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Essay Instructions: You are to write a 7-page paper. You are to “State the Question First” and then continue to answer. Read the Case Study, at the end of the case study answer the discussion questions. For Outside Sources, Use Internet Only.

Astro Boy---Marketing Japanese Anime to the World

In the 1980s, Japan was known for its manufacturing prowess. In those days the stereotypical Japanese corporation, staffed by gray-suited “salary-men,” dominated global markets. These corporations were the engines of Japan's export -oriented economy, producing a wide range of high-quality, low-cost standardize manufactured goods from automobiles to semiconductors and consumer electronics and global consumption. However, a decade of economic recession pummeled Japan's manufacturing sector. While the salary-man suffered, Japan's hip youth rejected the formal gray attire of their fathers in favor of dyed hair, Japanese neo-punk clothing, and an obsession with cartoon characters known as anime. Today this culture shift is paying back economic dividends as Japan becomes a global center for fashion, video games, music, and anime. In 2003, Japan's new economy cultural exports of clothes, video games, and anime exceeded $14 billion, three times the value of the country’s exports of TV sets.
At the leading edge of Japan's cultural export boom are anime cartoons such as Pokémon, Sailor Moon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. All of these cartoons featured wide-eyed characters are drawn in a style that dates back to the classic anime cartoon, Astro Boy, created by Japanese anime pioneer, Osamu Tezuka after World War II. Astro Boy, a wide- eyed, spiky- haired superhero with a gentle heart, fights for peace between humans and machines. In 1963, a black-and-white version of Astro Boy became the first Japanese cartoon show imported to the United States, but it was pulled in 1967 as more modern color cartoons increased in popularity. Now Astro Boy is back. Executives and Sony pictures in both Tokyo and Los Angeles have been working together with Tezuka Productions, the owner of the Astro Boy franchise, to relaunch the wide-eyed superhero to global audiences.
The rebirth of Astro Boy owes much to the success of Pokémon, which in the late 1990s and early 2000s showed that there was a global market among the preteen set for Japanese anime. Pokémon, which ultimately embraced videogames, trading cards, cartoons, toys, and full-length feature films, generated more than $2 billion in annual global revenues at the height of its popularity. Japanese cartoon characters have done particularly well in the United States. In 2002, broadcasting rights for Japanese anime in the United States were close to $500 million, and toys featuring anime characters brought in a staggering $4.7 billion. The trans-Pacific appeal of anime has been attributed to several factors, including similar lifestyles, income, values, and behaviors among preteens in Japan and the United States (in both nations, significant times is spent watching TV and playing video games). It has also been noted that anime cartoons are Western enough for the Japanese and Japanese enough for Westerners.
To develop Astro Boy, Sony has decided to follow a different approach than that typical of the genre to date. Until now, anime has been developed exclusively in Japan and then exported to the rest of the world and dubbed in local languages only after finding success in Japan. With Astro Boy, Sony is so sure that it has a hit that it has committed to developing the cartoons that will appeal in both Japanese and American cultures. For the new Astro Boy, US animators are drawing the Japanese designs in a high-definition format with 24 frames per second, instead of the jerky 4 or 5 frames per second used in Pokémon and most of the Japanese anime. Animators have synched the characters’ lips with both Japanese and English, and Japanese writers have worked with American producers to make the story line appeal across culture. The WB Network is so sure that it has a hit that it has purchased 25 episodes instead of the usual 13.
To leverage the value of Astro Boy, is following the standard industry formula, licensing rights to the Astro Boy characters to everyone from clothing manufacturers and fast food companies, to toy-makers. If Astro Boy is a global hit, Astro Boy burgers and bedding will no doubt follow. Sony has already locked up the film rights to Astro Boy and plans to bring Astro Boy to the big screen between 2005 and 2007.

Discussion Questions

1. Is the success of Japanese anime in countries such as the United States indicative of the emergence of a global youth culture?

2. What social and technological forces are making it possible for Japanese anime to transcend national borders?

3.How does the development of the new series of Astro Boy cartoons differ from the way Japanese anime has traditionally been developed? Why is this change being made?

4. Do you think that Astro Boy will be successful? Why? Why not?

Essay Instructions: TOPIC :
The research should examine a specific aspect of the material culture of youth. The topic is to examine advertisements around dolls that promote consumerism. Like Monster High dolls, Bratz dolls, and Barbie.
Print advertisements for the dolls could be examined in conjunction with adult fashion print ads--therefore looking for similarities between the two of them? Showing how they are promoting shopping to children and then pushing it onto adults?

Also State The thesis very clearly by saying thesis is….

Please examine at least 4 advertisements for each of them. You can choose them.

For Monster high Dolls- use the adds below and if you find others use them too. find print advertisement too. (you can relate them to the movie Heathers if you can)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EuP4XGtdE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3QILcZYUAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwKTvb5ka1Y

For Bratz dolls- you can use any of the beow and you can also chose other. But make sure you state it. find print advertisement too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ilOO-lt2c
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7011/6681953575_447931e6c2_z.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlgjj_I5jI

For Barbie
You can choose.

(by the way these advertisements are not sources so these shouldn’t be in the bibliography section, make another one stating sources for advertisements or put them somewhere doesn’t matter.)
In the bibliography section use at least 10 sources.


Below is the syllabus that we did in the class. Use the readings on below that you find online (the ones that are the easiest for you) and use them as a source.
Use at least one of the movies as a source; Clueless, toy story 3, Richie Rich or Pretty in Pink.
2 to 3 readings from the course schedule. (they can be any of the ones below)
1 different book that is not in the course schedule(the book has to be an easy-to find book and also there has to be a copy in google books and try not to choose a complicated one)
and the rest of the sources depends on you, you can find them online as many as you want but do not use books instead of the one I stated before. (do not use Wikipedia as a souce)
Make sure they are easy to find articles and they shouldn’t ask passwords to enter to the webpage etc.
Also, Make sure you make citations and footnotes+add the website links.


Write them very clear, since English is my second language I need them to be really understanding also I will use this for my presentation too so please consider that while writing it.
+Do not use any sources of written assignments before about this topic.
Thanks !
ANd let me know if you have questions




Course Schedule

Week 1: Introduction & Methodology
Monday, January 28, 2013

• - Thomas Hine, “Introduction: What Makes People Shop?” in I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers (New York: HarpurCollins, 2002), ix-xvii.
Week 2: Youth Culture and Consumerism I

Monday, February 4, 2013
Required Readings:

• - John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Dependence Effect,” in The Consumer Society Reader, Juliet B. Schor and Douglas Holt, eds., (New York: New Press, 2000), 20-25.

• - Jean Baudrillard, “Consumer Society,” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, Lawrence Glickman, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1999), 33-56
• - Malcolm Gladwell, “The Coolhunt,” in The Consumer Society Reader, Juliet B. Schor and Douglas Holt, eds., (New York: New Press, 2000), 360-374.

• - Czikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, “Chapter 1: People and Things,” in The Meaning of Things (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1-19.

Week 3: Youth Culture and Consumerism II

Monday, February 11, 2013
Required Readings:

• - Colin Campbell, “Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming,” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, Lawrence Glickman, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1999), 19-32.

• - Michael Schudson, “Delectable Materialism: Second Thoughts on Consumer Culture,” in

Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, Lawrence Glickman, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1999), 341-358.

- James Twitchell, “Two Cheers for Materialism,” in The Consumer Society Reader, Juliet B. Schor and Douglas Holt, eds., (New York: New Press, 2000), 281-290.
Week 4: Everything is a Commercial??"Advertising & Youth in the late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood (2008) Monday, February 25, 2013

Required Readings:
• - Juliet B. Schor, “Empowered or Seduced? The Debate About Advertising and Marketing to Kids,” in Born to Buy (New York: Scribner, 2004), 177-188.

• - Kit Yarrow and Jayne O’Donnell, “Chapter 4: The Lives, Minds, and Hearts of Today’s Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings,” in Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-somethings are Revolutionizing Retail (San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 77-117.
• - Milner, Murray, Jr. “Creating Consumers” in Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 2006), 155-170.
Week 5: Gender, The Domestic, and Consumerism

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Pretty in Pink, and Youth Culture in the 1980s The Most Private Space: Bedrooms and the Domestic Sphere

Monday, March 4, 2013
Required Readings:

• - Pretty in Pink. DVD. Directed by Howard Deutch, 1986. Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Home Video, 2006.

• - Barnwell, Jane. “Chapter 1: The Role of the Production Designer,” in Production Design: Architects of the Screen (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 3-24.

• - Croft, Jo. “A Life of Longing Behind the Bedroom Door: Adolescent Space and the Makings of Private Identity.” In Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Modern Culture (Nature, Culture and Literature 2), eds. Jo Croft and Gerry Smyth, 209-26.

• - Dullea, Georgia. “Teenagers Inner Sanctums,” New York Times, 9 January 1992.

• - Cieraad, Irene. “Gender at Play: Décor Differences Between Boys’ and Girl’s Bedrooms,” in Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life, eds. Emma Casey and Lydia Martens (Hampshire, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 197-218.

Week 6: But They’re Just Toys: Dolls, Games, Meaning and Consumerism

Toy Story 3
Monday, March 11, 2013

Required Readings:
• - Toy Story 3, Directed by Lee Unkrick, 2010. Hollywood, CA: Disney Pixar, 2010.

• - Judy Attfield, “Barbie and Action Man: Adult Toys for Girls and Boys, 1959-93,” in The Gendered Object, Pat Kirkham, ed. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996), 80-89.
• Richie rich movie.

Essay Instructions: This shall be a paper with general Information about the Pioneercamp ARTEK at the coastline of the Black Sea in modern day Ukrain. Please try to include some information about the education technics used there during the Sovjet period, as well as some Information about ARTEK being pushed to become the "Number-One Pioneercamp" in the entire communist world. Regarding the Citiation: Please include pagenumbers.
You might want to search for Catriona Kelly who wrote about Russian youth culture, and for Clementine G.K. Creuziger, as well as Liaa A. Kirschenbaum.

Essay Instructions: Cultural factors, including the ethnic composition of the country, languages, historical and popular cultures.

This is the part of the analysis that tells the reader about the worldview of the people, their various cultures and languages, and how well the society is coping with their differences. Be sure to note whether this is a relatively homogeneous society or heterogeneous society. Homogeneity, or sameness, makes it easier to get along and gain consensus (especially if most of the country is middle class). In some societies today, popular (often Americanized culture) is having a major impact on traditional cultures. Youth cultures, adopting Western music, dress, and ways of behaving are often seen as a major threat to traditional cultures by the older generations. This may cause tensions in the society, with shifting gender roles and challenges to traditional authority structures. (Are there tensions between fundamentalist and moderate groups? Tensions between older and younger generations? Tensions around shifting gender structures and social roles?)

Look at what's going on in your country culturally, look for different cultural groups, describe that situation and work from there with any analysis you can offer.