Friday, March 25, 2005

[A]

I haven't exactly been feeling well these past few weeks (weaks!), so most of my time has been spent visiting doctors and pharmacies in search of that magic pill that'll make everything better. But all this down-time has offered me an opportunity to catch up on some Japanese cinema:

1. First, the insignificant: Samurai Champloo is an exercise in gleeful anachronism. Where it pretends to be an Edo-period genre piece (specifically, 'chambara'), it's determining leitmotiv is urban hip-hop flavor. That's pretty far-fetched, but it carries it off with suitably self-referential goofiness all the same, freely adapting plotlines from all over (Zatoichi, Yakuza movies, etc.) This one is ridiculous, but amusing in its playful misuse of historical locale, event, and personae (and for the disciminating eye, there is plenty in there for parody). Now shut up and enjoy the show.

2. Second most insignificant: Shimotsuma Monogatari. In case you're wondering, Shimotsuma is a little town out in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the story naturally is about this town, and how it's not Daikanyama, Tokyo. Actually, it's about two girls who live in that town and how their styles and identities are produced by the media images they consume. Sort of. One embodies the 'white lolita' style only purchasable in Tokyo, while the other brandishes the country-side biker gang trappings readily available at Jusco (similar to Walmart). The movie itself is cut to pieces in a gaudy version of Tarantino's backwards-first method, and just as easily jumps from genre to genre (including anime segments, ala Kill Bill). But the intent is to merely tickle the audience, and not necessary to skewer them; the jolting shifts and odd twists are comic suggestions of our own media-saturated lives.

3. Last, and speaking of media, I rented Mori Tatsuya's documentary on Aum/Aleph/(or just as appropriately, Araki Hiroshi, the embattled young spokesman for the cult) entitled simply 'A'. Mori is ultimately fairly sympathetic to the cult (which was named Aum when it's members released the nerve toxin Sarin in Tokyo's subway network), and it is amazing to see how much access he has to its inner workings. The documentary picks up after the atrocity with the newly appointed spokesman Araki Hiroshi, boyish and bewildered, and tasked with explaining his faith to a shocked and hostile Japan. The documentary doesn't dwell on the details of the gas attack, or the trial of it perpetrators. That element definitely needs to be kept in mind however, since the context for the widespread social abuse of the cult cannot be understood without it. For audiences in Japan, overwrought news reporting has already brought the message home, but people outside will need to refresh their memories.

What is most powerful about this piece however is its depiction of the extreme, vindictive, and narrow-minded response by the media, the police, and average citizens to the cult. I don't believe it can really apologize for what Aum has done, nor does it really lead to a conclusive judgement of the cult as evil or not, since even its spokesman can not reconcile his own simple faith in Aum and the blatant deeds of its leaders. Cornered by journalists over the issue of whether the 'new' Aum would adopt new teachings, seeming to simultaneously claim both that the teachings were not wrong, and that there were some misunderstandings under the old leaders, Araki testily remarks that 'you don't seem to understand how religions work'. And he might be right. After all, all the denunciations and arguments against Aum seem ex post facto; the public has already judged it an evil cult, so people don't feel the need to be careful in their arguments, especially whether their criticisms can also be applied to other mainstream religions as well. Witnessing the police bullying of average cult members demonstrates an extension of this logic; since nobody is going to sympathize with them (they're guilty of being a cult member), does it really matter how far you mistreat them? Does atrocity make us less willing as a society to demand justice over vengeance?

But that's probably an overreading of the movie, according to my own perspective as an American. Mori's point might be simpler: looking at how Japanese society treats Aum cult members (who were not involved in the attack) only shows us why cults like Aum arise in the first place. People feel a need to escape. . .

Monday, March 07, 2005

Asian, American?

It's a question, if properly punctuated.

People do ask whether it's liberal to push for an 'Asian-American' identity; whether it makes historical sense to group together Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos etc; whether it's any better (or different) than white chauvinism; whether it's not in fact harmful to the cohesiveness of us 'Americans' as a people (and a democratic constituency).

At the risk of being annoyingly academic, I consider 'Asian-American' a set of issues, a set of questions, rather than simply an identity. And I argue that people have the freedom, in fact should have the freedom, to interpret their own identity as they see fit. That's not a terribly unreasonable position to take, especially since 'assimilation' itself is not inherently good or bad. Two-direction cultural assimilation in the United States is one version, forced one-way 'assimilation' of Koreans into the Japanese Empire (1910-1945), quite a different one. The degree of forcefulness, and the power dynamic is more related to whether or not it's a progressive or oppressive practice.

Recently, I've heard the ostensibly reasonable argument that we're all 'Americans' and we shouldn't have 'Asian-Americans' 'African-Americans' 'Hispanic-Americans' etc. I can't help thinking there's something odd about this argument because it's always directed at these minorities. What that suggests to me is a certain logical blindspot despite the apparent airtightness of the argument. What I want to contribute here is not an outright denial of the validity of this concept of Americanness. Specifically, it's necessary to understand that 'American' is a specific political, but vague cultural category. Furthermore, it's precisely the regressive form of assimilation that only calls upon the minority to become similar to the majority. Hence, before we can dissolve 'Asian-American' into just 'American', we need to also broaden the definition of what it means to be an 'American' in the first place. And that requires educating everyone, not just minorities, to accept a wider range of cultural practices as part of an inclusive 'Americanness'.

End of diatribe.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

This is a hijacking

This was going to be a post about Asian-America. But screw that. I just finished watching Casshern(2004), and it's hijacking this blog space. By force.

But speaking of hijacking, Casshern does just that as well, taking a generic '70s superhero anime and compression molding it into a visually composited moral collage on the universalism of hatred and war. Plus a theme song by the director's wife (Utada Hikaru).

For a clear exposition of the plot, see this review from Midnight Eye. Also be aware that sometime in 2005, the studios are planning on unleashing this monstrosity of a movie on American (and other) audiences. Don't say you weren't warned. Why monstrous? Too much Beethoven in the soundtrack. Too many layers and filters to abstract the footage. Garish theatrical sets employing heavy-handed historical symbolism. Too little irony, and too many overwrought soliloquies. And . . . the cliche'd use of retro-future aesthetics (but it's still kinda cool to see people dialing from antique rotary phones and connecting to sleek 3G-style clamshell phones).

I'm being obscure here, of course, but what makes this movie so hard to ignore and write-off, despite being an unmitigated mess, is the fact that it is entirely serious when it visually links THE WAR ON TERROR(sic) and the JAPANESE OCCUPATION OF CHINA. Battle Royale II tried to do something similar, but only ended up jumping on the Anti-American bandwagon and focusing on Japanese historical victimhood. Both films do in fact inject real-world footage of war and death into their fantasy milieus, but while BR2 has the propagandist tendency to eliminate any ambiguity in the roles of 'victim' and 'oppressor', Casshern boomerangs right back onto itself. Not surprisingly, its ending also discards all the technological explanations and moral arguments that come before it. It's simply not possible to guess how it'll end from only the clues in the plot. And much as the movie cannot propose any solution to the cycle of war and vengeance, it dispenses with explanation and ends on an elegy.

But as I just mentioned, the most powerful aspect of this movie is its historical consciousness. Now, there have been plenty of movies positing a different post-war for Japan. This one begins with the assumption that Japan has conquered 'Eurasia' and become a superstate filled with Cyrillic and Chinese iconography. But even with victory, they face an unending insurgency on a continent filled with 'terrorists', especially 'Zone 7' which appears to be the Chinese countryside. The dingy concrete tanks from which the 'neo-sapiens' arise look eerily similar to the photographs of Unit 731's research facilities in Northern China. The grainy black-and-white segments showing the systematic slaughter of civilians focus on women dressed in what appear to be Chinese traditional gowns. Add elements of medical horror, soldiers in gasmasks, and a brief flash of a mushroom cloud, and the film's imagery is surprisingly complete in terms of war in the 20th century.

But objectively speaking, this movie is ponderous. The dialogue is stifling. The female characters spend most of the movie looking begrieved, but saying little. Character development is on the level of a paper puppet play. The plot is equally incredulous, having to make compromises to fit the original plot of the anime series. Example: the 'villains' need an army of robots to threaten humankind. So, they find them.

However, as other reviewers have written, what makes the movie difficult to simply laugh off is it's intermittent flashes of brilliance. As a 2+ hour long aesthetic enterprise it is incomparable. As a definitive statement on ‘war = human nature’, it is foolhardy and over-ambitious. What makes it worthwhile is its intricately constructed and self-reflexive question to the Japanese: Would the world be a better place if Japan had won the war? And to the Americans: What are you going to do now that you've 'won'?