For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

Last week we watched the film, Lost In Translation, which goes along with our class discussion on works by Jameson and Auge. In my discussion of the following movie I am going to focus more on the work of Auge since his writing made a little more sense to me, and seemed to go along with the film slightly better.

Anyway, to start off, I would like to touch on what exactly Marc Auge’s writing, “From Places to Non-Places”, was about. He deals with the idea of the postmodern place and non-place. He defines the two with a place as “being historical and relational, with personal significance for the people experiencing it. Places are highly concerned with identity and meaning. A non-place, by that definition, would then be devoid of significance where people do not connect or feel any attachment” (Auge 77-78). To put this into perspective, the world we are living in is moving at a faster and faster pace and as people move through their daily lives, they tend to pull away from social interactions. The accelerated rate of technology helps this trend along with things like ipods because so many people have them in at all times that less and less people talk to one another. Therefore, they start to simply glide through their days more as observers instead of doers. This leads to people not finding any personal significance in their activities and moving into a state of non-place. While in the non-place, people can begin to feel lost and lonely even when surrounded by millions of people. This is the idea that Lost In Translation, touches on.

In the film, the characters Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte, end up in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is a huge city with millions of people, and a very flashy social scene. However, Bob and Charlotte are in a world they don’t understand. They are totally surrounded by a place which has a language they can’t speak or comprehend, as well as a new and very different culture. Bob and Charlotte begin to look at the Japanese people more as objects than as actual people because they cannot actually interact with them. This is what causes them to feel very lonely and completely lost. The ironic issue that arises then, is that the more people they are surrounded by, the more isolated and misplaced they feel. Both characters become stuck in a non-place. However, when Bob and Charlotte meet, they are able to talk to one another and actually have a conversation. In turn, when they are together, the places they go in Tokyo begin to have some significant meaning and change to a state of place, and they do not feel quite as lost as when they were alone.

An idea I have been considering is what happens when Bob goes back home after the movie concludes. Using what I know about place versus non-place, I feel that Bob is actually going to feel lost at times when he is back home with his family. The reason I think this is because while he was stuck in the non-place in Tokyo, he was really able to reflect on his own life and realize how unhappy he was. Then when he met Charlotte, he was able to find significance in his every day life. Therefore, when he gets back home to his wife and kids who he has really lost touch with, he is going to feel lost and lonely again until he finds a way to relate to them again. Just a quick idea for thought that's all.lost in translation