Asian Invasion

[Joseph Murphy]

>but what of cinema culture at ground level? One of the things
>Mitsuhiro doesn't do (and I'm not saying he should; the chapter was already
>incredibly long and ambitious) is articulate the relationship between
>academic film culture, and that of critics (of various stripe) and audiences
>(ditto). We could say the academic discourses around Chinese cinema have
>been more "nigiyaka" than Japanese in the last decade or so, and that a
>similar thing has gone on at those other levels. However, I don't think we
>can say the academics are generating the position Kehr's taking. Where else
>shall we look?
>
>Markus

That's kind of what I'm clumsily trying to get at (academic discourse 
filtering into journalism).  I don't know anything about Kehr's 
background, but this article has the stamp of someone who is 
acquainted with academic film studies.  But the field that kept 
getting called to mind as I read the article wasn't cinema studies 
about Asian or Japanese film per se. Rather, given the sorts of 
things he valorizes in the films, I kept thinking he was implicitly 
applying arguments from the 1970's on melodramatic imagination, 
understood to appear as a compelling aesthetic wherever societies 
were involved in the dislocations and steeply rising trajectories of 
rapid industrialization, but to disappear into camp and irony in 
advanced or postindustrial societies.
What makes this article an anomaly and vexes us at KineJapan and 
makes us think, is that here is a nice, high profile story with great 
visuals on the newly prominent Asian cinema, and the new cinema in 
which we all have so much invested wasn't even mentioned.  No Kitano, 
no Koreeda, no Kawase Naomi, no Unagi, nothing.  If the principle of 
selection was foreign cinema that has recently had all sorts of 
success in the festival and arthouse circuit, and is now making 
serious inroads into the multiplex scene (cinema at ground level), 
then by rights Japanese cinema should be included (Shall We Dance? 
was a good example).  If Asia is understood as a geographic or 
cultural or marketing category, then Japan would seem to fit there 
too.  If the principle is the intersection of the two, Japan should 
be included.  But Japan was not included, so, despite the name "Asian 
Invasion", the inquiring mind has to look for some other criteria 
generating this category for Kehr.  I'm suggesting that, whether 
conscious or not, "Asian invasion" is shorthand for cinema from newly 
ascendant economies.  It's just speculation, but it does account for 
Japan not being mentioned, except in its 1950's guise, when it was 
one of those.  Who knows, maybe the writer just doesn't like Japanese 
film, or maybe Stephen Holden's article scared the Times staff off.
J. Murphy

>but what of cinema culture at ground level? One of the things
>Mitsuhiro doesn't do (and I'm not saying he should; the chapter was already
>incredibly long and ambitious) is articulate the relationship between
>academic film culture, and that of critics (of various stripe) and audiences
>(ditto). We could say the academic discourses around Chinese cinema have
>been more "nigiyaka" than Japanese in the last decade or so, and that a
>similar thing has gone on at those other levels. However, I don't think we
>can say the academics are generating the position Kehr's taking. Where else
>shall we look?
>
>Markus

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Joseph Murphy
E-mail: <urj7 at nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu>
TEL: (352) 392-2110/2442. FAX (352) 392-1443
<http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmurphy>
University of Florida, Box 115565, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
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