Last night in suburbia, at the 7:45 showing of “Walk the Line,” the “Brokeback Mountain” trailer got booed, which is typical and depressing. Even though I might have my own issues with that movie (since Hollywood can only tell stories about queer life as long as they are talking about beautiful white men, and the actors portraying them are actually straight and showcasing how comfortable they are with their sexuality) I still want to rally behind it, because the world at large will never be ready for us, and so we must be ready for it.
There are also a number of historical epics on offer, even yet another “Pride and Prejudice!” When will Hollywood get sick of making the same films over and over again? What is this stupid insistence at revisiting the same boring novels, never showing us anything different, as if we all have some kind of collective short term memory loss that would prevent us remembering that we just saw this film, we just read this book in school, we already know this story and it doesn’t matter that Keira Knightly is in it now?
I am just so over the European perspective of fucking everything and I want something new and real. And so I am eagerly anticipating the release of “Memoirs of Geisha.” The trailer looks lush and stunning, and all the usual suspects like Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh are there, but why does Zhang Ziyi have blue eyes? Is that from the novel? I read it, and I might have liked it but it was one of those books that you read that just kind of leaves you, because it isn’t a terribly profound story, nor is it a true one, not that it really matters – but basically, it’s kind of an empty fashion show without pictures.
Still, even if it was in the book, I can’t say that it looks right on film. That is weird. I don’t know any Asian people with blue eyes, except for that porn star with the blond hair from Hawaii, and that old blind man from Kung Fu. Why do her eyes have to be blue? To make blue eyed people want to see the film? Why do they remain true to a novel which was not even true to begin with? It is just like that grade school experiment that separates the blue eyed people from the brown eyed people in class, and how easy it was for us to condemn the brown eyed people to death or something like that, which was supposed to teach you about racism, but actually did nothing but point out the popular kids in class.
I am still glad about the movie, even though Zhang Ziyi’s eyes are much more beautiful in their normal color. I would have preferred if she had just one contact in, a’la Marilyn Manson, but you can’t have everything, as we see in “Memoirs of a Geisha.” I think it is grand that the actors are not entirely Japanese, and I am delighted to see them all up on the screen, speaking English and looking fine. It’s just the eyes: so politicized, the way we see ourselves, the way others see us. I wish things were different. I wish things would change. But they don’t.