Is a picture worth a thousand words without the correct interpretation?
From a purely cinematographic standpoint, the eyes of Sayuri, the main character of Memoirs of a Geisha, have to be exaggerated so that the audience understands the importance of those eyes. By exaggerating the color, the director makes the statement that having those eyes, though beautiful because of their rarity, were also the bane of her existence. The only way to draw attention to her eyes without someone bluntly saying, "Look there at her eyes! Aren't they unusually blue!" is to embellish them. In the trailer, Sayuri has gray-blue eyes similar to those of the actual geisha. So, really, the color of the eyes on the poster is a simple advertising ploy to attract the eye (pun intended) and get audiences interested, rather than a sinister scheme to westernize the geisha. And really what is Miho Kubagawa complaining about ("Memoirs of an (American) geisha" Dec. 7, 2005)? The true Sayuri had gray-blue eyes, and the movie poster Sayuri has baby blue eyes. So are you complaining about the specific shade? How silly!
On a Dec. 8 episode of "The View," Michelle Yoeh, who plays an older Geisha, said herself that out of the eight main characters in the film, only three of them are Chinese. Furthermore, Yoeh noted that many actors have played people of different nationalities. How often has Selma Hayek played the non-discriminate Hispanic? Yoeh has even played different types of Asians in films made exclusively for Chinese and Japanese audiences. Movie-making is about transmitting an idea, not about obsessing over minutiae.
Kubagawa said that "many Duke men have described me as" exotic. What is wrong with being viewed as something special and unique? Is that not what all of us want? Exotic is simply due to perspective. A white male with blue eyes in China would be viewed as exotic. Kubagawa wants two things at once. She does not want to be viewed as the stereotypical "Asian" female, nor the Americanized Asian.
Serwaah Agyapong
Trinity '08
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