In 2020, hyperpop artist Ashnikko released a remix of her single “Daisy” with virtual idol Hatsune Miku. While the rights to any commercial use of Miku’s voice and likeness are owned by Crypton Future Media, anyone with Vocaloid software can produce songs for her. While scholars have found that fan-produced performances are foundational to Miku’s development as a performer, less attention has been paid to how intercultural commercial ventures have shaped her identity. This paper employs a textual analysis of the “Daisy 2.0” music video and an observation of comments posted on the video’s YouTube upload to demonstrate how the video’s narrative and its surrounding audience discourse both limit and expand Miku’s cultural signifiers. While fluid approaches to identity afforded by the hyperpop and virtual idol subcultures hold potential to liberate these performers from hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality, cultural and commercial constraints still loom large in these spaces.
A characteristic frequently glossed over in scholarly examinations of the online electronic music genre vaporwave is its use of East Asian cultural imagery in its paratexts. One exception is a piece by musicologist Ken McLeod, who connects vaporwave’s use of visual references to Japanese culture to techno-Orientalism, a term that describes how paranoia around Japanese economic expansion in the late twentieth century manifested in American and European cultural products. This article extends McLeod's argument to show how the uses and reproductions of East Asian cultural elements in vaporwave serve to reinforce stereotypes consistent with histories of techno-Orientalist representations, particularly with regard to gender. This article elaborates on the anonymous nature of the vaporwave scene to complicate approaches to techno-Orientalist analyses of digital artifacts. In doing so, this essay contributes to the growing body of scholarly literature addressing the roles representation, aesthetics, and affect play in the formation of communities around music genres online.
Teenage Stepdad is the social media pseudonym for a meme creator who makes satirical use of retro and nostalgic imagery to communicate anti-capitalist political messaging through his Instagram account. This piece explores how TeenageStepdad uses the aesthetics of culture jamming to give his memes affective power, as well as how he navigates the tensions of using a commercial social media platform to share anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist memes. Particular attention is paid to the recent promotion of a new web series featuring Teenage Stepdad, "Seize the Memes," and the ways in which the collaborative nature of Instagram can both promote and distract from the account's explicit political calls to action.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.