This was actually picked up by Model Minority, subtitled "A Guide to Asian American Empowerment," which is where the story link goes to.
I'm not sure how happy I am with the title The Guardian chose for this op-ed. Black folks were mentioned twice in the piece:
Some have hailed the film's subtlety, but to me it is reminiscent of the racist jokes about Asians and black people that comedians told in British clubs in the 1970s.and
Those not conforming to this never have a voice of their own. They simply don't have a story to tell, or at least not one that interests "us". This is the ignoble tradition into which Lost in Translation fits. It is similar to the way white-dominated Hollywood used to depict African-Americans - as crooks, pimps, or lacking self-control compared with white Americans.I don't feel the mentions were necessary to make the point; but there's making a point and having impact.
Bringing in Black folks at the end of a well written report on prejudice against other folk is like kicking white folks when they're down. They bring up Black folks as a way of saying, "And it ain't like you don't got a history of that shit." There's two ways of looking at that technique: using the mainstream's own history against it, or using Black folks against it.
It's kind of unfortunate that every group that looks to assimilate into the USofA will find Black people to be the most effective lash. You hate the driver but you hate the whip too, you know what I mean?
It would be good if everyone made their own case. Because you have one. And Black folks will support your efforts even if you don't mention us.
Can't Touch African-Americans, So Roll Out the 'Funny' Orientals
By Kiku Day
©2004 The Guardian (Manchester, England)
February 3, 2004
Film reviewers have hailed Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation as though it were the cinematic equivalent of the second coming. One paper even called it a masterpiece. Reading the praise, I couldn't help wondering not only whether I had watched a different movie, but whether the plaudits had come from a parallel universe of values.
Lost in Translation is being promoted as a romantic comedy, but there is only one type of humour in the film that I could see: anti-Japanese racism, which is its very spine.
In the movie, Bill Murray plays the alienated Bob, a middle-aged actor shooting whisky commercials in Tokyo. He meets the equally alienated Charlotte, played by Scarlett Johansson, a Yale graduate accompanying her fashion photographer husband.
The film is billed as exploring their disconnection from the country they are visiting and from their spouses, and how they find some comfort in one another through a series of restrained encounters.
But it's the way Japanese characters are represented that gives the game away. There is no scene where the Japanese are afforded a shred of dignity. The viewer is sledgehammered into laughing at these small, yellow people and their funny ways, desperately aping the Western lifestyle without knowledge of its real meaning. It is telling that the longest vocal contribution any Japanese character makes is at a karaoke party, singing a few lines of the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen.
The Japanese half of me is disturbed; the American half is, too. The Japanese are one-dimensional and dehumanised in the movie, serving as an exotic background for Bob and Charlotte's story, like dirty wallpaper in a cheap hotel.
Posted by P6 at February 11, 2004 09:36 PM
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