Essay - Memoirs of a Geisha—the Greater Potential of Film to Make...

Memoirs of a Geisha—the greater potential ***** film to make the alien world of the Japanese geisha seem exotic rather than fully human

***** Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha is a literary masquerade, while the ***** version ***** ***** book is a pageant. Golden's book ***** written in the voice of a contemporary geisha, and chronicles ***** woman's youth, entrance into the secret world ***** geisha society, trials, tribulations, motherhood, and eventual triumph over ********** insurmountable obstacles, all in the voice of a first-person narrator. The ********** Cinderella story forces the reader to take on ***** pers*****a of a m*****rginalized person whose culture, country, and lifestyle is ***** to most Americans. In contrast, the film "Memoirs of a Ge*****ha," although made with Asian ac*****rs (and directed by an American film*****r) eschews some of this first-person focus and instead stresses the brilliance of the colors ***** ***** exoticism of the geisha world to Western eyes. Thus, despite its visual power and iconography of color and design, the film tends to allow the viewer's mind to conform to stereotypes about ********** to a gre*****ter degree than that of ***** book.

***** of the most interesting aspects of Golden's book is how a narrative ***** is motivated ***** ***** male love ***** beauty, namely the ability of Japanese women to live as talented and trained geishas is rendered in***** a non-pictorial form in the framework of a novel. Although it is a novel about beauty, ***** ***** a Japanese woman's beauty—a category ***** person frequently stereotyped by ***** American media—by using a powerful and clear ***** *****, the ***** was able to deflate some of *****se ***** of the fragile, exotic Asian female. (O'Barr, 1994, p.173) True, the book's central geisha protagonist first named Chiyo, although an evidently intelligent young girl, is singled out (unlike her s*****ter) for her beauty. Because she is beautiful, Chiyo is able to have ***** opportun*****y ***** learn the arts of ***** ge*****ha and to have a slightly better chance at a more economically secure future, and a ***** life than her sister, who is forced ***** become a ***** conventional prostitute. While being a ge*****ha is not simply ab***** being beautiful, like a prostitute, th***** subjective sense of ***** in male eyes propels the geisha's entire existence. However, no matter how beautiful, or how ***** an object to be auctioned off other characters may see the geisha Sayuri that Chiyo becomes, ***** reader always hears the inner voice of this articulate young wom***** and gains a clear sense of her perseverance, wisdom, ***** intelligence, rather ***** focuses on the visual images Sayuri creates in the ***** of her cus*****mers.

Film, *****ever, by its nature is a more visu*****l medium, even though the ***** attempts to render some of the *************** ***** the novel that made it so popular, through ***** use of voice-over techniques. The power ***** the narrative voice must compete, however, with the startl*****gly ***** images captured ***** the camera. When *****, in a