Scripted Affects, Branded Selves

“Scripted Affects, Branded Selves is ... a welcome volume to fill the void in Japanese popular media scholarship.”
- Micky Lee, International Journal of Communication

“Lukacs’ approach is particularly enlightening to a recent problem in visual media study; that of how to write on the increasingly fragmented nature of production and viewing practices.” - Jenny Allan, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

“Scripted Affects, Branded Selves is destined to become a classic. Gabriella Lukács skillfully combines textual analysis of specific dramas with ethnographic study of television producers and consumers. In addition, she offers penetrating insight into the complex dialectic of global and local new media landscapes. What appears to be an insular national space of contemporary Japanese television culture is in fact thoroughly under the influence of global capitalism and the internationalization of cultural consumption.” - Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, New York University

“Trendy dramas showcasing the hip lifestyles of young Tokyo sophisticates were a powerful television genre during Japan’s watershed decade of the 1990s. Gabriella Lukács artfully weaves an analysis of the production and content of the genre programming with an analysis of the lifestyles and work ways of its viewers. She shows how this television programming is forging new selves, a new economy, and a new society. The result is a remarkably new way in which anthropology can engage television and a critical contribution to our understanding of Japan’s current transformation.” - William W. Kelly, Yale University

“Scripted Affects, Branded Selves is a very important book that no one wh is interested in Japanese popular culture, women’s studies and media studies can ignore.” - Benjamin W. M. Ng, Asian Anthropology

“Any scholar of Japanese or international media, or of contemporary Japanese culture in general, will find much rich material to mull and to integrate into a model of Japanese society and Japan studies that goes a long way toward transcending the rather tired categories with which so much foreign Japanology still operates.” - John Clammer,, Journal of Japanese Studies

“Lukács very convincingly weaves a study of production and consumption together in a way that leaves the reader wondering why studies such as this have not been done before. For anyone interested in the anthropology of television, media, and Japan studies in general, this book will be a valuable resource to draw upon.” - Emma E. Cook, Social Science Japan Journal