Shopping while they drop
a Invitations and Ultimatums (期待と最後通牒) film review - 1 person found this helpful
Maidhc Ó Cathail interviews filmmaker Jenise Treuting
Have you heard the one about the police inspector who helped protestors write their slogans? No, it’s not an Irish joke! It actually happened during Bush’s November 2005 visit to Kyoto. Jenise Treuting, who organized the protest, wanted to write “Kyoto rejects you too, Bush” in Japanese, so she asked the chain-smoking man she thought was a Hankyu department store executive to write “kyohi” (reject). He kindly obliged, and then inquired, “Jenise-san, aren’t you cold?” The concerned stranger who surprisingly knew her name introduced himself, explaining that he had been assigned to observe the protest.
A graduate of Ritsumeikan University and working as a freelance translator, Jenise Treuting has just made her first documentary. In Ultimatums and Invitations, her interviews with ordinary Americans and Japanese (on the streets of Kyoto, San Francisco and New York) about their perceptions of each other provide a fascinating insight into the love-hate relationship between these peoples, while subverting many of the familiar stereotypes.
Despite being interviewed by an American, many of the Japanese respondents didn’t hesitate to criticize America. “I was surprised by how forthright many of them were,” Treuting said. Americans also defied her expectations. “The stereotype, I think, is that Americans always have an opinion on everything. But many said they didn’t know, or didn’t have enough information to form an opinion.”
The “ultimatums” in the film title partly refer to the neo-conservative attitude toward the world, typified by Thucydides’ words in the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Merging the political with the personal, Treuting draws an analogy between Bush’s ultimatums to Saddam and her own impatience with her Japanese husband’s procrastination. It might not be a comforting thought, but she believes, “Our leaders are not so different from ourselves.”
The success of the neocons’ imperial project may ultimately depend on an “invitation to empire” from the weak, the “invitations” in the second half of Treuting’s title. “Americans are like movie stars,” says a middle-aged Japanese man. A group of Kyoto teenagers express their devotion to hip-hop in their words and dress. America’s attractiveness to foreigners is what political scientist Joseph Nye calls its “soft power.” Without it, Treuting’s film suggests, America’s “hard” military power might founder.
Newspaper headlines documenting both US intransigence and Japanese support for the Iraq war, are juxtaposed with mundane scenes of people on trains, bicycles and escalators going about their business. “I wanted to depict the disconnect between our daily lives and the destruction we are ultimately responsible for in other countries,” Treuting explains.
An understandable and common reaction to all this destruction is despair. Jenise Treuting, however, eschews despair, and hopes her film will highlight our responsibility for the perilous state of the world. “People are killing and dying while we’re shopping and going to work, because we are letting them do this.”
Have you heard the one about the police inspector who helped protestors write their slogans? No, it’s not an Irish joke! It actually happened during Bush’s November 2005 visit to Kyoto. Jenise Treuting, who organized the protest, wanted to write “Kyoto rejects you too, Bush” in Japanese, so she asked the chain-smoking man she thought was a Hankyu department store executive to write “kyohi” (reject). He kindly obliged, and then inquired, “Jenise-san, aren’t you cold?” The concerned stranger who surprisingly knew her name introduced himself, explaining that he had been assigned to observe the protest.
A graduate of Ritsumeikan University and working as a freelance translator, Jenise Treuting has just made her first documentary. In Ultimatums and Invitations, her interviews with ordinary Americans and Japanese (on the streets of Kyoto, San Francisco and New York) about their perceptions of each other provide a fascinating insight into the love-hate relationship between these peoples, while subverting many of the familiar stereotypes.
Despite being interviewed by an American, many of the Japanese respondents didn’t hesitate to criticize America. “I was surprised by how forthright many of them were,” Treuting said. Americans also defied her expectations. “The stereotype, I think, is that Americans always have an opinion on everything. But many said they didn’t know, or didn’t have enough information to form an opinion.”
The “ultimatums” in the film title partly refer to the neo-conservative attitude toward the world, typified by Thucydides’ words in the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Merging the political with the personal, Treuting draws an analogy between Bush’s ultimatums to Saddam and her own impatience with her Japanese husband’s procrastination. It might not be a comforting thought, but she believes, “Our leaders are not so different from ourselves.”
The success of the neocons’ imperial project may ultimately depend on an “invitation to empire” from the weak, the “invitations” in the second half of Treuting’s title. “Americans are like movie stars,” says a middle-aged Japanese man. A group of Kyoto teenagers express their devotion to hip-hop in their words and dress. America’s attractiveness to foreigners is what political scientist Joseph Nye calls its “soft power.” Without it, Treuting’s film suggests, America’s “hard” military power might founder.
Newspaper headlines documenting both US intransigence and Japanese support for the Iraq war, are juxtaposed with mundane scenes of people on trains, bicycles and escalators going about their business. “I wanted to depict the disconnect between our daily lives and the destruction we are ultimately responsible for in other countries,” Treuting explains.
An understandable and common reaction to all this destruction is despair. Jenise Treuting, however, eschews despair, and hopes her film will highlight our responsibility for the perilous state of the world. “People are killing and dying while we’re shopping and going to work, because we are letting them do this.”
