Gotta catch 'em all: structure, agency and pedagogy in children's media culture

Abstract

There can be very few people in the developed world who remain unaware of the existence of Pokemon. Yet despite the seemingly endless outpouring of adult concern and bewilderment, it is actually difficult to find a single term to describe it. In popular debates, Pokemon is most frequently referred to as a ‘craze’ – which of course implies that those who pursue it are in some sense mentally deranged, if only temporarily. Another, rather more neutral, term that comes readily to hand here is ‘phenomenon’. According to the dictionary definition, a phenomenon is something ‘remarkable’ or ‘unusual’; although, interestingly, it can also mean ‘the appearance which anything makes to our consciousness, as distinguished from what it is in itself’ (Chambers, 1978). So what is Pokemon ‘in itself’? It is clearly not just a ‘text’, or even a collection of texts – a TV serial, a card game, toys, magazines or a computer game. It is not merely a set of objects that can be isolated for critical analysis, in the characteristic mode of academic Media Studies. It might more appropriately be described, in anthropological terms, as a ‘cultural practice’. Pokemon is something you do, not just something you read or watch or ‘consume’. Yet while that ‘doing’ clearly requires active participation on the part of the ‘doers’, the terms on which it is performed are predominantly dictated by forces or structures beyond their control. The practice of collecting the cards, or playing the computer game, is to a large extent determined by the work of their designers – and indeed by the operations of the market, which makes these commodities available in