2019 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The Culture of Japanese Character Imitation and Parody
| Project/Area Number |
18F18743
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
Karlin Jason 東京大学, 大学院情報学環・学際情報学府, 准教授 (80361632)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
FEENEY WILLIAM 東京大学, 大学院情報学環・学際情報学府, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-11-09 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | Media / Performance / Imitation |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The semiotic analysis of diverse monomane performances has revealed a surprising diversity of methods for projecting a sense of similarity within them. Performers rely upon creative techniques that potentially draw up on a broad range of potential features as sources which performers selectively reanimate with their bodies to manifest the media persona. This leads to a further finding, which is that successful performances also require the projection of difference. Professionals often foreground a figure of themselves, as a monomane performer, to serve as the key sign of difference, enabling performers to both build produce the necessary double-voicing effects and build a personal brand as a comic professional. Fieldwork and online research have found that the performative resources of monomane also circulate socially. However, the shift towards everyday performances entails changes in their participant structure that entail difference consequences for evaluating interactional agency and communicative responsibility.
The professional performer accrues value by virtue of being seen as the intentional author and animator cited figures, grounding the interactional agency within the figure of the performer. By contrast, performances within everyday contexts often afford individuals a means to disavow agency, relieving performers of responsibility any actions or speech attributable to imitated figures, ascribing agency to the imitated figure and enabling performers to pursue courses of action that would likely be sanctioned as inappropriate, vulgar or offensive.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Unfortunately, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has interfered with participation in scholarly activities. Portions of this research were presented at the 2019 American Anthropological Association annual meeting. However, later scheduled presentations have been cancelled due to concerns over infection. These include the 2020 Association for Asian Studies annual meeting and a symposium on Japanese character culture at the University of California at Los Angeles. Additionally, the pandemic has precluded any possibility of hosting a workshop.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Research activities for the remainder of 2020 will clearly be impacted by the on-going coronavirus pandemic. As such, in person interviews and observation of monomane performances will be conducted if possible throughout the remainder of the year. Additional further archival work on the postwar emergence monomane as an established performance genre also will re-commence once libraries reopen. To adjust to the new reality professor Feeney will turn towards gather data through online sources and focusing more attention on analysis of materials that have already been gathered. Further data collection will turn towards tracking imitative performances by non-professionals via social media platforms such as Youtube. The rapid growth of digital communications technologies has fostered the development and propagation of new modes of sociality. Where prior media infrastructures relied on a highly centralized broadcast framework that incentivized the production of broadly alluring media product and personas, more decentralized digital technologies enable a profusion of more communities even as it more aggressively narrows the scope of each individual group. Tracing circulatory trajectories on social media may also make it possible to shine light on the ways that decentralized, peer-to-peer, modes of communicative relationality make it possible for smaller groups to come together as communities of practices, organizing their activity around increasingly specialized media practices.
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