Honey and honour
Dec. 26th, 2007 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusMy Christmas was a double bill: I watched two Japanese films made over fifty years apart. I began with Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), a tale of rape, murder and honour-bargaining out in the medieval Japanese forest. In fact it's four tales, four mismatching accounts of the same violent events, told by the participants (a bandit, a samurai, his wife, and a woodcutter).
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Now, I enjoyed Rashomon very much, especially this court-style narrative device of running through the same events from four completely different perspectives (one of them from beyond the grave, from a ghost). But in general I have my problems with Kurosawa. I think of him as a stiff, macho director too much given to crowd scenes, battle scenes, violence and pessimism. He makes great art, but if you were to plot the world of Rashomon -- a world where nobody trusts anyone else, where swords are constantly necessary, where alliances shift, where betrayal and dishonour, rape and murder power the narrative, and where none of the characters are remotely sympathetic -- onto the Inglehart Values Map, the Japan it represents would be close to modern Zimbabwe. This is a world dominated by traditional values and survival values. As such, great art or not, it says little to me about my life.
The second film (click the picture to watch it) couldn't have been more of a contrast. If Rashomon is a hard film, a tragedy, a 1950s art film made for export, a film for men (Hisae refused to join me on the sofa), Honey and Clover (2006) is a light, fluffy mass market film, a "women's picture", a comedy (in the Aristotelian sense). Despite a vague resemblance to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" (multiple lovers at cross-purposes), it doesn't really qualify as art. And yet it moves me more than Rashomon and says a great deal more about my life. For instance, Honey and Clover opens with a bunch of Japanese art students preparing gyoza. And it so happens that that's exactly how I spent Christmas Eve -- preparing and eating gyoza with six Japanese art students, one of whom had even attended Tokyo's Musashino Art University, the model for the college in this film.
If Rashomon showed, in terms of the Inglehart Values Map, predominantly lower-left quadrant values (survival, tradition), Honey and Clover shows upper-right ones: this is a film set in the secular-rational world of higher education, a world dominated by the quest for self-expression through art and personal happiness through love. What it lacks in artistic value (the music is awful and the cinematography slick rather than visionary) it makes up for by establishing the radiant Yu Aoi as the earthly summation of all possible human goodness. In Inglehart terms, the Japan depicted in Honey and Clover sits exactly where today's Japan sits on his map; in the civilized upper right quadrant. It's an advanced, soft place with advanced, soft values.
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If you follow Yu Aoi through Japanese popular culture, you find that, over and over again, she's cast as an advanced, soft being, a quirky, childlike, expressive, kind-hearted fairy, modestly unaware of her own beauty and unwilling to use it in power games. In her many TV commercials -- for Canon, for the Aeon bank card, for Shuiesha -- Yu is self-expressive yet socially harmonious. She's a water nymph, sharing a bath with Aoi Miyazaki. If she's not a painter, she's holding a light meter, part of the
creative team on a photo shoot, dressing up in a kimono, heading out to the seaside in a cute yellow Fiat 500, or weeping as she reads sentimental books in refreshing candy-striped wrappers.
Now, it's unlikely that so perfectly lovely a person could ever be a good artist. And, indeed, the paintings Yu's character creates in Honey and Clover are truly dreadful daubings, underscored on the soundtrack with appalling emo songs. But it would be a harsh film director indeed who forced Yu Aoi back to the Bronze Age -- and a series of survival- and honour-oriented struggles -- in the name of art. And perhaps we could see the society that vests some of its core values in Yu Aoi -- an advanced consumer society where people are finally able to concentrate on self-expression and personal happiness without sacrificing communal, unselfish values -- as a work of art in its own right, an incarnation of a new, less brutal code of honour.
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Now, I enjoyed Rashomon very much, especially this court-style narrative device of running through the same events from four completely different perspectives (one of them from beyond the grave, from a ghost). But in general I have my problems with Kurosawa. I think of him as a stiff, macho director too much given to crowd scenes, battle scenes, violence and pessimism. He makes great art, but if you were to plot the world of Rashomon -- a world where nobody trusts anyone else, where swords are constantly necessary, where alliances shift, where betrayal and dishonour, rape and murder power the narrative, and where none of the characters are remotely sympathetic -- onto the Inglehart Values Map, the Japan it represents would be close to modern Zimbabwe. This is a world dominated by traditional values and survival values. As such, great art or not, it says little to me about my life.
The second film (click the picture to watch it) couldn't have been more of a contrast. If Rashomon is a hard film, a tragedy, a 1950s art film made for export, a film for men (Hisae refused to join me on the sofa), Honey and Clover (2006) is a light, fluffy mass market film, a "women's picture", a comedy (in the Aristotelian sense). Despite a vague resemblance to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" (multiple lovers at cross-purposes), it doesn't really qualify as art. And yet it moves me more than Rashomon and says a great deal more about my life. For instance, Honey and Clover opens with a bunch of Japanese art students preparing gyoza. And it so happens that that's exactly how I spent Christmas Eve -- preparing and eating gyoza with six Japanese art students, one of whom had even attended Tokyo's Musashino Art University, the model for the college in this film.
If Rashomon showed, in terms of the Inglehart Values Map, predominantly lower-left quadrant values (survival, tradition), Honey and Clover shows upper-right ones: this is a film set in the secular-rational world of higher education, a world dominated by the quest for self-expression through art and personal happiness through love. What it lacks in artistic value (the music is awful and the cinematography slick rather than visionary) it makes up for by establishing the radiant Yu Aoi as the earthly summation of all possible human goodness. In Inglehart terms, the Japan depicted in Honey and Clover sits exactly where today's Japan sits on his map; in the civilized upper right quadrant. It's an advanced, soft place with advanced, soft values.
[Error: unknown template video]
If you follow Yu Aoi through Japanese popular culture, you find that, over and over again, she's cast as an advanced, soft being, a quirky, childlike, expressive, kind-hearted fairy, modestly unaware of her own beauty and unwilling to use it in power games. In her many TV commercials -- for Canon, for the Aeon bank card, for Shuiesha -- Yu is self-expressive yet socially harmonious. She's a water nymph, sharing a bath with Aoi Miyazaki. If she's not a painter, she's holding a light meter, part of the
creative team on a photo shoot, dressing up in a kimono, heading out to the seaside in a cute yellow Fiat 500, or weeping as she reads sentimental books in refreshing candy-striped wrappers.Now, it's unlikely that so perfectly lovely a person could ever be a good artist. And, indeed, the paintings Yu's character creates in Honey and Clover are truly dreadful daubings, underscored on the soundtrack with appalling emo songs. But it would be a harsh film director indeed who forced Yu Aoi back to the Bronze Age -- and a series of survival- and honour-oriented struggles -- in the name of art. And perhaps we could see the society that vests some of its core values in Yu Aoi -- an advanced consumer society where people are finally able to concentrate on self-expression and personal happiness without sacrificing communal, unselfish values -- as a work of art in its own right, an incarnation of a new, less brutal code of honour.
slice-of-life
Date: 2007-12-27 10:35 pm (UTC)http://www.veoh.com/videos/v7980707BE3hzR2
--LS
Re: slice-of-life
Date: 2008-01-01 04:06 pm (UTC)Re: slice-of-life
Date: 2008-01-02 04:58 am (UTC)Seriously, though, I was watching the Honey & Clover anime and it runs circles around the movie. As cute as Yu Aoi is she is no little person. In fact, she's much too beautiful and graceful for the role. The character of Hagu in the manga and anime is a sort of dwarf, 19 years old yet appearing to be 10, suffering for being a freak of nature a la Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. She also creats giant Rodin-like sculptures. Morita takes pictures of her and posts them up on a website where she is enshrined as a fetish elf. Rika is crippled and her body is disfigured. The pace is much more energetic and pays a lot more attention to character development. I think a lot of what was interesting has been sucked out with the movie. Although I'd agree with kumakouji this is not the smartest anime out there, I think for what it does it does well. Similar, in a sense, to another hugely popular melodrama manga/anime adaptation, Nana, although the "slice-of-life" nature of H&C certainly grew on me where Nana's pseudo-punkisms conversely grated. I wish there were more Ozu-ish stuff in anime. That would be an interesting dynamic... although how successful it would be is anyone's guess. I've been putting off that Azumanga Daioh for a while now... I should check it out soon. Peace out.
Re: slice-of-life
Date: 2008-01-02 05:54 am (UTC)