Japanese CNC?

[Kerim Yasar]

I would argue that there IS a real need for national cinemas, and as many as possible.
 
For better or for worse, film and television are currently the dominant media of global artistic discourse.  This is not only true of America.  They claim the largest audiences, the largest budgets (even larger than architecture in many cases).  They influence tastes to be sure, but even more importantly they work in ways both subtle and overt to propagate values and ideological assumptions.  The relationship between spectacle and politics has been fairly well understood at least since World War II, and while the exact nature of that relationship can be debated at length, I doubt anybody could argue against the statement that whoever controls the flow of images within a certain culture controls a great deal.  Homogeneity is deadly for all of the arts, but for cinema it carries particular political dangers.
 
Hollywood is thoroughly invested in the politics and psychology of spectacle.  The organs of power in the United States have learned a great deal from Hollywood and the advertising industry about how to manipulate opinion, not through the ham-fisted propaganda of totalitarian regimes but rather through the seductions of images.  There's a recruiting commercial for the US Marine Corps on television here these days which is a masterwork of CGI, but even this is nothing really new: the film Top Gun was essentially a two hour recruiting film for the Navy.  Hollywood creative types do tend to be "liberal," whatever that means, but the fact remains that for a film to attract the funding it needs both to produced and distributed, it cannot stray too terribly far from the bedrock assumptions of mainstream culture.  In the absence of vital national cinemas, the prevalent assumptions of American culture inexorably (even if slowly) percolate throughout the cultures of the world, even those that
 have strong high-art traditions of their own.  
 
The damage is already done in many places.  Go to any European country and you'll see that practically all of the teenagers have a bizarre love-hate relationship with the United States.  Many of them resent the exercise of American political, economic, and military power, but they also have a raging inferiority complex vis-a-vis American (and to some extent British) popular culture.  At the same time, they are alienated from their own traditions.  I remember when, as an exchange student in Vienna, I had some standing room tickets to the Vienna Philharmonic to sell.  I had gotten in line at 5 am for six hours to buy the season tickets but, as I was only there for one semester, I still had four tickets left as I was about to leave.  I posted a sign trying to sell them in the dorm where I was staying (which was populated mainly by Austrian students).  I couldn't find A SINGLE BUYER.  For hard-to-get tickets to one of the three finest symphony orchestras in the world.  In Vienna!  Only
 when I posted a notice at the music conservatory could I sell the tickets.  But oh how those Viennese girls were drooling over my American classmate with the punk haircut and the black boots!  And what America is exporting to the world for the most part is not the nobility of our founding political philosophies but rather the depravity of our contemporary social, economic, and political institutions, our violence, our lack of civility.  In a word: crassness.
 
German intellectuals may not lament the absence of a national German film industry, but then again many high-brow intellectuals think film in general is already beyond the pale.   THEY may not miss the German film industry, but I certainly do.  They may barricade themselves in their avant-garde theaters and their art galleries or bury their noses in their books, but meanwhile their larger culture is anemic and demoralized.  Scoring a major success on the international film circuit should be a source of national pride, like winning a gold medal in the Olympics or a high ranking in the World Cup.  It is an indication that one's contemporary culture has something valuable to say to the rest of humanity.  Film is a much more powerful way to reach out across cultural boundaries than are other media.  I'm sure many German intellectuals are pleased at the international following of somebody like W.G. Sebald, but what does that mean to the average German?  Nothing, probably.
 
I can only imagine how impoverished my experiences as a filmgoer would be if the French and the Iranians and the Chinese and so on weren't hard at work today trying to keep their industries alive.  And I can only imagine how impoverished film history would be if Hollywood had enjoyed hegemony from the very beginning and there had never been a Lang, an Antonioni, a Bresson, a Kurosawa, and so on.  I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time studying film had that been the case.

mark schilling <0934611501 at jcom.home.ne.jp> wrote:
Peter Larson raised an interesting question about the "need for a national
cinema," citing the Germans as folks who have seemingly done quite well
without one.

Japanese cinema is objectively far from dead, but subjectively -- it depends
on who you talk to, doesn't it? Many middle-aged and elderly types in the
Japanese film business will tell you that the industry today is in fatal
decline, while harking back to the films of their youth as a vanished ideal.
"Yakuza movies ended with me," Sugawara Bunta told me in an interview for my
book -- and how could I contradict him?

This "apres moi le deluge" mindset is common throughout Japanese society,
but especially so in the movie business. Thus the repeated attempts by
studio graybeards to "revive Japanese films" by bringing back faded stars,
directors and even genres (ex., the ninkyo eiga), often with results at the
box office that reinforce the prophets of doom. "Spy Sorge" is the latest
exhibit A.

So are Japanese movies dead? Yes, if you think the last "real" ones were
made back when Kurosawa Akira's hair was still black.

Mark Schilling
schill at gol.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Larson" 

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 12:18 AM
Subject: RE: Japanese CNC?


Well, you have to ask yourself exactly why having a national cinema is
important. For example, Germany's film industry is nearly extinct yet German
people don't really seem that up in arms about it (at least not at the
seminar I led!). There are plenty of German writers, artists and playrights
to satisy the artistic cravings of the people. I say that having a thriving
set of national "arts" is VERY important but that cinema may or may not be
equally important in light of other arts.

I hear complaints about the dominance of american cinema often, mostly by
americans. In America the film industry is extremely important and
representative of our national character, a sort of "national art" in the
same way as "national sports" or something. Perhaps other countries don't
generally feel this way.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of Mark Nornes
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 10:06 AM
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: Japanese CNC?


Jasper's post raises a key issue in this fascinating discussion:
exactly what measure do we use to gauge success or failure,
"healthiness" or "sickness," or even growth and decline?

To a national cinema's past? (Which one? What "moment"? Historical
relationship with Hollywood, or America for that matter? "Health" in
their respective film histories? )

To other national contexts? (On what points of comparison? Numbers of
films produced (which genres do you include/exclude?) Population?
Urban/rural percentages? GNP? Ticket prices? Colonial legacies, as
colonizer or colonized? What do you do about transnational linkages
(and I'm not talking about simply the current situation)? Nado nado.)

This issue is a constant theme of scholarship and criticism, certainly
since the dawn of television, but really going back to at least Taisho,
the Pure Film Movement, etc. Hmmmm. Sounds like a nice essay topic for
someone!

Markus



On Sunday, June 29, 2003, at 10:01 PM, J.sharp wrote:

>
>
> I think the Japanese film industry is in a pretty enviable shape
> compared with most other national cinemas, the most obvious point of
> references being the industries of the individual European companies.
>
>
>
> Its true, based on anecdotal evidence, one might get the impression
> that no one in Japan ever watches Japanese films, but you have to
> remember who you are actually asking. I work in an English school in
> Ginza, and most of my students wake up at 5am and work a minimum of
> twelve hours a day. You can imagine that when they do go to the
> cinema, they?re not going to sit for three hours watching EUREKA. No -
> they want no-brain entertainment like SPIDERMAN or MATRIX when they?re
> not shopping or walking around the golf course. I don?t count these
> people as representative of the Japanese public however. Every time I
> go into a cinema to watch a Japan film, there?s a pretty good turn out
> of people, and there?s usually about 10 Japanese films playing in
> Tokyo at any one time.
>
>
>
> There?s still been plenty of bigger budgeted more mainstream Japanese
> films playing the major chains this year ? AZUMI, MOONCHILD, SPY SORGE
> ? so someone is obviously watching them. Right around the corner from
> the school where I drone out eikaiwa on a daily basis, a huge screen
> has been emblazoned with the BATTLE ROYALE 2 logo for the past month
> or so, with hordes of people swarming around the BR2 gift shop on the
> street, which is purveying para-military inspired fashion accessories.
> Its going to be a big release ? probably the largest Japanese one this
> year.
>
>
>
> And that?s not including the ever-lucrative low-cost high return
> animated endeavours of regular favourites such as DORAEMON or ONE
> PIECE, nor the GODZILLA franchise. And lets not forget that no country
> in the world has an equivalent to Miyazaki, a national treasure whose
> films continue to out-gross all foreign competition. Nor the fact that
> the video chain Tsutaya devotes about a third of its floor space to
> domestic films ? there?s certainly nothing like that in video shops in
> the UK.
>
>
>
> As Aaron points out, Hollywood does have unfair market advantages -
> the same in any country - and their block-booking tactics, market
> saturation and the fact distributors and cinema chains are owned by
> the companies that produce the films, will ensure that in provincial
> towns outside of Tokyo, it is actually nigh on impossible to even see
> a Japanese film, whilst the latest MATRIX film is booked into two or
> three screens of the local multiplex. The film industry is one of the
> US? biggest industries, whereas it ranks pretty low on the business
> hierarchy in Japan, UK or even France, and as such, the US has become
> fiercely protectionist about its own interests ? far more so than any
> other country. There is the odd local film screened in the bigger
> cinema chains as a token effort alongside the Hollywood eye-candy, but
> as long as this is of the quality of TRICK or MOONCHILD, then the same
> people whose cinematic needs are provided for purely by the multiplex
> are likely to be giving Japanese films an incredibly wide berth in the
> future. (just read an interesting anecdote in Sight and Sound from
> last year which said that in Quebec, ASTERIX & OBELIX 2 actually
> out-grossed ATTACK OF THE CLONES last year, because independent
> distributors balked at paying the high box office take demanded by
> Lucasfilms, so the film actually played on a relatively small number
> of screens ? a good indication of how behind the scenes business
> skulduggery has such an enormous influence on box office performance).
>
>
>
> Remember that most of the films showcased abroad, and hence discussed
> on boards like this, are small arthouse releases ? not the larger more
> commercial offerings. As an English teacher, you might get blank looks
> when you try and discuss Naruse or even Ozu with your housewives
> afternoon course ? but I doubt any random member of the general public
> in Britain knows who David Lean is either. At the same time, it is
> still possible to meet plenty of cinephiles who become notably
> animated when you mention names such as Kurosawa Kiyoshi Shinya
> Tsukamoto.
>
>
>
> Essentially, like any other country I?ve been to, there are two film
> markets. Mainstream multiplex, and independent cinemas that might once
> have been labelled ?arthouse?, but subsequent to the Mirax-isation of
> the multiplex, are now the only place where you can see smaller
> national releases and non-Hollywood foreign releases. These cinemas
> have their own loyal followings which will ensure that this second
> market will never die out, but they are also sparsely scattered enough
> to mean that no individual title will ever achieve the same level of
> performance as a mainstream release ? even freak success stories like
> BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, which has played on one screen in Tokyo, but
> has been sold out for over six months.
>
>
>
> OK, so we?re hardly in the Golden Age of the 50s, but then, what
> country is? The 80s signified the death knell of national cinema, to
> my mind. It also marked a rapid downturn in the quality of Hollywood
> films. These films allegedly succeed because they are universal, but
> this for me is the reason why they are so unsatisfactory. They don?t
> address any of the issues that are important to me personally, and
> they rarely attempt to stretch the parameters of cinema as an art form
> nor enlighten me about other cultures. They are merely safe puerile
> fantasies where you are supposed to marvel at how much money has been
> thrown up on screen. No other country can possibly complete. Nor
> should they want to. The day when national cinema was forced to cater
> for an international market was the day it became less fresh and
> interesting. There?s nothing with the meat or power of the finest work
> from the 50s, 60s or 70s, from any country. As a British person, I can
> find resonance with the films of Mike Leigh or Lynne Ramsay, but it is
> films like BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM that are making the money. And its
> awful films like HOTEL HIBISCUS that are drawing in the housewives for
> the matinee performances in Tokyo.
>
>
>
> To the distant observer, it may seem that there?s been nothing
> significant coming out of Japan at the moment. There?s been precious
> little here that?s impressed me this year either. But the film
> industry goes in cycles, not on a teleological path to
> self-destruction. From my perspective in Tokyo, looking at those
> UniJapan figures I could infer that the British film industry is in a
> mess. Last year there was only 9 films from the UK screened in Japan
> (one of these was KEVIN AND PERRY GO LARGE!) compared with the 30 or
> so from previous years. However, this year I believe there?s already
> been more than 9, so this is undoubtedly just an isolated blip. In the
> same respect, I?m sure that Japan will have another 1997-98, when
> SHALL WE DANCE swept across America, RING and CURE crawled across
> cathode ray tubes all over Asia, anime fans went wide-eyed over
> PRINCESS MONONOKE and PERFECT BLUE, and arthouse audience swooned over
> UNAGI and HANA-BI.
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________
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