Women and Modernity in Asia:
Discourse on the history of Asian personalities/national figures (namely Memoirs of a Geisha) in American film. For example: the dragon lady, the docile female slave, the untrustworthy courtesan etc.
1. How can we explain/author/illustrate cultural difference without making the "other" radical.
2. Orientalizing as a tool to homogenize and dichotomize a cultural group- using the paradigm of "us" and "them".
3. Unlike the Black experience in America, Asian stereotypes were/are fluid in Asian-American communities as they are directly associated with whatever the current political relationship between Japan/China and the U.S. happened to be. Positive and negative film personas shifted back and forth from war to war and political movement to political movement depending on US sentiment towards Asian people.
4. The concept of "distant intimacy" as a narrative strategy for authors and screen writers to engage a (white) audience. Essentially, being able to access and experience the minds/story of a person who are geographically and culturally distant so that one's fantasies can be maintained and contained within the reality of a film or book. Often these are not historically or culturally accurate depictions because they are largely, if not wholly, made for entertainment purposes but these racialized images can penetrate the viewer's psyche much deeper than realized.
I was going to go into another class but I think this is enough intellectual rhetoric for one entry...
love sunshine and happiness
e
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How can we explain/author/illustrate cultural difference without making the "other" radical? I'll try this out on you...What if we define & generalize white American culture first. Then we navigate the pros and cons of our white, male culture--this gets into gender, religion, socioeconomics, history/politics, etc. And then you do the same thing for the "other" culture. Culture doesn't happen in a vaccuum, it is an intricate web/fabric that is not easily undone, created or discerned. I believe you have to live in it and breathe it to truly understand. So maybe "radical" is what the "other" may always look like. I will think more on this.
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