Memoirs Of A Geisha Sparknotes

Adapted from a New York Times bestseller written by an American male novelist, manipulated by American male directors and producers, the film Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) reifies the Western fantasies towards Asian women, their beauty, their sexual appeals and their exotic and erotic mystery, with the narratives constructed through both the Orientalist and patriarchal filters. Asian women and Asian culture are commoditized in the film (Akita, 2009), created by and for the pleasures of its Western spectators.

The Story

Memoirs of a Geisha (Geisha hereafter) centers around the life story of Sayuri, a famous Japanese geisha, who spans from the 1930s to post World War II era. Sayuri, then named Chiyo, is born into a poor fisherman’s family. When she is nine, Chiyo along with her sister are sold to a geisha house in the Gion district of Kyoto by her parents. Due to her unusual beauty, Chiyo is taken by the Mistress of the geisha house and is planned to be trained to be a future geisha while her sister is re-sold to the “pleasure district.” However, Chiyo’s beauty, symbolized by her water-like, blue-grey eyes, does more than opening her paths to a glorious life of a geisha; it also brings her

The film, by calling itself as the “memoirs” and by adopting the first- person perspective, creates the sense of realness and authenticity, by which they also construct the verisimilar yet distorted Asian femininity to meet up with Western men’s patriarchal and Oriental fantasy. Prasso (2005) states that Westerners look at Asian culture only through the prism of their making; Said (1975) argues that the representation of the Orient only reflects what the West anticipates it to become. Through cultural appropriations, by featuring Asian characters and the (mis-)uses of Asian cultural icons, done by the U.S. media, The West constructs their own Asianness (Feng,