This paper tries to recover Fiskean deconstructive criticism as a way of exploring the complexities of texts. Specifically, it is claimed that Lost in Translation’s moments of spectacle disclose that even in a text that intensifies White Orientalist views of Japan, the text’s obtuse meanings undermine, though not invert, this dominant narrative. The film’s text reifies heteronormative masculinity and femininity with the blending of the pre- and postmodern Japan, yet obtuse meanings undermine the Western gaze and propose hybrid queer spaces that complicate Western neocolonial domination. Subversion cannot totally overturn those meanings, but guerrilla opportunities permit tactical resistance.