July 23

Cultural Encounters

2012
By: Chen Enjiao

Question 2: While globalization is not a new phenomenon, the pace and scales of such efforts have greatly increased in the last 30 years. Choose two films (even those more than 30 years old) you have seen in class, analyze how forces of globalization are presented and articulated and how do these representations reinforce or demystify concepts of East and West

Contents
Preliminary Matters ................................................................................................................................ 2 Two Forces of Globalization .................................................................................................................... 2 Migration and The World ........................................................................................................................ 2 Media and Big Shots Funeral ................................................................................................................. 4 Globalization and the Identity Vortex ..................................................................................................... 5 Which Way Out? ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................. 9

Preliminary Matters
Opinions on globalization are so varied that it is useful to begin with a Foucauldian sentiment in mind: that attitudes toward globalization depend, among other things, on whether one gains or loses from it. (Ritzer) I will choose to discuss globalization as a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities1 (Al-Rodhan). Weaving Appadurais work on globalization together with an intertextual analysis2 of The World and Big Shots Funeral, I will discuss how the forces of media and migration had driven a globalization that concerns itself with the commercialization of illusions. Finally, I will argue the futility of attempts to derive essentialist understandings of East and West, two concepts in constant flux and interaction with each other to render an objective study impossible (we are all subjects of East and/or West in a globalizing world).

Two Forces of Globalization

While globalization is by no means an entirely new process, our current epoch is marked by the joint effects of media and migration on the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity. This means that relocation and electronic mediation have illustrated possible lives and fuelled agency in their border crossings of shared imageries (Appadurai).

Migration and The World

As we are offered a voyeuristic peep into the backstage of a theme park that lauds its visitors to see the world without ever leaving Beijing in the film opening, we note the shady

1 2

This definition was presented after a comprehensive overview of 104 definitions. I adopt this as a culture reality and reading strategy (Wang Ning). Since cross-cultural encounters had crept into the private and public conceptual spaces of the audience, director and myself (as translator), it is only necessary to read these movie texts in light of this presumed condition; to understand the horizontal development of works by the same director, and the vertical relationship that connects a movie to other forms of media and/or texts.

lighting of the actors and actresses working quarters and their hidden pain (Taos frantic search for a Band-Aid before performing) in contrast to the glamour and spectacle of the stage (Gaetano). Instantly, the film establishes a performative critique of migration and its illusory nature with its documentary-like (no melodrama until perhaps the abrupt ending scene) treatment. If Jias previous films had explored links between cosmopolitanism and performance, then The World is the next level in his critique as it establishes The World as a stage and its inhabitants as its actors and actresses, whose make-believe drove them to migration, then desperation. We experience the banalities of dead-end jobs and an insatiable desire for mobility through the perspective of Tao, a small town rural woman who had come to work in the World Park a site of commoditized and illusive realities offering miniaturized versions of world-famous attractions within walking distance of each other. Indeed, the site of filming is a comment by itself. By employing various long shots with its main characters in motion and the parks attractions stationary in the background, the film mediates the conflicting nature of globalization as migration uproots people from positions of stability (their origins, hometowns) and relocates them wherever the logic of the market dictates. That the park enabled escape and travel to attractions otherwise inaccessible to the low-and middle-class domestic populace ill-afford to visit these original sites but traps its workers within the confinement of this representational space is a cinematic capture of the migrants ambivalent encounter with globalization they get the engines of commerce moving but are not ready beneficiaries of its success. At its extreme, migration is portrayed as a fatal affair, as several migrants lose their lives in the film. The social tensions as a result of migration are also reflected in the film, especially as technology strains and tests human relationships. In The World, the mobile phone is both an intimate device for migrants who rely on it to stay connected as well as a tool of surveillance

(Tao deleting Quns message to Taisheng, Nius jealousy). It is depicted as a form of utopian escape as seen from the animations often accompanying messages (Tao is shown flying over the trappings of the park) which stands out amidst the films strained dialogues and gritty mise-en-scne. Further, just as the park replica is still never the real thing, the cell phone is a piece of virtual substitute that cannot replace true communication of the sort signified by the sustained intimacy between Tao and the Russian dancer. Albeit their relationship eventually serves to be another unraveling of Taos eventual disillusionment with her place as a migrant woman in a globalizing world. Tellingly, the director discusses the strange prevalence of shows filling up every sector of our lives in his motivation to employ performance in his films (Jaffee). The World therefore presents migration as disconcerting through its performative critique, as illusory lifestyles are often made desirable by media images and state promises. With this I turn to examine Big Shots Funeral and its articulation of the medias complicit role as another major force of globalization.

Media and Big Shots Funeral

Just as big name actors (Donald Sutherland and Ge You) are central to the casting of Big Shots Funeral, the celebrity is the nexus of transnational media flows. Celebrity as we know it is largely a product of new communications technology (British Broadcasting Corporation) as each wave of innovation increases the reach of media technologies exponentially. Where previously countries or cultural communities (linguistic, ethnic, religious) might enjoy independent celebrity systems, globalization and the proliferation of eyeballs had allowed the border crossing of personalities. Simultaneously, the wider reception afforded by innovative media technologies and the medias use of celebrity personalities to convince consumers to buy and prefer certain brands of beer, cigarettes, automobiles, clothes, foods, and appliances especially Western products (Marsella) results in a mutually reinforcing relationship. This

can be readily witnessed in the movie as Yoyo draws on the celebrity status of Tyler to attract sponsors for his comedy funeral. That Tylers fame should come in handy posthumous and not in his negotiations with capitalists reveals a pecking order in the films system of globalization (in ascending order of degree of and access to power): eyeballs, celebrity, media then wallets. Big Shots Funeral also appears to be a critique of contemporary Chinese entrepreneurships obsession with the surface prima facie . It articulates a demythologizing of authority wrought about by globalization as the Forbidden Palace a relic of another time signifying the height of the countrys imperial power is portrayed as a piece of real estate up for rent if one is able to pay a price high enough; similarly, in its subplot of remaking The Last Emperor and parody of household brand names, the movie satirizes and upends both the Chinese patriarch and the American master.3

Globalization and the Identity Vortex

Put together, these two movies portray globalization as a process of profiteering by putting illusions up for sale. The signification of which renders the task of identity construction impossible since constant fun and games will make free thought redundant (Buruma). These two movies are a stinging disavowal of agency with globalization, as was promised by Appuradai. Rather, by stripping world monuments of their historical and geographical context and tricking Yoyo into the illusion of autonomous control (oblivious to Tylers recovering health), the authoritarian-capitalism of China emasculates its citizens to become susceptible to identities imposed as befitting its official narrative.

Though the critique is undermined by the fact that it is still the American master that saves Yoyo from any impending trouble and indeed, gives him a happy ending on screen (Zhang), the affectionate relationship between Yoyo and Tyler despite their language barriers enables the critique to still stand on its two feet somehow.

Such may be the real critique I levy on globalization, that in its commoditization of everything, it subsumes human values and cultures, making one person indistinguishable from the next4. In my opinion, the monopolization of the ideoscape and mediascape by the Chinese state5 allows it to employ the media adeptly in the fabrication of lives of flight and fantasy, painting this East and that West to rev the engines of the globalization machinery (in but 1 of several possible actor-dependent vantage points), while many anonymous lives are ran over by its wheels of exploitation. In an earlier era of globalization at the level of corporate entities, Orientalism was borne as a tool of oppression (Said). Similarly, Occidentalism had been fashioned by the Chinese state in its relentless pursuit of capitalism without democracy for the individual (Chen). In summary, there is no essential Eastern or Western identity independent of one another as globalization may be traced as early as the third millennium B.C.E. (Barry K. Gills).6 Of course, if one looks long enough, one may always find a quotation to support anything. Similarly, there exists enough material in both movies to reinforce certain contemporary East/West stereotypes: the rampant greed of Eastern surface entrepreneurship, the cunning Western mastermind personified by Tyler, etc. However, we note the aforementioned works on Orientalism and Occidentalism in demonstrating how such hegemonic discourses came into being as social constructions, and realize that such conceptions are always amenable to political, temporal and spatial dimensions. In a dramatic role reversal on the world economic discourse, China is the currency manipulator on the world economic stage7 and the West is

4 5

Men and women, Westerner and Easterner, suffer the consequences of migration alike in The World. I recognize that this monopolization is far from absolute, thanks to the porous nature of the internet (the technoscape as in conflict with the monopolization) and that within China itself, there is no lack of counterdiscourses as well. Still, the overall situation is one of an authoritarian stronghold on means of political organization. I also note that an overseas Chinese diaspora may introduce a disjuncture between the ethnoscape and these two apparently collusive scapes as well. 6 This is to draw a very broad stroke since it is not in the interests of this paper to focus on any particularity narrowly-defined enough for an East/West distinction to emerge. 7 Read http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/14/us-usa-china-currency-idUSBRE83C18O20120414 for an evolution of the characterization in response to the three dimensions I had mentioned.

the rampant, avaricious consumer. Such fluid roles and associated ideas of what it means to be East/West should caution against any simple polarization of forced binaries.

Which Way Out?

I conclude that the two movies help to demystify what it means to be East/West through the deconstruction of identities, as the dehumanizing effects of globalization makes any differential markers obsolete. This deconstruction reaches its cinematic apex in its treatment of Tao and the Russian dancer. To Tao, the Russian dancer should enjoy an abundance of freedom as the Westerner. Yet her eventual turn to prostitution makes the apparent Westerner no less a victim. To regress, the conversation inside the walls of the palace in which Tyler dismisses Bertolucci's portrayal of Pu Yi as a tragedy-biopic suited to Western tastes and solicits Yoyos opinion of things seems to come closest to an Eastern/Western distinction; that Jias movies are critically acclaimed in Western film festivals but (relatively) little known to the domestic audience, and that Big Shots Funeral was a local commercial success which did not translate as well internationally all serve to reinforce the polarity that I had just debunked. Indeed, Yoyo might typify the typical Chinese marked by his inability to communicate effectively in English. However, such a focus on minute details risks missing sight of the grander picture the criss-crossing of cultures in an era of unprecedented movement of people and ideas. In Yoyos final scene with Lucy, who is outwardly Chinese but internally all Americanized, we are made to reflect on the multi-dimensionality of what it means to be East/West. Through the subversion of official propaganda and the revelation of the illusory nature of globalization in these two movies, we are led to reflect on the arbitrary nature of East/West constructs so we may come to realize that globalization is capable of continually empowering the individual through relocation, consumption and their subsequent mediation. While the

state continues to retain certain functions8, the individual need not always subscribe to a dominant discourse sold by propagandistic systems as is the case in systems of authoritarian capitalism. The fissures introduced by ethnoscapes and technoscapes help to make possible other realities for identity-construction as the recent turbulence of world financial markets shakes up the world in a reversal of economic clout and influence. This dramatic reshuffling leaves in their wake opportunities9 - opportunities for reassessing national economic objectives, the extent to which our systems fulfill societal goals and values, etc. It is thus my hope that through my arguments about the two movies presentation of globalization as a commercialization of illusions, I had dismantled the cloak of make-believe East/West constructs and helped pave way for a change of robes from the predominant discourse in the interests of a few to one that accommodates the interests of the many; such that the sense of loss and demise that often accompanies a fear of globalization be replaced by the hope and optimism of a rational exuberance10.

8 9

Much as companies do, I suspect, in the logic of Coasean Economics. The Chinese equivalent of crisis is , meaning that opportunities and crises are closely entwined together. 10 Rational because the logic of the system is calibrated to support the newly-negotiated outcome; exuberance because the grand direction of biological and cultural evolution is towards non-zero-sum-ness i.e. towards greater rewards for mutual cooperation (Wright).

Works Cited
Al-Rodhan, Dr. Nayef R.F. Definitions of Globalization: A Comprehensive Overview. Geneva: Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2006. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Barry K. Gills, William R. Thompson. Globalization and Global History. New York: Routledge, 2006. British Broadcasting Corporation. BBC News | Reith-99. 1999. 22 July 2012 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/week1/week1.htm>. Buruma, Ian. "AsiaWorld." The New York Review of Books 12 June 2003: 57. Chen, Xiaomei. Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Gaetano, Arianne. "Rural Woman and Modernity in Globalizing China: Seeing Jia Zhangkes The World." Visual Anthropology Review (2009): 25-39. Jaffee, Valerie. An Interview with Jia Zhangke. 26 July 2004. 22 Juy 2012 <http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/feature-articles/jia_zhangke/>. Marsella, Anthony J. "Hegemonic Globalization and Cultural Diversity: The Risks of Global Monoculturalism." Australian Mosaic (2005): 15-19. Ritzer, George. "The Globalization of Nothing." SAIS Review 23.2 (2003): 190. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York, 1978. The World. Dir. Jia Zhangke. 2004. Wang Ning, Sun Yifeng. Translation, Globalisation and Localisation: A Chinese Perspective. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2008. Wright, Robert. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. Zhang, Yingjin. "Big Shots Funeral: Performing a Post-Modern Cinema of Attraction." Berry, Chris. Chinese Films in Focus II. London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 17-24.

VERY GOOD AND WELL RESEARCHED A