Memoirs of a Geisha
Last night we went to see Memoirs of a Geisha. I was a little reluctant initially because I wanted to see Walk the Line instead, but it turned out to be another decision which worked out really well in spite of all my plans.I have been interested in different cultures for a long time, especially the Japanese. When I was a child, my dad was mugged, so he decided to learn Karate, so there was always a bit of counting in Japanese going on in the traditional washing-up discussions we had and a bit of Dad explaining the complicated names of the moves he was learning. Dad was also really into the Shogun books, something which I may now go away and read.
All of this resurfaced in my life in my second year at Edinburgh university, when I did Japanese as an outside subject for a year. I found it hard at first, being a Classical fish in an Oriental pond, but I did really get to grips with it in the end, in spite of losing lots of time because I was directing Aristophanes Lysistrata and then was really ill for a month. Actually being ill helped in some ways because I really had to fight to catch up and that gave me lots of momentum with my learning, perhaps more than if I had just studied evenly all the way through.
So the thing I learned from the film was about the nature and the ideal of beauty. We both felt that Hatsumomo was the most attractive geisha there precisely because she looked dishevelled and not made up. The other geisha each had a beautiful kimono and were heavily made up, which led me to realise that the Japanese ideal of beauty is pale skin because it is unusual. I then thought that the same was probably true of English girls dying their hair red or blond and how this puts the ideal of beauty above the individual. Should it be this way? Perhaps people would find it easier to be comfortable with themselves if these ideals of beauty were not being sold in every advert you see.
I wasn't expecting Memoirs of a Geisha to take me on such a journey. I am glad it did.
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