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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Maybe it's in bad taste to revive a thread from eight
months ago, but it doesn't look like anyone mentioned ISHII Teruo's 1960
<EM><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Ōsen
chitai</SPAN>,Yellow Line, </EM><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'MS Mincho'; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: PMingLiU"
lang=JA>黄線地帯</SPAN><EM>,</EM> for a highly questionable representation of
blackness.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Most of the film is set in the 'Casbah' section of
Kobe. The leading man eventually encounters a prostitute who has the trade
name of 'The Moor' <SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: PMingLiU; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">(‘Mūa’).
She's patently blacked up and played by an actress who is very white, with a
narrow face, thin lips with strongly pronounced nose, jaw and sharp eyebrow
ridges. She's also auburn (the film is in colour). I thought, to
start with, that we were supposed to perceive her as blacked up, required by her
pimp to take this trade role, but as the dialogue progresses, it seems that she
is simply supposed to be black. It's played with a strong, halting accent,
but I wouldn't care to say how that would have been placed.
The character comes to a sticky end and the plot lurches off
elsewhere. She is played by 'Susan Kennedy', who has no other roles on
IMDb or JMDb. The alliteration of 'zen' for 'san' in 'Susan' seems universal, so
not indicative of britishness for this actress.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: PMingLiU; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: PMingLiU; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Walking
back across Udine, I was discussing this role with a Slovenian TV
journalist. I argued for a dearth of black actresses in Tokyo in 1960 -
she argued for the blackness to be part of the humiliated role within the plot
(by her pimps). We then walked into Mark Schilling who basically agreed
with me, but, either way, it's more multiple exploitation, than
multi-culturalism. However, I wouldn't be surprised to find similar
representations of blackness in British and other European films up to that
time.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: PMingLiU; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Roger</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=amnornes@umich.edu href="mailto:amnornes@umich.edu">Nornes,
Markus</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
href="mailto:KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu">KineJapan</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, September 03, 2009 1:15
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: H-JAPAN (E): representations
of blacknesS, Japanese & Korean Cinema</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Several years ago, Nippon Connection showed a really
obnoxious film by Shinozaki Makoto. This is a director I respect, so I was
really at a loss when the lights went up. I guess you’d call it a madcap
parody of TV police/detective series. One of the main characters was a black
detective, played by a Japanese actor in overt blackface. It traded on the
worst kind of stereotypes. I think there’s even a scene where he eats
watermelon out of the refrigerator at a crime scene. I could bee wrong about
that, as I’ve tried hard to forget about the film. <BR><BR>I complained to
several (American and European) festival visitors about this (although
couldn’t bring myself to bring it up with Shinozaki-san himself); however,
they didn’t see the problem. This suggests that it might be a rich text to
look at, as there may be some contradictions or ambivalences worth playing
with. <BR><BR>But I doubt it.<BR><BR>Markus<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>On 9/3/09 7:51
AM, "Brian Ruh" <<A href="brianruh@yahoo.com">brianruh@yahoo.com</A>>
wrote:<BR><BR></SPAN></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Just saw this review of the film "Minami no Shima no
Furimun":<BR><A
href="http://metropolis.co.jp/movies/eiga/minami-no-shima-no-furimun/">http://metropolis.co.jp/movies/eiga/minami-no-shima-no-furimun/</A><BR><BR>The
film is set in Okinawa, and according to the review, "Worse than this highly
unoriginal plot is the fact that all the (mainly black) GIs are violent,
arrogant and abusive. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the portrayal is
outright racist."<BR><BR>Also, last week I sent an email to the list about
"Hotel Hibiscus," another film set in Okinawa, but I never saw it come
through. Here's what I wrote (apologies if it did make it through for others
and you're seeing this for the second time):<BR>Nakae Yuji's "Hotel
Hibiscus" focuses on a family on Okinawa. The children in the family don't
all have the same father (but they do have the same mother) -- one of them
has an African-American father while another has a white American father.
It's been a while since I've seen the film, but I don't think much is made
of this except to note it in passing. Which could be noteworthy in
itself.<BR><BR>==
Brian<BR><BR><BR> <BR><BR></SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>