Celebrity Culture And The Entertainment Industry In Asia

Popular Culture in Asia consists studies of film, music, architecture, television, and computer-mediated communication in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, addressing three topics: urban modernities; modernity, celebrity, and fan culture; and memory and modernity.

This book offers rare insight into the world of celebrity and media in China and beyond, looking closely at the dynamics of stardom and celebrity endorsement and examining its marketing and media impact. Through interviews with celebrities and entertainment industry practitioners, the authors discuss the social, cultural and economic influences.

Is it ever acceptable to “borrow” culturally inspired ideas? Who has ownership over intangible culture? What role does power inequality play? These questions are often at the center of heated public debates around cultural appropriation, with new controversies breaking seemingly every day. Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment offers a sociological perspective on the appropriation of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and religion embedded in clothing, textiles, jewelry, accessories, hairstyles and tattoos, as well as in entertainment, such as K-pop, Bhangra, and hip-hop. By providing a range of global perspectives on the adoption, adaptation, and application of both tangible and intangible cultural objects, Kawamura and de Jong help move the conversation beyond simply criticizing designers and creators to encourage nuanced discussion and raise awareness of diverse cultures in the creative industries.

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader brings together and presents a wide range of essays on fashion theory that will engage and inform both the general reader and the specialist student of fashion. From apparently simple and accessible theories concerning what fashion is to seemingly more difficult or challenging theories concerning globalisation and new media, this collection contextualises different theoretical approaches to identify, analyse and explain the remarkable diversity, complexity and beauty of what we understand and experience every day as fashion and clothing. This second edition contains entirely new sections on fashion and sustainability, fashion and globalisation, fashion and digital/social media and fashion and the body/prosthesis. It also contains updated and revised sections on fashion, identity and difference, and on fashion and consumption and fashion as communication. More specifically, the section on identity and difference has been updated to include contemporary theoretical debates surrounding Islam and fashion, and LGBT+ communities and fashion and the section on consumption now includes theories of 'prosumption'. Each section has a specialist and dedicated Editor's Introduction which provides essential conceptual background, theoretical contextualisation and critical summaries of the readings in each section. Bringing together the most influential and ground breaking writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we all think and say about fashion. This second edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader is a timeless and invaluable resource for both the general reader and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines including sociology, cultural studies and fashion studies.

This book examines how the young in Northeast Asia engage with the political, especially in terms of the production, reformulation, or contestation of their national identities. Through case studies covering China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan, the contributions provide a study of the online spaces where youth engage with current debates regarding national identities. The book also unpacks the distinctive forms of expression and negotiation of national identities favoured by younger generations across Northeast Asia and asks questions specifically raised by their political mobilisation. For example, how their public mobilisation for a given cause has forced them to rethink their place in national and global communities. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of East Asian culture and politics, media studies and youth studies. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The serial narrative is one of the most robust and popular forms of storytelling in contemporary China. With a domestic audience of one billion-plus and growing transnational influence and accessibility, this form of storytelling is becoming the centerpiece of a fast-growing digital entertainment industry and a new symbol and carrier of China’s soft power. Televising Chineseness: Gender, Nation, and Subjectivity explores how television and online dramas imagine the Chinese nation and form postsocialist Chinese gendered subjects. The book addresses a conspicuous paradox in Chinese popular culture today: the coexistence of increasingly diverse gender presentations and conservative gender policing by the government, viewers, and society. Using first-hand data collected through interviews and focus group discussions with audiences comprising viewers of different ages, genders, and educational backgrounds, Televising Chineseness sheds light on how television culture relates to the power mechanisms and truth regimes that shape the understanding of gender and the construction of gendered subjects in postsocialist China.

This is the most complete and compelling account of idols and celebrity in Japanese media culture to date. Engaging with the study of media, gender and celebrity, and sensitive to history and the contemporary scene, these interdisciplinary essays cover male and female idols, production and consumption, industrial structures and fan movements.