Takeshi Kitano interview

[Abe-Nornes]

I read Mark's interview with Takeshi with great interest (thanks so much
for posting it!), especially since I had just read Aaron's article in
Eureka severals days before. I actually started writing a response, but
found myself writing so much of Aaron's stuff that I decided to wait and
lurk; I _knew_ he would do the work if I waited long enough! This article,
by the way, is the best thing I've read about Kitano, yet hardly scratches
the surface (AAG. "'Nihonjin' Kitano Takeshi," Eureka No. 400, 30.3 (Feb
1998): 42-51). I'm not surprised there's a dissertation in the works
already. 

One of the itches waiting to be scratched in that article is the
representation of women, so I was glad Aaron broached the subject now. I
enjoy filmmakers that keep you on your toes---that contradictory side of
Takeshi is appealing (he's also very funny). But at the same time, the
contradictions are somewhat muted by the impressions---years worth of
them---of "Beat" Takeshi on television. In other words, while two or three
side by side interview comments look like a complex, contradictory man,
Kitano demands to be understood through his intertext----those books, all
that television, _and_ the films (that dissertation's going to be a bear).
Perhaps the representation of women in his films is complex, but I can't
say I was surprised by the hideousness of _Violent Cop_. It only confirmed
all those impressions left by his television work; the film felt only like
an extension. It is here I find myself unwilling to accept contradictory as
only complexity...it's here that I don't want to let him off the hook
because he's an artist....in sum, I find myself the ideologue embracing
rigid consistency.

That's one reason why I'd rather talk about the violence, which is so much
more pleasurable.

Aaron writes, 
>Violence in Takeshi does operate in system of oppositions 
>(especially with stillness and the ever present deadpan faces) that 
>prevents us from considering his films as elegies of violence.

This is a gloss of what he does in the Eureka article. The lack of
expressiveness in faces, the narratives that refuse to move forward,
obstruct the creation of a character and a violence with which we can
identify. There is an opacity that interferes with the diegetic effect and
thus affect (correct me if I'm wrong...). 

I don't think it works like this; after all, one of Takeshi's core foreign
audiences is interested him only to the degree that he can be appropriated
as an Asian Trash Master, like John Woo. They are in it precisely for the
violence and its affect. Even in the films where characters are most
cypher-like, there is a seduction there. I liked the way that Aaron's
article suggests that those deadpan faces point to beings on the razor's
edge between life and death. When I saw Takeshi's films, I often thought
along similar lines----particularly the _uncanny_. You're never sure
whether these people are dead or alive, and that sense is strongest when
they are in the presence of someone who is sitting at that dividing line.
In otherwords, that expressionlessness is far from expressionless!

How do you place this violence? Is it one in the same fabric as the
representations of violence in other media like manga? Is it critical? Is
it misogynist? There's plenty of play there, but it reminded me of
something specific, a connection no one has thought of. These seem to be
the same expressionless, Noh-mask faces of the heros in Japan's war cinema.
There is an uncanny quality to those films as well. The presence of those
blank faces was seductive by design. I'd like to think about this more.

It looks to me as though the filmmaker we could productively compare Kitano
to is Griffith, who inevitably forces his commentators to frame their
opinions with a BUT:

Griffith's a great artist, BUT he's a racist...

or

Griffith's a racist, BUT he's a great artist

Markus