INDEX
The Overlooked Individuals behind the Acclaim in the United States
The special situation in which “a work may not be seen in theaters” has inevitably led to an emphasis on the claim and praise for the film’s success and value as a movie.
Although the film has certainly been well received, as can be seen from the “Academy Award” results, there is, in fact, a near-total rejection of the film in the U.S. – a rejection of the racial bias in the film by Asian Americans, not just those of Japanese descent. For example, the film is not only rejected by Asian Americans, but also by Japanese Americans.
For example, in an article titled “Who Did ‘Oppenheimer’ Erase” (Note 5), Olivia Cruz Maeda, a Japanese American journalist in San Francisco, wrote about the Japanese who actually suffered from the atomic bombing as well as the Native Americans who were forced to leave Los Alamos, where the research center was located, and return to the radioactive land after the nuclear tests. In the article titled “Who’s Who” (Note 5), the author pointed out that the existence of people who were actually affected by nuclear development, such as the Japanese who actually suffered from the atomic bombings, the Native Americans who were forced to leave Los Alamos, the site of the research center, and had to return to the radioactive land after the tests, and the residents of the Marshall Islands, the site of the US nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, was hardly taken into account. The article also criticizes the white-centeredness of Hollywood films.
In addition, according to Han Yoon-ji, a writer for the web media “Business Insider,” female, Asian, and African researchers participated in the real-life “Manhattan Project,” but their presence itself is erased from the screen in this film (Notes 6 and 7).
I had never thought about it before reading these reactions in the U.S., but in a multi-racial society like the U.S., where racial issues such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Asian Hate” have become more and more serious, I was surprised to see how much the British director Christopher Nolan has succeeded in portraying on the screen in this film. The unacknowledged ethnocentrism* that Christopher Nolan depicts on the screen in this film seems to be a more serious problem than “the lack of concrete depictions of the damage caused by Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.
Ethnocentrism is a viewpoint that judges the superiority or inferiority of other cultures based on the culture and values of the group to which one belongs.
