Anyway, extract:
>The Asian-philia at the heart of >America's obsession with >cuteness is
hardly motivated by >the same innocence that >animates the little girls in
Hayao >Miyazaki's orgiastically cute film >My Neighbor Totoro.
Dennis is right, avoid the dubbed version of this film. Get one with subtitles--hint, the Japanese DVDs here have Japanese, English, and English subtitles, only you'll need a region-free DVD player, since Japan is region 2 (but still NTSC).
The complaint about Totoro makes no sense. It's about the ONLY film I know like this for small children that parents can sit through. And if you enjoy it for its depiction of idyllic Japanese countryside (now ravaged most everywhere by Bush-Miyazaki's structural construction projects), it's enjoyable just for that. However, it draws on Shinto images and beliefs and the god-like Totoro can be intense for the young ones. At first we are not so sure if he is going to be nice or mean. By the way, the film has a very strong environmental message to it, since Totoro is really a guardian spirit of the local zokibayashi (communal woodland). Also, the mother of the family is so sick we are not sure if she is going to live or not--another very scary theme for small children to take on.
I say watch it with your small ones and discuss it with them. You'll see there is a lot more to the film than most animation (Miyazaki would insist it is not anime at all--meaning not the typical Japanese stuff for children).
More culture theory, blah,blah:
>Possibly Asian pop culture >seems so appealing in the >United States
because it's >"safe," a nonconfrontational >and friendly product from a
>region whose power threatens >U.S. dominance.
Or maybe because a lot of it is just better done than Disney?
>There's something mildly >creepy about the way cuteness >– at least as it's
consumed in >America – reduces all of Asian >culture to its most precious,
>infantile, and fluffy form.
Well for Christ's sake, is that what's going on? And the next time my 3 year old cuddles her Totoro before she goes to sleep I tell her to GROW UP! and stop undermining the empire.
What a freaking stupid article. Don't tell me I missed the main point. It didn't really have one.
Charles Jannuzi
PS: Miyazaki's latest, as I posted earlier to the list, Spirited Away, is a night journey into post-bubble Japan. A film with a very un-cute heroine who actually struggles to survive because she still believes in something: she loves her parents. Nothing in the film is cute, but nothing is simply evil. Like wow, that might be really hard to understand.