OT American copying - was Re: [Sca-cooks] American Iron Chef

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Ted Eisenstein wrote:
>
> >I'm talking over forty years ago, when a film revolution
> >(such as it was) occurred for the production of a cheesy
> >American-financed monster movie about a big lizard. Much of it was done
> >with stop-motion photography in Japan only because people like Willis H.
> >O'Brien and his young apprentice, Ray Harryhausen, were far too
> >expensive for the number of camera-minutes in which Gojira is actually
> >visible.
>
> Stop-action? I thought Gojira was a guy in a cheesy rubber suit?

He is a puppet in the first two or three installments, animated by
stop-motion photography in most shots, and by simple hand puppet
manipulation in some. He doesn't appear to be a guy in a bad rubber suit
until 1959 or so, at which time Japan's economy had sufficiently
recovered to cause the same kinds of problems with animation in Japan as
faced in the US. The main difference is that the Japanese view some of
their drama and cinema as perfectly legitimate, in the same sense as
English pantomime and melodrama (i.e. highly stylized, non-realistic
theater loved by the public and resting on the cusp between theater and
religious observance). It matters to Americans that Godzilla looks
ridiculous; to the Japanese, that isn't the point.

Recently I was amazed to see Asian-Americans snickering over the
characters flying around on wires in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon",
simply because they were unaware of this as an extant and popular genre
of Asian film which has more in common with both mythology and with
comic books than with real life or history (never mind that the movie
was allegedly set in some mythic past while everybody was dressed a la
Qing dynasty). They had simpy lost touch, which is ironic because if one
were to make a movie based, say, on Cuchullain's adventures in the Tain
Bo Cualgne, there would be people flying around on wires in that, too.
Actually, some of the parallels between Irish epic poetry and Chinese
and Japanese myths and folktales are pretty striking.  But these same
people had no problem whatsoever when this same kind of thing was in
"The Matrix".

But I digress...

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98