18 Keep an Eye on the Beauty Contest & 19 Lupin Caught
Jul 23, 2015 17:14:00 GMT -5
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Jul 23, 2015 17:14:00 GMT -5
18 Keep an Eye on the Beauty Contest
Just in case there was any doubt, one thing we have confirmed about Lupin in this episode is that, whatever other vices he may indulge in, he isn’t a pimp or a human trafficker. That doesn’t mean he won’t tie up a bunch of women and put them in luggage to foil an art heist, but the man won’t stoop too low.
This isn’t really a surprise to us—Lupin’s interactions with women tend to fall into professional partnerships, infatuations, or rescues (often in some combination). A bit more surprising is that this episode also arguably marks the first Lupin art heist—although Lupin’s gone after statuary in the past it’s tended to be of the more folkloric variety, ort valuable as a piece of gold than a piece of work. Plus there’s a long history of lighthearted art thievery to draw on.
Lupin doesn’t go the How to Steal a Million route, though, and heads right for the unexpected ground of looking more broadly at commodification of women’s images. Smith, the episode’s antagonist, uses a global beauty pageant as cover for auctioning stolen artworks, mostly of women: Utamaro prints, bathers by Renoir, even La Joconde. A clear connection is drawn between the judgment of these pictures and the judgment of the contestants’ beauty. If there’s something obviously wrong in the auctioning off these artworks—stolen from museums where they’re acknowledged as priceless common goods—perhaps there’s something wrong with pageants as well. It’s just another form of pimping. The plutocrats judging the pageant pull back photos of the real contestants to see photos of the artwork they’re secretly bidding on—discreet and a bit shameful.
Both painted and physical beauty “Keep an Eye on the Beauty Contest” are heavily mediated. In addition to the aforementioned pamphlets, the Lupin gang spends most of their time disguised as TV operators. Unexpectedly late in the series, Goemon has his first major tear through the scenery (with his near-magic sword), an excuse for Lupin and co. to follow him around and film his wake for clues about the paintings’ actual location, rewinding the tape to look for evidence of the paintings (and catching one of the plutocrats eating his pamphlet).
All this focus on mediation makes the appearance of the actual artwork seem more direct. Beyond the easy steal-and-stowability of paintings and prints, they offer the rare opportunity to incorporate reproductions of the actual artwork into the animation. This makes for a surprising ending. Like in previous episodes, we essentially have Lupin acting as detective here, only to foil someone else’s schemes and bring him to them to his own sort of self-serving justice. He knits the canvases into a sail, putting the fine art to practical use, undermining the aura that’s developed around them. Real though they might be, we shouldn’t go too far in fetishizing them.
Stray Observations
• Despite the first half of the series’s reputation as the harder-edged, more mature half this episode easily has the most racy imagery (though none of it’s of our regular, Fujiko). Contemporary fashion photography supplements the paintings in the closing sequence. Even Zenigata’s boss at Tokyo Metro HQ is reading a nudie mag. And he has a brilliant ’stache. Yup.
• In keeping with Miyazaki’s own preferences and Lupin’s newfound automotive modesty he drives a small Citroën truck here.
• While the connection between the beauty contest and the Utamaro is obvious, the Renoir and Leonardo paintings are a bit odder matches thematically—both (but the Mona Lisa especially) are as much about showing the woman as a unified part of nature as they are about the woman herself, and the Mona Lisa’s probably as famous for having been as it is for any qualities of the painting itself.
• The Lupin franchise returns to incorporating painting directly in its animation in more surrealistic form in the first Lupin film, The Secret of Mamo.
• Among the contestants is a “Miss Piccolo”—a relative of the ladies at Piccolo S.p.A.?
Recommended?
While “Keep an Eye on the Beauty Pageant” is certainly interesting to write about, it’s actually a rather middling and inessential episode.
19 Which of the Third Generation Will Win
“No violence, we’ve got to do it up here! Logic, science & talent, Monsieur Gallimar.”
This one starts out promisingly—Inspector Gallimar, the descendent of le premier Arsène Lupin’s original pursuer, arrives in Tokyo to draw out le troisième. In doing so he sets himself up as an opponent of both Lupin and Zenigata. He wounds Lupin’s pride by both bringing his grandfather’s attire and asserting it’s worthless beyond its value as a Lupin trap, and threatens to show Zenigata as incompetent by catching Lupin with a relatively simple ruse.
And Gallimar makes a lot about his scientific approach—he’s an empiricist who uses the latest in technology to guard Le Premier Lupin’s attire (and other French treasures on display as part of a blockbuster exhibition). But his approach is a brute force one, typically involving putting the treasures under heavy guard of some sort. It’s an interesting counterpoint to both Lupin and Zenigata. Lupin, of course, is always a sort of countercultural figure, but also no strategic lightweight himself. He’ll either find someplace where Gallimar’s logic fails him or work outside the bounds of his thinking. Zenigata, on the other hand, relies less on methodical planning but his experience with Lupin’s working methods—history, not technology, is his guide.
Unfortunately, the episode never fully capitalizes on these differences. He does trip up Gallimar’s empiricism via disguise, once in a small, exciting (but ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to steal the French treasures and in the second time at a large scale, meeting Gallimar’s brute-force security with an incredible number doubles of Lupin III, Zenigata, and Gallimar himself.
In addition to it being a bit disappointing that Lupin doesn’t come up with some clever, under-the-radar way around Gallimar’s brute force (instead responding in kind), It’s odd how straightforwardly this ending is played—apparently, Lupin and the gang just rounded up a number of costumes, round up a number of people, and confuse Gallimar and Zenigata (who finally snap at one another). Since Miyazaki and Takahata took over Lupin stories have typically become more solidly and sophisticatedly constructed—there’s more set-up and reward, more elaborate set pieces, and a stronger link from one to another. This ending, though, might have worked better had they bee willing to break their own construction. The rooms full of Lupins and Zenigatas are almost surreal, and I’d almost have an easier time believing Lupin released some kind of psychotropic substance. Lupin needed to break Gallimar’s logic—my question is whether he really went as far as he could.
Recommended?
It’s well edited and a lot of individual scenes are quite well done—the fact that it feels like it’s building to a great episode means “Lupin Caught in a Trap” ultimately ends up rather disappointing.
Next week we will have to “Catch the Phony Lupin!” and “Rescue the Tomboy!”
Just in case there was any doubt, one thing we have confirmed about Lupin in this episode is that, whatever other vices he may indulge in, he isn’t a pimp or a human trafficker. That doesn’t mean he won’t tie up a bunch of women and put them in luggage to foil an art heist, but the man won’t stoop too low.
This isn’t really a surprise to us—Lupin’s interactions with women tend to fall into professional partnerships, infatuations, or rescues (often in some combination). A bit more surprising is that this episode also arguably marks the first Lupin art heist—although Lupin’s gone after statuary in the past it’s tended to be of the more folkloric variety, ort valuable as a piece of gold than a piece of work. Plus there’s a long history of lighthearted art thievery to draw on.
Lupin doesn’t go the How to Steal a Million route, though, and heads right for the unexpected ground of looking more broadly at commodification of women’s images. Smith, the episode’s antagonist, uses a global beauty pageant as cover for auctioning stolen artworks, mostly of women: Utamaro prints, bathers by Renoir, even La Joconde. A clear connection is drawn between the judgment of these pictures and the judgment of the contestants’ beauty. If there’s something obviously wrong in the auctioning off these artworks—stolen from museums where they’re acknowledged as priceless common goods—perhaps there’s something wrong with pageants as well. It’s just another form of pimping. The plutocrats judging the pageant pull back photos of the real contestants to see photos of the artwork they’re secretly bidding on—discreet and a bit shameful.
Both painted and physical beauty “Keep an Eye on the Beauty Contest” are heavily mediated. In addition to the aforementioned pamphlets, the Lupin gang spends most of their time disguised as TV operators. Unexpectedly late in the series, Goemon has his first major tear through the scenery (with his near-magic sword), an excuse for Lupin and co. to follow him around and film his wake for clues about the paintings’ actual location, rewinding the tape to look for evidence of the paintings (and catching one of the plutocrats eating his pamphlet).
All this focus on mediation makes the appearance of the actual artwork seem more direct. Beyond the easy steal-and-stowability of paintings and prints, they offer the rare opportunity to incorporate reproductions of the actual artwork into the animation. This makes for a surprising ending. Like in previous episodes, we essentially have Lupin acting as detective here, only to foil someone else’s schemes and bring him to them to his own sort of self-serving justice. He knits the canvases into a sail, putting the fine art to practical use, undermining the aura that’s developed around them. Real though they might be, we shouldn’t go too far in fetishizing them.
Stray Observations
• Despite the first half of the series’s reputation as the harder-edged, more mature half this episode easily has the most racy imagery (though none of it’s of our regular, Fujiko). Contemporary fashion photography supplements the paintings in the closing sequence. Even Zenigata’s boss at Tokyo Metro HQ is reading a nudie mag. And he has a brilliant ’stache. Yup.
• In keeping with Miyazaki’s own preferences and Lupin’s newfound automotive modesty he drives a small Citroën truck here.
• While the connection between the beauty contest and the Utamaro is obvious, the Renoir and Leonardo paintings are a bit odder matches thematically—both (but the Mona Lisa especially) are as much about showing the woman as a unified part of nature as they are about the woman herself, and the Mona Lisa’s probably as famous for having been as it is for any qualities of the painting itself.
• The Lupin franchise returns to incorporating painting directly in its animation in more surrealistic form in the first Lupin film, The Secret of Mamo.
• Among the contestants is a “Miss Piccolo”—a relative of the ladies at Piccolo S.p.A.?
Recommended?
While “Keep an Eye on the Beauty Pageant” is certainly interesting to write about, it’s actually a rather middling and inessential episode.
19 Which of the Third Generation Will Win
“No violence, we’ve got to do it up here! Logic, science & talent, Monsieur Gallimar.”
This one starts out promisingly—Inspector Gallimar, the descendent of le premier Arsène Lupin’s original pursuer, arrives in Tokyo to draw out le troisième. In doing so he sets himself up as an opponent of both Lupin and Zenigata. He wounds Lupin’s pride by both bringing his grandfather’s attire and asserting it’s worthless beyond its value as a Lupin trap, and threatens to show Zenigata as incompetent by catching Lupin with a relatively simple ruse.
And Gallimar makes a lot about his scientific approach—he’s an empiricist who uses the latest in technology to guard Le Premier Lupin’s attire (and other French treasures on display as part of a blockbuster exhibition). But his approach is a brute force one, typically involving putting the treasures under heavy guard of some sort. It’s an interesting counterpoint to both Lupin and Zenigata. Lupin, of course, is always a sort of countercultural figure, but also no strategic lightweight himself. He’ll either find someplace where Gallimar’s logic fails him or work outside the bounds of his thinking. Zenigata, on the other hand, relies less on methodical planning but his experience with Lupin’s working methods—history, not technology, is his guide.
Unfortunately, the episode never fully capitalizes on these differences. He does trip up Gallimar’s empiricism via disguise, once in a small, exciting (but ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to steal the French treasures and in the second time at a large scale, meeting Gallimar’s brute-force security with an incredible number doubles of Lupin III, Zenigata, and Gallimar himself.
In addition to it being a bit disappointing that Lupin doesn’t come up with some clever, under-the-radar way around Gallimar’s brute force (instead responding in kind), It’s odd how straightforwardly this ending is played—apparently, Lupin and the gang just rounded up a number of costumes, round up a number of people, and confuse Gallimar and Zenigata (who finally snap at one another). Since Miyazaki and Takahata took over Lupin stories have typically become more solidly and sophisticatedly constructed—there’s more set-up and reward, more elaborate set pieces, and a stronger link from one to another. This ending, though, might have worked better had they bee willing to break their own construction. The rooms full of Lupins and Zenigatas are almost surreal, and I’d almost have an easier time believing Lupin released some kind of psychotropic substance. Lupin needed to break Gallimar’s logic—my question is whether he really went as far as he could.
Recommended?
It’s well edited and a lot of individual scenes are quite well done—the fact that it feels like it’s building to a great episode means “Lupin Caught in a Trap” ultimately ends up rather disappointing.
Next week we will have to “Catch the Phony Lupin!” and “Rescue the Tomboy!”
