Besides the clamor during this year’s awards season, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” continues to make accusations of racism against Asia. Critics and advocates say his explanations for the controversial scenes in the questions miss the point.
Anderson, whose film has been chosen for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director Oscar, has remained relatively silent on the subject, having spoken briefly to Endeavor Earlier this year all the uproar. Asian Americans have objected to scenes in which Jerry Frick, a white Japanese restaurateur, played by John Michael Higgins, has a slow, sarcastic Asian accent, while speaking to his romantic interests, two separate Japanese women. The director, who claimed the joke was on Frick, “an idiot who says something stupid,” said he was “lost” in understanding the backlash.
“I’m definitely able to lose the mark,” Anderson told the outlet. “But on the other hand, I guess I’m not sure how to separate my intentions from how they land.”
Anderson did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
But viewers and commentators speak up, saying that goodwill is not enough when it comes to responsibly representing marginalized communities. As they say, works such as “Licorice Pizza” cannot be examined independently of the history of racial portrayals of Asian Americans, and the impact that such images have had on society through decades.
With the film continuing to stir controversy ahead of Sunday’s awards ceremony, experts say it’s time for Anderson to start listening.
“Great art has never been apolitical. Indeed, art has always existed in a political realm,” said Jennifer Hu, professor of Asian-American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
She added, “These images exist in an anti-Asian racist environment.”
Historians and critics say that even if Anderson’s words are taken at face value, the scenes are still in keeping with Hollywood’s larger tradition of exotic, glamorous and downplaying Asian women—a story that runs through the lens of a white man’s experience, that the film never defied. In the film, Frick, who says he’s lived in Japan for 15 years, turns into stern English when communicating with his wife Miyoko, played by Yumi Mizui, who speaks only Japanese. In another scene, main character Gary Valentine, portrayed by Cooper Hoffman, mistook Frick’s “new” Japanese wife, Kimiko, for Mioko. And when Kimiko, played by Megumi Anjo, speaks Japanese, Frick admits he doesn’t know the language.
Although Anderson has previously claimed That the scenes are based on real-life behavior he has witnessed before, experts say is perhaps most important that neither of the women gets an English subtitle when responding to Frick’s abusive dialogue. Mia Summers, a member of the Nikkei Riders, a coalition of Japanese American activists, said the creative decision made the film’s only Asians as “voiceless” and interchangeable “props” for a primarily English-speaking audience. . They have little potency, and they are not given any elements that make their views humane.
“Racism is not just about personal experiences, but how it reflects power imbalances or access to power,” Summers said.
Hollywood has long been criticized for portraying Asian women as the archetype of the lotus flower. Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist who focuses on Asian American media representation, previously explained that these images grew hand in hand with American imperialism and the occupation of Asia and the Pacific. Asian women were seen as “spoils of war and Asian men were seen as threats”, increased in part by US military men involved in sex trafficking abroad.
Somers said the images are particularly problematic when examined against Japan’s painful history with US imperialism. Okinawan women act against military violencea feminist group, compiled numerous accounts of widespread rape that occurred during the American occupation of Okinawa after World War II.
Yuki Tanaka writes in his book Comfort Women in Japan: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the American Occupation.
Hu said Anderson could have easily written the scenes in a way that would make Frick, and his problematic behavior, a punchline. Instead of silencing them and removing the translation from their conversation, Hu said, it could be the Japanese characters in the joke, giving lines that would expose Frick’s ignorance to the audience while also showing the woman’s self-awareness.
Sommers said that if Anderson really intended to make a statement about the episodic racism featured in Asian Americans at the time, he needed to be open to “apologizing and taking responsibility,” rather than succumbing to confusion over the controversy. And Hu added that a good first step a director should take is to “understand that his images, and those scenes are part of a larger discourse” that has links to white supremacy.
Somers said that because the film has generated such a buzz across awards season, Anderson can still use his platform in productive ways by focusing and upgrading people from minority communities.
“I really think he could have committed to being like, ‘You totally screwed up.’ And now I want to support the progress of storytelling,” Summers said. “I think that would be one response, that would be a lot better and actually show a willingness to learn and create alternatives to his really horrible novel that he created.”
[ad_2]
