I have not read the book or seen the film, but complete ignorance has never stopped me commenting before, so why stop now?

I am deeply suspicious of all that exoticness ie blue eyed geisha making the character exotic to the men she encounters, then there's the whole stereotypical exoticness of Asian women to a Western audience aspect as well.

Here's someone who's actually read the book: http://pigpuppet.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-8-11.html

ps congrats on the extension. it is an occasion to put your feet up, if only to recover from the extreme terror leaving your body.

i had similar issues re exoticism and asian women's bodies (isn't that a strange thing to write? i think about my female asian friends and writing that sentence and it feels strange: almost as if that sentence is trying to make my asian friends 'other'... does that make sense? i mean, i don't think of them as 'exoticised female bodies', i think of them as 'amazingly capable and organised', 'stalwart friend' or the other markers of their individual identities.

... yeah, so i have issues with the geisha film - i think of it as being a romanticised semi-erotic story about what is, essentially prostitution. If not not prostitution in the sense of money-for-sex, but certainly in the sense of women-as-ornament-which-men-buy. all that rot about a 'great geisha stopping men in their tracks with a look' kind of makes me gag. a great _woman_ needs greater resources than simply her appearance.

and i have issues with the blue eyes thing too.

... but we'll see. maybe i should go see it?