Time and again I have been struck by the paucity of English-language writing on a major historical subject. Large patches of German history, for instance, like the Peasants' War, or the 1918 Revolution, or the history of the Federal Republic. And while World War II can seem the most thoroughly exhausted of historical subjects, very little seems to have been written about the Italian armed forces' performance and role in that conflict.
No less surprising is the scarcity of historiography about Japan. The obsessive interest in the country in the United States during the '80s does not seem to have extended to an interest in the country's history--a testament to the superficiality of that interest, and of the "expertise" on the country so highly touted at the time. Unsurprisingly, the American anime fan who finds themselves intrigued by a subject like the Warring States period, or the Bakumatsu era, who would like to know more about the career of Oda Nobunaga, or what the Shinsengumi were really like, has very few sources to which they can turn.
That being the case with Japan, with its prominent place in world affairs during the last century, one can only imagine the scarcity of substantive information about other, less-prominent, less-studied societies--and what weak stuff must pass for expertise on their cultures.
Such is the distance between hype and reality in this "information age."
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
The East Asian Box Office: The Entertainment Press Gets Its Say
I have often remarked here on the trend in the hugely important markets of East Asia (China is the world's second-biggest, Japan's the third) toward the consumption of more domestically produced product, and fewer Hollywood movies.
My thoughts were a reaction to the films I saw topping the box office in China, Japan and South Korea in the past decade, but a more systematic examination only supports that conclusion, as an article in Film Business Asia showed last May. Indeed, the article notes that in 2013 "one hundred films from East Asia made more than US$10 million at their local box office," securing "a combined box office of US$3.41 billion."
Mark Schilling in his article "Why Hollywood No Longer Dominates Japan's Box Office" notes that the market share of foreign films in Japan fell from 67 percent a decade earlier to roughly half that (34 percent) by 2013--which also marked the fifth straight year in which they failed to exceed a fifty-percent share of the market.
These are impressive chunks of not just the local market to which Hollywood has paid so much attention in recent years, but the whole world market.
Of course, even if Chinese, Japanese and South Korean moviegoers are less apt to choose Hollywood, some American movies still do massive business in this region. Disney's Frozen was a megahit, pulling in close to a quarter of a billion dollars in Japan alone, and another $125 million in China and South Korea. The preceding year, Monsters University was a colossal success, while the comedy Ted was also a hit.
Still, it is increasingly being recognized that audiences are more selective regarding the American films they do. Schilling's thought, after noting the big business those American films did, is that Disney-style family films can still do well here, and that even if Ted is not exactly that, "Japanese audiences love cute, even if they get their cute from a vulgar, substance-abusing animated bear."
By contrast, they're not much for "dark and depressing"--the American entertainment industry's adoration of "dark and gritty" perhaps costing it in this part of the world.
My thoughts were a reaction to the films I saw topping the box office in China, Japan and South Korea in the past decade, but a more systematic examination only supports that conclusion, as an article in Film Business Asia showed last May. Indeed, the article notes that in 2013 "one hundred films from East Asia made more than US$10 million at their local box office," securing "a combined box office of US$3.41 billion."
Mark Schilling in his article "Why Hollywood No Longer Dominates Japan's Box Office" notes that the market share of foreign films in Japan fell from 67 percent a decade earlier to roughly half that (34 percent) by 2013--which also marked the fifth straight year in which they failed to exceed a fifty-percent share of the market.
These are impressive chunks of not just the local market to which Hollywood has paid so much attention in recent years, but the whole world market.
Of course, even if Chinese, Japanese and South Korean moviegoers are less apt to choose Hollywood, some American movies still do massive business in this region. Disney's Frozen was a megahit, pulling in close to a quarter of a billion dollars in Japan alone, and another $125 million in China and South Korea. The preceding year, Monsters University was a colossal success, while the comedy Ted was also a hit.
Still, it is increasingly being recognized that audiences are more selective regarding the American films they do. Schilling's thought, after noting the big business those American films did, is that Disney-style family films can still do well here, and that even if Ted is not exactly that, "Japanese audiences love cute, even if they get their cute from a vulgar, substance-abusing animated bear."
By contrast, they're not much for "dark and depressing"--the American entertainment industry's adoration of "dark and gritty" perhaps costing it in this part of the world.
On the Success of Game of Thrones
By the end of its fourth season, Game of Thrones became the most watched show on HBO ever.
More watched, even, than the storied Sopranos.
That the show would meet with much success at all once seemed a long shot.
And yet, in hindsight, it seems perfectly natural.
Game of Thrones succeeded as a fast, flashy, sex-and-violence-laden soap opera. And where soap opera is concerned, it is tough to beat a feudal setting.
The simple fact of the matter is that in today's world power is vested less in individuals than in large organizations, while office and office-holder are separate, and likely the products of a culture of white-collar organization men taught to always seem agreeable and "speak to the well-blunted point." Different kinds of power--public and private, economic, political and military--are vested in altogether different organizations. It all makes power diffuse, and vague, and impersonal, and the players rather self-important cogs in just one of many wheels, for all their flattering by worshipful journalists.
By contrast, in the Game, personal power is often highly concentrated and multidimensional, so that individual players like Tywin Lannister (Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, King's Hand, creditor to the throne) weigh very heavily in the scales--so much so that they don't have to worry about hiding bodies when violence becomes their preferred recourse. At the same time the drama of politics and war and wealth is tightly bound up with family drama, with people's love lives, in a way they never could be in the modern world (an incestuous relationship, a family vendetta, sufficient spark to set alight the ever-rickety feudal structure). And it is all attended by pre-modern pageantry next to which even the most lavish corporate function must pale (though admittedly, the TV production never quite does Martin's conception of these justice).
To put it another way, a couple of lawyers trying to do each other out of a partnership in their law firm, suburban adulteries, and even the tabloid scandals of the glamorous seem a very small thing next to the drama of the Lannisters and Starks.
Does this mean American television is about to unleash a torrent of feudal-set soap operas on us?
Perhaps. But it seems more likely to remain confined to channels like the CW (already invested in this area with Reign), and historical drama-minded cable networks like the History Channel (offering up Vikings) than the American Big Four, perhaps not totally averse to flirting with the form but much more likely to stick with their lawyers and suburban adulteries and such over the long run.
More watched, even, than the storied Sopranos.
That the show would meet with much success at all once seemed a long shot.
And yet, in hindsight, it seems perfectly natural.
Game of Thrones succeeded as a fast, flashy, sex-and-violence-laden soap opera. And where soap opera is concerned, it is tough to beat a feudal setting.
The simple fact of the matter is that in today's world power is vested less in individuals than in large organizations, while office and office-holder are separate, and likely the products of a culture of white-collar organization men taught to always seem agreeable and "speak to the well-blunted point." Different kinds of power--public and private, economic, political and military--are vested in altogether different organizations. It all makes power diffuse, and vague, and impersonal, and the players rather self-important cogs in just one of many wheels, for all their flattering by worshipful journalists.
By contrast, in the Game, personal power is often highly concentrated and multidimensional, so that individual players like Tywin Lannister (Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, King's Hand, creditor to the throne) weigh very heavily in the scales--so much so that they don't have to worry about hiding bodies when violence becomes their preferred recourse. At the same time the drama of politics and war and wealth is tightly bound up with family drama, with people's love lives, in a way they never could be in the modern world (an incestuous relationship, a family vendetta, sufficient spark to set alight the ever-rickety feudal structure). And it is all attended by pre-modern pageantry next to which even the most lavish corporate function must pale (though admittedly, the TV production never quite does Martin's conception of these justice).
To put it another way, a couple of lawyers trying to do each other out of a partnership in their law firm, suburban adulteries, and even the tabloid scandals of the glamorous seem a very small thing next to the drama of the Lannisters and Starks.
Does this mean American television is about to unleash a torrent of feudal-set soap operas on us?
Perhaps. But it seems more likely to remain confined to channels like the CW (already invested in this area with Reign), and historical drama-minded cable networks like the History Channel (offering up Vikings) than the American Big Four, perhaps not totally averse to flirting with the form but much more likely to stick with their lawyers and suburban adulteries and such over the long run.
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