Signing Off the Blog ...

Dear Everyone:

Thanks for a thoughtful and engaging semester, on and off the blog. Your propensity for working through critical problems was wonderful for me to witness. I hope you feel the benefit as keenly as I have felt it. Good luck finishing up this week. In my "spare time," I'm going to see if I can convert our blog into an e-book -- or, at the very least, into a PDF -- and make it available to you as a memento of the course, particularly for those posts that became your favorites.

Stay tuned,
-Prof. Graban

The Dam: Chinese Communist Party

If you love TED talks, or are perplexed by how a third world communist country can grow so fast, or are interested in how Confucius is inextricably connected to China's cultural identity, or you doubt whether Chinese Racial Superiority exists: Watch this entire video. You will be enlightened and you may find something you would like to look deeper into.
://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china.html

"The Chinese view the state, not just as an intimate member of the family … but as the head of the family.”

The Chinese people represented in the documentary were presented in multiple lights. The farmers seem to be fatalistic. They are unhappy with their lives, without education, and by the nature of their very philosophy, they are hopeless. They feel that by sending their daughter to work they are exploiting her, when in reality, this is a result of the state exploiting them. Even with these feelings, their belief in fate gives them no sense of agency. I believe in this section of the film we see the oppressiveness of an authoritarian communist state. Instead of seeing the money trickle down from a regulated enterprise into the pockets of the workers, we see that the state's main financial interests is in maintaining a strong national symbol, a dam.


While the dam may represent a powerful economy, it does not represent individual freedom.

We see never see a strong sense of cultural identity like Jacques discusses (the ideological origins are explained in the video I introduced at the beginning of this post).But in one scene, where a state representative is showing us fake relocatee homes, he tells us that all Chinese are happy. This is clearly a lie. It is a form of national propaganda. Espousing the feat of having created a utopia has been done by many communist governments in the past, up until their final days.

The entertainer seems to be the only other Chinese person represented in the film who is not miserable. He is portrayed as being "westernized" in order to gain capital.  All of his mannerisms, etiquette, seem artificially western. The director may want to present the idea that authentic Chinese culture is being washed away by free market modernization. Is this for the greater good? Is this even what is really happening? Isn't it just as easy to say that the ideals of a communist government are responsible?  There is not a single message to take away from this film, nor a single exploiter, however, the families along the Yangtze are definitely victims.

"Up the Yangtze" definitely supports my view that the unlimited authority of the state exploits/marginalizes its laborers in order to create a strong symbol of state power. Instead of seeing a good example of trickle-down economics, we see the working class being exploited and ignored by the state. The state controls most of the enterprises and therefore most of the money. This is why instead of seeing the worker's receiving humane wages and pursuing happiness, we see them being forced off of the state's land. We see them, but their government does not. The damn is supposed to be a symbol of economic progress, but can also be viewed as a symbol of state oppression. Here we see Burke's example of symbols using people instead of people using symbols.

Psycho vs. Psycho

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock introduced one of the most influential killer thriller's of the 20th century.  Of any century really.  Psycho.  This film currently has a %99 on rottentomatoes.com for you film critics.  In 1998, director Gus Van Sant made the equivalent of a carbon copy of Hitchcock's original, beloved horror classic.  This film, which completely replicated everything Hitchcock did from angles to the way in which the actors performed their lines.  This film currently has a %36 on rottentomatoes.com.  That's a hell of a difference between two films which are arguably the exact same...save for the fact that one's in color and the other's eerily in black and white.

What does this say about replicating art in Benjamin's essay?  According to him, "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element:  its presence in time and space" (1234).  What does this mean?  Just because Hitchcock made his in 1960 it's suddenly better than the exact same film made in 1998?  Maybe.  He elaborates on the reproduced work of art and claims that the "quality of it's presence is always depreciated" (1235).  The vast difference between the success of the films demonstrates how complicated the relationship is between the original and its replica.  It makes me wonder if there's every a way in which replication can be accomplished in a positive light.

McCloud

There's a distinct relationship between Locke's "mixed modes" (818) and McCloud's icons.
Most notably when thinking about words as icons.  Consider the image on page 28 of McCloud's deconstruction of icons.  We see the image of a man's face donning the image of an anatomical eye and then the word eye--but we understand that they both mean the same thing despite one of them having no place on a person's face.

I feel as if this illustrates the problem with language and emphasizes Locke's notion of the "arbitrary imposition of men" (817).  It many ways it both complicates and celebrates it. We assign signification arbitrarily as depicted in the image.  There's no reason to indicate that the anatomical 'eye' should be called 'eye'--e-y-e.  But at the same time...it is "e-y-e."  We've come to recognize it so therefore it has essence.  But our eyes are arguably very concrete--when we introduce "mixed modes" that gets slightly more complicated.  We cannot draw hope, yet we understand the implications behind it.  We can adapt symbols such as say...a dove...well I guess that's peace...I digress.  We'll just use a dove.  A dove can symbolize hope, and we understand the implications, yet there's no concrete evidence of hope because it's merely a concept.    

Takarazuka and Gender

I was staring at the poster in my room I bought after watching Takarazuka for the first time in Japan, and I couldn't help wondering how Butler might apply to the theater troupe.

First, Takarazuka is an all-female musical theater group, famous for its otokuyaku (male role-players). Typically, the musicals staged by Takarazuka follow similar plot lines: a man falls in love with a beautiful and innocent young woman, but before their feelings for each other can become manifest, some villainous type comes to stand in their way (there are often love triangles).  I watched the troupe's staging of The Great Gatsby on DVD, and I was surprised to see Daisy transformed into a young, selfless woman who only wanted to love her daughter and true love, Gatsby. I didn't remember the story unfolding quite like that...

Butler writes, "It would make no sense, then, to define gender as the cultural interpretation of sex, if sex is itself a gendered category.  Gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a  pregiven sex (a jurdical conception); gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established."(10)

An interesting aspect to Takarazuka is that both musumeyaku (female role-players) and otokoyaku (male role-player) must undertake rigorous training to learn how to act feminine and masculine, demonstrating Butler's concept that gender is performative. The Revue often deflects questions about sexuality presented in their performances by repeating their motto (typically, there is nothing beyond kissing on the cheek in a performance, but in regards to fans' fascination with Takarazuka, the Revue insists that, despite whatever reason fans may come, their performances are not sexual): "Modesty, Fairness, and Grace." In maintaining the legitimacy of this motto, the Revue depends on sex as "a gendered category."

In their need to teach both actresses how to perform their respective genders, the Revue reveals their motives to promote certain ideals through gender. The behaviors they teach are not so much what is real (if their gender were representative of reality, then why would the musumeyaku need such rigorous training?), but what will best promote their motto.

They rely on "sex" as a "gendered category" to hide their particular structuring of gender. They demonstrate gender is performative, but deflect questions about sexuality by insisting on their actresses "real" sexes as females, implying that within that category of sex is a natural inclination toward heteronormativity. They genderize sex, relying on its definition as a natural construct, in order to hide the true unstable nature of gender made evident  through their performances.

The Viewer's Broken Mirror

I found it rather interesting that during our in-class discussion regarding Up the Yangtze we took some time to assess the ways in which the film effected the viewer emotionally.  The assessment, however, was not simply directed at the way in which the emotionally charged film drew tears, but the ways in which it could actually make us feel bad based on the ground that we shared even the slightest thing in common with some of the more villainous characters.

It is not an easy thing to do to admit ones faults in a manner such as this.  The number of critics who have praised this film is practically without number, but very few of their reviews actually touch on their own feelings of self-insufficiency in watching the film.  I suppose that it is possible that some viewers simply see themselves as too far removed from the terrible passengers of the cruise to take note of this, but it is also possible that it is a result of the human being's nature to avoid things that are unpleasant and through praising the film remove any pent-up feelings that they may have accrued throughout their viewing. 

This idea of self-awareness skewed is something I find particularly interesting in regards to not only this film, but a great deal of media in the United States.

In a way, the idea detailed here can be seen through the eyes of Burke's idea of terministic screen.  His ideas regarding the importance of past events on the formation of our opinions and expression can be seen as relating to the viewers, while his exploration of the ways in which the different terministic screens of different people can result in a great deal of controversy and sadness.  A controversy and sadness that is very difficult to remedy due to the fact it is so deeply ingrained into our being.

Yangtze Dam: A Split Towards Capitalism II

The corrupted communistic ideal is presented clearly in the Yangtze dam.  As the dam splits the Yangtze, so does it split the country further from this ideal towards capitalism.  The dam steals the voice of those along the river and redistributes it back to those in power.  Those along the river have no say, no voice, concerning the impact such a construction will have on their lives.  This is how corruption works in capitalism and communism.  At the beginning, the cause is the purest.  Those who are placed in power seek to better the entirety of the community and progress together towards a brighter future.  However, they also far to often fall into the trap of corruption and see something they want, or the few would like.  Decisions made will always divide groups between the benefactors and those that take a loss.  What happens in corruption is that the same groups always benefit, while the others take the loss.  This happens until all of the representative power of the lessor is lost with the exception of their labor and physical power, which is suppressed by the benefactors.  Those along the banks of the Yangtze are a sample of the downtrodden, those who always lose.  If this process took place randomly, then there would be the greatest distribution of power and wealth to the middle.  Unfortunately, that is how the world works.  People will say "life isn't fair", but shouldn't it be?  We should level the playing field, but first we must try.

Up the Yangtze, Education, and Agency

     Awhile ago I talked about education vs agency. Now I want to talk about education vs agency vs representation. It seems to me like a person's level of education will greatly affect a person's ability to represent themselves which increases their agency. Cindy's father makes this fairly clear in Up the Yangtze. He seems to be represented by everyone but himself. The tour guide speaks for him when he goes to visit the dam and says that he is poor and uneducated so he doesn't understand and he is angry at the government. It is true that he is poor and uneducated but that doesn't mean his voice should be stunted like that. Later we hear Cindy's father talking about the government and saying something about the fact that he can't read and doesn't have a TV to watch the news so he can't pass judgment on such things. He even stunts his own voice here.

     Cindy's father is capable of recognizing his injustice and his tough situation but it's almost as if he doesn't recognize his own ability to speak because he is uneducated. It's hard to pinpoint the exact reason but I imagine that if he were able to learn about all the people around the world that were struggling just like he is, he would not be so willing to write off his own opinion. If he were only more aware of others in his plight he would make his voice just a little louder and not allow others to misrepresent him. Instead he would be able to represent himself in the midst of his troubles. I think the education would lead to agency which would lead to representation.

Up the Yangtze: a careful representation of Chinese peasantry.

Throughout the duration of the film Up the Yangtze, I was overwhelmed with Cheng's careful attention to  his representation of Cindy's family, and the other members of their economic class. Carefully, Cheng's interview with these people developed a unified voice for those whose stories are usually never heard, or are often oppressed by their economic standing. Here we uncover in this film, that those whose lives are most immediately and deeply affected by the Chinese government's dam project are those whose voices are not heard, their woes shrugged off for the greater good of the country.


If Cheng had not approached his work in this documentary carefully enough he could have falsely  and mistakingly represented these people in the trope the western world associates with the chinese peasant. A trope all to loudly represented in the comic "The Blue Lotus" by Tin-tin's author Hergé. This comic series has been sited as a good place to expose the ins and outs of post colonial racism, in this specific comic the trope of chinese peasant appears only as: an impoverished man with deeply cut cheek bones, ribs that stick out, always running barefoot in the streets, making his money by transporting western tourists.

This trope of "The Blue Lotus" is connected in the role Cindy is asked to play on the tour boat, but instead of representing Cindy as another basic representative of chinese peasantry, Cheng allows us to understand the troubles of the class of people she and her family represent by inviting us directly into their home. As if answering Johnson's call Cheng does not settle for the "'dog-like', 'fawn-like'"(Johnson 388) basic representation of a people and allows the story to unfold how we understand Cindy's position. A girl forced into working a cruise boat in an effort to help her family, at the price of submitting herself constantly to an imperial regime. She is taught to wear make-up, smile constantly, and never discuss politics in order to make more tips. As Burke to clearly explains, "A can feel himself identified with B, or he can think of himself as disassociated from B" (Burke 49). Cheng builds on this binary first allowing us to see for ourselves the deplorable poverty Cindy and her family live, completely separated and juxtaposed from the grandeur of the cruise ship. And then he asks his audience to chose who to identify with, the lower classes he interviews or the Tin-tin like character, the westerner who turns in Jerry for asking for a tip, the westerner who wishes to visit a country and be guided blindly through so they may leave believing "Everyone is Happy. "

Yangtze Dam: A Split Towards Capitalism I

Let's face it, there has never been a truly communistic country.  Sure, there have been countries that consider themselves communist, but by human nature the ideal of a communist country has always been corrupted.  A true communism is not one for all or all for one, it is all for all or none for none.  This puts responsibility on everyone, but at least the burden is spread out.  This is opposed to capitalism where much the decision making power is distributed to the most influential and wealthy, while the poor bear the brunt of the labor.  That is human psychology for you.  Thinking can be too hard for some individuals, so they give up their power in exchange for security, at least for a while.  But it is too easy to forget this exchange and often those in power thirst for more and press on those beneath them to extract what little value they can at a much greater cost.  There is a paradox involved with the Yangtze dam, however.  The dam is constructed for the good of the country and provides electricity for many homes, but at the cost of the homes of the poor along the river, who receive little compensation for their great sacrifice and contribution to the country.  At what point does hurting the little guy hurt the country?  This is a numbers game, I would not like to play because it deals with human emotions and lives on which I dare not place a specific value.  But decisions must be made, so what are the ethics we should go by?  The Yangtze dam both hurts and helps the ideal of communism by displacing the poor and providing electricity to many homes.  However, if we were to look at who benefited the most from its construction, I am certain we would find a few individuals who received much more for their labor than would be justified in comparison to the meager amount payed to those displaced.  This is the power of corruption and it inherently exists in any capitalist system.  Too many capitalize on the broken backs of the peasants along the Yangtze for it to be anything close to true communism.

Up the Yangtze- Thoughts on Jerry

One question that I seem to be struggling with is whether Jerry can be considered part of the subaltern.  A reigning factor in what makes someone part of the subaltern is their "voicelessness."  The inability to voice their own words and the natural inclination for misinterpretation goes against the idea that the subaltern are not a simple categorization of “being postcolonial or the member of an ethnic minority,” (Spivak 808).  This leads to my question on what Jerry is really a part of.  He states in the movie that he is part of a higher social position than Cindy and that his family has more money.  In my personal opinion, Jerry is a spoiled brat who is self centered.  However, I do not think he is part of the subaltern.  His ability to strongly voice his opinions and his motive is directly stated for others to hear.  His motivation is to make more money.  With this statement alone, it doesn't leave any room for misinterpretation.  However, there is the argument that he is also part of the subaltern because he is unable to state his voice of concern to the flooding of the river.  Although the movie's main focus was not on Jerry, I think the movie does a great job in putting the concern on what position Jerry fits into.  
 

D'Etre

I’m trying to figure out why Cooper chose the title of the excerpt from A Voice from the South entitled “Our Raison D’Etre” (Our Reason for Existence). I’m assuming that “our” is referring to Black Women.  Cooper’s article clearly states that there is “no word from the Black Woman” (379).  There is a void left open in literature that comes from an absence of an authentic take on the Black Woman.  Instead there is a representation of the Black Woman based on others’ experiences with Black Women.  I suppose the Reason for Existence could be to be sure that their true voice is put out there and heard. Cooper notes that she wants not only “a black man honestly and appreciatively portraying both the Negro as he is, and the white man, occasionally, as seen from the Negro’s standpoint” (383).    Now that I’m thinking more about it, I think that the “our” is referring to everyone.  Everyone needs to make sure that there are accurate portrayals instead of representations of many based on small encounters.   Cooper also sees nobility in the soul.  She quotes Shakespeare “Tis not only safer, but nobler, grander, diviner, to be that which we destroy than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy” (384).  The existence of Black Women seems to be based on choosing to be the object of criticism instead of trying to find happiness through breaking down others.  Our Reason for Existence seems to have multiple levels.  Perhaps Black Women would rather stay silent over using words to inaccurately portray others.  In the end Cooper wants the voice of the Black Woman to be heard, so I think Black Women exist therefore they should be heard.

Up the Yangtze- Representation?

I am wondering whether or not we can say that the people in Up the Yangtze were represented or simply displayed?  The idea that I am proposing might seem a little bit trivial, but I think it's relatively important to determine what that film means for our concept of representation.

So in the film, the tourists are displayed as simpletons- they are vague, air-headed, rude, demanding, and kind of annoying. The entire concept of "American" seems to be laughable to the "natives."  When they are in a work meeting and are discussing the inappropriate things to call Americans, fat and pale are mentioned.  I can't help but wonder if that was stereotyping at its finest?

I also take issue with the fact that all of the natives are forced to change their names on the ship.  They say at one point in the film that it is so they are more appealing to the Americans (and presumably other non-natives).  I find that this does two harmful things: For one, it strips the natives of their identity and replaces it with a stereotyped and misrepresented American ideal.  Second, it presents this idea of what Americans want that is not representative of all Americans.

Also, there are only two native teens followed in the film.  The representative sample is so small, one cannot help but question the accuracy.  Do these two teenagers represent China?  Poverty?  Depravity?  Desperation?  Opportunity?  Hard work?  Vehemence?  I think that this is sooo unclear within the film.  As an audience member, I guess I just want to know what I am supposed to be getting from these teens.   

I see several issues with the representation in the film, and as I discussed in my last SCD, I am wondering what it means that representations are sometimes not representative?

Post continued

I wrote about how I feel hegemonic and subaltern culture doesn't really exist and therefore the question of voice doesn't matter.  The "hegemonic" crowd has about as much vocal stamina as the subaltern as Chang dutifully pointed out in demonstrating the ignorance of the American, Canadian and other "white guy" participants of the cruise. In fact, I felt those with the strongest voices, the strongest words were from Shui Yu. She calls out Bo Yu Chen's mood and makes him realize that he's miserable on the boat; his ignorance (juxtaposed against the ignorance of the tourists) alienates him from the others.

TO me, this pretty much means that these attitudes involving barriers between third world and first world citizens are superfluous-- "These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality" (Gates 6).  If what Julia Anna Cooper says about black devils painted by white painters, Louis C.K. is right.  He caps off his joke with..."It's a very white attitude, don't you think?"

Louis C.K. always gets it right!

I figured the best topic on which to write was the SCD from this past weekend.  Personally I was proud of mine.

First off, if no one has ever heard of the comedian Louis C.K. I recommend you watch some of his stand-up.  He's very objectionable, but also hilarious...and right!  I started my SCD with a quote that I'd like everyone to consider.  He says of minorities and majorities: "You could take a white guy to Africa and he’d be like, ‘Look at all the minorities around here! I’m the only majority!’”  That's what I was thinking about as I was watching Up the Yangtze.  I was disgusted by the campy ways in which the white tourists participated in an otherwise rich culture and the comment from the woman about Bo Yu Chen's being "obtrusive" was presumptuous.  And it's also what I like to call the "White Guy" attitude.

The way in which the tourists interacted with those on the boat demonstrated ignorance, but if we're considering representation and misrepresentation I have to wonder if Chang wanted to construct American's in this fashion.  Julia Anna Cooper wrote that there was yet to be an authentic portrait of the African American--I feel the same can be said for all cultures across the globe.  I didn't participate in any of the campy crap while I was on a cruise liner through mexico.  I'm not trying to say this to sound cocky; I'm saying this to point out that no two people are the same which means no two people behave in the same ways.  Continuing my point into the next post!
 

The Future of the Turtles

“Unlike Rome, New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts.  Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future” (1343)

I understood this passage from de Certeau’s “Walking in the City” to mean that the beauty of New York comes from the idea that this city is able to reinvent itself and constantly push itself to be more.  It’s able to move on from the past and build on it to create something new, therefore moving towards the future.

With the past in mind, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may bring about nostalgia among all of us.  Did you know that there is a new movie based on this franchise in the works produced by Michael Bay?  However, he has said that he’s changing it from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to simply Ninja Turtles.  This seemed to cause a mild uproar among fans who have grown up with TMNT and who have seen TMNT reproduced over and over on the big screen, cartoons, a new generation’s cartoon, comic books, etc.  Changing it to Ninja Turtles changes the identity of the characters and of the franchise.  I know fans who have criticized Bay’s reproduction by saying that he should just create a whole new story and universe instead of making such a drastic change to something that is already so established.  However, I think de Certeau would say that these fans are too set on the past.  They need to look to and challenge the future.  Bay is taking the past and tweaking it to build on a future picture of the franchise. 

Creative Control

Throughout this semester the roles of author and audience have been contemplated and criticized.  Is the author’s intention and background important to understanding the text?  Does the audience take on the part that the author creates for them?  What does the reader bring to the text?  Does the reader have a certain screen?   Does the author put up a certain screen?  Who has the power, and who appropriates the text?  Who really decides the course of action?  It could be the author who wants to persuade or show a certain point of view.  Or, it could be the reader who decides to read a text a certain way.

I’m not a gamer, but apparently there’s some controversy with the videogame Mass Effect. Bioware, a company, promised gamers that they would create a trilogy of games where the decisions a gamer makes in the first game would affect the play in the second game which would then affect the play of the third game.  Supposedly in the end it didn’t matter, and the ending of the third game was massively disappointing.  People felt lied to.   They wrote in to Bioware demanding and petitioning for a new ending.  Bioware decided to give the people what they want in the form of an epilogue that would answer more of the open ended questions. As an outsider, this seems to take the roles of author/audience to another level. 

I think that telling the creator to change the ending is taking away from the original art.  The lines seem to be blurred anyhow, because I’m sure money is the huge motivator. So, Bioware may be concerned with revenue above a creator’s original work.  Also, giving gamers certain decision making abilities may also give them a sense of ownership of the game.  They want to see their hours of gaming and decision making pay off.  I wonder if this is a newer concept or if even as recent as 100 years ago, that author found themselves being petitioned to change the endings of their books because their fans didn’t agree with the ending.  I feel that a creator has every right to create a text a certain way, and the reader (whether they like it or not/agree with it or not) must accept the text as it is.  By this I mean that the reader should accept that the text is worded a certain way, but the reader still has the power to interpret the words a certain way.  I suppose both the creator and the reader have power, but the power is limited.

What would the tourist say?

Burke created the term “terministic screens” which are put in place to “direct the attention” (45).  I see how a documentary is a text that has a certain agenda therefore must attempt to direct the attention of the audience.   Documentaries can be deceiving, because they show a piece of reality.  There are no actors, and there is no script.  However, there is still a story that is being told.  It’s impossible for a documentary to show every perspective, and frankly the documentary would be boring if there was no point of view.  Of course there can be multiple layers, but there is usually an underlying point of view.

I saw Up the Yangtze as showing the perspective of the poor population of China.  These are the people who are forced to move and forced to work instead of gaining an education.  These are also the people who are exploited on the cruise ship in order to entertain tourists.  However there is no real look into the tourists and how they see China and the people working on the cruise ship.

My experience is not nearly as extreme, but I’ve been in a similar situation.  Where I work, 29% of our clientele are Asians (mostly Chinese and Vietnamese).  We have a session during orientation where we learn how to interact with these guests.  We learn things like we should not touch them on the shoulder, red is good luck, the number 8 is good luck, and always talk to the eldest member if there is a group.  This session reminded me of the session in the movie where the cruise ship workers were learning how to talk to the tourists.  In a way it’s good if it allows a worker to give the best service possible.  However, I almost find it patronizing.  It’s overgeneralizing people, and it’s also underestimating workers’ natural humanity.  I don’t remember a lot of what we learned in that session, because I figured I treat everyone the same…with sincerity and respect.  I personally didn’t find it necessary to treat people different based on their race. 

I don't think that our clientele see these things as necessary for us to know.  I also don't think that the tourists would think that modesty would necessarily equate insincerity.  The workers on the cruise ship seem to be constantly recreating a fake China that the tourists have come to expect.  Perhaps they should show a more authentic China to give tourists a better and more immediate experience with the country and the culture.  That brings the idea of authenticity into question...has this reproduced manufactured idea of China become the authentic China, because it has been reproduced so many times?

Up the Yangtze and Burke

Up the Yangtze was fascinating to me for a variety of reasons, however, I think one of the most prominent of these was the simple fact that modern rural China is simply not depicted. It was interesting to see the rhetoric of the people as well. The main family depicted in the film really were fairly normal (at least by Western standards. As Gates mentioned in “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference it Makes,” Western understandings of human “truths” may not be entirely accurate (Gates, ) I would propose that these are not entirely wrong either, but it should be noted regardless). The rhetoric used by the family about their situation is fascinating. I would propose that a lot of what they are saying falls under an imposed terministic screen. I’m not sure that this is really much different from terministic screen as it exists anyway, but I think it is more obvious how the screen is functioning and from where the screen is operating.

Burke’s conception of a terministic screen involves framing (“directs the attention in keeping with its nature” (Burke, 49)) both language and observation. Because language is one of the primary mediums for out understanding of reality (“our ‘Reality’ could not exist for us, were it not for our profound and inveterate involvement in symbol systems” (Burke, 48)), it has profound impacts on one’s ability to conceive of that reality. China, as a “socialist” country (the argument could also be made for communism, but this is not really not relevant), and more importantly an authoritative government, relies heavily upon the formation of reality, and thus upon the formation and control of terministic screens. You could see this in the movie when the poor people would speak in terms of the larger nation as if they did not really matter themselves. There was a kind of selflessness almost entirely nonexistent in American rhetoric. I guess I should note that to an extent this was fairly normal. The people were trying to make sense of a situation they could do nothing about. However, the very pathways for them to do this were nationally organized and far-removed. They said things like “I suppose it is good for the nation” but a Western individual might ask something like “this is good for the nation, but is it fair?”

I do not know enough about Chinese linguistic history to make any solid claim, but I would bet that the nationalistic lines in Chinese rhetoric would not have existed a hundred years ago. Thus, the rhetoric used by the modern Chinese must have been shaped and formed over time, supporting Burke’s claim that language is action. I think I should clarify and say also that language is action both in its development and in its ability to shape reality. It is not just the language of the family that is shaped by larger national government actions and culture, but also the way they decide to deal with their function. Thus, not only a linguistic screen, but the path to a loose worldview.

Walking Up the Yangtze

                I recognized elements of de Certeau’s “Walking in the City” as I watched Up the Yangtze.  Primarily I saw de Certeau’s idea of the “voyeur” and the “walker”.  A voyeur is elevated and “put at a distance” (1343).  I saw the tourists in the documentary as being voyeurs.  There is a distance put between them and the Chinese culture that they seemingly want to experience.  The walkers, “whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it”, are the Chinese people in the movie who go about their business day by day without really taking a look around them (1344).  They are part of the city, but they don’t recognize other people besides themselves.  There were different economic classes present in the movie, but even the Chinese people themselves did not fully realize what conditions Yu Shui lived in.  Neither group of people is completely aware of their surroundings even though they think they know and understand what they see.  Therefore neither group is completely useful in creating an operational city concept.  If the two groups combined, they’d create a people that is able to be a part of the current culture as well as view the surroundings in order to be aware of the cultures around them.

                De Certeau would see Chang as presenting a China that “constructs the fiction that creates readers, makes the complexity of the city readable” (1344).    The tourists would be the readers.  The workers on the cruise ship are making a complex city more understandable to the tourists who are only there for a small amount of time.  It’s difficult to capture the essence of a city that has a long history when you only have a few days to find the essence.  The tourists are surprised by how modern the city is, because they associate China with an ancientness only presented to them in books.  The workers on the cruise ship play into that representation of China by allowing the tourists to try on ancient costume. 

Up the Yangtze, Across the Ocean

I wanted to reflect a little on the documentary we watched in relation to representation and my adopted siblings.  I know I have blogged about my adopted siblings before, but watching the video made me suddenly wonder if my sister would have grown up to work on a cruise ship or a tour bus or some other sickly patronizing tourist enterprise.  She was an orphan, after all.  An orphaned girl, who have even less chances of bringing themselves up well because in China they do prefer boys.

But I was shocked when , as I was watching he documentary, I had to stop myself from thinking of China as the place we "rescued" my little sister Vonne Mei from.  I had to stop myself from thinking patronizing thoughts of, "Oh I'm so glad we rescued my little sister from this country where no one would have given a shit about her, it's a good thing we Americans stepped in".  This thought made me wonder about representation of the Chinese in general.  We witnessed through the film the struggles of a very poor and desperate family, one that had to farm their teenage daughter out to work on a cruise ship for European tourists.  We also had representations of the Chinese that were working on the tour boat, as well as the young adults who were partying in the city.  Now I find myself think of the way I represent and think of my little eight-year-old Chinese sister, who by all rights is an American girl.  She speaks English (we tried to have her take Chinese classes, but she wasn't going for it), she dresses in regular clothes, goes to a private Christian school, and is fully aware of the fact the she is adopted.

It seems that adopting Chinese or African babies has become considered to be something of a fad, especially with celebrities.  Going off of Johnson and her discussion of "Indian" representation in literature, is this novelty of adopting foreign children our real-life way of lending "a dash of vivid coloring to an otherwise tame and somber picture" of modern life (Johnson 388)?  I know that the adopting parents care about the children, I mean, my parents certainly love my sibling very much and only adopted because my mother couldn't have any more children, but why China?  Why Africa?  Why do American parents have to travel overseas to get babies, when there are plenty of parentless children here?

Can Johnson's comment of introducing something foreign and exotic as a means of increasing interest and appeal be applied to adopting children?  To tourism?

P.S. This is what I wrote my paper on...

As anyone who read my blog post on Butler might imagine, I focused on cisgender privilege while writing about this image, but I wanted to share it so everyone else could weigh in as well if they felt so inclined. I encountered it on a friend's Facebook page and it made the ol' hackles stand up, I must say.

I've been thinking about that lady praying in "Up the Yangtze"...

...mostly because she sounded so lovely chanting her prayers. She also reminded me of my mentor, who is an elderly and devoutly Catholic Chinese woman who gives me pamphlets about saying the rosary and tells me about the blessings the Holy Mother will give me for saying it every day. <3

Anyway, our discussion in class prompted me to do a bit of research on Christianity in China. From what I have read, it appears Christianity is particularly popular. The BBC reports that "the [Chinese] government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics... [but] independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate... [and] a conservative figure is 60 million" (Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?). However, persons are not permitted to participate in churches which have not been sanctioned by the state (of which there are many). The idea behind forbidding this is that when the church is not controlled by the state then the church will be controlling persons through its own power without regulation by the state's agenda.

The same BBC article says of state-sanctioned churches: "They report to the State Administration for Religious Affairs. They are forbidden to take part in any religious activity outside their places of worship and sign up to the slogan, 'Love the country - love your religion.'" If we apply representation to this, we could say that state-sanctioned religion does not represent the religion of the people, but the religion of the state. If the 45 million Christians suspected to exist by outsiders but not accounted for by the government are those who participate in non-state-sanctioned "house churches", they are 45 million people not being represented. If the government is failing to account for them because they don't want to represent those not under their power to the outside world, then the government effectively erases their existence.

I don't know if this is the case at all; I'm just making speculative jumps based on the information I found in this article and this account I suspect of being sensationalized: China's Christians suffer for their faith. Note it's several years older than the other article, as well. However, if this is the case, maybe the woman's at-home shrine with her cross and prayer mat was something Chang included to represent another unrepresented party. Maybe this woman's interests are not represented in the spirituality she finds in state-sanctioned churches, and her existence as a religious deviant is not represented by the Chinese government, and that was why Chang included her.

Again, I'm pretty much making big speculative jumps, but I would like to point out that apparently although Christianity is a major religion in China, one has three types of very distinct Christianities to choose from and everything else is apparently carried out under the radar. For instance, as one of those BBC articles points out, Catholics who invest too much power in the pope are not part of the state's Catholicism, which appoints its own bishops independent of the Vatican, etc.

Reaction to Up the Yangtze

I was moved by Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze. I rode my bike home from the screening feeling strange and contemplative. As I passed through the Sample Gates and observed students filtering through Starbucks and all of the shops on Indiana Avenue, I considered my privileged life. I get to go to college and opportunities are vast and varied. My family does not need my financial support and I get to make my own decisions. I don't have a tremendous amount of responsibility and my problems seem frivolous when compared to those faced by Cindy and her family.

This is often the intended result of informative texts about political and or social issues. I feel for those people whose homes will be underwater and their lives drastically changed. Through such texts, the audience can get a glimpse of understanding into the life of another. Cooper discusses the importance of such ability to "think one's self imaginatively into the experiences of others" (Cooper 381). "It is impossible to acquire it without a background and a substratum of sympathetic knowledge. Without this power our portraits are but death's heads or caricatures and no amount of cudgeling can put into them the movement and reality of life" (Cooper 381). Texts like Up the Yangtze provide background information and sympathetic knowledge for audience awareness.

While watching the film, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the predominantly wealthy white tourists and the young Chinese workers on the ship. It seemed wrong and foolish for the tourists to pay large amounts of money to enjoy their "exotic" trip while being served by adolescents like Cindy whose families don't have enough money to send her to school past middle school. Chang said, "I get the feeling that the tourists are here to see some ancient version of China that doesn't exist anymore." This reminds me of Johnson's discussion of authors who include Indian characters to "lend a dash of vivid coloring to an otherwise tame and somber picture of colonial life" (Johnson 388). The tourists seem to have a romanticized view of China, but they are likely unaware of what is going on in the background. Of course, the audience of the film has been educated about the realities of the situation regarding the dam. But the blissful ignorance of the tourists is upsetting. Such films require viewers to consider the privilege in their lives. I'm sure that's not Chang's main goal with the film. Simply raising awareness about what is going on in the world is always important. This leads to action and I just read the blog post from Chang and he discusses how after watching the film, many people made donations to Yu Shui's (Cindy's) family. I suggest everyone go visit those links.

Is The Cabin in the Woods Meta?

SPOILER ALERT:  This blog discusses the current movie The Cabin in the Woods and may contain some spoilers about the movie.

I’ll preface this blog by saying that I don’t like horror movies.  I get too scared so I don’t watch them. However, I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon (co-writer and director), and there has been so much buzz about The Cabin in the Woods that I had to wiki it to read what happens.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_in_the_woods

The reviews I’ve read for this movie have called it a “next-level genre masterpiece”.  “Film critic Roger Ebert commented ‘The Cabin in the Woods has been constructed almost as a puzzle for horror fans to solve. Which conventions are being toyed with? Which authors and films are being referred to? Is the film itself an act of criticism?’” Roger Ebert’s evaluation immediately made me think of Mitchell’s article “Metapictures”.  Mitchell looked at certain pictures as being able to “refer to themselves or to other pictures, pictures that are used to show what a picture is” (35).  It seems that this movie is aware of the horror movie conventions and then pushes the limits or defies the limits of its own genre conventions. In the movie there is a group of college kids who stay at a cabin.  They don’t know that there are people (technicians or puppeteers) watching them and releasing certain horror elements for these people to deal with.  These technicians have a slew of monsters (zombies, werewolves, vampires, etc) locked up and will release them based on the actions of the college kids.  The college kids find a bunch of artifacts that are usually typical catalysts of horror movies (aka pendants, a diary of spells, Pandora ’s Box, etc). Certain monsters will be released depending on which artifact a person chooses.   The technicians have fun within the limits betting on who will choose which artifact.  The technicians are also very aware of the fact that each college student represents a different type (aka the whore, the athlete, the virgin, etc).  The film has an awareness of itself through the technicians who are producing all the action and through one of the college students who is aware that something horror-like is happening.  The film also references other horror films through the artifacts that are typically used in this genre of film. 

Mitchell’s article looked at Valasquez’s Las Meninas as the prime example of a metapicture.  Mitchell says that “the formal structure of Las Meninas is an encyclopedic labyrinth of pictorial self-reference, representing the interplay between the beholder, the producer, and the object or model of representation” (58).  Roger Ebert has also commented that The Cabin in the Woods is a “puzzle”.  I can see just from the description on Wikipedia that there are complex levels to the movie.  There ae levels of the college students, the technicians, the director who is in charge of the technicians, and the ancient ones (which is the reason that the technicians are toying with the college students).  The writers of The Cabin in the Woods understand and mastered the horror genre in order to be able to break the frame and play with the idea of an agent (the technicians) knowingly acting in the name of the horror genre. 

Marking "Otherness"

Towards the end of class on Friday, there was brief discussion about marking "otherness" with use of the language system. Gates attempts to make us aware of such situations. "But we must also understand how certain forms of difference and the languages we employ to define those supposed differences not only reinforce each other but tend to create and maintain each other" (Gates 15).

I am reminded of a lesson I learned in a class about race and society. When a crime is committed and reported in the news, if the accused person is non-white, disproportionately the race of the individual is identified. If the suspect is white, there is often no mention of race. This illustration makes it rather clear how such representations can be severely detrimental to the images of particular races. They will be stereotyped as criminals.

I see this happen in daily life when someone shares a detail about another person that is not pertinent to the story, such as "There's this black guy...." or "Some gay guy..." It always strikes me as unnecessary. Why do we feel the need to mark "otherness?" I'm still trying to decipher exactly what Gates recognizes in our language system that is problematic. It seems to be more than people simply sharing extraneous information. There is a way in which language discriminates. "Otherness" is marked explicitly and implicitly.

"...how can the black subject posit a full and sufficient self in a language in which blackness is a sign of absence? Can writing, with the very difference it makes and marks, mask the blackness of the black face that addresses the text of Western letters, in a vice that speaks English through an idiom which contains the irreducible element of cultural difference that will always separate the white voice from the black?" (Gates 12).

Does anyone have another example to better explain this? I can see how a black author will always be read as a black author. When an author is non-white, race is taken into account. This might not always be true, but I'm making a generalization in attempts to better understand the situation. Gates says, "Black writing, and especially the literature of the slave, served not to obliterate the difference of race; rather, the inscription of the black voice in Western literatures has preserved those very cultural differences to be repeated, imitated, and revised in a separate Western literary tradition, a tradition of black difference" (Gates 12).

I do see this at play, but if anyone has any further examples, they'd be appreciated. Thanks!

Gate's Race Tropes

I was intrigued by Gate's idea that race itself is a trope, "When we speak of 'the white race' or 'the black race,' 'the Jewish race,' or 'the Aryan race,' we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally in metaphors" (4). We know this to be true, each of these races has an abundance of difference (no two people look exactly alike) categorized within each race trope and we depend on this very basic outline to define one race as different from another. Ask anyone whose appearance does not fit the archetype of a particular race just how many times they have been asked "what are you?"

 This exchange highlights the importance race holds as a social context for who we are as humans and what we have to say. Gate states, "Race has become the ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or adherents of specific belief systems... Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so very arbitrary in its application" (5). I think that Gate's is highlighting a very important truth within discourse. Much of what we say is controlled by the race we "belong" too. As a white women I am very much aware of areas of discourse that are marked off from me, which would only be read as highly offensive if I dared to speak from that perspective. For instance, I could never speak for Black women's struggle with oppressive systems because her position is far more oppressed than mine, her voice is still silenced in many areas of discourse and my speaking on her behalf would not only be offensive but would demote her position to subaltern. In Gates example of the Pope visiting Togo's Supreme Priest to discuss their belief systems compatibility, we see how race works as a terministic screen. The Pope walks away from this exchange having screened the whole discussion from his white supremacist world view and discusses the african religion as having "great confusion in ideas" and having customs "contrary to the will of God" etc. This discourse the Pope uses places him very securely in the arrogant hold of the White race, it even influences how he views other non-white cultures. Of course because Gate assures us that race is a trope, I do not need to feel I am intrinsically connected to the Pope because of our whiteness, but instead must make myself aware of the confines of this trope and understand how this position is operating on a world scale.

"Art is the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and The Culture Indistry

"To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose "sense of the universal equality of things" has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction." The point has been made somewhere in our class discourse, that  by destroying the aura of a work of art, our perception of the work of art becomes more realistic because we no longer consecrate the material. Also, films and images produced for the masses have a larger production value because the production companies can predict, to a certain extent, a gross profit. This makes it possible for some truly stunning works of art to be created as a result of a larger budget.

It is hard for me to read this article, however, without thinking in terms of an Adorno & Horkenheimer article I read over the "Culture Industry." While capitalistic modes of production do allow for some incredible films, the artistic integrity of many art forms is diminished because they are not designed for "arts sake" but merely to attract a demographic that has already been established. This is why so much of the "art" in the post-modern era gets recycled year after year, decade mimicking decade. The argument against the mechanical reproduction of art is taken a step farther( in Adorno and Horkenheimer), when they make the claim (and i'm paraphrasing) that the "culture industry" is responsible for reinforcing existing social and political ideologies by perpetually producing content (Music, Blockbusters, Advertisements..etc) that perpetuate existing social idealologies, thus creating a stagnant, generic, and recycled culture.

Unpacking Spivak's Last Line

Initially I was surprised at the anger Spivak expresses against Bhubaneswari's great-grandniece for her new executive position, a job most people would praise. The last line of Spivak's article has a clear undertone of anger, "Is it any wonder that this young woman is a staunch multiculturist, believes in natural childbirth, and wears only cotton?" (809) and demanded that I unfold some of Spivak's article in order to make sense of it.

We understand the subaltern to be any class or sector of society marginalized by hegemony by the end of Spivak's article, any member which is part of "the circuit marked out by epistemic violence" (800). Basically, any person that is hiding behind or over shadowed by the letters of Colonial texts, people whose histories were deemed unimportant or misremembered. This is the anger through which Spivak speaks when talking about the story of Bhubaneswari. A woman who took careful steps when planning her suicide in order to prevent it being read as just a sati-suicide. Her waiting for menstruation before hanging herself, was her exercising her right to speak out for her history and bare witness to the severity with which she viewed her inability to follow through with this political assassination for Indian Independence. This demonstrates the power of Bhubaneswari's voice, one that supported Indian Independence so much that she would rather kill herself than face her political party for not following through on this assassination.

It is through this context that we can understand the anger in Spivak's last line, she is angry at how Bhubaneswari's own history has been silenced within the voices of her ancestors (the people most trusted with upholding her history). As her great-grandniece accept her position in the New Empire she accepts her role in the hegemonic system that Bhubaneswari fought to disrupt. She becomes a "staunch multiculturist" instead of a staunch Indian woman, still holding on to aspects of her native culture's belief systems, "believes in natural childbirth," but has wrapped these beliefs and her entire culture in the fabric of Post-Colonial Capitalism, "cotton."

T.S. Eliot hiding in Burke

Deep in the comments attached to "Terministic Screens" lies a quote from T.S Eliot that I have found very enlightening, especially at a time when Re/presentation is on my mind. T.S Eliot writes, "In any knowledge prior to speech the object is not so much an identity recognized as such as it is a similar way of acting; the identity is rather lived out than known. What we are here concerned with is the explicit recognition of an object as such, and I do not believe this occurs without the beginnings of speech...Our only way of showing that we are attending to an object is to show that it and our self are independent entities, and to do this we must have names... We have no objects without language." 
The idea here is very reminiscent of Burke's description of mans use of Dramatisic language. Burke says "an animal comes into being that does happen to have this particular aptitude [use of language], the various tribal idioms are unquestionably developed by their use as instruments in the tribe’s way of living (the practical role of symbolism in what the anthropologist, Malinowski, has called “context of situation”). Such considerations are involved in what I mean by the ‘dramatistic,’ stressing language as an aspect of “action,” that is, as “symbolic action.” It seems that Eliot is suggesting that the identity of the object is not something that is merely ascribed to what the object is, but rather what the object does. In order to differentiate between these actions, we use language to identify them. Burke incorporates this idea into his theory of logology, by stressing the importance in the symbolic action required to help human societies function.

Dis/Continuity

The relation between the paradigms of continuity and discontinuity provides us with a way to speculate "What is human." I was re/reading Burke's article on terministic screens in hopes that my understanding of his theory would start to solidify. I am fascinated by the idea of man as a symbol using animal because it does something very important, it supports both the secular hypothesis idea of continuity between human beings all life forms, while also allowing the theological approach of a discontinuity between animals and human apes. This discontinuity emerges from the fact that we use symbols and other animals do not. While Darwin's theory of evolution emphasizes the continuity essential to evolution, his terministic screen leaves him blind to the idea that humans do have a significant attribute that is absent in every other species, symbol use.  


The principles of continuity and discontinuity show up again in section V. Burke writes of the discontinuity  of the human animal by saying " It is the unwritten cosmic constitution that lies behind all man-made Constitutions, it is decreed by the nature of things that each man is "necessarily free" to be his own tyrant, inexorably imposing upon himself the peculiar combination of experiences. At the other extreme, each of us shares with all other members of our kind (the often-inhuman human species) the fatal fact that, however the situation came to be, all members of our species conceive of reality somewhat roundabout, through various media of symbolism. Any such medium will be, as you prefer, a way of "dividing" us from the "immediate" (thereby setting up a kind of "alienation" at the very start of our emergence from infancy into that state of articulacy somewhat misleadingly called the "age of reason"); or it can be viewed as a paradoxical way of "uniting" us with things on "a higher level of consciousness," or some such" (52). Again, we can recognize the concepts of continuity and discontinuity. As we begin to articulate and associate words to things, we begin to develop our "terministic screen" of reality. We can find continuity among society by developing screens that are based on similar "mediums" of symbolism as other individuals. This can be a unifying thing for humans, and can also divide us based on our different mediums. 

De Certeau's City: Naked Lunch in Superposition

The city when viewed from a distance or down on the streets is the same or is it?  The short answer is yes.  The long answer is yes, but whoa mama what a strange reason why!  Our perception of the city from a distance and in the streets is obviously different, as is each of our individual perceptions and understanding of the city.  This city can be real or a mental construction of history, language, or really anything.  Our minds are amazing, or trivial depending on the perspective.  But if we take emotion out, and leave only logic, we can see a common structure emerge.  I'm not saying that emotion doesn't play a vital role in our understanding of our world, only that to see what something is made of you have to deconstruct it first.  Thus, the city in our perceived logical form is just that, perceived.  Now, I know I've talked about each individual's perception being different and all that jazz, but this gets much more interesting and weird when we apply a recently observed phenomenon in physics.  When there is no matter around other matter to influence it, the isolated matter will vibrate and be still at the same time.  That is the matter is in motion and not at the same time.  It is only when the matter is affected by associations with other matter, that it is observed in a specific way.  In other words, when applied to the city, the city is in every possible state until the observer perceives it in a specific manner.  De Certeau's city can be anything, and is anything until influenced in the mind of a perceiver by associations.  Strangely enough, you CAN believe anything - until you've seen it.

The Strength in a Voice

As I perceive, Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?"  is trying to say that all of the power in language is dependent on the understanding and interpretation of communicated information.  So, the answer to the title's posed question is obvious.  The subaltern can speak.  The real question is "does anyone listen?"  By the very nature of being subaltern, the usual answer is no, or at least a great deal less than the majority listens.  So, effectively the subaltern can speak, but it is up to the listeners to give the subaltern a voice.  However, there is at least some power in the subaltern's speech, as at least someone will listen as a reasonable gesture of fairness.  Eventually, if the reason behind the subaltern's speech is deemed worthy by enough of these equal-opportunity listeners, the subaltern's voice will gain strength and garner at least some measure of influence in the system of things.  The subaltern will have a voice, but still lack a majority of influence.  So, the strength in any voice is in its ability to convey information and relate an understanding between communicators, but it is entirely up to the listener to imbue this power into the speaker's words.  I guess another way of looking at this issue would be to say that the subaltern cannot speak.  Only the listener speaks through their perception.