Scapegoats are as American as apple pie: Salem had witches, Joseph McCarthy had the Communists, Rock and Roll and Rap were each accused of corrupting society, and, recently, school officials and lawmakers began hinting at the Internet's evil influence. But the latest inductee to the menace-of-the-month club is not a spiritual, political or cultural threat: America's new terror is the media-marketing scheme called Pokémon.
A year ago this mega-fad alarmed only parents and teachers, but now the preteen craze is under fire from major news organizations. Embodied as an array of cartoons, video games, movies and trading cards, Pokémon is not as much a product line as it is a perpetual ad campaign which encourages children to collect and consume as much Poké-paraphernalia as possible, inspiring only more collection and consumption. But unlike other recent kid manias, from Dungeons and Dragons in the '80s to Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo, television networks and newsmagazines have elevated Pokémon to the status of a national threat.
In a series of probing, investigative reports, (the first of which was entitled, "Is Pokémon Evil?") Newsweek suggested that the fad caused epilepsy-like seizures in hundreds of school children in 1997, the death of a toddler who suffocated on a Burger King Pokémon toy holder, and numerous fights among school children - not to mention injury to the reputation of psychic Uri Geller, who is suing Nintendo over the spoon-bending cartoon character, "Un-Geller." So how could one franchise be responsible for so much devastation?
Most reports agree that Pokémon's malevolence lies in its ruthlessly efficient moneymaking ability. While there is certainly something brazenly capitalist about the cartoon's theme song, "Gotta catch 'em all!" and the recent motion picture's title, "Pokémon: The First Movie," most serious Pokémon objections concern the game's objective: Players succeed by buying, investing in, and trading brand-name collectibles - sort of like daytrading for preschoolers. A column in Salon remarked, "Pokémon may be a cartoon, but it's one of the best management training films you'll ever see."
Yet, if the uproar surrounding Pokémon concerns fears of children being prematurely exposed to the harsh reality of the financial world, then why have games like Monopoly (which turns families into landlords and tenants) and baseball card trading been accepted as old-fashioned family fun? In fact, Pokémon's tactics are hardly new to children who regularly see movie ads in which they are advised to buy McDonald's Happy Meals and "collect all four action figures!"
Actually, the only common element to these Poké-protests are their suggestion that the fad is a foreign attack. Rather than hold a single company - Nintendo - responsible for Pokémon proliferation, journalists and commentators have attributed this terror to the Japanese nation in general. In reporting on a new line of games, Variety reported that "after unleashing Pokémon on American children, Japanese video game developers are busily readying an onslaught of new products." And Newsweek has taken to calling the cartoon/game everything from an "Asian Contagion" to a "Merchandising Tsunami from Japan."
And this is not the first time that major media networks have charged Japan with launching a mercantile attack on the United States. The '80s saw some of the most Japan-phobic books, movies and news reports, from Michael Crichton's Japanese corporate Samurais in "Rising Sun" to the evening newscasts describing how Honda and Toyota were responsible for job losses suffered by U.S. auto workers. And who could forget the "Karate Kid" movies, in which the heroic American Ralph Macchio earns valor and discipline through the ancient Japanese martial arts while Japanese characters who choose to wear American clothes prove to be brutal and corrupt.
While the United States has proudly distributed its culture to every corner of the globe via McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Baywatch reruns, the American media apparently has difficulty understanding successful foreign companies as anything other than an invasion or warfare. And perhaps this is why Furbies are valuable and harmless while Pokémon is expensive and dangerous: It's easier to justify fearing Yen than fearing dollars.
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