Up the Yangtze

I’m continuously fascinated by the texts that we are assigned to read for each unit. It’s interesting for me to see how these texts can be related to our unit in ways that don’t seem obvious on the surface. It shows me how much rhetorical theory is used around us. It’s in everything; every film, book, speech and piece of art is saturated in rhetoric.

This film in particular was a great documentary that showed how all of our terms from this unit, such as diaspora, gynocriticism, hegemony etc can be exemplified.

When we read Butler we learned that show argued for the misrepresentation of women in her work Gender Troubles. She writes about the issue stemming from the gender structure emerging out of a binary opposition. She continues to say that what really needs to be examined is the representation of a subject.

You see examples of this scattered throughout the film. As we discussed in class there are tons of juxtapositions. Through images and text based interaction. One of the main juxtapositions in the film is the one created through the depictions of Cindy and her male counter part who is also take residence on the ship. Cindy is easily defined by what she is not that he is. She is in a lower class family, she is a female, she is younger, she in uneducated etc. However, if you take a closer look you are more apt to realize that her situation is not black and white. Nor is China’s. The film depicts tourism as a good thing for China. It’s helping the economy and providing jobs, however the film is also juxtaposing this with Cindy’s storyline. She is far from her family, often sad and lonely and having to work hard at a young age to support her siblings and parents. This makes it hard for the viewer to understand how the two situations are being represented. It is possible that this is because we are continuing to attempt to define situations through binary oppositions. For example, the notion that the dam depicted in Yamgtze is good and helping all of the families in China is too straightforward and black and white. The situation needs to be fully realized and understood. It is multifaceted.

We read about the same types of issues when we discussed Keller. She was misrepresented in her society because she was being defined by what she was not. However, her situation was expansive and her representation was what was actually holding her back.