“POWER RANGERS, IRON CHEFS and the Global TV Market”
PETER X FENG, University of Delaware
MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 / 6:30PM
STERN LOUNGE / AUSTIN ROOM 217
MULTI-MEDIA PRESENTATION
Japanese TV programming appears on U.S. televisions in many guises. While most viewers are aware of animated programming like Pokémon, there are prime-time shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos (U.S. producers pay royalties to the Tokyo Broadcasting System for the right to use the format created for Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan). Professor Feng will discuss the cultural implications of different kinds of adapted programming, with special attention to the long-running Power Rangers series, which combines English-language footage intercut with the Japanese production in a pioneering form of international co-production. He will also examine Iron Chef’s journey from San Francisco’s KTSF-26 (which aired a subtitled version in the mid-1990s), to the fledgling Food Network’s dubbed version, to UPN’s failed Iron Chef USA (starring William Shatner as the Chairman) which preceded Iron Chef America by three years. This multi-media presentation will explore what is lost – and gained – in translation when Japanese programming enters the Global TV Market.
Peter X Feng is Associate Professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of English. He was Chancellor's Distinguished Visiting Professor of Film Studies at UC-Irvine (1997-98) and a member of the Advisory Board for Wayne State University Press' Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series since 2003. Dr. Feng has published articles in Cinema Journal, Cineaste, Amerasia Journal, Jump Cut, Camera Obscura, and elsewhere. Screening Asian Americans (2002), a collection of essays on Asian Americans and Film, was published by Rutgers University Press, and Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video (2002), was published by Duke University Press. Feng teaches courses in Theory, Asian American Literature, and Film Studies; recent courses include "Sex and Violence in Asian American Literature," "Texts and Contexts: Movies, Novels, Comics," "The Hollywood Musical," and the graduate seminar "Narrating Race, Narrating Nation."
Sponsors: Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and Asian American Cultural Center
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu