The greatest foreign language film
In 2018, the BBC polled film critics on the greatest “foreign language” films of all time. By “foreign language” here they meant non-English, but the critics were selected internationally, so I don’t know why they didn’t just say non-English, but okay, let’s let that slide for now.
The top-voted film in the poll was Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954). Interestingly, though, exactly zero of the Japanese film critics voted for it. Instead, among Japanese films, they preferred the works of Ozu and Mizoguchi. It’s a weird situation: Seven Samurai is the uniformly critical consensus greatest film of all time abroad, and yet in his own home country Kurosawa’s work doesn’t even appear in critics’ top ten lists.
Or maybe it’s not so strange: Different cultures just like different things for different reasons. Apparently, there’s been a whole long-running debate in Japan over whether Kurosawa’s films are “too western”, whether they’re “authentically Japanese”. This sort of thing happens in the opposite direction, too, though maybe not to such an extreme extent. For example, for bands that don’t make it in the west, there’s always the possibility of making it “big in Japan”.
There certainly exist gulfs between cultures. How can they be crossed? I am undoubtedly a western person for most intents and purposes. But I don’t want to have a totally western view. I’d hoped that perhaps watching Seven Samurai could be a step in the direction towards understanding something about Japan and the Japanese perspective, but funnily enough, it might not be.
Like Kurosawa, I make mad films, okay, I don’t make films
But if I did they’d have a samurai
Gotta get in tune with Sailor Moon
’Cause that cartoon has got the boom anime babes
That make me think the wrong thing
How sad would it be to have a conception of a foreign culture as simplistic as those in the Barenaked Ladies’ lyrics? I want to be able to understand different cultures and their tastes at a deeper level. In part this is for political reasons, but it’s also for personal and aesthetic reasons. On a personal level, I want to be able to better understand the China from whence I myself was born. On an aesthetic level, it seems analogous to not being able to see certain colors, or not tasting certain flavors, or not having certain thoughts; why should I limit my experiences in life?
There isn’t anything inherently bad about the west — I’ll even admit that I like the Barenaked Ladies song. Kurosawa’s films being “western” — if it is even correct to characterize them as such! — doesn’t mean they’re bad, just that they happen to appeal to westerners. “Authenticity” does not inherently signify goodness, nor does “appropriation” inherently signify badness. The different tastes can simply co-exist and do not have to be in competition with one another, despite the tacit assumption of singular objectivity underlying a ranking of the “greatest” films.
But it is important to not conflate the appropriated remixes viewed through a western gaze with the originals viewed through native eyes. They are two different things. Neither one more “authentic” than the other, they just are what they are in their different contexts.
As Noah Smith recently wrote about weebs (a bizarre 4chan neologism that means “western Japanophile”):
Japanese people themselves tend to be somewhat mystified when they encounter weebs. It’s a very odd thing to have your country’s pop culture used as a platform for a bunch of foreigners to create a real-world facsimile of a romantic youth they imagine you got to enjoy. And perhaps this is why weebs don’t often move to Japan (and those who do often find it unsatisfying); for most, it’s not the place they really want to go.
Because Japan isn’t actually the place that lets weebs — or at least, the ones who aren’t too shy to leave their rooms — live the romantic dream. That place is weeb culture itself. America and other countries where the culture has taken root didn’t ape Japan; they created something entirely original.
It is certainly easier for us Americans to access the spin-offs, the fortune cookies, the California rolls, the hard-shelled tacos, if only simply because they’re more available. But the originals remain harder to grasp. They cannot just be consumed, we must also engage with them. We know our own culture to be a living, dynamic, evolving thing, and of course the same is true for other cultures.
Even as observers, an obvious initial barrier is language. I am not saying, a la Sapir-Whorf, that this is a necessary barrier, or that there are untranslatable thoughts. The issue is more that, a la “Manufactured Consent”, publishers are incentivized to put out the material that will sell, in this case, stuff that already happens to be more aligned with a western sensibility. So, for simple economic reasons, we’re more likely to see the Kurosawas, and less likely to see the Ozus and the Mizoguchis. If we seek more, then there’s no way around it, we must commit to the work of learning the foreign language or culture.
In his poem “Do You Speak Persian?”, Kaveh Akbar writes about the sadness of losing connections with his family and past through the loss of language.
I have been so careless with the words I already have.
I don’t remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.I remember only
delam barat tang shodeh, I miss you,and shab bekheir, goodnight.
How is school going, Kaveh-joon?
Delam barat tang shodeh.Are you still drinking?
Shab bekheir.
I don’t want to be so careless. The cost of learning a foreign language can be high, but I can’t imagine that it’s not worth it, as it opens access to an entire parallel universe. Some may be captivated by Elon Musk’s mission to Mars, but I prefer to visit the other worlds that can be found right here on our home planet. The BBC so easily and casually falls into an Anglocentric framing in its films poll, but we should aim to make the “foreign” less foreign.