Robert Oppenheimer,” the film was released Friday and follows the physicist’s ascent into his role as the director of the clandestine weapons lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as part of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret U.S.
“But it is true that these institutions that are in positions of power, positions of influence, put more value on stories of men like Oppenheimer, like Truman, than it does on the Asian and indigenous communities that suffered because of decisions that those men made.”īased on the 2005 biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. “I don’t think we should depend on Hollywood to tell our stories with the nuance and the depth and the care that they really deserve,” Nina Wallace, media and outreach manager at Densho, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the stories of those of Japanese descent. They emphasized that while no one film has the responsibility to illustrate Japanese victims’ perspective, “Oppenheimer” does little to challenge the long history of glorifying the work of white men, and risks perpetuating the persistent, often reductive, portrayals of Japanese victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Experts say that the issue of representation is more nuanced.
