the City”), American women are asking a range of questions about
China. As these women quell their curiosity about a “foreign” nation, however, they are
concurrently manifesting a particular national identity of their own. The preoccupations of
these women, then, are worth noting for what they say about the U.S. as well as China.
6
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
The Hollywoodization of Hoop:
Basketball, Mass Media, and the Influence of
American Popular Culture in the Philippines
Lou ANTOLIHAO
Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
This paper examines the inroad of American popular culture in Asia during the late Cold War
period. Particularly, it looks into the impact of this process, which is generally referred to as
the “Americanization Asia” in the context of Philippine basketball. The rise of visual mass
media and the subsequent influence of American showbiz industry from the 1970s have
transformed the professional basketball scene in the Philippines into an important aspect of
the local entertainment industry. This critical change has put basketball in an even more
prominent location in Philippine society, making it into a national spectacle where American
popular culture is not only actively reproduced but also openly criticized and imaginatively
re-invented.
Generally, the sustained advance of American “cultural products” during the Cold War
period has resulted to some revolutionary transformation in the overall structure of
basketball in the Philippines. First, the wider exposure afforded by the television coverage
has made it more attractive for companies to use the basketball leagues to promote their
products. Particularly, this opportunity has inspired a group of companies to form the
Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), the first professional basketball league in Asia.
Although it was largely patterned after the US NBA (National Basketball Association), the
league has made some alterations to make it more suitable to local conditions. For
example, instead of having the each team based in a particular city/province like the NBA,
logistical limitations has compelled the PBA to have all its teams based in Metro Manila.
Second, the professionalization of the sport has also led to the rise of the status of top
basketball players from a mere sport celebrity to entertainment superstars, getting the
media attention that is previously accorded only to famous movie and music personalities.
Apart from the media attention, playing basketball has also become a source of lucrative
incomes, many players and coaches started to command multi-million salaries that was a
far cry from the meager allowance that they used to receive as amateurs.
Moreover, this “hollywoodization of hoop” has also been beneficial to Philippine basketball
since it was able to expand its following even to people who are not conventionally
attracted to the game. For instance, the coming of the ‘glamor boys,’ a group of popular
PBA players, in the 1980s has greatly expanded the people’s interest in basketball, and
particularly in the league itself. Apart from playing in popular basketball teams, the ‘glamor
boys’ are likewise well-known product endorsers, they appear in television shows, and star
in movie productions. Stories and gossips on issues regarding their professional and
personal lives also abound in tabloids, magazines, and other print media. As a result, the
PBA was able to capture a substantial following, particularly among female fans whose
support are previously often limited to inter-collegiate tournaments.
Nonetheless, the most significant impact of the “hollywoodization of hoop” was in its role in
keeping the people’s interest in the sport that at that time was already going through a
difficult crisis. The period during the 1970s and 1980s saw the decline of Philippine
basketball in top international competitions. After decades of dominating the Asian
basketball scene and coming up with a number of notable showing in the Olympics and the
World Basketball Championships, many basketball followers were disappointed with the
country’s string of failures. As a consequence, the sport started to receive various criticisms
7
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
especially from those who believe that basketball is not suitable for Filipinos because of the
general lack of height that is necessary to excel in international competitions. However, its
evolution as part of the local showbiz entertainment industry has made it possible for
Philippine basketball to sustain its popularity among the people despite the mounting
criticisms. With the “hollywoodization of hoop”, therefore, basketball in the Philippines has
transcended its significance as a pastime sport and has literally become “more than just a
game”.
Compared to other Asian countries, the Philippines’ earlier history as a US colony has made
the effort of analyzing its relationship with the US during the post-WWII period even more
complex and problematic. The case of Philippine basketball, in particular, shows how more
recent social stirrings are often connected to older issues and larger processes. Basketball
was invented in the United States and was introduced in the Philippines during the US
colonial period to help “pacify” the new territory. Although it has since undergone a long
process of “indigenization” and has already become an important aspect of Filipino culture,
many still view it as a remnant of colonization. This sense of ambivalence makes the
examination of Philippine basketball a valuable source of insight into the specific features of
the “Americanization of Asia” and how it is related to the larger discourses in cultural
imperialism, neocolonialism, and globalization. In addition, its history as a colonial sport
also opens up for the possibility of exploring the origins of the political and cultural
expansion of the United States into Asia beyond the Cold War period.
8
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Major League Baseball as a Forged National Pastime:
Constructing their own National Narratives in South Korea
CHO Younghan
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
As an American pastime, baseball symbolizes American hegemony, and in East Asia, its
popularity reflects pervasiveness of American influence. Nonetheless, the spread of
baseball in Asia is more complicate: whereas baseball was introduced in Asian countries by
American missionaries at the beginning of the 20th century, the wide circulation of baseball
was made possible under the influence of the Japanese Empire. Furthermore, each Asian
country came to have its own national narrative on baseball. In Japan, the history of high
school baseball, which is represented by the “Koshien” league, provides a national event in
which Japanese people gather together. In Taiwan, the success of its little baseball in the
Little League World Series which was held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in the late 1960s
provides the national pride as well as a “new battlefield” for Taiwanese identities.
This paper explores baseball as a table of negotiation, contestation or even combination
between American hegemony and national narratives with the focus on the case of South
Korea during the turning point of the new millennium. Similar to baseball, MLB continues to
symbolize American hegemony as well as the nationalistic response to it in South Korea. In
the examination of sudden popularity of MLB and emergence of Park, Chan-ho (a pitcher of
LA Dodgers) as a national hero, it suggests that baseball, particularly the fandom for MLB,
generate multiple elements for constructing national narratives in South Korea, which
inevitably remain as a forged national pastime.
The beginning of the new millennium marked another transnational trajectory of baseball,
in which MLB has not only sought to expand its market into Asia but has also enrolled Asian
players. In South Korea, the rapid growth of public interest in MLB in South Korea
overlapped almost exactly with the IMF intervention. A Korean baseball player in MLB,
Chan-ho Park who played for the L.A. Dodgers came to national prominence during the
national crisis between 1997 and 2000. Under the gloomy atmosphere during the IMF
intervention, it was not surprising that his great success in the U.S. attracted huge public
attention in South Korea, and he became a national celebrity. His great performances were
represented as Korea’s capability for overcoming national crisis, as well as a symbol of
Korean supremacy.
Another moment which brought up MLB as major spectator sports in a national level was
the first WBC (World Classic Baseball), which was hold in the U.S. in March 2006. The WBC
was being planed as an American event for the purpose of globalizing MLB in the world.
From the beginning to the end, the WBC is “global in form, but national in essence” (Klein,
p. 247). While the Korean team continued to win six games in a row, which was really
unexpected results, baseball and particularly Korean MLB players who joined the national
team emerged as national favorites. Meanwhile, Park often functioned as a national
time-machine which drove the fans or even general spectators to remember his heydays in
MLB, which was overlapped with the national crisis, as well as to remunerate their
experiences and memories in those days. Even thought the period for MLB fandom in South
Korea was less than 10 years, many of fans consciously or not constructed various kinds of
national narratives around MLB and Park as representative Korean player in MLB.
9
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
In this vein, it might claim that baseball or even MLB become another national pastime in
South Korea, and it is true that MLB in part functioned as a venue for building a strongly
nationalistic narrative. However, MLB remain as a forged national pastime in South Korea
in several senses. Contrary to baseball, MLB does not have substantial history or historical
connection to Korean baseball. During the IMF intervention, MLB and images of Park had
been widely utilized for the political purposes; in a sense, broadcasting MLB played a role of
a governing tool in South Korea. Wide popularity of MLB was by and large promoted by the
nationalistic sentiments rather than by passion for sports themselves. As a result, a new
type of MLB fans, which I term “national fans” of MLB, emerged as major groups among
MLB fandom in South Korea.
In this regard, intentionally, I do not argue that the national narratives on MLB are neither
false nor wrong. By using a term “forged,” I attempt to illustrate a fissure or contradiction
within national narratives on MLB in South Korea. In doing so, I intend to show that
baseball or MLB in this case is an important avenue by which American hegemony
navigates nationalistic sentiments among Korean sports fans and even general Koreans. In
the twenty-first century, such a contradiction is an unofficial statement which
demonstrates the degrees of American influence on Korean sports fandom, which is also
witnessed in Taiwan and Japan. I also suggest that MLB can be a national pastime in South
Korea with its forged nature, which demonstrates both the degrees of American influence
on Korea and the negotiation or combination, rather than contestation, with nationalistic
sentiment in Korean.
10
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
What's the point of Americanization in Thailand?:
“Go Lang Wang”, Sarit Regime and the Depoliticizing of Cold War Culture
Viriya SAWANGCHOT
Wathanasala Centre for Cultural Studies, Thailand
[email protected]
In Thai academic circle, there are relatively few studies of Cold War culture and fewer still
that sought to explain the Cold War as a politics conflict, not as a cultural phenomenon. This
paper will be examined the relationships of American culture in the early Cold War and the
formation of youth culture and popular music in Thailand, particularly in “identity politics”
of “Go Lang Wang”. This phenomenon has happened between the late of 1950s to the early
of 1960s.
In Thailand, before the 1960s, a full access to western culture was limited to highly
educated elite in society. But the Cold War brought American culture face to face with the
large segments of the Thai society as never before. During the Cold War era (1947-1991),
the U.S. formed relationship with allied nations like Thailand against the stronghold of the
communists in Vietnam war( 1957-1975). This relationship proved critical during the Cold
War era as Thailand provided a base from which America could conduct air campaigns
against communist aggression during the Vietnam Conflict, and also staging grounds for
U.S. soldiers. Ironically, in Thailand, the Cold War period began with the Coup of 1957,
which led by Field-Marshall Sarit Tanarat. The Coup also overthrew twenty years of the
state promotion of modern Thai politics and culture, Ratthiniyom, as represented by Field
Marshall Phibul Songkram. The main aspect of Ratthiniyom did not see Western culture as
a threat that could overpower Thai culture- which perhaps is the all too common view held
by Thai elite and conservative intellectual. Indeed, Phibul wished critically to include
aspects of the West into ‘cultural’ modernity of Thailand.
But in Sarit regime (1957-1964), Thai politics, economic and culture have been dominated
by the army and royalists or pro-monarchy elite. Martial law was declared as an extra
precaution, and political parties were no longer allowed to hold meetings. The public
gathering over 5 persons were thereby considered a breach of martial law and deemed
illegal even if they were peaceful. In 1958, Sarit actively exploited US anti-Communism in
the region to legitimate his suppression of opposition inside and outside the government
and parliament. With material and monetary assistance from the US and the World Bank,
the Thai government started the modernization project with first Five Year Plan
(1958-1962) to build infrastructure and create an atmosphere favorable for an export-led
oriented economy. Paradoxically, in this regime, the growth of cultural modernization was
quite difference. The wave of American music and fashion in the early of Cold War caught
up some of Bangkok youth, called “Go Lang Wang”( groups of gangsters who stayed behind
the Wang Buraphar shopping center ), who almost came from lower-class youth.
Interestingly, one aspect of the changes in clothes to an “American style” was to help Go
Lang Wang to differentiate themselves from the traditional Thai identity that closely
supported the political ideology of the nation state in Sarit regime. Also in its adaptation of
the American culture, Go Lang Wang turned to be gangster looked alike. What happened
after that was a moral panic about the effects of Go Lang Wang on riot, morality, sexuality,
and national identity. Initially, in 1961, it was a martial law against these Bangkok
youngsters.
11
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
It could be urged that the major political force in power after the 1957 Coup was the army
and bureaucracy but the major politico-cultural fear was American cultural imports evoked
instead of the West. Hence, the formation and growth of the Sarit regime not only try to
overthrow the entire modernity project which invented by the Phibul regime but also the
American culture invented by Cold War. But it is tragic irony; Sarit’s government was
strongly supported by U.S. Cold War policy as well.
Nevertheless, there was tension between two sources of the formation of “cultural politics
of youth” in the Cold War period in Thailand, one as represented by the youth in the late of
1950s and consumption of American pop culture and another as represented by the
pro-democratic student movement in the 1970s and consumption of an American
counter-culture. Indeed, Go Lang Wang never became an icon of counter- culture or a left
politics in Thailand. However, the invented identity of Go Lang Wang appears to have
relevance to history of the Cold War period in Thailand.
12
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Imported Others: American Influences and Exoticism
in Japanese Interwar Popular Music
Edgar W. POPE
Hokusei Gakuen University Junior College, Sapporo, Japan
[email protected]
The first great wave of American influence on Japanese popular music came before the
Second World War, and coincided with the rapid expansion of Japan’s record industry that
began in the late 1920s. Imports of American records, sheet music, and movies, together
with Japanese performances and recordings of American songs, brought a wide range of
American music into the complex emerging mixture of Japanese popular music. Among
these American imports were numerous songs and musical elements that referred to places
or cultures considered exotic from the standpoint of mainstream America, such as Hawaii,
China, Arabia, and Cuba. In this paper I examine some of the “imported exoticisms” that
were brought from the United States to Japan during this period, and the ways in which
they were creatively reworked by Japanese musicians in accordance with their particular
aesthetic and ideological goals.
I define exotic music as music that gives pleasure partly through its association with
concepts of the foreign, as experienced by a certain audience. A pleasurable sense of
foreignness is generated by exotic signifiers, which in general are combined by songwriters
with other, non-exotic elements to produce an aesthetic whole. Exotic signifiers (including
melodies, rhythms, and instrumental timbres) associated with particular countries or
cultures were imported from the U.S. to Japan, where Japanese artists selected and
recombined them for use in their own creations, usually retaining the same or similar exotic
significations but sometimes using them for more generalized exotic effects.
One example of an exotic American import is “Chino Soy,” a song with elements of
“Chinese” exoticism recorded in the U.S. in 1935 by Xavier Cugat’s orchestra and released
in Japan the following year. One of the song’s exotic signifiers, a melody played on oboe,
was apparently seized upon by Japanese songwriters, reworked and incorporated into
several Japanese songs about China in the late 1930s. Cugat’s orchestra imbeds the
signifiers of China in a strongly Latin American rhythmic texture, and this texture is also
incorporated into one of the Japanese songs. These Japanese songs about China belong to
a genre known as tairiku merodei or “continental melodies,” exotic musical depictions of
the Asian continent that became popular after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in
1937.
Another example is Fred Fisher’s “Sing Me a Song of Araby,” one of many songs with
“Arabian” themes produced by the American song writing industry in the 1920s. Recorded
with Japanese lyrics in 1928, it was a major hit, and helped to inspire a series of “Arabia”
and “desert” songs by Japanese composers. The melody contains a minor-key passage that
seems meant to evoke a Middle Eastern feeling. The lyrics also contain exotic evocations of
Arabia, which are retained in the Japanese translation. The popularity of this song in Japan
may have been due in part to the presence of at least one earlier Japanese “desert” song,
and to the influence of an American movie, “The Sheik” starring Rudolph Valentino, which
was released in Japan in 1922.
A third example is “El Manisero” or “The Peanut Vendor.” Recorded in the U.S. by Cuban
musician Don Aspiazu’s orchestra in 1930, it became a huge hit and initiated a fad for
rumba music in the U.S. It was soon exported to Japan, and in 1933 it was recorded there
by Japanese-American singer Kawabata Fumiko, with lyrics in both Japanese and English.
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International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
The Japanese title “Kyuba no Mameuri” (“The Bean Vendor of Cuba”) ensured that the
exotic topic was clear to all. Rumba in Japan did not achieve the same popularity as in the
U.S., but the clave rhythm (the “key” to the polyrhythmic texture of rumba) became an
exotic signifier that appeared later in other exotic Japanese songs.
Through songs such as these, imported U.S. exoticism had a profound effect on the
development of Japanese approaches to representing other countries and cultures through
popular music. American-made exoticisms were not simply imposed upon Japan, however.
Japanese culture producers actively initiated and carried out the process by selecting
American songs, adapting them to the needs of their audience and drawing selected
elements from them to be recombined with material from other sources, both Japanese and
foreign.
Although American music, and much American-influenced music, was officially banned
during the Pacific War, it was certainly not forgotten, and the effects of Japan’s prewar
appropriations of American exoticism continued to resonate in Japanese popular music far
into the postwar years.
14
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Hong Kong Chic: 1960s Hong Kong Pop Music and Modernity
Frederick LAU
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA
[email protected]
The arrival of American pop music in 20th century China had profound impact on the
development of new Chinese pop music genres. With the introduction of American big
bands, tin-pan alley songs, croon singing, jazz combos, and studio bands in Shanghai in the
1920s, new Chinese pop music emerged, resulting in a style of music that some earlier
Chinese writers described as “Yellow music” or vulgar music. Despite the dubious
characterization of this new genre and the negative view of American vernacular music, the
trend of appropriating American music into Chinese pop genres intensified even after the
music industry migrated south to the then British colony of Hong Kong after 1949. Under
the British colonial governance and the deep rootedness of traditional Cantonese culture,
Hong Kong has transformed itself into a unique culture that would welcome all form of
hybridized cultural forms and practices. Energized by the arrival of R & B, early Rock ‘n’ roll,
the emergence of a Cantonese based movie industry, and the distinct socio-cultural
environment of Hong Kong, a local, Cantonese language pop genre known as yueyu
liuxingequ was created in the 1960s.
Yueyu liuxingequ, based largely on a combination of American music and Cantonese music
elements, departs from its Mandarin predecessor in terms of its musical organization,
aesthetics, and content. What is distinctive is the way American musical elements were
partitioned and incorporated into the music that is accentuated by Cantonese musical
sensibilities and cultural reference. With its special musical characteristics and cultural
moorings, this music has established a new identity unique to Hong Kong’s colonial
culturalscape. Relying on overt appropriation of American classics, pop tunes, and
vernacular musical clichés, this new genre has dislodged American music cliché from its
original intent and turned it into local humor and as commentaries on issues associated
with the urban life style experienced by the young and locally educated generation as well
as the discourse of modernity in 1960s Hong Kong.
This paper traces the changing meaning of Americanization in musical practice of twentieth
century China and in particular of 1960s colonial Hong Kong. What do these American
musical elements represent in their new contexts? How do they work in compositions and
why were so many writers drawn to writing in this style? How did this new style articulate
a sense of place and locality? In this paper, I reject theorizing this phenomenon as simply
a case of cultural imperialism or the result of musical globalization. By examining the hybrid
nature, lyrics, and symbolism of early Cantonese pop songs, I address larger issues of
appropriation of American music within a local Asian setting. Going against the
conventional wisdom of transnationalism that privileges the connectivity between “here”
and “there, and home” and “host countries,” I would like to put issues of human creativity
and agency back into understanding the impact and effect of cultural flows across cultural
and national boundaries. Rather than locating yueyu liuxingequ in the globalization trope,
I argue that the apparent Americanism in yueyu liuxingequ has been transformed into a
Chinese discourse of modernity and marker of cosmopolitanism. In analyzing how
American musical elements are being utilized, constructed and imagined, I argue that in
this case the process of appropriation disrupts the discourse of Americanization as
expansionism and undermines the inflated notion of American’s cultural prowess.
15
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Reframing Post-war Space:
Singapore/Malaya in Hollywood Movies 1945-1965
LAI Chee Kien
Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
The political formation of nations and states in Southeast Asia resulted largely after World
War II as their peoples commenced disengagements from former Western and Japanese
colonizers. Spatial boundaries were consolidated or redefined to map such ambitions or
initiatives even as different “indigenous” groups contested for rights and sovereignties
within those geographies. From 1948 onwards, the region became a crucial theatre in Cold
War politics that concomitantly shaped local spheres and their bloc allignments. The
erstwhile “British holdings” of Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak and North Borneo spanning
across the South China Sea became important candidates for political resolution and
reimagination.
In both Singapore and Malaya, the increasing post-war presence of the United States may
be traced by the establishment of various institutions and programmes. The State
Department set up various key USIS offices in Singapore, Penang and Kuala Lumpur from
1948, and later in the 1960s; Peace Corps volunteers were deployed in various local social
and educational institutions. Other programmes brought experts of different fields
including those of language and sports, while the “Voice of America” looked to Malaya to set
up a relay station west of Guam. Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister of Malaya,
purchased a Chrysler Imperial Crown convertible as his official car (instead of the “usual”
Rolls-Royce or Bentley) during Independence celebrations in 1957.
My paper examines three Hollywood movies set between World War II and the Cold War as
texts that emphasized and disseminated emerging U.S. positions and relationships with
Singapore and Malaya. After 1945, the U.S. role in ending the “Pacific War” as well as its
engagement in SEATO translated into political influences that nascent Southeast Asian
states could not ignore. The first two movies, ‘Singapore’ [MGM, (1947), starring Fred
MacMurray and Ava Gardner] and ‘Malaya’ [Universal, (1948), starring Spencer Tracy and
James Stewart] served dual functions of introducing components of the Cold War theatre to
American audiences while reinstating strong U.S. involvement in those places for other
viewers; their titles simply construed as place names where plots developed. Prior to the
war, movies about the region [like ‘Road to Singapore’ (1940) and even ‘King Kong’
(1933)] cast its cinematic spaces as essentially foreign/oriental and exotic locales.
This move towards sketching “real” spaces in the Cold War was heightened in another
Hollywood movie titled ‘7th Dawn’ (MGM, 1964). Based on a novel by Michael Keon and
starring William Holden and Susannah York, the movie’s setting is the Malayan Emergency
and the plot revolved around multi-ethnic characters entwined in moral and political
dilemmas. Filmed on location in Malaysia with a close correlation to actual events and
persons while the U.S. is still militarily-engaged in Vietnam, the protagonists are seen to
traverse at ease within the movie landscapes as well as converse in languages including
local ones. Prior to the advent and appeal of television, I argue that the increasingly
“realist” portrayals and spatial narrations of these movies were important for the United
States in defining their specific post-war roles in Singapore and Malaya, as well as boosting
and constructing capital for their subsequent popular culture transmissions.
16
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
Singapore’s ‘Cinema-Age’ of the 1930s:
Hollywood and the Shaping of Singapore Modernity
CHUA Ai Lin
Department of History, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
Cinema-going was the most popular form of entertainment in 1930s Singapore, with an
estimated 8000 viewers filling twenty screens each night in the city by 1936. About seventy
per cent films screened were American in origin, and many large Hollywood studios had
distribution offices located in Singapore. Movies became so popular that an entire
supporting field emerged, from film magazines to the spillover of popular film soundtracks
into the media of gramophone records, wireless broadcasting and live performances in
dance halls at the ‘Worlds’ entertainment parks, and consumption of these products was
shaped by a culture of fandom. This paper will argue that America films played a crucial role
in influencing social changes in Singapore, particularly amongst young people and women,
as well as in shaping the identity of Singapore as a distinctly modern city.
Due to the widespread consumption of American film, there were diverse reactions to this
new social phenomenon from different quarters. The colonial government’s reaction was
alarm at the perceived influence of decadent Hollywood films on a native audience in terms
of moral vices and crime, as well as the economic threat to Britain posed by the runaway
success of the American film industry compared to its lacklustre British counterpart.
Besides the official censor, moral policing of films found support from religious bodies and
older members of the local non-European community, who were brought in to sit on the
Cinematograph Films Censorship Annual Committee. The Singapore viewing public were
frustrated with heavy-handed censorship laws, which persisted even though secret society
crime had already been brought under control by 1930, the same time at which the Hays
Code in America laid down strict regulations against the excesses of risqué Hollywood films.
While focusing on regulation and censorship, existing scholarship on the cinema in colonial
societies has less often documented the responses of local audiences. This paper aims to
reconstruct the contemporary local voice in this highly-debated topic from the sphere of
Anglophone print culture. The lingua franca of English allowed individuals of diverse ethnic
backgrounds, albeit sharing a common framework of English-language education and
cultural references, to participate in a common public discourse. This perspective contrasts
with the conventional approach within Singapore historiography to focus on specific ethnic
communities, an approach which overlooks the vibrant cross-ethnic discussion that existed
in colonial Singapore society. The existence of a large corpus of English-language
publications produced in inter-war Singapore for a local, non- European audience is
testimony to the depth of the domestic, English language public sphere and sheds light on
two bodies of opinion on which official sources and colonial discourse tends to be silent on:
the voices of local Asians and those of young people.
As film magazines were read by those who were already die-hard fans of the big screen,
debates about the controversial nature of the cinema were to be found elsewhere, most
notably in forums for young people in The Malaya Tribune newspaper, The Student – a
highly successful regional magazine and club for students and young working adults, as
well as in school publications. Critics expressed concern over students wasting time and
money at the cinema as well as imbibing unacceptable ideas of romance and sex,
materialistic lifestyles and even picking up American slang. The concentration of
discussions about the cinema in youth forums reflected the degree to which films connected
with the aspirations of youths, and favoured their perspective against that of their elders.
17
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
For cinema entrepreneurs, children and young people formed an important sector of the
spending public, and Amalgamated Theatres established the Mickey Mouse Club in 1933 to
tap on this market. In this way, the cinema in Singapore was pivotal in helping to shape a
distinct youth identity, what scholars working on inter-war America and Europe have
termed ‘the first teenagers’.
While colonial discourse on film censorship centred on the difference of race and the
necessity of protecting Asiatics from undesirable influences, local Singapore public opinion
focused on age and education level as the factors determining those who were most
vulnerable to the negative influence of the cinema. The characterisation of young people
was parallel to the racial category of Asiatics for the colonial state: both were seen as
lacking in intelligence to distinguish between fact and fiction on screen and therefore had to
be protected by censorship.
Apart from young people, cinema-going was also closely connected with female audiences.
These two categories represent those who were most affected by the influence of films. The
cinema came at a historical moment when there emerged a critical mass of women who had
been educated and were seeking to extend their lives beyond the domestic sphere. Images
of progressive Western women provided a model for the social aspirations of young women
in terms of love and romance, employment opportunities and material lifestyles. Changes
in the role and attitude of women in this period were much greater than for men, hence
intensifying the impact of the cinema for women in particular.
American films played a role in the shaping Singapore modernity not just through the
content of popular movies, but in the very real presence of the American cinema industry
in Singapore. Like the Ford Motor plant established at Tanjong Pagar in Singapore in 1926,
the numerous Hollywood studios’ distribution offices in Orchard Road introduced the icons
of modern life into the Singapore landscape, bringing also progressive industrial and
marketing know-how. Hollywood personalities made their presence felt in Singapore too.
Frank S. Buck, the reknown American wildlife collector whose books and films such as Bring
‘Em Back Alive (book, 1930; film, 1932) were international blockbuster hits, had his animal
camp in Johor – where Bring ‘Em Back Alive was filmed by Van Beuren Studios. The
following year, Samarang, made by United Artists was also shot in Singapore, using a local
cast. In 1936, the Paramount Picture film, The Jungle Princess, established actress Dorothy
Lamour as the sarong girl, portrayed with tigers and chimpanzees in Malayan jungle and
singing in the Malay language. (A host of other Hollywood films were set in Singapore, or
alluded to it, but were never filmed here.) At the crossroads of shipping routes, Singapore
also saw many stars visiting the island on their world travels, most notably Charlie Chaplin
in 1932 and 1936, which heightened audiences’ excitement about the cinema. Singapore
never seemed like a far-flung outpost, but a city plugged into the forefront of global popular
culture.
18
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
A Careful Fiction:
American-subsidized Hong Kong Filmmaking during the Cold War
Charles LEARY
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
[email protected]
Throughout the Eisenhower administration, the National Security Council habitually
advised the U.S. President of the “careful fiction of Hong Kong’s neutrality” maintained by
the British colonial government that prevented overt propaganda efforts by both the U.S.
and China in the struggle over the spread of Communist ideology. Various covert
propaganda efforts were being organized by the Central Intelligence Agency across the
world in the battle against Communism, including the indirect funding of the Committee for
Free Asia, later renamed as The Asia Foundation, based in San Francisco. In 1952, the
Committee for Free Asia accepted a proposal from journalist Zhang Guoxing to begin
funding a diverse enterprise in Hong Kong in the Asia Press, the Asia Pictorial, and Asia
Pictures. Besides financial assistance, the Asia Foundation arranged for Hollywood experts
(including famed director Frank Borzage) to critique and advise on Asia Pictures filmmaking
and attempted to monitor, as best it could, the content and scope of the film productions.
Asia Pictures would make nine feature-length films throughout its brief history in the
1950s, winning multiple festival awards and featuring major established stars and directors
as well as emerging stars in the Hong Kong film industry. I will detail the correspondence
between The Asia Foundation and Asia Pictures as they attempt to carefully produce and
distribute a popular screen fiction for the Cold War struggle over the hearts and minds of
filmgoers in East and Southeast Asia.
19
International Conference on American Pop Culture in Asia
19-20 February 2009, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
at the ARI Seminar Room, Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road
‘Two Schools’: Contact Narrative and Cultural Rivalry in Martial Arts Cinema
Meaghan MORRIS
Lingan University, Hong Kong
[email protected]
In 1915, the pioneering American filmmaker D.W. Griffith declared that cinema was a
powerful mode of historical writing that could shape a historical consciousness in the public
better than any formal study. Filmmakers world-wide may have continued in this belief, but
Western film scholars often have not: some years ago, the critic Adrian Martin remarked
that after two decades of film theory, 'the range of possible themes that a film might
address has seemingly shrunk to a gothic handful: sex, cinema, identity, "the image" ...'
('Mise en Scene is Dead...', 1992). Transnational, English-language action cinema made in
Asia has always had other concerns: revenge, kinship, duty, friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
money, work, survival, war, political change and economic crisis are foregrounded in
stories offering aesthetic as well as ethical pedagogies for dealing with history's upheavals.
Focusing on transnational ‘direct to video’ martial arts stars who worked in Hong Kong in
the 1985-1995 period—in particular, the American karate champion Cynthia Rothrock, and
the Australian star Richard Norton—my paper will examine the ways in which their films
produced images of Asian popular culture for an international audience, while addressing
American historical concerns.
20