The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order
Author(s)
Yoshimoto, M.
Abstract
Examining the problem of writing about non-Western (namely Japanese) cinema is an issue clouded by the non-traditional aspects of foreign cinema with regard to Hollywood’s story-telling mechanism. Yoshimoto revisits the categorizations of previous critics, in some cases renouncing their assessments as unfounded, and seeks to discover whether one can accurately critique the cinema of foreign nations. Historically, it was thought that through discussion of ‘The Other,’ western writers elucidated on aspects not generally observed by the native critics. Despite all of this, postmodernist thinking has cast into doubt the ability of westerners to truly understand the cultural background surrounding these films and suggests that we need a new framework through which we may view cinema not as the work of those imitating Hollywood, but rather in a way that allows for cultural credence to be given its appropriate respect.
