The Reuse of Japanese stories in American films: a Comparison to the "Jaan Pehechan Ho" Controversy

As pointed out by David Novak’s article “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood”, there is an appropriate and inappropriate way to reuse and reproduce images from another culture in another cultural setting, that does not necessarily rely on the artist’s intentions.  Novak describes two interpretations of the Bollywood number “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” from the movie Gumnaan, one in which the number was shown in the opening of the American movie Ghost World and the other when it was performed by a San Franciscan pop band named Heavenly Ten Stems.  While it’s use in Ghost World was seen as an appropriate artistic use, Heavenly Ten Stems was seen as using the song and other Asian songs in a racist and enterprising way.  By using my own example of remakes of Japanese films in Hollywood, I will explore what makes reuse of a one cultures art appropriate, and what does not.

The Magnificent Seven
             From IMDB

Seven Samurai
   From IMDB

The Magnificent Seven, an American cowboy-Western film, is a remake of the Japanese Akira Kurosawa classic Seven Samurai.  Both the American and Japanese films are seen as classics in their own right, and are both fondly remembered by critics as hallmarks of both American and Japanese cinema.  Kurosawa, the director of the original movie, actually enjoyed the remake so much that, according to one IMDB movie buff “ Kurosawa gave John Sturges a sword in appreciation after seeing his film” (IMDB 2003)  The artistic interpretation of the film is acceptable in this instance, and both are seen as expressing something useful about their respective cultures, although the concept initially came from one only.

Gojira
             From IMDB

Godzilla
              From IMDB

In contrast to this is the 1998 American remake of Gojira.  Although no one was accusing the remake of being racist, the American, Godzilla was charged by many critics of being bombastic and campy, almost to the point of insulting the original.  The original Gojira was about a giant reptile awakened by American nuclear testing, and according to Susan Napier fulfilled a particular function to the Japanese viewer: “it demonizes American nuclear science… it [allows] ‘good’ Japanese science to triumph against the evil monster.  The film thus offered its immediate postwar Japanese audience an experience that was both cathartic and compensatory…” (Napier 1993: 332)  When Godzilla came out,  it contained none of the nuanced social commentary (ironically, aimed against America) and was a full-throttle action flick.  It was panned by the critics and fans of the original as being over-the-top, unbelievable and too far a departure from the original movie to be a legitimate interpretation.

To me, comparing The Magnificent Seven with Godzilla, the first criteria in interpreting another cultural expression is taking it seriously.  The Magnificent Seven offered a fully American version of the original, but that still respected the original storyline and developed an artistic enough vision. The American Godzilla was mostly aimed at entertainment value, rather than adding a commentary on nuclear war.  Secondly, the remake has to have something interesting to say about the original – it can’t just be remaking it “for fun”.   This is described when Novak says “what is at stake here is not just the loss of original meaning in a landscape of mediated cultural signs.  It is a question of equivalence… between two sites of remediation whose relations to the original hang in the balance between ‘mockery’ and ‘tribute’” (Novak 2010: 60)

When reinterpreting media from another culture, based on David Novak’s article and the case of American movie remakes of Japanese films, it is important to recognize that there is a line between culture and kitsch, artistic interpretation and artistic license.  It was not a case of whether the song “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” itself was being reinterpreted, or if a Japanese film was being remade, but what this reinterpretation added to the original, and how much it respected it as a significant cultural expression.  

Works Cited and Movie Trailers

IMDB

2003                The Magnificent Seven.  User Comment.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054047/  Accessed February 16, 2011

Napier, Susan J.

1993                Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira.  In The Journal of Japanese Studies 19(2): 327-351

Novak, David

2010                Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood.”  In Cultural Anthropology 25(1): 40-72

Youtube

2009                Godzilla (official 1954 Japanese trailer).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSk-i1UFJWA  Accessed February 16, 2011

2008                Godzilla 1998 Official Trailer.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwf2fqcS3mk.  Accessed February 16, 2011

2006                Magnificent 7 (1960) trailer 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWIlGnJDR zw  Accessed February 16, 2011

2006                Criteron Trailer 2: Seven Samurai. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNqQXC8 Tv8U Accessed February 16, 2011 

Graffiti in Gastown and Chinatown – Wall Art and Small Scribbles in Transitional Areas

Wall mural at the corner of
Pender and Gore, with
mailbox graffiti

In this post, I will be looking at the presence of graffiti in the Gastown/Chinatown area of the Downtown Eastside.  It is an area that was quite recently viewed as the seedy underbelly of Vancouver, and to a certain extent it still is.  The reason why I thought of this area is that recently both have been growing and changing into cultural centres – one into a heritage/young hipster hang out and the other a family friendly cultural area.  I noticed that the graffiti in this area was always appropriately located around the consumer aspects of the growing districts (only barely infringing on store fronts, or being erased off important structures) and what seemed like an attempt from graffiti artists to associate with larger works, in multiple cases commissioned for expression of the cultural area, without actually tagging over them.  Although in a sense the examples of graffiti I saw fit with the traditional view of resistance, they also resisted in a manner that was not overstepping certain boundaries of the consumer area, lest it be erased.

Wall mural behind SFU,
note the tag over the
original tag

My search for graffiti began in Gastown, by the new SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, otherwise known as the old Woodward’s building, a re-emerging symbol of consumerism, that has had some recent tension between community members over its place in Gastown.  One piece  of graffiti I found here was a wall mural tucked around the corner of the building by the parking garage.  It was quite an interesting piece of art, depicting a jungle with a purple sky.  However, the graffiti art had been painted over with other graffiti in one spot, right over the original tag.  I’m not sure if this was in good humour, a competitive statement or just a random act, but his particular mural, being more typical than the ones I will shortly discuss, did not seem official, making it seem to me more susceptible to alterations by unknown individuals.  This contrasts to the more elaborate murals, which were huge, elaborate works of graffiti wall art, and no had attempts to tag over them.  It may have been that the smaller tags could be scrubbed off and the picture repaired, but I noticed that although there was graffiti lacking on the wall murals themselves, there was plenty of smaller graffiti surrounding them.  In fact, particularly in Chinatown, most of the graffiti I saw was on buildings and other surfaces surrounding larger wall murals, like the mural of Lao Tzu at the corner of Pender and Gore, depicted at the beginning of 

this post.  It seemed there was no desire to graffiti over one of these works, but a desire to be associated with   

The side of a small grocery.
If you look very closely,
you can see the graffiti

them.  Otherwise, Gastown and Chinatown had their share of small scale graffiti, often clumped in alleyways, or scribbled into a nook, or in a couple cases in Chinatown inconspicuously written on to a shop wall of a smaller business, never a bank or large shop. 

Describing street art as something that is inevitably consumed due to its public nature, Visconti et al say “given that architecture and urban design ‘are among the very few truly inescapable—and therefore public—art forms’ (Carmona and Tiesdell 2007, 179), the street art practices transforming them highlight the difficulty in representing what public space is or should be, that is, of an ideology of public space”  (Visconti et al 2010: 1)  Given the consumer aspect of both these communities, I think this observation applies well to the situation of Gastown/Chinatown.  Whether posh shops or a thriving market community, graffiti artists tend to put their work where it will be seen by strolling consumers.  Of course, one does not see much graffiti when they stroll down Robson street.  It’s presence still has to do with the fact that Gastown and Chinatown are still seen as “lower class” areas, and as Ley and Cybriwsky describe “the power to claim territory endues the claimant with both identity and status among his peer group.” (Ley and Cybriwsky 1974: 494)  These areas are still trying to be claimed by the DTES graffiti artist, who assert that Chinatown and Gastown are still their domain, yet still fall within rules of the growing consumer area.  If they don’t, their graffiti will be erased, which brings 

Outer wall of the Sun Yat
Sen Gardens.  If you look
closely, you'll see there's
an extra paint job that
doesn't match.

The old Woodward's W,
now for display, has been
graffitied on.  It has been
partially covered up, but
not erased

me to my last pictures and my last point: as depicted in two obvious graffiti erasures on the Woodward’s “W” and the wall of the Sun Yat Sen Chinese Gardens, there are consumerist sections of these areas that are becoming dominant that do not fit with the ideology of traditional graffiti art, yet graffiti artists are still trying to claim them, despite what seem to be enforced rules not to.

Citations

All images my own

Visconti, Luca M. et al

2010    Street Art, Sweet Art?  Reclaiming the “Public” in Public Place.  In The Journal of Consumer Research 37(3).  http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/652731  Accessed February 7, 2011

Ley, David and Roman Cybriwsky

1974    Urban Graffiti as Territorial Markers.  In Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64(4): 491-505.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/2569491  Accessed February 7, 2011