Global Text (Final Draft)

The film lost in translation by Sofia Coppola takes a different pace and style then most films. The film is a slow paced mundane type of film where things don’t just happen in a matter of seconds but rather take time. The film's setting is in Japan and its protagonist are two American characters. These two American characters Bob Harris and Charlotte are set in a place where neither one of them knows the language or the culture. Their personal life is also suffering due to the lack of communication and interest between them and their significant others.

Bob Harris is a famous actor who is drawn to Japan not for interest in its culture or for a change in scenery but for the money that it’s offering him. Bob Harris lives a pretty dull and sad life. His wife if very distant and no longer really cares about him which can be seen through their interactions. For example, in one of the scenes where Bob is talking to his wife she says “Bob, should I be worried about you?” and he responds with “Only if you want to” this conversation between them shows the lack of interest and love in their marriage because one would assume that as a spouse you would automatically worry about your spouse without having to ask. Bob is not only lost in the sense of his marriage but he is also lost in a new culture. Bob was hired to make a commercial for one of Japan’s whiskies’ called Suntory. The director of the commercial has a translator who is “interpreting” for Bob. As the director begins to tell Bob what he is to do the translator listens and then “explains” what the director is telling him to do. The interpreter is telling him very little about what the director is actually saying causing Bob to feel clueless about what he is really supposed to do.

Charlotte our other American protagonist ends up in Japan because her famous photographer husband was sent there for a photo shoot. Charlotte similar to Bob has a spouse that shows little to no interest in her. Charlotte through out a lot of the scenes with her husband prances around in her underwear and gets no reaction whatsoever from him. Charlotte phones home in one of the scenes and says to her mother that she was not sure that she loved her husband. Her husband is out working most of the time leaving her alone in a place where she hardly knows anybody and finds it difficult relating to people.

When Bob and Charlotte finally meet which is later on in the film they instantly click and become really good friends. This good friendship turns into a friendship with strong feelings for each other but never really progresses from there. Bob and Charlotte begin enjoying their time in Tokyo once they start spending time together. I think that being that their situations were identical they found comfort in each other. They were both lonely and lost in a city they were not familiar with.

         The film Lost in Translation shows more than just the progressing relationship between two American’s who are lost and find comfort in each other but it also shows the relation between the city of Tokyo and globalization. Globalization is a term a lot of people use loosely, but do people really know what it means? Some people might say that globalization is a path to the future possibly to the Utopia described in Frederic Jameson’s “The Politics of Utopia's" but in all reality I think that globalization has to do with the spreading of western culture and making it the ideal way of living.
               In the film Lost in Translation we see what we can call western globalization happening. It seems that the city of Tokyo represented in the film has adopted the western culture and forgotten about  it's own. The film shows two sides of Japan, one is the city of Tokyo and the other is the country. The city of Tokyo is a city with a lot of lights and technology similar to the cities in California or even Las Vegas Nevada which are westernized cities.

The country which I believe the scenes that showed the real culture of Japan take place show a completely different view of Japan. As we can see in the picture above Charlotte is visiting a temple which looks nothing like the places in the city. The image above does not show any signs of globalization but rather more of a quiet and technologically free environment.
              In the film we see two worlds on which is westernized and another which is away from the city that shows more of what Japan's culture really is.  The separation that is shown in the film reminded me of something that was said in Frederic Jameson's "The Politics of Utopia" which reads
"If it no longer does so, then perhaps the explanation lies in that extraordinary historical dissociation into two distinct worlds which characterizes globalization today. In one of these worlds, the disintegration of the social is so absolute" which describes the two distinct places that we experience in the film. The film Lost in Translation shows a pair of humans being that are still trying to figure out what they need in life to really be happy. The depictions of the two cities is very crucial in supporting my thesis about globalization being another way of saying westernizing a non-western culture. The city of Tokyo along with the songs that the people were singing during karaoke show how Tokyo is accepting and transforming into a western like culture while the places away from the city show a lot more culture and less if any globalization.

Work cited

Lost in Translation. Dir. Sofia Coppola. Perf. Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson. Focus Features, 2003. Film.
Martin, Randy. “Where Did the Future Go?” California State University Northridge. Web. 9 Dec 2013.