Some thoughts on film (1)

As we are currently in the midst of prestige season--the last few weeks of the year during which art houses and multiplexes teem with Oscar hopefuls--I've had plenty of fodder for opinion-formulating on the subject of film. Here's the first of a continuing series:

-I find it incredibly bizarre--and bordering on offensive--that three Chinese actresses (Ziyi Zhang, Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li) play the three female leads in the film adaptation of "Memoirs of a Geisha." It's probably excusable that this Japenese historical drama was written, produced and directed by white Americans. Stateside moviemakers shouldn't be restricted to making films about their own personal cultures. (Imagine if Scorsese had only made movies about Italian-Americans...All right, bad example.) I suppose the argument could also be made that actors are actors and that they, too, should not be excluded from roles simply by virtue of their national origin. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I have a hard time believing that the Chinese Ziyi Zhang was cast because she was the most qualified actress in the Hollywood orbit to play a Japanese geisha. From this outsider's perspective, it seems that she was cast because she is a vaguely recognizable (and thus marketable) Asian woman. American audiences aren't expected to know, let alone care, whether she's from China or Japan or Korea; nor are we expected to be aware of the cultural and ethnic differences that exist between the nationalities that we would lump together under the Asian heading. Whatever aspirations "Memoirs of a Geisha" has of exposing Americans to a facet of Asian culture are negated by the film's reinforcement of the embarassing American perception that "all look same" and, therefore, all are the same.