NC: Okoge

[Jean W. Williams]

On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Frances Loden wrote:

> Another wearisome tendency of many Japanese films is the limited conception
> of the central female character.

And sometimes that gets mixed up with the "kookiness" to which you
previously referred.

One film which I really disliked for its treatment of the main female
character was "Okoge".  So much for the (mis)conception that marginalized
people necessarily have anything in common.  This (gay) director only
proved to me that he is capable of doing the very same things to a female
protagonist as his (heterosexual) director buddies.  What a guy!  And what
a "twist" on the homosocial relationship created between the male director
and his male audience.

>From the opening scene, when the young woman is literally made into a
phallus in her lipstick red swimsuit on the gay nude beach where, much to
her amazement, she finds herself totally ignored . . . to the point where
she "stands in for" the young gay guy with whom she's so smitten,
allowing herself to be raped by a brute, the character is complicit in
her own making as a fetish object.

In this film, the character is a literal convenience:  first providing a
site where the gay couple's sex can occur and finally, serving no
more purpose than a uterus on legs -- a walking womb-for-rent or what the
film describes as "the gay guy's dream come true".  (and it might be
added, a lot of heterosexual men's, too)

The scene in the gay bar where she literally inserts herself (doing male
drag) between the brute and the young gay guy and attempts to act as their
nakado, is painful to watch.  She seems constantly obsessed with
justifying her purpose/existence.  Are we really to believe that this
hunky young gay gay (who has already been involved in a relationship with
the older, married man) is so impotent as to be unable to pick up his own
date? Or for that matter, that he and his partner, left to their own
devices, would not have been able to figure out their own liaison
logisitics? It seems as though they "allow" the young woman to become a
convenient tool (phallus) for them, especially since she seems so
desperate to do so.

The scenes of her job - giving "voice" to animated characters, seems more
of a metacommentary on her real "purpose" -- for in this film that's about
all she really seems able to accomplish.  So much for dreams of Frida
Kahlo.


Jean Williams
Dept. of Performance Studies
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
jqw3827 at is2.nyu.edu