Technology and Culture

Jonathan Abel's The New Real is a complex and fun genealogy of Japanese media technology innovations in the long twentieth century. Through historical analysis, Abel provides a cogent argument for why media studies and Japanese studies would benefit from thinking more critically about representation and mimesis. He questions common claims that new media technologies allow us to access more immediate or "real" realities (i.e., representation), and that in turn human behavior is radically transformed by new media innovations (i.e., mimesis).

The book's title is a play upon the term "new media" and the Zizekian/Lacanian "Real," two concepts that Abel uses to critique the often-epochal claims that surround discussions of media innovation. By examining media technologies ranging from stereographs and audio recordings to video games and emojis, he challenges the idea that media merely drive change. Instead, he posits that media and technological change reveal a specific long-standing relationship with the world. Drawing on numerous case studies and Japanese media debates, Abel calls for us to reconsider mimesis as a concept metaphor for various forms of imitation, and subsequently mediation. [End Page 412]

The book begins with a complex theoretical exegesis, followed by a variety of case studies that demonstrate and stretch Abel's claims in specific ways. The opening chapter, "Welcome to the New Real," introduces readers to the major theoretical claims of the book. Abel outlines how modes of mimesis, mediation, remediation, immediacy, and hypermediacy all help us understand the multiple ways that meaning-making shapes our relationship with reality. If this sounds daunting, it is—but Abel walks readers through his claims carefully while providing enjoyable examples. He also acknowledges the challenging nature of this deeply theoretical opening chapter and invites readers to reengage with it repeatedly as they go through other sections of The New Real.

Subsequent chapters present an occasionally dizzying array of case studies, mostly chronological yet occasionally nonlinear, depending on the mimetic mode under discussion. Examining stereomimesis, for example, Abel uses the example of stereographs, two-dimensional photographic images that are layered to create a sense of three-dimensional depth. Through this, he argues, we can see the ways that representation and mimicry are distinct but constantly in dialogue with each other. Later he examines the history of Madame Butterfly to describe what he calls schizoaesthenic processes, in which imitating representational forms allows a text to blend into a cultural milieu while also causing fractures within it. The question of copying continues in the following chapters. In the case of Japan's first television superhero Gekko Kamen (Moonlight Mask), who sparked debates in the late 1950s after a child tragically died while imitating one of his stunts, Abel theorizes the tension found in the long debate surrounding modes of representation and their capacity to inspire copycat behavior in people. We are then guided through a history of family-oriented video game consoles and the visual novel game Steins;Gate, which provides an additional social dimension to Abel's theoretical framework. Within this section he explores "interpassivity" and ecomimesis, the process of situating social and mimetic relations within other world-building capacities. Finally, Abel's consideration of mimesis returns to its bodily connotations, but in an unusual form when he provides an enlightening genealogy of the now infamous "poop" emoji. Through this analysis, Abel explores the dream of typographers and designers to collapse the gap between sign and signifier by developing modes of communication that mimic supposedly universal bodily symbols and functions. The irony is that through the establishment of emoji, as Abel notes, the world has adopted a visual language deeply imbued with Japanese cultural connotations.

I rarely nod in agreement as often as I did while reading The New Real, and my enthusiasm for this book cannot be understated. Its many ideas and keywords will provide fruitful material for scholars for years to come. However, The New Real's complexity, both...