VLVL re western media portrayals of Japan

[pynchonoid]

Hollywood's Land of the Rising Cliché
By MOTOKO RICH
 Published: January 4, 2004


[...] But what seems to grate at Japanese viewers a
bit more is the movie's storybook approach to the
samurai, who are depicted as unfailingly noble, and as
pure as warriors can possibly be. In fact, the samurai
myth is now a fairly tarnished one in Japan, in a way
that the movie's glory-filled depiction doesn't
reflect. And since that myth was originally created by
Japanese literature and film, it's odd to see those
outdated images return in new American packaging.

[...] Mr. Zwick acknowledged that the movie inevitably
simplified Japanese history, in order to make it
accessible to a current — and Western — audience. "The
only thing one can do is hope that with a kind of
immersion and some respectful understanding, that what
you come up with is a distillation, rather than a
cliché," he said. However, he also admitted that the
movie is heavily driven by myth and nostalgia.
"Movies, finally, can't help but dwell in a kind of
iconography," Mr. Zwick said. "The samurai myth is
partly a myth. It is central in the way that our own
lone frontiersman is a myth and I think they find
their expression in all sorts of different ways. In
this country, we sell cigarettes with the myth and
elect presidents with it. In that country it finds its
applications in all kinds of different ways and I'm
finding my own use for it in this story as well." 

[...getting closer to what Vineland does with Asian
media images...] Unlike its contemporaries, "Kill Bill
Vol. 1" makes no attempt to convey a "real" Japan. It
is a pastiche, a dense layering of hip Japan-inflected
references, not an attempt at verisimilitude. As a
result, it has largely escaped the debate about
whether its Japanese characters are faithful
portrayals or cartoon characters. (All the film's
characters are cartoon characters, and deliberately
so.) But despite its obvious and extreme
exaggerations, a few viewers have been troubled by its
take on Asian movie conventions. "Liu's `O-Ren Ishii'
also strays into the realm of the stereotyped `Dragon
Lady' of Orientalist myth," wrote one Hong Kong-based
blogger.

[...] But despite the cinematic kimonos, swords and
pachinko parlors, the soul of these movies hasn't
really shifted eastward. "We're embracing the culture
for our own purpose, to understand ourselves," said
Jeanine Basinger, chairman of the Film Studies
department at Wesleyan University. [...]
 
...the rest worth reading at:
<http://nytimes.com/2004/01/04/movies/04RICH.html>



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