ABSTRACT

This article examines Paramount Pictures’ marketing of its 2017 live-action remake of the 1995 Japanese cult anime Ghost in the Shell and online audiences’ responses to it. Analysing the trailers, the article argues that Paramount dually serves existing fans via visually quoting the original film’s iconic imagery, and new wider audiences by promoting the remake as an A-list blockbuster via emphasising its lead Scarlett Johansson. Analysing 315 audience-made memes produced by Paramount Pictures’ viral marketing ‘meme generator’ evidences users’ responses’ anti-fan, anti-orientalist, and anti-whitewashing discourses towards the remake, its star, and Hollywood. In doing so, users perform a range of intersectional identities that read against the remake, whereby memes signify audiences’ reading of the trailers and themselves into existence when posting such content online. To conceptualise this, the article uses Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial third space, arguing that both memes’ meaning and users’ identity inscriptions occur interstitially. Resultantly, the article adds to the scarce work on media promotional materials, gives much-needed attention to online image texts, and highlights the saliency of race as part of the intersectional make-up of audience’ identities and reading strategies.

摘要

本文考察派拉蒙影业对其 2017 年真人版重拍 1995 年日本邪教动漫攻壳机动队的营销以及在线观众对此的反应。文章分析了预告片，认为派拉蒙通过从视觉上引用原片的标志性图像来为现有粉丝提供双重服务，并通过强调其主角斯嘉丽·约翰逊将翻拍片宣传为一流的大片，从而为新的更广泛的观众提供服务。分析派拉蒙影业的病毒式营销“模因生成器”制作的 315 个观众制作的模因，证明了用户对翻拍、其明星和好莱坞的反粉丝、反东方主义和反粉饰话语的反应。在这样做的过程中，用户会表现出一系列交叉的身份，这些身份与翻拍相反，由此模因表示观众在在线发布此类内容时对预告片的阅读和他们自己的存在。为了概念化这一点，文章使用了霍米巴巴的后殖民第三空间，认为模因的含义和用户的身份铭文都是间隙出现的。结果，这篇文章增加了媒体宣传材料的稀缺性，对在线图像文本给予了急需的关注，并强调了种族作为受众身份和阅读策略交叉构成的一部分的显着性。