Jasmin Evans highlights Pokémon cards as the product of globalised consumerism that blurs physical and digital worlds: “Gotta catch ‘em all”, but at what cost? They also reveal profound human relationships with the natural world, being born from their inventor’s desire to share the joy of nature amidst rapid urbanisation.
Museum of the Anthropocene: Pokémon
Pokémon cards are the product of a globalised consumer culture. Since the original release of Pokémon Red and Blue for Game Boy in 1996, Pokémon has taken the world by storm; as of today, there are 36 core Pokémon video games, over 50 spin-offs and side games, over 100 sets of Trading Card Game cards, 50 films or short films, and over 1,200 episodes of animated TV. The Pokémon Company are estimated to be the world’s highest-grossing media franchise of all time with a total revenue of approximately $98.8 billion after only 28 years of operation. Their global expansion, the period of ‘Pokemania’ in the nineties, where Pokémon gained popularity in the UK and the USA illustrates how ideas or cultural products can be spread worldwide. In this way Pokémon cards are not just toys: they represent how physical and digital worlds can blur together. But they also tell us something profound about the relationship between humans and the natural world.
Although now a globally recognised franchise, the way in which Pokémon began is relevant to the Anthropocene in a different way. As a child Satoshi Tajiri, the creator, enjoyed searching for and collecting bugs in the natural landscapes around his city. However, as Japan underwent its ‘economic miracle’, urban expansion happened rapidly, and the habitats he used to trawl for bugs were paved over. Thus ‘Pokémon’, or pocket monsters, was born – not from a capitalistic desire to exploit, but from a desire to bring the joy of searching, finding, and collecting to a generation who have lost that to the Anthropocene.
The concept of capturing Pokémon, many of which are modelled on wild animals, nonetheless reflects a will to collect and to display which was prominent in histories of colonial exploration, expansion and knowledge-making. But while you can collect the cards in order to complete your ‘dex’ much as explorers did with their taxidermy collections, in other areas of the franchise Pokémon live alongside humans and work with them, much as domesticated animals do in real life. Other features of the franchise reflect the human desire for control; even the “Gods” of Pokémon can be collected, suggesting that nothing is safe from the grasp of mankind.
More recently, Pokémon has returned to its roots with the release of Pokémon GO in 2016. This is a mobile version of the ever-popular Pokémon games which uses Augmented Reality (AR) to encourage the player to go out into the real-world, to “catch ’em all” and fill up your Pokedex, to battle your Pokémon against the villainous Team Rocket or other players. While this creates the somewhat bizarre situation of people being outside in the world but nonetheless only engaging with a virtual version of it, studies have shown that it has been successful in creating conditions for ’armchair gamers’ to explore the outside world, while others have even suggested that Pokémon GO could be a useful tool for wildlife conservation due to its ability to build new kinds of interest in the natural world.
As collectable items, Pokémon cards can create false rarity. The existence of ‘rare’ cards – which are only rare because they have been made so by The Pokémon Company – create a need to buy and buy more, in much the same way as manufactured scarcity drives the workings of markets for products such as oil and diamonds. “Gotta catch ‘em all” is what the catchphrase of Pokémon tells us. However, to truly collect each individual card you would need over 16,000 cards and would need to purchase thousands more than that to account for card rarity. Cards are bought in plastic packaging, made of printed card, and transported across the globe; therefore, their environmental impact directly contributes to the human activities which caused the circumstances of their creation in the beginning.
The Anthropocene is perhaps defined by humanity’s control and exertion of power over the natural world. How far will we go to have everything? “Gotta catch ‘em all”, but at what cost?
Notes
Pokémon was contributed by Jasmin Evans.
Jaz says: “Throughout my degree I have tried to choose a wide variety of modules. The Museum of the Anthropocene module has taught me invaluable lessons on how to connect information across interdisciplinary fields. The freedom to choose my own Anthropocene object and analyse it through the lenses that we were taught meant that I was able to really think creatively when writing this piece. I am excited to be continuing at UEA next year to complete my integrated Master’s.”