Need Sushi Police Abroad?

The following article was written as an assignment for the Analytical Reading and Writing class.

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When the Japan's Ministry of Agriculture announced that they planned to certify authentic Japanese restaurants overseas in November 2006, many foreign media including The Washington Post, Financial Times, and The Independent reported it and criticized the attempt with the strong words like "sushi police"(Sanchanta) It was also condemned by the chefs around the world as "meaningless" (Lewis). This news drew so much attention that one of the officials of the Japan's Foreign Ministry had to admit finally that it became a "PR catastrophe" (Lewis). As Japanese food has become popular in recent years around the world, the number of Japanese restaurants overseas has dramatically increased. It is estimated around 25,000 by 2007 ("Proposal" 2) and would be 48,000 by 2009 (Faiola). Especially in the U.S., the number of Japanese restaurants increased rapidly to about 9,000 by 2006, which is more than doubled in the previous ten years. This increase is one of the reasons why the Japanese Government launched this certifying program. The Government strongly concerned that in the long run some of the restaurants might gradually damage the reputation of Japanese cuisine due to the poor culinary skills and knowledge about Japanese cuisine of the chefs working there and insufficient sanitary management in the restaurants. In order to maintain the original quality of Japanese cuisine and present the traditional Japanese cuisine correctly, the Japanese authority finally decided to tell the people in the world what the authentic Japanese food is through certifying Japanese restaurants outside of Japan.

Before the Japanese Government actually announced the details of the certifying program, many critics who were against this idea opposed it saying that Japan does not have any authority to define and evaluate authentic Japanese cuisine that is once localized outside of Japan because Japan itself has localized many kinds of food from abroad. One of the main reasons for this is that what made sushi globally so popular is its adoption to the local food-tastes by the local chefs. According to them, California rolls with avocado greatly helped transform traditional Japanese sushi into more palatable food for ordinary Americans (Sanchanta). Seaweed rolls with smoked salmon and cream cheese are a typical example of the localized Japanese food popular in the U.S. (Faiola). Aren't these considered as "Japanese food"? After all, Japan itself is the country that has adopted many kinds of foreign foods throughout history. For examples, tempura, which is believed to be Japanese now, was originally from Portugal and ramen noodles came from China. Both were adopted into Japanese food long time ago and now became one of the most popular foods in Japan (DPA). Even today, spaghetti topped with mentaiko (spicy cod roe) is found at an Italian restaurant and a rice burger can be ordered at a hamburger shop (Sanchanta). The Washington Post even sees the plan as "another expression of resurgent Japanese nationalism" (Faiola). While adopting and modifying foreign cuisine from abroad, it does not make any sense for Japanese in telling the authenticity of their own foods and blame other localized Japanese foods outside of Japan. Food has changed and will change influenced by other food cultures. Don't they evaluate any creativity in fusion-style Japanese cuisine at all? (Actually, fusion is one of the popular cuisine styles in many Japanese restaurants in the U.S. today.) Overall, there is no merit for the Japanese restaurants abroad to be distinguished authentic or phony. As all the news shows, the notion that only the Japanese Government can tell what is good and what is bad is not acceptable outside of Japan.

However, some restaurants, in fact, operate under the guise of a Japanese restaurant without offering essential ingredients for Japanese cuisine. As a whole, it may lead to misrepresent traditional Japanese culture and food. According to the survey on the Japanese restaurants in major 21 cities in the world done by the Agriculture Ministry for the Advisory Council for Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program in 2006, most of the Japanese restaurants were ran by the private owners and on average, less than 10% of them were owned by Japanese or Japanese descents. The percentage of the chefs who has experience of training at a Japanese cooking school or working at a traditional Japanese restaurant as a chef is much less than that. The number of the chefs who were actually licensed back in Japan is very small. These numbers show that many of the chefs working at Japanese restaurants abroad do not seem to have had any chance to learn Japanese culinary properly. It can be assumed that a quite many of them just followed someone's example and studied by themselves. The same situation is also confirmed by Masashi Yamagata, who is the Vice-president of the All Japan Sushi Association and also a guest speaker at the Second Advisory Panel for the Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program hold by the Agriculture Ministry in February 2007. One of the main activities of his national organization is to dispatch sushi instructors to conduct workshops and give lectures on sushi making all over the world. What he found there was the facts that many chefs only have very poor knowledge of how to prepare raw fish in safe and sanitary conditions. According to him, sanitary condition in the kitchen is the most important point in sushi making to eliminate the risk of germ and bacteria infection to raw fish. Germs and bacteria are usually killed by boiling or roasting, but since a sushi chef does not use fire for preparing sushi, he or she constantly has to run water while making sushi to keep his or her hands and the utensils completely clean. Sometimes Japan's hygiene standard conflicts with that in the foreign country. The members of the organization then have to solve the problem by adjusting the Japan's hygiene standard to the local circumstances and rules while maintaining the original quality of the food. For example, there were strict sanitation guidelines for restaurants in Los Angeles. They were required to keep their hot food in 60ºC (140ºF) or above and cold food in 5ºC (41ºF) or below before they serve the food to the customers. Sushi does not fit in these guidelines because vinegared sushi rice is supposed to be kept in 37-38ºC (98-100ºF) almost as same as the warmth of a human hand. In order to solve this problem, the members of the organization asked the health officials to ease the restrictions for sushi. As a result, they got an agreement that the health officials are not going to regulate it within three hours after cooking rice (the rice has to be discarded after that). This negotiation with the public bureau could not be done by any one but the representatives of the association that have the proper knowledge and culinary skills of making sushi.

A sushi chef also has to know about many kinds of raw fish in detail to be able to control the quality of them. There is no way to share the kitchen space with meat cooking due to the risk of food poisoning or parasite infection. All of these are very basic knowledge for licensed sushi-chefs in Japan (280,000 chefs in 2007), but it does not seem to be widely shared with the counterparts outside of Japan where there is no such license required at all. If the workshops or lectures were given and the chef could receive the certificates, it may greatly help to improve the quality of the restaurant and as a whole raise the level of the Japanese restaurants in the area. Once food poisoning repeatedly occurs in some Japanese restaurants abroad, sushi may be regarded as something not safe to eat. That would be a nightmare for Japan and other Japanese restaurants in the world. Actually, many food-poisoning cases at Japanese restaurants have been reported in Moscow recently due to the insufficient hygiene management in the kitchen space. To prevent this kind of accidents, a certain type of certifying system to assure the basic knowledge and skills of original Japanese cuisine is desirable. In order to upgrade the quality of the Japanese cuisine abroad from the bottom, the Japanese Government started a certifying system for the Japanese restaurants abroad which provide low-quality cuisines and operate with poor culinary skills and insufficient hygiene management.

Further more, the knowledge and culinary skills to handle and process raw fish are the basic requirements for the chefs working at Japanese restaurants. The Japanese Government can provide them in order to correct misrepresentation of the original Japanese foods. Indeed, Japan has already started acting on it and is producing the great results. The certifying program is actually very different from what the foreign news media reported. There is no 'sushi police' at all. It is a rewarding system to support overseas Japanese restaurants that need help. After receiving the Proposal for Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program in March 2007, the Agriculture Ministry set up the NPO called the Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad (JRO). Now it has set up its 18 branch offices with the local Japanese restaurants and food companies in major big cities in the world to support Japanese restaurants in the area. Currently it is building a worldwide network and helping to establish the Japanese Restaurant Association in each area. It has not launched the certifying activities yet, but has already started its mission to develop human resources for Japanese cuisine through conducting many workshops of culinary skills and hygiene managements of Japanese foods for the chefs and managers around the world. They have also held business conferences for developing new Japanese cuisine menu and helped importing Japanese ingredients from Japan for the restaurants ("Activities"). Although the activity progresses little by little, through these varieties of practical workships for Japanese-restaurants staffs, the quality of Japanese restaurants abroad will surely improve. As a result, the consumers also gain benefits from the activity.

Moreover, Japan is not the only country that attempts this kind of certifying system. Thai and Italy also have their own certifying systems for the national restaurants abroad. The Thai system called "Thai Select" started in 1999 and the Italian one called "Ristorante Italiano" started in 2003. Both are very rigid and detailed, which may not be the appropriate examples for Japan to follow. On the other hand, the recommendation system called "Japanese Restaurant Upgrading Committee" supported by JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) has already started certifying the local Japanese restaurants in Paris. The reason it was set up is that there were so many Japanese restaurants that offer pseudo-Japanese foods and many French people believed that they were authentic. The committee gives the logo to the certified restaurants assuring that the restaurant offers orthodox and traditional Japanese cuisine. Through this certifying system, the restaurant can add an extra value to promote its business. Even it fails to be certified, the staff then knows which points need to be improved and has an incentive to get certified. At the same time, the certifying organization knows through consulting what the local restaurants actually need so that it can prepare the ingredients or give beneficial advice for them. The system always comes with the backup support for the restaurants. It helps and motivates those who have an intention to improve their cuisine and services. This is not a mundane inspection for all the Japanese restaurants abroad such as "sushi police." It is a rewarding system and doesn't conflict with the idea of localization of Japanese food at all.

Among Japanese restaurants in the world, many of them seem to lack the basic culinary skills and knowledge of Japanese cuisine. To upgrade them and promote more high-quality Japanese foods, there are many things that a Japanese organization can do. One of them is to give lectures and workshops of the basic culinary skills, the knowledge of original Japanese cuisine, and the sanitary management to the chefs working at Japanese restaurants.  Under this system, they can recommend the restaurants as safe and high quality for the consumers. They are both good and beneficial for not only the chefs, but also the consumers to check the restaurants and Japan's exporting companies to expand their business. It may take a time to see the visible results, but this certifying system will surely bring much better food circumstances for the restaurant staffs, the consumers, and the people involved in this business. On the whole, introducing a national culture to the world is an essential strategy to raise the bar on quality standards of the national food in the world.

Examining Initial Evacuation-zone Setting by Japanese Government

The following article was written as an assignment for the Public Speaking class.

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We Japanese had a huge big disaster in the Tohoku prefectures of Japan on March 11, 2011. Many people were lost and are still missing. The Japanese government and many foreign embassies issued evacuation advisories to save their countrymen immediately after finding out the explosion of the nuclear-power plants in Fukushima and the possible risk of radioactive contamination. However, there were clear differences in the evacuation advisories issued by the Japan authorities and their foreign counterparts. In this article, I would like to write about these differences and give my opinions on the appropriate instructions of those authorities.

The U.S. Government issued its evacuation advisory on March 17th recommending that U.S. citizens should stay 80 km away from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants. It also arranged charter planes to evacuate its citizens to other Asian countries. France also took very quick action to evacuate its people. It recommended that its nationals get out of the Kanto area or Japan immediately. Not only did it charter planes to evacuate them to their home country, but it also prepared iodine tablets for them at the Embassy just in case of radioactive contamination. As a result, a total of 4,000 out of 7,000 (that's about 60% of) French nationals left Tokyo after the quake. The British Government also issued the same advisory as the U.S. It chartered flights to Hong Kong and also a bus from Sendai to Tokyo. China evacuated 6,000 of its nationals to the nearby Nigata Prefecture and brought them back home from there. Other foreign countries including Australia, South Korea, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and Austria basically issued only the same 80-km evacuation advisory that the U.S. issued.

On the other hand, there is a big gap between the U.S. and Japan. The Japanese Government asked the residents who live within a 20-km radius of the power plant to evacuate and also asked the ones who live within another 10-km radius to stay indoors. Since it issued this announcement on the 12th, right after the explosion at the power plant, the Japanese Government has been criticized regarding its evacuation range. Some people said the Government underestimated the risk of radioactive contamination and the evacuation zone should have been widened to 80 km, the same as the U.S. Later, a month after the earthquake, the Japanese Government partially increased the evacuation zone, adding five local areas outside the initial 20-km zone where the radioactive contamination is estimated to be more than 20 millisieverts per year. 20 millisieverts per year is the maximum limit for an adult to expose to radiation in emergency situation. This was recommended by the ICRP (the International Commission on Radiological Protection) after the earthquake. Usually in the Western countries, this amount of exposed dose is allowed only for nuclear industry employees.

From a risk management point of view, I think both the Japanese and foreign governments made appropriate decisions on the question of evacuation-zone range at that time. We have to understand that they were in totally different situations. Although they both tried to evacuate their own nationals, Japan had to evacuate a huge amount of people from the stricken zone from immediate health reasons, whereas foreign governments had to evacuate only very few nationals from the evacuation zone. As the U.S. Ambassador announced, they advised the evacuation "as a precaution"(U.S. Embassy), rather than as an immediate health threat. It was not even forced evacuation. For the foreign governments, it would be extremely difficult to find their nationals and evacuate them once the accident happened and the situation became chaotic. To avoid the possible worst-case scenario, they did what they could do beforehand. It was also manageable for them to evacuate a few hundred or thousand of their nationals to other countries by chartering planes just to ease any concerns of those nationals and their families back home.

First of all, why did the U.S. say 80 km? 80 km is 50 in miles and "50 miles" is an easy number to say or remember. That's what I thought at first, but it turned out that the number is not based on any facts.According to ABC News, on April 7th after almost a month since the earthquake, the members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards told an independent advisory panel that they determined the distance based not on the actual data but on the assumptions about the reactor's condition. This is because they couldn't get any data off the site then. Since their scenario assumed 100% damage to the reactor, their evacuation range was greater.

However, it was proven that the Japanese Government set an appropriate evacuation zone. It issued its evacuation advisory based on its risk management procedure. The 20-km range is considered to be safe enough even by several other foreign authorities. In fact, when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in the U.S. in 1979, the first evacuation zone was only 5 miles (8 km) from the nuclear power plant (they widened it to 20 miles (32 km) two days later). In the case of the Chernobyl accident in 1986, it was 18.75 miles (30 km). According to BBC News, the U.S. Government announced later that its 80-km evacuation advisory "did not imply a lack of confidence in the Japanese warnings"(BBC). In reality, it is impossible to evacuate the whole population from a 50-mile (80-km) evacuation zone that covers all Fukushima Prefecture with its population of two million plus.

Since the situation was uncertain at that time and was viewed differently by the Japanese Government and foreign authorities, their decisions were different despite the fact that they had the same information and were responding to the same accident. I personally think the Japanese Government made many questionable decisions after the disaster, but regarding the range of the evacuation zone, it is wrong to criticize them for the initial setting.

Analysis on Dan Pink's Speech at TED

The following article was written as an assignment for the Public Speaking class.

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Dan Pink, who is a famous career analyst, bestseller, and also known as an ex-speech writer of Al Gore, gave a speech at the TED Global 2009 conference in July, 2009 on "The surprising science of motivation." He gave a brilliant speech there using a variety of speech techniques and fascinated the audience within 18 minutes and 40 seconds. These techniques can be examined in four aspects: structure, speaking, phrasing, and interacting with the audience. The following analysis shows how effectively they are used to entertain the audience (Listening to his speech is recommended before read the following article).

Dan Pink's speech has a good hook in introduction and a concise summary in conclusion. It is composed of roughly four parts: Introduction, examples, explanations, and conclusion. He starts his speech with a "confession," which is a great hook to draw the audience's attentions at the beginning. He then briefly tells his academic career that he went to a low school. Because of this information, he creates an imaginary situation with the audience on the stage as if they were in the court room ("I want to make case" and "ladies and gentlemen of the jury") so that the audience is forced to play an imaginary role as a jury to examine what he is going to say. He continues to remind the audience of this fictional situation throughout the speech. Presenting a speech in such a conceptual form can be too exaggerated or funny, but he has done it very intellectually without any negative aftertaste. He makes the audience laugh at least four times in the first one and a half minutes, which suggests that he was successful in making them relax and feel comfortable to listen to him. With the strong hook, he totally grasps the audience's attentions at the very beginning of his speech. He sums up his idea in the last one minute and ten seconds of his speech. In conclusion, he summarizes his speech in three points with the key words that he mentions earlier. Since the audience became very familiar with the key words by then, it was quite easy for them to reconfirm his idea in sorted forms. This brief summary and short conclusion leave strong impression to the audience.

There are less content-related speaking techniques used in Pink's speech. For example, he makes the audience laugh at least 13 times in total (One in every one and a half minutes). There are several kinds of jokes he makes:

1. Mismatched phrases. To say unexpected words or phrases contrasted to the previous words such as "George Soros and Friedrich Hayek" and "Mick Jagger."
2. Irony or exaggeration. Jokes about American politics like "as we say in my hometown of Washington D.C., a true fact" and about American characteristics like "I'm American. I believe in free markets."
3. Funny description or modification such as "some kind of touchy feely sociologist conspiracy."

These jokes are not so relevant to his main story, but they produce the audience's responses each time and make the speech more interactive with the audience. Another speaking technique is to indicate the audience what he is going to tell next. There are three types of indicators in his speech:

1. Simply indicating what he is going to tell next such as "Let me wrap up."
2. Indicating to give examples of what he just said such as "Let me give you an example of …."
3. Indicating that an important statement will come next like "And here's the best part."

These indicators help the audience greatly to follow the direction of his speech and prepare for the next topic. The other speaking technique is short sentences such as "Doesn't work." He drops the subjects and other parts of the sentences so that he can save much time and keep the flow of the speech. The speech becomes more powerful. The audience also feels the quick pace of the speech and this forces them to follow the speech. This is one of the most obvious characteristics of his speech. It goes very well with his fast and energetic speaking. These speaking techniques make the audience understand his speech more smoothly and interestingly, which enable them to get straight to the points with fewer obstacles.

The other important technique that Pink uses in his speech is phrasing. For example, he repeats important concepts many times ("candle problem" for six times) and repeats important points twice in succession ("three and a half minutes longer"). Repeating emphasized points make the audience feel that the repeated phrases are important and are forced to pay more attentions to them. To impress important points more to the audience, he also repeats same phrase patterns for more than three times such as "we can" and "maybe." They all work very well to leave strong impression to the audience. Another technique is rephrasing. He describes concepts in different ways such as "carrots and sticks" = "reward-and-punishment approach" = "If-then rewards." Similarly, he tries to rephrase abstract concepts with difficult nouns into more concrete and understandable examples such as "These contingent motivator" = "if you do this, then you get that." They help the audience to understand the concepts much easier. All these rephrasing techniques are employed in order to make the content easier for the audience to understand. Since the topic is abstract, rephrasing is done quite often in his speech.

The last important aspect of Pink's speech is to interact with the audience. He often asks them using the confirming words like "Right?" for five times and "Okay?" for six times. They are said at the following points:

1. Before unfolding the logic to confirm the premise of his story.
2. After unfolding the logic to confirm the consequence of his story.
3. Right after complicated explanation as reading quotes is done.
4. Simply used as a tag question.

By inserting these confirmations at each point, he tries to make sure that the audience catches up with him. They are stimulated to listen to him more carefully each time he confirms with them. He also asks the audience to think ("Think about …") and has an imaginary discussion with them ("Now some of you might look at this and say …"). He even regards the audience as groups of examinees in the experiment he is talking about and makes orders calling them "You." He uses these different methods to make a strong connection with the audience as much as possible. It is a good strategy to keep their attentions the whole time while making a speech.

Because Dan Pink himself was an excellent speech writer, he uses many kinds of speech techniques so efficiently including imaginary setting, jokes, repeating, short sentences, rephrasing, and interact with the audience. There are tons of touching speeches on the TED's website, but I think Pink's is one of the most effective and successful speeches of all.

The Concept of Nerdiness in Digital Age

The following article was written as an assignment for the The History and Significance of Race in America class.

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In the movie The Social Network, Mark Zuckerburg is called "a nerd" by his girlfriend Erica Albright when they break up at the beginning of the movie. Indeed, Mark is described totally as a nerd throughout this movie. Not only does he wear the same cloth all the time and talks very fast and logically, but also what he actually does indicates something that is more related to the characteristics of a nerd. In this article, two preceding studies of nerds ("From Nerds to Normals: The Recovery of Identity among Adolescents from Middle School to High School" (1993) by David A. Kinney and "The Witeness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness" (2001) by Mary Bucholtz) are to be examined first, and some more aspects of nerds that are not mentioned in these two researches are also to be examined to see how the situation and meanings of a nerd may have changed in the digital age.

To see how adolescents change their self-perceptions from middle school to high school, David A. Kinney had interviews with 81 jr. high and high school students and observed them at the schools and other places in a small Midwestern city (The actual location is not disclosed) in the early 1990s. What he found there is the fact that about one-third of the interviewees had been labeled as a nerd or ostracized by the other students in popular groups in the middle school. However, they became self-confident and see themselves "normal" after they entered high school, involved in extracurricular activities, and joined in new friend groups. He explains that since there are mainly only two groups (popular and unpopular) in middle school, many students try not to be labeled negatively by the popular group at school. They try not to do any stupid acts so that they are at least seen "nomal." Especially at these ages, they tend to think what their peers say to them as themselves. Many of them cannot establish their own personal identity at this stage. On the other hand, after they get into high school, they find a variety of student groups including the ones that hardly exist in the middle school such as punks and freaks. Many of them found their favorite new peer-group that provides friendly supports and positive and reflected appraisals to them. They now can escape from the trendies' expectations and evaluations, and develop a more positive sense of self through the positive peer relationships. At the end of the paper, Kinney introduces several preceding studies on how the high academic achievers use strategies such as "clowning" to avoid being labeled as a nerd including the case of black students who try not to be called "acting White." In a word, the nerdiness at a middle school is viewed something that has to be overcome and replaced with the "normals" (Kinney, 1993, 24), and at a high school it is something that is acceptable as a part of one's identity.

On the contrary, Mary Bucholtz focuses more on race. She argues how the white students in a high school who regard themselves as a nerd distance themselves from the coolness of mainstream white and black subculture. She collected the data through the interviews with the students at Bay City High School in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995 and 1996. She insists that unlike the negative images of nerds that are widely conceived in the society, they have their own communication strategy to deliberately position themselves away from the whiteness and blackness of youth cultures at school. First she categorizes high-school students into three groups: African-American students who indicate blackness, European-American students who indicate whiteness, and nerds who detach themselves from the first two groups. The groups are not divided by their skin colors. They are categorized by the visibility of whiteness and blackness. For instance, Asian Americans are categorized as nerds since they are seen as a minority and thought to be good at science and technology. She also mentions that European-American students often fall into a double-bind situation because they have to behave cautiously not to be seen by their peers as if they imitate black culture, while most of their "cool" youth culture is actually borrowed from African-American teenagers. In other words, much of the youth subculture is once deracialized and adopted to the white youth culture. White students have to walk on a thin line not to be too black but to be cool. According to Bucholtz, nerdy students try to be uncool to deviate from the white norm that the cool white students have. She calls this attitude toward cooler students "hyperwhite" or "too white" (Bucholtz, 2001, p. 86).

Bucholtz also explains language ideology of the coolness and the linguistic tendency that nerdy students often show when they speak. She names the language "Superstandard English" (Bucholtz, p. 87) because they are likely to use Standard English excessively when they talk. They often try to speak in "supercorrect" forms (p. 88). According to her, they try to avoid the influence of language ideologies that blackness and whiteness have by using "hypercorrected" Standard English (p. 88). More specifically, they fight with the three semiotic processes that language ideology has in general: iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure. During the interviews with them, she notices that they do not use slangs much. It shows that they try not to get involved in the "cool" world. She analyses their discourses in the interviews in detail and finds that they not only avoid using slangs, but also use the terms that shows their intelligence to the listener. She also did a phonological examination on their utterance and found out that instead of using colloquial Standard English, they speak in a careful speech style similar to a reading style. Bucholtz suggests that it forms a link to intelligence and is furthermore associated with independent thought. Another point she mentions is the vocabulary and grammar they often use. It was observed that they use polysyllabic nouns with a stance of scientific objectivity without empiricism. She says this is the moment when they show the performance of their nerdiness (According to her, intelligence is the primary concern for them). They told her that they are much involved in studying and other intellectual work and are not interested in the youth subculture around them. She concludes that their attitude toward academic achievement is a strong counterattack against the notion that academic endeavors are not cool.

Compared to Kinney's work, Bucholtz conceptualizes and formulates her theory much clearer, but there seem few points that are dropped because of the dichotomy and formulation. First, even if she focuses on symbolic racism, categorizing only whiteness and blackness is a little too rough. Thus it is a little questionable to call the nerds as "superwhite." There are references to Asian Americans as "honorary" whiteness (Bucholtz, p. 87), but there is no reference to the Hispanics at all. Also there is no characteristic distinction between male and female students. There could be some differences since the word "nerds" are more likely to be labeled to male students. Her unique point is that she points out the direction where the nerds try to go. She calls the direction as "intelligence" and "independent thought" (p. 92), more specifically "an investment in a wider institutional and cultural norm" (p. 96).

However, Bucholtz does not specify the community or space in detail where the nerds try to move into. She just conceptualizes the position that nerds often take. Some other studies show that there are actual places where nerds can fully express themselves. For example, Katie Hafner points out in her article ("Woman, Computer Nerd -- and Proud," The NewYork Times, 1993) regarding female science-majored students at M.I.T. According to her, they found their comfortable places such as Tech Square where the M.I.T. students gather or at home with her older brother who thought her computer programming during her high school days. Another example is Lawrence Eng, who is an Asian American and also calls himself otaku (a Japanese word for nerds). He writes in his dissertation paper about otaku culture, in which he can see himself as if  "[he] is at the center of attention within a vast social network of connections" on a web forum of Japanese anime (Eng, 2006, p. 1). Above all, after 2004, social media including facebook has become so popular in the U.S. that almost every body in jr. high and high school students has his or her own account. Even though they still have to spend half of their time in school in a day, quite a large number of them can probably find their own comfortable space in cyberspace now. They probably expand their friend-network outside of their schools and some of them may build their personal identities such as "nerd pride" there. This trend may affect the meaning of the term "nerd" more positively such as intelligent, respectful, and interesting, and may become more close to the nuance of the word "geek," which is used more positively than nerd today. This social-networking aspect in self-identification has to be focused more regarding this topic.

In the movie The Social Network, first Mark wants to become a member of the Phoenix S K Final Club so badly that he willingly accepts the offer from Winklevoss twin brothers (who are also the top athletes in the Harvard boat club) to program a social network website for them. At this point, he is just a nerd who wants to become a member of a popular group at school just like Kinney observes in middle school. However, after Mark found the website has great influential power even to the students outside of Harvard University, he changes his direction toward broader world. He forgets about becoming the member of the Phoenix SK Final Club just as same as the nerds Bucholtz describes in her research (One thing in the movie that is different from her theory is that one of the main members of the fraternity Divya Narendra is non-white (Indian)). In this sense, this movie clearly describes the socializing phases of a young male nerd at the beginning of the digital age in the early 2000s.

Racial Representation in American History X

The following article was written as an assignment for the The History and Significance of Race in America class.

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A movie American History X (1988) deals with white supremacy and racism. We can see a variety of racial representation in this movie. We're now going to see implicit racial associations and racist stereotypes seen in this film first with the framework of John Russell's discussion in his research "Race as Ricorso: Blackface(s), Racial Representation, and the Transnational Apologetics of Historical Amnesia in the United States and Japan," examine the background and arguments on race in the movie, and finally see the editorial point of view of the film maker.

There are so many symbols that representing race in American History X. Two young white brothers are featured in the story. The older brother Derek had been a white supremacist. He killed two black youths and had been in prison for three years for voluntary manslaughter. He has many icons of white supremacy on his look including skinhead and swastika tattoo on his chest. However, after he gets out of the prison, he has his mild hair-style and does not shows his tattoo to other people any more (he only sees it in the mirror after taking a shower, which reminds him of his old regretful past). His younger brother Danny has been inspired greatly by Derek and now becomes a member of a white supremacist group. He also shaves his head and has a collection of Nazi posters in his room. Their looks show a typical young white supremacist today. While in prison, Derek changed his racist ideology. Not only because he was raped brutally by one of his white inmates, but also because he saw the reality of racial conflicts and disillusioned.

There are a variety of racial symbols depicted in the prison. The prison guards say racial words to Derek. Macho black, white, and Hispanic groups are clearly divided in there. The main concern in this part of the movie is whether Derek would be raped by blacks or not. It turned out that they did not, but the notion of "being raped by blacks in prison" is shared not only with Derek but also with the audience of the movie. This notion probably comes from what Russell calls "the sexual body images of black males" (Russell, 2011, p.132). Derek has no communication with any members of these macho black guys. In the movie, they are just depicted as "beasts that may sexually offend others"(Russell). Since the possible victim is a white, it also indicates that the rape would be a kind of interracial pornography (There is almost no description of black females in the movie. The only exception is a black shop-keeper who was insulted by Derek and his racist members). The other symbolic icon of blackness can be found in the characteristic of Lamont, who is a black inmate and becomes a good friend of Derek in the laundry room in the prison. He talks and makes jokes a lot, which also characterizes him as a typical young black male who has a big mouth. Another representation of black character is Dr. Sweeny. He is a high school principal who holds Ph.D. and tries to help both Derek and Danny. He is seen as a well-educated black role-model. He is also seen as the person who has gone through the Civil Right Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a man of dignity and plays a "good guy" in this movie. During these events, some flashbacks of past events are inserted occasionally. One of them is a basketball match with a young black group at a park. Here Derek finally won the match with them against the expectation that blacks play basketball better than whites. One of the black guys, who is killed by Derek later in the movie because of stealing his car, is depicted as a bad guy who physically offended Derek during the game. All of the black characters in this movie are split into good and bad guys. This is what Russell calls "a series of binary extremes" (Russell, 2011, p.128). All of them bear strong black icons. Even Dr. Sweeny, who is relatively more depicted than other black characters, is seen as a typical wise and elderly black-male.

The background of the movie also plays an important role in representing race and racial issues. The racial situation is actually discussed by the characters themselves in the movie. The story unfolds in Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California, where different races exist in the same area. The topic that is referred to in the film is the Los Angeles Riot occurred in 1992. This racial-motivated event has huge impacts on Derek and Danny since the Riot is exemplified by Derek to support his claim to justify the beating of Rodney King. A hard dispute over racism is carried out at the dinner table at Derek's house with their mother Doris's Jewish boyfriend Murray (who is a Danny's school teacher) and Derek's girlfriend Stacey. Here Doris and Murray talk about the Rodney King incident from relatively a liberal point of views, whereas Derek criticizes Rodney with harshly racial words. In the end, Derek shows his hostility to Murray by showing his swastika tattoo.

Another interesting aspect of this movie is that it also shows racial discriminatory views of working-class American people. For example, Derek and Danny's father Dennis, who was a firefighter shot and killed while fighting a fire, talks about affirmative action critically to Derek. He probably does not call himself a white supremacist, but criticizes the racially "unfair" system. He uses hateful words such as "affirmative blacksion," "niggers," and "shit," which clearly show his racial discrimination against blacks. It shows that these prejudiced notions may easily be passed down to the next generation in an ordinary working-class family. Another racial episode that is likely to happen in Los Angeles is that attacking a glossary store owned by a Korean. The main reason why Derek attacks the store with his racial-group members is that the owner hires non-white employees. The movie reflects the political and social situations in the 1990s in Los Angeles on their life-style basis. For Derek and Danny, their enemies are real. The enemies are the people whom they see every day in their lives such as their neighbors, co-workers, classmates, and shop owners. The brothers hate them because they are non-white. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler and Nazis ideology seems to play a relatively small in their lives. Swastika and other Nazism icons seem to attract them only as a fashion, not as philosophy. They don't look like Nazism ideologues at all (Both brothers do not use particular racial words such as "Aryans." Derek uses the word "Jewish" only once while disputing with his mother's Jewish boyfriend). There is no description of them praising Hitler or his ideology in the film. That is probably why Danny can change his mind and throw away all the Nazism posters and stickers immediately at the end of the film.

The message of American History X is very clear. White supremacist ideology is not focused much in this film. Instead, hatred and violence seem to be put more emphasized as the reasons and causes of racism. For example, Dr. Sweeny asks Derek in prison, "Has anything you've done made your life better?" Derek actually changes his mind with this question. At the end of the film, Danny writes as a conclusion of his essay assigned by Dr. Sweeny saying that "Hate is baggage. It's not worth it." Both examples point out that the brothers' problems are not on race, but on hatred. What they have to do now is to see themselves objectively and find out whether the hatred has its own legitimate basis. Although rest of the characters are distinctly divided into good and bad guys and described stereotypically with racial symbols, it successfully shows how a circle of hate violence continues.

However, there is criticism that the movie sends the wrong message that hate crimes are committed by people who shave their heads and wear swastikas, and if a viewer knows that he does not do this, he can rest assured that he is not a racist (Finley, 2003, p.82). This is probably because the story relies more on the racial stereotypes, whereas a similar movie such as Crash uses the racial stereotypes in ordinary people more efficiently to show the conflicts between them so that they are more likely to happen in their real life. Overall, the movie shows how racial hatred is reproduced over generations very well.

Movie Review: Steven Soderbergh's Art-house Films

The following article was written as an assignment for the Introduction to Film and Video Analysis class.

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Steven Soderbergh is one of the most successful directors in the U.S. today. He won the Best Director of the Academy Award in 2000 with Traffic and has many Oscar nominated films such as Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), and The Good German (2006). After his first film "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" (1989), he has directed many big-budget Hollywood films like the trilogy of Ocean's series (2001, 2004, and 2007) and two parts of Che (2008). On the other hand, he also continues to direct many experimental films with non famous actors or amateurs with small budgets. This type of films includes Sex, Lies and Videotape, Full Frontal (2002), Equilibrium (2004. One of the three short films in a movie Eros), and The Girlfriend Experience (2009). Many of the cinematography in these films have actually been adopted later into his big-budget Hollywood films. In these four art-house independent films, Soderbergh not only used unconventional cinematography, but also continues to focus on a particular theme ─ exploring ambiguous and unstable relationship between a man and a woman.

In Sex, Lies and Videotape, several experimental cinematographic techniques are used to convey the film's main theme: sexual relationship with others. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated the Academy Original Screenplay, but was made with a relatively small budget ($1.8 million) (Ebert). The Two main actors James Spader and Andie MacDowell had never played a main role before they played in this film. The story is about two sisters and two guys. A husband named John is refused to make love with his wife Ann (played by MacDowell), while he is having an affair with her sister Cynthia. One day, his college friend Graham (played by Spader) comes to his town. Both sisters are attracted by Graham. Each character has an obsession or a fear about sexual relationship with others. Some lie and the others conceal one's true feeling to each other. (In the film, Graham describes other three as "I see John and Cynthia and you [Ann], and I feel comparatively healthy.") To find out the real relationship with each other, the sisters tell their personal stories regarding sex in front of Graham's video camera. In this film, although there are some close-up shots of the characters in bed, no sexual intercourse or masturbation scene is explicitly shown. Instead, the characters have much conversation about sex. (This is partly because of the character's setting that Graham cannot get erected in front of other people.) When Graham meets Ann, they start to talk about their sexual experience and tendency. (Ann also talks about her masturbation experience in front of a psychiatrist.) This setting -- a huge amount of "sex talk" between Graham and Ann -- makes their later non-verbal and physically intimate scene more sensual and attractive. This sexual discourse sounds more sexual and immoral through the grainy images and unclear sounds of the video that Graham takes. In this sense, the low-resolution video images are used quite effectively in this film to produce a voyeuristic atmosphere. In addition to this, a voice-over is often used for the smooth transition to the next scene.

Full Frontal also has a variety of experimental cinema techniques and the similar theme that Sex, Lies and Videotape has. It was shot over 18 days (Scott) mostly on digital video in an improvisational style. By using different resolution cameras, the film divides (and sometimes blurs) the line between what is real and what is happening in a film within a film. It also contains the voice-over of each character at the beginning of the film regarding what they think about their lives. The story is about a day in Hollywood. There are several stories going on at the same time toward the end. Each character interrelates with each other and has a trouble in relationship with the others. A middle-aged couple has a marriage crisis while sisters have an internal conflict with each other. A female executive keeps harassing her employees while a black actor keeps the sexual relationship with several women. The husband of the couple confesses that they once tried to videotape their sex play, which turned out to be failed and became the cause of no sex since then. Many of them seek to improve their relationship with their counterparts. The husband starts to tell his story about their marriage to a vet assistant whom he just met on that day. A reporter (played by Julia Roberts) sends secret love letters to the black actor, while the wife leaves a divorce letter to her husband (it turns out not to be read by him). A masseur and a theater director tell their online relationship and their first-date plan to their family and friends. Each character reflects and talks about his or her life in the middle of developing or restoring the relationship with his or her (new) partner. All these talks are going on at the same time at different locations between different characters. It is difficult to judge if the cinematography that Soderbergh adopted in this film including a movie-in-a-movie setting or different resolution cameras is a good idea or not in the relation to the movie's theme. Some critics say that the film is "an exercise in style and possibility" (Scott) or it "embodies the very essence of the French New Wave" (Morton). On the other hand, a famous movie critic Roger Ebert says "A film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable." The rough texture of a digital camera and improvisational acting and dialogues do make some scenes (outside of the movie in a movie) lively and realistic. Even though, there are some scenes outside of the movie in a movie shot without using a digital camera, which make the audience a bit confused in telling whether they are inside or outside of the movie in a movie. Overall, the film succeeds to a certain degree in focusing on and contrasting each character's interpersonal problem with unconventional cinema methods.

Equilibrium, one of the three short films in a movie Eros, is also shot with different camera techniques. The story mainly unfolds at a psychiatrist office in the 1950's. An advertising executive (played by Robert Downey Jr.) is having a therapy session with his psychiatrist. He has been wondering who is the woman in his dream that he has had every night recently. In his dream, the woman is taking a shower and he is half asleep in bed. He tries his best to describe her and their situation with his words to his psychiatrist. In turn, the psychiatrist tells him to imagine the dream more in detail (The film indicates that the woman he dreams about becomes his wife later.). There are various kinds of screen tones used in this film. At the beginning, unstable, sometimes shaky camera in color is used as if the shot were the view of the man in bed. The camera follows the nude woman in the bathroom. Then the next scene is in the psychiatrist office in black and white. The film goes back to color again later, but it becomes black and white again at the end with a coarse texture (probably shot on a low resolution film). Interestingly, this film also has voyeuristic parts. Besides the shower scene mentioned above, while the psychiatrist is listening to the patient's story, he is watching outside of the window secretly with a telescope (What he is looking at is not identified to the audience at all). The color tone on the screen is changed according to the content of the scene. The contrast between color and black and white emphasizes that of a dream and reality. It actually makes the naked woman in the 1950's style in the man's dream so sensual and attractive with vivid colors. On the other hand, the therapy session with two men in a plain office in black and white indicates that the time in the movie is long time ago and nothing exciting things happen in there. In addition to this, the waving camera also produces a kind of erotic voyeuristic feeling to the audience. As a result, the woman's striking images leave such a strong impression to the audience that the audience would understand why the man is so attracted to the woman. Although the story is very short (27 minutes) and not much story unfolds, still the film fairly succeeds in focusing the main theme (mysterious relationship with a woman) using different color tones in the film.

In The girlfriend experience, the cinematography fits its main theme (sexual relationship with others) the best among the four films. This film also has the similar features like other three films. It was made with a relatively small budget ($1.3 million), shot with a portable high-definition video camera with a mostly unprofessional cast and with mostly improvised dialogues. As the movie title suggests, the story is about the daily life of a high-class escort girl named Chelsea (played by a famous hard-core porn star Sasha Grey). The location is in New York during the 2008 Presidential election. There is no sex scene at all in this film (only a few kissing and nude scenes). It mainly focuses on the conversation between Chelsea and her clients. Due to the subprime-loan crash at that time, every client of her talks about money and the downsizing U.S. economy even they are on a "date" with her (This is partly because most of her clients are wealthy business men). As the story goes, she decides to spend a weekend with one of her clients (which turns out to be failed) and it causes a quarrel with her boyfriend. The event forces her to think about the line between the business and private relationships with her clients. She also has to talk about herself in front of the journalist of a magazine at a restaurant, but here she often declines to talk about her interpersonal issues to the interviewer in order to protect her privacy. She mainly expresses her true feeling in front of her boyfriend, a female friend, and the client with whom she can open her heart. A variety of cinematography is used to produce a realistic atmosphere in lively New York. Unstable shots by a portable camera are often used especially for the scenes in a limousine or a private jet, which make the audience feel as if they were with the characters in there. Long shots on the streets are also used quite often in order to show famous restaurants and boutiques that are actually located in New York. Out-of-focus images of the characters are sometimes adopted as well to convey the real atmosphere of the location. For example, Chelsea and her boyfriend go to a bar and talk over the table. While they are talking, the focus is on the counter behind them, not on them. A voice-over with her voice is repeatedly used as she keeps the record of whom she met, what she did, and what she wore at each date. This cinematography successfully supports the documentary approach to Chelsea's "real" life with the gorgeous background of New York. It helps to show her appearance and behaviors more ordinary but still elegant, and sometimes reveals what she really thinks about behind her cool face. Roger Ebert says, "This film is true about human nature. It clearly sees needs and desires." Chelsea's little worries and problems in her daily life are clearly conveyed to the audience through this series of effective cinematographic techniques.

While Soderbergh has made many box-office movies, he also keeps making many art-house type movies including the ones I mentioned above. They were usually made with small budget, non famous actors, and high-definition camera in a short period. Unlike his other big Hollywood films, there is no gun, no murder, and no violence in these four films. They mainly focus on the interpersonal relationship between the characters often with sexual mise en scenes with unconventional cinematography. Meanwhile, there are two more films that are also considered to be experimental in Soderbergh's films: Schizopolis (1996) and Bubble (2005). I excluded those because Schizopolis is a comedy and Bubble is a mystery, which do not match the theme of this blog post.

I did not have time to write about how he has adopted the cinematography that he tested in the four films to his mainstream Hollywood films, but it greatly affect his other films in several ways. It is a pity to hear that Soderbergh is retiring from making films after he finishes making two new movies with Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, and George Clooney (Lu). I think it is the time to shed more light on his art-house type films to examine how he has developed and integrated his cinematographic techniques into his big Hollywood movies.

Movie Review: Fargo and Blood Simple

The following article was written as an assignment for the Introduction to Film and Video Analysis class.

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The Coen brothers often make films that are categorized into crime movies. The genre includes the elements such as crimes, guns, murders, police, fights, violence, "good guys," and "bad guys." Miller's Crossing (1990), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007), and some other Coen's films have a lot of these elements. Strong influences by the hard-boiled novels of Raymond Chandler are seen in their films. Among them, Fargo (1996) received two Academy Awards (best actress and writing original screenplay) and a Cannes Film Festival Award (best director) and is considered one of their best movies. It has very unique characteristics, among which may even change the notion of the categorized genre as a crime movie. By comparing their first film Blood Simple (1984), its uniqueness becomes much clearer. Fargo seems to follow the rules of crime movies on the surface, but its motif and composition are quite out of them that allow this movie to be seen as an anti-crime movie in some points.

There are many similar points in both Blood Simple and Fargo regarding their plots, scenes, characters, and motifs. For example, one of the main male characters in both movies makes an initial crime plan involving his own wife and asks other person(s) with money to carry it out (A man asks a private detective to kill his wife in Blood Simple, whereas a man asks two thugs to kidnap his wife in Fargo). In both films, The original plans do not go well as planned, and the stories unfold unexpectedly. The husbands get in trouble and the other people around them also get involved. At last many of them are killed. All the events also happen within a few days in both movies. There are many similar scenes as well. They both have many long shots of a long road to the horizon on the plain field. Both first scenes are the long-distance shot of a long, empty road. Important negotiations are held in a bar. The couples in both movies find themselves safe when they are in bed with their partners. Sex scenes appear quite early in parts of both movies. Female characters try to escape to the bathroom at their houses and the attacker(s) breaks in there. While one of the characters is moving a dead (or dying) body in the middle of a street to the roadside at night, a car is approaching them. All the characters in both movies move to different locations by car and also many important conversations are held in there. In both films, female characters play quite a tough role such as shooting villain(s) and managing to survive. Same kinds of props including telephones and guns are also often used as an important tool. Strong similarity is also found in both characters. For example, the main characters in both movies are all middle-aged. The murderers are motivated by money to carry out the plans and end up dead (In Fargo, one of the criminals is arrested alive while the other one is killed). Most of all, both movies have very similar motifs. The intention and desire of each character causes unexpected results by accidents and leads the story to an unintended direction. These unexpected plot twists are one of the strong characteristics of the Coen brothers' films. This failing-crime plot is often seen in their other movies including Raising Arizona (1987), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Burn After Reading (2008). All the similarities mentioned above suggest that they are apparently pretty much the same kind of crime movies.

However, Blood Simple and Fargo still have different characteristics as well in characters, scenes, and plots. Blood Simple focuses only on the characters who actually get involved in the plan, whereas Fargo focuses not only on the characters got involved in the plan, but also on a police officer and her colleagues and family in the same town. Blood Simple follows the basic rules of film noir (guns, murders, money, femme fatale, and dark night), whereas Fargo is not restricted by these rules. It actually deviates from them and has very opposite characteristics to them: The police officer is not a macho or cool man but a middle-aged, cheerful pregnant woman. There is no femme fatale and no one is driven to commit a crime by sexual desire.  Blood Simple has many thrilling scenes. For example,  a camera only shows a female character hiding in the bathroom and does not reveal to the audience who the approaching attacker is in the living room. The sounds of the attacker's footsteps and the heartbeats of the female character also emphasize the thrilling mood. In contrast, Fargo has very few such scenes. Instead, it rather provides a comical touch to the violent scenes. For example, a female character fall off from the stairs blinding herself with a shower curtain and faints. This is one of the reasons why this movie is seen as dark comedy. Blood Simple consists of only a crime story, whereas Fargo consists of both a crime story and the ordinary-life story of a local police chief, Marge. There are many contrasting scenes as well. While darkness is very much emphasized in Blood Simple, the whiteness of snow in a day time is put much emphasis in Fargo. The climates in both movies are also opposite. Sweat on the character's face and flies flying around him show that the event happens in very hot summer in Blood Simple. On the other hand, white breaths from the mouths and heavy clothes with thick gloves show that the temperature is extremely low in cold winter in Fargo. Although one character wears a cowboy hat and another cowboy boots, the movie does not seem to represent the taste of Texas much in Blood Simple (The characters do not speak in heavy Texas accents), whereas strong Minnesota accents and the repeated dialects such as "yah" spoken in almost every character in a small local town Brainerd show the strong locality of Minnesota in Fargo. All the protagonists are desperate to find their ways out and do not morally reflect on what they are doing in Blood Simple, whereas the police chief Marge gives simple but strong moral questions at the end of the film to one of the arrested criminals Gaear regarding what he has done in Fargo. ("There's more to life than money, you know … Don't you know that?")

The ways the characters are depicted are also very different in both movies. All the characters are depicted quite seriously, and some are even depressed in Blood Simple. However, they are not heavily characterized with repeated actions or phrases. Especially the two main characters, Abby and Ray, are depicted as plain characters so that the viewers are easy to relate with them and imagine how they feel. In fact, there are many close-up scenes of them without saying anything, which may force the audience to guess what they are thinking. In Fargo, all the characters, including the very minor ones, seem a little comical to the audience even though they act seriously in the film. One of the main reasons for this is that each character bears caricatured traits which leave the viewers the strong impression of them and make the viewers easy to expect what the character will do and say next time when he or she appears on the screen. The characters' characteristic signs repeatedly occur again and again to the same characters throughout the movie in the forms of the actions, phrases, and facial expressions and form his or her unique characteristics. In other words, the characters are dominated by their own characteristics and do not act or say anything against their characterized images any more. The characters act and say as they are expected, which may lead the viewers to see them as a stereotypes with no complex human emotion.

The other reason for the comical aspect is that all the characters in Brainerd speak in very heavy regional accents and say colloquial dialects quite often as mentioned above. This also helps the viewers regard them as "characterized others" instead of seeing them as "ordinary people like us" just like the viewers themselves. This regional characteristic plays another important role in forming the perception of the characters. The viewers would notice that these Minnesotans act and say things quite politely. This politeness of the people in Minnesota is known as "Minnesota Nice." They also act politely even when they are in the middle of dangerous or desperate situations, which make the scenes funny even though they are quite serious. These contrasting points in both films make the very different impressions. Blood Simple keeps the thrilling tension, while Fargo has a relaxed, little comical atmosphere even though the events are very dreadful. Some other Coens' movies such as Big Libowski and Burn After Reading also have the same kind of comical atmosphere.

One of the most different points of Blood Simple and Fargo is the composition of their story lines. There are two on-going stories in Fargo, whereas only a single story line going on in Blood Simple. Fargo is not only about the story of criminals but also about that of ordinary people. These two stories are clearly contrasted as a whole to make a good balance of the movie tone not to become too criminally oriented. Marge's business and private lives are depicted in detail (they are actually mixed). By contrasting with the routine work and boring life in countryside, the movie successfully reveals the craziness of the other on-going kidnapping and its relevant events without much centering and dramatizing the violent event itself. Fargo finishes with the scene that Marge's husband Norm tells her that his picture was selected as the design for a postage stamp. It suggests that even right after a very dramatic and violent event such as shooting and arresting a murderer, a very personal event which looks very minor for many people becomes very important and exciting for a couple like them. For Marge, fighting with "bad guys" is not the exciting main event as the viewers expect. For her, it is just a routine work that should be done as usual as a part of her job. In other words, this movie rejects the core characteristic of crime movies such as "Who wins at last?" Instead, it suggests that there are many important things than beating bad guys. It gives an alternative value to the viewers at the end. In this sense, Fargo can be seen as an anti-crime movie. What Marge says in the police car to Gaear ("… and it's a beautiful day.") at the end of the movie shows that she is now back to her ordinary life again. The same composition and motif are also seen in No Country for Old Men that has parallel (criminals and police) story lines going on at the same time and makes a similar tone at the end of the movie.

Though there are many similar points in Fargo and Blood Simple, Fargo is more complex in composition and leaves the viewers a different impression at last from what it is expected as a crime movie. In a word, Blood Simple shows only the chain of violence, whereas Fargo shows how the violence and crimes look ridiculous and comical when it is compared with the peacefulness of caricatured ordinary people.

Movie Review: Stranger Than Paradise

The following article was written as an assignment for the Introduction to Film and Video Analysis class.

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Jim Jarmusch's second movie Stranger Than Paradise (1984) is often seen as a "deadpan comedy" or "wry humor" mainly because all the characters do not talk much. Even if they talk, they often fail to communicate with each other. On the other hand, the movie is also considered as "Downtown Cool" or "streetwise naturalism." These humor and coolness come mainly from the cinematography and the character's settings in the film. Overall the film clearly creates the "deadpan" atmosphere and shows the isolated situation of each character by breaking one of the conventional rules of general movies.

Stranger Than Paradise intends to create a boring atmosphere by showing communication failures between the characters. The film does not have any twisted story-line or exciting events. It consists of three acts. In the first act "The New World," Willie and his friend Eddie meet Willie's cousin Eva ,who just came from Budapest, in a desolate apartment in New York. She spends ten days there with them. In the second act "One Year Later," Willie and Eddie visit Eva in Cleveland, Ohio in the middle of cold winter. In the last act "Paradise," three of them go to Florida for a vacation. The only big event happens at the end of the film when Eva happens to receive a huge amount of money by accident. Except for that event, Jarmusch mainly describes their awkward interactions with each other. He focuses more on their communication failures. For example, Willie refuses to speak or listen to Hungarian that his aunt Lotte and Eva speak. Willie fails to tell a joke to Eva because he totally forgets the punch line. Jarmusch also shows the fact that there is not much to talk about when the characters meet each other. Willie does not ask Eva anything about her first trip to New York or her home country Hungary when they first meet. Willie and Eddie have nothing to talk with aunt Lotte when they visit her house in Cleveland. Instead, Jarmusch inserts the silence before and after the characters'short conversation quite often in order to reveal the boring and uncomfortable situations that they have to bear. To fill the emptiness of being together in the same place, they often smoke cigarettes and drink beer. Also, their conversations are often one-way. (e.g. Aunt Lotte speaks Hungarian to everybody even if nobody is listening to her. A drug dealer approaches to Eva and complains to her without confirming her identity.) All these malfunctions of the communication leave the impression to the audience that each character is isolated even though he or she would like to communicate to each other.

Jarmusch also uses cinematography to amplify the character's isolated standings. Unlike the popular images that each city has, the locations where Willie and Eddie go including New York, Cleveland, and Florida are depicted only with the desolated images. Abandoned cars and ruined buildings are shown in New York. Whole the city is covered with snow in Cleveland, and only the deserted motel and beach with no other people is shown in Florida. The film's black-and-white images make the scenes more devastated. Usually in a film, a close-up shot with the character's facial expression is used to show the character's intention or feeling more directly to the audience so that they are more likely to overlap themselves with the character subjectively. In this film, Jarmusch doesn't use a close-up shot at all. Instead, he employs many middle and long shots, which often include several characters in the same frame and leave the impression to the audience that they objectively observe the interaction between the characters from a distant point. Few-second blackouts are also inserted between the scenes. They play quite an important role here. They interrupt the sequence of story each time the scene changes. The audience is forced to stop following the story-line each time and is given the break to appreciate the meaning of the event that they just saw or think other things. The blackouts prevent the audience from getting into the movie's world. These techniques are used quite efficiently in this film to produce the weary and deadpan atmosphere.

The other point that looks the characters more isolated in the film is that they cannot feel that they are supposed to be together to achieve something as a goal in the movie, which is often the case seen in other movies. Willie and Eddie say to each other that they do not know what to do and where to go. Even if they go to other locations hoping for changing their current boring situation, they still feel the same there. After they arrive in Cleveland, Eddie says to Willie, "You know, it's kind of funny. You're some place new, and everything looks just the same." As a result, the audience is also at a loss with them in the story. From that point, the audience wanders with them without any possible goals of the movie.

Stranger Than Paradise changed one of the premises of movies that the characters surely communicate with each other and the story follows a certain story archetype in a genre which have a typical ending or goal predictable for the audience. The film successfully displays an uninteresting and tiresome atmosphere and communication failures that often occur in a real life. It is still quite unconventional and unique among other films today.

Movie Review: Rashomon

The following article was written as an assignment for the Introduction to Film and Video Analysis class.

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A classic film still gives the audience today the strong senses of originality and sharpness it has even if it is black-and-white and was made a few decades ago. Rashomon (1950) directed by Akira Kurosama is one of them that had a huge impact on the audience and filmmakers all around the world after it received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 and the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1952. Today the film is considered as a classic not only by its content, but also by its composition of the story line (The story is based on the two short stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, but it is changed a little). Avove all, the film always makes the viewer to think what a story line is every time one watches it.

At the beginning of the film, a woodcutter and a priest started to tell a mysterious story that they heard at the courthouse to a vulgar man who happened to drop by at the gate of an abandoned temple called Rashomon with them under heavy rain. According to the woodcutter and priest, there was a murder in a forest three days ago. A samurai was killed and the suspect was arrested. After that, the woodcutter, the priest, the suspect, the samurai's wife, and even the dead samurai testified (through the medium) at the courthouse. However, their stories are conflicted each other. The woodcutter also gives his "true story" to the other members at the temple which he had not told at the court, but it also conflicted to the others. They get so confused that they cannot trust what people say any more. At the end of the film, they find a baby abandoned behind them. The vulgar man robs the clothes of the baby, whereas the woodcutter, who also allegedly stole a dagger from the dead body, decides to take the baby and bring it up as his own children. The priest finds humanity in his decision and tells him that he can keep his faith in human beings.

The most unique point of this film is its composition of narrative and point of view. The same incident is viewed and told differently by different people who were at the scene at least four times. All the characters have their own motivations to make up their own story. The narrative of each character is often inserted from the beginning of his or her story through the end so that it looks more favorable to the character. As a result, the audience cannot tell exactly which the real truth is. In other words, the audience would face the situation that what they watch might not be what actually happened in the real world in the movie. What they can believe is only the scenes at the temple and that of the courthouse. Some of the audience may notice that there is another character in the courthouse, an unseen investigator. It is hard to characterize him since he is out of the camera frame and does not say a word even though the other characters seem to have conversation with him. The audience knows he is there at the scene only because all the characters testify to him looking toward the direction of the audience (which is toward the camera). It makes the audience feel as they were the investigator or judge. His figure is unseen and his voice unheard in order to have this setting effect. This means that the fairness and objectivity of an investigator and judge is deliberately excluded from the film although the role itself is played in there. The judgment or sentencing of the trial is not referred either from any of the characters. Instead, the audience is the one who has to play that role. They have to judge by themselves whether each person's story is true or not. Toward the end of the story, not only do all the characters get confused but also does the audience.

Now what the audience can believe in the movie is only in the scene at the temple. Here the abandoned baby plays an important role. Throughout the movie, the priest keeps saying that he might lose his faith in men, but at the end when he knows that the woodcutter offers to become a foster father of the baby, he can finally believe human beings again. At the same time, the audience may receive another message from the movie that this humanistic happy-ending is reliable because it is not some one's story or point of view but a God's point of view. This viewpoint in the ending part is well-contrasted with the narratives and viewpoints of human beings in the earlier parts, which makes the last message clearer and stronger.

There are many weak points in this movie. For example, the characters explain the movie's motif too much by their own words. They also overact without adopting the actual ways of talking at the time in Edo period. Moreover, the treatment and motive of the female character does not seem socially acceptable or understandable for many viewers today. Even so, the film still gives the audience a fresh impression every time they watch it.