Idols%20and%20Celebrity%20in%20Japanese%20Media%20Culture

Introduction: The Mirror of Idols and Celebrity 17
Figure I.3 Former Morning Musume idol Yaguchi Mari appears in inset (above
left) during a VTR about the AKB48 General Election. The captions (bottom)
highlight the words and emotions for the television audience.
than three years (Nikkei Entertainment 1999, 35–36). Since the maturation
of the idol system in the 1980s, the careers of both male and female
idols have become increasingly shorter. 22 Through the mass media,
the awareness of a particular celebrity or idol permeates national consciousness
until it collapses under the weight of its own self-referential
reproduction. Very few celebrities have sustained long-term careers in
the Japanese entertainment industry.
The abundance of media commentary on other media within Japan
creates a social context wherein much of the knowledge that informs
the act of media interpretation has been predigested. In this social context,
the act of interpreting and evaluating media texts, such as idols,
is never entirely independent, but rather intertextual. As one star fails
to command public attention, a new one is immediately elevated in the
media through the repetition of intertextual discourse. With each new
celebrity performer, the media is invigorated with a new focus for further
profiling, exposure, and gossip. As a result, the desire for novelty
becomes engrained in Japanese media culture, guaranteeing stability
and routinizing consumption.
The Japanese television industry is constantly struggling to produce
new programming, and agencies to produce new celebrity performers.
Commercial calculations play an essential role in every aspect of the
production of television in Japan. Reruns or syndicated programs are