AsianForum 136th "Representations of Japan in Hollywood films: Cultural communication or Lack of communication?"

136th
Asian Forum
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
14:00-15:00
Conference Room 203/204, Dialogue House 2F

Michael Richardson
Visiting Professor at the Center for the Study of Global Issues, Hitotsubashi University
Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University of London.

Representations of Japan in Hollywood films:
Cultural communication or Lack of communication?

Since the Second World War, a significant number of Hollywood movies have either been set in Japan or otherwise deal with American/Japanese relations, from Stuart Heisler’s Tokyo Joe (1949) to Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003). Many of these films have been controversial from a number of angles, almost always linked to questions of cultural representation and feeding into or emerging out of the Orientalist debate which has above all accustomed us to recognise the inherent power relation representation involves. In this paper I will look at the range of themes these films have dealt with and consider whether they should be treated less as films ‘about’ Japan than about American attitudes towards the ‘foreign’ in general.

Lecture in English