【Text/Observer Network Columnist Zhao Dingqi】
Recently, some netizens posted three squirrel product promotional posters in October 2019. Because the model in the poster resembles a "squinting eye" makeup, some people believe that this is a scandalizing of the Chinese people and deliberately "insulting China". This is already the third public opinion storm caused by "squinting" this year.
The reason why many netizens are so angry when they see "squinting" is because the supervillain "Fu Manchu", which was created by the United States in the early 20th century, has penetrated the hearts of the people with the image of "squinting eyes" and "drooping beard". Since then, "squinting" has become a stereotype of Westerners for Chinese. If Westerners make a "squinting" gesture in public, there is no doubt that it is a deliberate act of humiliation.
Many netizens have criticized the series of posters of the three squirrels to the height of "insulting China", but as a Chinese company with the purpose of making profits, it is difficult to say that the "three squirrels" and the main creators of their advertisements have the motive and malice of "insulting China". There are also some people who believe that even if the main creators do not have subjective intentions, they are also influenced by Orientalist culture in their subconscious, and there is a suspicion and tendency to deliberately cater to Western stereotypes.
As a nation that has experienced a century of suffering, the people have always maintained vigilance against orientalist stereotypes, which is a good social phenomenon. But while criticizing this form of Western cultural hegemony, are we falling into a trap of another form of Western cultural hegemony?
One
Orientalism is an academic concept proposed by Edward W. Said in the 1970s, referring to a specific imagination created by the West based on subjective prejudices against the East, and even transmitted from the West to the East's own consciousness.
In orientalist imagination and rhetoric, the East is a world of the Other that "cannot represent itself" but "must be represented by others." Whether in Western academic works or literary works, the Eastern world has been seriously distorted. On the one hand, the "non-my race" of the Eastern world in the eyes of Europeans and Americans is often scandalized and barbarized, and appears in the form of lack of rationality, moral degeneration, absurdity, laziness and ignorance; on the other hand, the East is often full of some fascinating mysterious color, satisfying the Westerners' exotic imagination of pre-modern society.
There is no doubt that Orientalism is the product of an unbalanced power relationship between East and West. In the case of the dominant cultural system of Western society occupying a strong position, the stereotypes created by Orientalism are not only popular in Western society, but also often internalized by the East itself, forming a phenomenon of "self-orientalization", that is, the East imagines and characterizes itself through the way the West imagines the East.
For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, in order to be able to go to the world and gain the recognition of the Western-led international film world, the new fifth-generation director group deliberately highlighted a mysterious, backward, sensual and lustful Oriental image characteristics in the film, and to a certain extent, with a welcoming posture to cater to the Western imagination of Chinese women. These are reflected in film works such as "Red Sorghum", "Ju Dou", "Big Red Lantern Hanging High" and so on.
Stills from "The Big Red Lantern Hangs High"
The "squinting eyes" in this three-squirrel incident is also considered a typical Western stereotype with Orientalist overtones. The word "squinting" in English is "chink eyes" or "slanty eyes", which generally refers to slender eyes, and some people directly call them "Chinese eyes".
In the American Chinese, "squinting" is a typical Asian facial feature. This facial feature is often considered unbeautiful, even comical, under the Western-centrist aesthetic of advocating large eyes and deep eye sockets, so the simple action of squinting eyes becomes a racist act.
Therefore, "squinting" has become a kind of orientalist cultural discrimination, which contains two links. One is to set "squinting" as a facial feature of orientals, and the other is to define this facial feature as ugly under the aesthetics of Western-centrism. Both are indispensable. This also raises the question, what are the aesthetic criteria on which we are basing our criticism of the aesthetic discrimination contained in "squinting"?
Two
Beauty is not an eternal thing that never changes. From ancient times to the present, the standard of beauty has been changing in different socio-historical processes and cultural contexts. The elements that determine the change of aesthetic standards can be summarized in two aspects:
On the one hand, the factor of social class, the dominant class in a social form, will inevitably shape the aesthetics of the whole society according to its own interests and tastes. On the other hand, there are the elements of racial characteristics and national culture. People of different races will shape the corresponding aesthetic standards according to their own characteristics.
For example, when the Tang monks were on their way west to learn the scriptures, they did not hide their contempt when they met other races. In today's view, the handsome white men and beautiful women with deep eyes, high noses, big eyes, and three-dimensional faces are "strong customs and despicable appearance" in Xuanzang's view, "rough appearance, both gallful and embarrassing". Because at that time, the Tang Dynasty was strong and strong, and it was more culturally confident, it naturally judged other races by its own aesthetic standards.
Before the Qin and Han Dynasties, the appearance of Chinese was dominated by single eyelids and a collapsed nose, which was born flat and belonged to the typical Mongolian race, which can be seen from the Qin terracotta warriors with all single eyelids and slender eyes. Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, with the continuous flow and integration of various ethnic groups, there have been more talents with double eyelids and big eyes in Chinese society.
For this reason, the long eyebrow details that are set as "ugly" in the mainstream aesthetic context today have been presented as "beauty" in many works of art in ancient China, and even before the Tang and Song dynasties, it was a standard "beauty". In some of the Tang Dynasty court ladies that have been handed down to this day, we can find many such faces.
Part of "Lady of the Flowers"
Of course, this love for long eyebrows and fine eyes is also related to the positioning of women in feudal society. Li Yu wrote in "Idle Affection and Occasional Mail": "Those who are thin and elderly, will be soft in disposition, those who are thick and large, and those who have strong intentions." ”
The positioning of women in feudal patriarchal society is to teach their husbands and children, "no talent is morality", and the criterion for judging women is mainly not "appearance", but whether they are gentle and virtuous. Women with long eyebrows and small eyes look more gentle than women with large eyes, so they are more likely to be recognized by mainstream culture.
Stills from "The Biography of Zhen Huan"
Of course, feudal society had other aesthetic standards. For example, fair skin, light posture, delicate and thin, and "three-inch golden lotus", etc., all reflect the aesthetic taste of the landlord class that is detached from productive labor.
Until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, the images of beautiful women we see in some works of art are still different from our aesthetic standards today. In the first half of the 20th century, Shanghai and other places were widely popular in a kind of advertising painting called the moon card, which is a kind of advertisement painting of ladies using Western painting techniques. The beauties painted in the early moon cards still show the traditional Chinese aesthetic concept, that is, long eyebrows, cherry mouths, and a relatively delicate posture.
However, after the 1930s, the posture of the beauties on the moon card changed significantly, and a large wave of beautiful women with large eyes, high noses, white skin and plump skin, and clear contours appeared. These images are basically indistinguishable from the images of "beautiful women" that we recognize today. Behind this change, what is hidden is the change of aesthetic standards.
While the West manipulated China's political situation and enslaved Chinese people through the cannons of the ships, it also quietly changed the aesthetics of the Chinese. Compared with the yellow people with flat faces, the appearance of Westerners is relatively three-dimensional. The characteristics of Westerners, such as double eyelids and high nose bridges, have gradually been internalized into the aesthetic standards of Chinese.
The aesthetic hegemony of the West is not only reflected in the evaluation criteria of appearance, but also in the temperament, figure, clothing and other aspects of women. The feminine and sexy femininity created under the capitalist consumer culture has replaced the female image of traditional society.
Of course, during the Republic of China period, due to the low degree of modernization in China, the influence of this aesthetic culture was limited to colonial metropolises such as Shanghai. After the founding of New China, along with the establishment of the socialist system and the development of the women's liberation movement, this aesthetic standard with a certain materialized feminine color was replaced by a sunny and robust image of a working woman.
After the 1980s, the Process of Western-led globalization once again brought the Western aesthetic back to China. Under the influence of Western social trends, some scholars criticized the New China Women's Liberation Movement for suppressing women's gender characteristics, forming a so-called "asexual iron girl" phenomenon, and deliberately emphasizing the physical pain of women in the process of manual labor.
But while these scholars criticize the physical pain inflicted on women by the so-called "asexual Iron Maiden," the hard-working working class women, who are in large numbers in the West, do not enter their field of vision. In fact, they essentialize some of the gender traits of Western middle-class elite women into the general essence of women, and "women's discourse has always potentially taken middle-class women as the basis of the imagination of female subjects." This emphasis on so-called "femininity" was rapidly absorbed by the nascent consumerist culture after the 1990s.
The image of a young, beautiful, middle-class woman who can consume has become the mainstream aesthetic standard. This so-called "feminine" female image means that women have to shape their bodies and temperaments with male gaze and aesthetic standards, and women become sexualized and objectified others again.
At the same time, the traditional Chinese aesthetic has gradually been eliminated from the national memory. In the mainstream Western aesthetic context, the elongated eye shape and facial flat facial features are more common among Asian american groups, often attached to negative value judgments. This value judgment also subtly shapes the mainstream aesthetic of Chinese through the global cultural industry dominated by capital. At present, many popular screen actresses mostly have high nose bridges, double eyelids and well-defined faces, and these traits are actually more common in the appearance of Europeans and Americans.
Therefore, the so-called "Chinese's favorite looks" at present are not so much the embodiment of some "authentic" Chinese beauty, but rather the product of the influence of Western consumerist aesthetic culture. This aesthetic standard of identity, produced under the domination of the global cultural industry, in fact forms an invisible domination of women.
In all kinds of film and television art works and public cultural spaces, we can hardly see female figures with small eyes, dark skin, fat and other characteristics. This aesthetic standard of identity has spawned a huge medical beauty industry, and there have been cookie-cutter "net red faces" and "plastic surgery faces".
Three
Through its global cultural industry and cultural hegemony, the Western countries have incorporated all corners of the world into the cultural and aesthetic system of identity. But at the same time, there is also a trend in Western society that questions the cultural industry of identity. They advocate "respecting" and "accommodating" the differences of different nationalities and cultures, trying to present a pluralistic and heterogeneous beauty.
But this phenomenon of multiculturalism, which has emerged in the West in the guise of "progress", contains a hidden discrimination. This is more evident in the fashion industry. Sociologist Georg Simmel believes that fashion tries to provide some kind of universal rule on the one hand, and on the other hand, it tries to meet "the requirements of difference, change, and individuality.". Therefore, there is often some distance between Western fashion design and mainstream aesthetics, and even often go against the mainstream, in order to reaffirm the legitimacy of differences and marginal beauty.
The image of the Oriental model, which is popular in the fashion industry, represents an oriental image in the Western imagination. They replaced the same Oriental beauty produced by the Western cultural industry with a different Oriental beauty that conformed to the "exotic imagination" of the West. However, this visual representation of the Orient, which appears in the name of "respecting" oriental characteristics, intentionally or unintentionally merges with existing cognitive biases and stereotypes, "The repeated appearance of these screened, shaped and 'typical' Asian female figures means that the cultural production logic in the fashion field is not to break, but ultimately to serve the fixation and structure of prejudice against others." ”
This cultural prejudice of the West has also subtly influenced some domestic literary and art workers under the influence of its cultural hegemony. For the creators of the "Three Squirrels" advertisement, it is difficult to say that they have any deliberate "insulting" motives, but they are likely to be influenced by some Western cultural hegemony. In the process of advertising creation, they want to break the same aesthetic image and advertising style, but unconsciously fall into the aesthetic prejudice of the West.
Of course, even the vast number of netizens who criticize "squinting" can hardly be said to have completely broken free from the influence of Western aesthetic hegemony. They criticize the Orientalist cultural prejudices inherent in "squinting" without breaking free from the aesthetic trap of identity created by the Western cultural industry—we have lost the ability to imagine another aesthetic.
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