Swallowtail Butterfly

Bethany Leigh Grenald bethany
Sat Oct 10 19:11:46 EDT 1998


I recently saw this movie so thought I'd give a review of it. I think
I interpreted it a bit differently than some others on this list.

>From the very beginning of Swallowtail Butterfly, the viewer is
destabilized as, while a poor quality video of an unidentifiable
industrial wasteland plays in the background, a narrator, in English,
introduces the movie. The introduction has a folkloric quality to it,
speaking about the events of the movie as having taken place in some
unspecified time in the past, even as the background
video seems evocative of both past and future, and various elements of the
film indicate that it's really taking place in the future.  For me, this
effect reminded me of the feeling I got when seeing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE,
which is supposed to be taking place in the future, is commentary on
the present, but is full of signifiers of its 1970s creation.  
Anyway, losely stated, I see SB as being a fable about the oppression of
minorities in Japan, while also being a commentary on the empty pursuit of
affluence in Japan, as seen through the eyes of "Yentowns" -- foreigners
who come to Japan (which they call "Yentown") to earn as many yen, "the
greatest force in the world," as they can. Our introduction to the
yentowns is via a nameless, pubescent girl of uncertain nationality, who
gets taken in by the Yentowns after her prostitute mother dies in some
unknown manner.  
    I call her the introduction to the yentowns because she is one of the
few characters in the movie who speaks Japanese fluently, and typical
movie convention in the states at least is to use a character from the
majority group to introduce the audience to that which is minority, or
unfamiliar to most of the audience.  But she only
marginally serves such a fuction -- the creators of this movie use
many techniques to try to give a sense of discomfort to the viewer, to
make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange.  These techniques
include having only a fragmentary plot; entering scene after scene with
the viewer having no clue about the background history of that scene;
employing less famous actors in the major roles (I confess I didn't know
any of them, but perhaps you who are more knowledgeable about film than me
will know them) while popular actors like Tomoko Yamaguchi get small
roles; as well as the temporal uncertainties mentioned
earlier. But the key way to discomfit in this movie is I think by playing
with language -- the actors here largely speak Chinese, a Chinese/Japanese
argot, English, and I heard Portuguese or Spanish at one point, too.  Perhaps
the longest exposition in Japanese in the movie then is by a white guy
(for want of a better term) who speaks accentless Japanese as his first
and only language.  The well known Japanese actors who appear in this
movie all speak English, I believe.  In this context, interactions with
Japanese people are quite limited, and when the yentowns meet them, the 
Japanese characters are written as either being bumbling
oafs who are no match for the wit of the yentowns, or else as brutal,
coldhearted people who destroy the yentowns with little effort and no
concern. 
     Indeed, while it seems the movie is about the greed of the yentowns,
it becomes apparent that this is a commentary on Japan, and displaced onto
the yentowns, who ultimately are cartoonish.  The violence that the
yentowns engage in is portrayed very cartoonishly, and at several points I
felt like I was almost watching an anime movie. But the violence of
the Japanese characters is filmed in a far more realistic manner, with
painful consequences.  

=========================================================================
Bethany Leigh Grenald                      
Department of Anthropology
University of Michigan
bethany at umich.edu










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