1. History:
Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade's book - Introducing Japanese Popular Culture: Provides historical so as political and economic context to Japanese popular culture.
http://aas2.asian-studies.org/EAA/EAA-Archives/14/2/843.pdf : this shows the history of cute culture development from the post war time and how it was not targeted to specific customer in japan and how quickly cuteness became a steragity to the marketing.
2. Concept of “cute” and subcultures in Asian cute culture as a whole:
The Dark Side Of Harajuku Style You Haven't Seen Yet | Style Out There | Refinery29: Experience of an Asian-American reporter visiting Japan and getting familiar with Harajuku Style.
i-D Meets: Tokyo's Genderless Youth: One of the subculture, related to Feminism.
3. Feminism and Sexism:
i-D Meets: Tokyo's Genderless Youth: One of the subculture, related to Feminism.
https://qz.com/740598/the-emerging-field-of-cute-studies-can-help-us-understand-the-dark-side-of-adorableness/ : this shows the dark side of the cute culture and how people growing up with cute culture shapes to become cute
(A)cute Confusion: The Unpredictable Journey of Japanese Popular Culture: Not understanding Hello Kitty as a character and her rights/ ability. (also because in the official site her boyfriend is a “little girl”, some people in different culture sees a problem without a basic research)
4. Marketing and Products (relate):
A socio-marketing analysis of the concept of cute and its consumer culture implications: Analysis of cute culture by marketers and how it evolve through the years.
Odours of Mobility: Mobile Phones and Japanese Cute Culture in the Asia-Pacific: Humanizing technology by personalizing, creating identities for devices.
What’s the cultural difference between the West and the East? The consumption of popular “cute” games in the Taiwanese market: How Asian market their game and the difference to Western culture of gaming.
5. TV Shows:
Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade's book - Introducing Japanese Popular Culture: On section II, chapter 4 - 6, Japanese television’s topics covering superhero, romance, and travel.
Aggretsuko Netflix Trailer: How they tackle office culture and problem using cute characters.
(see more in music)
Part one will be updated later
So making this 2D sketch this project is more personal project. Parsonal enough to make me discover my feeling that I have been trying to notice. So this poster is how I feel. being in middle of two culture and trying to belong to sub-culture where I grew up believing I could be myself in that culture.
Against Feminism
Fetishized
Chilsish
Resisting the Adult World
Self Expression
Insprational Figure
Genderless
Pink Power
Expression of Issues
I trying to make a object that shows how in the Japanese culture I feel about cute culture and how being out side Japan, I have been reseving the lebel from people and from articlues
I specificly chose a material that is easily broken because I felt like some of the article did actuly hurt me since the author who didn't grow up in Japan didn't do enough research and said that something I have been believing is totally wrong and only shows the sicking part of the humanity.
inside there is a figure of person putting up the poster looking words which represent what I believe cute culture could be and how it stands for me
many of things inside are covered in gulitter with represent that estetic of cuteness people see
From the out side there are black and white lebel with words that shows how cute culture are studied outside the Japanese culture which make the viwer hard to seek though those word on the outside
I am proposing to make a intractive screen that has camera to make a mirror looking platform that "bad" charactor shows up and you need to get into the figting clothe to fight them
in the GIF I am only showing the one set of clothing but I wish to have more than one or make it able to have that dress-up feel to be able for audience to customize thier battle clothing that they feel confortable and "cute" in
I think one thing cute culture though me is to be strong and to be bad ass, you don't have to look strong of bad ass but I can be cute and strong in the same time