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bill harris wrote: > I actually wrote the paragraph cited, not Hans. > > Sorry. That attribution was made by Thunderbird not by me. > The issue is whether Japanese audiences saw one of their own films as = > having been back-dropped or understood within a particular context. Are = > Twenty-Four Eyes, The Burmese Harp, and The Human Condition just = > adventure stories? Does anyone care nowadays about what films mean in = > their country of origin, or is it just all about me? > The problem with Gojira is that the connection between the atom bomb and the monster is so tenuous that on the surface it might seem unlikely that an audience was likely to take the movie seriously as a response to the bomb. One possible factor that may suggest that it wasn't so taken is the way the monster seems to have fairly quickly been adopted as a pop cultural figure held in a great deal of affection. Would that have happened if the audience really associated the monster with the real horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? At first glance, there is cause to be skeptical. Hadn't thought of that argument initially but what I was interested in speculating about is whether the film might have had a different an emotional resonance for a post-war Japanese audience than the American version had on its audience. The 9/11 example can be taken as a speculative argument by analogy suggesting by example that the emotions aroused by traumatic events can somewhat surprisingly find an expressive vehicle in a work that might seem too trivial (or kitschy in the case of the song) to bare that emotional weight. If this is true, it very well might be true in other situations, giving some probably very weak support to the notion that for the original post-war Japanese audience the response might have been associated with the bomb. To judge whether this association actually did or did not exist would need historical evidence I don't have on hand. The question of the interpretation of films that are made for, or at least released into, an international marketplace is an interesting one that played a role in my thinking about the nature of genre. > Yet lest I appear to suggest that all Americans are self-centered, = > permit me a note of congratulations to the writer for having remembered = > the sad events of 9/11/73. I have no idea of how that song and those = > firefighters tie in to feelings for the three-thousand plus Chileans = > murdered by the CIA-putch; but it's the thought that counts. After all, = > as Iraq might suggest, human sympathy for others over here is in short = > supply. > Glad that I don't have to teach informal logic anymore. Used to hate having to sort out this type of non-sequitor. j * * Film-Philosophy salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **