So Long, Sister

I watched Sayonara last night. It's one of those films I've seen in bits and pieces, but never start to finish. It's a Marlon Brando film about an American serviceman who falls in love with a famous Japanese performer. The film was a hit back in 1957, offering the audience what it wanted--widescreen romance, lavish color, location shooting, beautiful sets and costumes, a dramatic Franz Waxman score, etc. It won four Oscars and was nominated for ten. Yet, the film is slow going. It spends two and a half hours telling a story that could be better told in ninety minutes. It's not helped by Joshua Logan's plodding direction. While the message of the film is tolerance, it also hasn't dated well, since inter-ethnic romance isn't quite so daring any more. If anything, its quaint view of Japan and its submissive women seems condescending today. Still, I couldn't help but laugh when I read this reader's review by Jessica Donohue from Berkeley, California at the Internet Movie Database. I honestly thought real humans didn't write this way once they left college. (Does that mean Jessica is still expecting a grade?):

This is a masterpiece of film-as-propaganda. In the social sciences, the Other is a pan-applicable category which labels those facets of a culture that incur self-loathing. In Sayonara, the Other is blatantly feminine. Women in this film are treated derogatorily, this is obvious. No less subtle is the negative attitude towards aspects of Japanese culture, even landscape, labelled feminine (vs. masculine American). Gender ambiguity defines Japanese culture in the film as well as in the colonial imagination (Said, 1978). Such androgyny is horrifyingly Other.

The review continues in this hilarious vein. (Imagine referencing Edward Said to prove a point in a movie review--or anywhere else, for that matter.) As they say, read the whole thing.

Columbus Guy says: What's the problem? The Other *is* blatantly feminine.