My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)

Based on the manga series “Nono-Chan” by Hisaichi Ishii and written/directed by Isao Takahata (Pom Poko, Grave of the Fireflies), My Neighbors the Yamadas is a truly unique film. Both visually and structurally, there's no other film quite like this one. Centering on an eccentric Japanese family called the Yamadas; the film has no plot to speak of. Instead, there are a plethora of short episodes that focus on a particular member of the family dealing with some kind of situation, be it fighting over the remote for the TV, waking up late for work or school, or even leaving the youngest behind at the shopping center. Each "episode" is bookended with a title and a haiku adding a smart and comical footnote to every sequence.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I need to mention the animation style. From one clip or the trailer, it becomes obvious that this film simply looks different from just about anything else. It's a bizarre and original style; the only instances where I've found anything remotely similar have been in animated shorts. Made entirely digital, as opposed to hand drawn cels, the animation resembles a comic-strip style come to life with water colors. There are a few fantasy sequences scattered throughout the film that show off the incredible detail and spectacle of this particular visual choice, but the majority of the film is much more understated. The fantasy sequences are packed with color, movement and visual references to various aspects of Japanese culture, but the majority of the film features limited backgrounds and an almost complete lack of detail in both the characters and the environments. There are quiet scenes that almost feel like a comic tribute to the films of Ozu. It's this lack of detail however, that forces all attention to be paid to the characters and the way they move and interact. This, aside from some terrific voice acting, plays a major role in presenting the characters in a realistic and relatable manner.

The family consists of Takashi Yamada (Tôru Masuoka), the father, Matsuko (Yukiji Asaoka), the absent-minded mother, Shige (Masako Araki), the wily grandmother, and the two children, Noboru (Hayato Isobata) and Nonoko (Naomi Uno). All of them have their own unique quirks, but somehow manage to seem like genuine characters. Even during an elaborate and surreal fantasy sequence, the emotion or purpose of the scene never feels forced. There's a scene late in the film in which Takashi confronts a few bike gang members who are disturbing the peace of a neighborhood. The animation shifts to a more detailed and course visual presentation. Takashi is noticeably terrified and the gang members taunt him. It’s not until his mother comes to his rescue and baffles the gang members with a speech does the style of the film resume its usual appearance. It actually amazing how the quickly the tension drops once the animation goes back to normal. The normal cartoony style becomes something of a safe-haven, where you know that the characters will be okay. After this scene, Takashi sits alone on a bench and imagines himself as a superhero in order to cope with the feeling of being emasculated in front of the gang members as well as his wife and mother. It a very touching scene and even with the elaborate fantasy sequence, it maintains a strong bittersweet tone, as does much of the film. In the end, a major theme of this film and what really ties together all the episodic scenes is the idea of acceptance; accepting not only the people around you for both their positive and negative qualities, but life itself.

Let's Roar! : Blackface in Musicals from 1927-1942

Al Jolson as Jakie Rabinowitz

Blackface performances were a part of American culture for many years before appearing in films, but over the years it was portrayed in different ways. In The Jazz Singer (1927), it was used as an offensive visual depiction of incorporating a foreign culture into an American ideal, in Swing Time (1936), Fred Astaire uses it to tribute one of the great African American dancers, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and in Holiday Inn (1942) it is used for a musical number in which Abraham Lincoln is honored for freeing the slaves. It would seem that over the years, blackface in musicals is used in a manner that at the time is intended to acknowledge a particular view of African American culture, but in doing so misrepresents them.

Almost always linked with the spectacle of musical numbers, blackface was featured in vaudeville shows and was popular. “Minstrelsy was the first and most popular form of mass culture in the nineteenth-century United States” (Rogin, 5). Al Jolson was one such performer. The Jazz Singer featured two blackface performances including a scene in which Al Jolson applies the makeup and the audience is allowed to witness the transformation. This film is important historically because it was the first significantly popular film featuring sound; this is due to its use of sound in a realistic and seemingly unintentional way (Cook, 211). The Jazz Singer is the story of a Jewish singer who rejects his father’s wishes of becoming a cantor and decides to be a famous jazz singer. His father refuses to accept his choice even when he is an adult and after a confrontation becomes ill. Al Jolson’s character must then decide if his is to sing in his father’s place or perform at the Broadway show. In the end he is able to have it both ways. The only musical numbers in which blackface is used are the ones that are on done on stage, making it part of the spectacle. By using blackface, the idea that jazz belongs to the African American culture is emphasized. In comparing the restaurant scene in which Jack Robin first performs as an adult and the later performances on stage, it becomes apparent that what he does physically is no different. The only defining difference between the performances is the addition of the blackface makeup. A Jewish man singing jazz is enough of an image to portray the “melting pot” idea of America that the film seems to enforce. The blackface is, if anything, unnecessary and distracting. As an interesting note, what Al Jolson sings in the film is not what is now called jazz. At the time there were many high selling jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, but at the time, the label of jazz was attributed to the music of Al Jolson who spoke for these African American musicians through his use of blackface (Rogin, 113). “The Jazz Singer assigned freedom to a blackface ventriloquist rather than to an African American jazz musician” (Rogin, 113).

The addition of the black makeup is like a literal mask for his Jewish heritage, giving the message that in order to be truly American, you must hide your real ethnicity or cultural identity, and in the process discredit another race. The scene in which Jolson applies the makeup depicts this best. He covers his face and when his mother and a friend of the family enter to see him, they do not recognize him. This is a scene that was noted by both fans and critics alike.[1] The blackface is therefore a tool in order to make someone from a non American background more “American.” It is also a tool for Al Jolson’s character to get access to his girlfriend in the film, who is not Jewish and referred to by his family as a gentile. This plays into the common stereotype that African American men strongly desire white women. This is “the underlying identity” (Rogin, 79) is the use of blackface. This is not much different to how blackface is used in the later Fred Astaire film, Swing Time from 1936.

Fred Astaire as Lucky Garnett

Swing Time is one of the many popular Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ dance/musical films. The story isn’t too important here, as the scene in which is to be referenced has very little to do with the plot, but it is an incredible dance regardless. These films featured several dance numbers that showcased the two stars talent. In Swing Time there is one particular dance number in which Fred Astaire performs solo called Bojangles of Harlem. This dance was a tribute to African American tap dancer Bill Robinson who performed in vaudeville and minstrel shows and in the dance number, Fred Astaire uses various moves that Robinson did while wearing his bowler hat and minstrel outfit. The dance is one of the more memorable parts of the film and features an incredible segment in which he dances with three of his shadows. In this film, the blackface, costume, and set are used to acknowledge an African American dancer, however, it is also a tribute to minstrelsy. The dance opens with a large blackface image which is moved away showing off two colossal feet that are then removed from a smiling Fred Astaire. The open blackface mouth is one of the key components to the blackface costume as Bernard Wolfe wrote, “…we like to picture the Negroes grinning at us…” (Rogin, 176). Towards the beginning of the sequence Fred Astaire dances with all the white female background dancers, alluding to the forbidden union between white and black. Aside from the blackface and minstrelsy reference, there is nothing particularly offensive about the dance itself, and as mentioned earlier; it is a truly remarkable dance.

Marjorie Renolds as Linda Mason

Holiday Inn is a musical that was made in 1942. The film is obviously of the time as the Fourth of July performance features a film montage of America’s history of military excellence. In Holiday Inn, there is, like in Swing Time, only one scene which utilizes blackface and it is the president’s day dance. The dance is done with all the performers wearing blackface and features a solo by the maid and her children who are actually African American. In it she refers to African Americans as “darkies” (Rogin, 178) and is dressed up in typical “mammy” southern black maid fashion, which is one of the major stereotypes of blackface (Diawara). The actress was not even southern, but had to fake an accent for the role (Rogin). The minstrel performance is done as a celebration of how Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. In terms of the films plot, the reason for blackface is meant to be comical. In the film Fred Astaire’s character is trying to remember the face of the girl he danced with while drunk at the New Year’s party. Not wanting to lose her to Fred Astaire’s character, Bing Crosby decides to hide her by making her wear blackface makeup. Bing Crosby tells her that the performance was now going to be done in black face because he thought about it and it would be more effective this way. This is never referenced in the actual number, but the use of an excuse for blackface gives the impression that by the forties it was less popular.

It would seem that the way blackface is depicted in each of these three musicals over the course of a fifteen year period is offensive and unnecessary. Any of the messages that the films were trying to display would have been more effective without the blackface makeup. Both The Jazz Singer and Swing Time make similar allusions to the idea of interracial relationships. In The Jazz Singer Jack Robin’s blackface career gets him a non Jewish girlfriend while in the Bojangles of Harlem dance, Fred Astaire dances with an entire row of white dancing girls. These seem to echo, though much more subtly, a fear expressed in Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith, which was that African American men lust after white women. This was not alluded to in Holiday Inn. In The Jazz Singer, it also served as a way for a Jewish immigrant to mix into American society (as a Jewish person singing Jazz music, which is associated with the African American culture); through blackface he could literally cover-up his culture and heritage. In Swing Time, Fred Astaire uses it as a tribute to a great African American tap dancer and in Holiday Inn it is used to honor a man credited with freeing African Americans from slavery as well as mock those he freed. No matter how one attempts to justify the use of blackface, it was an ugly tool used inside and outside film to degrade an entire race of people with stereotypes and misrepresentation.

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[1] Hall, Mordaunt. The Screen: Al Jolson and the Vitaphone. The New York Times, Oct. 7, 1927; pg. 24.

Sources

• Hall, Mordaunt. The Screen: Al Jolson and the Vitaphone. The New York Times, Oct. 7, 1927; pg. 24.
• Cook, David. A History of Narrative Film. W.W. Norton and Company. New York, 2004. pgs. 210-11.
• Rogin, Michael Paul. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in The Hollywood Melting Pot. University of California Press. Los Angeles, 1996.
• Diawara, Manthia. The Blackface Stereotype. http://www.blackculturalstudies.org/m_diawara/blackface.html. 1998.

Hellboy: Sword of Storms (2006)

Hellboy: Sword of Storms marks the first of the animated Hellboy films. There doesn't seem to be any significant continuity with the live action films, but they do feature the much of the same cast as the voice actors and even use the theme music from the first Hellboy film.

The story begins with Hellboy (voiced by Ron Perlman) and the B.P.R.D. investigating the disappearance of some agents in a Mayan temple, where they encounter mummies and a giant bat. This introduction is entirely unrelated to the rest of the plot, but serves its purpose of introducing the heroes and the purpose of the B.P.R.D. The films’ plot begins with a Japanese professor discovering a scroll depicting what seems to be a harmless fable, but then finding himself possessed by two demons intent on awakening their dragon brothers and destroying the world.

The story is essentially divided up into three plot lines. One follows Hellboy, who's transported to a spirit world by a fox, the second follows Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Liz (Selma Blair) as they fight one of the dragons, and the last follows two B.P.R.D. agents, Kate Corrigan (Peri Gilpen) and a psychic. Kate, though having never been portrayed in the live action films, is actually a character from the comic series. The highlights of the film by far come from the Hellboy portion of the story. Trapped in the spirit world, he encounters all manner of demons, many inspired by Japanese folklore, including flying heads, a turtle demon, trolls, a spider witch, and even a three headed lady serpent (a different version of the latter was featured in Vampire Hunter D). These demons are sent after him via figurines on a scroll placed by the possessed professor, quite similar to the way Zeus interacted with mortals in Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts. A few of these encounters are taken directly from the comic series and it has the same tone. Hellboy's complete lack of fear and almost indifferent attitude towards the bizarre and threatening encounters he comes across is strongly present in the film, made only better by the inclusion of Ron Perlman, who has the character down to an art.

Speaking of which, the art work used here is very sharp and pronounced, clearly inspired by the creator Mike Mignola's unique style, but it's in the design of the characters and creatures where this is most apparent. Aside from the use of CG, the film looks quite good. I bring up the CG as a negative because in the few instances where it's used (mainly during some extreme long shots of a city or a few environmental effects like clouds or leaves), it's very noticeable. In one instance, there was a shot of a city with storm clouds over it and the city had absolutely no features; it was merely a group of rectangles. Not only did it not match the rest of the film's style, but it looked bad even taken by itself. The other issue with this film is the pacing. Because the majority of the action is found within the Hellboy portion of the story, that makes the Kate portion almost entirely the exposition. She and the psychic have the shortest amount of screen time, but they spend most of it explaining the magical artifacts. Abe and Liz's subplot seems really interesting at first, particularly when dealing with potential character development, but what it eventually boils down to is Liz trying to burn a dragon that lives in the water. Aside from the relatively slow way this battle is portrayed, in the end, had they never encountered the dragon at all, the outcome of the film would have been no different.

These complaints aside, Hellboy: Sword of Storms is an entertaining film and a good Hellboy story. The mixture of modern American characters encountering creatures and threats inspired by Japanese mythology and folktales makes for a very interesting mission for the B.P.R.D.

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Based on the comics by Aoi Hiiragi, Whisper of the Heart is the first and last film of the late Yoshifumi Kondo. He worked closely with both Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, and as a debut film, Whisper of the Heart is quite a promising cinematic achievement. Miyazaki’s influence is clear throughout the entire film, and this is likely due to his role as both screenwriter and storyboard artist. That being said, Kondo still manages to bring his own unique vision to the film, and aside from the general look of the animation, it doesn’t feel exactly like a Miyazaki film.

The story is a coming of age tale about a young girl named Shizuku Tsukishima (Youko Honna) who's in the midst of studying in order to be accepted into high school. An avid reader and developing an interest in writing (her introduction to it is actually through her translating “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver for her friends at school), during the summer she learns of a boy who has been reading all the same books she has at the library. The rest of the story deals with her experiences with young love and self discovery. There's a distinct charm to the film and all the characters are well developed and feel real; the way the characters talk and interact is surprisingly realistic and natural. Given the teenage romance plotline, this story could have quite easily been sappy and over-the-top, but it never feels that way. In fact, the romance, despite being such a driving force of the film, is actually underplayed for more quite moments, allowing the subtle plot points to connect and serve as the guiding factor for the fates of the main characters. It's here where the cat wearing a suit comes into play.

The cat is a figurine referred to as Baron Humbert von Jikkigen (voiced in the fantasy scenes by Shigeru Tsuyuguchi) found in a store run by Nishi (Keiju Kobayashi), the grandfather of Seiji Amasawa (Kazuo Takahashi), the boy that Shizuku likes. The cat plays a prominent role in a story that Shizuku comes up with in order to test herself as a writer, but the object alone has its own history tied closely to that of the grandfathers. They could do an entire film about the history of that cat figurine. There are various other objects and things within the story that are there in order to connect Shizuku and Seiji, but the cat is the most visually recognizable. The world itself utilizes the painted backgrounds that have become a staple of the Studio Ghibli films, and has a magical quality to it.

Though the story is set in a modern contemporary setting, it nevertheless radiates a certain magical quality, which is exemplified during the fantasy sequences late in the film. It’s these fantasy sequences in which the style is the most distinguished from that of Miyazaki’s. In the Miyazaki fantasy films, the world, no matter how bizarre and creative, always seems functional; it’s easy to see how people can live and work on a day-to-day basis. The fantasy elements in this are like those of a child’s imagination, overflowing with color and shapes that don’t necessarily make sense, but don’t have to either. They serve merely as the imagination made visual. This is a very small part of the film, but it vividly stands out.

An interesting aspect of this film is its use of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” It's played at various points throughout the film; the opening plays the Olivia Newton-John version and the melody is even embedded into the score. Part of its use comes through Shizuku, who while translating it to sound better for her choir to sing, alters the lyrics in order to express her own feelings. The highlight of this builds to a scene in which she sings it with Seiji, who accompanies her on violin. It’s a very good scene and when the grandfather and a few friends join in, it becomes one of the most memorable moments of the entire film. Whisper of the Heart is a terrific film that works well not only as a coming of age story, but as a romance between two people trying to find out who they are for themselves.

Pom Poko (1994)

In many Japanese myths, forest animals such as foxes and raccoons have the ability to shape shift and play tricks on people. It’s a staple of the Japanese folktale, which are full of spirits, gods and mischievous animals.

Written and directed by Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), Pom Poko follows a large clan of tanuki, or raccoon dogs, living in a forest around Tama Hills in the early 1990s. This area was chosen as a site as a development project called “New Tama” and the forest becomes slowly but utterly demolished. The central characters are the fun loving and carefree tanuki, who decide that in order to save the forest and their homes; they have to drive out the humans. They try just about everything they can think of in order to stop the construction; they send out two of their members to find master shape shifters, they lead aggressive and violent attacks against the workers, but for the most part, they tend to just play tricks on the construction workers in order to scare them off. Throughout the entire story, the film maintains a relatively light hearted tone, which mirrors the look of the characters.

As with nearly all Studio Ghibli movies, the painted backgrounds are beautiful and detailed. The tanuki at first seem very realistic and closely resemble their live action counterparts, but this all changes early on during a tanuki civil war. As the two opposing charge towards each other, they quickly transform into bipedal anthropomorphic cartoon characters while the narration explains. Apparently, when humans aren’t looking, the tanuki walk on two legs and can speak. In their more cartoony mode, they employ a wide array of magic to give themselves clothes or shape shift into just about anything they want to. They also bare an uncanny resemblance to the Care Bears. Speaking of their magic, I need to point something out about the tanuki. Much of their magic employs the use of their testicles. I’m not kidding. It’s a bit surreal watching the cute little tanuki do things like stretch their balls out into various objects, but keep in mind, this is actually an integral aspect of the tanuki in Japanese folktales. Once you get used to the visual, it’s pretty funny to watch. One of the more interesting things about this film is the tone. I mentioned that it’s pretty lighthearted throughout, and this makes for some pretty amusing scenes. The tanuki are so silly looking that even scenes where they all lay around in a mass depression are still sort of funny. It’s because of this tone both within the film and the quirkiness of the characters that they manages to sneak in some more mature themes. Many of the tanuki and even some humans die in their campaign against the construction site, and do to the rapidly decreasing size of their homes, the tanuki are forced to try and prevent themselves from having children in order to avoid overpopulation and starvation.

Despite whimsical nature of the story and a lot of the silliness I’ve described, Pom Poko is a very touching film and it’s hard not to be charmed by it. A key theme in Pom Poko is that of environmental conservation, but it never feels overly preachy. In fact, because of the nature of the characters and their genuine desire to save their homes, their plight becomes a very sympathetic one. The ending in particular is bittersweet. Another aspect of the story is about how the tanuki adapt to the new world; a world in which their homes no longer exist. This aspect of the narrative adds a hint of sadness over every element in the film, but is always secondary to the lighthearted nature of the characters. Pom Poko is a terrific animated film with a modern comedic twist on Japanese folklore and a poignant message about the environment.