{"id":69689,"date":"2017-01-18T08:22:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T13:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69689"},"modified":"2017-08-25T23:07:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T04:07:57","slug":"super-mario-and-cultural-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/01\/18\/super-mario-and-cultural-globalization\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Mario and Cultural Globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2020 Summer Olympics will be held in Japan.\u00a0 And when the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, made this public at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he did so in an interesting way.\u00a0\u00a0 He was standing atop a giant \u201cwarp pipe\u201d dressed as Super Mario.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to imagine the U.S. equivalent.\u00a0 Can you imagine the president of the United States standing atop the golden arches, dressed as Ronald McDonald, telling the world that we\u2019d be hosting some international event?<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0px; padding: 65.3199% 0px 0px; width: 100%; text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/593259318?et=cyDI5AZeS89QSzsGkwilTQ&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=amk7fJ3TKzvBrc4F6zBCk-PpFYDNORt0sguEs2TvzOA=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"388\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Prime minister Abe was able to do this because Mario is a cultural icon recognized around the world.\u00a0 That Italian-American plumber from Brooklyn created in Japan is truly a global citizen. <em>The Economist <\/em>recently published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/christmas-specials\/21712064-pudgy-italian-plumber-who-lives-america-was-conceived-japan-and-loved\">an essay<\/a> on how Mario became known around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Mario is a great example of a process sociologists call <strong>cultural globalization<\/strong>.\u00a0 This is a more general social process whereby <em>ideas<\/em>, <em>meanings<\/em>, and <em>values<\/em> are shared on a global level in a way that intensifies social relations.\u00a0 And Japan&#8217;s prime minister knew this.\u00a0 Shinzo Abe didn\u2019t dress as Mario to simply sell more Nintendo games.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it didn\u2019t hurt sales.\u00a0 In fact, in the past decade alone, Super Mario may account for up to one third of the software sales by Nintendo.\u00a0 More than 500 million copies of games in which Mario is featured circulate worldwide. \u00a0But, Japan selected Mario because he\u2019s an illustration of technological and artistic innovations for which the Japanese economy is internationally known.\u00a0 And beyond this, Mario is also an identity known around the world because of his simple association with the same human sentiment\u2014joy.\u00a0 He intensifies our connections to one another.\u00a0 You can imagine people at the ceremony in Rio de Janeiro laughing along with audience members from different countries who might not speak the same language, but were able to point, smile, and share a moment together during the prime minister&#8217;s performance.\u00a0 A short, pudgy, mustached, working-class, Italian-American character is a small representation of that shared sentiment and pursuit.\u00a0 This intensification of human connection, however, comes at a cost.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-69745 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/01\/4886811597_264fe6ea3c_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"365\" \/>We may be more connected through Mario, but that connection takes place within a global capitalist economy.\u00a0 In fact, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC6-ymYjG0SU0jUWnWh9ZzEQ\">Wisecrack<\/a> produced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Vz3eOb6Yl1s\" data-rel=\"lightbox-video-0\">a great short animation using Mario to explain Marxism<\/a> and the inequalities Marx saw as inherent within capitalist economies.\u00a0 Cultural globalization has more sinister sides as well, as it also has to do with global cultural hegemony.\u00a0 Local culture is increasingly swallowed up.\u00a0 We may very well be more internationally connected.\u00a0 But the objects and ideas that get disseminated are not disseminated on an equal playing field.\u00a0 And while the smiles we all share when we connect with Mario and his antics are similar, the political and economic benefits associated with those shared smirks are not equally distributed around the world.\u00a0 Indeed, the character of Mario is partially so well-known because he happened to be created in a nation with a dominant capitalist economy.\u00a0 Add to that that the character himself hails from another globally dominant nation&#8211;the U.S.\u00a0 The culture in which he emerged made his a story we\u2019d all be much more likely to hear.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><i><a \/>Tristan Bridges, PhD<\/a> is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is the co-editor of<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/ushe\/product\/exploring-masculinities-9780199315673?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;\">Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Inequality, and Change<\/a> <i>with C.J. Pascoe and studies gender and sexual identity and inequality.  You can follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tristanbphd\">Twitter here<\/a>. Tristan also blogs regularly at <a href=\"https:\/\/inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com\/\">Inequality by (Interior) Design<\/a>.<\/i><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2020 Summer Olympics will be held in Japan.\u00a0 And when the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, made this public at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he did so in an interesting way.\u00a0\u00a0 He was standing atop a giant \u201cwarp pipe\u201d dressed as Super Mario.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to imagine the U.S. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":69749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[98,64,129,1821,1711],"class_list":["post-69689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-capitalism","tag-globalization","tag-media","tag-nation-japan","tag-toysgames"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/01\/Shinzo-Abe-Mario.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69689"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69748,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69689\/revisions\/69748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}