racist?

Rating: Null/10 (27 January 2004)

I thought "Lost in Translation" was kinda--dare I say it?--racist--not in a malicious way but in an ignorant way. I get that the film is supposed to be yet another "fish out of water" story--two Americans feel isolated, alienated, and lonely in the Land of the Rising Sun, so they turn to one another for comfort. But here's my problem: Asia is always the setting for this type of film. Asians are always portrayed in the media as the strange, mysterious, incomprehensible "Other" to whom nobody in their right mind (i.e. white Americans) can relate. Hey, Sofia! Asians are people too, you know! i don't know if you know this or not, but the world is getting smaller and smaller every day (gone are the days of Commodore Perry opening medieval Japan to the west for the very first time!), and the smaller the world gets, the more people realize that hey, maybe we're not so different after all!