The first 120 or so pages of Shutting Out the Sun (2006) are fascinating, and indeed, Zielenziger’s portrayal of a number of Japanese hikikomori (shut-ins), their families, and those working the help bring them back out into the public world, manages to be very thoughtful and compassionate, and even, at times, moving. Later chapters are less powerful, in my opinion, in part because of the way Zielenziger presents the social problems he chooses to tackle. Many, such as the falling birth rate, the lingering (relative) conservativism among men, the precipitously-declined birth rate, and the national obsession with conspicuous consumption of brand …
Tag: culture
Typology, Teleology, and Essentialism: Comparing Cultures Across Time
I don’t know if I’ll actually undertake this or not, but I certainly have it on my mind. In my Pop Cultures of the English-Speaking World course, I usually teach a segment on the Flapper Girl, inviting students to compare this American, 1920s concept of the “New Woman” with the phenomenon that arose in the mid-2000s, where young women’s consumption patterns began to draw criticism and the label “된장녀” (Soybean Paste Girl) came into sudden and widespread use. While the (Korean) term has kind of melted into the background, it’s still very much present in the minds of young people, …
Enjoyment
While grading some homework from my course on Popular Cultures in the English Speaking World, something clicked for me. I was reading through student responses to the episode of How I Met Your Mother that we watched together, and discussed. Something that really stood out for me was the way in which people talk about comedy, or entertainment in general. I’ve noticed it before, in the way many Koreans talk about music, but finally I think I put some pieces of the puzzle together. Now, I’m not 100% sure I have something here–it may be that my students are all …
Scorning Science, and the Fear of Doubt
I meant to post this a couple of months ago, but better late than never. The anti-science movement in America: yeah, it’s a problem. Indeed, it is a very frustrating problem, and this is, I think, one of the reasons that the Regenesis television series I just finished watching was so engaging for me: time and again, the characters run into the social/cultural problem of people either being scientifically illiterate, or anti-science, or science-phobic. The utter frustration of a number of characters on the show–but especially David Sangström–was one of those things that made the show so relatable to so …
Addendum #2 to [Literary] SF: A Social Phenomenon (Plus Some Detours)
Note: This is an addendum to this original post, and to the first addendum I posted the other day. Some of the discussion that has cropped up in the responses to the earlier post and addendum to which this is appended (and which I want to address) is concerned with the “colonialism” or “imperialism” of the status I suggested American mainstream non-SF media have for average Korean viewers. That is to say, questions were raised as to whether this non-SF having a kind of pseudo-SFnal, utopian quality — in that it depicts a world not only radically different, but also …