Deification and Demonification: Burke, Hum, and What the Yangtze Means

From Dr. Nerdlove

Gross, right? Whether or not we think this man is a real agent, his profile shows he is operating on a paradigm that he has of Asian women and clearly missing the mark. Who would be flattered to see other women get cut down for not being the right race while being lifted up for something that they can't control?  Furthermore, he's acting like all Asian women are like this, thus preventing any dialogue by Asian women from occuring. Burke would say that this is a result of terministic screens: saying that he had gained this viewpoint through a world that had granted it to him. Sue Hum might say that this objectification is created intentionally to cast people in roles. Did the world create this gross guy or did this gross guy create the world?

In "Between The Eyes: Racialized Gaze As Design," Hum critiques the political cartoon character that she had called the Celestial, a mystical and ambiguously Chinese figure that wore long, flowing robes and imparted ancient wisdom on others who were deserving of it. While not necessarily a positive one, this image is set into people's minds, which makes them think that this is the way that people should be ("Hence, the characteristic of sight imbues socially identified visible corporeal differences with facticity. It confers significance on socially determined corporeal markers to construct bodies of color as a homogeneous group. This racial group, then, becomes a “reliable” avenue for establishing social hierarchy and cultural probity."(195)). In the documentary, the tourists take pictures of them wearing imperial garments and describe China as "more civilized than (they) thought it would be" and the locals as "funny". By accepting this as their image of China, the tourists are forcing this idea onto the locals, who are made to recreate it.

Burke's ideas of terministic screens also plays a role in racial fetishization. Burke argued in his essay Terministic Screens that the world made the people: "Here the kind of deflection I have in mind concerns simply the fact that any nomenclature necessarily directs the attention into some channels rather than others."(45) What this means is that the world chooses what people see. In the documentary, a tour bus stops in a farmers village and shows the tourists how those farmers who have been relocated, explaining that it's a conscientious choice and how the farmers are happier here. This would be the creation of a terministic screen-the tour bus is creating an idea for the tourists to play on.

More to the point of our case study, in Up The Yangtze, the face of fetishization is put front and center into the audience's lap. Yu Shui takes a job on a cruise ship and experiences the different ways that the tourists and others treat her based on their paradigms of her. The tourists experience a view of China that is filtered through their own lens and the lens that is provided to them by the touring companies and by the government. These factors combined create a role that people are forced to fill in order to keep others happy, satisfied, and paying. When we choose to view people a certain way, it hurts them by preventing them from speaking out against the issues that are hurting them, thus perpetuating the cycle of pushing ideals even further.