Tokyo Biyori

Joseph Murphy jamurphy
Thu Oct 30 15:20:18 EST 1997


>4) It's hard to trust a critic who misses or misinterprets basic facts
>about a film she is lambasting. It indicates (1) she wasn't paying
>attention or (2) her Japanese isn't up to snuff. Which is it Frances?

I don't know about that, Mark.  I'm not comfortable with the idea that a
flawless command of Japanese is required to make a critical observation
about a film.  It seems like a disciplinary move rather than an
interpretive move.  You might just as well say it's hard to trust a critic
who brings up trivial mistakes to avoid engaging a legitimate argument.
I understand Frances' to be suggesting that whether this is a "Japanese
film" or not, it also needs to be read under the category "melodrama" in
the sense in which it has been exhaustively theorized as an expressive
strategy.  But whereas melodrama typically offers an ambivalent pleasure to
female viewers (soliciting participation in social relations that are
oppressive, but offering generous space for female protagonists and
socially mandated "feminine" concerns, think of soap operas in any
language, it's pervasive in international popular culture.), it's been
twisted here rather resolutely into the service of the narcissistic male
ego.  Sure it's a "Japanese" male ego, but it seems like a good point to me
and the implicit frame helps make sense of the Araki phenomenon (this is
not just Araki, or Shimazu either, it goes back to Tanizaki, and the term
"feminisuto" was introduced into Japanese in Taisho with this connotation
of "woman worshipper", the conservative implications being obvious).  To me
making the disciplinary claim that only people with certain special tools
(language, familiarity with culture) are authorized to interpret has a
conservative tendency to close off that kind of insight.  Certainly, when
we screw up a reference, let us know, but I hope no one will be discouraged
from contributing because they're not quite sure they caught this or that
word, or understood a cultural reference.






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