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gah, stupid geisha movie
Nov. 28th, 2005 08:40 pmAside from the one scene that looks like some kind of fascinating Butoh musical theatre performance, I have no interest in seeing Memoirs of a Geisha. Please stop showing me the preview, movie theaters (I've been to theaters like 6 times in the past two weeks, virtually unheard of for me).
I don't care if Margaret Cho likes it (okay, she just likes the Idea of It), the book always struck me as more of the same exoticism of Asian women that you can get anywhere. Like a Victor Hugo novel with the New Modern Twist of being about a Hot Asian Prostitute (not that it's even true of the geisha tradition, though it seems to be what western culture thinks). Oh, look at her being exploited! Isn't it tragic?
Ironically, I think a big part of why I grew up comfortable in a variety of cultures despite my whiiiiiteness has something to do with exoticizing Asian women. I lived in military housing much of my childhood, and many of my friends were half-Filipina, half-Samoan, half-Korean, half-Japanese - half, in short, lots of racial groups that were colonized a thousand times [excepting Japan] and later essentially occupied by the American military. And the non-white halfs of my friends' families, not all that surprisingly, were invariably their moms. It's a weird sort of multiculturalism, the white, young sailor & his brown family: I mean, they were real, normal (in the sense of being actual people & not wacky fantasies) families, but I wonder how much their presence in the military community was about the normal & how much was about the Exotic Asian Woman thing.
The western thing with geisha in specific and Asian women in general is so squicky and bleh-ick-nasty-taste-in-my-mouth. I have a very hard time divorcing that book or that movie from it. Am I seeing something wrong? Is it actually some sort of great, fabulous celebration of Japanese culture, or somehow just a story totally devoid of that Exotic Asian Woman shit?
I don't know. It's not entirely for me to decide, of course. But I still don't plan to see it.
I don't care if Margaret Cho likes it (okay, she just likes the Idea of It), the book always struck me as more of the same exoticism of Asian women that you can get anywhere. Like a Victor Hugo novel with the New Modern Twist of being about a Hot Asian Prostitute (not that it's even true of the geisha tradition, though it seems to be what western culture thinks). Oh, look at her being exploited! Isn't it tragic?
Ironically, I think a big part of why I grew up comfortable in a variety of cultures despite my whiiiiiteness has something to do with exoticizing Asian women. I lived in military housing much of my childhood, and many of my friends were half-Filipina, half-Samoan, half-Korean, half-Japanese - half, in short, lots of racial groups that were colonized a thousand times [excepting Japan] and later essentially occupied by the American military. And the non-white halfs of my friends' families, not all that surprisingly, were invariably their moms. It's a weird sort of multiculturalism, the white, young sailor & his brown family: I mean, they were real, normal (in the sense of being actual people & not wacky fantasies) families, but I wonder how much their presence in the military community was about the normal & how much was about the Exotic Asian Woman thing.
The western thing with geisha in specific and Asian women in general is so squicky and bleh-ick-nasty-taste-in-my-mouth. I have a very hard time divorcing that book or that movie from it. Am I seeing something wrong? Is it actually some sort of great, fabulous celebration of Japanese culture, or somehow just a story totally devoid of that Exotic Asian Woman shit?
I don't know. It's not entirely for me to decide, of course. But I still don't plan to see it.