Snow Falling on Cedars (2 of 2)

While not every review of the book is glowing, I have found virtually none that addressed its racism. (Compare with the many outraged Newfoundlander responses to Annie Proulx’'s The Shipping News.) Even leaving aside the people who can't read critically and resent the notion that such a thing is possible (see the ongoing Da Vinci debate), the worst that most people say is that it’'s “'boring,'” or “'slow,'” if they don’'t like nature descriptions. I found only a single response that addressed the concerns that had struck me so forcibly, by Keith Aoki, professor of law at the University of Oregon School of Law, who discussed the film in "Is Chan Still Missing? An Essay About the Film Snow Falling on Cedars and Representations of Asian Americans in U.S. Films" (7 UCLA Asian Pac. Am. L.J. 30 (2001). He argues that the film is racist, and/or dangerously disingenuous about race, for:

1. Its simplistic, fairy-tale view that the rule of law ultimately vindicates the truth against racism and hate, when, in fact, law has often been the enabler and promoter of racist acts (e.g., the internment, slavery, the Jim Crow laws, and the extermination of Native Americans).
2. Its failure "to interrogate the interracial obsession, indeed fetish, Ishmael has for Hatsue" (more on that later).
3. "The question of audience." This is a film for whites, about J.A.’'s, with J.A. characters mostly mediated by the perspectives of white characters. Now, I’'m all for works about white/nonwhite characters by all writers. For white writers in particular, it’'s good for them to work with a. their fear of people of color, and b. their much more justifiable fear of misrepresenting people of color in their work, by learning to treat non-white characters as humans. It’'s also good for white characters in novels to investigate issues of race and injustice, particularly in owning up to responsibility for their own racist actions, which Guterson does manage quite well some of the time. I don’'t even necessarily mind the way that a novel like Schindler’'s List focuses on the actions of the Good Nazi Savior, and fails to highlight the ways in which European Jews fought to save themselves, fight, and otherwise resist, because we do need to read works in which people who have nothing to lose by siding with evil choose to do good, instead. But when these works still wind up perpetuating stereotypes, as Guterson’'s does, that’'s not good art or good politics.
4. SPOILER: A plot in which the minorities are subjected to the hatreds, prejudices, and sheer whims of white people, which is par for the course, right? But then, not only do they have to be abjectly grateful to the few white people who decide to stop acting like dicks, but also, they get blamed for their own oppression! When Kabuo lies about his involvement with Carl, because the theft of his farm, the internment, the arrest for the murder, and the farce of a trial have taught him that he will never be seen as a human being, much less as an innocent one, we’'re supposed to believe that it was racist of him not to trust white people to treat him fairly. This is after Ishmael withholds from the trial critical evidence about Kabuo’'s innocence, so he can punish Hatsue for dumping him, and then try to get back in her pants. Just when you think that Guterson’'s cleverly dismantling the myth of white moral superiority, Ishmael finally admits the truth to Hatsue, who tells him, “I understand it.” Huh? This is a man who has come to think of her as “'that fucking goddamn Jap bitch,'” blaming her for his war wounds, and tries to have her husband executed for murder--and she understands it?

I understand it, but not in the way that Guterson intended it. There’'s a tradition of works in which Asian female characters forgive white guys for humping them and then destroying their lives: Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon, The World of Suzy Wong. Ishmael’'s feelings about Hatsue are expressed mostly in his belief that he deserves access to her body: first, because he loves her, and later, because she hurt him. Guterson got that psychology right. But for all his hooha about injustice and racism, he never questions the fetishization of Hatsue as a sexual--and racial--object. When she’'s not being humped, she’'s thinking about flowers and trees and shit like that, or being tormented by the conflict between her lust for a white dude and, like, Buddha. But it is not the most radical of feminist ideas that the identification of women with nature, and perpetuating the virgin/whore dichotomy, are hardly the best ways to develop complexity in your characters, much less the themes of racial and sexual injustice.

One of the biggest obstacles for white writers writing about Asian/Asian-American women, and readers who enjoy works with these kinds of images, is a problem of empathy. For that, I’'d like to refer to Arthur Golden’'s Memoirs of a Geisha--the book I dislike more than just about any other--because Golden’'s characterization of Sayuri is not unlike that of Hatsue. In a discussion with non-Asian female fans of the book, one woman told me, “It was so truthful about how women feel,” a sentiment I see echoed in many reviews, many of them from white women readers. Now, the passivity, vulnerability to abuse, enforced silence, victimhood, mixed with the struggling toward personhood and independence, those things that comprise Sayuri’'s character, make it easy for many women to identify with and like her. Life sucks for a lot of women; these characters tell them that they are not alone in their feelings of powerless and isolation and occasional spunk. It is possible for them to enjoy books like these, identifying with Sayuri or Hatsue, because of their own personal situations, without necessarily being racist themselves.

But a white woman who claims to identify with these characters will never have to suffer the stereotypes inflicted against those of us who look like those characters but have nothing else in common. A white woman who feels like Sayuri inside will never be assumed automatically to have Sayuri’'s character traits. She will never be told--by a white person--that she doesn’'t act, look, or talk like “most Asian women” who are, supposedly, quieter and sweeter and more accommodating to men, or, on the other hand, that she’'s the “perfect Asian woman” for being those things. She will never be grabbed on the street by a white man yelling 'Konichiwa'” or “'ching chang chong,'” or told that her “'exoticism'” is her chief claim to attractiveness. White women have sexist things happen to them all the time. But nobody calls them geishas. And those of us who are called geishas on a regular basis are not happy. If you like Memoirs of a Geisha, or Miss Saigon, or Snow Falling on Cedars, you are not responsible for racism against Asian-American women. But your taste is helping you to participate in a cultural climate that encourages those racist writers who perpetuate the stereotypes, even though they have the power to say something fresh and truthful instead. And you’'re not the one who has to deal with the consequences.

For corrective literature about J.A.’'s and Japanese-Canadians and the internments, I can, with some serious reservations, recommend the following books: Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Itsuka, John Okada’'s No-No Boy, Julie Shigekuni's A Bridge Between Us, and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’'s and James Houston’'s Farewell to Manzanar. These books are not all consistent in quality. Kogawa is a good writer. The Houstons' book is really fucked up. I'll tell you more if you're interested.

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