Political And Social Issues In Spirited Away And Roshamon

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

1. What are the main themes, politically and socially, that are portrayed in the film?

These films all reinforced how children’s opinions sway through the way in which they are raised. It demonstrated how as children they were clueless as to who was their enemies and why they were. They also revealed how the government has played a significant role within the riots between the cultural diversity.

The cultural context of the film The Last Samurai affects the characters’ values, attitudes and beliefs, as the character Nathan Algren is shaped by the American cultural context of the film. His values and attitudes concerning beheading and his attitude towards his involvement in American Indian wars are explored in the film.

This theme of the globalised world of Japan is relevant to the circumstance that the movie has been set up in because of Sophia Coppola’s 21st century up bringing. The movie itself can be seen as a comment on the growing global scale of the world, and the multicultural boundaries that are blurring and changing within the world.

On the other hand, Hollywood’s depictions of different ethnic Asian are not always negative or evoke racism. As the news Japan’s military growth and reaches the shores of America, characters such as Fu Manchu and General Yen which portrayed dangerous Chinese warlords disappear from the screen. The Japanese Imperialist troops became the replace for the stereotypical evil Asian characters. (Marchetti, 41) Scene of Japanese troops

In conclusion, the use of romantic and familial relations in China Night and Angels on The Street highlight how Japanese colonial filmmaking attempted to paint Japanese imperialism as benevolent and make its war efforts more palatable for audiences at home and abroad. By naturalizing the Japanese presence and highlighting the need for Japanese ‘civilization’ efforts, these propaganda materials justify Japanese colonialism, and distract wartime audiences from acts of violence committed with a whitewashed fantasy of the Japanese imperial agenda in World War II.

Following the topic of race the Japanese society were as well not discussed about in the textbook in the appropriate way. This particular race had gone through a lot of hardship and was removed from the homes and brought to camps, which were like prisons. The reason behind the removal of the Japanese American was to get rid of them from the west side due to the fear that the Americans felt of having them in the United States was not safe. In for most the Japanese American reflected as a threat to the American and they could not handle that in result, the Americans got rid of them for the safety of the US. As having the opportunity to watch the class film, Something Strong Within it demonstrated the living conditions and the horrible lifestyle

Introduction: Nowadays, Japanese animes are becoming increasingly famous, and America is not an exception for anime’s gigantic worldwide fandom. Animes, such as One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and Attack on Titan, are the main leaders of the anime wave sweeping all over the world. Nevertheless, many Japanese animes are often criticized at the same time for employing the idea of neo-nationalism or indirectly mentioning justifications for Japan’s war crimes during the World War II. Although they are not really noticeable to most of the audience, the author of a famous anime, Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama demonstrated that such neo-nationalist factors actually exist in animes when he showed a strong support towards Japan’s past aggressive wars and colonialism in his SNS.

Hollywood is the oldest film industry in the world and one of the third industries which has great market on marketing and producing movies. Its incredible power can attract the viewers’ hearts and interesting around the world through the images that present in their films. Even though people in the U.S. industry think that portraying stereotypes in the movies can help them attracting the attention of viewers and turn these attentions into profits, the Hollywood writers and directors still have a social responsibility to avoid stereotyping ethnic characters because they can create racism issues through stereotypical roles, indirectly damage Asian women’s image, and decrease the self-esteem of the younger

I decided to write about the movie “Joy Luck Club” because it dealt with the aspects of Asian culture through the lives of women. We have two groups of women that the movie revolves around. The first group of women are the mothers that migrated from the Asian countries, and the second group are the daughters of those mothers who were raised in America. Throughout the entire movie both group of women share their struggles and share their secrets. In the movie the stories that the women tell relate more towards the struggle that women suffer nowadays.

In this article, Thomas Lamarre analyzes Akira in order to explain the cultural phenomenon of a Japanese fascination with destruction. He states that Japanese audiences have continually had a "traumatic fascination" with images of destruction ever since the dropping of the atomic bombs (140). He proposes nuclear symbolism is so widespread in Japanese film because acting out destruction helps viewers come to terms with the trauma caused by it in reality (132). Japanese audiences want to draw near to and comprehend the destruction, just as how many characters in the film want to find the little boy Akira so that they can have a grasp on his power (136). The repetition of acting out an historically traumatic event in media assists the audience

Whitewash movies have been collected criticism from many US people these days, but the problem has not been solved yet. For example, Hollywood released recently a movie titled “Ghost in the Shell,” in which the lead is a white person unlike the original comic book. Why can Asian actors not feature in Hollywood movies. In this essay I will think of various matters concerning whitewash problems in terms of Hollywood culture.

Space Battleship Yamato (1977) and The Silent Services (1988-1996) are both films that ‘rehabilitate’ Japan’s experience of World War II as they re-tell or imagine alternative histories or fictional stories that rehabilitate past trauma (namely their humiliating defeat of WWII and a sense of loss of masculinity to the U.S.-Japan alliance and what came corollary with it). Such narratives can be interpreted as expressing what contemporary Japan desires. The narrative of each film is reflected by the context of the time of its production (cold-war vs. post-cold war) and whilst the narratives of SBY and SS share similarities they differ in their depth of political discussions, conveyed messages and explicitness due to the constraints of post-war democracy, pacifism and U.S. relation. Relevant concepts are militarism, nationalism, anti-war messages, anti-US messages, pacifism, masculinity and patriotism and many of these co-exist in each respective film – the films try to reconcile them by ending with a lasting impression that justifies the aggression for the sake of world peace.

In a traditional or typical family, it is always understood that children are meant to and able to rely on their parents for both safety and emotional support. In the film by Miyazaki Hayao Spirited Away, we observe a family far from the traditional sense of the word. Much of this film is about a young ten-year-old girl who is forced to save herself and her parents from being forever stuck in a world separate of their own. The relationships she loses and gains form her into a different person than who she is in the beginning of the film. Susan Napier asserts in her book “Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle” Chihiro is a bratty child with parents who seem to be detached with her and as we see in the film selfish and indulgent in their own desires (181). These factors all contribute to the development and relationships of Chihiro in the film as well as the idea of family.