Postby GhostontheNet » Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:00 am
I think this is one of the effects of the present stage of globalization, of which anime fandom has been one happy early manifestation. Basically, the era in which America can assume that it can impose its symbols, culture, and narratives on the world on a one-sided basis is over. The era of streaming video services has increased the consciousness of television media content in other countries, whereas previously cinema had been the global medium and television the national medium. What’s happening now is a cultural cross-pollination of style, tropes, and influences.
Sometimes there is a tendency toward international co-productions to compete with American media productions at their level. Such is a familiar strategy for global cinema, and television is increasingly taking on cinematic production values in an epic narrative format. I think the tendency toward remakes of foreign media to legitimize what a smaller audience has already happily discovered, and introduce the narrative to a wider audience that avoids foreign media as such, is a predominantly American conceit. To be sure, some truly brilliant productions have been made because of this conceit, but there’s always the tinge of cultural xenophobia toward narrative beneath this commercial reality.