活動写真弁士
Today I sat in the first session of the Pop Culture class. Professor Bourdaghs is from UCLA, and so far he seems good - like he actually expects something of us. A couple people came to the class and left thinking it would be too much work because *gasp* we have to talk in class, submit two reading responses, and write a 12-15 page research paper. I do think it will be a lot for me because I'm in Intensive Japanese (mainly because there will be readings to do), but if I were on a normal schedule, I wouldn't think it at all unreasonable. I'm already really excited about it. Today we watched clips from two early postwar Kurosawa films - One Wonderful Sunday and Drunken Angel - and next week Susan Napier, author of one of the most important recent works on anime, from everyone's favourite team, I mean, school will guest lecture on Sayonara and, more specifically, Hollywood's portrayal of Japanese women. Furthermore, I figure the final paper will be a good start for the report I have to submit to the ITO Foundation next September.
But the main reason I'm blogging right now is because, before watching the clips, Prof Bourdaghs gave us a very cursory summary of the development of prewar popular culture in Japan, which of course included silent films. Maybe some of you already know this, but back then in Japan (and they now know elsewhere in Asia and even Africa) they had something referred to as 弁士 [benshi] or 活弁 [katsuben], from 活動写真弁士 [katsudoushashinbenshi] (moving picture orator), which was a performer who stood on stage beside the movie screen narrating or commenting on the silent film as it played. The performers became stars in their own right of course, and they had a lot of power in the theater - they could insist that the projector be slowed down or sped up or stopped altogether; when the subtitles weren't translated, they could make up their own stories; etc. In Korea, which was a Japanese colony at the time, 活弁 were Korean of course, and could therefore say anything they liked about the Japanese (the Japanese government could censor movies, but they couldn't *really* control what people said), so often a Japanese police officer would sit in the theater, in case he needed to "interrupt."
Obviously, when talkies came on the scene, 活弁 were doomed, but... something rather like them still exists, doesn't it?
But the main reason I'm blogging right now is because, before watching the clips, Prof Bourdaghs gave us a very cursory summary of the development of prewar popular culture in Japan, which of course included silent films. Maybe some of you already know this, but back then in Japan (and they now know elsewhere in Asia and even Africa) they had something referred to as 弁士 [benshi] or 活弁 [katsuben], from 活動写真弁士 [katsudoushashinbenshi] (moving picture orator), which was a performer who stood on stage beside the movie screen narrating or commenting on the silent film as it played. The performers became stars in their own right of course, and they had a lot of power in the theater - they could insist that the projector be slowed down or sped up or stopped altogether; when the subtitles weren't translated, they could make up their own stories; etc. In Korea, which was a Japanese colony at the time, 活弁 were Korean of course, and could therefore say anything they liked about the Japanese (the Japanese government could censor movies, but they couldn't *really* control what people said), so often a Japanese police officer would sit in the theater, in case he needed to "interrupt."
Obviously, when talkies came on the scene, 活弁 were doomed, but... something rather like them still exists, doesn't it?
posted by Bibhatsu at 05:00
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