A Tokyo tourism promotion caused some debates by presenting brief videos of the area’s traditions, cuisine, and religious practices, likely taken by tourists. The residents had a negative view of these videos as they thought that the tourists were finding strange or funny the normal day-to-day activities.
The videos that have gone viral underscore the fact that the visitors quietly use stereotypes as the main source of their representations of Tokyo. Thus, the already existing Orientalist views, which are based on cultural misunderstanding, are being reinforced. The humorous and superficially interesting aspects of these portrayals disclose the fact that the selective storytelling is the major factor in shaping the full-toned perceptions of the city and its inhabitants.
Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation was very well-received and praised for its subtlety and intimacy as well as for its unpretentious yet profound treatment of isolation and connection. Animatedly, Tokyo is the setting of an American actor in his middle age, Bob Harris, who is in the city for a whiskey advertisement, and of a young woman who is literally left in her hotel room while her husband, a photographer, is on duty.
The narrative setup presents the issue of estrangement that runs through it, as it has already begun to be exhibited by the very choice of the setting and the way in which it is presented through the characters’ point of view.
Edward Said’s Orientalism was based on a very long history of Western literature which transformed the East into a place of fear, lust, and dominance. Initially, it was produced in colonial offices, travel diaries, and missionary reports. Scholars disguised their curiosity as knowledge, painters presented Eastern bodies and cities as spectacles, and novelists occupied their plots with masked characters, the scent of incense, and the threat of the unknown. In other words, the archive gave rise to a story about the East that was constructed from distance, not from lived experience.
Said advanced the narrative and made it clear that the West, through its own manner of getting familiar with the East, had already dictated the identity of the latter. The West considered itself the territory of reason and progress, while the East was trapped in a role of feelings and secrets. The scheme had a straightforward function. If the East remained alluring, the West remained dominant.
In addition, the dispute was intensified by the presence of pop culture. Hollywood circulated the same clichés in different settings, from the desert to the palace and the mystic. The East was represented by the animated films as a bright playground rich in danger and delight, music videos copied emblems without regard to their significance, and fashion considered religious items as bare ornamental props.
The same blatant frameworks were also used in academic circles, yet they claimed objectivity. Said indicated the cycle and contended that representation played a role as a political weapon. The West was the one who exercised the power to name, categorize, and criticize in which it was the one that determined borders, military control, and diplomatic relations.
The theory penetrates into the realms of religion and identity debates in which Western authors characterized Islam as inflexible or aggressive without investigating its internal variety, and Eastern philosophers reacted by writing alternative stories that revealed how the West had also experienced its own contradictions.
Asian and Middle Eastern writers remarked on the West’s preference for an East that was both colorful and far away. They pointed out that the West had more fun with the fantasy than with the actual people. Said grouped these tensions in one frame and claimed that knowledge acted as a power structure. Then, the one who controlled the image could shape the world.
In cinema, we can find Asian locales and characters as the exquisite backdrops to Western stories, as the directors do. They present temples, streets, bazaars, and neon lights, but seldom depict the lives of the native population. The Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha are films that bring the East to the West to allow the latter to confront their emotions of guilt, longing, or identity.
The filmmaking journey has been quite impressive. Still, movies skillfully show Asian cities through the gained perspective of the outsiders. The city of Tokyo, for instance, in Lost in Translation, is portrayed as a scantily clad symbol that consists of nothing but neon lights, bars, and high-end hotels. A gradual medium shot that focuses on the neon-lit streets demonstrates its representation, putting the aesthetic above the cultural representation issue.
The color combinations selection with bright shades being predominant, simply points the viewers to the beauty of the city, thus, turning it into a backdrop for the Western story that is unfolding. The effect left behind by the characters is that they are “without place,” which means the city is there just to show the experiences of the Western characters.
It is the case with other movies too; the future of Blade Runner 2049 is made up of Asian elements but the movie does not care about the source of those images. Doctor Strange takes the character on a trip to an Eastern city, which turns out to be a spiritual maze helping the character to gradually arrive at personal clarity. They signify the role of the cinema in transforming the East into a backdrop for the Western yearning, staring at oneself, and going through an identity crisis.
Coppola’s Tokyo seems to be less of a metropolis and, reluctantly, a collection of selected signs from the very beginning. You shift through karaoke bars, Shinto shrines, pachinko gambling houses, robot talk shows, and bowing hotel staff. The movie mixes these visuals to point out the variance. Obliviously, Bob and Charlotte get involved in the area. In the process, their looking, pausing, and judging are the three steps. The visuals and noises come to them as a very odd parade, and they stay at the surface.
The cinematography creates the atmosphere by using shallow focus and distant shots. The metropolis appears to be bathed in gentle colors, human figures are unrecognizable, and thoroughfares are transformed into flowing patterns of light. The audience nods to the refinement, but still, the impact is of an exotic display created for the eyes of foreigners.
You are also aware of the way the movie deals with the Japanese characters. They introduce tiny laughs, tiny stoppages, tiny moments of misunderstanding. The filmmaker who talks to Bob in the ad establishment turns into a joke, and the person working for a prostitute who comes to Bob’s room is yet another. Their interactions make culture look strange and ridiculous, so you never find out about the characters’ inner feelings or emotions.
In very quiet scenes, the film still presents Japan as a piece of contrast. The traditional lifestyle underneath the surface works to show the void between Bob and Charlotte. Their estrangement becomes more pronounced as the environment around them is peculiar, and the outcome is a soft type of Orientalism that is masked by atmosphere, brightness, and flavor.
The feeling of being lost in Tokyo by Charlotte and Bob is the main emotional point of the movie. The way they move around the city is very fashionable, delicate, and full of private desires. The atmosphere is such that the audience is made to think that both are going through a great cross-cultural journey. A spiritual depth is implied. Still, the experience is turned back on the individuals. Their being out of place is the result of their boredom and confusion.
Tokyo turns into a symbolic stage for their personal conflicts. The city is a mirror, and the copying of the rituals of the Japanese is the reflection of the confusion and the introspection. Powerfully, Coppola’s Japan resonates with the ancient travelogues in which the alien territory gives silent but articulating lessons. The comprehension comes through direct interaction and through oppositeness.
The urban atmosphere is exuding loudness, overpopulation, and unapproachability. The sound seems to be the outer expression of their inner world, the swarm shows their isolation, and the unfamiliarity is seen now as an emotional intensifier, as distinguished from a separate world with its own subtleties. At the same time, it is a continuation of a long series of orientalist daydreams where the East is a paltry place for the West to flourish and grow.
Gina Marchetti in her book Romance and the “Yellow Peril” marks that Western narratives always use East Asian just as a place for characters to divert for a while. Without a glance, the characters run through these places, illuminate their minds, and come back to their routines. In such a manifestation, Charlotte gets a tiny piece of intimacy with Bob, and Bob goes through a moment of refreshment. The city that expressed these emotions remains neutral, and the audience does not witness any new comprehension or interest in Japanese culture. With no such progress, their trajectory ends there.
The most apparent way of showing Orientalism in Lost in Translation was through its treatment of language. The movie put the Japanese in the position of an acoustic wall. Voices around Bob and Charlotte were without meaning. The script took the vacuum as a source of joke, the advertising shoot turned into the most explicit case, and the director is talking for a long time, making big gestures, changing his voice, and adding different meanings at the same time, all at once.
The interpreter’s reply is a short, ambiguous one in which the contrast makes the audience laugh. The humor assumes that the audience has in common the feeling that Japanese is a heavy, difficult, and overflowing language. There are no subtitles at all, and context does not come at all. Still, the viewer is from the Western perspective.
The method creates a subtle hierarchy where English turns into the medium of understanding and emotional sharing. Bob and Charlotte’s voices are low in their hotel rooms. Words are heard with affection, and pauses are very significant. In contrast, Japanese is just a blur of chatter, noise, or awkward punchlines. Hardly, the Japanese-speaking scenes ever depict the characters’ thoughts or feelings.
The voices of the characters become less and less noticeable. The audience experiences the characters’ displacement, but the cost of the identification is a reduction of compassion for the environment around them. The customs that are the background for the plot become soft sound. Japanese people are not heard either as talk or as living beings.
Sometimes, defenders of Lost in Translation argue that the film’s limited perspective is intentional. According to them, Bob and Charlotte are wandering through Tokyo with exhausted and indifferent perceptions. They are outsiders without the ability to interpret the culture, and the film portrays their perspective. Such a viewpoint is tidy, but it does not address the main problem, which is bigger than their separation.
The movie does not consider any option other than detachment because a Japanese character with a psychological burden is never shown. Also, an instance reeking of Western exoticism is never exhibited. The plot never gets through the scope of Western solitude. Such disproportion creates a silent order that controls and regulates every moment.
The stunning visuals of the film contribute to the neglect of the issue. The audience gets immersed in soft lighting, languid cuts, and an atmosphere that is luxurious. The music is hardly heard, the conversations are barely audible, and the manner eases the friction. Max Weber cautions in The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism that the power involved is time after time concealed by the aesthetic finish. The cultural variation is no more than an ornament, and the inequitable frameworks are no longer visible under the grace of the images.
When you observe such a pattern, the faintly gloomy aspect of the film makes Japan a place of interest to be consumed. The place gets portrayed as a series of feelings that are composed for the Western thoughtful people. The outcome is no exception; it has already been included in the list of Western stories that consider the East solely a backdrop for personal desires instead of a place with its own profoundness.
Lost in Translation delivers subtle emotionality and exquisite performance. The tenderness, however, conceals an obvious hierarchy of gazing and framing; the distance makes Tokyo a mirage, the city is felt, but still never completely there, and the Japanese characters pass by the story like mute symbols. Their existence reinforces the intimate musings of the two visitors who are almost oblivious to their surroundings.
When viewing the movie with orientalist fantasy, it is part of a bigger pattern of Western stories that depict the East as minimal surface and mood. The film remains beautiful, but its meaning becomes more and more unfamiliar. You begin to question whose sensations determine the frame and whose muteness occupies the silences. Even after the lights go off, the doubts stay around, as if there was still something in the story that was not spotlighted, waiting just outside the image.
References
- Coppola, S. (Director). (2003). Lost in Translation [Film]. Focus Features.
- King, H. (2010). Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier. Duke University Press.
- Marchetti, G. (1993). Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. University of California Press.
- Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism. Penguin Classics.
- Salzberg, A. (2011). Review of Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier, by Homay King. Bryn Mawr Review of Modern Languages, 16(1).
- Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Routledge.
