I’ve been thinking a lot about what Chinese consumer power is going to mean for images of Asian people in Hollywood films — (even if offending Asian Americans doesn’t effect a studio’s bottom line enough for it to be an issue, offending Chinese viewers, or the Chinese government, has real monetary consequences). I’ll probably write something longer about it once I think it through a little more, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share something that’s fascinated me since I was a kid: the way children’s films are marketed in America vs. Japan. These are commercials for the same movies, but check out the tonal differences:
(note: this is essentially taken from an e-mail I wrote to someone around ’07, so that’s the time period all the examples come from)
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
U.S. (this was probably ripped from Australian TV, but this is the same commercial they showed in the U.S.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch’v=MzCdHlZKcJ0
Japan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch’v=TbAUiAthEc8
Meet the Robinsons
U.S.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch’v=Gb1mT5eZs1M
Japan:
(embedding doesn’t seem to be working right, but there is a link below)
Ben Hamamoto is a writer born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been published in the Oakland Tribune and has written for New American Media’s YO! Youth Outlook and the Nichi Bei Times. He is a research manager for the Health Horizons Program at the Institute for the Future. He also edits Nikkei Heritage, the National Japanese American Historical Society’s official magazine and contributes to Nichi Bei News.
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