ORIENTALISM IN THE WESTERN CULTURAL INDUSTRY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.9771/contemporanea.v20i3.51549Keywords:
Orientalism, Fiction, ChinaAbstract
China’s economic strength is an undeniable fact. Despite its growth, the imagery about the country remains linked to a Western perspective that does not seem to be updated. We question how China is represented in Western audiovisuals, and the hypothesis is that the nation is presented in an orientalist way through the western lens and little interested in its sociocultural reality. We search, then, intertwine notable cases of China’s representation in Western audiovisual with the geopolitical dynamics of its time.
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NOTAS
Trata-se de uma distinção sustentada a partir das observações de Said (2007) sobre a ideia de um “eu” que fala sobre o ocidente e um “outro”, que fala sobre um não-ocidente. Destacamos, portanto, que esse “nós” utilizado no texto não diz respeito a nossa identidade enquanto brasileiros e latino-americanos, mas, sim, à
uma ideia de separação entre uma perspectiva dominante ancorada em um centro (o eu / o nós) e uma região periférica (o outro / os outros, que englobam diversas regiões, incluindo a América Latina).
“Early favourable discourses about China flourished for a few centuries, then disappeared when Europe diverged from China economically, politically and morally; the discourse of imperialism was applied to China as the West extended its global reach, then discarded when Europe’s Empires collapsed and imperialism fell into disrepute; racist discourse was directed at the Chinese when it suited the needs of powerful groups, then suppressed when the international situation changed and racism became a liability; the discourse of the Cold War was applied to China when the Communist Party came to power in 1949, then abandoned when the United States and China undertook a rapprochement in the face of the Soviet threat”.
“I believe they add up to a discursive formation that precedes and in some sense determines, or exerts pressures and sets limits upon the speaking subject. [...] Uneven in the sense of imbalanced and hierarchical, and knowledge in the sense of interested and worldly ‘discourse’ that ultimately tells us more about the U.S.-West and its intellectual and political preoccupations. [...] My point is simple: the question is not one of individual failing or bad faith, but how texts and statements are signs, part and parcel of a larger knowledge/ power formation”.
Cerca de 500 homens brancos foram até a Chinatown de Los Angeles para torturar e assassinar vinte imigrantes chineses.
Decreto que visava dificultar a imigração e a naturalização de chineses diaspóricos em território estadunidense (Tchen, 2010).
“[...] rising nationalism and anti-America propaganda as evidence of the ideological threat that the last remaining powerful communist nation presents to the rest of the world”.
“[...] the picture I have painted of what is likely to happen if China continues to rise is not a pretty one. Indeed, it is downright depressing. I wish I could tell a more hopeful story about the prospects for peace in Asia”.
“They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence”.
“For many Europeans and Americans, he has stood as the sign of a world fundamentally, and perhaps irreconcilably, divided between East and West. As Nayland Smith, Rohmer’s protagonist put it, Fu-Manchu was not only ‘the yellow peril incarnate in one man’ [...], he threatened to inundate the West with even greater numbers of yellow, black and brown aliens [...]”.
O perigo amarelo passou a ser acionado para se referir ao “medo de japoneses” durante a segunda guerra mundial, após a associação do Japão à Alemanha Nazista. O cinema hollywoodiano também fez uso desse momento através de filmes como Rising Sun (1993).
“How could we be, with a civilization so many times older than that of the West? We have our rigid code of behavior, of honor. Why do they never show those on the screen?”
“In Mulan, a legendary Chinese heroine is transformed into an American teenager; in Kung Fu Panda, the ageold Chinese tradition of the martial arts is emptied of weight and meaning. In both films, China itself is reduced to a heap of motifs in which the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall have no more meaning – and probably less – than egg rolls and chopsticks. Projecting American values onto a Chinese landscape, not only do these films absorb the other but also, as if they had a magic wand, they make the real China vanish before our eyes”.
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