25/10/06 - the last samurai

this post is several months late in coming now. i've been jotting down ideas for gemlog posts in my notepad for a couple months now, but what with travelling and several of these ideas warranting longer, more thought-out posts, i hadn't gotten around to actually writing them.

so i watched "the last samurai" for the first time on a flight about three months ago, and it left me feeling some very mixed emotions.

just to get this out of the way, on a technical level it was obviously amazing. beautiful cinematography etc etc.

what really didn't sit right with me was the main character being american. yes, i know, woke mind virus or whatever.

it reminded me forcefully of how "black diamond" made me feel, and not in a good way,

while i understood the importance of the topics covered in "black diamond", and i understand how starring caprisun as your main character would make the movie more marketable and therefore potentially get more eyes on your movie about social injustice, it still felt wrong to have your main character be a white guy yelling the k-word in a movie about human rights abuses in the diamond trade.

"the last samurai" didn't even have the justification of needing the marketing to bring an important message to a wider audience. its main character was white just because.

now, don't get me wrong - i'm half white, half japanese. i don't have an issue with white people appreciating japanese culture by any means, nor do i have an issue with interracial marriage (obviously. did i really need to clarify this?)

what didn't sit right with me was the romantisation of a lot of the negative aspects of traditional japanese culture, things that had and continue to have a real negative impact on people.

what didn't sit right with me was the weird fetishisation of the "exotic japanese woman", who is given absolutely no agency (to be fair realistically so).

what didn't sit right with me was the perpetuation of old stereotypes, of the japanese people as dedicated and obsessed.

was it reasonably accurate in a lot of its portrayal of imperial japan? sure.

did it also romanticise all the worst things about my culture while simultaneously perpetuating the weird fetishisation of "exotic asia" with a white saviour main character? yeah.

all in all? idk man, it was entertaining i guess.

contact me at: tsukaj@tilde.club