Marc Steinberg is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University and the author of
Alexander Zahlten is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.
Marc Steinberg is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University and the author of
Alexander Zahlten is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.
Critical Media Imagination: Nancy Seki’s TV Criticism and the Media Space of the 1980s and 1990s
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Published:February 2017
Ryoko Misono, Ryoko Misono, Edmond Ernest dit Alban, Marc Steinberg, 2017. "Critical Media Imagination: Nancy Seki’s TV Criticism and the Media Space of the 1980s and 1990s", Media Theory in Japan, Marc Steinberg, Alexander Zahlten
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This chapter extracts a theory of media out of the unique body of critical work of the popular media figure, TV critic, and eraser-stamp artist Nancy Seki. An enormously prolific author writing about TV at exactly the moment its primacy in the media ecology of Japan began to wane, Nancy Seki developed a complex reservoir of self-reflexive tactics that included artistic practices as well as a sharp humor. The late Seki enacted a media theory that made heavy use of the tools of popular culture itself: critical text, an “eraser print” illustration of a TV celebrity’s face based on a carving in the medium of the rubber eraser, and a short tagline included below the illustration. This chapter shows how these three elements worked together to offer an immanent critique of television, and examines Seki’s concern with the shape of the public sphere in a mediatized society.
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