People and places
Internationalism in an internment camp J G Ballard’s childhood experiences as depicted in Empire of the Sun and Miracles of Life. By Lois Warner
52
loyalties, expectations and experiences – ordinary for many ‘third culture’ kids – through the extraordinary situation of being in Shanghai during World War 2. On the surface, young Jim’s life appears significantly different from the perceived lives of modern third culture kids. Certainly there is absolutely no interest in the local culture: in his memoir, Ballard recalls that he ‘lived in Shanghai for fifteen years and never learned a word of Chinese … never had a Chinese meal’ (Ballard, 2008, p31). When the novel opens early in the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the deep divide between Jim’s life and the city he lives in is darkly comic, as exemplified by the scene of the family obliviously threading their way through the city’s occupation-barricaded streets in their chauffeur-driven American car to attend a party: ‘Bayonet in hand, the [Japanese] sergeant slashed open a sack of rice, which he scattered around the [Chinese] woman’s feet. She stood shaking and crying in a singsong Spring |
Autumn
On my most recent 20-hour journey from the United States back to the Middle East, I happened upon Empire of the Sun on the plane’s entertainment system. Since I had recently visited Shanghai, and lived for six years in Tokyo, I decided to watch it again: I believe the last time I saw this film, it was on VHS. I remembered the film was about a boy who spent World War 2 without his parents in an internment camp, but I had not remembered why he was there. I had remembered the story as being about survival in a camp; but upon this viewing I realized it is actually about the perceptions of a boy caught between several states … none of which is indisputably ‘his’. A third culture kid. I was so struck by this new perspective, one I had never considered before, that upon my return I picked up J G Ballard’s novel of the same name (on which the film is based), and then his autobiography, Miracles of Life. In these works, but most especially in the novel, Ballard depicts the contradiction of
| 2019
