Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet

246 Pages·2017·1.778 MB·English

by  Sheng-mei Ma

SHENG-MEI MA
Sinophone-
Anglophone
Cultural Duet
Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet
Sheng-mei Ma
Sinophone-
Anglophone Cultural
Duet
Sheng-mei Ma
Department of English
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-58032-6 ISBN 978-3-319-58033-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58033-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940343
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A
cknowledgements
I wish to thank the following editors and publishers for permission to
reprint, with revisions: Chap. 1 from Ecozon@: European Journal of
Literature, Culture and Environment; Chap. 3 from International
Journal of Cultural Studies; Chap. 7 from International Journal of
Comic Art; Chap. 8 from American Multiculturalism in Context; Chap.
11 from Trans-Humanities: Ewha Institute for the Humanities.
v
c
ontents
Part I Sino . . .
1 Sino-Anglo-Euro Wolf Fan(g)s from Jiang
Rong to Annaud 3
2 To Anglicize and Angelize the Rape of Nanking 23
3 Asiatic Aspie: Millennial (ab)Use of Asperger’s Syndrome 39
4 Turandot: The Chinese Box by Puccini, Zeffirelli,
Zhang, and Chen 57
5 Speaking (of the) Dragon: Slain by the West,
Ridden by the East 69
6 Asian Inscrewtability in Hollywood 87
Part II . . . Anglo
7 Gene Luen Yang’s Graphic Bi-Bye to China/Town 103
vii
viii CONTENTS
8 Asian Birthright and Anglo Bequest in Chang-Rae Lee
and Bich Minh Nguyen 123
9 On Sci-Fi’s Good China, Bad China: Maureen F.
McHugh and Chang-Rae Lee 137
10 Fed (Up) with Gyoza and Vodka: Oldboy’s Forbidden
Fruit of Alterity 157
11 Noodle Western: Asian Gunslingers, Swordplayers,
Filmmakers Gone West 173
12 Millennial Taiwan Food Films: Naming and
Epicurean Cure 187
Notes 203
Bibliography 217
Index 235
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 5.1 Beowulf ejected by the Dragon’s fiery breath, like birthing
or menstrual blood, from Grendel’s mother’s vagina-shaped
cave mouth in Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf 78
Fig. 10.1 Park Chan-wook’s Daesu in Oldboy sniffing one of the many
gyoza he is about to taste 158
ix
i
ntroduction
The new millennium has witnessed the ascendancy of China, a reshuf-
fling of geopolitical balance so drastic that it contests postwar, US-centric
power dynamics. The Pacific Ocean, an unwittingly ironic name, has
grown tense over troubled waters and controversies in Japan over
the Senkaku Islands, in Taiwan over the Taiwan Strait, and between
Southeast Asia and the USA over the South China Sea. On the west-
ern borders of China ethnic dissent has erupted among the Uighurs in
Xinjiang, and Tibetans in Tibet and India. In the continental expanse in
between, the gap of haves and have-nots is as wide as that in the USA,
with discontent and social unrest simmering in both neo-empires. To
curb China’s global reach and to reassert its supremacy, the USA has
launched a series of diplomatic and socioeconomic initiatives, such as the
Asia pivot and the Transpacific Economic Partnership. Unequivocally,
the Sino-Anglo relationship is of paramount importance in the twenty-
first century, stirring up endless debates among economists, social scien-
tists, politicians, in the 2016 US presidential election, and beyond.
A gaping hole in this discourse of our time lies in the cultural sphere,
specifically in Sino-Anglo comparative cultures. This lacuna is due in
large part to the pair’s ambiguous entanglements in literary and visual
narratives, one tantamount to a neurosis from loving and hating your
frenemy, of having your cake of Orient/Occident and eating it. Owning
and consuming the other, as symbols of self-fulfillment, pulsates beneath
Sino-Anglo comparative cultures. The twin cultures meet on occasion
in a collaborative duet, a pas de deux in fiction and film, or the rivals
xi
xii INTRODUCTION
clash in a combative duel, a sword de deux—jostling in any given Sino-
Anglo text’s words, images, sounds, and even silences. Should one for-
get to cross the proverbial “t,” then the partner’s duet becomes a two
party duel. Should the hyphen that builds a bridge across Sino-Anglo,
as political parlance goes, “stand up to” China/USA, it ends up erect-
ing a border wall, a middle finger. Indeed, the millennial China-US rela-
tionship morphs between the sunny rhetoric of win-win cooperation
and the shadow of antipathy. Discord arises because forgetting to cross
one’s “t” may well stem from a Freudian slip, subconsciously skipping
the finishing touch of the horizontal line, an outstretched, inviting hand
to the dance partner, to effect a duel. Such reversibility reminds one of
the Hollywood-style romance of kisses and more in the wake of a sword
fight and a violent tussle on the ground. Yet who is straddling whom?
By Sino-Anglo rather than China-USA, I eschew realpolitik to focus
specifically on the two languages and cultures, Sinophone vis-à-vis
Anglophone cultural productions. Contrary to Kipling’s twain, East and
West forever meet in such translingual and cross-cultural spheres, like a
repetition compulsion bordering on neurosis over the self and its cultural
other. Indeed, the coupling of the two—duet-cum-duel—is so predict-
able that each seems attracted to and repulsed by its dark half, sembla-
ble, (in)compatible for their shared larger-than-life-ness. Call it American
Exceptionalism meets Chinese Triumphalism! From maximal thematic,
narratological structures to minimal tropes and stereotypes, ceaselessly
joining and splitting are the twain neuroTICs, the accent falling deliber-
ately on the last syllable to mark the cerebral, synaptic click. The cranium
of “n-euro” encases the cultures’—collective brains’—cognitive chain
reactions of a line of pulsing New Europes, from contemporary Europe
to Europe’s firstborn and heir, America, and now to the globalizing,
Americanizing China.
Since a tic denotes a neurological repetition compulsion manifested
in physical movements, vocal articulation, and mental reiteration, a neu-
roTIC comes to symbolize the new Europe and/or America’s mental
and psychic reprise over their other—Asia. Likewise, a modernizing Asia
interacts with the West, bouncing between resistance against and compli-
ance with (self-)Orientalizing. This prefix of neuro signals not only invol-
untary neural impulses but also one neurotic cleaving onto—holding
tightly as well as detaching from—the other: the hyphen between
Sino-Anglo clings like a chain to the ball that each superpower wishes
to undo. Hence, the two part their ways out of unrequited love and/or