filmgurl Gets Ranty on Your Rice-King Ass

Found this article about the marketing tie-ins for "Memoirs of a Geisha", including an Asian themed fashion line from Banana Republic, green tea in tins w/ Zhang Ziyi's face all over them and something known as "rice face wash" (I also enjoy the fact that the actual name of the beauty line is "Fresh: Memoirs of a Geisha").

Now, I've resisted posting about the whole "Memoirs of a Geisha" thing for a while, mostly because I don't want to come off like some sort of "Yellow Power" extremist, but I don't even know where to begin with this, other than to say that it confirms my opinion that the film and the book are really just about trying to sell some sort of Oriental fantasy. It isn't a love story. It's not about "women's feelings". It's about perpetuating an image.

I mean, people complain about "Harold & Kumar Go To Whitecastle" being racist, but they're okay with this? Zhang Ziyi is Chinese. Michelle Yeoh is Chinese (born in Malaysia). Gong Li is Chinese. Sure Ken Watanabe is Japanese, but he was in "The Last Samurai" and I personally think that should be enough to have his nationality revoked. Saying that Asian women are interchangeable like that is generalization based on fetishism. I won't argue that they aren't all great actresses, I am a great fan of all three women, I just have a hard time believing they couldn't find even one Japanese girl to put in the lead. Actually, no, wait, I can, because no Japanese woman worth her salt would have touched this thing with a ten foot pole.

While things are certainly getting better for the way that Asians are depicted in Western media than they were say in the days of "Long Duk Dong", I still think there's a long way to go with the way that Asian women are depicted. Granted, I have exploited my status as a "hot Asian girl" on occasion, imitating school girl giggling & wearing a Kimono on Halloween (once, and it was a mistake), but I can at least argue that I'm doing so "ironically". Or at least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself.

Enough for now. I'm going to go brew myself some "spring cherry green tea" to calm down.