Professor Lewis's new article in Screen
In her new article in Screen, Diane Wei Lewis examines popular representations of precarity in Japan with close attention to the 2009 film Air Doll and its 1998-9 manga source text. Gōda Yoshiie's original manga examines the pressure men face to police their emotions, particularly in the workplace, and criticizes the damage caused by rigid gender roles in recessionary Japan. In contrast, Koreeda Hirokazu's adaptation shifts attention to the erosion of the traditional family and the plight of the child in an unstable society. Although Koreeda's film introduces fascinating new issues -- including attention to female dysphoria and a deeper exploration of identity -- it also evinces a conservative and melancholic attachment to heteronormativity that suggests an inability to imagine new forms of kinship that would redress the sense of social breakdown in early 2000s Japan.
