Thank you for the helpful background. Clearly, the preoccupation with
pokemon is overwhelmingly as a commercial phenomenon. Does anyone think
there are more aspects to this than the economic? I was struck by the way a
lot of people's views seemed to have been determined by a knowledge of the
origins of the pokemon characters, not by the way they are perceived as
dramatic characters by their target audience -- ie children.
In a message dated 28/10/99 21:13:45 GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:
<< There is a strong collecting thrust to the programme
but the narrative is often inexplicable, from an adult perspective. >>
Thanks to my ignorance, I didn't know pokemon meant "pocket monster" or that
it was originally a gameboy character. Nevertheless, because I did not have
any preconceptions when I began becoming aware of the programme earlier last
spring, I have to say I did not find anything inherently 'monstrous' about
pokemon. My daughter's favourite is a sweet little thing called Pikachoo
(sp?) who just happens to be able to zap a lot of bigger, thuggier pokemon
with some kind of lightning power. So the narrative seems pretty
straightforward to me -- the baddies are nasty to their pokemon (and the
earth as a whole) and use/breed nasty pokemon in turn; the goodies are just
the opposite; and each episode is the usual good vs evil story with the
occasional moral about hard choices, duty, etc (distinctly Japanese, in my
opinion, in this respect).
It may well be that the pokemon phenomenon signals the advent of a media
super-system that has, for a change, an East-to-West trajectory. But
children just see the characters as yet another species of make-believe
creatures that can be bought and collected. Taking all this as granted, what
strikes me as more interesting is the ideological shift manifested by the
pokemon phenomenon. As someone has commented, marketers are aware that kids
'buy the sweatshirt' and grow out of it. What surely should be of greater
interest to parents and adults is what they don't necessarily grow out of,
what they may retain. And in relation to an artefact -- such as pokemon --
of a media super-system, that retained 'something' may be embodied in
whatever 'truths' children perceive in the dramatic content of the programme
narrative. With the pokemon television programmes, dramatic content seems to
pivot on the idea that humans, being the only moral agents around, are
somehow responsible for all extant organic and artificial entities -- and
that's not just a variation on an age-old universal drama, it is a
fundamental ideological message -- arguably a more Japanese than Western one.
This, not whether the programme promotes the sale of Ninendo games, cards,
or virtual pets, seems to me to be the more interesting children-and-media
issue inherent in the pokemon phenomenon: How are children around the world
receiving this message, and how are they being changed by it?
Jenina
PS. By the way, I hope I haven't implied that I am anti-pokemon. I think
they're great fun, and they have the virtue of being an opportunity to glean
something of what understand from what they see on television.
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