{"id":22285,"date":"2018-10-05T15:07:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T05:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22285"},"modified":"2018-11-05T15:17:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T05:17:24","slug":"isle-of-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22285","title":{"rendered":"Isle of Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"isleofdogsposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Wes Anderson
\nWriter:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Wes Anderson
\nCast:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Yoko Ono, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum<\/p>\n

In a alternate reality Japan of the future, the country is overrun with a virus spread by canines.\u00a0 The mayor of Megasaki City –\u00a0authoritarian Kenji Kobayashi – decrees that all dogs are to be banished to Trash Island, despite the protestations of Professor Watanabe who claims to be close to finding a cure.\u00a0 The first dog exiled to Trash Island is Spots, a pet belonging to Atari (Koyu Rankin), the orphaned nephew of the Mayor.<\/p>\n

Atari flies – and crashes – a plane into Trash Island and is rescued by a pack of dogs lead by Chief (Bryan Cranston).\u00a0 The dogs decide to help reunite Atari with Spots.<\/p>\n

\"isleofdogs\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I watched\u00a0Isle of Dogs\u00a0<\/em>a good six months after its cinematic release and I had forgotten the film had a backlash online for its portrayal of Asian culture.\u00a0 That was until I got about ten minutes into the film myself.\u00a0 There’s no real beating around the bush on this one.\u00a0 It’s a shitty and otherwise unremarkable Wes Anderson film but it deserves all the notoriety it got back in February.\u00a0 It’s racist as hell.<\/p>\n

The film could charitably be described as having some small nods to Asian cinema.\u00a0 At a stretch, Chief and his crew could be seen as a metaphorical spin on Kurosawa’s\u00a0Seven Samurai<\/em>.\u00a0 But honestly, what the hell was going on with the producers who signed off on this trash pile?\u00a0 It has every lazy Asian stereotype in the book.\u00a0 Here’s a checklist – sumo wrestlers, cherry blossoms, Hokusai’s\u00a0The Great Wave<\/em>, robots, Taiko drums, haiku poems and Buddhist temples.\u00a0 They are all unceremoniously lumped into the backdrop of\u00a0Isle of Dogs <\/em>as window dressing.<\/p>\n

Whilst the film is happy to borrow all these cultural tropes, it takes the creative decision to give the dogs of the film voice acting from famous American actors and then doesn’t bother to provide any subtitling for the Japanese humans in the film.\u00a0 In other words the dogs speak English and the Japanese are purposefully made unintelligible to the audience.\u00a0 It is shockingly dehumanising.\u00a0 This film, that plays for deadpan comedy, has no qualms about an extended (and pointless scene) of sushi preparation that invites the audience to squirm at how the food is made and whose sole purpose appears to be encouraging revulsion at Japanese culture.\u00a0 The cherry on top of the shit sundae is Anderson using imagery of a mushroom cloud.<\/p>\n

The saddest thing about this whole sorry film is that it feels like an act of political cowardice on Anderson’s behalf.\u00a0 To make a film fifteen months after the U.S Presidential elections about an authoritarian leader who demonizes others and rallies the public in an anti-science agenda clearly suggests that a political allegory was the nucleus of this film’s inception (there’s even a line about Kobayashi stealing his re-election).\u00a0 But to take that story and ship it all the way over to Japan and reframe it so that the film’s only white, blonde character can roll in and save the day is some utter bullshit.<\/p>\n

I’ve liked many of Anderson’s films.\u00a0 Probably more than most people.\u00a0 But there’s no excusing this.\u00a0 If we even needed a reminder of why films like\u00a0Crazy Rich Asians<\/em>\u00a0are important, consider this – if\u00a0Crazy Rich Asians<\/em> wasn’t released in 2018,\u00a0Isle of Dogs<\/em> would be the most profile film about Asian culture to come out of Hollywood this year.\u00a0 Fuck that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set in Japan, Isle of Dogs follows a boy’s odyssey in search of his lost dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1383,2190,2472,2791,801,2790],"class_list":["post-22285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-bill-murray","tag-edward-norton","tag-frances-mcdormand","tag-greta-gerwig","tag-jeff-goldblum","tag-yoko-ono"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22285"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22291,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22285\/revisions\/22291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}