Feel free to add common myths about the East that you’d like cleared up. Or how you’ve already cleared it up. It might help me or another reader.
As I understand it, it comes down to overly simplistic, exaggerated, or just plain inaccurate perceptions and portrayals of people from Africa and South/East Asia. Stuff like
CW: Racism
- acting like Japanese people are incomprehensible without understanding this strange foreign concept called “face” (which is really just a shorthand for the universal desire not to look like an asshole in public)
- treating Japan, China, and (sometimes) Korea as if they were all interchangeable
- basically any criticism libs make of China/the CPC
- fixating on “exotic” foreign foods and acting like that’s all they eat (see: “Chinese people eat dogs!”, ignoring that they eat far more rice, soybeans, eggs, and chicken)
- treating Muslim religious extremism as arising ex nihilo and proof of the inherent inferiority of Middle Eastern culture without any understanding of the history or material conditions that brought it about
Speaking of eating dogs, that was apparently legal in the US until the 2018 farm bill
It’s basically a bunch of bullshit the amcient Greeks thought about others, especially Persia, that has been transmitted with little changes through thousands of years through “western” culture, though who exactly the “west” and what the “orient” is has changed.
The west is full of free individuals, the east are unthinking slaves to despots. Western men are properly masculine, eastern men are either effeminate or have a savage, animal masculinity. Eastern women are titillating and “exotic”. Westerners are brave and noble warriors, easterners are a disorganized “horde”, if they ever win its just cuz they have superior numbers and no regard for human life. Only the west has real civilization, others are either savages or overly civilized or “decadent” Etc. Etc.
Once you know about it, you see it fucking everywhere, throughout contemporary society and going back literally thousands of years in history, literature, philosophy, etc. It’s sickening. The “west” needs to be destroyed, materially, morally, ideologically.
It’s weird people call eating sushi for the first time and Asian women both the same thing : “exotic.”
I’ve seen in my lifetime school kids my age in elementary school saying asian people have no souls and that they eat cats. Fast forward like 30 something years later, and those kids still have those beliefs into adulthood and are agitating for war with china.
Honestly the “culturally acceptable” racism towards people from Asia is disgusting. The east/west divide enables people to completely dehumanize them.
The best way I would describe it is overemphasizing that it’s foreign, and usually part of some sinister plot. There is a large amount of overlap between antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Asian sentiment (particularly anti-Chinese) sentiment, for example.
Sometimes when anime or pokemon was spoofed in the aughts, the animators would get kind of…weird about it. Even some parents and school faculty members would see it as a bad influence, and anime had a moral panic against it. Hell, Pokemon risked having the iconic pokemon redesigned just for the US.
Strong recommendation to read Orientalism by Palestinian American scholar Edward Said, who established Orientalism as a critical concept. It’s very approachable, you don’t need any other background knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR511iAedYU
This is a video specifically about orientalism and Middle Eastern music in films and games. I think seeing how orientalism warps and flattens a specific part of the art we’re presented with is a good primer for exploring the concept further.
I saw this video a few months ago. I loved the depth of geography amd culture it brought to me! Loads of American film makers better take notes from this.
One thing I find difficult about orientalism as an aesthetic is that… it kind of slaps, doesn’t it (as acknowledged in that video iirc). It’s not just music either — so many great villains, settings, costumes etc etc. Like, it’s completely understandable and right that you can’t do Ming the Merciless anymore, but… that dude had a thing going on
Yeah, its natural for art to develop themes, tropes, styles, and shorthand. But our shorthand for, say, Europe’s Middle age doesn’t actually replace anyone’s understanding of European history. Even if people don’t know all that much about it, they’ll understand that the art doesn’t actually communicate much about that cultural or historical reality.
Yet as we start drifting outside that peninsula, that ability to distinguish artistic shorthand from real culture starts to drop off alarmingly.
But our shorthand for, say, Europe’s Middle age doesn’t actually replace anyone’s understanding of European history. Even if people don’t know all that much about it, they’ll understand that the art doesn’t actually communicate much about that cultural or historical reality.
I don’t think this is true at all actually. It’s just different degrees of problematic
Maybe my understanding of orientalism is wrong. As I see it, Western culture developed a set of ideas and tropes about other cultures that have, at best, a tenuous and overly-broad connection to the lives of a lot of different peoples that have been lumped together. Then it compounds, with new works recursively referencing older orientalist works, rather attempting to form even a single genuine connection to any of the many, many cultures that are supposedly being referenced.
post-renaissance europe also has a somewhat similar relationship with medieval europe too. it’s a dark age, y’know, when people were stupid and brutish and lived under feudalism, not like in our enlightened times.
seconding the recommendation to read orientalism. I think @toje@hexbear.net overstates how approachable it is (it is after all still a heavily cited academic text), but it’s certainly no superimperialism. if you want an example of more modern liberal orientalism, listen to the first 2 minutes of this episode of trueanon which is barely exaggerated satire
I’ve never listened to NPR so I had no idea why they were talking like that. My boyfriend had to tell me. It’s disturbing that people unoronically listen to NPR.
https://pca.st/episode/24cbf281-110e-4c23-bbce-68b145c7bffe
That is a good citations needed episode breaking down a particularly disgusting NPR interview
read Said, there’s also documentaries, interviews, and lectures where he’s explained the broad strokes if you’re strapped for time. it’s a very worthwhile book though.
What’s Said’s full name?
Edward Said
