Historicizing East Asian pop cultureanti-communist propaganda (Yoshimi 2003).^3 Under the supervision of the ongoing American
military presence, and often with its direct financial support, many governments installed broad-
casting and entertainment systems that were crucial both in propagandizing anti-communist
ideas and in building national ideologies. From the start, these systems embraced American
formats, programs, operating rationales, and so on. Moreover, because of the obvious American
origin of these technologies and cultural products, they were treated as symbols of modern life
or modern style (Yoshimi 2006). In the process of nation-building, therefore, national govern-
ments in the region actively embraced American-flavored pop cultures, and these were in turn
welcomed and enjoyed by the East Asian general public.
As pop culture became more prevalent in people’s everyday lives, however, the same national
governments became wary of the sexual, individualistic, and even liberal ideologies that they
believed were spread as a consequence of various American pop-cultural influences (Chua and
Cho 2012). Their concerns included exposure to immorality, sexuality, violence, and progres-
sive political ideas. Therefore, pop culture was also decried across East Asia as evidence of the
decay of each society’s moral and ethical standards, and it was often regarded as a threat to the
authority of the government. Thus, in East Asia, America often “serve[d] as a metaphorical siren
song against which a balanced economy must seal its ears” (Garon and Maclachlan 2006, 14).
Such patronizing government attitudes collided with the populist approach of local consumers.
This conflict reveals the complexity of the connections between East Asian pop cultures and
Americanization, and it can also be used to trace the expansion of American hegemony during
the nation-building stages of many Asian countries.
After seventy years of steady interaction with the local, this penetration of American pop
culture into both the production and consumption sides of the East Asian pop cultural space
has become almost seamless—as seen most recently in the domination of American television
formats in East Asian television. In this regard, Anthony Fung suggests the idea of global (dis)
continuity to describe “the degree of continuity of the modes and structures of operation of
transnational cultural corporations, which conventionally dominate in the transplant from West
to Asia in which local adaptations and modifications arise” (2013, 2). As the world of mass enter-
tainment has become globalized and national boundaries have become more porous, the status
of American pop culture in East Asia has been transformed. No longer curious and new—or
degenerate and corrosive—American music, films, and television are now seen as cultural prod-
ucts to be actively mimicked, appropriated, and even banalized. The result is that today it is often
difficult to discern the boundaries of American influence in East Asian pop cultures (Chua and
Cho 2012). Nonetheless, it is still true that East Asians recognize, either implicitly or explicitly,
both the direct and indirect influence of American culture on Asian pop cultures (Ang 2004).^4
The emergence of East asian pop culture
Since the early 1990s, East Asian cultural landscapes have been significantly transformed through
increased integration, networking, and cooperation among various elements of the transnational
cultural industries, including non-Western players. Such transformations engender both drastic
and subtle reconfigurations within the pop cultures of East Asia: the “structure of transnational
cultural power has been dispersed, but has also become more solid and ubiquitous” (Iwabuchi
2004, 6). Previously, East Asian audiences tended to prefer American pop cultural products to
domestic or regional ones. However, so many elements of American pop culture have been so
effectively routinized and integrated into East Asian cultural products and the everyday lives of
people in East Asia that it is hard to discern the extent of American pop culture’s influence on
local or regional pop cultures. Such transformations in the East Asian cultural landscapes have