Hello Obeika,
Nice objections from you, but on same points, you misunderstood me as well, as it normal to happens when a dialogue is written and not spoken, I guessﾂ…
Anyway I really liked your objection about tv and reality. I am currently studying to become aﾂ…How do you say it in English? I think is massmediologyst, (i mean someone who study different kinds of mass-media and their influence on people) and I am aware of the differences between real life and images and the "danger" of media to create a kind of mentality, so I would be completely out of my mind if I say that something is true because ﾂ"I've seen it on tvﾂ"! You're right on this point: i know a film is just the thought of an author behind it (but basically that could be considered the same also for real-life news report on tv: a news of an event is not the real event, but only the reporter's point of view about it), however, films and media could be helpful to help someone to understand a different culture.
Let my try to explain better those misunderstandings please.
Obeika said:
Interesting observation here, and making some huge generalizations along the way as well. Not all Japanese women or men for that matter are quite like you are describing here, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of foreign women that travel to and work in Japan every year as well. THe majority of them coming from English speaking countries.
True, it was a generalization, but I think generalization as a mental process it's inevitable when you talk about different people in different countries all over the world, otherwise you could never be able to make a comparison between them (for ex. A comparison between Italians and Frenchs or whatever, because you should have to consider the different particularity of 60+mils of Italian individuals and I don't how many millions of French and that would be impossible).
Besides, more than business men/women travelling for work, I was thinking to teenagers and/or simple guys. Here in my own city, sometimes I see Japanese girls going all alone to visit monuments with their rucksacks on their shoulders. I see Japanese guys as well, but from a male point of view (and anyway our society's point of view is basically a male one), it's more uncommon see a foreign girl all alone. It would be quite uncommon for an Italian girl (and I don't know about western girls in general) going alone without at least a female friend. I don't know why, maybe also for a matter of personal ﾂ"safetyﾂ". You know, sad to say, but bad people are everywhere; if I were a girl, nowadays, unless I were a psyco-girl myself, I think I would be concern to go everywhere without some care.
Obeika said:
Please be careful here, even though you may have written "at least they seem" you still are saying that you are basing your impressions upon movies or TV, that really isn't reality in any sense of the word. It is also very dangerous in my opinion to create an image of a people or country based solely on what one sees on TV or in the movies. Plenty of generalizations and misconceptions get spread about in that manner and that really isn't healthy.
I Already told you that I liked this statement of yours, but...Let's consider this: I am found of asian movies. Of these asian movies I probably watched, let's say, 100 japanese film by different authors, different directors. Let's say 80/100 films of these japanese films show directly or indirectly the habit of Japanese fellows to remove their shoes before entering their house. That would be helpful for me to realise that in Japan is a common habit to remove the shoes before going into the inner rooms of an house. Or let's say: all the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's Japanese movies I watched show people eating with sticks. Instead recent Japanese films (from 2000 let's say) show Japanese eating also with ﾂ"westernﾂ" forks. It could tell me that this western ﾂ"fashionﾂ" of eating with forks is spreading in Japan, either in the real life either in the mind of the directors of the films, who, at the end, are real people living in a real life too!
Moreover, watching some Japanese horror movies (The ring 1-2, Dark Water, The Grudge, Sorum, Kairo-Pulse) and also ﾂ"asianﾂ" horror movies (The eye 1-2, Inner Senses, The phone, Scissors, A nightmare) I realised how different is Japanese/asian concept of horror from the western one. The figure of ghost is not so scaring for us; the only recent western horror movies with ghosts I watched in this period were ﾂ"13ghostsﾂ" and ﾂ"Stay aliveﾂ", but there were plenty of violent scenes and blood in thereﾂ…So different from the asian way of doing a ﾂ"ghost-storyﾂ" movie and is not a case they had to change the structure of the film when they make USA remakes of Asian horror movies (the ring, dark water, pulse, the grudge), adding some blood or anyway violent or shocking scenes to make them works even in western countries.
The fact is even in your traditional dramatical theather there's the figure of the wrathful ghost hunting man. So even in this case media helps me to understand some interesting differences between ours mentality.
Of course you have horror movies with violent and blood scenes too and a Takashi Miike's film could be strong even for me, but it's the exception and not the rule.
It would be interesting going deeper on this point, but I will eventually go off-topicﾂ…
Obeika said:
I suppose you can imagine what people around the world would think about Italy if all they knew about it was from TV or movies......(introduce the theme song from the Godfather series here...) and equating Chinese women with Japanese women, even if they both come from Asia is like me saying to you French, Spanish, German, Polish and Italian women are all the same because they come from Europe.
Again. Correct, but IMHO not so true. There are Italian films made by very sensible director that managed to capture the soul of italians inside themselves. Watching them you'll be probably be able to understand some aspects of the personality of Italian fellows.
And about the comparison between chinese/japanese girls. You are right, and it could be unpolite from my side to do it, but still if you consider the life of an Italian man and the life of a Spanish one, ok just consider them as 2 different films without no audio at all (so you couldn't understand who Is the Italian and who the Spanish), you would probably have some troubles to realise who is who. Their way of acting/reacting on some events would be the same. Their style of life would be more or less the same; their way of eating too. So as for our common indoeuropean roots I can perfectly say: ﾂ"Italian people are similar to spanishﾂ" or ﾂ"english to germansﾂ" etcﾂ…As for ex Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, people are pretty similar to each other for historical reason (same soviet regimes there), culture, way of living etcﾂ…So Russian and Ukranian people, but none would dare to say: ﾂ"Japanese and Italians are similarﾂ" or ﾂ"Saudi-arabians and Japanese are similarﾂ", not only for fisical features, but for a lot of other reasons.
They are generalizations, but I think, on some aspect, They're quite tolerable.
Sorry for that long post, you just provocked me speaking about my fields of study
