You are at the breakfast table, browsing the papers for what has changed in the world, when your six-year-old asks, playing absently with his bowl of cereal: "Who is Mickey Mouse?"
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You are at the breakfast table, browsing the papers for what has changed in the world, when your six-year-old asks, playing absently with his bowl of cereal: "Who is Mickey Mouse?"
And you know something profound has happened; time has blown a golden chapter from the history of your beliefs gently out of the window. You slowly wake to the cruel fact that Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and the good old raucous bunch from Disney were not immortal after all.
Most children today are not interested in toon icons that we, and our parents, grew up with. They have moved on to new animation heroes, speaking animals, mutating aliens and rampaging robots. But there is a bigger, more engaging story here. The children have actually moved on to a whole new animation world.
It has been a pop cultural coup. Animation from East Asia has quietly usurped the big, warm world of American cartoons. Every household name in Mumbai or other Indian cities, indeed most world cities, is inspired by Japanese animation genres like anime or manga. Gokou, Doraemon, Shin-Chan, Beyblade, Ben 10 and Ninja Hattori are all from Japan, where children and teenagers are in turn deeply influenced by Korean street fashion.
Gokou's spiked hair, Ben's layered clothing, the oversized tops and skinny pants of the toon girls are designs and ideas exported from the streets of Seoul, first to Tokyo and Beijing and eventually to the rest of the world.
So, Donald Duck's tuft doesn't stand a chance with a generation driven to look cool. Mickey serenading Mini with guitar and clumsy antics is pass ufffd to youngsters who are learning to treat "sexy" as a casual, vanilla compliment. Goofy transforms into stunned knots after a mighty spin in a washing machine; Ben transforms into an alien with the flick of his watch.
East Asia is ambitious, like the world's children and young adults. America is struggling to keep its old money.
Japanese animation is conjuring up fantastic space battles in remote planets, making robots, beasts and humans rub shoulders in futuristic wars. The US' animation powerhouse Disney is going back to moon journeys with flies, or to the magic of Arabian Nights with Aladdin. Noble thought. But when you have too many gadgets in hand, war wins over goodness.
While East Asia has established brute dominance of the animation world in terms of culture and ideas, it also provides the sweatshops where these cartoons and the merchandise are made. Many episodes of Simpsons and Family Guy were made in South Korean studios, and a visit to any toy shop in Mumbai is evidence enough of China's near-monopoly in the production of merchandise.
Animation was once one of America's biggest cultural exports, which captured the imagination of the world. We wanted a slice of Mickey Mouse's world of plenty. Today, Mickey lives in the boondocks of nostalgia, or not at all.
China, Japan, India, Brazil are rising economically. More than 70 years after the Great Depression, the US is again making headlines for job losses, downturn, economic struggle. It is yet the most formidable economic power. But if Mickey Mouse is an indication, the mighty America is slipping in the minds of tomorrow's inhabitants.
Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor, Mid Day. Reach him at abhijit@mid-day.com
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