"The Cove" - NHK coverage

[aaron.gerow at yale.edu]

I only caught the last half by chance. Yes, it was nice to see them taking up
some controversial issues, as well as the whole issue of how media can
manipulate points of view. If some people can view this and see how moving
image media can construct narratives and positions, that can make them more
critical viewers.

My general impression, however, is that the program was a splendid case of
displacement: of taking what NHK and other Japanese TV news and documentaries
regularly do and displace it onto the foreign other. Then, while criticizing
the film for being made with a predetermined position, the host and the expert
at the end repeatedly used the words "wareware" ("we") and "Nihon no"
("Japan's"), as if the meanings of these terms were obvious and 
unquestioningly
shared by the audience. In other words, they were constructing a *we Japanese"
versus "them" opposition that stemmed precisely from the same kind of
"pretedemined position" (this time, national identity and a conception of
national culture) that they were criticizing in the film. I found it 
enormously
hypocritical, but exemplary of the kind of displacement going on elsewhere.

Aaron Gerow