America’s Angry Inch: Retroactive Post

Prompted by my visit to Chika's home in Tsushima for the first time this weekend, I had a revelation about yet another difference between Japanese and American culture. It started like this (it started like that, it started with a wiffle ball bat, so....no, j/k).

Actually, Chika first showed me her short films from when she was in the US. It's really inspiring to see a friend sharing their talent with you. I hope to see more of her work someday, when she gets back to it. One in particular stuck with me: her final film titled 'the diary'. It was about a boy whom you're led to think is crazy since he believes in a Pink-cloud Monster and an ominous Black Cloud that takes away his love. In the end however, he takes control of his life and decides that it is what he wants it to be, that he is the person that he chooses to be and is re-united with his beloved.

After this, Chika put on Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a movie that I've seen parts of when I was younger and that I've known about since childhood, but haven't ever watched. It was surprisingly one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a while. Basically, it's about an East German tansgender rock star and her trials in love.

Later in the evening, we got back from the Tsushima matsuri and headed to Tsutaya for a couple of movies. While trying to choose movies, we got into discussing why Japanese peoples' taste in movies differs so greatly from American tastes. Chika said that most Japanese people don't understand her movies because they're very 'American'. I tried to figure out what that meant...I knew that they were different, but in what ways exactly?

I think that it has to do with identity. American movies focus on so many different '-isms': sexism, racism, classism, etc...Why is that? Because we seek to define ourselves. Hedwig was a perfect example of this. As individuals we plumb what we are not, in order to find what we are. I think that this is inextricably connected to our identity as Americans. We don't have one. We have many. We're allowed to have many. This is one of America's greatest strengths, but this is also why we have so much uncertainty in our lives. We don't know what we're supposed to be, because society tells us we can be anything, that we are everything.

Japanese movies on the other hand, and most Asian movies, tend to be very sentimental, full of drama and emotions and love, etc...Something most Americans find a bit overdone, but which makes sense when you think about how they lack this need to define themselves. Eastern countries have such an extended history, a history that provides so many rules about what people should do and how they should behave. It's something that you have to be here to really experience how fundamental this is to its citizens. Japanese people are JAPANESE. This embodies many things, and I don't mean to say that there aren't some black sheep in the bunch, but when it comes down to it, if you're Japanese, that's what you are. It permeates your individual identity so thoroughly, it doesn't really occur to them that it could be different.

This unconscious awareness is something we sorely lack as Americans. Our nation is so young, by international standards, and we're not a mono-culture. We pride and prize our pluralism, our multi-culturalism, our salad bowl of a country. That's one thing I've learned after living abroad for so long: neither is right or wrong, better or worse, they're simply just...different.

Paris, Je T'aime: Retroactive Post

Today I hurried home and prepared the different layers for the vegetarian lasagne I was making for tomorrow, so that I could catch the train to Shiz and watch a movie that Albert had told me about. Albert had heard about it from Bradford, who had seen it last week. He told me about it because it was a French movie showing in Shiz city and as such, figured I'd be interested.

I knew nothing about it, so a visit to its Wiki entry and the theater's website was in order. I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my favorite actresses, Natalie Portman was in it, along with a medley of other actors. So, I decided to catch the 7pm showing, no matter the state of my household. I went and managed to find it fairly easily, sat down and prepared to watch yet another film in French with subtitles I couldn't understand, because this was Japan and not the US. There were points in the movie where I looked to the Japanese for help with the French, but after a while, I forgot about them.

The movie is actually a compilation of 18 short films set in 18 of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, focusing on what else but love in the city of Amour? But not simply love in the fashion of the next Hollywood romantic comedy (or love-com as the Japanese call it), though there was certainly some of that. Rather, it focused on love in its myriad forms, sometimes tragic, sometimes uplifting, sometimes disappointing, joyful, heart-breaking, as complex as a decades-long marriage or as simple as a haircut. And all of this is reflected in the city as well.

Albert is right in telling me that I need to learn as much about France, French and Paris as I can before I go there, in order to avoid the jarring pain of the real Paris as it meets the Paris of my dreams, thoughts and heart. But seeing this movie made me feel like the character in the last story, a fellow American with a terrible accent writing in French that she loves Paris and hopes that it will love her back.

At one point in the movie, I was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness, felt more keenly perhaps because I had spoken to Travis this morning and had been wishing for some company, especially his, during the movie. But by the end of it, I felt better for having seen it alone. It allowed me to engross myself in the movie, in Paris, that by the time I left the theater, I felt a different kind of culture-shock. With my head swimming with French and thoughts of a foreign country, I had to deal with the reality that I WAS in a foreign country, just not the one I had been looking at.

All of a sudden, I had to remember I was in Japan, not Seattle; that this wasn't my city, my country, my home. But then I realized that while Seattle no longer feels that way and that Japan feels more and more comfortable with the passing months, it's still not quite right. But I ask myself, Will France be any different? Or will I feel the way about France as I do Japan once I move after living here for at least a few years? Will any place ever feel 'Right' again, or is that something I've given up in exchange for the novelty of travel?

I guess we'll see. But for now, Paris, je t'aime.