tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81368876735996611712024-03-13T19:38:45.504+09:00TV MultiversityDocumentary Film, Educational Television, World CinemaTVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-47518705290872030832022-05-04T19:25:00.003+09:002022-05-04T20:33:02.546+09:00 Murakami’s Sheep and Post-War Japanese Ideology<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI79-R5Lz3LGtBFBlBIVBte3AlqmHFRpx31SAcdqWeay8IQEykT5IqKgBdlrpKjb2uGTKJiLnloJpuOIPSXkQCmB_jPApgbW7YOAlzUjUOw5lD2vrP-92ymIopEsd32vW2ibuVbI8d9FBmZhTWPhgCeghrDxYw-rO4WHNAkeNem2NAW6AcinIdOlAAAg/s100/murakami.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI79-R5Lz3LGtBFBlBIVBte3AlqmHFRpx31SAcdqWeay8IQEykT5IqKgBdlrpKjb2uGTKJiLnloJpuOIPSXkQCmB_jPApgbW7YOAlzUjUOw5lD2vrP-92ymIopEsd32vW2ibuVbI8d9FBmZhTWPhgCeghrDxYw-rO4WHNAkeNem2NAW6AcinIdOlAAAg/s1600/murakami.jpg" width="100" /></a></div>Murakami Haruki is one of the most well-regarded yet controversial authors in contemporary Japanese literature. Being the son of two literature professors in postwar Japan, his writing covers a variety of topics from politics, economics, and pop culture. Before he is the author we know now, he dabbled in translation work for Western novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <i>The Great Gatsby</i> and Raymond Chandler’s <i>The Long Goodbye</i>. Murakami kept a sense of Japanese locality in his novels with a Western atmosphere which is the base of the paradoxical East-West. For Western readers, the text offers a unique read with a slight touch of nostalgia and for Japanese readers it is a familiar setting with an unexpected twist. Initially aspiring to become an international writer, Murakami soon realized that he had to find his voice in Japanese literature eventually leading him to his unique style of magic realism or whatever.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism" target="_blank">Magic realism</a> has always been an elusive term; The term itself was first coined by a German historian Franz Roh when he used the term in a piece about a post-expressionism and this magic realism is expressed through the variety of the strange or fantastic ways in which an otherwise mundane object can be presented. He himself wrote in his book <i><a href="https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/German_Art_in_the_20th_Century.html?id=iaRPAAAAMAAJ" target="_blank">German Art in The 20th Century</a></i> “of course not in the religious psychological sense of ethnology” to assess the confusion. Several writers have tried explaining it and every explanation has seemed to always come out contradictory to the others which may be why most scholars hesitate to define the concept. A criticism against magic realism as an academic concept is its lack of definition, which has resulted in ambiguity. Hjorvardur Harvard Arnason wrote in his encyclopedic book, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/162763.History_of_Modern_Art" target="_blank">History of Modern Art</a></i>, a definition of magic realism that encompasses almost every other explanation of it. As noted by <a href="https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/History_of_Modern_Art.html?id=0EuCMAEACAAJ" target="_blank">Arnason & Mansfield</a>, “In general, the magic realists, deriving directly de Chirico, create mystery and the marvelous through juxtaposition that are disturbing even when it is difficult to see why.” </p><p>In other words, magic realism writers are not looking to create a new realm of strangeness but, instead to translate the mundane world into one. Different from the ontological approach to magical realism above, epistemological magical realism is distinguished not from its connection to cultural beliefs but to the aspects of knowledge. This allows writers like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges" target="_blank">Jose Luis Borges</a> and Alejo Carpentier to use the genre as an amalgamation of several smaller terms unique to the history and surrounding different cultural regions. In Japan, writers such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami" target="_blank">Haruki Murakami</a>, Banana Yoshimoto, and Ryu Murakami weave the struggles that the Japanese public faces as they adapt to an increasingly global culture. Unlike their predecessors, who are slaves to the material expectations of their society, <a href="https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780199235698.001.0001/actrade-9780199235698" target="_blank">Goto-Jones</a> suggests that they were free to define the meaning of their lives for themselves. 1980s Japan sits in a blend of East-West beliefs as internationalization became the focus of a lot of different aspects of life including consumerization, which is often found in Murakami’s writing by being a familiar yet disconnected writing style that has a distinct American feel in their Japanese writing, as suggested by Rubin (writing in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316524.Oe_and_Beyond" target="_blank">Snyder</a>'s <i>Oe and Beyond</i>). Lost in the duality, works from authors like Murakami became increasingly embedded in the 1990s, sometimes known as the "lost decade," that caused Japanese youth to seriously reevaluate what made them Japanese.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz1oM7ZLhieT8_fYbANyLYs5IKu_tv4nv1nE3TXS78zzSFcfYVBUhhlZO8dUzQ3lz0mgR1gAfYKIbnSZUevdwjZ3c6A6AsjmEluKsEBNNE_Yjelxz0Cwj-EfMKZ-tYso2jya0ZDBfboA2aHCMHQTKRb4i49yiBJl5gncv0K6-4jUquq18_u9_Z_I0MYw/s1821/wildsheep.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1821" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz1oM7ZLhieT8_fYbANyLYs5IKu_tv4nv1nE3TXS78zzSFcfYVBUhhlZO8dUzQ3lz0mgR1gAfYKIbnSZUevdwjZ3c6A6AsjmEluKsEBNNE_Yjelxz0Cwj-EfMKZ-tYso2jya0ZDBfboA2aHCMHQTKRb4i49yiBJl5gncv0K6-4jUquq18_u9_Z_I0MYw/s320/wildsheep.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>Magic Realism was not an outlier in contemporary Japanese Literature; Many authors such as Murakami Haruki, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Yoshimoto" target="_blank">Banana Yoshimoto</a>, Ryu Murakami, and Kenzaburo Oe have dabbled in the genre putting their experiences and beliefs to a more fictional setting. Stylistically, the framework of magic realism allows authors such as Murakami Haruki to experiment with genres while retaining some coherence when his narrative breaks “reasonable expectations.” But this style of writing is what pushes Japanese literary critics to categorize his work as <i>bungaku</i> instead of the well-respected <i>junbungaku</i>. As Japan works its way to change from its neo-Confucianist traditional ways to a more Westernized one it creates a gap. Magical realism had always been an amalgamation of several smaller terms unique to the history and surrounding different cultural regions. Murakami’s <i>A Wild Sheep Chase</i> expresses Japan’s ideological evolution from the second World War to present day while posing interesting questions of Japan’s future.<p></p><p>Just like authors who come after Murakami in the genre, much of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wild_Sheep_Chase" target="_blank">A Wild Sheep Chase</a></i> has symbolism embedded in between words. He told the story of his protagonist that was set on a mission to find a demonic sheep that was possessing people, using the sheep as a bridge connecting the concept of this world to the other that Murakami often uses. The book earned him the Noma Literary Award for New Writers but was criticized for its “fragmented, discontinuous structure” by the critic <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40149070" target="_blank">Iwamoto</a>. Just like all of his other writings, the hero/narrator’s name is never named, he instead referred to it as “I” or “Boku” in Japanese.</p><p>Murakami reflects on his own work: “I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I’d been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill.”</p><p>Boku, like a lot of university students in the middle of the upheavals of the 1960s, confesses to not having a purpose in life. 1960s Japan was marked by the failed student activism (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenky%C5%8Dt%C5%8D" target="_blank">Zenkyoto Movement)</a> and other riots towards opposition to American imperialism as well as Japanese monopoly capitalism. The young generation grew up into a country that was in the midst of rapid growth, in contrast to the previous generation that had witnessed the Second World War. This bred a feeling of discontent among the young Japanese at the time who were confused and not being able to choose their own paths. The new generation was stuck with the social pressure from the older generations to do a certain job and devote themselves to a certain company just as the individuality and anti-nationalism that the riots bred had been beaten out of them. Boku was left in a state of ambivalence as a personification of the apathetic attitude of an entire generation left afloat as well as ignorance to the world around him.</p><p>Nonetheless, Boku soon saw the “fruit of many years of pointless self-discipline” describing how he had increasingly become more of a corporate drone. He is still as before despite the changes that the world has gone through, just as his younger self was, he fell into the corporate 9-to-5 routine.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkm1RTlcoDATDjV_K_MB1YTrm7PjXP2fDxnDhFmBoXJ_SHOMVZhjbvplzKkZwb3LgKj_xgC4QxWmlZzjy-h6RLFxRjz4bUKGDGl41d2JetYRO9Ro9xwTrxOXdtCc6m5w8RUxXAv-Mm85niJ0-AITQGWw323qizVElG3k9-FGhKqt5_XJOQcDpeq7GVqQ/s626/wild_sheep3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkm1RTlcoDATDjV_K_MB1YTrm7PjXP2fDxnDhFmBoXJ_SHOMVZhjbvplzKkZwb3LgKj_xgC4QxWmlZzjy-h6RLFxRjz4bUKGDGl41d2JetYRO9Ro9xwTrxOXdtCc6m5w8RUxXAv-Mm85niJ0-AITQGWw323qizVElG3k9-FGhKqt5_XJOQcDpeq7GVqQ/s320/wild_sheep3.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>Boku takes on the role of a listener and tells the bizarre tale of the sheep. The most prominent magical realist element of the book, the sheep, is as bizarre to “Boku” as it is to readers. A popular critic of Murakami, Kojin Karatani, suggests that the sheep as a symbol of contradiction to Western ideology meaning instead of a uniform and certain world it gravitates more towards an individualistic world. The sheep resists the idea of “Western humanism,” against uniqueness and unpredictability as it progressively inhabits different characters throughout post-war Japan. Its first victim was a professor who was tasked to establish a self-sufficiency program based on the sheep for a large-scale North China campaign. The second person to fall prey was a rightwing Boss who grew up suppressed as an Ainu. The sheep entered him as he got released from prison and became the Boss afterwards. The third prey was Boku’s friend Rat, a copywriter who later killed himself along with the sheep as he valued the things that would have been lost if the sheep had won.<p></p><p>Considering the character’s relationship with the sheep, the sheep is not confined to only the modern ethos but also the change into a modernist thinking. The evolution starts with the Sheep professor who was an ambitious man working on uniting East Asia (unity), then a person who came from an alienated culture in his own country who grew up as a right-wing Boss that took control of politics for his riches (consolidation and defense of culture), and ends with the son of a merchant who became rich by taking advantage of the wars (future of conceptual unity). Tracing the path of the sheep through these three figures, Murakami’s genealogy of Japan’s modern ideology is thus presented to the reader through his effective use of magic realism.</p><p>[This essay is by Rani Putriarni Taulu. It's based on her graduation thesis in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Together with literature and history, she's interested in language studies.]</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-10617591066604703752022-04-27T20:14:00.002+09:002022-04-27T20:49:55.725+09:00Watching a film by ear: An acousmatic approach to cinema<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iBCR6AzgaJaWt_T3UdPWwnmbD5T0oLb_jUGaKqoyiwNTGImXUu61GWb93Ap3QRT1RDDp0GbKPYrgHgqmd50M8nlGhmBPHE_Kch8B_2vmc0SWyebB96BOnpW9piVZfaGGXM6YF8DTE_vFk6HyW9o6LW2rF2f0bGKPjuS3vyXUnHjJovF57hTp8I9qYg/s100/no-country.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iBCR6AzgaJaWt_T3UdPWwnmbD5T0oLb_jUGaKqoyiwNTGImXUu61GWb93Ap3QRT1RDDp0GbKPYrgHgqmd50M8nlGhmBPHE_Kch8B_2vmc0SWyebB96BOnpW9piVZfaGGXM6YF8DTE_vFk6HyW9o6LW2rF2f0bGKPjuS3vyXUnHjJovF57hTp8I9qYg/s1600/no-country.jpg" width="100" /></a></div>Sound film is commonly expressed as the interplay between the audio and the visual. Since the 1920s, audiences’ cinematic experience has been dramatically transformed owing to the synchronization of sounds and motion pictures. The silent film era highlights its narration performance mainly by the continuous alternation between moving images and intertitles (title cards) while its score is accompanied by a pianist or an orchestra. With more diverse sound elements (dialogue, music, ambient sound, sound effects, etc.) being synchronized to motion pictures, sound film delivers an immersive experience and strengthens its storytelling. Cinematic audiences are required to engage more intensively in the cross-modal perception of hearing and seeing. This progression appears as a breakthrough for filmmakers and, simultaneously, new advanced perceptual challenges for the audiences’ eyes and ears.<span></span><p></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>One of the challenges emerges as the biased visuocentric perception when it comes to comprehending film narrative. Despite enhancing the realistic experience of cinematic audiences, sound is not regarded as the key role in film storytelling as the visual components. In comparison to sounds, visualized objects on the screen are believed to render themselves more ostensibly, instantly, and directly to audiences (<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20688517" target="_blank">Wojcik, 2006</a>). Visual storytelling is more tangible as a manifestation of verisimilitude supported by techniques such as framing, lighting, scene transitions, camera motions, etc. Whereas, film sound designing is usually noted as a post-production of adding values, such as subliminal emotional impacts, to an established and scripted narrative attributed to a montage of captured motion images (<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/audio-vision-sound-on-screen/9780231185899" target="_blank">Chion, 1994</a>). At a common-sense level, from where the audiences see it, the question for sound to defend itself is: A film without sounds remains a film and we can probably figure out its story through the motion pictures. However, does an imageless film with only sounds make any sense?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RXSIaC-GZ4LV3l1W6YO8qOxVDfYSrJevuO_9uYq6qh9NB_23t9999bVGIlhQjAXEiGhecu0N6STKQyaDnrFnvPSQY_LseAhXmZwmkJPShJiP6QAU_d7nKuWCmQI9sLvijtDf2rM8lrBOIvjUB5imBwbHjJ7TP0ONIkukUVKhhc_AAHDIKBHwrsGSuQ/s2228/acousmatic-logo.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1612" data-original-width="2228" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RXSIaC-GZ4LV3l1W6YO8qOxVDfYSrJevuO_9uYq6qh9NB_23t9999bVGIlhQjAXEiGhecu0N6STKQyaDnrFnvPSQY_LseAhXmZwmkJPShJiP6QAU_d7nKuWCmQI9sLvijtDf2rM8lrBOIvjUB5imBwbHjJ7TP0ONIkukUVKhhc_AAHDIKBHwrsGSuQ/w320-h232/acousmatic-logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the case where sound is separated from the visual, the acousmatic theory comes in handy. The term acousmatic sound, coined by <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520294301/treatise-on-musical-objects" target="_blank">Pierre Schaeffer</a> in 1966, refers to sound as an autonomous object that draws our attention to the intrinsic traits of it. The word acousmatic originates from <i>akousmatikoi</i>, a teaching method of Pythagoras where his pupils are required to sit behind a veil so they would concentrate better on his oral lectures. Solely perceiving sounds without the visualized causes assists the intention to disclose the sound objects’ essences and primary features (<a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199347841.001.0001/acprof-9780199347841" target="_blank">Kane, 2014</a>). Likewise, when considering film sound as acousmatic sound and disintegrating the audiovisual contract, one can find that unseen sound considerably informative and, consequently, they can discover the tellability of sound in an imageless film.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglecrzJyO6zX78-Lcww4Dq827QWvcpPCxUm6ip7xqctiEaiN28G04MgpwtYRUvBceFpqWaDIGiKFndybmKb1FCAL2MK7YyrncMfJD4MfNYBxL8hR5McCSuZT-xmJLh8a26kwrt9EkihAwPOt0TMpweIQeH7NjpXkOLet6SXsXPcOft8aY2ebxM77M5KQ/s1022/Screenshot%20(203).png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1022" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglecrzJyO6zX78-Lcww4Dq827QWvcpPCxUm6ip7xqctiEaiN28G04MgpwtYRUvBceFpqWaDIGiKFndybmKb1FCAL2MK7YyrncMfJD4MfNYBxL8hR5McCSuZT-xmJLh8a26kwrt9EkihAwPOt0TMpweIQeH7NjpXkOLet6SXsXPcOft8aY2ebxM77M5KQ/w320-h195/Screenshot%20(203).png" width="320" /></a></div>Making senses out of sounds without their visualized sources, however, requires specific methods of listening. In this essay, I propose the three listening modes of Michel Chion owing to their direct relevance to film sound. In his book on audio-vision in cinema studies, Chion (1994) identifies the three modes of listening as causal listening, semantic listening, and reduced listening. Causal listening, the most well-known mode, takes place when one attempts to identify the source of a sound. For instance, a dog can be the source of barking sounds. The second listening modes, semantic listening, involves interpreting codes or messages embedded in the perceived sound. Again, a dog’s barking sound can indicate the dog as the object but, at the same time, it can inform us of either a state of triggered anxiety of the dog or a sense of nearby danger. The last mode of listening, reduced listening, is described to emphasize the traits of the sound itself. Rather than implying the dog as the cause or hinting a warning of danger, reduced listening draw listeners’ attention to the barking sounds’ pitch, timbre, tempo, loudness, repeatability, etc.<p></p><p>In the context of film narrative, by utilizing the listening modes when examining acousmatic sound fragments excerpted from films, audiences can detect the narratological implications of sounds. Narratological implications of sounds are aural factors whose states or actions are involved in narration and indicate the tellability of the discourse. In this case, the discourse is the film sound fragments of auditory scenes, and the aural factors can include different features such as noise, sound effects, the manipulation of silence, etc. Looking into the two auditory scenes, the Eagle Pass Hotel scene excerpted from <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/" target="_blank">No Country For Old Men</a> </i>(2007), and the Paris assassination scene excerpted from <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408306/" target="_blank">Munich</a></i> (2005), this essay will address some notable narratological implications of sounds in film sound. Readers are recommended to temporarily omit the visual when experiencing the scenes. The timestamps in the following paragraphs will be aligned with the time duration of the two attached clips above rather than the original films.</p><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/zL9w-3pQb5U" width="480"></iframe><br /><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/1RZzTFOSHKc" width="480"></iframe><p style="text-align: left;">The first narratological implication is the manipulation of loudness that draw audiences’ attention to a key focus. The key focus can be an object, a person, an action, or a movement within the story. Both auditory scenes possess certain individual sounds whose amplitudes significantly put their imaginary sources closer to the camera. The Eagle Pass Hotel scene stresses the sound focus on the main character and his perspective by intensively amplifying sounds heard and caused by the character. For instance, the amplified breathing sound and footsteps sound suggest the key focus is the action caused by the main character. Whilst, other sounds like the loud bang or the engine sound indicate their imaginary sources, a gun, and a vehicle, as the key focuses. As for the Paris Assassination scene, although it manipulates more background noises, it still renders the sound focuses on specific objects and actions through the sound amplification. At 02:55, the metallic sliding sound among the city street noises, for example, is amplified to highlight the two key focuses: the phone as an object and the action of dialing a phone call.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The next narratological implication is the spatialization of sounds that sets up the context of the narrative. With the technique of sound layering, background noises and ambiences are embedded in the auditory scenes to inform the audiences about the scenes’ atmospheres or locations. The Paris Assassination scene reveals its indoor space and outdoor space by making use of the ambiences of street noises and the quietened white noises. The Eagle Pass Hotel scene, with fewer sound layers, illustrates the indoor space of the hotel using the quietness and indicates the open street space using distant vehicle’ sounds. Besides the design of background sounds, both scenes also carry similar indicative key sounds that imply specific locations. For instance, different sounds caused by the characters’ footsteps on different surfaces, such as the squeaky and clacking sounds of the wooden floor or the clomping sounds of the concrete ground, suggest distinct places where these surfaces exist.</p><p>The third narratological implication is the cuts of sound shots that establish the linearity of the storyline. The Eagle Pass Hotel scene’s linearity is anchored to the perspective of one character while the Paris Assassination scene’s linearity is fragmented into different angles that comprise a panoramic view. In the Eagle Pass Hotel scene, with the sound elements and sound effects revolving around the main character and his actions, the chain of sound shots leads audiences through every moment of his experiences. Despite the appearances of any other characters in the auditory scene, the consecutive cuts of sound shots where the aural traits of the main character consistently exist and prevail justify that the linear sequence of the story is only under his perspective. For instance, at 04:43, when the character is outside on the street, his footsteps sound remains its high amplitude while the vehicle’s engine sound gradually fades in, as a suggestion that it is getting nearer until it gains the same loudness. The Paris Assassination scene, on the other hand, involves a lot of non-linear cuts of dissimilar sound shots, which offer different perspectives on the same event. It can be observed that this auditory scene directs audiences’ perceptions to distinctive shots that portray different happenings that occur simultaneously. At 04:10, for example, the shots of the rotary phone’s sliding sound accompanied by the outdoor noises and the walking sounds accompanied by the quietened indoor ambiences are continuously interchanged.</p><p>With Michel Chion’s three modes of listening being applied to the acousmatic scenes, our aural perception is assisted to give access to comprehension and interpretation. The causal listening mode helps the determination of sounds’ imaginary sources in the story world. However, it is inevitable to encounter misinterpretations and false speculations when defining the sounds’ sources. The semantic listening mode engages in interpreting the sounds that possess implied meaning or anticipate atmospheres. It also elevates the acknowledgement of sounds’ references to specific places or actions. In the Eagle Pass Hotel scene, semantic listening elucidates the caution of the character when moving as quietly as possible, the anxious atmosphere induced by heavy breathing and running sounds, and the brutal gunshots sound that gives to violence in the climax. In the Paris Assassination scene, the empathetic ambiences either string along with or anticipate the scene’s sequences. For example, when there is a troublesome interruption, the accelerating tension is implied in the uneasy ambiences. The non-English indistinct conversations detected in the background sound imply a non-English location. As for the reduced listening mode, it serves the purpose of examining the traits of sounds themselves such as amplitude, pitch, frequency, etc. In the case of differentiating sounds that share similar imaginary sources, it emerges as an effective mode of listening. For instance, in both auditory scenes, despite sharing the common imaginary source as a person, the footsteps of different characters on certain surfaces generate different sounds that have distinctive amplitude and pitch.</p><p>The narratological implications of sounds found in the two auditory scenes challenge the visuocentric perception when it comes to comprehending film narrative. The acousmatic sounds express their ability for storytelling without the visual. This observation, however, neither disregards the ocular ideology nor imposes a phonocentric idea upon films. Rather, I want to emphasize the pluralism of cinematic experiences. Audiences can take creative approaches towards film and its narrative. Rather than solely relying on the hierarchical approach, where images come first and sound come later, or the prominent-visual approach, where images are the informative component and sounds are the secondary element, one can turn to the inverse processes regarding this essay’s approach.</p><p>[This essay was written by Du Hoang Bao Linh as part of her undergraduate thesis at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. Her thesis received recognition as an Outstanding Thesis for the class of Spring 2022. She majored in Culture, Society and Media while at APU. Besides film and music, she is also interested in two other fields of interdisciplinary studies: education and multiculturalism.]</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-90969505802699417072022-01-10T11:35:00.007+09:002022-04-27T20:21:22.429+09:00Stages of minimalism on Fumio Sasaki's path to happiness<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgupE40UXbRFFPB8IiEz91gAPqfkuLBf1gJrLScpOCEwuDakVtLc_gzgarKOmyJ2O4H4Gl1fW1A3Dd7ez1QZZL_DKBLKJJKi_muMCuRHx6L-gn8V3_BJoUPnIDQJUjAG1fAnYaNPrJMRPgABoreueCE7jvcHUshT8luH1hJMW1jLPEQPACwAoMWPauVZg=s100" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgupE40UXbRFFPB8IiEz91gAPqfkuLBf1gJrLScpOCEwuDakVtLc_gzgarKOmyJ2O4H4Gl1fW1A3Dd7ez1QZZL_DKBLKJJKi_muMCuRHx6L-gn8V3_BJoUPnIDQJUjAG1fAnYaNPrJMRPgABoreueCE7jvcHUshT8luH1hJMW1jLPEQPACwAoMWPauVZg" width="100" /></a></div>In recent years, minimalism as an approach to art has given way to minimalism as a lifestyle. Used not only as a means of reducing personal possessions, it becomes a personal quest for self-fulfillment beyond material acquisition. In the Japanese scene, two names emerge: Marie Kondo and Fumio Sasaki. Kondo, often associated with the simple living movement, has a pragmatic outlook that focuses on material detachment and clutter reduction. Sasaki, with a more traditional inclination, infers a conscious insight into socio-cultural values and how some are used to assess happiness. In his perspective minimalism contradicts modern standards of happiness, which are loosely based on consumerism, such as having expensive cars and high-paying jobs and other examples of consumption for the sake of appearance rather than need. By relegating material possessions to the far back of people’s lives he disproves the erroneous idea that the sum of one’s belongings equates to self-worth. This essay explores Sasaki's transition from materialist to minimalist.<p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJuBpEo15airzeUIapIym9dxAHkQ624OG4CR5JkyaBkx0RjgSd2cLuHtBmjyiR38tqodtyKdaWCSWlNSzWT1RhKKL50QcCdlB9y0wCs_psEPM1FNPOV8ErlctK8ZfC0Z6wd_2aUiHeIzG7P3xwLiKe-lhF-o1upuWUaIJOvNifGU_X_PNesf7bJOcmig=s535" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="535" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJuBpEo15airzeUIapIym9dxAHkQ624OG4CR5JkyaBkx0RjgSd2cLuHtBmjyiR38tqodtyKdaWCSWlNSzWT1RhKKL50QcCdlB9y0wCs_psEPM1FNPOV8ErlctK8ZfC0Z6wd_2aUiHeIzG7P3xwLiKe-lhF-o1upuWUaIJOvNifGU_X_PNesf7bJOcmig=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Fumio Sasaki’s transition from materialist to minimalist can be divided into 5 stages, following the model proposed by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03069885.2018.1523364" target="_blank">Jennifer Hausen</a>. No longer satisfied with the life he was leading, Sasaki was looking for practical ways to change. He began with Stage 1: Finding discontentment in one’s life. With a beginner’s mindset, he searched for minimalism on the internet, and was struck by the image of people with little to no possessions in their lives, and those who focused on living life through traveling around the world. Sasaki found names like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Altucher" target="_blank">James Altucher</a>, a successful entrepreneur who claimed to own only a bag of clothes, a backpack with a laptop, an iPad, a phone, and nothing else. Or <a href="https://andrewhy.de/the-15-things-i-own/" target="_blank">Andrew Hyde</a>, a multiple business owner, who went as far as proclaiming to be homeless and owning only 15 objects.<p></p><p>Although he envied the freedom and the ease with which such people were able to prioritize what they consider to be essential for their lives, Sasaki had no intention of getting rid of his house. But it was the dissatisfaction with his own life that urged into the development of Stage 2: The decision to change. He wanted to distance himself from endorsing values, goals, and associated beliefs that center on the importance of acquiring money and possessions that convey status. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivg6CpEJoAp76ga-gr1YeltsHJghNn7FO2i5DeUHlN7kFknnSmCPRxkcwa5pRIqxxfXS8s29iLjEqEb-lTBIttU3WD8XR5zpxap9Q5lQGy2l24am7cJ1mgZSRF-L8h3T7RD51PzwUb5Ntkz6OXHbLIukasYNWlZIR_4sSGdaxD8uZtJS-xpS0Ua-Yo0A=s1200" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivg6CpEJoAp76ga-gr1YeltsHJghNn7FO2i5DeUHlN7kFknnSmCPRxkcwa5pRIqxxfXS8s29iLjEqEb-lTBIttU3WD8XR5zpxap9Q5lQGy2l24am7cJ1mgZSRF-L8h3T7RD51PzwUb5Ntkz6OXHbLIukasYNWlZIR_4sSGdaxD8uZtJS-xpS0Ua-Yo0A=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Reassessing how to effectively resolve the inconsistencies between this desire for change and practicality triggered Stage 3: Introspection. Sasaki could not shake the feeling that his belongings owned him and no matter how much he would clean and organize, they were still there in his house, cluttering his living environment. He had acquired them with hopes that they would make him feel better. At some point, he wanted so much to become a photographer that he transformed his kitchen into a photographic darkroom that he barely used. He was so good at buying things that in his office he had a pile of Amazon boxes. He was just not as good at managing his possessions. So much so that he could feel them talking back to him. It took him a year of selling his over 150 books collection and CDs to a second-hand store, but gradually, he emotionally detached himself from these and so many other objects.<p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XOXf8TKNliU" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
</p><p>This gradual change reflects a reorientation, solidified in different life domains, bringing him to Stage 4: Solidification. Although there had been a notable change, Sasaki’s minimalist self still struggled with his materialist self. He still fancied a luxurious lifestyle and it did not help that the lady with whom he was infatuated married someone with an income much higher than his. He not only wanted to have a simpler lifestyle; he also wanted to have a deeper understanding of what could bring him happiness. He wondered, “Were minimalists and people that got rid of most of their belongings (like Gandhi and Mother Teresa) happier?” Or, “When Mother Teresa passed away, she only had an extra sari, a pair of sandals and a bag. Why didn’t she buy a trendy sari? Was she pretending?” He assumed that these people knew more about happiness than most people today. While studies on Japan’s GDP show four times more growth in the past decades, the line of happiness seems to be the same as four decades ago. The whole has not become any happier despite modern convenience. Sasaki does not claim Mother Teresa or Gandhi as minimalists, but for sure they endorsed material detachment as a means to lead a simpler life. Adopting concepts from Zen Buddhism into his life were propelling factors that helped him to solidify his commitment to minimalism as a practical lifestyle. He embraced emotional detachment from the material and a shift to a higher emphasis on the relationship with oneself and others, both key characteristics of Zen Buddhism. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyYOlWROO4wsKCjBg9nsji99ILC9fn95se6-hOtVmgWYxUIT2oLqUukEOcOReIfbVdbiE-F5Mo33TvoLB4GVc68_CSsWFiqTSYvjIWa25dcZzFz37Sgo744skhF7wCUue-XC9O0CboKRoSZZ3D6TzVvlwMKyX45an3o1m3hQtLQR6xfn1Amu9YZ-sB_g=s1200" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyYOlWROO4wsKCjBg9nsji99ILC9fn95se6-hOtVmgWYxUIT2oLqUukEOcOReIfbVdbiE-F5Mo33TvoLB4GVc68_CSsWFiqTSYvjIWa25dcZzFz37Sgo744skhF7wCUue-XC9O0CboKRoSZZ3D6TzVvlwMKyX45an3o1m3hQtLQR6xfn1Amu9YZ-sB_g=s320" width="320" /></a></div>When it was time for Sasaki to move from the busy Tokyo streets to more serene Kyoto, it only took 30 minutes to pack because of how little he now had. He spends more time on his relationships rather than buying different products, reaching Stage 5: Renewed identity. This is exemplified by increasing prosocial tendencies, which he suggests is a positive benefit of happiness. Even his relationship with himself became healthier and underwent an overwhelming change. Currently, Sasaki spends more time outdoors and in nature, a significant contrast to his prior sedentary material lifestyle. Visible physical health improvement, which in turn is associated with improved mental health, is seen in individuals identified as happy and/or positively satisfied with their lives. Minimalism for him was the beginning and the method not to become happy, but to “be” happier with himself and his life.<p></p><p>In contemporary industrialized societies, there’s normalcy around endorsing materialistic values in order to compensate for feelings of inadequacy. As this thought process proves to be ineffective, found alternative lifestyles emerge that counter consumerist culture and advocate for simpler lives. Sasaki’s depiction of minimalism accounts for reassessing and developing the habit of differentiating wants from needs. This, in turn, eliminated the disorder from clutter or consumption for self-indulgence. It’s almost certain that each a person will have their own version of minimalism, from the most radical such as Altucher and Hyde, to the more traditionalist such as Sasaki. However, these differences point to an essential quality: Introspection that is necessary to reassess personal values and the mutual influence of environment and culture. I wish to suggest that proposing a minimalist lifestyle for modern societies such as Japan could contribute to higher life satisfaction as well as posing more sustainable and ecological ways of living, which further research could certainly explore in more detail. Minimalism can promote a more sustainable lifestyle by combating exacerbated consumption and sweeping away the mistaken idea that happiness is rooted in material objects.</p><span></span><div>[The above essay is by Drusila Gomes. It is based on her 2020 graduation thesis at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, which was recognized as outstanding. While at APU she pursued studies in culture, society and media. This helped to develop her skills and gain knowledge of how modern societies can benefit from traditional wisdom and alternative ways of living. She's currently working as a language teacher in Japan and is exploring the nuances of the educational system.]</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-812602801800594132021-06-20T18:51:00.003+09:002021-06-26T23:39:37.333+09:00Fading morality in American Biblical film adaptations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STPzfZtEzAU/YM8QsRuYdII/AAAAAAAABlc/ihvhXW8NxZo_dIrKwf-yTlbVQqUIXBu_QCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/ten_comm.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STPzfZtEzAU/YM8QsRuYdII/AAAAAAAABlc/ihvhXW8NxZo_dIrKwf-yTlbVQqUIXBu_QCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/ten_comm.jpg" /></a></div>It seems only natural that films (or any other media) devoted to retelling Biblical
stories would, first and foremost, exalt their moral virtues. Like the Bible
itself, they are often regarded as didactic tools with which to educate people
on ethics while reasserting the Biblical god’s authority. However, this is no
longer the case in American cinema. Overtime, the genre’s didactic function
monopolizes what little attention it still commands from American audiences,
while America’s film industry itself seems to have lost sight of the genre’s
devotion to the monotheistic Biblical god. The exclusivity that makes morality
in Bible adaptations “Biblical”--the willingness to proclaim God as the ultimate
moral authority superior to those of every other belief--has disappeared from
mainstream cinematic productions almost entirely. The result is a conflation of
Biblical morality in these films with that of a more universal, humanist, and
less religiously-bounded sort in the American audiences’ collective
consciousness. </div><div><br /></div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span>For the first half of the twentieth century, American Bible film
adaptations strictly adhered to the conservative notion of Biblical morality by
using the faith-duality plot device. This plot device juxtaposes the virtues of
the Biblical god and the irredeemable wickedness of other faiths’ deities
(usually exemplified by generic paganism and idols), thereby reasserting the
former’s moral superiority. Three of the period’s most famous, and expensive,
films--<i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041838/" target="_blank">Samson and Delilah</a></i> (1949), <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014532/" target="_blank">The Ten Commandments</a></i> (1923) and <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/" target="_blank">The TenCommandments</a></i> (1956) all utilize this convention. The <i>Ten Commandments</i> (1923) has
the golden calf and the film’s main antagonist--the godless, capitalist
Danny--epitomizing the evils of a pagan faith. The first half of the film
highlights the sin of idol-worshipping by cutting off the plot thread involving
Moses and the Hebrews right at the iconic golden calf incident. The second half
then propels itself forward from this point, using the first half as a
cautionary tale to extol the virtues of the Ten Commandments. Likewise, the
film’s 1956 remake also puts great focus on the dichotomy between Jewish
monotheism and Egyptian paganism, but also adds to the reaffirmation of Biblical
morality’s superiority by having the pharaoh’s last words be: “[Moses’] god...
is God.” Samson and Delilah also uses similar tactics for the same end of
putting Judeo-Christian monotheism and its values on a pedestal. Instead of
punishing individual antagonists, however, it condemns all Philistines as an
evil, paganist collective. All Philistines, including Delilah and the primary
antagonists Ahtur and the Saran of Gaza, are ultimately killed by the film’s
hero--Samson.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/grOD4nBWWmI" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe> </div><div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EiLmKxiTT3g" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The latter half of the 20th century, however, saw this faith-duality
plot device’s steep decline in popularity, as Biblical morality in Bible
adaptations gradually phased into more secular ethics. Two iconic films of the
genre belonging to this period--<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054343/" target="_blank">The story of Ruth</a> (1960) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120794/" target="_blank">The prince of Egypt</a>
(1998)--exemplify this trend. <i>The story of Ruth</i> in particular, provides is a
good analogy of this transitional period. It is the first time the book of Ruth
from the Bible, known for its theme of acceptance and benevolence towards
outsiders to the Judeo-Christian faith, received a cinematic adaptation. This
denotes a possible sign to the American film industries’ budding tolerance for
alternative beliefs. While The story of Ruth, like its predecessors in the
genre, still persecutes the majority Moabite pagans and only rewards Ruth for
her successful conversion to the Judeo-Christian faith, its emphasis is not the
dichotomy between faiths. The film ultimately focuses on compassion towards
others, especially foreigners over dogmatic loyalty towards Biblical law. In
doing in so, it also brings into question the rigidity of said law and calls for
flexibility in passing judgment. If <i>The story of Ruth</i> is still partially trapped
by the convention of demonizing non-Judeo-Christian beliefs, then <i>The prince of
Egypt</i> is entirely divorced from this trend. Faith and morality are addressed,
but nonetheless take a backseat to human drama. The Hebrews’ struggles and the
crumbling glory of Egypt are simply backdrops to the tragedy of severed familial
bonds and diverged paths between former brothers Moses and Ramses.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zmBDY-fSlIs" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe> </div><div><br /></div><div>By
2000, not only have theatrically released films disappeared almost entirely from
the American market, ones that were made take on neutral to even negative
attitudes towards the Biblical aspect of Biblical morality. While some
theatrical productions belonging to the period from 1970 to 1999 still exhibited
at least ambivalence towards Judeo-Christian monotheism, those produced after
2000 either portray the Judeo-Christian god in an exaggeratedly negative light
or go out of their way to distance themselves from the Bible. They also make no
attempt at portraying morality but, like <i>The prince of Egypt</i>, use Biblical
themes to narrate human drama.</div><div><br /></div><div>The newest remake of <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443412/" target="_blank">The Ten Commandments</a></i> (2006)
by the same name and <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1528100/" target="_blank">Exodus: Gods and kings</a></i> (2014) exemplify the first trend of
portraying the Judeo-Christian god as a hostile, amoral entity. <i>The Ten
Commandments</i> (2006) shows how violent, unsympathetic and needlessly cruel God
can be. He punishes the innocent Egyptians, some of whom are Moses’ loved ones.
A controversial detail from the original Biblical story that is often omitted in
film adaptations is also included: God orders half of the tribe of Israel
murdered for refusing to follow Moses. Among the executed, the deaths of women
and children receive extensive focus. At the end of the film, Moses is banned
from entering the Promised Land in his old age, seemingly without explanation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Likewise, <i>Exodus: Gods and kings</i> discusses little morality while emphasizing
this violent, even vengeful, aspect of God to account for the violence shown on
screen. It even attempts to secularize the protagonist’s motivation. Moses is
introduced as an atheist who is knowledgeable about the god of the Hebrews but
chooses not to believe in him at first. He is then forced into the task with
broken legs and a concussion. Ultimately, Moses liberates the Hebrews as a war
general (not shepherd) commissioned by God, but his actions are motivated by
basic compassion and a secular sense of justice, not religious devotion.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t-8YsulfxVI" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>While it does not treat Judeo-Christian monotheism with contempt as the previous
two films, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959490/" target="_blank">Noah</a></i> (2014) makes efforts to distance itself from the religiosity of
its source material and even the world which we inhabit, then discusses morality
in entirely secular terms. Its world building is evidently meant to be
fantastical, with the word “God” replaced by “the Creator,” a cast in ethnically
and historically ambiguous costumes, and a landscape occupied by fantastical
animals. Noah then goes on to use its vaguely Biblical setting to discuss
environmental concerns and tell a story of ideological conflict, none of whose
opposing sides are religiously motivated.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6qmj5mhDwJQ" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe> </div><div><br /></div><div> Biblical morality can
be distinguished from the common sense understanding of morality in that,
instead of an innate sense of right and wrong, it is derived from the
Judeo-Christian god. Thus, ethics must go hand in hand with reverence towards
God in order to be Biblical. But mainstream American film adaptations of the
Bible have shown an evident decrease in this devotion since the latter half of
the twentieth century. Morality in these films as of recent years, is either
secular or omitted from the discussion entirely. This is likely the result of
the religious pluralization of American audiences after the end of World War II,
which has discouraged Hollywood studios from including the sort of religious
exclusivity for the sake of heralding Biblical monotheism known to Golden era
films. With this audience pluralization also came decreased Bible literacy. The
result is that in order to avoid alienating non-Judeo-Christian viewers,
Biblical elements in modern films are either used as mere backdrops for the
drama being told, treated with contempt or indifference. This is not to say that
Biblical morality has disappeared completely from this genre of American cinema,
as old conventions and a focus on religious reverence remain prominent in
independently produced productions. However, with the drastically low number of
theatrical releases by big studios and a shared apathy among them towards
Biblical morality, this trend in mainstream media will likely persist for years
to come.</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>[This essay was written by Vy Nhat Tran as part of her graduation
research at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. The undergraduate thesis upon which the essay
is based received recognition as an Outstanding Thesis for the 2018 graduating
class.]</div>TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-57123726344565872172021-04-11T20:41:00.003+09:002022-04-27T20:22:11.005+09:00An author of outsiders: Jim Jarmusch’s "Down by law" <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_m64i6CdB3g/YM8xtDJUuDI/AAAAAAAABnA/3zXiyR6T8UYexRiZa18SuEYMsYELhWlDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s100/down.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_m64i6CdB3g/YM8xtDJUuDI/AAAAAAAABnA/3zXiyR6T8UYexRiZa18SuEYMsYELhWlDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/down.jpg" /></a></div>Jim Jarmusch is an American independent film director with a dominant characteristic of his cinema; marginality. The director’s movies focused on outsiders, people who wander with no destination, at odds with themselves and others, traveling through a wasteland of modern America. This study seeks to determine how Jarmusch creates marginality via the cinematography of a film <i>Down by Law</i>. The primary source of this paper is the film. Secondary sources include existing interviews of the director and other related materials. The analysis part will briefly touch upon technicalities of implemented camera work and provide images from the film. The study proposed that marginality has its cycle that consists of four elements; stranger, interference stage, freedom, separation. Further analysis demonstrates the depiction of the cycle in the film. The results indicate that Jim Jarmusch employs specific camera techniques such as long shots, momentum, lighting, horizontal representation, static shots, and black and white choice of photography to underline the notion of marginality in the film <i>Down by Law</i>.<p></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>"I’d rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China." --Jim Jarmusch <p></p><p>Loners, outcasts, misfits, and marginal people have a prominent cinematic ally, a filmmaker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jarmusch" target="_blank">Jim Jarmusch</a>. An American independent movie director spent the last three decades portraying immigrants, taxi drivers, Zen hitman, and vampires. Marginality has been a defining element in his cinema from the critically acclaimed black and white picture <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088184/" target="_blank"><i>Stranger than Paradise</i></a> (1984) to his recent comedy/horror work <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/" target="_blank"><i>The Dead Don’t Die</i></a> (2019) portraying zombies/ultimate outsiders. Jim Jarmusch deliberately avoids the Hollywood cinema production and cultivates aesthetic marginality by his minimalistic style and limited financial conditions. Moreover, the concept of marginality is visually depicted through the technicality of his camera work. This essay will attempt to understand the concept of marginality and investigate the technical depiction of the concept in Jim Jarmusch’s film <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090967/" target="_blank">Down by Law</a></i> (1986). </p><p style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7OHg4Ayewao" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
</p><p>The concept of marginality has a long history of definitions and transformations within sociological and philosophical context. The origins of the concept appear in sociological studies by R. Park’s <i>Human migrations and the Marginal man</i> (1928) explaining the cultural differences, races, and ethnicities among people in different situations. An author introduced a concept of cultural hybrids that refers to someone who shares the cultural life of two separate groups and at the same time does not belong to either of them. A marginal man is not accepted because of the social prejudice insisting that one must belong to a place or a group of people in order to exist in society.</p><p>The latter deviations of the concept introduce Strangerhood and Otherness. The sociological study of S. Demir, "Old Concepts, New Contents: The City, Cinema and the Stranger," offers a transformed understanding of the concept Strangerhood that refers to a mental state of a person rather than a characteristic. This type of strangers differs from the ones who were innocently pushed by the circumstances, they determine their existence as the border that cannot be separated from inner and outside inbetweennesses (Demir, 2018).</p><p>Otherness, however, offers different but related understanding of the concept. A philosophical essay of M. Cauchi, "Otherness and the Renewal of Freedom in Jim Jarmusch’s <i>Down by Law</i>: A Levinasian and Arendtian Reading," analyzes the pattern of renewal of freedom through otherness and refers to ability of otherness to offer newness into the world (Cauchi, 2013). Other is an element that refers to a difference, ethnical or racial, religious and ideological that has a power to renew freedom that can only by achieved through an encounter with the other element </p><p>Both studies, however, did not touch upon the whole aspect of marginality, only partly. Arguments that were made by authors are nearly components belonging to the bigger idea of the concept. This study proposes that marginality has its own cycle where numerous elements combined altogether represent marginality as a whole. There are four parts to the cycle of marginality; stranger, interference stage, freedom, separation. These elements are in specific order, after every step is completed, the cycle as a loop returns to the first stage; stranger and continue its mechanism. The framework is a lens that helps to discover and deliver specific employed camera techniques and most crucially illustrate the cycle of marginality in the film.</p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XQu_HMjku3o/YM8vakXPLiI/AAAAAAAABl8/VkCidk3264UB-ytvXjVtEogt_IxOAHLdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s712/jj1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="712" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XQu_HMjku3o/YM8vakXPLiI/AAAAAAAABl8/VkCidk3264UB-ytvXjVtEogt_IxOAHLdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj1.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i>Down by Law</i> is one of the earlier works of the filmmaker that reassured his position in the independent cinema industry and brought to Jim Jarmusch recognition as an art-house movie director. Down by law has a black and white aesthetic that received an award in Cannes for the best picture (Suarez, 2007). The film begins with a graveyard shot, slowly moving horizontally away, implementing a long shot accompanied by the iconic voice and ironic lyrics of Tom Waits "A Jockey Full of Bourbon." The shots introduce the audience to the outskirts of the city of Louisiana, portraying strangers who are passing by and melodically synchronized opening scene of marginal characters Jack and Zack. From the early scenes of the film, the audience begin to recognize the detachment and distance of the characters. The characters are outsiders, marginal people who cannot be identified as heroes of the film but rather partly present, partly connected, and not belonging people who are about to take a journey through the timeframe of the movie. The scene then fades to black, and additional credits of the film appear on a dark screen.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kDveI5SobAE/YM8vksSafrI/AAAAAAAABmA/J6GdI9odi1gS5ztP1wBLR5LpPE2MmMyFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s713/jj2.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="713" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kDveI5SobAE/YM8vksSafrI/AAAAAAAABmA/J6GdI9odi1gS5ztP1wBLR5LpPE2MmMyFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Momentum and lighting are the techniques that help to develop the characters. Momentum gives enough of timely freedom to portray the actions and show who characters are, it is described as a technique that helps to gather the steam throughout the film. Lighting on the other hand, contributes in representing their motives. The representation of momentum. A character Bob sits in the same shot for two minutes, sharing about his family and opening a door into his life for the audience. <p></p><div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EihMQIp3J-g/YM8vyJuvgrI/AAAAAAAABmI/02IprtIAOhEmq0pRTty86GkjVWKdAKEsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s718/jj3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="718" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EihMQIp3J-g/YM8vyJuvgrI/AAAAAAAABmI/02IprtIAOhEmq0pRTty86GkjVWKdAKEsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The second stage of the cycle is interference stage that is depicted by the same techniques, long shots, momentum and angles. Angle shares a perception of characters, a location where they meet, a place with their take of seeing. Angles portray whether a character changes, remains the same or becomes indifferent. A good example of an angle positions is when Bob tries to connect with Zack and Jack. Bob is depicted by the left corner of the screen frame and the camera position that is slightly over the heads of two characters. The audience now is seeing Bob’s perception of events and how they turn out.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Wr5mjgCaso/YM8v8kBfEUI/AAAAAAAABmQ/FOFGrFkA9tweV8kvrWcbkHWxwrqFCswLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s712/jj4.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="712" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Wr5mjgCaso/YM8v8kBfEUI/AAAAAAAABmQ/FOFGrFkA9tweV8kvrWcbkHWxwrqFCswLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The third element; freedom. A process of getting the freedom in their minds as well as the reality in the film, was illustrated through the camera technique named horizontal representation. The film has a straightforward horizontal shot of the process to escape which was portrayed traveling on feet, as well as a boat while duration of the film. These shots move in a linear direction with no interruptions of turns, and characters become a part of the scene. The crucial part of portrayal of escape from the prison/mind was depicted by a static shot. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KjKRPmjJLH0/YM8wDtZdnTI/AAAAAAAABmY/_B9eHh5eIe8YyPFoHxNww9DxHP-uZp3OACLcBGAsYHQ/s712/jj5.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="712" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KjKRPmjJLH0/YM8wDtZdnTI/AAAAAAAABmY/_B9eHh5eIe8YyPFoHxNww9DxHP-uZp3OACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The last stage is separation. Near the end of the movie, there are two scenes depict the element of separation. After the characters’ accomplishment of escaping prison and stumbling upon a house where Bob meets Nicoletta and get food and shelter, they start to make up their minds about the next steps each of them wants to take. Bob decides to stay with Nicoletta confessing his love for her. Zack wants to move to another state, he mentions West, Los Angeles to which Jack replies that he wants to go East, giving an inside reference about the incompatibility of two. And so, they say goodbye to Bob and Nicoletta, accompanied by the wide-angle shot which provides the whole frame of background, emotions, and a slight confusion on the faces of marginal characters. They separate renewed by the experience, even more, marginal than they were before they went through the adventure of the film’s timeframe.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jXrpKYBuios/YM8wKl3Uw2I/AAAAAAAABmc/i9fd2E47zhgpQD1r6eieoZXEtAkfMHQ7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s711/jj6.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="711" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jXrpKYBuios/YM8wKl3Uw2I/AAAAAAAABmc/i9fd2E47zhgpQD1r6eieoZXEtAkfMHQ7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the second scene that portrays the separation between Zack and Jack. The camera applied the wide- angle shot, depicting a depth of the space and literal separation between two set apart roads. Zack and Jack walk away, and the audience left with an open-end finale. The above mentioned camera techniques within the framework of conceptual analysis suggest the fulfillment of four elements of the cycle of marginality. The analysis unfolded specific techniques as long shots, static camera position, general lighting situation, momentum, wide-angle shots, and horizontal representation. Furthermore, concepts and interpretations of the two studies by Cauchi and Demir were described and applied to the body of the analysis. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YjG_-kQkNGA/YM8wRaZdAfI/AAAAAAAABmg/o-I4rgPFlNY5PzNmidA4zk30SGzID3EVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s711/jj7.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="711" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YjG_-kQkNGA/YM8wRaZdAfI/AAAAAAAABmg/o-I4rgPFlNY5PzNmidA4zk30SGzID3EVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>This study situated that Jim Jarmusch’s <i>Down by Law</i> in relation to the concept of marginality through in-depth analysis of the concept and technical aspects of the picture. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that Jim Jarmusch’s depiction of the marginality is achieved through a use of specific camera techniques which are: long shots, position of angles, lighting, horizontal representation, momentum, black and white choice of cinematography, static camera shots as well as distant shots. Furthermore, findings of the study illustrate that marginality consist of four elements as stated in the analysis part of the study. Moreover, the cycle is found in the film and applies to the cinematic depiction of the concept through camera work. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5gyCLDnCtKY/YM8waAUzDcI/AAAAAAAABmo/AhM1pBXW6Fg4lBHGNl5Y3p2wkc5P128GwCLcBGAsYHQ/s714/jj8.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="714" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5gyCLDnCtKY/YM8waAUzDcI/AAAAAAAABmo/AhM1pBXW6Fg4lBHGNl5Y3p2wkc5P128GwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>With regards to the marginality the importance of this study is also in providing the understanding of the significance of individualism. Marginality cannot be fully understood without an acknowledgment of individualism. In the origins of the study on the concept, they mention that marginality can have negative connotations as segregation of the cultural mismatch or even abandoning marginal style of life and join the dominant groups. Of course, dominant groups will expect the marginal people learn their dominant values and principles. However, marginal people often times choose to embrace their sense of freedom and thus it certainly enhances their individualism and the self.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jW5p3Xg0jo0/YM8whdwCZBI/AAAAAAAABm0/Db4eUziqPL0Ku6ueSJr7oCanxhWtEA6IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s715/jj9.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="715" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jW5p3Xg0jo0/YM8whdwCZBI/AAAAAAAABm0/Db4eUziqPL0Ku6ueSJr7oCanxhWtEA6IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jj9.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Finally, Jarmusch’s marginal characters depicted in the film seem to have an insight observation of the world, life, and their experiences that remained unspoken in the picture. It probably is not due to their introverted nature or unwillingness to share knowledge with others but the importance of a sacred type of knowledge that is found in solitude and should remain unspoken. Perhaps, this could be one the reasons why they are loners, outsiders and misfits. A further investigation could allow a useful discussion on the mentioned observation. <p></p><p>References</p><p> Cauchi, M. (2013). Otherness and the Renewal of Freedom in Jarmusch's <i>Down by Law</i>: A Levinasian and Arendtian Reading. <i>Film-Philosophy</i>, 17(1), 193-211. </p><p>Demir, S. T. (2018). Old concepts, new contents: the city, cinema and the stranger. <i>Türkiye İletişim Araştırmaları Dergisi</i>, (31), 121-133. </p><p>Piazza, S. (2015). <i>Jim Jarmusch: Music, Words and Noise</i> (Illustrated). Reaktion Books.</p><p>[This essay was written by Guzal Koshbahteeva. It is based on her Master's research at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.]</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-40171095975757150872020-11-20T20:05:00.000+09:002021-06-26T23:41:33.402+09:00"A story of a bird named Bìm Bịp": Lies, violence, and meaning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7qiJNeKxXBw/YM8gqX8BPYI/AAAAAAAABlk/l_tSMgSyC4ULgio4R_N_dw-l8siG_YWqwCLcBGAsYHQ/s100/monk_tale.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7qiJNeKxXBw/YM8gqX8BPYI/AAAAAAAABlk/l_tSMgSyC4ULgio4R_N_dw-l8siG_YWqwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/monk_tale.jpg" /></a></div>“On the road, he met a bandit who was wielding a big sword. The monk was scared, but he thought the bandit would not harm him because he is a religious man. Suddenly, the bandit kneeled and asked: “The master, please accept me as your disciple. My hands filled with blood. I am ashamed and regretful. I don’t know if I can still lead a religious life or not.” The monk assured him: “You need a true heart to lead a religious life. If you are truly penitent of your sins, The Devine will know for sure. I am on my way to meet the Buddha, so I cannot accept you as my disciple.” The bandit replied: “Please send my true heart to the Buddha.” Then immediately, cut his chest open, took out his heart and gave it to the monk.”<div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>The violent action was done to the bandit by himself, and it was unexpected and somewhat irrational. The character who performs this action is also portrayed as an uneducated and barbaric man. Camus once asserted: “A man defines himself by his make-believe as well as his sincere impulses” [1]. The bandit was uneducated; therefore, we have no basis to doubt that his pursuit of forgiveness is an act of insincerity. To the best of his understanding, he also acts out on his sincere impulses with a fast cut. Even though we were never told about his inner thoughts, we can feel that the bandit is a man who defined himself clearly.<br />
<br />
“The monk prayed for the thief, then he carried on with the heart of the dead. Slowly, the heart started to rot and became smelly, which attracted the flies. Eventually, the monk threw the heart away, thinking that the bandit will never be able to lead a religious life.”<br />
The dishonest action was done to the thief by the monk. In contrast with the bandit’s action, the action of the monk is logical and rational. When you see a bandit, who would have thought that he possesses that quality to be enlightened. And, would any normal person carry a rotten heart with him?<br />
<br />
The journey of the monk was carefully narrated with his inner thoughts; which suggests that he is not a bad man, but he is not entirely sincere either. His motive is never for other people. When the bandit begged for his teaching, he was too caught up with his own journey. Then, when the rotten heart disturbed him, he decided to throw it away. It is also noteworthy that the monk sees himself as a religious man, so the bandit would not rob or harm him.<br />
<br />
“The Buddha told the monk: “You have done a lot of good, but you still missing a cause. You go find the heart and bring it back to me. By then, you can find the enlightenment.”<br />
<br />
The monk came back to find the heart, from bushes to bushes. Eventually, he turned into a bird named Bìm bịp. The color of its feathers is half black half brown, similar to the color of the monk’s Buddhist coat.”<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the bandit’s irrational action leads him to enlightenment, while the monk spends eternity on finding the ‘true heart.’ It is remarkable how such a short story is layered with thoughtful structures and meaning. Even the choice to associate violence with the bandit and lies with the monk is an interesting setup. The violence is thoughtless, and it often turns into pure chaos. However, a lie is always planned and deployed for a clear motivation. When a man is violent, he often has no control; but when a man lies, he is often in control. Here, it is possible that the bandit is violent because his nature, but when he realizes it, he can change. On the other hand, the monk lies because of his understanding. He has spent years to learn, but he still desires an outcome.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRnyh-29eKI/XZkeEl0tqpI/AAAAAAAABbM/D9FR6_ZlGlEr88HisaneG44RYK8Oa2l4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/monk_tale.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="317" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRnyh-29eKI/XZkeEl0tqpI/AAAAAAAABbM/D9FR6_ZlGlEr88HisaneG44RYK8Oa2l4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/monk_tale.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Francesca Escorbar’s Buddhist Monk 2 (Source: Carré d'artistes)</span><br style="text-align: left;" /></td></tr></tbody></table>A new preprint, which I was fortunate to be a part of, dives deep into this issue of lies and violence in Vietnamese folklores [2]. The results suggest lying that serves an either Confucianism, or Taoism religious mission brings a positive outcome to a character, while a violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer. In fact, elements of violence and lies appear in folklore more often than we think. For instance, in “Little Red Riding Hood,” the wolf eats the grandma, and he also eats the Little Red Riding Hood in some versions too. In “Hansel and Gretel,” the two kids are abandoned by their parents, and later it is the sister who had to kill the witch. Alcantud-Diaz (2010) highlights that the classic Brothers Grimm collection of fairy tales contains an alarming amount of violent words, either directly or indirectly [3].<br />
<br />
A fictional story often reflects reality and carries the culture of its creators. Studies of fictional stories have unearthed cultural phenomenon [4], or how we perceive environmental disasters [5]. For folklore like ‘a story of a bird named Bìm Bịp,’ it is often perceived as a story that our ancestors used to educate people. However, the cultural norms are also transmitted through the story. And, with all the lies, violence, our modern story is not so different.<br /><br /><div><span>
References:<br />
[1] Camus, A. (2005). <i>The myth of Sisyphus</i>. London, UK: Penguin Books. (Original work published in 1942).<br />
[2] Vuong, Q.-H., La, V.-P., Ho, T. M., Nguyen, H.-K. T., Vuong, T. T., & Ho, T. M. (2019, September 26). On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: Folktales as a cultural transmitter. <i>OSF Preprints</i> (Working Paper No. AISDL-1909), DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/nb7tg.<br />
[3] Alcantud Díaz, M. (2010). Violence in the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales: a corpus-based approach. <i>Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses</i>, 23, 173-185, DOI: 10.14198/raei.2010.23.10.<br />
[4] Vuong, Q.-H., La, V.-P., Vuong, T. T., Nguyen, V. H., Ho, M. T., Nguyen, T. H. K., Bui, Q. K., Ho, M. T. (2018). Cultural additivity: Behavioural insights from the interaction of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in folktales. <i>Palgrave Communications</i>, 4, 143, DOI:10.1057/s41599-018-0189-2.<br />
[5] Clode, D., & Stasiak, M. (2014). Fictional depictions of climate change. <i>International Journal of Climate Change</i>, 5(4), 19-29.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>[This essay was written by Ho Manh Toan.]</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-30080853899701805772020-09-16T19:27:00.002+09:002022-04-27T20:20:41.951+09:00Pacific Islander’s effect on media production<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qsJ5nVQ4hnI/YM8mkN4kcbI/AAAAAAAABls/6MybAaC_onYf-bmVtAIxo3ejieE_k0CcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s100/moana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qsJ5nVQ4hnI/YM8mkN4kcbI/AAAAAAAABls/6MybAaC_onYf-bmVtAIxo3ejieE_k0CcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/moana.jpg" /></a></div>The indigenous people and culture of Hawaiʻi have been sabotaged by misrepresentation, sexualisation, and exoticisation stemming from foreign tourism and large-scale media. The increase of foreigners to Hawaiʻi in the late 1700s and early 1800s destroyed sociopolitical systems, unnecessarily reallocated millions of acres of (rightful Hawaiian) land, and lead to the illegal annexation of Hawaiʻi in 1898 (Levy, 1975; Lâm, 1989; Wilkinson, 1989). The popularization of Hawaiian culture (hula, lūʻau, surfing, etc.) has also caused an increase of “Hawaiians at heart,” non-Natives who use interest in culture to identify themselves as legitimate Natives (Hall, 2005). Media has also aided in the popularization of the paradisiacal Hawaiian image: live-action and animated movies alike have sexualized the hula, exoticized the culture, and portrayed a largely Native-free Hawaiʻi. Nevertheless, grassroots movements can be seen to this day: the current protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain, show that Native Hawaiians continue to fight for their indigenous rights.<br /><br /><div>
<span><a name='more'></a></span>The media has played a major role in the misrepresentation of Native Hawaiians and many other indigenous cultures. Previous research shows that media is shaped by and shapes social rules, expectations, and ideals (Griffin, Piper, & Learmonth, 2018); is aiding in socialization (Arnett, 1995); and is ultimately a powerful tool to shape ideas about cultures and customs other than the dominant culture’s norm. While there are live-action and animated films that have included Native Hawaiians, two are of note: <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275847/" target="_blank">Lilo & Stitch</a></i> (2002) and <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/" target="_blank">Moana</a></i> (2016). Both animated Disney films are about young Pacific Islanders who deal with adventure, friendship, and family. The films also similarly present Native Hawaiians in ways measurable through ethnic identity terminology, particularly the community identity and external identity aspects (Weaver, 2001). Community identity incorporates the Native connection to the community through place (the connection to surroundings and genealogical ties with the land), language (the distinct languages or dialects spoken by the group), and traditional knowledge (ways of life passed down through generations) (Weaver, 2001; Kanaʻiaupuni & Malone, 2006; Corntassel, 2003; Ragavan, 2001). External identity is the identification with one’s ethnicity in relation to those outside of the ethnic group, for example, rejection of certain aspects due to negative stereotyping (Weaver, 2001). While these aspects are important to compare the portrayal of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in film, I felt there was a lack of research on the inclusion of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the production stages of the films. Because media representation begins in the production stages, creation and incorporation (Sternberg, 2017), it was also necessary to research and compare these aspects for both of the films.<br /><br /></div><div>
The ways <i>Lilo & Stitch</i> and <i>Moana</i> portrayed community identity aspects were different and can be linked to the level of inclusion of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in the production stages. Lilo & Stitch’s connection to place was mainly seen through “He Mele No Lilo,” a restructured genealogical chant for Kalākaua written by Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu; Lilo, Nani, and David’s connection with the ocean; and the interactive relationship Native Hawaiians have with place--a belief that certain actions or rituals can affect weather or natural events (Kanaʻiaupuni & Malone, 2006)--being represented in Lilo’s ritual to feed Pudge the weather-controlling fish a peanut butter sandwich every Thursday. The traditional knowledge aspect was mainly represented through Lilo’s connection to hula. The final aspect, language, was most successful for including Native Hawaiian, local actors as voice actors in the film: Tia Carrere (Nani) and Jason Scott Lee (David). Carrere and Lee not only made the script more authentic by changing it, but they also inserted Hawaiian language (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) words and pidgin, a local Creole mix of plantation languages (Brislin, 2003). One scene of truck drivers speaking in pidgin illuminates the difference including local voice actors made for the film, at least for the Hawaiian audience. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/37qAz7hV6Rg" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
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Unfortunately, these aspects also have negative consequences. While songs in Hawaiian and English were written and performed by Native Hawaiians, comments made by the directors offer that they were unaware of the true power and meaning of song in Native Hawaiian culture. Furthermore, the connection to the ocean, the connection to hula, and Lilo’s ritual could be superficial inclusions by the directors in an attempt to play on previous stereotypes (surfing, hula) and to hone in on Lilo’s troubled behavior (believing a fish could control the weather, which even the other Native characters seem troubled by.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LKFuXETZUsI" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
</div><div><br /></div><div>In addition, one of the main themes of the film is the “Hawaiian” family, one that does not differentiate blood relatives from distant family or friends; however, the fact that societal support was absent for the Pelekais shows that a deeper knowledge of the Hawaiian family was lacking by directors (Hoʻomanawanui, 2008). These aspects reflect a lack of deeper socio-cultural understanding by the directors in the creation and incorporation stages, aspects that could have been remedied by including Native Hawaiians in the production stages. Ultimately, while Lilo & Stitch may not have been openly aware in its stereotyping, the exclusion of Native Hawaiians in production lead to misrepresentation of culture.<br /><br /></div><div>
Moana’s approach to creating a Pan-Pacific cultural film was completely different than that of Lilo & Stitch. The directors started by traveling to various islands in the Pacific, then created the Oceanic Story Trust (OST), a group of skilled Pacific Islanders to check the film’s many cultural components (Sternberg, 2017). This inclusion lead to the enhancement of the community identity aspects throughout the film. Moana’s connection to place was exampled through songs like “Where You Are” that show the Pacific Island bond to the environment and the self-sustainable lifestyle (Foaʻi, Mancina, & Miranda, 2016, track 3).</div><div><br /></div><div>The centrality of the ocean is also a key factor in the film, representing the deep respect Pacific cultures have for nature. Traditional knowledge is abundantly represented in Moana, with examples that link to cultures around the Pacific: wayfinding, hula, traditional tattoo, traditional ways of living such as weaving and fishing techniques, storytelling, and even animated costumes. </div><div><br /></div><div>Traditional tattoos are of specific importance because they represent mana, or life force, and often tell stories (PBS, n.d.-a; PBS, n.d.-b; PBS, n.d.-c). Maui’s tattoos were designed to showcase the legends surrounding the demigod, and are explained in the song “You’re Welcome.”</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/79DijItQXMM" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
</div><div><br /></div><div>Many pan-Pacific languages were included in the songs, as well, such as Tokelauan and Samoan. Nevertheless, the film did face criticism in the animation of Maui and the Kakamora. Many accused the film of perpetuating the stereotype of the obese Pacific Islander image through Maui. The Kakamora are group of coconut pirates originally meant to represent a group of people from the Solomon Islands, but then were animated as coconuts. Not only does this misrepresent the people, but coconut itself is a real racial slur used against Pacific Islanders.</div><div><br /></div><div>
Through analysis of the films’ production stages and their representation of culture, Moana was comparatively more successful for the accurate traditional knowledge, language, and place-centered themes. While Lilo & Stitch did include aspects of Hawaiian culture like song, dance, and rituals, the lack of Native Hawaiians in the creation and incorporation stages makes these possibly stereotypical aspects even more suspicious. Moana ultimately proved that the inclusion of Pacific Islanders in the production of media can yield a box-office hit that still accurately represents and protects indigenous cultures.<br />
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References<br />
Arnett, J. J. (1995). Adolescents’ uses of media for self-socialization. <i>Journal of Youth and Adolescence</i>, 24(5), 519-533. doi:10.1007/BF01537054<br />
Brislin, T. (2003). Exotics, erotics, and coconuts: Stereotypes of Pacific Islanders. In P. M. Lester, & S. D. Ross (Eds.), <i>Images that injure: Pictorial stereotypes in the media</i> (2nd ed., pp. 103-112). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.<br />
Corntassel, J. (2003). Who is indigenous?: ‘Peoplehood’ and ethnonationalist approaches to rearticulating indigenous identity. <i>Nationalism and Ethnic Politics</i>, 9(1), 75-100.<br />
doi:10.1080/13537110412331301365<br />
Foaʻi, O., Mancina, M., & Miranda, L. M. (2016b). Where you are [Recorded by N. Scherzinger, A. Cravalho, C. Jackson, R. House, & L. Bush]. On Moana (Original Motion Picture<br />
Soundtrack) [CD]. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Records.<br />
Griffin, M., Piper, N., & Learmonth, M. (2018). Organizational readiness: Culturally mediated learning through Disney animation. <i>Academy of Management Learning & Education</i>,<br />
17(1), 4-23. doi:10.5465/amle.2016.0073<br />
Hall, L. K. (2005). “Hawaiian at heart” and other fictions. The Contemporary Pacific, 17(2), 404-413. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/23722071<br />
Hoʻomanawanui, K. (2008, September). Moʻolelo as social and political action: Responding to Jack Zipes (De-Disneyfying Disney) and Waziyatawin (From the clay we rise). Paper presented at Folk Tales and Fairy Tales: Translation, Colonialism, and Cinema, Hawaiʻi.<br />
Lâm, M. C. (1989). The Kuleana Act revisited: The survival of traditional Hawaiian commoner rights in land. <i>Washington Law Review</i>, 64, 233-288. Retrieved from<br />
https://heinonline.org/HOL/PrintRequest?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/washlr64&div=21&print=section&format=PDFsearchable&submit=Print%2FDownload&id=245<br />
Levy, N. M. (1975). Native Hawaiian land rights. <i>California Law Review</i>, 63(4), 848-885.<br />
doi:10.15779/Z38117N<br />
PBS. (n.d.-a). Skin stories. History of tattoos. Retrieved from<br />
https://www.pbs.org/skinstories/history/index.html<br />
PBS. (n.d.-b). Skin stories. History of tattoos. Retrieved from<br />
https://www.pbs.org/skinstories/history/hawaii.html<br />
PBS. (n.d.-c). Skin stories. History of tattoos. Retrieved from<br />
https://www.pbs.org/skinstories/history/newzealand.html<br />
Ragavan, S. (2001). Protection of traditional knowledge. <i>Minnesota Intellectual Property Review</i>, 2(2), 1-60. Retrieved from<br />
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1371&context=mjlst<br />
Sternberg, K. (2017). From the margins to the frame: Social identities and a “pan-Pacific” <i>Moana</i>. Retrieved from Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. (2675).<br />
Weaver, H. N. (2001). Indigenous identity: What is it, and who really has it? <i>American Indian Quarterly</i>, 25(2), 240-255. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1185952.pdf<br />
Wilkinson, C. F. (1989). Land tenure in the Pacific: The context for Native Hawaiian land rights. <i>Washington Law Review</i>, 64, 227-232. Retrieved from https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/washlr64&div=20&g_sent=1&casa_token=bHwl6KwzTbMAAAAA:NuQKLIeSDUnkpFh-wOxwhTvrNTB8XrlBQIS4WKRnmtIiZA_YbsiW9w3gLP-y_CMKuAitTXmiIUg&collection=journals<br />
<br />[Kaylee Thompson is a Native Hawaiian student from Maui. This essay is extracted from her graduation thesis at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. She wrote her thesis on Native Hawaiians for the love of her people and the betterment of the community. She has since accepted a job in Tokyo, and hopes to complete graduate school in the future.]<br /></div></div>TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-19491854130109042012019-06-22T19:49:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:23:28.700+09:00Kerouac and the Fellahin tribe of God's children<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>On the Road</i> is a literary phenomenon in a conservative post-war America in the late 1950s of such rippling effects that its author, Jack Kerouac, has been baptized by the media as the chief of a generation of revolutionary artists. According to <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/07/home/kerouac-roadglowing.html?mcubz=3" target="_blank">Gilbert Millstein (1957)</a>, the first established reviewer to endorse the book, the three pillars of Kerouac's writing, thinking and vision constitutes an indispensable whole, and the dismissal of any element shall break down the entire architecture. Unfortunately, <i>On the Road</i> has been interpreted without much confirmation of the authorial intention and remained vulnerable to sectional analysis. In either criticisms or appraisals, most scholars have disassembled the novel into its language execution, structural composition and ideological validity.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The surgical approach prevalent in academic studies corresponds to the boldness of Kerouac's experiment with a spontaneous prose style highly influenced by jazz and poetry to textualize conversational taboos regarding genders, races, crimes and substances. Such an approach, while enriching discussions about the unconventional content and form of the book, might swivel around some prescribed focal points and limit an advantageous viewpoint of the bigger picture. I propose a fast-track portal to comprehensively appreciate both the book and the writer by looking at <i>On the Road</i> as the fieldnotes of an anthropological research whose findings can be summarized into one word–the Fellahin. A fine literary and ideological choice, this diction is the arch stone to resolve all internal conflicts within the main characters, suggesting his optimistic rendition of the original concept by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler" target="_blank">Oswald Spengler</a> and deliver Kerouac's Christian worldviews.<br />
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A minimalist summary of <i>On the Road</i> is the travels of the narrator, Sal Paradise, mostly with Dean Moriarty across the United States and to Mexico. Once aligned to an academic framework, it resembles a meticulous record of raw data to study a generic tribe of people by an anthropologist. The researcher, Sal, describes a "Paper America" of false promises, social gaps and institutional injustice as the context for his fieldworks. Dean ostensibly belongs to the dominant white male category, but his extreme exuberance of liveliness is a counterexample that worth an in-depth analysis. Thus, he becomes the main case study for Sal's research.<br />
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Sal's discovery of a Fellahin quality among a certain group of people, signified by the realization that "[Dean] had found people like himself" when they come into contact with the Mexican Indians, answers all of his research questions. It is to this generic Fellahin "tribe" that Dean’s mentality finds a whole sense of identification with, although their immediate physical traits force the dual into a fragmented identity among "self-important money bag Americans." Dean chases after a life force with his diasporic choreography, but his addiction to the unpredictable traps him in extreme states. Sal concludes that to feel "alive" without losing balance, one should share the Fellahin’s acknowledgement of the universal fate of birth and death and, as Dean does, embrace any unexpected occurrences in between these two points. The contrasting duality of rootedness and movement found in the Fellahin and Dean complements one another to sustain stability and liveliness simultaneously and resolute the identity crisis among citizens of the phantom American society.<br />
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Sal Paradise's concept of the Fellahin is Kerouac's re-appropriation of the original term from Spengler's seminal work <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West" target="_blank">The Decline of the West</a></i>. Spengler original model proposes that all civilizations start from a group of nomadic peasants who wish to establish settlements. Along with their spacial expansion from villages to towns to cities, their communal cohabitation fosters the creation of intangible values that define a culture. Nevertheless, as the fellahin mass becomes marginalized by urbanization and its displaced culture, Spengler opined a fatalistic tendency of the downfall of all civilizations. In principles, Sal's reflection resonates deeply with Spengler’s conception. However, he also proposes a more optimistic trajectory. In Kerouac's presentation of Dean as the negative instance to his immediate genealogical stereotype of an American white male, the author suggests that by filling in the voidness felt by urban dwellers with the complementary duality of movement and stillness as found in Dean and the Fellahin, a civilization shall prosper by regaining its connection to the fixed and unfixed variables that textualizes life.<br />
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Kerouac specifically suggests Christian faith as the direct gateway to Sal’s realizations. According to Spengler, a culture takes root in some form of religious awareness, which is gradually rejected by rationalism during the process of civilization. The Fellahin are those that still preserve an organic mysticism of an invisible force that "bound us all together in this world." This journey of finding oneself in relation to a divine being is described in Sal's observation of the three stages of mystical development that Dean goes through during his adulthood. At the latter stages, Dean's mindfulness of the knowledge of IT, of TIME and of the fact that everything is FINE (as capitalized by Kerouac) represents the Trinity Doctrine of the Christian faith, whereby God exists in three forms of the same essence as The Father–The Son–The Holy Spirit. The knowledge of TIME anchors the Fellahin to a primordial existence of the Father and the Son as the source of all mankind. The knowledge of IT fuels the Beatific soul or the Holy Spirit whose temporal presence Sal witnesses in Dean, great musicians and people who are "mad to live." Kerouac proposes that for uprooted citizens from megatropolis, they shall need to enter what Spengler terms a second religiousness, which is ideally Christianity, to trace back their origins.<br />
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Kerouac confides that "[On the Road] was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him." By reading it as Sal's anthropological study of the Fellahin "tribe," readers shall be able to not only appreciate the literary and ideological craft but also peak through the keyhole to see the God in whom Dean and Sal has found the secrets of life.<br />
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[Nguyen Thu Trang graduated with a B.A. in Culture, Society and Media from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in 2018.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-15589226494276450252019-03-15T21:22:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:24:30.584+09:00Murakami and music in "Sputnik sweetheart"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is renowned for his unexpected mystical stories that contained within them many symbols and musical references. His writings are well-known to be influenced by his affection for every genre of music, jazz and classical in particular, and partly due to his once owning a jazz bar named Peter Cat and collecting over 10,000 records of various musical genres that helped to sustain and deepen his musical tastes. Murakami himself believes that rhythm has a significant influence on literature, whether from music or fictions. He always artfully and blatantly applies his knowledge and preoccupation in music, accumulated from years of passions in his writings.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>After many years of writing mystical surreal stories, Murakami decided to take a break and explore a new style of writing. He still retained his simple witty sentence structures and the musical references in the story. He came up with <i>Sputnik Sweetheart</i> (2002), a compact-size realistic and romantic novel, full of myriad musical references, mainly classical music, jazz, rock n’roll and bossa nova.<br />
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The story is generally told from the eyes of Boku, the term used to call Murakami’s male narrator, identified in the story only as "K," a middle-class primary school teacher. Boku, or K, secretly harbors feelings for Sumire, an aspiring Bohemian writer who dreams of becoming one of the characters in a Jack Kerouac novel. Later, Sumire falls deeply in love with Miu, a beautiful, independent, high-class, and sophisticated former concert pianist and a wine importer. Sumire adopts Miu's high-society world, trading her indulgent life to get closer to Miu. For Sumire, Miu is everything she wants to be. Throughout the story, Boku watches and perceives Sumire's transformations through his listening to her deep thoughts and feelings as well as his reading of her writings and hidden letters.<br />
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The three characters share common interest in music, but they prefer different genres of music, songs and musicians. Each character uses musical references in the story to refer him/herself, describe his/her situations or refer the other characters differently. Sumire herself mostly mentions classical music, but hardly mentions other genres. All scenes describe her daily life are only mentioned in classical music, but other genres of music that referred to Sumire are used when Boku casually talks to her. Meanwhile, Boku is a big fan of jazz, bossa nova, pop and rock n' roll. Many times, in the story, Boku always uses these genres of music as a means to metaphor or enhance the atmosphere of the particular scenes. However, Boku uses classical music whenever he wants to mock Sumire's changing lifestyle and appearance or Miu's extravagant lifestyle. For Miu, the musical genres that she always refers or uses to describe herself in the story is only classical music. Murakami might use the reference of music to his characters in order to help the readers, especially those who are share interest in music, enjoy and understand more about the social backgrounds, identities, norms and values that all the three protagonists adhere to in the story.<br />
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Moreover, the musical references in the story can somehow help to enhance the atmosphere and the understanding of the characters' feelings in the particular scenes. For example, Murakami mentioned Mozart in C minor to describe Miu's uneasy feeling in the Ferris Wheel and the atmosphere around her. Mozart's C minor work has a sense of despair, dark, implacable and fatalistic resignation. Compared to the scene, Miu already gives up searching for someone to help her out. Staying alone at the Ferris Wheel at night frightens her out, so she mentally plays Mozart’s Sonata in C Minor in order to sooth and express her feeling.<br />
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Murakami does not only use the reference of music as a mean to enhance the atmosphere and the understanding of the characters’ feelings, he also uses musical reference as a metaphor in his stories. Take the song "Violet" by Mozart for example. Murakami cleverly uses this song in chapter 1 to talk about Sumire's background and the origin of her name. Sumire means Violet in Japanese. The background and lyrics of the song is about a callous shepherd's daughter who happened to trample down a little violet in the field. Although the violet would get heartbroken by a shepherd's daughter, it was delighted. The lyrics and the title of the song foretells the unrequited love fate of Sumire. She falls head over heels with Miu. In the end, Sumire has never received affection from Miu in return. Both the lyrics of violet and the color itself also hint homosexual relationship, which strangely fits with the plot Murakami intends to write.<br />
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Another example is when Boku tries to negotiate with the security guard to help Carrot out from being caught shoplifting. The security guard intentionally satires Boku’s statement by mentioning "Auld Lang Syne." The lyrics of the song in Japanese describes the hardships endured by students during their school years to gain knowledge and to serve Japan. Although there are no words that mention of goodbyes in Japanese, the lyrics of the song subtly implies forgiving and forgetting all the bad feelings. Literally, the security guard mentions this song as a metaphor to mock Boku's statement that the guard should blindly forgive the crimes of Carrot and let the kid go as if nothing ever happened. Most of Murakami’s fans are Japanese, so the song in Japanese version will be helpful for the readers to understand and relate to the satirical metaphor.<br />
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In short, Haruki Murakami has often mentioned musical references in his writings, out of his liking to music all genres and to add depth and insight to his narratives and characters. Although the book <i>Sputnik Sweetheart</i> (2002) is a small-scaled, light, romantic and realistic novel, unlike Murakami's other surreal detective stories, it not only represents a wider range of musical references- genres, lyrics, musicians and brands- than some bigger volumes but also contain unique applications of such references hardly found anywhere in Murakami's novels: socio- economic, class-related musical, figurative device.<br />
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[Juthamas Chavanapanich studied Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, graduating with a B.A. in 2018.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-8187196187326418812019-01-16T09:53:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:24:54.320+09:00Competition and cooperation in Korean education<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Education has become a principle duty for most of humanity. It is the major element for human growth and contributes to building a society. However, in the case of South Korea, social problems are coming from the current educational system, which is very competitive. Competitive education in South Korea has been influenced by neoliberal globalization, which has been spread widely throughout South Korea after the 1990s. Based on the neoliberal policies, markets should distribute the wealth efficiently and reasonably according to an individual’s effort.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>By adopting the neoliberal ideology into policy, schooling in South Korea has now turned to a certain product and lost its fundamental purpose. It builds the relationship between suppliers and consumers saying that education is a service product, which has transformed the educational relationship into a commodity relationship. As a result, the benefit principle passed the burden of the educational expenses on to the people and the competitiveness of education was introduced by imitating the competitiveness of capitalism in education. The core of neoliberal education policy is to adopt education as an economic principle and introduce market economy principle such as freedom to compete.<br />
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The working principle of this academic society is not self-affirmation but denial of others. Moreover, it is competition with others, but not self-realization. Academic standing is the establishment of universal hostility; in other words, education is to create a competent servant which means to answer the question well. Negatively speaking, you do not ask questions, you have everything in your mind, you have to memorize it well, and then you can search it out. It is most likely a slave education, which is, in any case, you should not ask first, and you do what you say, and that is the essence of Korean education. The best thing to create such a person is the competition with an examination. Internally, we have to make sure that citizens’ education cannot be done at all times. We must make our colleagues enemies from our childhood. There is an examination system to prevent civic solidarity, a discussion for it, and communication for it.<br />
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The three presentations have been announced by the government as a reality of education in South Korea: uniform memorizing education, examinations, and competition-oriented education, with classes focused on the top few students, and vertical hierarchy. Therefore, the government promoted two different policies, which is the high school credit system and unverified recruitment. <a href="http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201808212042015#csidxa8502%208fe7f386f298fc3d93435f972f">Jeong Je Young (2018; in Korean)</a>, professor in the Department of Education at Ewha Woman’s University, pointed out that the high school credit system is a system that enables students to realize the potential of students by selecting courses according to the career path of the students and providing individualized curriculum and to active student participation type classes such as class and project class. Moreover, the unverified recruitment which also known as blind recruitment in South Korea, was started from the idea and principle of giving equal opportunity to all people through fair procedures.<br />
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The research for this issue is conducted with a textual analysis of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9151274/">2018 Korean TV series <i>Sky Castle</i></a>. <i>Sky Castle</i> (2018) is a satirical drama that shows the educational and social irrationality of South Korea through the people who take their children to the prestigious universities and those who take on the task of passing down wealth and honor. Inside the series, lot of tragedies are happening and they are in a great shock at the time, but they still see the Korean society repeating the tragedy again. Even if a person dies because of the competitiveness in the education, the system never changes and the tragedy is inevitable.<br />
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On the surface, <i>Sky Castle</i> deals with the issue of competition and entrance examinations, but it is only one aspect and is not the cause of this drama. It looks at where the phenomena that appear to children come from. They are constantly looking at the tragedies that the system is causing and are experiencing close, but they are not going to fundamentally solve it. In addition, it makes the absurd system more public by treating the tragic heroes as even the losers of the competitive system. Eventually, the children die or become monsters in the world they have created. As Jeong (2018) reminds us, we live in a competitive system, we face each other day by day, and we have not looked at how the system works properly. Besides the residents of Sky Castle, there is one special character showing how competitive students are. It is called "A coordinator for university entrance examination."<br />
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In the series, only thirteen privileged people were allowed to meet the coordinators for their children. Regardless of huge amount of money they have to spend, they were providing information and tips for student’s target universities. Starting from their 10th grade, the students will get private lessons for the examination and also get opportunities to participate in the extra-curriculum activities which are necessary for the admission. The problem is that since this coordinator costs a lot of money which only plutocrats are allowed to access. It is showing how competitions inside the classroom are causing hierarchy and unfairness to other students. Moreover, they also do illegal things such as stealing the future exam papers to make their students to get good grades.<br />
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As a result of this research, I have come to realized that cooperation is more needed than the competition in Korean education, because cooperation makes people help each other to achieve a common goal instead of pitting them against one another. The meaning of cooperation is to work with others; it not only simply means to have a conversation with the others, but also to complete the task successfully with the combination of everyone’s work. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Learning_Together_and_Alone.html?id=lh8iAQAAIAA">Johnson and Johnson (1994)</a> define cooperative learning as a situation in which students attain a goal, it is positive interdependence and students consider that they are only able to achieve their own learning goals when other members of the group also carry out the goal at the same time. To cooperate in learning is an instructional approach that makes students into small groups and encourages them to learn and complete what they have to do, and at the same time, to make sure that other members in the group are also completing the assignment.<br />
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[This essay is by Ji Woo Kim, a 2018 graduate of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University with a major in Culture, Society and Media. She currently lives and works in Japan.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-596464084983424342018-11-07T22:10:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:25:25.378+09:00Media portrayal of an ideal beauty image<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In Indonesia, there is one image of ideal beauty that is portrayed in all media, from magazines, advertisement billboards to commercials, especially of beauty products. This image portrays woman with almost white-light skin tone, long-straight lustrous silky black hair, big rounded eyes with double eyelid and long eyelashes, pointed nose, and slim yet curvy figure. This image can be seen in almost every beauty commercials in Indonesia and it immediately raises question because most native Indonesians, except in small areas of Indonesia, is naturally dark-skinned.<br />
<a name='more'></a>As a multiracial and multiethnic country, Indonesia has 1128 races and over 1000 ethnicities with different physical characteristics. Some ethnicities, such as Asmat people or Ambonese, have dark brown skin tone and naturally curly hair resembling Melanesian people and yet it is still rare to see commercials that featured Indonesian women with curly hair and tanned or dark skin. Despite of this contradictory fact, women in Indonesia considered having white skin as a symbol of beauty. The popularity of skin-whitening product in Indonesia shows that Indonesian women desires light skin color and sees having white skin as one aspect in measuring beauty. Other apparent aspect of beauty is having lustrous silky black hair, with middle-parted style, as can be seen from the Indonesian commercial clip below.<br />
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Thanks to technology and globalization, foreign media is being widely spread and consumed by Indonesians through social media, leading to increased exposure of a variety of ideal beauty images from different parts of the world. Young generations become exposed to wider definition of ideal image of beauty, not only Indonesian definition of ideal beauty. Other than Indonesian ideal beauty image described above, there are two other prominent ideal image of beauty in Indonesia, which styles are often adopted by young Indonesian women. They are the East Asian image of beauty and Western image of beauty. These two ideal beauty images are popular in Indonesia because of the popularity of Hollywood movies and western medias, and growing popularity of Korean and Japanese dramas in Indonesia.<br />
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Other than the two popular ideal images of beauty, according to Indonesian women, the current ideal beauty image of Indonesia is Raisa, a celebrated young singer. Raisa's physical features, slim yet curvy body, long black hair with no bangs, thick eyebrows, round double eyelid eyes, fair skin, pointed nose and sharp jawline, are adored by Indonesian women as the portrayal of ideal beauty in Indonesia. Moreover, her ladylike images made her seen by Indonesians as the ideal beauty image.<br />
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Despite all media portrayal of ideal beauty, what exactly is ideal beauty image according to women? This essay tries to explain ideal beauty image according to Indonesian women and the influences of media portrayal towards their opinion of ideal beauty image. To learn about ideal image of beauty for Indonesian women, I conducted 10 individual interviews with Indonesian students at an international university in Japan.<br />
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Ideal beauty image according to these women is something relative and subjective, and it differs from one individual's perception and others. To describe ideal beauty, one need to look beyond physical appearances and despite media portrayal of ideal beauty image, Indonesian women think that ideal beauty is defined by attitude and inner characteristics rather than physical appearances. There are several attributes that define ideal beauty image for them.<br />
First, ideal beautiful woman is someone with positive aura and charms. This positive and charming aura is seen by how the person behaves, acts, and carries herself in public. How she carry herself in public, such as the way she talks that shows intelligence and good nature, her good manners, and the positive influences that she has over people around her. This is the main attribute that Indonesian women think when talking about ideal beauty.<br />
Second attribute that define ideal beauty according to Indonesian woman is inner beauty, which are good personality, nice attitude, self-respect, self-confidence, independence, be one own self (<i>sono mama</i> in Japanese), or intelligence. Inner beauty has different meanings and interpretations but Indonesian women think that having good heart is what make someone beautiful. These varied interpretations of inner beauty show the values each woman cherished in their life.<br />
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Third, physical appearance such as good fashion style or facial expression is also mentioned by several women as ideal beauty criteria, although it is not the main criteria for defining ideal beauty. Physical appearances reflected inner characteristic or personality. Facial expressions, such as a smile or a pout, also reflected what is inside and became the characteristics of that person. Fashion style or how someone dressed up also reflected someone's personality and character. Physical beauty is considered important too, as it would bring some advantages and benefits in finding jobs or getting acceptance from societies. Rather than bringing rewards from society, good physical appearances are seen as important because it will give self-confidence and boost self-esteem, and therefore is believed to lead to appreciation and positive image. In describing ideal beauty image, these women do not describe in detail what kind of physical or facial features, such as hairstyle or shape of nose, but rather they emphasized on body size.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KMALcbPDrkw/XX9nQcpi0-I/AAAAAAAAAno/KfrfTor3ZlgRTgjJDCePpilCE9NLCUs6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/rebecca2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="202" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KMALcbPDrkw/XX9nQcpi0-I/AAAAAAAAAno/KfrfTor3ZlgRTgjJDCePpilCE9NLCUs6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/rebecca2.jpg" /></a>These attributes are characteristics of ideal beauty image according to Indonesian women. Media portrayal of ideal beauty, on the other hand, does not necessarily mean ideal beauty for these Indonesian women. Media portrayal does affect how society thinks of ideal women’s body image and appearances, and it sometimes made women feel dissatisfied with their looks due to comments from family or peers. Society's expectation on women's physical appearances gives suggestion that only women whose appearances look as portrayed in mass media were allowed to wear any style of clothes. While for the others whose body do not look "ideal," society will often criticize what they wear because they think that clothing style should only be worn by women with "ideal" body. Indonesian women in this research expressed criticism towards media’s focus on slim body and think that beauty should not be associated with slim body because beauty comes in all size and beauty is something subjective. They also give examples of foreign celebrities and often refer to social media such as Instagram, Youtube channel, or fashion blogger in talking about media portrayal on women. Not only focusing on body image, but the mass media also shapes beauty trends and fashion styles. Celebrities' fashion styles are often mentioned as part of what makes them look beautiful and to provide examples of different types of beauty.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ueS0yngYFU/XX9nQd_bNyI/AAAAAAAAAnk/qRop2A3jSxUOEIbcWJghR2t58V1aVEheACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/rebecca1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="196" data-original-width="203" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ueS0yngYFU/XX9nQd_bNyI/AAAAAAAAAnk/qRop2A3jSxUOEIbcWJghR2t58V1aVEheACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/rebecca1.jpg" /></a>Physical appearances are not the main attribute in describing ideal beauty. To these Indonesian women, media portrayal of women affect how society thinks about ideal beauty image of women, but do not define what ideal beauty is for them. Physical appearances are considered important because it would be the first thing people will judge before knowing someone's personality and it reflects inner quality of the person. Although physical appearance is not the main attributes in determining beauty, physical appearances are important as it shows how someone value herself and reflect her inner qualities.<br />
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Although media does not define ideal image of beauty according to these Indonesian women, media affects society's expectation on how women should look like. That is one of the reasons of why society often criticize women's appearances. Indonesian women in this research oppose the narrow definition of the pursuit of beauty, which pursue beauty from only physical appearances, to the extent that someone was willing to do anything to resemble the ideal beauty image internalized in media by doing extreme diet or performing plastic surgery. The most important factor in defining ideal beauty is inner beauty, and Indonesians women express their opinion on how women should improve their inner quality instead of pursuing physical beauty. The various characteristics of ideal beauty that were mentioned in the discussion showed the value that each woman cherished in their life. Even though there were a lot of different characteristics mentioned in the discussion, Indonesian female women value positive characteristics such as independence, self-respect, self-acceptance, and good personality. Media does not define their concept of ideal beauty, yet media affects the way they think what society expects women to look like.<br />
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[This essay is by Rebekha Adriana, a 2014 graduate in Culture, Society and Media of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. She has published on female migrant workers in Indonesia and terrorism in Asia, and recently completed a graduate program at Leiden University.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-91457932725425196862018-09-24T08:02:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:26:05.572+09:00"Coach Carter" and the lone quest for winning in life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the most powerful speeches of the 2005 American film <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393162/">Coach Carter</a></i> was delivered inside a library, which may seem odd for a sports movie. The basketball team had been prohibited from playing and was forced to study. The one who made that decision, head coach Ken Carter, was facing the toughest challenge in his career: make his players study while pressure from the school and the community could have put not only his job but also his life in danger. It could be easier anywhere else but not in America, where high school sport is a dominant cultural event and the gym or the stadium is the sacred temple of not only the school but the whole community behind it.<br />
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A sports movie perhaps is never about the sport itself. For instance, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/">Moneyball</a></i> (2011) is about the statistics and economic efficiency versus the conventional intuition, or <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758745/">Friday Night Lights</a></i> (2004) is a continuing snapshot of a moment when winning a high school football game is more important for the community, i.e. the adults, rather than the players themselves. Coach Carter becomes more ecstatic when the story moves to the library. The audience soon realizes this is not about basketball anymore, but life.</div>
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Coach Carter sets up its reality with images of a locker room full of angry kids, streets fill with thug gangs, and a school with a security check heavier than an airport. This is not a suburb for a teenager to have a typical education but an inner-city street education with a violent tendency, the need to show masculinity, and the higher chance of joining gangs, going to jail or death. The Richmond Oilers old head coach realized that time has gotten the best out of him. So he reached out to Ken Carter, who was a superstar student athlete at Richmond High, now a decent businessman to become his replacement. Carter knew the job would not be easy, and a radical change must be implemented. On the first training with the team, he proposed to the team a contract and two choices: sign the contract then play, or not.<br />
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The contract was a laughable and debatable issue among the kids, their parents and the school when they first heard about it, simply because it has nothing to do with basketball. It requested the players to have GPA over 2.3, full class attendances, must sit in the front row and wearing shirt and tie on game day. The implication of the contract is clear. First, it makes the kids become more professional from the appearance. Then, it tries to contractually coerce them into present at class and achieving an acceptable result.<br />
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Carter had to resort to such a forceful method because he was alone in his belief. Growth in the same environment and provided the same options, he knows so well what is the most likely future for them. It is definitely not a bright one. However, the community and the school think otherwise. While the school was failing at academic so hard that the principal had to convince herself that basketball was the only possible highlight of the kids, then the community also considered basketball not only the sole highlight but the sole opportunity to fame and stability in life. That illusion has been feeding to the whole community for generations and it was just not easy to break the cycle. Thus, Carter was alone because his reason and vision were replied by protest, angriness and violence. The contract was not fulfilled by the players so he locked the gym up and told them let study. The extreme action was responded by more protest and violence. Up to this point, it was not up the man anymore.<br />
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Carter's lone quest is indeed nostalgic and romantic, but when we examine deeper into its context and other factors, we were struck by the obscurity or negativity of its portrayal. The school, embodied in the principal, was the villain of the story. The community reacted to Carter with protest, threat and angriness. The teachers who helped the kids were overshadowed by Carter himself, they are barely known in the story.<br />
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[This essay is by Manh Toan Ho, a 2017 graduate of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. He is currently a researcher in Vietnam. The essay was also published on the <a href="https://sc.sshpa.com/post/5569" target="_blank">EASE Vietnam SciComm System</a>.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-60432818426574954252018-07-12T07:10:00.001+09:002022-04-27T20:26:35.897+09:00Bilingual education and cultural identity development <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Strong cultural identity is often perceived as vital for school adaptation in the psychology literature, as it strongly relates to students’ mental well-being and self-esteem. Addressing this issue, studies on acculturation have been conducted through observing behavioral patterns and perspective change of overseas students experiencing acculturation. The relationship between acculturation and identity is often discussed in terms of the complications between the need to adapt and the need to maintain one’s cultural identity.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>A successful case in handling this issue can be found at a Japanese International University (IU). Looking into choices of acculturation strategies and cultural identity modification of IU overseas students, this essay discusses how the IU bilingual educational system and multicultural environment have makes it possible to both encourage cultural identity development and maintaining strong sense of belonging of the students.<br />
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The bilingual educational system at IU offers opportunities to choose classes in Japanese or English, as 90% of the lectures are offered in both languages. The number of Japanese and overseas students are balanced. Overseas students are provided with an opportunity to study in Japan without Japanese language proficiency and easily immerse themselves in a culturally diverse environment by utilizing English as the common language. Overseas students on the IU campus are not compelled to participate in frequent interactions with the Japanese community neither informally nor academically. Instead, they are encouraged to voluntarily participating in cultural exchange activities to enhance mutual understanding between cultures. Hence, the amount of exposure to Japanese culture mainly depends on the will of individuals, for which IU distinguishes itself from other campuses where overseas students separated from or are obliged to conform to the dominant culture.<br />
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Observations on the background of IU inspired my research questions, that in such a low-pressure environment, what acculturation strategies overseas students tend to prefer, and how the living-abroad experience might bring about changes to their cultural identity. My research at IU utilized in-depth interviews conducted among ten IU overseas students of six different nationalities. Interviewees were asked about their relationship towards home and the host community, how well they adapted to Japanese culture, and their opinions upon the need for a firm sense of cultural identity. The interviews were analyzed using the model of <a href="http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/viewFile/51441/27572.%20In%20analyzing%20the%20data,%20student%E2%80%99s%20insights%20&%20reflective%20thoughts%20were%20gathered%20to%20identify%20signs%20of%20cultural%20identity%20modification.">acculturation strategies by Berry (2005)</a>, according to assimilation, marginalization, separation and integration.<br />
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The number of students who preferred assimilation as the acculturation strategy (5 in 10) significantly exceeded those who chose other strategies. Also, most students (7 in 10) experienced changes in their cultural identity, which were identified through signs of reinforcement or debilitation of their belongingness to home culture.<br />
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This finding of acculturation strategy was somewhat surprising, as I expected that, above all, assimilation would be least potential to be chosen. There are three reasons for my assumption. First, due to IU equal population between Japanese and internationals, and its bilingual educational system, overseas students are not under pressure to participate in Japanese communities. Second, a wide range of student circles, activities and multicultural events offered students the freedom to make decisions about with whom they wish to associate. Third, Japan is still a relatively conformity oriented and homogeneous society, where acceptance of non-domestics is only very recently encouraged. Therefore, it was expected that overseas students would be more likely to, either reside comfortably in their home community or join other international communities, rather than try to immerse into the Japanese environment.<br />
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However, if we perceive IU and the opportunities it offers to overseas students under a different light, it is comprehensible why assimilation is the chosen strategy. An active multicultural environment with no pressure to conform to the host culture seems to have, counter-intuitively, attracted the curiosity of a young generation who are eager to explore the world, to live life to the fullest through unique experiences. This thought is evident in many interviews, expressing the enthusiasm of students in experiencing different cultures and understanding new perspectives. As one interviewee noted, "I think that curiosity really gets the best of us, and keeps us hunting for more," while another suggested "when you really get to know people from other cultures and the way they live their lives like, you get so attached."<br />
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The number of students who associate frequently with their home community (3/10), as opposed to those who have experienced identity modification (7/10), was very significant. Rather than seeking comfort in their familiar surroundings, students are more interested in immersing themselves, firstly into the host culture, then to the plethora of cultures in IU; under which light they engage in the inner journey of reconstructing cultural identity. That leads us to a crucial question of whether IU, and universities like it, would soon develop into a new "melting pot" where the clear distinction of cultural identity is gradually blurred, and a strong attachment to home community may even become undesirable.<br />
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This reminds us of the redeemed concept of assimilation, used by dominant cultural groups, as the means to "save" the minorities from cultural backwardness. In IU, the cultural minorities are eager to liberate themselves from the limitation of inherited and national beliefs and values, which can ironically be perceived as the "backwardness" in a global era. Many therefore may wish to "redeem" their rigid perspectives into a more flexible, global and acceptant mindset towards cultural alternatives. The difference is that IU minorities willfully and actively engage in assimilation, with the common goal to develop themselves as successful global citizens.<br />
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The bilingual educational system and multicultural environment that IU provides can be seen as a successful example for universities aiming to make students "feel at home" in a foreign country. It can transform the "foreign" into the "familiar" environment for overseas students through utilizing English as the common language. Thus, the IU environment can resolve students’ psychological issues rooted in a lack in belongingness. This is achieved through replacing the need to belong to a home community with the need to redeem oneself from inherited cultural limitations and reach out to the larger entity, the multicultural community. In that sense, IU is succeeding in granting students opportunities for cultural identity development and global understanding.<br />
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However, regarding the issue of cultural preservation, there are also risks which can be seen from the system. It is possible that IU might shape incoming cultural groups into outgoing "culturally-modified" individuals who eschew the need to classify themselves with established groups, and who instead are more eager to continuously reshape their identity according to their recreated reality. In the future, this may heavily contribute to the loss of cultural identities, and result in a homogeneous global society, where cultural boundaries are further blurred and the conventional concept of cultural identity is perceived as mere "backwardness."<br />
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[Phan Ha Yen Nhi graduated in 2017 from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, majoring in Culture, Society and Media, and she is currently a graduate student at Sophia University in Tokyo. This essay is based on fieldwork she conducted in Japan.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-58654820626595720632018-04-09T09:25:00.000+09:002019-09-24T07:28:04.031+09:00Two Books on Third World Cinema<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Any discussion of Third World films should begin with definition of the concept of the Third World. Roy Armes in <i><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520056909">Third World Film Making and the West</a></i> (University of California Press, 1987), defines Third World countries as those once colonized nations that are still underdeveloped because of their economic exploitation by the West. This, I assume, accounts for the rather strange title of this book since the emphasis here is given to the relationship between Third World filmmaking in particular, and the West in general. Yet, I did not find that this emphasis was reflected in the writing. And for good reason, since the primary concern of a Third World filmmaker is not his relationship to the West (although this may be one of his concerns) but his country and his people. It seems to me that the title points to an uneasiness that Roy Armes feels in writing about this subject. It is hard to pinpoint why he feels so uneasy.<br />
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The book is thoroughly researched and highly informative and yet reading it leaves me feeling frustrated and angry. Perhaps Armes' uneasiness stems from the fact that he is a First World critic writing about Third World films. I don't think that this is necessarily bad. Critics in the First World can be of great help in bringing these films and their issues to the attention of the public. But, in trying to give an objective, scholarly account of Third World filmmaking, Armes adopts the very stance towards these filmmakers that they are fighting against. That is, he takes the Third World filmmakers as his object of study, in the scientific manner, and therefore he cannot avoid objectifying them and adopting a somewhat paternalistic tone. Third World filmmakers are struggling to become subjects rather than the objects that they had been in a colonial context. They are trying to define their own identity as separate from the West rather than in relation to it. They are fighting to find their own language and their own identity centered in their own culture. But of course, this is true only of a certain kind of Third World filmmaker and this point brings up another problem with the book.<br />
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Roy Armes' aim is to give an overview of Third World films and thus he includes both films that are made solely for the purpose of entertainment and those that deal with social and political issues. The aims is laudable in itself, since it allows for a fuller understand of Third World film culture as it exists but it tends to be rather disappointing in practice. First of all, there are so many films covered that the reader tends to get lost in a mess of details. Few of the films are described in enough detail to make them come alive in the mind of the reader, expect at the end, in the "auteur" section, and even here there are problems. Four of the filmmakers focused upon in this section, that is Glauber Rocha, Yilmaz Guney, Ousmane Sembene and Jorge Sanjines, are politically committed and even the other two, Satyajit Ray and Youssef Chahine, are concerned with social issues. And yet, although Roy Armes is obviously sympathetic to their aims and often praises their films for the manner in which they communicate the urgency of these issues to the audience there is an ambiguity in his writing which is disturbing. This ambiguity shows up even in the discussion of particular films. For instance, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_of_the_Condor">Blood of the Condor</a></i> (1969), directed by Jorge Sanjines, is a film which denounces the US for its attempts to decimate the Indian population of Bolivia by sterilizing its women without their knowledge or consent. Somehow, Armes (1987, p. 298) can reduce this to "the ruinous impact of US Peace Corps workers, who bring alien values (and convert sterilization) to the Altiplano."<br />
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This ambiguity is also present throughout the rest of the book. For instance, in "Part Two: Theory and Practice of Third World Film Making." When writing about the revolutionary Third World filmmakers and theorists of the 1960s, he makes this statement--"To some extent, the optimism of the late 1960s has proved to be ill founded, having underestimated in particular the extremes to which the United States is willing to go to protect its 'interests'" (Armes, 1987, p. 100). How anyone could read Solanas and Getino's seminal article, "For a Third Cinema" in Nichols' edited collection <i><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520031517">Movies and Methods Vol. 1</a></i> (which Armes quotes in his chapter on Third Cinema) with its call for a revolutionary cinema in the face of US imperialist domination, or see their epic documentary, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hour_of_the_Furnaces">The Hour of the Furnaces</a></i> (1968), with its bitter denunciation of Third World exploitation and call these filmmakers optimistic and unwilling to face the extremes that the US will go to is beyond me. This chapter somehow gives the impression that the fight against imperialism might be well-meaning but useless.<br />
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Strangely enough, Armes seems almost to apologize for having to include a discussion of the films of Cuba, Angola and China in his book. Perhaps he feels this way because their revolutions were successful. However, as he himself points out, these countries were colonies and therefore they also suffered from underdevelopment. But they have become Marxist and somehow Armes feels that he should focus on "developing countries with a market economy" (Armes, 1987, p. 10). Why is this? There are problems, in terms of Third Cinema, with a communist country like China that has taken up socialist realism as its official film style. But, if he is willing to include commercial films, why not socialist realism? As for Angola and Cuba, he himself admits that to omit them would cause problems since they have exerted a great influence on the films of Latin America and Africa. So in the end he includes these Marxist countries and certainly he would have a hard time justifying their exclusion. But why the apologies? Questions like these kept cropping up as I read the book and made me rather uneasy.<br />
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And yet, the book is so well researched that it will be endlessly useful to anyone interested in the filed. The bibliography alone is worth the price of the book as in runs to 34 pages. In some ways, it is too well researched for the different points-of-view on each issue are set out at such length that one loses interest in the debate. Armes' stance is so ambiguous that it is hard to tell what his point-of-view might be. His objective approach to the subject matter again serves him badly. Yet his goals for the book seem ideal and the structure well thought out. One can only agree that films should be studied in relation to their social, cultural and economic context. The historical background that he gives for each country that he covers is highly useful. The discussion of the "Theory and Practice of Third World Filmmaking," which takes up the second part of the book is, I think, a necessity for any book on the subject of Third World film. The third part on the "National Film Industries" is also useful for it provides the background necessary for the discussion of the particular filmmakers that takes up the fourth and last part of the book.<br />
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Is it exactly this kind of carefully structured approach to the subject that is missing in <i><a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/17115181?selectedversion=NBD4319014">Film and Politics in the Third World</a></i>, edited by John D. H. Downing. This book is a collection of essays about Third World films and interviews with Third World filmmakers. The essays deal with the films both in terms of their place in national cinemas an as works of particular authors. But we are not given a carefully structured introduction to the subject as in Roy Armes' book. The foreword by Downing is only two pages long. There is barely any attempt to define the term, Third World, or what the theoretical context of the study of Third World film might be. Yet, I think that it is the more useful of the two books, particularly for someone who has never studied the subject before.<br />
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The strength of the book resides in the fact that it is a collection of essays written by a variety of authors. Therefore, the reader can experience a number of different approaches to Third World film and yet each approach is consistent within itself since it forms the basis of each essay. The essays focus on one particular national cinema or filmmaker from the point-of-view of one writer rather than the complication of different points-of-view that one gets in Armes' book. Downing has also been careful to include many Third World writers and the concern that they fell for the fate of their own people informs the essays with an urgency that cannot be duplicated by the objective point-of-view. The weakness of the book, however, can also be found in this diversity of approaches for, unavoidably, some of the essays are weaker in quality than other.<br />
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This book is also very useful because it covers a wide range of countries. The films of some of these, such as those of Iran and China, are not very well known and Downing performs a real service in bringing them to our attention. If Downing's goal is that of "communicating artistic excellence (with a political sting), and of developing international comprehension in a nation which seems bent on understanding neither others nor itself" (1987, Foreword, p. x), it is well served by the book. The biggest flaw in this book is the need for either a long introduction or the inclusion of some essays on the theory and history of the subject. In part this lack is made up by interviews with the filmmakers themselves. For no one can speak as lucidly and passionately as, for example, Sembene Ousmane, the great African filmmaker, on the needs of his people and on the necessity of making films that will fill these needs. Downing does to some extent set the article in their historical and political context for the reader by sometimes providing introductions to the essays and by providing footnotes as well.<br />
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The title of Downing's book, <i>Film and Politics in the Third World</i>, seems to me to be, as in Armes' case, also somewhat ambiguous. I gather that he is trying to account for a broader spectrum of subjects than those that would only be related to political films per se. Some of the filmmakers, such as the Algerian Merzak Allouache, are themselves avoiding the political propaganda type of film, or as in the case of the Chinese filmmaker Xie Jin, the rigors of socialist realism. The weakness of the title is that it is ambiguous, since one could write about commercial Third World films and discuss their relation to politics. A reading of the book makes it obvious that this is not what Downing is interested in.<br />
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On the whole, the two books complement each other. Roy Armes' book is useful for the historical background that it provides. Downing's book communicates the aims and concerns of Third World filmmakers and the passion and urgency that they fell for their subject. One thing that is missing in both books is the attempt to define a style or cinematic language which might be shared by politically and socially conscious filmmakers of the Third World. It is something that Teshome Gabriel tries to do in his pioneering work, <i><a href="https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/Third_cinema_in_the_third_world.html?id=v2tZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation</a></i>, and I think that it is an important part of the discussion on Third World film.<br />
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[This essay is by media studies scholar Mary Alemany-Galway, who received an M.A. in film studies from UCLA and has taught film studies at Concordia University in Montreal. At the time of its original publication in the important and now long-running Canadian film studies journal <i><a href="http://www.cineaction.ca/">CineAction</a></i> (No. 18, Fall 1989, pp. 64-65), she was an independent researcher working on her doctorate in post-modernism and film studies. More recently, she is a co-editor of the influential collection of essays <i><a href="https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/Peter_Greenaway_s_Postmodern_poststructu.html?id=Cv1iAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Peter Greenaway's Postmodern/Poststructural Cinema</a></i> and author of the groundbreaking <i><a href="https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/A_Postmodern_Cinema.html?id=pQVL3_d24fYC&redir_esc=y">A Postmodern Cinema: The Voice of the Other in Canadian Film</a></i>, and Media Studies Program Co-ordinator at Massey University in New Zealand.]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-49481791419186154932017-09-19T20:54:00.000+09:002017-09-19T20:54:41.495+09:00Eyes of the Journey Alternative World Premier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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September 21 is the alternative world premiere of a new film <i>Eyes of the Journey</i>, a visual poem in Quechua from director Rodrigo Otero Heraud and and producer Maya Tillmann Salas of Asociacion Cuyay Wasi in Peru. Several organizations, people who are interested, and cinema clubs in several countries around the world who will show the film on that day to spread the energy of the film around Mother Earth on the same day. The film is like a prayer in Quechua and its makers know it will have a magic effect. The film originates in Cusco, Peru, where it will be projected on the 21st to an audience of 600. Cusco is the home of the film's protagonist, the Quechua shaman Hipolito.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><i>Eyes of the Journey</i> is spoken entirely in Quechua. It was made to touch the hearts and minds of people, without any commercial pretensions. It is a film to affirm and encourage Andean culture and Andean people. Thinking also on a broader audience, the goal is to answer to the world´s need to see, feel and understand how nature in the form of Mother Earth can become a source of healing and further harmony. We are aware that the many problems mankind faces are not just climatic but social, and are due to the distance and barriers societies build from nature. It is right in the indigenous peoples we have a way to access another form of relationship with nature.<br />
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Through the film we want to open a window to life as a journey. This path is not visible to many, because nature's language consists in signs that could be almost imperceptible to us. Therefore, we used the character of the shaman Hipolito, who lends us his eyes and his wisdom so we are able to see this language of nature. He is <i>The Eyes of the Journey</i>, and through his eyes we will understand the way of our indigenous peoples.<br />
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The film is a way to: generate and move emotions that may help us reach harmony with Mother Earth; link the indigenous cultures worldwide; encourage the traditional peoples suffering from cultural loss; increase our knowledge about Andean peoples and their importance; improve the way we look at ourselves as diverse peoples; and promote the use of Quechua language in Peru.<br />
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<i>Eyes of the Journey</i> portrays the Andes and the spiritual aspects of its peoples. It is a homage filled with hope but at the same time a possible goodbye. It is a journey from the visible to the invisible, from the external world to the soul. With a oneiric and poetic language different ritual moments are shown. It starts with the first rains of the year, having a counterpoint between the stages of water and the stages of life. The character goes along the stream weaving a journey, sometimes reflecting, sometimes praying, sometimes showing the ways of the indigenous communities and their rituals to express their connection to life. Little by little a direction is found, a search for answers that find a climax when the shaman reaches a sacred mountain. There they have a dialog where the Mountain reveals the illness humanity suffers.<br />
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When faced with the observation, "The hearts of people are becoming stone hard," the shaman Hippolito replies, "But even the stones has a heart. If it wasn´t for that, they would not shed their tears to give us to drink, to water the plants, to grow life. Then we must open our hearts to Mother Earth, despite our different beliefs or occupations. There is a knowledge in nature, there is wisdom and love in nature. There is everything we search for." After the dry season, new rains announce a new sowing of crops. The journey continues towards the sea, where the film ends, but also where everything starts over and over.<br />
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People who have seen previews of the film have noted that it is a "pilgrimage," a "continuous prayer," a "visual meditation and a poem, featuring "beautiful photography," and the "strength of the local landscape" that encourages a "return to the essence of the Andes" and the "way of the Apus" (mountain spirits). The films has also been termed a "message to the heart" and a "photographic essay on the natural light in the Andes."<br />
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The film's director, Rodrigo Otero Heraud, has followed the way of an author in filmaking. His work is based on what he considers transcendental matters, such as the ancient knowledge of traditional peoples and different approaches to spirituality and consciousness. To him filmmaking is about generating spiritual nourishment, therefore they are at the same time creative works and a form of service. His filmmaking is intimate, sensitive and with a cinematographic language of his own. He directs, shoots and edits, in order to print a personal seal in his works.<br />
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The main character, Hipolito Peralta Ccama, is a spiritual master from the Andean tradition, who works also as a schoolteacher in Cusco. He is a man with the soul of a poet, heir to an ancient tradition that is fading away. When he performs a ceremony, he puts all of his body and soul into it, knowing also that guiding and maintaining people’s feelings for Mother Earth is an uneven struggle, basically because of the spiritual deterioration of our times in which He will probably end up dissolving himself in hopelessness. Still He gives every spark of his fire for his mission and his vision, and takes every chance to touch and connect people's hearts, so we can realize that we are all here as voyagers, who will not take anything when we depart, so it is not riches we must collect, but seeds of love we must sow.<br />
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Hipolito is the axis of the film. He does this journey to different places of the Andes, in search for sacred mountains that could reveal the invisible story of what moves inside the spiritual world on Earth. This journey helps him feel and see how the distant brothers and sisters live in each community these days, and how are moral among the different peoples. He is a traveller looking for connections with water, mountains and people he finds along his way. Then he makes a diagnosis of Andean cultures and their possible outcome, as well as what is necessary to help life carry on.<br />
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[Readers can connect with Asociacion Cuyay Wasi and the filmmakers <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cuyaywasi/">here</a> and learn more about <i>Eyes of the Journey</i>.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-84714696249630313412017-07-29T22:03:00.001+09:002017-07-29T22:03:53.639+09:00Fan Awareness of Godzilla's Dual Identity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The value of a film can be assessed from its production and reception. What makes the Godzilla films an exceptional case is that it took longer than 50 years to fully appraise the reception on a par with the original production. Such a gap was created by a travestying version of the 1954 original that gave birth to Godzilla as both a celebrated <i>kaiju</i> character and a film genre. This conclusion is shared by many, even the Japanese critics and historians who mercilessly dissected the Americanized edit <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i> (1956) with Raymond Burr. The sensitive historical context within which Godzilla was born understandably made its export to America more or less a process where the beloved <i>daikaiju</i> was stripped of his originally dark and cautionary tale about nuclear horrors that his creators intended to convey. However, the charm of the 1956 recut is indisputable and a natural given among the Western fans because it was thanks to this highly edited version that Goji-san brought tremendous financial success, along with establishing his name and his one-of-a-kind genre beyond the borders of Japan. In 2004, fifty years after its debut in Japan, the original Godzilla film was screened in American cinemas for the first time, which was a revelation to his international fans who recognized that they hardly knew him.<br />
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Since these two roads crossed, little has been done to determine how significant a revelation it was for Godzilla's loyal American fans. I wish to argue here that Godzilla's dual status of international cult idol and major political-historical figure allows us to study the production and reception simultaneously. This essay presents that dual status of Godzilla through analyzing primary data sources of individuals who spent their childhood loving the American version and adulthood discovering the complexities embedded in the Japanese one. I have identified this special category of viewers by analyzing relevant discussions in online forums, news/journal articles and transcripts of interviews. It is expected that if international fans' perception of Godzilla has indeed changed, reflections by those who experienced the gap between two immensely dissimilar representations 50 years apart are a good starting point.<br />
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My use of a qualitative method to collect and analyze data helped to provide an understanding of fan awareness of authorial intention in Honda Ishiro's original version after having grown familiar with that in Terry Morse's re-cut version. Before diving into the main analysis, it is important to note the limitations in such choice of data sources. While being a fairly accessible, diverse and ample data source for a study of film reception, fan forums can be disorganized, unpredictable and inconsistent due to their very accessibility and diversity. Furthermore, to avoid compromising the validity of studying online fan forums due to inability to determine contributors' demographics, only posts that meet the following criteria are included for analysis in this research:<br />
<ol>
<li>Clearly stating that the writer has actually watched both versions and with a time gap in between.</li>
<li>Stating personal opinions and observations from such an experience, backed up with evidence and articulated in an elaborate and persuasive manner.</li>
<li>(optional) Responding to previous posts if contributing to an existing topic.</li>
</ol>
What these criteria mean is that the targeted audience should have: a history of following the Godzilla franchise in order to have time to develop an informed understanding of <i>kaiju</i> fandom; hold an original judgment based on personal viewing experience, not from reading secondary sources only; reflect a certain degree of enthusiasm and knowledge about what s/he wrote; and possess a team spirit that respects others' contribution to the discussion at hand, which may indicate willingness to utilize available resources to reach a fuller understanding.<br />
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Although having probed into a variety of sites, for the purpose of this essay I decided to select and analyze relevant writing from the following sources:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://skreeonk.com/">Skreeonk</a>, <a href="http://scified.com/">Scified.com</a>, <a href="https://www.tohokingdom.com/forum/">Toho Kingdom Forums</a>, <a href="http://www.godzilla-movies.com/forum/">Godzilla-Movies.com Community</a>, <a href="http://www.g-fan.com/">G-fan Online</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-why-the-Japanese-original-is-no-joke.html">Godzilla: Why the Japanese original is no joke</a>, by Tim Martin (May 15, 2014) in <i>The Telegraph</i>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/why-you-should-watch-the-actual-original-godzilla/371389/">Why you should watch the (actual) original Godzilla</a>, by Christoper Orr (May 22, 2014) on <i>The Atlantic</i>.</li>
<li>Written account of interview with Steven Ryfle (author of <i>Japan’s favorite mon-star: The unauthorized biography of the big G</i>), by Devin Faraci (from a fan website called Chud.com) in 2006.</li>
<li>Written account of interview with Ed Godziszewsky (commentator for Classic Media's <i>Godzilla Raids Again</i>) by Patrick Galvan from Toho Kingdom on December 1, 2016.</li>
<li>Critical review of Godzilla films by Roger Ebert in 2004 on Rogerebert.com</li>
</ul>
In the online fan forums, the most popular sentiments include joy from discovering the original movie and surprise in realizing how different it was from the 1956 version. Here are a few excerpts from longer pieces of writing describing the authors' viewing experience of the original version:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Up until a couple weeks ago I sadly only owned the highly edited American version <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i>, but I bought the Japanese version and watched it a couple nights ago so as to be well informed for this discussion. I gotta say it is one of, if not the best, Godzilla movies ever. (Godzilla3580)</blockquote>
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Godzilla was originally released here in 1956 as <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i>, an atrociously cut, dubbed and re-edited version. (Godkilla2000)</blockquote>
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I don't really revisit [the American version] very often. The original Godzilla is a movie I watch all the time and I'm constantly finding new things to love about it year after year. Meanwhile there is a sort of shallowness in <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i> that goes beyond the atomic anxiety of a nation. (Gman2887)</blockquote>
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<i>Gojira</i> is the best Godzilla. I saw it in theaters twice (once in 2004 and again in 2014) and I think that first viewing in Japanese made a big impact on me... not that the American release didn't; that was one of the first movies I watched as a kid, but the Japanese version was fresh and unscathed. (Creature22)</blockquote>
For the academic articles, the sentiment is more or less the same although the expressions are more formal, and sometimes from a neutral third person position. For example,<br />
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Western audiences have spent more than half a century thinking of Godzilla as a joke dinosaur in a rubber suit, a Japanese trash-culture "King of the Monsters" locked in endless battle with giant moths, dragons, armadillos and skyscraper-sized robots. (Martin, 2014)</blockquote>
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As a boy, I adored Godzilla movies. This was in the days before ubiquitous VCRs (let alone DVDs, DVRs, streaming video, etc.) and Saturday afternoons that happened to feature a Godzilla flick were like minor holidays. Every now and then, the rest of the gang would show up, too: Rodan, Mothra, Ghidorah, Anguirus--even that shameless rip-off Gamera. Best of all were the rare, eagerly anticipated broadcasts of the kaiju free-for-all <i>Destroy All Monsters</i>. But though I saw the "original" Godzilla countless times, it was always the 1956 Americanized edit. It was not until the last decade that I saw Honda's original 1954 cut, and when I did it was a genuine revelation. (Orr, 2014)</blockquote>
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There are some exceptions, notably the "heartless" review by Roger Ebert, one of the most famous and widely-published US film critics. Despite bashing the idea and performance as idiotic and "bad," he still called the original version the "<i>Fahrenheit 9/11</i> of its time." Many fans, however, defended Godzilla against such a humiliation by digging into every fact Ebert used to point out the "factual errors and misunderstandings." One of the things Ebert clearly ignored, or about which he was not fully informed, was the multiple subtexts that made an impact on the fans upon discovering it, not the proud man in the rubber suit, not the atomic breath coming out of a dinosaur, not the "crude" special effects, not the love triangle. The Western adult fans, though arguably unable to feel the same way Japanese filmgoers in the 1950s did when struck with the story told on screen, are fully aware of the serious messages Godzilla took on his shoulders upon his birth. "Dark," "sad," "depressing" and "clear" are the most used adjectives to describe the original version. "Clear" refers to the smooth sense of continuity only available in the original as the American version was heavily cut, edited and supplemented.<br />
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That being said, most of the fans tend to be carried away with the newly discovered sophisticated identity of Godzilla, due to which they focused too much on what was missing, instead of what was present, in the 1956 recut. Taking into account the post-WWII and Cold War context when discussions about nuclear weapons needed to be done in a veiled manner, much effort was put into reproducing the film, especially to the inserted scenes regarding matching costumes and film stock, to make it more accessible and "legal" yet still enjoyable to the US audience. This is where the online forum's feature of allowing multiple opinions contributed to a single topic does the versions justice. In fact, it is considered the most common attitude towards the films--both are valuable in their own way. Every fan defends their favorite childhood movie in a different way using interesting pieces of evidence. For instance,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sure, [<i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i>] can't be compared to the original. And it's far from perfect. But as "Americanized" movies go, it really wasn't that bad. Yes, Burr, as Steve Martin, looked awkward in places and its pretty obvious some of the scenes were edited in later (i.e. the lighting gives it away easily). But still, Burr gave a good performance. He treated his role seriously and didn't winked at the audience in a tongue-in-cheek manner (that would have surely destroyed the film). And despite cutting way too much of the original, the essential horror and destruction of Godzilla was retained. As was the grim mood of the original. The 1956 director, Terry O. Morse, I think actually tried to do the best he could. Maybe given a choice he might not have edited the film at all, but being as it is, I think he tried his best to mesh his scenes with the original under the circumstances. So, all in all, yes the 1956 version is inferior to the original. But I don't buy the argument it is a mere hack-job. On its own, it is a decent and watchable film. Maybe not necessarily great, but not really awful as it could have easily been. (Godzillatheking123)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i> is a good movie, it's just an inferior piece to the 1954 film. The fact is the film in its original version wouldn't have sold well in the States. The atomic fear and cultural references to post-war anxiety simply wouldn't have resonated with western audiences. And the addition of Raymond Burr gave Westerners a recognizable face to cling to. It wouldn't have worked with Takarada and Hirata. A lot of the splicing is jarring, but not immediately bad and I thought the way Burr interacted with some of the characters was clever in a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers splicing sort of way. You could tell the footage didn't match, but Burr kept things fairly believable. Fans should remember that this is the version that made Godzilla an international star, not the Japanese version. It was <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i> that was used as Toho's international foray into world wide success and it even got a Japanese theatrical release for it. It may be an inferior film, but it was always more widely accessible. (Gman2887)</blockquote>
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That, perhaps, is the fair and square point to make about the value of <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i>: it is the version that made Godzilla an international star. Only then could the original meaningful subtexts get through to Western audiences. The loyal attachment fans developed for Godzilla over the years ever since the 1956 release is precisely what motivates them to go the extra mile in exploring the meanings behind his existence, namely in the original version. The same thing can also be said about what really keeps the "mon-star" alive beyond just another forgettable monster film or another short-lived phenomenon in pop culture, but rather an apt symbol for the ongoing process that allows history to be preserved and vividly reminds posterity of the monstrous potential of nuclear weapons.<br />
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Within the limited scope and space of this essay, I wish to humbly draw a few conclusions. Firstly, the majority of fans today have watched both versions, specifically thanks to the 2006 release of both in one DVD set, and recognized the crucial differences between them. Secondly, instead of dismissing the original film for its dubbing and low-tech special effects, fans and fan-critics alike praised its realistic depiction of nuclear holocaust and its sentimental qualities as a major monster film production, whether or not it matches their personal tastes. Thirdly, no Western fans so far expressed grievance for being "fooled" or ripped off by the 1956 edit, although some of them did acknowledge more efforts should have been put into making Godzilla a more meaningful and sophisticated entity on a par with his original appearance. Most importantly, fans who approached the films from a more interdisciplinary perspective tend to distinguish the distinctive roles each plays in Godzilla's identity as a whole, and thus appreciate both.<br />
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Perhaps academics are either still influenced by a deeply rooted arrogance that film audiences do not go beyond the realm of entertainment and a hobby-inspired pen job, or disheartened by the diverse and unknown depths of studies of film reception. Godzilla is probably one among the best cases to challenge those notions, since most who spend time watching, researching and writing about the cult phenomenon are loyal fans who simply want to take the Japanese Big-G seriously the way they feel he deserves. Generally, they have done a fairly good job demonstrating how well aware they are and others should be of the values of Godzilla films. Studying the reception side of the films, both casually and academically written reviews, has informed us of a crucial understanding that, despite all differences, the two versions are indispensable to Godzilla the <i>kaiju</i> and the genre as we know them today. One makes it an open and welcoming door to a humane and soulful monster while the other presents it in a sophisticated and valuable story. In other words, <i>Godzilla</i> (1954) and <i>Godzilla, King of the Monsters!</i> (1956) together have given Goji-san a life unknown to any other monsters that ever graced film theaters. They are a fascinating blend of fear and hope for the future in the nuclear age.<br />
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[This essay is by Nguyen Nhu Ngoc, who has recently completed her MA in cultural and media studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-61032364781000596732017-06-05T23:28:00.001+09:002017-06-05T23:28:22.924+09:00The Nuclear Deal and Failed Iran-US Relations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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2015 witnessed a significant turn of events in international relations. The Obama Administration adopted a flexible approach to mending frozen relations with regimes the US had for decades perceived as hostile and consequently its relations with Cuba and Iran were put into a new direction.<br />
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The US had severed its diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 during the Cold War, two years after the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro that resulted in the country adopting socialist ideologies and turning its back to the Capitalist US. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union as Cuba’s main anti-US ally, the hostile relations between Cuba and the US strongly remained.<br />
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With Iran, the hostility dates further back in history when a US backed coup d’état overthrew a democratically elected prime minister and helped the Shah return to power. The diplomatic relations were severed with Iran’s Islamic Revolution and were more intensified with the US Embassy hostage crisis in 1979.<br />
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Obama’s unprecedented diplomatic charm offensive had two contrasting outcomes for Cuba and Iran. It was relatively successful in improving Cuba-US relations to the point of reopening of embassies in Washington and Havana after only 18 months of secret talks in the presence of the Canadian Government and the Pope as third parties. Details of the agreement can be found <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/01/politics/obama-note-to-castro-reestablish-ties/">here.</a><br />
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On the other hand, the American negotiations with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program were conducted in several rounds throughout the years leading to a deal commonly known as the "Iran deal." While the same approach from the US government led to breaking the ice of Cuba-US relations after more than five decades, the Iran deal, which was initially an attempt by the two governments to lay the foundation stone towards normalization of relations, did not help change the nature of the relations as the path taken by the governments had several obstructions.<br />
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A primary obstacle hindering normalization of Iran-US relations was Iran’s unique political structure that ultimately resulted in lack of consensus among the leaders in understanding the implications of negotiating with the US, and then consequently complicated the domestic level negotiations. Domestic negotiations were conducted between Iran’s government as a chief negotiator and the rest of the constituents that directly or indirectly affected the decision-making process, such as the Supreme Leader, the Parliament, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Guardian Council. Hence, lack of comprehensive domestic support and the presence of strong domestic oppositions in the form of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/jul/18/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-nuclear-deal-wont-change-iran-us-policy-video">Supreme Leader’s redlines</a> and rhetoric of other influential figures put a limit in flexibility of the Iranian team throughout the negotiation process.<br />
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Another major factor that obstructed the negotiations from altering the nature of the relations was the efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee">AIPAC</a>), which influenced the process the most. The Israeli lobby in the US is one of the most powerful interest groups and it has been engaged in activities that would secure Israel’s interests in the Middle East, particularly those aimed at undermining Iran’s influence in the region. The lobby, with its significant capability in influencing domestic politics, spared no effort in blocking any sort of deal from being reached. It attempted at influencing voters of the Congress and also spent millions of dollars to sway public opinion through media and various campaigns. Thus, the primary domestic factor that created difficulties for the US president, which consequently reduced US government’s capability for comprehensive negotiations with Iran, was the presence of interest groups, most influential of them all, the Israel lobby.<br />
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Despite the deal being ratified by Iran’s Parliament and the US Congress as major domestic constituents, lack of support from remaining domestic constituents (as the likes of domestic politicians, interest groups and a universal public support) meant that convincing the rest of the domestic actors of Iran and the US became impossible because of which the deal could not pave way for these respective governments to work towards normalizing relations.<br />
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Here, the dominant approach to International Relations (IR) that considers states to be as homogeneous as a black box, with one voice and one opinion regarding state policies, is challenged. This conventional approach that divides the world into democratic and non-democratic entities, and generally overlooks any other type of political structure in between, emerges from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty">Westphalian nation-state paradigm</a>, a paradigm that tends to let slide the complexities that exist within the political entities called states. Avoiding this binary in analyzing occurrences in international relations and regarding the government as one of the many constituents that affect the policymaking in a state, it can be argued that the Iran nuclear deal was made by the Iranian and the American governments only, and not by the rest of the decision making actors. The nation-state paradigm thus falls short in understanding the complexities that exist in political entities, especially those of the non-West, such as Iran.<br />
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The nuclear deal is a landmark deal but owing to domestic constraints, which are in turn informed by distinct ideologies and socio-cultural paradigms of Iran and the US, comprehensive normalization of relations remains yet elusive. So far conventional IR pundits have generally attempted to analyze the political dynamics of Iran, and other non-West entities such as Singapore and China, by subscribing to the Westphalian state-centric model, by taking notions such as democracy as reference points. This has consequently led to the utter failure of understanding non-West entities. By attempting to analyze the idiosyncrasies of conventional paradigm, this research therefore concludes that while conventional IR theories are effectual for the analysis, metaphysical assumptions of Westphalian norms and the binary of democratic/non-democratic that such theories are stipulated on, inadvertently fall into the same trap. It concludes that a more nuanced distillation of IR is necessary to accommodate different realities that might not be, or are currently not taken into account, such as theories that ignore the features of a non-democracy in Iran. While the thesis makes the nuclear deal and the actors involved focal point for analyses, the research is also an attempt to question the assumptions that IR currently stand on. With globalization and postcolonial world getting intricate and hybrid, an approach to understanding IR and foreign policy (especially of the non-West) will be challenging without forming an understanding within IR that in a hybrid world, self-other centric IR will be increasingly ineffectual.<br />
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[This essay is based on Leili Yousefi's graduation thesis in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. Ms. Yousefi, who received an award for outstanding thesis in March 2017, has lived and studied in Iran and Japan. She currently resides in Canada and will begin her MA in Sociology at McMaster University in September. ]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-37649554497210255472017-03-18T15:57:00.001+09:002017-03-18T15:57:31.715+09:00Representations of Psychopathy in US Cinema<div>
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Ever since the early nineteenth century when Philippe Pinel described psychopathy as moral deficiency with no sign of mental impairment, scholars have taken an interest in the condition. The ensuing discussions emphasized the role of an unsympathetic environment in making an individual morally insane and on the society's responsibility in mitigating psychopathic behavior through moral therapy. A century later, scholars interpreted psychopathy from a sociological perspective, but which bore some resemblance to the nineteenth century moral discussion. For example, Harrington's <i>Psychopaths</i> (1973) and Smith's <i>The Psychopath in Society</i> (1978) suggest that an amoral society commending individualism and personal achievement provides an environment that rewards, and thus encourages, psychopathic behavior. They also suggested that psychopaths are more successful in adapting to such a society.</div>
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By the mid-to-late twentieth century, cinema directors had established a representation of psychopathy that more or less corresponded to the two above mentioned perspectives. However, a number of recent films are set apart from this dominant cinematic image by focusing on characters that do not correlate with those previous perspectives, thus diverging from the dominant discourse. This essay will discuss three such films: <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134119/" target="_blank">The Talented Mr Ripley</a></i> (1999), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/" target="_blank"><i>Gone Girl</i> </a>(2014), and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872718/" target="_blank">Nightcrawler</a></i> (2014). Although all three films have many common themes, the essay will look at a unique theme in each film that most strongly depicts society as amoral and unsympathetic.</div>
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The first act of <i>The Talented Mr Ripley</i> reveals the unsympathetic way that society treats people like Tom, the psychopathic character. Prior to his psychopathic actions, the film shows Tom in a humble background. Despite his talents, Tom has to do menial tasks to survive. Additionally, the film portrays him being dominated time and again by other characters: despite his reluctance, Mr. Greenleaf makes Tom go to Italy, while people like Freddie constantly patronize him. On top of that, the film also discloses a social disapproval of homosexuality, which causes Tom to lie about having a fiancee. As his character unfolds, Tom participates in a number of psychopathic acts ranging from manipulation to multiple murders.</div>
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The relationship between an unsympathetic environment and psychopathic tendency in an individual harkens back to the views of nineteenth-century scholars. They suggested that such an environment led an individual to become psychopathic. While the film does not explicitly depict Tom's environment to be a cause of his psychopathic behavior, it does suggest that Tom is subjected to an unsympathetic environment while displaying psychopathic tendencies.</div>
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<i>Gone Girl</i> highlights the role of an unsympathetic media in influencing the perception of a society that values image (of an individual or a situation) over truth. Ellen Abbott, a newscaster in the film, embodies a tendency to exaggerate the truth. Mundane actions like an accidental smile are analyzed as a symptom of sociopathy. Furthermore, Ellen's nonchalant apology to Nick in the final act suggests that such a practice had become commonplace. On top of that, the film also underscores the influence of media representation of public perception by, at times, disclosing reactions of unnamed characters. Ellen's false accusations of incest between Nick and his sister prompts two men to make jokes about "twincest." Additionally, it underlines, on multiple occasions, that the public reaction to any new information is dependent more on its delivery. Nick's initial appeals, which seem more natural, are met with skepticism; whereas, more calculated and rehearsed appeals are successful in encouraging sympathy.</div>
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Similar to less well-known theories of psychopathy, <i>Gone Girl</i> represents a psychopath being more adapted to this environment than other characters. Since the beginning of her plan, Amy goes to great lengths to ensure that her image is that of an innocent victim. She presents herself in a way that people will sympathize with her. In contrast to Amy, Nick appears incapable of doing so and therefore becomes ostracized by the media and the public alike. This portrayal in some ways corresponds to Harrington's and Smith's work, which suggests that psychopaths are more suited to adapting to an unsympathetic society.</div>
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<i>Nightcrawler</i> portrays how an amoral society favors psychopathic behavior. KWLA, a fictional cable news network, illustrates the work ethic of a for-profit organization. The film depicts how the company undermines moral concerns over pursuing financial gain. Many times, the obvious unethical means employed by Lou gets overlooked by Nina, the news director, as long as the product has a high market value. Incidents like accidents and deaths get stripped of their emotional value and are treated as commodities. Moreover, the film portrays how such a work environment favors someone who lacks, or is willing to forego, moral judgment. Lou gets more successful in his work, while Frank (the character voicing his moral concerns) often gets silenced. Finally, the film's climax shows an expansion of Lou's previously small enterprise.</div>
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This representation of psychopathic behavior being rewarded in an amoral society is discussed by Harrington and Smith. As a consequence, such rewards in a way promote further psychopathic behavior. A similar tendency is apparent in this film as well: as the film progresses, Lou becomes more successful and his actions become more psychopathic.</div>
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The relationship between an unsympathetic and amoral society and a psychopath represented in the three films to some extent aligns with the moral and sociological dimension of psychopathy. However, despite many common themes between the three films, each of them corresponds most strongly with a different aspect of the two discourses. <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i> hints at the role that an unsympathetic environment may play in inducing psychopathy; <i>Gone Girl</i> reveals how a psychopath may be better adapted at dealing with unsympathetic agents; <i>Nightcrawler</i> demonstrates how an amoral society rewards and thus promotes psychopathic behavior.</div>
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[This essay is by Salonika Neupane and is based on her graduation thesis in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.]</div>
TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-2552595378922146612017-03-01T00:51:00.000+09:002017-03-04T10:21:58.062+09:00A Cultural History of Criminalizing Homelessness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Recent decades have seen a drastic rise in the number of homeless people, both individuals and families, and this is largely due to unemployment, limited affordable housing and failures of social safety networks. According to a 2005 United Nations survey, there were approximately 100 million people worldwide dwelling on the streets and another 1 billion without inadequate housing. Since then, the problem has only worsened, as the number of homeless people within several countries still remains considerably high.<br />
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Christopher Ubsdell, who has been homeless in London for seventeen years, sees the problem this way:<br />
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What you have is a wide-ranging political agenda across the whole spectrum of government, where they are criminalizing homeless people and criminalizing people on benefits. If anything goes wrong in society they always blame it on the people who cannot defend themselves, and homeless is one of those categories.</blockquote>
Ubsdell's <a href="http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-uk-is-outlawing-homelessness/199886/" target="_blank">story</a> is just one among a thousand tales of the homeless. Due to the perceived danger that their status seems to pose to society, poor and homeless people have long been blamed for their situations. Such stigmatization has resulted in mass criminalization of poverty and homelessness at the hands of policy-makers.<br />
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Along with the rise in homelessness, there has also been a rise in surveillance on so-called "troubled areas," numbers of designated "homeless-free" zones, harassment and punishment towards the homeless in public places. Throughout several parts of the world, governments are increasingly devoted to enforcement-based policies toward homelessness and other associated "anti-social" activities. In 2014, with the enactment of the Anti-Social Behavior, Crime and Policing Act, the London borough of Hackney council implemented a "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/05/homelessness-unequal-society-hackney-council" target="_blank">public space protection order</a>" outlawing begging, loitering or sleeping rough in specific locations. In America, homeless people are now even <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/anti-homeless-laws-study_n_5592322.html" target="_blank">prohibited to sit or lie on sidewalks</a> in more than 80 cities, whereas in 2011, there were only 37 cities banning sleeping in cars. No matter how diverse the levels of these acts are, they are all attempts to criminalize poverty and homelessness through law enforcement.<br />
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Still, is there truly a recent punitive turn towards the poor and the homeless? I suggest that a perceived recent trend of criminalization may not exist, as the core element of anti-homeless policies has <a href="http://www.feantsaresearch.org/IMG/pdf/ejh6_2_article3.pdf" target="_blank">been consistently punitive</a>. Although their purposes are altered depending on different times and socio-economic circumstances, these laws are more specifically designed to attack than to help protect the homeless. Rather, the disciplinary nature of vagrancy laws and anti-homeless ordinances has been resurrected and intensified under neoliberal economic policies.<br />
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Legal scholars generally agree that the first vagrancy statute was fully developed and passed in England in 1349 to punish anyone without a job. These people were called "valiant beggars," because they were thought to refuse to work and therefore stood a chance of feeding on other people's charity. As cited by <a href="https://ucdenver.instructure.com/files/3218143/download?download_frd=1&verifier=oVGyGlu70BRrsF5IhXPS63pSwOTYimfv9XjTXne2" target="_blank">Chambliss</a>, the statute also stated that only by being imprisoned would these "potential beggars" agree to work to earn a living.<br />
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Early vagrancy laws were established to reduce the cost of poverty treatment for local municipalities and to prevent property crimes by broadening the categories of offenders and potential offenders. Also, with the shortage of labor preceded by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death" target="_blank">Black Death</a>, vagrancy laws were meant to ensure a stable supply of cheap workers for landlords by criminalizing begging as a form of intentional idleness and curtailing the mobility of laborers. Chambliss further notes that people were forced to work even with low wages in order to be considered legitimate for poor relief, or else they would be punished.<br />
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Decisions for arrest were often based on one's status instead of crimes committed. At that time, vagrants were the main targets of imprisonment because they were <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3179896-masterless-men" target="_blank">thought to be dangerous</a> by carrying diseases or involving in robberies and murders. Even in cases where they were not directly threatening the social order, vagrants were still perceived as potential <a href="http://www.lltjournal.ca/index.php/llt/article/viewFile/5000/5869" target="_blank">sources of havoc</a>. Vagrants were "undeserving," while other poor people, who deemed to be "deserved" of poor relief or workers that had a "master," were allowed to ask for alms in public spaces and were <a href="http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=ohlj" target="_blank">excluded from punishment</a> under the legislations.<br />
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The stigmatization of social status is being revived under the new political economy, as homeless and other visibly poor people are being targeted to keep social security in check. In many cases, the presence of homeless people on the street alone is thought to leave an unhealthy impression on the economic condition of an area. Homeless people are <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/guillem-fern%C3%A0ndez-evangelista/geographies-of-exclusion" target="_blank">more likely to be charged</a> than non-homeless citizens even though their offenses are not serious, most of which are related to begging. Punishment against the homeless was further encouraged in 1982 when Wilson and Kelling proposed the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/" target="_blank">broken window theory</a>,” which argues that while a single vagrant does not matter, a gang of vagrants matters much as it "may destroy an entire community." Even in circumstances where they "harmed no identifiable person," homeless people are still treated as "broken windows" in need of repair through punitive measures.<br />
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As the history of vagrancy laws is the concern of a social elite, current anti-homeless policies attempt to secure the economic and political interests of legislatures. This has led to further discrimination, exclusion and discipline born at the sacrifice of the lower class for the interests of the privileged. In this context, putting priority on <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.615.5049&rep=rep1&type=pdf" target="_blank">public aesthetics</a> is designed to soothe the complaints, fears and worries among the urban upper class. As noted by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12068/abstract" target="_blank">Udvarhelyi</a> about the situation in Hungary, for example, criminalizing legislations, designation of "homeless-free" zones, intensification of surveillance on the homeless and urban gentrification campaigns are examples of policies that prioritize "clean" and "safe" public spaces at the expense of basic human needs.”<br />
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We are now living in an era where freedom and individualism are encouraged, but it is this individualistic ethos that frames the lower classes as being solely responsible for their own predicaments. Attempts to criminalize homeless people reveal an underlying truth of how the attitude towards homelessness among the privileged is the root cause for this trend. The dominant view that homeless people are problematic results in the demand of their removal from public spaces by criminalizing their status and daily activities. This attitude has been carried over since the emergence of early vagrancy laws until the present, and is now intensified under the effects of the new political economy. Local municipalities, in order to secure their positions, prioritize the rights of other citizens over those who are homeless. Yet, this ought to concern political leaders lest the be accused of what <a href="http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/PENALISAPOVNEOLIB-EJPPR.pdf" target="_blank">Wacquant</a> terms as the "deficit in legitimacy." Homelessness proves to be an obstacle for the advancement of politicians, but finding an effective solution may cost them time and money. Therefore, the fastest way is to satisfy the opinions of local citizens, whose votes and support will determine their prosperity, by driving the homeless away from public and to legislate them out of existence.<br />
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We need to remember that people do not choose to be homeless, and that homelessness is not a crime. Vagrancy laws and anti-homeless ordinances are not effective solutions. Instead, coercion and heavy reliance on the police force only worsen the problem since it sharpens the social inequalities that already exist between the lower class and the "other," as well as violates the rights of homeless people. Imprisonment has been shown to likely increase the risk of homelessness than actually reduce it. After being released from prisons, homeless people are still left with no shelters and no food provision. In the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/368164/prisoners-experience-of-prison-and-outcomes-on-release-waves-2-and-3-spcr.pdf" target="_blank">UK in 2012</a>, for instance, 15% of prison inmates were reported being homeless prior to incarceration while more than 80% needed help with accommodation on being deinstitutionalized. In addition, records of conviction, whether serious or minor, can prevent access to job opportunities, housing options and public empathy, making homelessness more difficult to escape. This results in homelessness not being solved but passed forward within an unbreakable cycle between local municipalities.<br />
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[This essay is by Le Bao Trinh Vu and is based on her graduation in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. She is currently a graduate student at Nagoya University. Her research interests revolve around poverty studies as well as Japanese studies with a focus on Japanese culture and literature. Outside classrooms, she is interested in writing short stories and translating news between Japanese, English and Vietnamese.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-46172017217865449572017-02-12T12:58:00.001+09:002017-03-04T10:21:12.379+09:00The "Good War" in Recent American Cinema<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The film USS Indianapolis: <i>Men of courage</i>–staring Nicolas Cage–which opened in US theaters in early September 2016, has once again proved the resilient interest of Hollywood movie makers in the World War II movie genre. More than half a decade after the war ended, the story of patriotic GIs fighting fiercely, altruistically or the espionage mission of Allied powers in order to defeat the evil Nazis has never failed to captivate audience’s heart. The war ended in September 1945, yet it’s no doubt that World War II-themed films still dominate our contemporary popular culture. Much of this is greatly contributed by the previously shaped the “Good War” concept of World War II in the public memory, particularly in America. The Good war memory signifies a clear division between “us,” the good, morally superior American soldiers fighting for human rights and freedom, and “them,” the evil Hitler and his monstrous SS Armies inflict horrible crimes on other human beings. This idea of Good War was again magnified and promulgated through traditional media, which is a powerful site to alter and reconstruct audience’s perception and memory of past war, especially the distant generation that only learn the history lesson through television, music or history textbooks.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Notwithstanding the fact that the good war concept has rooted to a very sturdy position in public memory, narratives of war-themed films do not always remain the same, they however, change through time, partially in response to significant incidents or political events. American spent decades to celebrate and glorify the war efforts with delighted soldiers united in multi-ethnicity platoons, especially during the recovery period, which cinema focused entirely on the portrayal of the horror and brutality of the war, also drew attention to heroic and patriotic themes. Narratives of the recovery years focus on the goodness of individuals, sanitization and glorification of war efforts. Films during this period brought up some problems, but still showed no criticism and ended on hopeful note. However, the dark era of the Vietnam and Korean War, from the 1970s until 1980s, narratives of war films reversed and reflected more negativity toward military leadership and criticism of the war. Films showed more horror and brutality, battlefield was no longer sanitized and glorified, soldiers were shown with more flaws, and dark sides. The publicized heroism myth from previous era could no longer be sustained. Instead, we witnessed flawed leadership figures, mentally and emotionally distraught soldiers. During the 1990s, with films like <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/" target="_blank">Saving private Ryan</a></i> (1998) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243609/" target="_blank">To end all wars</a></i> (2001), the traditional narrative of noble and legitimate commanding officers, of American exceptional mission, of the pure evil enemies, is seemingly once again redeemed with exclusive focus on the portrayal of heroism and patriotism. Nevertheless, the September 11 attack hindered this trend. Narratives of post-9/11 Hollywood war cinema complicates the archetypical narratives set up during the previous eras. This was exhibited greatly in the 3 following films, which were made during the post-9/11 era.<br />
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<i>Flags of our fathers</i> is set in the year of 1945, and follows a story of a group of men raising the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi in a Japanese sacred island called Iwo Jima. The photograph of them planting the flag changes their lives but the commendation of becoming war heroes is not only about honor but also ultimately leads to their sufferings, mentally and physically.<br />
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In the entire film, the flag is acclaimed; the three survivors are applauded for their contribution to the country and acknowledged as heroes. Everywhere they go during their bond tour, the press and the people come to cheer for the heroes of the war, despite the unknown fact that those heroes are not the first men to raise the flag. Eastwood intentionally portrays these faux-heroes as being mundane as other survived soldiers: they have flaws, guilt, haunted by the ghost of war, and of all, know they are not heroes. As Eastwood has painted it transparently from the beginning of the film, this entailed heroism is not a fruit of any patriotic tree. As James Bradley, John Bradley’s son also concludes: “Maybe there is no such thing as heroes… Heroes are something we create, something we need.”<br />
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In contrast to other films in previous decades, which stick to the simplified version of history, <i>Flags of our fathers</i> represents a more conventional picture of the reality of battlefield, specifically about the tension between races and classes within the army and the postwar life. There is still discrimination against Native Americans, the job struggles or the mental struggles of Ira and Bradley after war; and etc. Instead of showing the film in a chronological order, like many other films, Eastwood uses lots of flashbacks and forward-jumping scenes. Suggesting the idea that it is impossible to have one coherent remembrance; nevertheless, the war was compiled with fragmented memory, much of which comes from troubling nightmares. Eastwood’s anti-World War II film, somehow, serves to refuse the concept of World War II as the Good War that has been portrayed and celebrated for so many years in Hollywood cinema. <br />
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<i>Inglourious basterds</i> opens in the year of 1941, but the main story is set in the last years of the war 1944-1945, which follows two simultaneous plans by different actors in an attempt to assassinate Hitler and his high-ranking officials during a premiere of a film. Since this film is a fantasy comedy genre, everything is magnified and portrays in a dramatic way. Films during the postwar eras were often portrayed military officials to have effective leadership, with strong authority, ideal of brave and virtuous, and more importantly have no questions of war or military but Aldo, one of the main characters in the film, shows the otherwise. The reason Aldo fights, rather than because of idealism or patriotism, Tarantino paints it closer to his addiction to violence. He shows no mercy or sympathy to enemies, only violence with killing, torturing, and scalping and his reason to fight is closer to his addiction of violence rather than any idealistic deeds. The reversed picture compared to the idea of “good versus evil,” “Allied versus Nazis” painted by Tarantino suggests the thin line between the definition of good and evil, patriotism and terrorism, as Landa, the SS commander, himself sums up when he interrogates Aldo, “your mission or some other might call terrorist plot.” The basterds, despite their violence, are still be portrayed as heroes in the film. Tarantino again, through his masterful directing techniques, challenges the notions of heroes that were depicted decades ago. Throughout the film, he underpins the relationship of good and evil, right and wrong that confuses people by the mixed reality often being delivered by media.<br />
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Set in 1945, <i>Fury</i> follows the story of a tank platoon, which named their tank Fury, and their battles in the heart of their German enemy. Patriotism portrayed in the film mainly focuses on the final tank scene, when Don refuses to leave his tank and decides to stay to fight the Nazis even though they are outnumbered. His crew members later follow him and stay to fight till their last breath. Through this, Ayer wants to portray patriotism through national identity: American soldiers do not leave their post; they fight even when they know they cannot live. This implies the nature of classic heroes: sacrifice for the country. However, with a little twist at the end, Ayer again challenges the notion of glorifying heroes. After the tank fight, Norman is the only survival of the crew, but the underpinning reason why he makes it through the fight is that he hides in the mud and is let go by a German soldier even though he had seen Norman. American soldiers find him the following morning, and they call him a hero. The film again shows that there is no clear distinction between good and bad, the people who so-called Nazis, not all of them are evil, monstrous and so do American soldiers.<br />
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The three films resolve contradiction of “good and evil” and “sanitization and brutality” of the two previous eras by bringing the contradiction together and portray in in one film. Films show the blurred line between good and evil, glorify the remembrances of the war yet criticize the horror and brutality that come with it. All three films share the similarity in reasoning why the hero soldiers fight by depicting the nature of the decision to join the war has no relation with patriotism or the human-centered liberal dreams inspired by Roosevelt, more about private goals rather than about publics’. The reasons why they keep fighting, as raised by Eastwood in Flags of our father is because of the friends they made during the war. The above-mentioned films play with the thin line between good and evil, patriotic and terrorism. Violence in the name of heroism and patriotism may also be considered as terrorism, and vice versa.<br />
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However, we cant deny the fact that fact that World War II has brought America out of depression into prosperous era and pushed it to become the world’s economic and political power. It brought significant changes in society, including changing roles of women and young people in society. Women and other minority ethnics, having tasted the sweetness of being economically independent during the war years and being forced to go back to their traditional roles, are unquestionably frustrated for being suppressed. This later served as a strong motive for civil rights and women’s rights movement in the US.<br />
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[The above essay is by Rachel Ta and is based on research she conducted for her 2016 graduation thesis in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-35099590588784400782017-02-04T18:07:00.001+09:002017-03-04T10:20:33.408+09:00Adapting Images of Fathers in Animated Films<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Some animated film titles such as <i>Lion King</i> (1994), <i>Chicken Little</i> (2005), and <i>Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs</i> (2009) remind us of a sincere father–son relationship. Fatherhood has become a major theme adopted in mainstream American cinemas, and father–son relationship portrayal is one of them. Pixar, as a well-recognized animated films producer, has also adopted this recurring theme of father and son narrative in two of its films: <i>Finding Nemo</i> (2003) and <i>Ratatouille</i> (2007). The fathers in these films, especially in <i>Finding Nemo</i>, have attracted audiences, in which they are acknowledged as an example of a good father. Hence, there are some questions to be asked: what exactly is a good father? And what makes these fathers a good father? This essay will discuss the characteristics of a good father, and how Pixar represent them through father characters in its films.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>There is no right or wrong answer to a question about what a good father is. The meaning or the image of a good father varies from one individual to another. It depends on the social perception of how a father should behave in a family, which is shaped by a place, time, and the culture an individual lives in. The media such as books, magazine articles, television programs, and films play a role in maintaining this social perception. Therefore, it is crucial to look at how fathers are represented in the media in order to identify the image of a good father in a society.<br />
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American society at the beginning of the twenty-first century believes that a good father is a father who is emotionally articulate, caring, and involved in raising his children. There are many self-help books, magazine articles, and comic strips that discuss how important it is for a father to be a nurturing parent. Through this image, fathers are encouraged not only to provide financial and other material resources but also to spend their time with their children, engaged in some activities together to build a meaningful relationship between him and his family.<br />
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As one of the widely consumed types of media, American films, including its animated films, have been maintaining the current image of a good father. Not only that mainstream American cinemas often feature fatherhood as their theme but they also have represented involved, caring, and loving fathers. In animated films, this image gradually replaces the stereotypical image of a father as authoritative, stern, or physically and emotionally distant from his children. Particularly in the portrayal of father–son relationship, fathers in animated films are no longer demanding and have less dominance in their relationship with their sons; it is the fathers who change their behaviors and adapt towards their sons’ needs to develop. In other words, recent animated films contribute to building the image of a good father in the early twenty-first century. The following section will further explain the representation of fathers in two well-known Pixar films, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/" target="_blank">Finding Nemo</a></i> (2003) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/" target="_blank">Ratatouille</a> </i>(2007), and introducing two major points that reinforce the image of a good father within the father characters.<br />
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The type of father–son relationship depicted in <i>Finding Nemo</i> and <i>Ratatouille</i> is quite similar. At the beginning of the narratives, the fathers seem to depict some stereotypical characteristics of a father, such as demanding their sons’ obedience and expecting their sons to do something against their sons’ will. The short clip above, taken from <i>Finding Nemo</i>, shows that Marlin, the father, is overprotective towards his only son, Nemo. Unfortunately, Marlin’s overprotectiveness limits Nemo to explore his curiosity. Marlin is too afraid to let Nemo swim with no supervision due to Nemo’s small right fin. However, Nemo finds his fin is not a hindrance to swim and experience new things.<br />
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Similarly, Ratatouille also presents a father who is demanding and restraining his son to pursue his dream as a chef. Django, the father, wants Remy, his son, to do what they are supposed to do as a rat. It means that Remy is not allowed to be close or get along with humans, let alone becoming a chef. In the <i>Ratatouille</i> teaser trailer, shown below, Django shouts at Remy not to be picky with foods. However, Remy believes that to be a chef, he has to be careful and choose the foods that he wants to eat. For Remy, Django’s demand is one of his major obstacles.<br />
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Even though it might appear that the films portray the image of stereotypical fathers, the stories do not end right there. As the narratives progress, the fathers gradually show their efforts to become a good father. They adapt to their sons by changing their behavior in order to support their sons’ development. Marlin’s adaptation towards Nemo in Finding Nemo marks Marlin as a good father. Marlin realizes that he has to change to support Nemo’s development. The following video clip refers to Marlin’s adjustment; it takes place when Nemo wants to save their friend, Dory who gets caught on a fishnet. However, Marlin does not let Nemo go swim by himself. Marlin is afraid to lose Nemo again but Nemo insists on swimming and helping Dory. After hearing Nemo’s plead and devastation, Marlin decides to trust Nemo and learns that everything is worth trying. Marlin’s trust enables Nemo to be more confident and finally, save the day.<br />
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Similar to Marlin, in <i>Ratatouille</i>, Django is the one who jumps into Remy’s life to support his son more, and this implies the value of a good father within Django. Django becomes aware that he needs to change his behavior to help Remy accomplish his goal. The short clip below shows Django’s adaptation in response to Remy’s needs, resulting in a stronger father–son relationship between them. After seeing Remy almost failing to achieve his dream, Django offers Remy some help from him and the whole clan, although they cannot cook like Remy. Django becomes more open and learns to see the world from a different perspective through Remy’s journey becoming a chef. Django’s adaptation to Remy’s needs allows Remy to be a chef.<br />
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On top of father’s adjustment, to become a good father, fathers have to be emotionally articulate. Both films portray fathers who can communicate their feelings towards their sons. In <i>Finding Nemo</i>, although in the earlier scenes Marlin appears to express more of his anxiety towards Nemo, as the narrative progress, Marlin proves that he can express his love through trust and understanding. Seeing Nemo’s effort to save Dory, Marlin also realizes the importance of expressing their emotions towards each other, thus maintaining a meaningful father–son relationship.<br />
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Likewise, in <i>Ratatouille</i>, despite all arguments that Django and Remy have, Django can express his feelings and affection easily towards Remy. Django is glad to have his son back to the clan, even though only for a short time, and tells Remy that the important thing is to have him home. He seems to be worried and disappointed at Remy when his son tells him that he wants to leave the clan. However, Django never fails to praise Remy whenever Remy does something helpful for the clan and later in the film, for having the courage not to give up in achieving his dream. Both Marlin and Django in the films have demonstrated that although at the beginning they seem to be authoritative, they are willing to change their parenting conduct in order to support their son, and to communicate their feelings.<br />
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Through the emphasis of father’s change and nurturance, Pixar films have represented its fathers in accordance with the current image of a good father in the early twenty-first century. Fathers are depicted as someone who can adapt their behavior in response to their sons’ needs as well as being emotionally articulate to express their feelings towards their sons. Pixar has effectively introduced this image of a good father through the narratives and character development. The representation implied in the narratives shows that Pixar films serve beyond mere forms of entertainment. The films, in some ways, support a particular view of a good father, which may or may not give significant effect to their audiences. At last, as one of the most influential media, Pixar films have maintained the social perception about a good father: He has to be ready to change for his children and to be affectionate.<br />
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[This essay is by Nurina Sevrina and is based on her undergraduate thesis in Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, which was awarded outstanding thesis for the class of 2016.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-91039197775451163262016-12-30T14:19:00.002+09:002017-03-04T10:19:03.746+09:00Humanities and Social Sciences through World Cinema and Visual Arts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This essay is incentivized by the global trends of digitizing and sharing of knowledge through the Internet, electronic devices and online courses. These trends, while potentially rendering the physically confined, text-based, formal style of university lecturing as slow, redundant, and costly, urge serious reflection on the quality of teaching and learning in response to the changing context of higher education. What can be done to coordinate the traditional role of a lecturer and the newly equipped self-learning capabilities of students?<br />
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Through teaching undergraduate courses at an international university in Japan, we have developed a course narrative that makes visual literacy a crucial tool for teaching and learning humanities and social sciences. Visual literacy denotes an education that makes visible what words aim to convey through using visual sources. In particular, we promote visual literacy by using world cinema and chalkboard illustrations instead of textbooks and presentation slides or handouts. In effect, the traditional focus on a selection of texts as well as the keyword-based lecture notes are maintained yet transcended into audio-visual texts and visually illustrated notes. In terms of films, they are selected thematically, arranged into different units within a course and shown to students during class time. They thus become the primary source of knowledge similar to standardized textbooks, while the activity of viewing films becomes a collective and systematic method of learning. At the same time, relevant concepts and information needed to study these films are customized into a set of lecture notes, written and illustrated on the chalkboard as guidelines for students. Rather than merely copy-pasting words, we aim to enliven the conventional activity of note-taking by making it more stimulating and motivating as students have to actively think about what they are taking notes of. This course narrative is currently used in 3 courses: Education and Society, Religion and Belief, Media and History.<br />
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The selected films play multiple roles. In the context of the social sciences they are used to illustrate socio-cultural concepts, while in historical contexts they blur the distinctions between dramatic and veritable truth. In the context of the humanities they expose students to some of the greater, and lesser, known works of world cinema. Films are shown in their entirety, but with frequent pauses to refer to concepts and themes. While selections may vary each semester, in Education and Society we have used films from Japan, India, West Africa, North America and Australia, which are selected for their dramatization of themes at the intersection of schooling and society. We often begin with the 2001 American film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181536/" target="_blank"><i>Finding Forrester</i></a>, about a gifted young African American writer discovering an older reclusive white novelist who coaches him in writing. In addition to raising issues of social class, peer pressure, and racial discrimination, the film's mentor-protege relationship brings out tensions between standardized and individualized learning and allows us to extrapolate guidance offered in the film to our students for their own writing assignments. The 1986 Japanese film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409757/" target="_blank"><i>Burakkubodo</i></a>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaneto_Shindo" target="_blank">Kaneto Shindo</a>, dramatizes an incident of bullying at a public school in Japan. Shindo questions the politicized interdependencies between school and society, highlighting hidden dynamics of social class, and problematizing the one dimensional view of bullying often found on the evening news. However, the documentary style of shooting and editing also offers opportunities to discuss the fine line between dramatic and veritable truths. For the purpose of comparative writing assignments, the 1997 Canadian film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119052/" target="_blank"><i>The education of Little Tree</i></a> is paired with the 1996 West African film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110252/" target="_blank"><i>Keita! The heritage of the griot</i></a>. Each depicts tensions between the global knowledge from mass schooling and the local knowledge of vernacular cultures by focusing on a child who moves in and out of both worlds. After the concepts and themes are explained in the lectures and illustrated through chalkboard art, the socio-cultural issues raised by these films are discussed in an online forum.<br />
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Among other issues such as talking speed, language differences or room lighting, the use of movies as "moving textbooks" adds another challenge to the learning activity by students. Having board notes as guidelines is therefore necessary because they provide an all-at-once presentation of the most important concepts and information, available throughout lectures to be referred to when needed. For example, as shown in the following figures, the board art for <i>Keita!</i> consists of all elements that a set of notes usually cover: film title and basic facts, new vocabulary that are used in the film or necessary to understand it, key concepts, major themes the film discusses, and guiding questions. These board notes are summarized based on the professor's lecture notes and then incorporated into illustrations sketched out on paper. The illustrated version is discussed for revisions and corrections before being rendered on the board. The nature of this method is particularly provisional because it has to be worked out on two different media—paper-ink and chalk-board—and unlike presentation slides or handouts, when the class is over the notes are wiped away. This aspect of impermanence can be quite demanding in being re-constructed every time but can also be a source of inspiration symbolizing the ever-changing process of perceiving knowledge. Furthermore, we have recognized more benefits than initially intended. Many students are seen to copy the illustrations into their notebooks, whereas some even improvise new drawings to reflect their own understanding of the materials. Visual literacy is also appreciated in helping non-native students overcome the language barrier and gain more understanding from the lectures. Since the chalkboard illustrations, including arrangements, fonts and colors, used in each lecture are unique to that content, it makes the concepts more memorable and distinguishable for students. Although at the beginning this method was designed to revitalize students' learning experience, planning the board art has become a learning opportunity for us as well because it helps visualize ideas, recognize previously unrecognized connections, and clarify the understanding of concepts.<br />
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Our understanding of visual literacy proceeds from an assumed existing visual sensibility among students but moves it from passive consumption to active understanding. We encourage this movement in a second cinema-based course, Religion and Belief, for which films are selected to illustrate religions in their cultural contexts and to highlight the relationship between religion as a corpus of ideas and a set of practices. We sometimes begin with the 1960 Bengali film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053765/" target="_blank">Devi</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyajit_Ray" target="_blank">Satyajit Ray</a>, which weaves a complex tale of how individual faith coupled with social power on one hand and communal expectations on the other hand are merged into a tragic misunderstanding. Furthering the theme of power, we compare the 1968 joint American/Italian production <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063599/" target="_blank">The shoes of the fisherman</a></i> with the 2001 Iranian film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278159/" target="_blank">Zir-e nur-e mah</a></i>, both of which complicate the role of religious authority and the relationship between religion as an institution and the societies, both global and local, within which a religion is situated. While the scale and settings differ, both films focus on an individual in a position of religious authority struggling to reconcile personal faith and a sense of moral duty with social expectations and institutional imperatives. A second comparison illustrates religion as a set of practices by focusing on pilgrimages to religious sites, illustrating an often unclear distinction between tourists and pilgrims, with self-discovery as a comment element. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113129/" target="_blank">Fukai kawa</a></i>, the 1991 Japanese film by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_Kumai" target="_blank">Kei Kumai</a> based on a novel by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%ABsaku_End%C5%8D" target="_blank">Shusaku Endo</a>, follows a three Japanese travelers to the Ganges in India, who on the surface appear as tourists but who are seeking redemption within. This is compared with the 2010 American/Spanish production <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441912/" target="_blank">The way</a></i>, which follows four pilgrims on the road to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela" target="_blank">Santiago de Compostella</a> and which highlights the vagaries of the pilgrim's quest. These films are screened in the lectures with pauses to explain concepts and connect themes, and students are urged to develop a sociological way of understanding and speaking about cinema beyond its presumed role as casual entertainment.<br />
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Typically, the 95 minute length of each lecture is divided between lecturing and film screening. Therefore, except for the first film that is rather experimental to attract attention and test students' ability, two to three lectures are usually required to study one film. Though presenting different information as a film unfolds, the board notes thus have to grasp the gist of each part to ensure continuity needed to study the films wholly. Thought questions are most useful as a connector not only between different parts of the same film but also between films on the same theme. The said thought questions also function as pointers and hints for the writing assignment required at the end of each unit. Ideally, elements from all questions are organized into a single assignment topic question. The following figures are board notes for part 1 and 2 of <i>Devi</i>. Needless to say, not everything can be illustrated. The illustrations therefore focus on either the main theme or the key message the film conveys. In this case, it's the tensions that go into turning a private dream or vision of a deity into a public reality in a religion. It's expected that students will leave the lecture hall with a sociologically informed understanding of the films, instead of a mere impression based on individual taste. However, not all abstract ideas can be effectively illustrated in drawings, in which case it varies and really depends on the ability to select the most relevant point and to integrate it into the lecture. This method is thus far from eliminating text. Rather, it blends together words and pictures, taking advantage of both media to form a dynamic foundation for what we want to teach about humanities and social sciences.<br />
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A third course to which we apply this method is Media and History, which centers around memory and representation of the atomic bomb in American and Japanese cinema. We begin by comparing the initial works, the 1947 American film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039178/" target="_blank"><i>The beginning or the end</i></a> and the 1952 Japanese film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044497/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Genbaku no ko</a>. The former illustrates a view from above, physically as that of the bomber looking down at the bombed and socially by centering on scientists, generals and politicians. The latter, directed by Shindo, illustrates a view from below, physically with the bombed looking up at the bomber and socially by centering on women, children and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha" target="_blank">hibakusha</a></i>. This viewpoint of above and below is carried over into subsequent films as the two cinematic traditions further diverge, and sometimes converge. A second comparison represents the emerging Cold War climate of fear and anxiety, as portrayed in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa" target="_blank">Akira Kurosawa</a>'s 1955 film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048198/" target="_blank">Ikimono no kiroku</a></i> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick" target="_blank">Stanley Kubrick</a>'s 1964 film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/" target="_blank">Dr. Strangelove</a></i>. The question of nuclear proliferation forms the basis for the 1979 Japanese film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194426/" target="_blank">Taiyo wo nusunda otoko</a></i> and the 1992 American film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091472/" target="_blank">The Manhattan project</a></i>, both of which depict an individual building an atomic bomb. As Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Cold War recede into the past, later films struggle with the question of memory, as represented by the 1991 Kurosawa classic <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101991/" target="_blank">Hachigatsu no kyoushikyoku</a></i>, which depicts three generations of Japanese recalling the Nagasaki bombing. By limiting the course content to selected American and Japanese films about the atomic bomb, we aim to sketch the history of the atomic bomb by showing how memories of a singular event become plural, while also providing opportunities for students to engage in analysis of how these themes are developed visually.<br />
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Our method so far is clearly not perfect; there is much room for improvement. Regarding the board illustrations, the challenges include time, arrangement, skill and style. The allowed time to render them before class starts is fairly tight (15-20 minutes) considering the prepared design has to be transferred onto the chalkboard in different sizes and tools. Often under the pressure of time, details get left out to prioritize text, which may result in less pleasant and effective visual literacy. That leads to a more personal issue of skill, which of course requires continual practice to improve, based on feedback from students. We only began putting this method into use roughly a year ago and it has been a relatively new and gradual process to develop and stabilize the essence of doing illustrations. Changes made through time can be seen in the following figures for the first part of <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>. Though generally seen as an improvement after a year gap, the difficulty was reported in reading the cursive handwriting. In most cases, it is the first time students learn about the provided concepts so clear and simple writing is preferred, which leads us to the matter of style. Illustration and lettering styles, though generally appreciated, can hinder understanding if one is not familiar with cursive script and pictorial notes. Some students further pointed out the difficulty in taking note of what's on the board and the lecturer's explanations at the same time. Likewise, a similar problem of multitasking is addressed in taking notes while watching films. We respond to these observations by suggesting that films and illustrations are not flat and fixed, but prone to multiple interpretations. We thus recommend practice and patience in order to acquire university level note-taking skills and make the best out of what visual literacy has to offer. However, while reminding students to take the challenges as a learning opportunity, we are always looking for ways to turn these limitations into a source of more creativity after each and every lecture.<br />
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Beyond the specific content covered in the courses, there are a few overarching themes that can be raised in this context as well, so in lieu of a conclusion we wish to reflect on some of those themes here. The three named courses are part of the Culture, Society and Media cluster in the College of Asia Pacific Studies. While a typical approach to interdisciplinary teaching is to give each branch of the cluster its own set of courses, we aim instead to move between sociology, cultural history and cinema studies. This is challenging and we by no means profess to have perfected a balance and so further reflection is necessary. We are also making an effort to offer course content that exemplifies diversity, in keeping with the multicultural climate of the university, so we carefully select films from a variety of cinematic traditions. Some films are by highly accomplished directors, such as Kurosawa and Shindo of Japan, Ray of India and Kubrick of America, providing another benefit of introducing students to some of the gems of world cinema. This bolsters the humanities-oriented offerings at the university. The diversity of the selected films and their presentation through multiple lenses invites students to develop their own thinking and writing, as well as their social interactions, along these lines. Finally, by screening the films in a large scale lecture setting, we strive to create a common experience among students, which we have found fosters social interaction even as contemporary university life becomes more atomized. Given these tentative steps, we hope that in addition to being applied to the specific courses mentioned above, what we have outlined here might also inspire others to take up similar approaches in their own university teaching, in particular in those instances in which large scale lectures are the norm. We further suggest that conceiving of teaching in this way, through blending the humanities and social sciences into an integrated comparative, multicultural, interdisciplinary, skills-driven framework, can offer an alternative to the unfortunate current trend of marginalizing those fields in higher education.<br />
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[The foregoing is by J. Progler, professor of Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Japan, and Nhu Ngoc Nguyen, a graduate student in Culture and Society at APU. Progler's writing can be found online <a href="https://ritsumeikan-apu.academia.edu/JProgler" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://progler.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://atomicfootlocker.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a>, and Nguyen's artwork and writing is online <a href="https://nguyennhungoc.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.]TVMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13503054801750777277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-11537937415632190542016-03-26T08:05:00.000+09:002016-04-08T05:14:54.757+09:00A Puerto Rican Experiment in Social Films<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dYtUy6LBJAo/TN_EyoDGIMI/AAAAAAAAAN0/l4m4syblGvs/s1600/peloteros.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dYtUy6LBJAo/TN_EyoDGIMI/AAAAAAAAAN0/l4m4syblGvs/s1600/peloteros.jpg" /></a>At a time when Latin American and other Third World national cinemas began to finally receive their long overdue recognition, the need emerged to develop a plan for the methodological study of the Puerto Rican cinematic tradition. Undertaking this project, Ines Mongil-Echandi and Luis Rosario Albert concentrated their analysis on the collection of over 100 films produced by the Division of Community Education during the 1940s through the 1960s under the sponsorship of Governor Luis Munoz Marin. These films represent a national artistic expression whose great value was internationally recognized at the time but which after 40 years lacked an analysis based on modern historical studies of film.<br />
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This essay results from an extensive research project about Puerto Rican cinema, inspired by the enthusiastic participation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Leyda">Jay Leyda</a>, professor of film history at New York University, and supported by <a href="http://www.exitart.org/">Exit Art</a>, a nonprofit art organization in New York City. The essay provides a general overview of the Puerto Rican cinematic tradition, films as a visual presentation of the historical process of a developing nation. It is meant to situate Puerto Rican cinema within the context of worldwide practices and to serve as a contribution to the historical studies of Third World national cinemas.<br />
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These films constitute a unique collection. They were produced as part of an innovative approach by the Puerto Rican government to organize and educate the adult population of Puerto Rico. The creation of the Division of Community Education meant the consolidation of ideas shared by a group of creative and political figures among whom were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Mu%C3%B1oz_Mar%C3%ADn">Governor Munoz Marin</a> and his wife <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ines_Mendoza">Ines Mendoza</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Delano">Jack and Irene Delano</a>, Edwin Rosskam, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Marques">Rene Marques</a>, Fred Wale and Carmen Isales.<br />
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The program of the Division of Community Education combined the production of educational materials - books, posters, and motion pictures - a with a program of field work and community organization carried out mostly in the rural areas of the island. The combination was to become a force in the lives of the people, something to stand on and to act by. The program had as its base the 'idealistic' purpose of changing peoples' attitudes by group discussions and community action. Their goal was summarized in the preamble of the Act which created the Division of Community Education in 1949 under Puerto Rico's Department of Education. It was written by Munoz Marin in English and Spanish to ensure that his intentions were well understood:<br />
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'The goal of community education is to impart basic teaching on the nature of man, his history, his life, his way of working and of self-governing in the world and in Puerto Rico. Such teachings addressed to adult citizens meeting in groups in the barrios, settlements and urban districts, will be imparted through moving pictures, radio, books, pamphlets and posters, phonographic records, lectures and group discussions. The object is to provide the good hand of popular culture with the tool of basic education. In practice this will mean giving the communities and the Puerto Rican community in general the wish, the tendency and the way of making use of their own aptitudes for the solution of many of their own problems.' </blockquote>
The project of stimulating self-help in the communities relied on Munoz Marin's ideas that the community should not be 'civically unemployed' and that the government was not solely responsible for the social well-being of Puerto Rico. The Division was his favorite project since it reflected his ideas of education. It cultivated democratic participation by the community in the solution of their problems thereby building an infrastructure that raised rural levels of living, maximized the scarce fiscal resources for the local public works, and enabled industrialization. In this sense, the Community Education program was a part of a larger project of industrialization developed by Munoz Marin attracting United States capital to the island under the program '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bootstrap">Operation Bootstrap</a>.' As well, the program inscribed within the parallel '<a href="http://www.flmm.com/pags_nuevas_folder/biografia_folder/op_serenidad.html">Operation Serenity</a>' the concept of a satisfactory way of life and culture for Puerto Ricans. The dramatic and widespread achievements of 'Operation Bootstrap' have tended to overshadow the great accomplishments of the Division of Community Education as a program which represented Munoz Marin's concern with the non-economic aspects of Puerto Rico's rapid economic and social transformations. The favoritism of Munoz Marin towards this project is revealed in the fact that many of the films produced were premiered at the governor's mansion.<br />
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The entire Community Education program was constructed as a complex educational machine consisting of four interrelated parts: Administration, Field and Training, Production, and Analysis. The Production Section was divided into three units - Editorial, Graphics, and Cinema - which produced three different educational and audio-visual materials: booklets, posters, and films. The production of educational materials began in 1946 with the Division of Visual Education of the Public Recreation and Parks Commission. The Graphics Unit was headed by Irene Delano who introduced silk-screen printing techniques to the island. Jack Delano became the director of the Cinema Unit, while Edwin Rosskam occupied the position of editor and chief of the Production Section. One of the major tasks of this first team was to begin a campaign of recruiting the best Puerto Rican talent who showed interest in learning and developing the crafts of writing, graphics, and filmmaking.<br />
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The films are inscribed within a government-sponsored production model of documentary films that underline the educational purposes with a creative use of cinema. The first films done in the Division of Visual Education, written by Rosskam, a former editor for the New Deal program at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration">Farm Security Administration</a>, and directed by Jack Delano, a photographer for the FSA's Photographic Unit, constitute an experimental phase within the production of educational materials.<br />
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The experience of the Division of Visual Education proved that the production of educational materials within the island's limited budget was possible. This established the model for the production of the films of the Division of Community Education. Films that were meant to challenge and change the attitude of a traditional, rural, adult population required a specific style and mode of production.<br />
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The first four films produced by the Division of Visual Education between 1946-49 (<i>Jesus T. Pinero</i>, <i>La Cana</i>, <i>Informe al Pueblo</i>, <i>La Voz del Pueblo</i>) combine the use of factual footage with a voiceover narration that reaffirms the information provided by the image. The simple language of the first productions was based on statistical reports made at that time, that the average educational level of the adult rural population did not go over the fourth grade. <i>Una Gota de Agua</i> (<i>A Drop of Water</i>, 1947) marked the beginning of a production model later developed by the Division of Community Education. The use of factual footage and voiceover narration is accompanied by the convincing testimony of a 'real' nurse urging the people to boil water, adding the use of natural actors.<br />
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By the early fifties, the production, educational, and aesthetic model of the Division was clearly defined. Aside from using nonprofessional actors (members of communities) to play their life-stories on films, the films were shot on location in the Puerto Rican countryside. Entire crews spent months living with the people who were the actors, creating a relationship between them and the film producers that resulted in a great realism.<br />
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The films addressed two different aspects of education: information on specific community problems and events and messages to provoke the change of prejudicial or negative attitudes. With this aim, the use of drama was included as a way of appealing to popular emotion in order to provoke the desired change of attitudes. The films represented the problems of the adult rural society in a dramatic and realistic style and were based on true stories of the communities as they were reported by the group organizers.<br />
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Some of the most common problems presented by the films as subject matter were: concrete community problems such as building bridges, roads, schools (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305956/"><i>Los Peloteros</i></a>, 1951; <i>Una Voz en la Montana</i>, 1952; <i>El Puente</i>, 1954); consumer and market education (<i>Una Gota de Agua</i>, 1947; <i>Pedacito de Tierra</i>, 1952; <i>Juan sin Seso</i>, 1959); old leadership (<i>El Cacique</i>, 1957); timidity (<i>Ignacio</i>, 1956); women's rights (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178760/"><i>Modesta</i></a>, 1956; <i>Que Opino la Mujer</i>, 1957; <i>Gena la de Blas</i>, 1964); cooperative action (<i>El de los Cuatro Cabos Blancos</i>, 1955; <i>Caminos del cooperativismo</i>, 1961; <i>El Yugo</i>, 1959; <i>Accion Comunal</i>, 1959); labor and social well-being (<i>Las Manos del Hombre</i>, 1952; <i>La Cana</i>, 1947; <i>El Hombre Esperado</i>, 1964; <i>Informe al Pueblo #1</i>, 1948); and popular culture (<i>Nenen de la Ruta Mora</i>, 1955; <i>La Plena</i>, 1957; <i>El Resplanador</i>, 1962).<br />
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One of the most important features of these films was that it they included the villagers and farmers who formed the majority of the Puerto Rican population. The films represented aspects of Puerto Rican <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jibaro"><i>jibaro</i></a> (country person) everyday life, within their own context of labor and social relations. In general, the representation of the <i>jibaro</i> is not exploitative or paternalistic. In this sense, the films break away from the 'pastoral nostalgia' and the misrepresentation of the <i>jibaro</i> found in bourgeois Puerto Rican literature. Instead, the films represent the <i>jibaros'</i> recognition of themselves and the solutions of their problems as a group. However, not all of the problems facing the Puerto Rican rural population round a democratic solution. The films tend to portray an idealized vision of rural life in Puerto Rico that responds to the program's main purpose of promoting community meetings and, thus, changing attitudes. Different from other occidental 'official' film productions that pose a problem and a solution, these films are concerned mainly with the representation of the process of the community's recognition of its own problems.<br />
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All across the island the Division's group organizers arranged community meetings to bring the message of democratic participation contained in the films and books, often going over difficult terrain in jeeps equipped with portable electric generators, a film projector and screen. On the day of the screening, the group organizer had already visited the community to distribute the books and to place the posters that promoted the film screenings and called the people to the site of the screening by playing music on the loudspeakers. The music attracted entire families who walked down the mountains bringing with them musical instruments to play along during the 'festive' occasion. The films, based on everyday life of the rural people, created within the audience a sense of identification and stimulated discussion with the group organizers of their problems in relation to those portrayed in the films.<br />
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Two weeks after the screening of the films, the group organizers met with the communities to discuss the way in which the films provided valuable information for solving their common problems. The group organizer was responsible for reporting back to the central office on the nature of the audience's reaction and the establishment of a relationship between the communities. These responses determined the content and themes of future films.<br />
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With these films, the rural communities became the spectators of their own situation, seeing themselves and the solution to their problems represented on the screen. This became a fundamental part in the development of the Division's production model. Stimulated by the films toward the solution of their own problems and improving their lives, they began constructing public works that resulted in government savings of millions of dollars annually, at the same time contributing to the democratic development of the society as a whole.<br />
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After the first few years of production the films began to receive artistic recognition in the international film community. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1111082/">Amilcar Tirado</a>'s film <i>Una Voz en la Montana</i> (<i>A Voice in the Mountain</i>) won a Diploma of Merit in the 1952 Edinburgh Film Festival. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178760/"><i>Modesta</i></a>, directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0232525/">Benjamin Doniger</a> with the Puerto Rican cinematographer <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0537905/">Luis Maisonet</a>, won the First Prize in the 1956 Venice Film Festival and particpated in the 1957 Melbourne Film Festival.<br />
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As part of their professional training, the members of the Cinema and Editorial Units began to participate in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Flaherty">Robert Flaherty</a> Seminars, a documentary film organization on the East Coast founded by Frances Flaherty, which included well-known film critics and filmmakers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Barnouw">Erik Barnouw</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Dyke">Willard Van Dyke</a>. The films were enthusiastically received and praised for their simplicity of cinematic narrative and dramatic documentary style which used natural actors. In 1955, through these seminars, Willard Van Dyke was invited to the island to train a new group of film technicians. His work in Puerto Rico resulted in the production of <i>El de los Cuatro Cabos Blancos</i> (<i>The One with the Four White Hooves</i>) and a short film about flowers, <i>Mayo Florido</i> (<i>Flowering May</i>).<br />
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The program continued to attract international interest. In the 1950s the Museum of Modern Art presented an evening of Puerto Rican films. the RCA International Division published a bilingual booklet in recognition of the accomplishments of the Division of Community Education and as sales promotional literature for its own products. Furthermore, RCA made its own 30-minute color film: <i>The School House on the Screen</i>. The United States Information Agency and UNESCO began to distribute the films worldwide and they were shown in Italy and Latin America as an example of educational materials used by community action programs to stimulate adult education.<br />
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In retrospect, the Division of Community Education's cinematic production forms part of the great wave of the realist aesthetic and 'agit-prop' experience. In England, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grierson">John Grierson</a>, with the sponsorship of the colonial Empire Marketing Board, began to produce labor-oriented informative documentaries with the social and commercial protection of the state. Already in the late twenties Grierson posed the documentary filmmaker's aesthetic and social mission to 'bring the citizen's eye in from the ends of the earth to the story, his story of what was happening under his nose... The drama of the doorsteps' (quoted in Erik Barnouw, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=qtZ91DNvgBMC&"><i>Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film</i></a>, New York, Oxford University Press, 1974).<br />
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Under different historical conditions, this aesthetic wave is evident several years later in American documentary art of the thirties, in the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration">WPA</a> arts projects, the Photographic Unit of the FSA, Frontier Films, and especially in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pare_Lorentz">Pare Lorentz</a>'s New Deal films <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122662/"><i>The Plow that Broke the Plains</i></a> (1936) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029490/"><i>The River</i></a> (1937). Pare Lorentz's case relates to the Puerto Rican documentary tradition because his sponsor was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_G._Tugwell">Rexford G. Tugwell</a>, a member of President Franklin Roosevelt's brain trust and the last U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico in 1941. Tugwell became the sponsor of an office of information which visually recorded the life of rural Puerto Rico. The office of information later produced John Ferno's film <i>Puerto Rico</i> (1947), one of the first documentaries made about the island by a member of the New York documentary film movement.<br />
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That the first group of people who worked in the production of educational materials in Puerto Rico was composed mainly of American artists and social workers tied to the New Deal programs constitutes an important aesthetic and ideological influence on the Puerto Rican documentary film tradition. On the other hand, the impact of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neorealism_%28art%29#In_cinema">Italian Neo-Realist Cinema</a> served to reaffirm the artistic possibilities of educational films in terms of using nonprofessional actors and location shooting within a dramatic style in the films of the Division of Community Education.<br />
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An analysis of the general results of the work of the Division of Community Education is certainly out of the scope of the our essay. However, the material goal of sharing responsibility for the construction of local public works between the government and the community promoted the development of an infrastructure in the countryside that constituted part of the political justification of the program. Therefore, the impressive number of local public works accomplished should not be the only measure applied to the spiritual goal of achieving a change in the people's attitude toward democratic participation.<br />
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The achievement of this goal of democratic consciousness is even harder to determine considering that the program of the Division of Community Education took place together with other government programs which were often contradictory. For instance, the massive migration movement of Puerto Ricans necessarily obstructed the Community Education effort. Also, while the Division of Community Education promoted women's rights, the government was launching a massive birth control campaign which resulted in the sterilization of a third of the female population of child-bearing age.<br />
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Nevertheless, one of the most important contributions of the Division is in its cultural products. Millions of booklets were distributed and discussed in community gatherings. the films had a wide exposure between the 1940s and the 1960s with an audience of over 2,000,000 viewers. The production section of this government division became a workshop which gathered some of the most talented Puerto Rican artists. Writers like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Marques">Rene Marques</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Juan_Soto">Pedro Juan Soto</a>, Emilio Diaz Valcarcal, and Jose Luis Vivas Maldonado gained experience and exposure. Graphic artists Irene Delano, Felix Bonilla, Carlos Raquel Rivera, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Homar">Lorenzo Homar</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Tufi%C3%B1o">Rafael Tufino</a>, Isabel Bernal, and Antonio Maldonado developed a fine graphic tradition. Filmmakers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Delano">Jack Delano</a>, Amilcar Tirado, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0537905/">Luis Maisonet</a>, Oscar Torres, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0232525/">Benjamin Doniger</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1080742/">Marcos Betancourt</a>, and Angel F. Rivera were responsible for the production of a unique collection of social films. For these artists, some of whom have been associated with the independence movement in Puerto Rico, the educational artistic effort of the Division of Community Education was a patriotic mission which furthered the development of Puerto Rican society.<br />
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The films continue to represent a visual memory of the political and economic transformations which took place in Puerto Rico in the mid 20th century. To us, this collection shows a cinematic expression that is typically Puerto Rican, especially during the first 15 years of production. The Division of Community Education produced the most important body of films of a national cinema that exemplifies the aesthetic possibilities of the dramatic documentary style within the specific purposes of a government-sponsored adult education program.<br />
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[This is a slightly edited version of the article 'Films with a Purpose: A Puerto Rican Experiment in Social Films' by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0598049/">Ines Mongil-Echandi</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0016544/">Luis Rosario Albert</a>, which was originally published in the film and video monthly journal <i>The Independent</i>, Vol. 10, No. 6, July 1987, pp. 11-14. The authors, who held Master's degrees in Cinema Studies from New York University, were at the time of its publication working as associate researchers for the film archive project of the Luis Munoz Marin Foundation and film consultants to the Department of Education's film preservation project.]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-24301880898087797442015-07-18T01:58:00.000+09:002015-07-18T17:05:16.849+09:00Six Films About Religion and Belief<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When religion is examined as a social institution and belief as a set of cultural values, films sharing common religious themes come in handy for their isolated contexts and full-length storyline with clear focal points. This essay sets out to compare and discuss three arguably well-circulated themes throughout all religions and beliefs by looking at three pairs of films: <i>We’re No Angels</i> (USA 1989) with <i>Marmoulak</i> (aka <i>The Lizard</i>, Iran 2004); <i>Devi</i> (aka <i>The Goddess</i>, India 1960) with <i>Bagh-e Sangi</i> (aka <i>Garden of Stones</i>, Iran, 1976); and <i>The Shoes of the Fisherman</i> (USA/UK 1968) with <i>Zir-e Nur-Mah</i> (aka <i>Under the Moonlight</i>, Iran 2001).<br />
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The first pair, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098625/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">We’re No Angels</a>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Jordan" target="_blank">Neil Jordan</a>, and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416960/" target="_blank">Marmoulak</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Tabrizi" target="_blank">Kamal Tabrizi</a>, are within the theme of “hiding behind religion,” in which viewers are walked through the journeys of “convicts” (criminals) turning into “converts,” meaning someone who changed religion, or the conversion of moral standards under the influence of religion. For one, the journeys initiated by the need for a shelter from unfair legal enforcement for the convict-characters Jimmy and Neddy in <i>We’re No Angels</i>; and wrong conviction for Reza in <i>Marmoulak</i>. The common motif of film reading would easily predict their believers as their change for the better by moving from a polluted environment to a pure holy circle of religious as false priests. What did religion have to radically change them? There are arguments against “miracles” of prompt rescue by the Weeping Madonna but witnessing those certainly influenced the leading characters’ belief in supernatural power, which resulted in significant changes in their character development. Such influences should not be seen as merely submission to the religion, but also as a journey to win back their true self. Regarding the “untamed” nature of “convicts,” Reza’s talent of climbing walls in <i>Marmoulak</i> is a gift, which was first misused to steal and thus caused him to be imprisoned, but then was adjusted into a tool to help others. Likewise in <i>We’re No Angels</i>, Jimmy shows his deep concerns for life conditions in prison; while Neddy, despite his being self-centered and selfish, never fails to look after Jimmy’s safety.<br />
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The common factor of children in both films also contribute to inner changes provoked by the religious shields on the convicts. Both the daughter of the widow in <i>We’re No Angels</i> and Reza’s imaginary boy in <i>Marmoulak</i> do not communicate with voices and only make their silent appearance whenever the leading characters encounter a moral dilemma. The innocence and purity of children, which are arguably close to that religious goodness, are utilized to monitor, adjust and eventually tame greed and selfishness, or bad intentions in general. It works splendidly, as we see how Reza voluntarily submitted to justice or how Neddy bravely jumped off the bridge to rescue the girl. The convict/converts’ good nature never ceases to exist, only polluted by sins; religion is therefore a cleanser to make it once again embraced and appreciated. Although we may accuse believers of their naiveness to have accepted the cunning convicts, as the story unfolds we have learned that there is much truth to their illegitimate preaching, such as Reza’s observation that “there are as many paths to reach God as there are people in the world,” or Jimmy’s “the one thing they can never take away from you.” Their moral speech is in both films the evidence of complete repentance as converts, as well as the fact that the same act of hiding behind religion opens up different directions for people to choose the path that fits them the most. In sum, religion here acts as a guide to inner peace and redemption for sinners regardless of their initial approach, rather than an ideal destination.<br />
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The next pair are two non-Hollywood films <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053765/" target="_blank">Devi</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyajit_Ray" target="_blank">Satyajit Ray</a>, and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169580/" target="_blank">Bagh-e Sangi</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parviz_Kimiavi" target="_blank">Parviz Kimiavi</a>. Both share a focus on “abusing religious symbolism” whose several factors open, develop and invariably lead to their tragic closure. No doubt religious symbolism is of dominant significance in both films but the manner in which it is presented through sets of symbolic dualities is central to my discussion, all of which can be traced back to one core: the imbalance of symbolic dualities. Dualities are not necessarily opposites, but rather different directions of interpretation from the same root. For the sake of clarifying this claim, I would like to analyze two typical symbolic dualities that manifested the tragic endings.<br />
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First, there is the duality of stone and flesh. In <i>Devi</i>, it is the goddess statue and Doya herself; while in <i>Bagh-e Sangi</i>, it is the garden of stones and its creator Darvish Khan. This duality is more apparent in the former because the statue bears the appearance of the Goddess, which is believed to be Doya in her father-in-law’s dream vision; whereas in the latter, the garden of stone is an interpretation of Khan’s holy vision. There is no way to know for sure what is the correct interpretation of a holy vision, but in both cases, there was ineffective communication between the first and secondary receivers, which resulted in forcing religious values of stone onto flesh. In <i>Devi</i>, the rituals are entirely imposed on Doya as if she is a mute living statue. In <i>Bagh-e Sangi</i>, Khan is actually deaf and mute so instead of flesh, other people form their judgement based on his arrangement of stones (and vague body language). These distorted judgements varied greatly and therefore led to different reactions toward the stone and eventually tragedies to the flesh: maddened Doya and suicidal Khan.<br />
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Second, the duality of holy water and tears is presented in both films. Crying is the method of expressing emotions for both Doya and Khan. Doya is assumedly too reserved and depressed to speak up, so most of the time she silently cries; while Khan, despite his immense concentrating in his artwork, cries very remarkable tears when being frustrated by others’ abusing his work. Both are secular water but granted with holy power. Doya’s tears are believed to save lives, Khan’s tears are an abstract portrayal of offended powers that eventually destroy the garden’s holiness. However, these strange effects of tears: resurrecting power in <i>Devi</i> and white liquid covering everything in <i>Bagh-e Sangi</i>, are interpreted in the bias towards the rationalization of the majority’s religious expectations, and against the common indication of human dissatisfaction. Had they attempted better observation on both implications of tears, the burden of divinity would have been reduced. Therefore, when people are blinded by their own prejudiced belief, they tend to ignore the respect of the worldly values in religious practices and thus abuse these religious symbols, which commonly lead to regretful tragedies.<br />
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Last but not least, the pair of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063599/" target="_blank">The Shoes of the Fisherman</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Anderson_(director)" target="_blank">Michael Anderson</a>, and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278159/" target="_blank">Under the Moonlight</a></i>, directed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Mirkarimi" target="_blank">Reza Mirkarimi</a>, share a major element of religion and belief—“doubting the religious calling.” In fact, doubt is portrayed in all films on religion discussed so far, but these two particular plots make it a deliberate question mark through the dilemma in whether to accept a religious role in society. The leading characters in both films, respectively Kiril and Hassan, have to undergo some journeys against their will. Kiril was unexpectedly removed from Lubianka prison in Siberia to Moscow and then to Rome; while Hassan had to run after the street thief Chick and eventually ended up with the poor homeless people under a bridge in Tehran. Though prison in Fisherman and Hassan’s seminary bear a value of education, they are both a form of confinement: Entering such a political prisoner camp as Kiril is said to be a one-way trip; whereas Hassan always looks as if he is being trapped in a place to which he does not belong and hence does not take the studying and instructions seriously. Although Hassan appears to have doubts in becoming a mullah from the beginning, I argue it was not doubt initially. He only hesitated due to his own conflicting expectations and that of his family and society; besides, he did not seem to have much speculation toward religious doctrines. This non-committal feeling only turned into a doubt after he was exposed to the world of poverty and crime, in which people seek God as their only hope. Many incidents take place along the way for Hassan, from Mr. Manoochehr’s advice to the under-bridgers’ activities and conversations, to imply that the motivation of his indecisiveness has turned into the desire to do good. He started, at least implicitly, to ask himself the question of how much a mullah can be helpful to others. This question is of course asked more explicitly by Kiril on many occasions, such as during his ordination and conclave, because he knows how significant an influence he can exert as such a respectable figure in the Church of Rome, especially under the great pressure of impending nuclear war.<br />
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The expression of doubt in both characters is produced by the imposition of outside expectations and the internal desire to be good and helpful. The resolution of these doubts therefore depends pretty much on the people to whom each attached themselves in their journeys. Kiril befriends Father Telemond on the plane to Moscow and became an admirer of his original and unconventional religious speculations. Hassan, on the other hand, learns empathy for the under-bridgers, brings them food and weeps for their sins and misfortune, and in turn they bring him signs of God. It is thanks to the struggle of these people that our leading characters grow more determined in choosing the religious path as a power to do good and bring justice. Kiril and Hassan in the end “have learned enough to face freedom” from mental confinement because they have found the answer to their doubts: Religion is only the means to justice, but justice itself relies on the will of people.<br />
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[This essay is by Nguyen Nhu Ngoc, who studies Culture, Society and Media at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136887673599661171.post-79805251921035441232015-06-10T09:41:00.000+09:002015-06-11T09:13:16.379+09:00Cinema Criticism and Social Class<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Art films, middle cinema and commercial films in India all depend on the middle classes for legitimacy and critical acclaim. Even those producers and performers who stridently proclaim the supremacy of popular taste, or denounce the elitism of the art-film critics, are on the defensive when there is a sharp criticism of their wares in the media. Indeed, the way the producers of each of these kinds of movies try to win friends and influence middle-class opinion give the lie to their declared dependence on only the opinions of the 'common Indian.' The common Indian is rarely influenced by what Kumar Shahani says of Manmohan Desai. But Desai was distressed when Shahani took him on while Shahani in turn resents that his films do not get the patronage or support of those for whom his radical ear bleeds, whereas Desai mobilizes such support with casual ease. Nevertheless, there are clear differences in the cultural thrusts of the three; to gauge the appeal or lack of appeal of any of these forms, one must first identify the thrusts.<br />
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First, the commercial film tends to reflect and be protective towards the implicit cultural values of the society. If it criticizes traditions, the criticism tends to be indirect, latent or unintended. If for instance there is criticism of untouchability, it is grounded on the traditional concept of a humane society; if there is criticism of religious violence, the criticism invokes not so much the secular values of a modern polity as the perennial values of the religions involved.<br />
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Of course, the emphasis on cultural self-expression or cultural self-defense is also simultaneously a defiance and unwitting criticism of middle-class values. The commercial cinema in India does tend to reaffirm the values that are being increasingly marginalized in public life by the language of the modernizing middle classes, values such as community ties, consensual non-contractual human relations, primacy of maternity over conjugality, priority of the mythic over the historical. But even such indirect criticism of middle-class values is cast not in the language of social criticism but in that of playful, melodramatic, spectacles.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">In art films and middle cinema, on the other hand, the emphasis on the expressive function of art and the reaffirmation of cultural values tends to be muted. High-brow films usually provide sharp criticisms and deep analyses of the social pathologies associated with tradition, which contrasts markedly with their shallow or superficial criticisms of the violence and exploitation associated with modern institutions. The high cinema in India has never been particularly sensitive to the growing threats to lifestyles, life-support systems and non-modern cognitive orders, or for that matter to the values of those in the 'survival sector' of the society--a sector not primarily concerned with the goal of a good life (as it is defined by modern Indian), but with mere survival and the protection of whatever little the survivor has by way of access to the global commons, traditional technologies, knowledge of health care and community self-sufficiency outside the monetized sector of the economy. The feelings, attitudes and values associated with the survival sector are the ones that the commercial cinema consciously or unconsciously exploits but in the process also unwittingly supports, even if only partially and even while mouthing the slogans of the dominant culture of politics. Commercial cinema romanticizes and, given half a chance, vulgarizes the problems of the survival sector, but it never rejects as childish or primitive the categories or worldviews of those trying to survive the processes of victimization let loose by modern institutions. The makers of commercial cinema cannot indulge in the luxury of such rejection, given the kind of audience they seek. (This tacit refusal to reject cultural values and embrace modernity uncritically also partially explains the enormous popularity of the Indian commercial cinema in parts of the erstwhile Soviet Block which had rich native traditions of art cinema patronized by the state.)</span><br />
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Second, the middle cinema is--some may say was--the true heir to pre-Independence popular cinema and its occasional, mostly unsuccessful attempts to be arty (by which I simply mean the scattered attempts by some movie-makers to turn cinema into a new artistic medium of cultural and personal self-expression in India). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramathesh_Barua">P.C. Barua</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Shantaram">V. Shantaram</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debaki_Bose">Debaki Bose</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimal_Roy">Bimal Roy</a> did not make art films, nor did they lay down the basis for future directors of art films. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyajit_Ray">Satyajit Ray</a> has often claimed that he learnt little from these makers of what were popularly seen as clean, socially relevant, technically competent films; he had virtually to create his own medium and style.) Though the middle cinema is often viewed as a compromise between art and commercial cinema, it could be more appropriately seen as a further development of the style that once catered to the middle-class culture of the 1930s and 1940s. The middle cinema has in fact a tradition to build upon, the tradition of the 'good popular cinema' of yesteryears.<br />
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Indeed, the middle cinema can claim to originate from an even wider cultural current--the current represented by a galaxy of well-crafted, less-than-great creative products, from the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_verma">Ravi Verma</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premchand">Premchand</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girish_Chandra_Ghosh">Girish Chandra Ghose</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prithviraj_Kapoor">Prithviraj Kapoor</a>, from Marathi stage music to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundan_Lal_Saigal">K.L. Saigal</a>. Viewed thus, the middle cinema caters to that part of the middle-class consciousness which has during the last century and a half played a creative role in Indian society by sustaining a dialogue at the popular plane, however imperfect, between the traditional and the modern, the East and the West, the classical and the folk.<br />
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What we call popular cinema today is certainly popular but its links are now weakening with the pre-war popular cinema and the middle-class experiences that sustained that cinema. Popular cinema now (for the sake of clarity I shall stick to the term commercial cinema) has more links with the growing mass culture in India. However, though these links are getting stronger every day, they do not monopolize commercial cinema; nor are they likely to do so in the near future. So do distinctive ways of telling a story, the styles of acting, and the set-piece interactions of stereotypes. Above all survives a structure of myths that has proved remarkably resilient to all demands for change.<br />
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Third, commercial cinema has to take an instrumental view of cultural traditions and worldviews and present them theatrically and spectacularly. To do so, it has to <i>generalize</i> the specific problems of its different audiences and then <i>exteriorize</i> the psychological components of these problems. To this extent such cinema is anti-psychological: it presents conflicts as if they were conflicts among social types or products of a unique conjunction of external events. This point is further explored in Ashis Nandy, 'The Popular Hindi Film: Ideology and First Principles' (<i>India International Centre Quarterly</i>, 1981, 9, pp. 89-96) and <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aWC1AAAAIAAJ">The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games</a></i> (New Delhi: Viking and Penguin, 1989, ch. 1).<br />
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Thus, for instance, the grandiloquent stylization of the Muslim aristocratic traditions of north India, Goan Christian simplicity and love of a good life, Rajput valour, Bengali romanticism; they are all essential to the basic style of the commercial cinema. Thus also the dependence on stereotypical 'external' events or situations to sustain its story-line. Together they allow commercial cinema to 'spectacularize' and de-psychologize everything it touches--violence, dance, music, death, dress and love--and subject every sentiment and value to the judgment of the market. On commercial film as a spectacle in Roland Barthe's sense of the term, see the above cited article, 'The Popular Hindi Film.'<br />
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I sometimes suspect that this double-edged 'sensitivity' to culture is one of the few valid grounds for a social criticism of popular movies, not the violence and sex they depict nor what urbane critics say about their irrationality, crudity and use of stereotypes. In fact, the lack of realism and the dream-like quality--the 'cultural dream work,' one may call it--is deployed to deal with the concerns of low-brow viewers, concerns which most art films and middle cinema do not touch upon. The basic principles of commercial cinema derive from the needs of Indians caught in the hinges of social change who are trying to understand their predicament in terms of cultural categories known to them. The strength of the commercial cinema lies in its ability to tap the fears, anxieties and felt pressures towards deculturation and even depersonalization that plague a growing number of Indians who do not find the normative framework of the established urban middle-class culture adequate for their needs and yet have been pushed to adopt it in everyday life.<br />
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There can, of course, be political and aesthetic criticism of films catering to the mass culture. But it is possible that public lamentation about the alleged aesthetic and moral failure of the commercial film only reinforces its appeal for its audience which is unconcerned about the aesthetics and the ethics, the absurdity of 'immorality,' because it has the secret code by which to decipher the film's latent social message in the context of its life-world. It is actually willing to read such lamentations as final and satisfactory proof of the commercial film's defiance of culturally alien aspects of middle-class morality.<br />
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Fourth, there are differences in the way art films and commercial films, so to speak, see themselves and see each other. The main difference is that for the art film there is a clear artistic break between it and commercial films; for the commercial film there is only a commercial break. The partisans of art films see themselves as champions of a proper medium of individual and cultural self-expression; to them, commercial films are technically competent, high-paying financial ventures with no artistic legitimacy or social relevance. When the votaries of art cinema grant social relevance to the commercial film, they do so in negative terms, seeing the commercial cinema only as an index of social pathology.<br />
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To the partisans of commercial films, on the other hand, art films constitute an artistic continuum with the commercial cinema. They hold that the art-film maker is usually careless about the producer's money and can therefore afford to indulge in useless, baroque detailing as a private ego trip at public expense. The applause the art-film maker receives is primarily the work of pedantic film critics pretending to be entertained when they are actually bored to tears. Such art films are distinguished mainly by their cultural inability to gauge public sentiment and their ability to fail at the box office. The situation is actually more complicated. Like Hindu nationalists who constantly speak of themselves as representatives of Hindu sentiments but have never managed to get more than one-fifth of the Hindu vote, commercial filmmakers are not great prognosticators of the public taste. According to informal trade estimates, in India 80 percent of all commercial films fail at the box office; another 15 percent barely recover their costs. Less than 5 percent are hits. Obviously, there is no one-to-one relationship between popular taste and commercial cinema. (To get an idea of what popular taste may be reading into commercial cinema, see Nandy, 'The Popular Hindi Film.') There is also the fact that many famous and commercially thriving film producers have, at some stage of life, approached distinguished directors of art cinema, such as Satyajit Ray and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrinal_Sen">Mrinal Sen</a>, to make films for them.<br />
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The two kinds of film-makers also regard censorship differently. Commercial film-makers dislike censorship for the same reasons that businessmen hate social controls on business. They are out to sell their wares to the public and they feel that censorship, reflecting middle-class prudery, interferes with entrepreneurial freedom. Like other sections of the corporate world, they are convinced that what is good for the commercial film is also good for India. However, there is in them a deeper acceptance of censorship, as is evident from their frequent attempts to justify their films by pointing out how standard family values and politically correct public norms are upheld in them and by their spirited denial that their films include pornographic elements and anti-women attitudes or that they promote consumerism and violent vigilantism. Commercial film-makers never argue openly for great freedom to express eroticism or realistic violence or political dissent. They only argue that they are even more conventional in these respects than many others (such as the makers of low-brow Hollywood films that get past the Indian censors).<br />
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Art-film makers, in closer touch with the <i>haute bourgeoisie</i>, take a different line. They feel that their work need not be censored, for all art films by definition have mature and responsible viewpoints, unlike the commercial films which are (by definition again) infantile, irresponsible and deserving of censorship. True, art-film makers would like the censorship not to be too prudish or anti-political. But, on the whole, they consider the makers and consumers of commercial films to be eminently educable in matters of public morality and they believe censorship to be an instrument of discipline and socialization. The partisans of art cinema do not deny that the appeal of the commercial cinema lies precisely in its 'immaturity' and 'childishness'; they merely deny that immaturity can be defiance and regression rebellion, for they equate the child with the primitive waiting to be civilized and educated. The champions of the art film cannot afford to keep a space in the public realm for the undersocialized self of the viewer that registers, however imperfectly or crudely, the political presence of Indians at the margins of modern India.<br />
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[This essay was extracted from 'An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema' by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashis_Nandy">Ashis Nandy</a> and originally published in <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=8cGZQgAACAAJ">The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves</a></i> (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 202-207.]</div>
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