"Shögun" is the kind of Hollywood product that assumes a defensive crouch from the outset. The FX series a ten-part adaptation of James Clavell's best-selling 1975 doorstopper, which centers on an English sailor who lands in seventeenth-century Japan and rises through its samurai ranks-was announced six years ago with reassurances from John Landgraf, the network's chairman, that this version would be au courant with modern sensibilities. "It's not an easy thing to get right," Landgraf admitted, adding that the show's creative team would consult experts in "feudal Japanese culture" and feature a cast of "almost entirely Japanese actors." (A previous miniseries, from 1980, hadn't bothered to subtitle the Japanese dialogue: producers felt that if the British protagonist, John Blackthorne, couldn't comprehend what was being said then neither should American audiences.) These production details were intended to distinguish "Shōgun" from the many Western films and TV shows that have been made under the assumption that, while Asian aesthetics are worthy as spectacle, Asian people do not merit understanding, identification, or individuation or, in the most egregious cases, any presence at all.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 04, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 04, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.