radicalism in film
Aaron Gerow
gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Mon Sep 20 23:26:42 EDT 1999
>Just as a matter of interest, it is not, written form Maoist perspective is
>it?
My review of Jubaku will appear in the Thursday Daily Yomiuri, but I did
not find the film that radical. Despite its basis in recent history and
earnest and well-made call for change, it is like many salary man movies
in that it does more reassuring than critiquing: low- or middle-level
salary men (the audience) are basically all good and it's only a few bad
eggs at the top (and outside the hallowed Company) who have caused the
problems. There's little critique of salary man culture itself or of
institutions as entities that have a life of their own apart from the
individuals who compose them.
But I am still intrigued by Harada Masato's repeated use of communist
images. Remember the yakuza and the high-school girl singing karaoke in
front of USSR flags in Bounce koGALS? I definitely do not think he's a
Maoist or Leninist, or that the use of such images is intended as a call
for a similar kind of revolution. To me, it is mostly a kind of
eccentricity which livens up Harada's sometimes too-neatly-structured
films, but I wondered what others think?
Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171
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