"Lost", indeed

It's a subject that's been swimming around my head for a while now, but I'm just now putting pen to paper. Or, er, fingers to keyboard. It just doesn't sound as good...

The topic at hand is the criticisms of Lost In Translation as racist. One genius (please note completely un-notable sarcasm) on CNN called it "incredibly" racist, objecting that the only people in the movie with any soul were the white people (apparently, he didn't notice the inattentive husband and the shallow, airheaded actress) and that every Japanese person was "stupid".

Forgetting for a second that the word racist has been beaten into near-meaninglessness by people who can't think up a good argument, it's this guy's arguments that are racist. The movie shows how difficult and uncomfortable it is to be in a culture totally different than your own, and the Japanese culture is one that is often strikingly different than the general American culture. They have (again, generally speaking) a different sense of humor and a different way of living. For this guy to look at this difference and conclude that it's only Sofia Coppola depicting Japanese people as "stupid" is exactly the cultural narrow-mindedness that he thinks he's criticizing.

Ah. I'm finally glad I got that off my mind. Thanks for listening.