Jirorian

'Terry Tate: Office Linebacker' is structured like a documentary with the commentary of the office's inhabitants guiding us through the situation that has taken stronghold of their workplace. This situation is as ridiculous as it is appealing, comically exposing the binary mentalities that pervade the worlds of corporate America and elite sports. Productivity and efficiency are the goals toward which the office workers are setting themselves, and by taking the methods employed in the starkly different world of American football to push these workers, notions of professionalism are deconstructed as we realise that we have all, at some point, wanted to be Terry Tate. We are not allowed to be Terry Tate, however, because of the social codes by which we have to abide our conduct. As a result, we must find solace simply through the power that the screen holds in realising our deepest fantasies.

A girl caught in between the conflicting voices of her parents, as a result having to make decisions in adherence with her own individual judgments of what is right or wrong, even in spite of the potential backlash that might consequently ensue from either one of her two authoritative figures. It is a striking image that shocks many of the characters in the film, along with the audience, in the jumping up of a small, supposedly innocent girl reaching to press the high buttons of a tobacco vending machine; or even as she stares down the singular cigarette lying on the ground prior to making her move. The obvious implications one would assume as being the logical progression of this are made manifest in the characterisation of the older girl who smokes and offers the little girl a cigarette, and in doing so provides the entryway to yet another confusing, alternate system of authority to those of which the little girl is struggling with at home. The story thus follows the girl's efforts to make sense of the nonsensical world she perceives around her, as her absence of entirely respectable figures to look up to -- people without any regrets or vices to pervade their sensitive outlooks on life -- speaks for the reality to which life bears as being confusing, imperfect, and uncertain in nature. As suggested through the film's conclusion, the only remedy we have in our efforts to fit inside this chaos is through the structures of family, and the little moments we share where everything seems to make sense.

A venture into the difficulties cultural homogeneity bears upon those who do not completely fit inside the social structures that define the common experience, in this case being that of the so-called peace and uniformity typically associated with the Japanese countryside, 'Born With It' tells of a boy with a racially mixed background struggling to comprehend the overwhelming social forces that push him into isolation, and prevent him from being accepted by his classmates as their equal in regards to his Japanese identity. The children's reactions being portrayed as a natural course of events highlights the degree to which notions of race are inherently embedded within the Japanese psyche and nation's sense of itself, which in this case differs from the history of segregation and suppression that Western viewers will be quick to identify with, because the Japanese children staring at the coloured boy are purely coming from a place of ignorance. Their realities are only understood in adherence with the world that they have been exposed to, which hinders their abilities to comprehend anything that they cannot immediately identify with. As a result, their understanding of what it means to be black is limited to the concept that colour must be a distinguishing feature of their preconceived notions of nationality, ethnicity, language, and identity. The issue here is that these notions are historically constructed notions purely for the sake of identifying difference, and as we come to realise that difference itself actually bears less presence in reality than the terminology and systems through which we are accustomed to seeing it, we realise the need for the terminology and systems to be adjusted. In the meantime, we must gradually overcome the direct effects had on those who are victimised by these falsified senses of reality, as candidly brought to screen in 'Born With It'.