Lost in the City Analysis (Week 11)

• The topic is "Lost in the City"

Organization

• Focus on urban space and analyze shots/sequences for support
• The exam consists of four questions, with two to be chosen, using relevant texts

Individual & City

• Cities anonymize individuals
• Cities force interactions with strangers, offering possibilities for contact, but these can be both liberating and isolating
• Weber says that a city is a settlement of closely spaced dwellings that form a colony so extensive that the reciprocal personal acquaintance of the inhabitants is lacking
• Simmel says the incomprehensibility of people contributes to disorientation and isolation in collective living
• In Benjamin's view, Baudelaire responds to the city as a poet and flaneur, embodying shock and seeking sensory immediacy
• The new inconsolability of modern cities is an essential moment in the image of modernity
• The urban environment, with its mass of often unknown people, may evoke theoretical feelings or serve as a symbol
• Simmel: The individual resists being levelled and swallowed by the social-technological mechanism
• Economics (Marxism), rural/urban dynamics, the 'iron cage’ of modernity (Weber), and psychoanalysis come together
• The metropolis creates psychological conditions through its economic, occupational and social life
• These conditions lead to a contrast with the slower rhythm of small town and rural life
• The intellectualistic character of the mental life of the metropolis is intelligible as over against that of the small town
• The intellectualist nature is a protection of the inner life against the metropolis' domination
• Money economy and concentration of commercial activity led to the importance of exchange
• Money economy and intellect are closely related, with a matter-of-fact attitude
• Elements of human existence that are more or less irrational: tradition, custom, religion/faith, justice, superstition, uncanny, love, and familial bonds
• The blasé attitude is an adaptive phenomenon where nerves renounce response to metropolitan life, leading to devaluation and valuelessness
• External reserve involves aversion, strangeness, and repulsion; indifference isn't as great as it seems
• Antipathy saves from the dangers of metropolitan life by distancing and deflecting, thus a form of socialization
• An individual reduces to a negligible quantity, a single cog
• The operation of things and forces takes away everything connected with progress, spirituality, and value
• The metropolis is the proper arena for a culture that has outgrown every personal element
• Money is concerned with exchange value, reducing quality and individuality to quantitative level
• Emotional relationships rest on individuality
• Intellectual relationships deal with people as numbers
• Tokyo's Shibuya crossing is emblematic

Marquez

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian writer (1927-2014) and the 1982 Nobel prize winner.
• Marquez is associated with magic realism
• He's known for One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
• A work is "The Woman who came at 6 o’clock" (1950)
• Dialogue from "The Woman Who Came at Six O'clock"
  • "'That's not it, Jose. I didn't come at six o'clock today,' the woman said."
  • "'It just struck six, queen,' Jose said. 'When you came in it was just finishing.'"
  • "'-'I've got a quarter of an hour that says I've been here,' the woman said.'"
  • "'-'Stop your foolishness, Jose. You know I haven't had a drink for six months.'"
  • "'-'Tell it to somebody else,' he said, 'not to me. I'll bet you've had a pint or two at least.'"
• Other dialogues:
  • The woman asks, "'So do you love me?'" Jose says, "'Yes.'"
  • '"'Even if you didn't go to be with me?' she asked.'"
  • '"'I love you so much that I wouldn't go to bed with you,' he said.'"
  • '"I love you so much that every night I'd kill the man who goes with you.'"
  • '"'In that case you'd defend me if I killed him, right?'"' She pushes Jose's pig head.
  • '"Answer me, Jose,' the woman said. 'Would you defend me if I killed him?'"
  • '"'That depends,' Jose said. 'You know it's not as easy as you say.'"
  • '"'The police wouldn't believe anyone more than you,' the woman said.'"
  • '"'It's true, Jose. I'm willing to bet that you've never told a lie in your life,' she said.'"
  • '"'Just the same,' the woman said. 'The police know you and they'll believe anything without asking you twice.'"

Yoshimoto

• Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964
• Yoshimoto is a Japanese writer with pen name ‘Banana’
• The pen name is cute and purposefully androgynous
• Their themes include: "exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan" and "the way terrible experiences shape a persons’s life."
• "Newlywed" is a sample work
• "I had spent the evening downing whiskey at a bar with my buddies and was totally smashed [...] I stayed put, frozen in my seat. I had stayed on the train because I didn't really feel like going home."
• A man got on the train. He looked like an old homeless guy with ragged clothes.
• The other passengers moved to neighboring cars, but the narrator stayed.
• There was a woman seated where the homeless guy had been, he was nowhere to be seen.
• She had long brown hair, gray eyes, and wore a black dress and patent leather heels
• Her face looked familiar, and she wore a corsage of fresh flowers
• '"If I run into an older woman who lives alone, and seems reserved, I speak to her in the language of solitude. For men out whoring, I use the language of lust. Does that make sense?"'
• "'-'You don't miss anything, do you? Then the four of us would find threads that tie us together, a common register just for us.'"
• "It seemed as if we had toured Tokyo...It was the incredible sensation of encountering a life force that eviloped everything...This town breathes in all the universes that people in this city have in their heads."
• "Intending to say a few more words, I turned in her direction to find the dirty bum sleeping peacefully by my side. Our conversation had come to an end. The train sailed slowly into the station."

Lost in Translation

• Lost in Translation was written/directed by Sofia Coppola in 2003
• Genre: Romantic comedy-drama
• Story about things being disconnected and looking for connection
• The response was positive, but there was some criticism of Orientalist/racist portrayal of Japan
• The film engages with issues of loneliness, alienation and disconnection
• Cool tones of the soundtrack evoke dimensions of the film
• Jet-lagged Tokyo experiences create a heightened expression of dislocation
• During the film, Bob and Charlotte are adrift, existing in a state of limbo
• Time provides reflection on the meaning and direction of their lives, but doesn't lead to any great insight
• Boredom and loneliness assails the protagonists
• The connection becomes established between the two
• McGowan praises Lost in Translation for its evocation of absence
• This reading stems from a Lacanian psychoanalytical perspective
• Enjoyment experienced by Bob and Charlotte based on recognition of the fundamental absence
• The dimension of alienation is evoked most fully in relation to Charlotte's explorations of the city and trip to Kyoto
• The Japan through which she drifts is puzzling, not presenting a threat to her conception of self
• This experience applies to modern, postmodern, contemporary, and traditional fabrics of Japan
• The nature of Charlotte's experiences buys into dominant western ideology, part of Orientalist discourses applied to the far east
• The west depicts Japan as a place of paradox and contradiction
• The key to understanding this discourse is that it tells more about its source than its overseas territories
• In some dimensions, Lost in Translation could be interpreted as a product of patriarchal culture
• The coupling of a younger and much older male is a familiar ingredient or patriarchal assumption
• The fact that Charlotte spends stretches dressed skimpily could be viewed as blatant sexism had the filmmaker been male
• The film could be interpreted as a study of contemporary alienation
• It is all carried out in a very privileged arena, taking place in a luxury hotel
• Concerns have been raised by local distributors about the film as racist or negative stereotypes
• The film opened in Tokyo, and was described as outrageously biased and banal

Next Session

• Readings are up on Moodle