In 1997, an episode of the Pokémon animated TV series apparently induced seizures in children, which led to the warnings that appear today at the beginning of TV animations in Japan by government mandate. This incident serves as a point of departure for considering how television screens (and televised animations) have come to imply a tricky combination of totalizing strategies and individualizing procedures, generating modes of affective attunement to broadcast and wifi systems that parallel to neoliberal governmentality.
About the Speaker:
Thomas Lamarre teaches in East Asian Studies and Communications Studies at McGill University. Some of his written works include books such as Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics (2005), Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription (2000), and The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (2009).
