aka Sento

Abe-Nornes amnornes
Sun Jan 18 04:45:44 EST 1998


I was waiting for this:

>My research area is not in Japanese film, but Aaron's and Markus' comments on 
>Sento's name change and the state of feminism in Japanese film bothers me a
>bit.  
[snip] 
>I value my feminist education in the States but I appreciate even more her
>skepticism 
>toward the imposition of feminism upon the world outside of  white academic,
>social, 
>and political contexts.  I appreciate the feminist anxiety expressed in the
>writing of 
>Gerow and Markus, but I think what is more important is not the lack of
>feminist 
>education in Japan but how and why feminism is pertinent and essential in
>analyzing 
>films made by women

I am aware of the pitfalls here. However, the values that are at stake (and
perhaps equally problematic) lie elsewhere. It's not that I think these
Japanese filmmakers NEED feminism. It's that the doc and avant-garde
films/videos I value often take subjectivity on, politicizing it, and
cannily exploring its relationship to moving image media. You find this
everywhere in the world right now, but I often find myself disappointed by
work in Japan. Japan shares this trend towards inquiries about
subjectivity, and they are films by *both* men and women (Sento is only one
of the better ones, and certainly the most celebrated one). But they are
usually naively apolitical, sometimes conservative...even if they look
sharp and are very enjoyable to watch. 

I'm curious about this difference. In the American and European case, it
has a lot to do with the way feminists developed film theory in the 1970s
and 1980s (it seems especially strong in cinema, but you probably see the
same pattern in conceptual art). It's a diffuse, but traceable lineage, and
one of the best legacies of a lot of problematic film theory. 

So I was arguing that in the case of Japanese criticism and filmmaking
feminism did not serve as this kind of conceptual ground at a crucial
historical juncture, NOT that it needed it. Japan has had feminism as long
as we have, but it has simply functioned in different spheres; indeed, as a
political movement it has been powerfully effective in dealing with local
and regional issues ("naming" being one of them, which is why Sento's name
change is a political act). 

On several occassions we have broached the subject of films perceived as
politically progressive that feature striking, often chilling, violence
against women (in fact, Adachi was involved on some of the most extreme
examples). We never really got into this, but I think these questions will
have to account for the same historical developments in film criticism,
theory and practice.

Markus





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