Every month the OTW hosts guest posts on our OTW News accounts to provide an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom. These posts express each individual’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy.
Camilo Díaz Pino is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media at West Chester University. His research covers cross-cultural media circulation, transnational media fandoms, cultures of production, animation, and kids’ media, and the integration of popular media in social movements. His current book project focuses on the history and influence of Japanese comics and animation in Latin American culture. Today, Camilo talks about his favorite aspect of Asian media fandom in Latin America and how special it is when anime is known by everyone.
How did you first find out about fandom and fanworks?
As a kid my family moved around quite a bit, so fandom itself was an entry point to friendships in new, unfamiliar places. I myself was a huge comedy nerd as a kid, and my parents were incredibly lax about what I was allowed to watch, so I knew movies, adult animation, stand-up acts, and TV shows that my friends were not allowed to engage with, or just hadn’t heard of. And that made me that kid. The one who knew the references and (mostly dirty) jokes the others were being sheltered from.
Later on, I must have run into online fan spaces almost simultaneously to my first clumsy creative projects making my own Pokémon and (later) Digimon. And then I fell into the vast chasm of fanfiction, where suddenly all the things I wished could have happened to, with, and for my favorite characters were suddenly happening. And I do still live in that world. Most recently, after finishing the Dungeon Meshi manga, I kind of still needed more from that world. So I do spend a bit of time on Archive of Our Own (AO3), checking in on my blorbos and whatnot.
What stands out to you about the dynamics of Asian media fandom in Latin America? What are some factors that shape these dynamics?
My favorite aspect of Asian media fandom in Latin America is the fascinating (to me) interplay between its aspects as an everyday, accepted, and at this point fundamentally “normal” part of popular culture juxtaposed with its more passionate, subcultural dimensions. We live in a time period where the president of Chile, for example, has a favorite Pokémon. And we know this because someone asked him online while he was campaigning, and he answered (it’s Squirtle, by the way). And then, shortly after being sworn in for his first term, he was gifted a Squirtle plushy by Japanese diplomats.
Anime fandom has gained political currency in this way, to the extent that politicians and diplomats engage with it not as a superficial appeal to the “kids”, but as an accepted aspect of common generational experiences. And while we do see shades of this in other regions, there is something about the Latin American experience with anime – and now K-drama and K-pop – that holds it closer. That frames it less as an aspect of “Asian” media and more as an aspect of shared popular culture more generally. Latin America, just like most of the world actually, has far more media importation and transnational circulation from other non-Spanish or Portuguese-speaking production centers than places like the US or the UK, where, even when things are imported, they have tended to circulate largely within the same “linguoscape”, or language landscape, if you will.
Smaller countries, poorer countries, and countries with newer emerging media industries don’t have the luxury of only creating their own media or of only engaging with media made in similar linguistic or cultural frameworks. We have imported Japanese TV since we’ve had TV, both animated and live action. So when anime arrived in the 1970s, rather than developing parallel import industries (which is what happened in the US), it came through the same translation and dubbing industries that brought us live-action Hollywood films, mainstream TV, and Western animation. Mario Castañeda, the Latin American voice of Goku, is also the voice of Bruce Willis, Captain Planet, and Cosmo Kramer, among dozens if not hundreds of other characters and stars from all over.
This longstanding integration between Asian media and other avenues of media importation and circulation in Latin America has had something of a “leveling” effect. Unlike in the US, where anime fought its way into the mainstream in the late 1990s, (and is even now still seen as nerd culture), anime in Latin America became, well, an everyday thing. A marker of childhood and family culture more generally. Anime like Heidi: Girl of the Alps (the first collaboration between Studio Ghibli heads Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, by the way) was appointment viewing for my mom’s generation in the 1970s – and not just the kids. Her whole family would watch it together on Sunday evenings.
Fast forward to today, and anime culture exists both as the more familiar (to us in Anglophone countries) permutation of nerd culture more generally, but also a deep-seated and entrenched aspect of Latin American pop culture more widely. I’m sure many of us have seen Goku as the mascot of more than one memed taco restaurant. But that’s just scratching the surface. Latin American public spaces are littered with anime fanworks, with characters as mascots, team emblems, graffiti, you name it. And it’s been that way for decades. It’s just pop culture now, as “ours” as Mafalda in Argentina.
How has looking at activist movements in Chile helped you perceive and understand the influence of Asian media fandom in Latin America?
Fan scholars love looking at fan communities and fan creators because communities do things, and creators make things. It makes our job easier when we can just access and watch what’s going on that way. But not all fans make things. And not all fans convene in fan-oriented communities. And not all fans even see themselves as fans, per se.
Because of Latin America’s long-established, low-key “fannish” relationships with many Asian media texts and formats, it can be difficult to really see or articulate the depth of the cultural impact of these objects in the general popular landscape. So when left wing protest movements (such as those which have been active for several decades now in Chile) do things like recreate the “spirit bomb” (genkidama) scene from Dragon Ball Z, it’s exciting. Because not only are they building a huge ball to do it with; not only are they, by the hundreds, recreating the pose Goku asked the people of earth to make in order to lend their collective energy to defeat the evil represented by, in this case, privatized for-profit education systems; not only did they get the Spanish-language voices of Goku and Frieza to lend their voices and support to the students in order to make it all authentic. They also are counting on the Chilean public at large to understand what this performance means – what it’s referencing, and how its message of collective action and collective responsibility for the greater good in the face of individualist evil might be connected to their political aims.
I think of moments like these as ruptures: moments in which latent aspects of a culture suddenly manifest, making themselves visible. They were always there, but it took specific conditions for them to make themselves seen. I think of it somewhat like how a theoretical physicist might think of a specific natural principle. You can’t always observe the phenomenon itself. But sometimes, given the proper circumstances, you can see evidence of it by looking at how it affects the things that surround it.
In this case, the latent cultural permeation of something like Dragon Ball Z in Chilean pop culture made itself seen in how it was able to be so specifically evoked by this movement. More recently, we’ve seen similar phenomena occurring with other uses of anime in Chilean protests, as well as K-pop for that matter. I’m happy to provide my own work on the matter for anyone, by the way – at present I have two articles on this topic available for download on Academia and ResearchGate.
How did you hear about the OTW and what do you see its role as?
Like many others, I first encountered the OTW years ago thanks to AO3 and its emergence as the preeminent online platform for fanfiction. The concept itself of having an organization dedicated to fostering, advocating for, archiving, and providing access to fan works seems increasingly fundamental in a world where the governance over the popular mythologies that shape our lives has progressively been corralled in and usurped by powerful private entities and their lobbying of governments worldwide. A world without popular control over popular stories represents the death of a living, breathing, evolving culture.
When we look at the stories, characters, archetypes, and universes that we grow up with, that we use to make sense of ourselves, each other, and the world, there is no functional or meaningful distinction to be made between the legitimacy of a multimillion dollar film, TV show, or videogame and a piece of literature or art produced by one passionate person or group of friends in their own time – even and especially if they are building on existing worlds. Both categories of creative work are, indeed, work. Both can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. And both are ultimately participating in a long, continuing conversation – drawing on existing works, premises, tropes, and structures in order to, hopefully, make something new and interesting out of them. All culture is remixing something.
The only real difference between these creative frameworks has to do with power and resources – the power and resources to try and dominate the cultural conversation and attempt to wall off “legitimate” use of (and access to) the building blocks of culture that, when we really look at them closely, and beyond the frameworks of profit-generation, actually belong to us all. Because popular culture is folk culture, just with extra steps. Once it exists in the world, it belongs to us all. The OTW does fundamental work in reasserting popular control over culture, advocating for us to both recognize and mobilize the power that we, as cultural animals, already have.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
I’ll admit I’m a sucker for the use of fan objects in street-level politics. If you ever need a moment of joy, please look up the Chilean street-level performer, activist, and actual hero, “Stupid Sexy Spider-Man” (Estupido y Sensual Spiderman) – an almost surreal real-life mix of a Simpsons meme, Spider-Man (natch), and pole dancing busker realness. And I know it’s sometimes a little silly, but I do love it when people use shared stories, characters, and worlds to educate each other on political debates and histories. It’s not always the most elegant tool to use, but fandom is often a fundamental entry point to so many important conversations.
Also, I love that a lot of videogame soundtracks have now begun to be incorporated into the “standard” jazz repertoire. So cool.
We encourage suggestions from fans for future guest posts, so contact us if you have someone in mind! Or you can visit our Pinboard account to catch up on earlier guest posts.