Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan

Extract

At the end of the twentieth century, Japan was rocked by substantial changes in the socio-economic structure brought about by a long recession. Economic disparities became more visible and began to widen between the haves and have-nots as institutions and companies were forced to alter their human management systems and began restructuring their operations in various ways, such as instituting hiring freezes of new graduates. Thanks to deregulation of temporary labour laws companies and institutions also began expanding their use of irregular workers, which are cheaper and easier to lay-off should the need arise. The economic landscape was characterised by market fragmentation, and this trend has continued.

It is within this context that Lukács addresses how market changes affected both commercial television networks and the reception of networks’ televisual fare. She tracks the development of a new kind of prime-time television drama, the trendy drama, which was created in the 1990s in response to the difficulties networks were having in staying afloat. Trendy dramas were a move away from traditional ‘story-driven’ dramas (where the main focus is on a predetermined story line). In contrast, trendy dramas’ story lines were of less import; by weaving through new consumer trends and using the hottest tarento (celebrities who work across media genres), trendy dramas were written to be signifiers of lifestyles (or ‘affect’, as Lukács terms it), not stories, and thus, they were developed and meant to be consumed as a way to keep up with the latest trends. They were consequently written for and targeted the demographic with the highest disposable income: young single working women, with the focus of the dramas on individuals’ realisation of happiness.