The Meta-Racism of American Movies

Well, as with so many of the posts on this blog, the impetus of this article was a conversation i had with a group of friends at a party the other night, this friend was Italian, and had taken offense at a recent Hollywood film which had a sequence set in Rome. The friend found the depiction of Italian culture to be false and stereotyped, and labelled the film racist, the film was Eat Pray Love. This discussion got me thinking about the way in which Hollywood portrays foreign cultures, often with little success or autheniticity. I had a similar discussion with some french friends six months ago about Lost In Translation, a film set in Japan, and one of my absolute favorite films.

Eat Pray Love is a 2010 film starring Julia Roberts about a woman who experienced a breakdown and decides to spend a year in Italy, India and Bali. The first three months she spends in Rome, where she eats and eats. The film ends up portraying the Italians as simplistic, offensive and more than slightly obsessed about food (okay this part may be realistic). However to label the film racist is simply too harsh, the film is intended to be a celebration of Italian culture, and indeed i ended up wanting to go back to Italy (I lived there for a year). Racism is defined by intention, and this film is not at all ill meaning, the film is intended as a celebration of Italian culture, which simply comes off as being an oversimplified version of Rome, so whilst the film is slightly problematic, it's flaws come from the fact that it is an American film about a foreign culture, that cannot even begin to depict the complexities of a foreign culture.

Lost In Translation is a 2003 film about two strangers who meet in a Tokyo hotel. This movie is far more problematic, as it can easily be accused of ridiculing the Japanese people. The title of this film is Lost in Translation, and it describes two people who go to Japan with no real understanding of the culture, and yet who fall in love with the city and with each other, thus, although narratively the film has no real understanding of the Japanese people, as this is loosely a first person narrative. Despite this, the film is also a heartfelt love letter to the city of Tokyo and it's culture, the city looks beautiful and the way Tokyo is portrayed is intensely meaningful.

The inherent problem with any foreign director making a film about a city of a country is that they don't have an implicit understanding of the complexities or the true ambiance of a foreign city or country. Despite this, labeling these films racist fails to justify their intentions, as in many ways these films are meant as celebrations or valentines to the cities where they are set. Whilst a lot of these films are clearly problematic, their good intentions cannot be overlooked.