Ever since i came back from Japan, the first question out of everyone’s mouth is: “Is it like Lost in Translation!?!?” I always respond “Well….”

It’s hard to parse what i’m being asked. Perhaps i’m being asked if i was just as lost and overwhelmed in Tokyo as Murray and Johansson are. Or perhaps i’m being asked if the caricatures of the Japanese are true. I tend to assume the former, but perhaps that’s hopeful…

Japan was a totally overwhelming experience for me. Not only was it (New York + London)^2 in terms of intensity, but the subtle differences were so fascinating that i spent my entire trip watching for details. Even in my own glazed-over viewpoint, there is no doubt that the Japanese characters in the film were caricatures.

It’s important to remember how caricatures operate. Ever watch a caricature artist? What they do is take the features that appear fundamentally different to their perceived norm and magnify them. Each caricature artist magnifies different features dependent on their own perspective (although, if you have a large nose, you’re going to have a tremendous nose in the eyes of every caricature artist).

Try as i might to see Tokyo on Tokyo’s level, i was brutally aware of my own caricaturization of the city. Fashion played a prominent role in my own processing. My memory has somehow secured the rush of men in business suits in Shibuya and the absurd commonality of 1980s retro fashion. I know that this doesn’t fit everyone, but it stood out because it was so different from what i normally see. My mind was holding on to magnificent differences only.

The problem with creating caricatures is that it’s only funny when you’ve chosen to expose yourself to that processing, when you want to see what stands out from another’s perspective. We choose to subject ourselves to the caricature artist. It’s not nearly as humorous when it is subjected on us. This is where i recognize the problem with Coppola’s movie. I suspect that she meant well… she wanted to portray a sappy set of characters in what she perceived as the American caricaturization of Tokyo. That said, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this doesn’t read well in Japan. It’s far more insulting because the joke is not shared.

This goes to the root of humor. When humor operates by making fun of a population, it is only funny to that population if they were the joke tellers. For example, when my ex-girlfriend used to roll her eyes and call something gay, it was funny; when a stranger does the same, it’s homophobic. Context. Audience. Speaker. One of the key problems with LiT is that it is a caricaturization by gaijin.

[Thoughts stemming from the CSM article (thanks Joi) and Mimi’s old post]

[For more on humor, read Jokes and Their Relation to the Unsconscious. References on caricature can be found in “The City and the Body” from Judith Donath’s “Inhabiting the virtual city.”]

Update:

I had a great talk with Joi about differentiating portrayals situated in hatred and those situated in stereotypes. The latter are not nearly as visible and can hurt just as much. This is a really good point and i conflated the two in this entry. Humor based on stereotypes doesn’t feel as problematic because the intention is not based on hate. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

I also realized that a really good way to consider LiT is to juxtaposition it alongside Kill Bill. Kill Bill (both parts of the full movie) is not nearly as problematic because it is caricaturing every action genre out there, from Chinese martial arts to Japanese sword fighting to Westerns to stupid Americans and their guns. When you laugh, the laughter is only partially at the characters; it is predominantly at Tarantino for incorporating yet-another genre in an off-the-wall way. Additionally, in the Japanese section of Kill Bill, Tarantino goes out of his way to caricature Japanese sword-fighting while simultaneously empowering female fighters to be the most prestigeous. Certainly, everyone in that film dies except two and all of the wrongful deaths are righted, but it’s important to remember that everyone proves their worth in fighting except the stupid dumbfuck American hick with his gun.

Update:

United Airlines is showing Lost in Translation for the month of May on two types of flights: to Tokyo/Narita, to Hong Kong / China / Korea. This gives me the distinct impression that people are linking the movie to certain cultures, not simply to the state of being lost in another country. Other movies during the month of May had no clear linkage between location and direction. LiT is not being shown to/from Europe, unlike almost every other movie.

From Caterina:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Just as we are afraid of ghosts and of the God of the panopticon insofar as they are imaginary non-entities – that is, because they do not exist – so, according to lacan, we love God precisely because he does not exist.

I had to fudge it. The first two books i picked up didn’t have 5 sentences on page 23. Leave it to Derrida and JL Austin to have rather long sentences that fill the page. Thus, i went with Bentham’s “The Panopticon Writings” (which were out due to a recent debate with my roommate).

Note: catching up on blog reading, but i thought that this exercise was fun!

For one of my classes, we’re discussing online dating. This is particularly timely since i’m about to head off to Vienna to discuss the same topic at CHI. Instead of taking it too seriously, i’m glad that my class decided to find the humor. So i thought i’d share.

First, tales of horror from the online dating world.

There are also various “how to translate personal ads” going around. Inside is one that i thought was funny.

Update: Jonas has some great data on online dating. (thanks Ado!)

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I interviewed a person i know a few days ago about hir blog/journal. S/he talked about writing as a form of cathartic processing. S/he got to write down hir thoughts and share them with hir friends who would know when to comment and when to just let hir process. At one point, s/he looked at me and said: remember when you used to blog for that?

Wow… i really did use to process unfinished thoughts, personal frustrations, frameworks i was trying to construct… all in my various web journals. I didn’t have to defend myself to strangers; my friends were totally constructive in their critiques. I didn’t need to remember to be formal; i was allowed to be half-baked.

Now blogging is this psycho addiction. I’m aware of having an audience of unknowns, but trying to put on blinders just to write. I want the cathartic processing, but i want to share some of my findings/ideas with the world. They don’t both fit into the same forum, even though i try. I write so that i don’t lose track of thoughts. Yet, i am only able to deal with comments and people on occasion. I struggle to find the appropriate voice. Another friend told me that my blog tended to have a lot of content, personalized. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Then again, i was told that my thesis looked like a stream of consciousness writing. It was.

As i interview people about their regrets, i start to wonder if i’ll have my own. Will i regret blogging? I try not to live in regrets, or rather, i try to forget that which i might regret. Yet, is forgetting possible?

I’d always seen the steam vacs at Safeway. Thus, when we decided to do a massive house cleaning yesterday, i decided to make certain that all of the carpets and rugs got a thorough cleaning. We have a no-shoe policy in our house so i figured it would just help get rid of Marble fur and random dust. I was so not prepared for the color of the water in a matter of moments. The amount of dirt that came out of those rugs was mindblowing. Where on earth did it come from? Is it from before my time? If you think that your house is clean and tidy, go do a steam vac on your rugs. Me oh my.

This evening, my roommate wrote a mock USPS launch announcement to highlight why Gmail might seem foreign to those who view their email as a metaphor for the real thing:

The United States Postal Service has announced the launch of an automated service that ensures its customers receive advertising material directly related to their interests. No more junk mail!

Now the advertisements you receive free each day — courtesy of the trusted USPS — will be automatically selected to match keywords found in your correspondences. And it’s all privacy-friendly!

Newly installed robots will open every letter handled by the USPS, read its contents, reseal the envelope, and send the recipient — free of charge — third-party material describing goods and services directly related to the scanned content of the letter.

…(cont’d)

Many people have heard me tell an anecdote that i learned while living in Holland: At the turn of the century, the Dutch government collected mass amounts of data about its citizens with good intentions. In order to give people proper burials, they included religion. In 1939, the Nazis invaded and captured that data in less than 3 days. A larger percentage of Dutch Jews died than any other Jews because of this system.

Well, i’d been searching for a citation for a while. Tonight, i remembered to ask Google Answers and in less than an hour, had a perfect citation:

The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses. Social Research, Summer, 2001, by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson

The essay is even better than my anecdote and i truly believe that anyone in the business of doing data capture should be required to read this.