Representation in Up
the Yangtze:
Politeness and social norms
Yung Chang presents everything in
his movie through complex and bold juxtapositions. This is especially true for
the contrasts between Western and Eastern societies. Chang uses the small river cruise ship as a
microcosm for, well, the world. Westerners are presented as naïve,
deep-pocketed, and inappropriately jolly people while the Chinese, in
comparison, are poor, dedicated workers who bend over backwards to make sure
that the passengers have a good time. The Chinese people on the boat are
constantly in a state of pretend, putting on an act to keep hidden from
tourists the true reality of their lifestyles and the state of China’s people.
This act made me think of not only
how the East tries to present itself to the West but how everyone represents themselves in the West.
Politeness and social structures play a huge role in interaction and
communication. We all take these things into consideration when we approach and
interact with others, and usually it is an unconscious habit.
Everyone puts on
some sort of act when dealing with others for the first time. We want to make a
good impression so we don’t say everything we are thinking and we don’t ask
intrusive and inappropriate questions. We stay polite and civil. In the film,
the cruise director teaches the young Chinese people how to interact with the
passengers, specifically the westerners. They are told not to bring up current
issues in politics and to be sure to never use the word “fat”. These are rules
that we generally follow as well when it comes to meeting people for the first
time. It’s pretty much a well- known social norm that if you want to get along
amicably with someone, you probably shouldn’t insult them and you should avoid
topics of politics and religion, or in other words, you should be polite.
It’s been a while since I’ve really
stopped to think about how politeness and social norms really shape the world
around us. It’s like we are all interacting with each other through a universal
terministic screen of politically correctness. There is this automatic erasure
of controversial topics and insults. Of course, there are people who ignore
this and do/say what they want purposely just to stir the pot and create
tension. Even then, this always seems like a deliberate move. Our autopilot
just goes directly to politeness.
I’ve never been to the East. I’ve
never experienced their culture but now I wonder, even if I were to travel
somewhere East, would I really be experiencing their true lifestyle or would I
be getting the watered-down, happy-go-lucky, everything-is-wonderful, American
version? There is no way that all of the people in China act this way towards
Westerners. The mere fact that there was a specific lecture on how to interact
with Westerners including what to say, and more importantly, what not to say,
made me think that these people don’t usually put up this front of politeness
with each other. This is not their autopilot like it is for us. They had to
learn specifically how to see the world through that terministic screen. So
normally, how do they act? Are they more “real” people who ignore society’s
constructs and rules of politeness in exchange for a more raw form of
expression? And as an American, will I ever see that side on a simple visit?
You bring up an interesting point. Perhaps it is true that different cultures' politeness and social norms prohibit outsiders from really connecting and understanding all intricacies of the culture. Or perhaps it is a sort of opposite situation. Perhaps the outsiders' preconceived notions of that they are going to experience or see in a foreign culture shape the way that they experience it and in turn how the native culture interacts with them. When we bring preconceived notions of representation to the situation, are we ever able to form a pure understanding of an individual's true self/culture, and so on? Is accurate representation possible when we approach it with bias? Th Westerners on the boat envision China and the East to be lagging behind in technological and urban sophistication. One of the things that they might think of when they envision China is some sort of dramatic traditional dress. Because this is a cruise ship, aiming to make money, the Eastern staff capitalizes on this, giving the uninformed Westerners what they expect to see, providing an incomplete and inaccurate representation of themselves for the sake of a profit.
ReplyDeleteFor this reason, I struggle to jump onboard (no pun intended) with part of your argument. While I do think that your point regarding the cruise ship as a metaphor for the world is interesting, and very accurate in some respects, I don't think that it is necessarily an accurate portrayal of cultural interactions/relations. I have a hard time thinking that Easterners off the cruise ship and in the real world are content with reenforcing racist and misinformed representations of their culture. On the cruise ship this is done for theatricality and money. I strongly doubt that, Easterners would happily dress Westerners in oriental looking garb for a photo op, or make fun of their traditional Asian names for the sake of a laugh.
It is obvious that the Easterners are not accurately representing themselves on the cruise ship. True representation is not their goal. The goal is to provide the cruise goers with the representation that they want to see, regardless of how off the mark it is.
This of course illuminates an issue in cultural relations and understanding. Such an idea is troubling. When we, as Westerners, bring our preconceived notion of a culture to the table, we influence the way we see them represented. This elicits the question of whether we can ever truly understand members of different cultures. If there is always a little bit of ourselves int heir representations, can we ever truly see them?
I like your idea that the cruise ship served as a microcosm of the world at large. This is true in a lot of respects since people are often divided into castes based on wealth and Westerners have a reputation for being wealthy but also ignorant. The way the workers on the cruise ship tried to cater to their stereotype of Westerners by acting stereotypically themselves says a lot about modern misrepresentation. Cultural groups are willing to misrepresent themselves in order to pander to their own misrepresentation of other groups. When we travel, regardless of where we go, we are not experiencing a true representation of that foreign culture because people represent themselves differently around those they do not identify with.
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to have seen you explore how we can fix this lack of proper representation. How can people communicate with people of other cultures in such a way that both groups are properly represented? Is this possible at all? Since we identify with those similar to us, does that mean we are always going to dis-identify from those different from us? I would love to explore challenges to these ideas about misrepresentation in order to find a solution to it because, as of now, it seems as if 100% accurate representation is impossible since someone is always othered in the process of representation.
-Kayla Goldstein, word count: 227