Metropolis and Periphery, It's Tough Being a Man and The Man Who Stole The Sun - Discovering Gender Roles in These Three Films

The three films we’ve watched and discussed in this unit, Metropolis and Periphery, are three notably different pieces of cinema with a variety of types of characters set in different relations to Tokyo. The settings of these films was a topic especially prominent in our class discussion, which is a given considering the unit title. Tokyo is the metropolis, and the periphery can refer to what is on the edge of the metropolis. Most often in our discussions, what appears on the periphery of the metropolis are the characters and how they are affected or reflected by the metropolis.

Woman in the Dunes does not show Tokyo at all, instead portraying it through words as the urban city that is contrastly juxtaposed to the desert landscape in which the characters are inserted. Niki wants desperately to return to Tokyo to make a name for himself, and he finds himself baffled constantly by the new environment from which he cannot escape. In It’s Tough Being a Man, a specific area of Tokyo, Shibamata, which had yet to be transformed into modernity, compliments Tora’s characteristics of being stuck in the past. His motives, couched in an examined traditional role of masculinity, clash with the other characters’ future-mindedness. Lastly, The Man Who Stole the Sun portrays Tokyo as the city context for Kido’s manipulation of the government, which gives a nuance of Kido’s bending the will of Japan for his own intentions, whether for entertainment or power. Because Kido sees himself as a nation, the environment in Tokyo – specifically because the National Diet, Japan’s bicameral branch of government, is housed in Tokyo – causes Kido to be posed as a nation threatening another nation. In conclusion, our class discussions on the environments of these films has revealed how much they reflect the characters, and I have noticed moreso now the effects settings reflect on characters in other films.

Another consistent topic of discussion in regard to these films that we’ve been examining are the gender roles. Again, the three films pose three different depictions of male and female roles. Woman in the Dunes depicted a young widow living in the desert, left unnamed to the audience, which created an interesting nuance in her role in the film. She has some character and identity, and yet she is repeatedly objectified throughout the film, especially given the scene Keira pointed out of her lying asleep naked in limited lighting, which frames her in Williams’ pornographic frame.

In It’s Tough Being a Man, the matter of masculinity was the primary focus in regard to Tora, who repeatedly fails at a role of masculinity because of his problematic history and current rough nature. He desires, in his own way, to be a good masculine role model (as seen in his verbal oath to support and do well by his sister in a yakuza meeting), but continuously he is an unlikeable character because of his overbearing actions and obnoxious crudeness. This suffocates the female characters in the film, and though the sister and aunt display opposition to Tora’s actions on several occasions, the sister especially does not fulfill a role of female empowerment by being too forgiving of Tora’s harmful actions.

This matter segues into the main female of The Man Who Stole the Sun, who had a sense of independence from the males in the film. She sided with Kido ultimately, and followed him to her death, but she didn’t seem to be as influenced by masculinity in comparison to It’s Tough Being a Man. Kido still sought to impose his feeling of power and control over her, as well as everyone else in the film, but her character still seemed to radiate an independence as she continuously made her own choices, as seen when she refuses Yamashita’s advances.

In conclusion, spatial analysis and gender roles in these films are continuously arising in our discussions, which are consistently revealing to me in our varying opinions and perceptions on these matters. I’m always interested to see how others have perceived these films in regard to these topics in our class meetings, especially because they are important functions in the messages of cinematography.