Everything I know about Japan, I learned from Mr. Baseball
Look, I don’t presume to be an expert about Japan; most of my knowledge of the island country stems from Mr. Baseball, an early ‘90s romantic-comedy starring Tom Selleck and his mustache. And quite frankly, as with all historically accurate Hollywood productions, that should be enough.
So imagine my surprise when one of my “gaijin” friends called this cultural Rosetta stone into question, berating me for basing my presumptions of Japan off a movie written by one of the guys who also wrote Junior (arguably the greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger film of all-time). Blasphemy! How can one dismiss the fact that Mr. Baseball also stars Dennis Haysbert, a paragon of honesty and integrity; I know this, because he sells car insurance.
What’s next? My preconceptions of Africa as based on Coming to America are wildly out of line with reality? My perception of Aborigines and the Australian outback is skewed by Crocodile Dundee - and its sequel? That all Japanese handymen are, in fact, not karate masters – as The Karate Kid led me to believe?
My entire perception of reality, as based on any number of similar movies from both the ‘80s and early ‘90s, is unraveling before my eyes.
… It does make you think, though.
An entire generation – my generation – was predisposed to globalization before it even really began. Growing up, we were introduced to other cultures through comical fish-out-of-water stories; films that positively portrayed other cultures as the running time wore on.
Hysterical cross-cultural mishaps aside, these films had an underlining premise that Western civilization and other cultures had a lot to learn from one another. Americans would often trade crass American attitude and individualism for the other culture’s work ethic and sense of honor. A reoccurring theme developed; Americans were often too laid back, all other cultures were too uptight. Through cultural understanding, we met somewhere in the middle.
Prior to this wave of cinema, almost all non-Western civilizations were portrayed negatively; with antagonists often hailing from a mysterious and/or uncivilized country that clashed with our own Anglo-Saxon ideals. One of the earliest supervillains was Dr. Fu Manchu, who created a stereotype so ingrained in the American psyche that it took decades of cultural awareness to erase.
But then something changed. The economic winds began to blow another direction. Capitalism was about to go global.
It’s tough to say whether or not the wave of cross-cultural cinema in the ‘80s and ‘90s borders on propaganda; whether Hollywood - and the interested economic parties of America by proxy - were actively trying to prepare us for the inevitable. Or perhaps the studio system sensed the changing tide, and was intent on creating product that would appeal beyond its shores to an international audience. Nowadays, overseas box-office revenue can be more lucrative than a studio’s domestic haul depending on the film.
That wasn’t always the case twenty years ago.
The odd thing is, with the proliferation of the Internet and the global community so dependent on one another for commerce, that particular sub-genre of cinema is all but dead. Kids don’t find cross-cultural films nearly as amusing anymore; they are apt to learn about other cultures from an endless stream of Internet and cable media at the disposal of their fingertips. The air of mystery and danger that used to hang over other cultures has been dissipated by YouTube and Wikipedia.
The flipside is that foreign cinema doesn’t seem as, y’know, foreign. We’ve become so culturally aware, and with the far corners assimilating into Western civilization, the only cultural barrier nowadays is language - and that’s what subtitles are for. The result is that foreign cinema has gone mainstream, and other countries are able to rival Hollywood productions on their own turf.
Except Bollywood, their stuff still looks terrible. Except this action sequence, which I would like to nominate for an Oscar – it is legitimately amazing.
… So back to the original topic: maybe I’m not an expert on Japan, but at least I don’t believe the country is inhabited by mechanized robots and girls that are actually attracted to nerds. Now that is unbelievable.
Until tomorrow, folks.
Categories: Commentary
Tags: globalization Mr. Baseball Crocodile Dundee The Karate Kid
First Hollywood tried to stereotype the foreign cultures of our world, but then the internet happened, and we learnt to get along - we learnt that we're not really as different as Hollywood suggests.In fact, we're the same.
Now, Hollywood has done it again. They're wanton eyes have wandered to space... Hollywood has stereotyped the entire indigenous population of planet Pandora as a backwards, tree-hugging, hippie commune. Well, let me tell you, Hollywood is wrong again.
Recently, I travelled out to Pandora to find out the truth about the mysterious Naa'vi. Some of them, thankfully, were willing to be interviewed. They told me that the motion picture 'Avatar' is a very irresponsible film, and that it "paints the people of Pandora as one dimensional hippie caricatures."
"This is a gross misrepresentation," said one beleaguered member of the 'Sllemsnoremac' tribe. "In fact, we Naa'vi are a very enterprising folk. We cannot stress this enough."
Since this report has gone out, we're hearing that the tribe are now trying to gather funds to make a picture of their own - one that, "represents the people of Pandora fairly." Also in their statement, they say that they are open to the possibility of trading their most valuable resource, 'Sraetrettibsemaj', (referred to in the film as 'unobtanium') with Earth. They also welcome human tourists.
-InfectedGib, reporting
--okay, I may have gotten a little carried away with myself. I wonder if I can option this as the basis for a tv docu-drama,
'The Tribulations of being Blue -
The Naa'vi: In Their Own Words'
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