Latent Orientalism: A Postcolonial Study Of The Last Samurai And Lost In Translation

In recent years, there has emerged a fad of films centering on Japan by the Hollywood studio which is always the vane of the global cultural authority. In these films, the identity of Japan and Japanese people seem to be changed. The thesis aims to, through the examination of The Last Samurai and Lost in Translation in aspect of different representations, reveal the long-lasting Orientalist complex.The illustrations about Japan and Japanese people are dramatically different in The Last Samurai and Lost in Translation: Japan in the former film is peaceful and natural; its people worship the western culture. However in the latter one, Japan is modern but swept by alienation; Japanese people are absurd and inert. Imagery and construction of a person or a nation in films as such are closely related to power, ideology and ethnocentrism. Through the representations such as costume, language, roles, and landscape, the thesis explores the Orientalism concealed—relying on its economic, political and cultural power, the United States beautifies the uncivilized Japan as a virgin land to be enlightened by the West; it uglifies or otherizes the modern Japan because Japanese people break up the Occident's imagination and expectation about the Orient. Although the two films change some stereotypes of the Orient, the binary oppositions of the West vs. the East, the Self vs. the Other still exist. The West keeps watching the East in a dominant position, taking it as a different land and a spectacle. The Orient, which is beautified, romanticized, uglified and feminized in the two films, continues to be the inferior, the background and the adornment. In the postcolonial period, as long as the imperial power prevails, there is a long way to go for the East.