From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Aug 06 2001 - 15:31:46 MDT
Michael Wiik [mailto:mwiik@messagenet.com] wrote,
> Ever see the movie 'The Siege', with Denzel Washington? I thought it was
> pretty amazing since there was no reference whatsoever in the film to
> the fact that Denzel's character was black. As far as black/white
> relations go, the film was raceless. Anybody know any other (American)
> films with such racelessness?
Al Villalobos wrote,
> Wesley Snipes in Rising Sun (also a novel by Michael Crichton) with Sean
> Connery? I dont think the book made any reference at all to the
> charachter's (Snipes')race
This is ironic. It is true that there was little if any reference to the
black character's race. But that is because the book was so busy discussing
Japanese racism.
The Japanese felt that non-Japanese were inferior. The Americans feared the
Japanese as different. The American mentor who lived in Japan explained how
Japanese felt superior to Americans. The past love affair between the
Mentor and a Japanese emphasized how she was outcast for being different,
and how he could never fit in because he was not Japanese. In the book, the
American cops called the Japanese racist, the Japanese called the American
cops racist. The race issue was a major concern in the book. In real life,
Japan protested the publishing of this book. They claimed it really was
racist against Japanese. There was a lot of controversy about this book
either being racist itself or being about racism itself. There was arguing
on both sides about whether it was really racist again the Japanese or
whether it was really truthful about Japanese being racist against
non-Japanese. This argument occurred in real life about the book, and
within the book about the fictional case.
(By the way, I loved this and almost anything written by Michael Crichton!)
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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