HOMELESSNESS OF STYLE AND THE PROBLEMS OF STUDYING MIIKE TAKASHI, THE

Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Spring 2009 by Gerow, Aaron

R�sum�: Les �tudes critiques consacr�es au cin�aste Miike Takashi se concentrent g�n�ralement sur le caract�re outrancier de l'oeuvre de ce dernier, de m�me que sur sa profonde indignation envers la soci�t� japonaise. En s'attardant sur l'usage r�current fait par Miike du plan-s�quence, du montage rapide, ainsi que d'une facture visuelle inspir�e de la bande dessin�e, cet article vise plut�t � faire ressortir le caract�re � itin�rant � de l'oeuvre du cin�aste, dans laquelle abondent les personnages sans foyer et sans identit� claire errant dans un environnement marqu� par la mondialisation. L'itin�rance s'inscrit �galement dans les multiples changements de ton et de style rendant les pr�occupations nationalistes et les dimensions politiques de l'oeuvre de Miike difficiles � circonscrire. Le travail du cin�aste soul�ve ainsi des questions fondamentales dans l'�tude du cin�ma populaire, de m�me que dans celle des dimensions politiques du cin�ma japonais.

I

Miike Takashi's career emerged in Japan in the late 1990s out of video cinema, prolifically working in a variety of genres until he arrived as a major theatrical film director whose work has garnered significant attention at home and abroad. Although his films have spanned- if not also warped- cinematic categories as wide-ranging as idol movies (Andromedia [Andoromedia], 1998) and musicals (The Happiness of the Katakuris [Katakuri-ke no kofiiku], 2002), they have tended to concentrate in violent genres revolving around yakuza and horror, such as the Dead or Alive series, IcM the Killer (Koroshiya 1, 2001), and Audition (Odishon, 1999). Appropriated by pop culture gatekeepers such as Quentin Tarantino (who appears in Sukiyaki Western Django, 2007) , Miike has been sold abroad alongside such directors as Fukasaku Kinji and Kitano Takeshi as the purveyor of a hard-hitting, flamboyant and cool stylistics, now fashionable at a moment when the international buzzword is "cool Japan."1

Critics writing on Miike Takashi's films struggle to find the proper location for the films in art, politics, or nation.2 Many authors, worried that "the surface, the gloss, the astonishingly graphic showmanship is so striking . . . that it tends to mask Miike's subtexts and abiding personal concerns"3 are concerned that the dominant perspective on his cinema only focuses on stylistic bravura, mangaesque narratives, and audacious violence. They seem compelled to argue that there is something deeper going on, something that provides these films with more value. Tony Williams, for instance, relies on metaphors of appearance and reality to argue that the films "contain more than meets the eye," his primary argument being that while they "may appear gratuitously violent and pornographic," they in fact "represent a particular cinema of outrage" based in a Japanese "populist tradition" and "designed to offend civilized sensibilities."4 More critical writers like Mika Ko complain of the surface qualities just as they attempt to locate them in deeper problems of Japanese nationhood. To her, "the breaking open of diegetic homogeneity and narrative integrity" is linked in Miike's work with metaphors not only of the body, but also, following Mary Douglas, of the body politic.5 Directly conjoining style with nation, Ko claims the violation of both narrative and body boundaries reflects the larger break-up of the national polity (kokutai) in recent Japan. Ko assumes the location of these films (that they are about Japan) at the start of the analysis, which then prompts her to see Miike as a special case of what Tessa Morris-Suzuki terms "cosmetic multiculturalism" in Japan, in which cultural diversity is consumed only on the surface level, confirming both Japan's generosity and the boundary between the consumer and the consumed. To Ko, Miike's depictions of the heterogeneity in Japan must ultimately be called cosmetic because they do not envisage any authentic alternative to the status quo.6

In a previous article, I alsc tried to argue beyond an initial impression of Miike, seeing in his cinematic and narrative excesses an acknowledgement of impossibility steeped in loss and the sad realization of homelessness in today's transnational flows of global capital.7 1 worry, however, about the general compulsion to locate "deeper" meaning in Miike or a set political stance. This is not because his work is not cinematically or politically important. Nor is it my goal in this essay to challenge the general assumption that stylistic excess is of lesser value, either artistically because it lacks thematics or "personal concerns," or politically because it perpetuates a reactionary and nihilistic form of cinematic postmodernism that has broken down all forms of serious meaning through cynical playfulness. One must note that such divisions between surface style and political or personal depth reproduce the principal means through which film criticism and scholarship have approached popular and genre cinema since at least the days of the politique des auteurs. Such binaries tend to praise or denigrate films based on whether or not they go beyond the superficiality of mass produced entertainment and find a home in serious artistic or political expression. The problem with these approaches is that, in the case of Miike, they seek a precise location for a director who is not only thematically concerned with homelessness, but who himself seems nomadic in terms of style and politics, and less concerned with collapsing the divisions between surface and depth or the image and reality than engaging in the more complex possibility of wandering between these poles. Miike's films seem to stray between the excessive style he is famous for and what seems the opposite of that, a long-take cinematography. Given this oscillation, I want to reflect on the implications this homelessness of style has for a politics of cinema in contemporary Japan. Miike proves to be an intriguing subject of study because his work ultimately challenges our tendencies to locate cinema in categories of style, politics and nation.