Comparing Lost In Translation And The Shipping News

ENGLISH EXTENSION 1 ESSAY!

The global world. A world in which barriers and identifying characteristics of different countries and communities are broken down to create a world which is uniform and commercialized. This global world is presented throughout the four texts: the film, Lost In Translation, the novel, The Shipping News, the film, Children Of Men and the novel, Transmission in differing ways. In this fast-aced global world, connections with individuals or communities are beneficial to an individual being able to establish and identify oneself.

The development of the characters are seen within all the texts, and the way in which the characters develop are from the relationships they choose to build and uphold in their worlds.
Lost In Translation shows us a heavily globalised and commercialized Japan in which the two characters Bob and Charlotte begin their journey. They both come from America to Japan, Bob on a trip to shoot an advertisement and Charlotte, on a trip, following her husband, unsure of what is set for her in the future. Before the two characters meet, it is already clear that they do not fit in to this global world as the director uses different camera shots and scenarios where the characters are shown in isolation, eg. Charlotte sitting alone next to the window in her hotel room, or through the blurring effect of the camera, where if the character is in focus, the scenery is blurred and if the scenery is in focus, the character is blurred eg. Bob’s taxi ride to the hotel in the opening scene. These techniques already show us the trouble the two characters have with connecting to this place they are in. It is only when the two characters meet and begin to build a strong friendship, that their stay in this unknown land seems to
Quoyle is a miserable, failure in life and through establishing the wrong connections with different individuals he is unable to achieve anything and is always put down within the global world in which he lives. Newfoundland is seen to be the purely local community and it is through building relationships within this community that he is able to get a true sense of who he is. More than navigating the global he is navigating the local, as Newfoundland is a community which has chosen to retreat from being part of a global sphere. The only real connection they establish with the global world is through the small segment in the newspaper which Tert Card writes. Quoyle, feeling like a failure due to his dysfunctional family and the horrible relationship he had with Petal Bear, finally gains strength and believes in himself through the relationships he establishes with Wavey, Jack Buggit and individuals like his Aunt. The author uses knots as a preface to all the chapters and the knots are chosen for specific chapters to show the confusion, the tangle or the neat knot the characters are in, and the symbol of these knots are carried on into Quoyle’s name, as it represents a coil, the character, without an knots to bind him to a strong relationship and without any knots to different individuals and communities which allow him to gain a sense of self. The ending shows a changed Quoyle, one through different