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The Oriental Obscene – Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era

Autor Sylvia Shin Hue Chong
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 8 noi 2011
The Oriental Obscene is a sophisticated analysis of Americans’ reactions to visual representations of the Vietnam War, such as the photograph of the “napalm girl,” news footage of the Tet Offensive, and feature films from The Deer Hunter to Rambo: First Blood Part II. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong combines psychoanalytic and film theories with U.S. cultural history to explain what she terms the oriental obscene: racialized fantasies that Americans derived largely from images of Asians as the perpetrators or victims of extreme violence. Chong contends that these fantasies helped Americans to process the trauma of the Vietnam War, as well as the growth of the Asian American population after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the postwar immigration of Southeast Asian refugees. The oriental obscene animated a wide range of political narratives, not only the movements for and against the war, but causes as diverse as the Black Power movement, law-and-order conservatism, second-wave feminism, and the nascent Asian American movement. During the Vietnam era, pictures of Asian bodies were used to make sense of race, violence, and America’s identity at home and abroad.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780822348542
ISBN-10: 0822348543
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: 84 illustrations
Dimensiuni: 156 x 235 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.59 kg
Ediția:New.
Editura: MD – Duke University Press

Recenzii

"Sylvia Shin Huey Chong has located the Vietnam War as the constitutive trauma of modern American nationhood, one that is particularly attached to a visuality of violence. She argues, moreover, that this trauma also serves as something of a primal scene around which whole sets of gendered and racialized positions are generated and then solidified in the public spheres of American politics and sociality. The Oriental Obscene offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, American racial politics, popular culture, and the making and endurance of American Orientalism.” Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University

"The Oriental Obscene is fresh, original, scrupulously researched, and tightly argued. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong uses the psychoanalytic categories of trauma, the primal scene, and fantasy, relying centrally on the work of Jean Laplanche. She quite rightly contends that the theories of Laplanche and Deleuze can enrich each other, and she demonstrates how this works as she rethinks representations of the Vietnam War in visual media. Her book will attract a broad interdisciplinary audience, including scholars of film and media, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and critical race theory.” Sharon Willis, author of High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film

"Taken in the context of scholarly investigations into representations of the Vietnam War, Chong’s work is a thoughtful and important contribution to the canon. However, as an exploration of otherness and the construction of racial identities, The Oriental Obscene also provides a valuable resource to broader areas of research in film and media theory, cultural studies and other critical approaches to race." Josh Nelson, Screening the Past, July 2012

“The Vietnam War was the first truly visual conflict for Americans, who watched it unfold nightly on their televisions and opened up their daily newspapers and weekly magazines to find graphic photos of violence and chaos happening some seven thousand miles away in Indochina.... Sylvia Shin Huey Chong joins the conversation about visual representations of the war, analyzing photographs and films produced during and after the conflict. She argues that depictions of the Vietnamese in American media constituted an “oriental obscene” which encapsulated a host of US anxieties about Asian immigrants, Far East politics, and challenges to race and gender conventions since the 1960s, in addition to reflecting American conceptions of the Vietnam War.” - Journal of American Studies, February 2013


"Sylvia Shin Huey Chong has located the Vietnam War as the constitutive trauma of modern American nationhood, one that is particularly attached to a visuality of violence. She argues, moreover, that this trauma also serves as something of a primal scene around which whole sets of gendered and racialized positions are generated and then solidified in the public spheres of American politics and sociality. The Oriental Obscene offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, American racial politics, popular culture, and the making and endurance of American Orientalism." Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University "The Oriental Obscene is fresh, original, scrupulously researched, and tightly argued. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong uses the psychoanalytic categories of trauma, the primal scene, and fantasy, relying centrally on the work of Jean Laplanche. She quite rightly contends that the theories of Laplanche and Deleuze can enrich each other, and she demonstrates how this works as she rethinks representations of the Vietnam War in visual media. Her book will attract a broad interdisciplinary audience, including scholars of film and media, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and critical race theory." Sharon Willis, author of High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film "Taken in the context of scholarly investigations into representations of the Vietnam War, Chong's work is a thoughtful and important contribution to the canon. However, as an exploration of otherness and the construction of racial identities, The Oriental Obscene also provides a valuable resource to broader areas of research in film and media theory, cultural studies and other critical approaches to race." Josh Nelson, Screening the Past, July 2012 "The Vietnam War was the first truly visual conflict for Americans, who watched it unfold nightly on their televisions and opened up their daily newspapers and weekly magazines to find graphic photos of violence and chaos happening some seven thousand miles away in Indochina... Sylvia Shin Huey Chong joins the conversation about visual representations of the war, analyzing photographs and films produced during and after the conflict. She argues that depictions of the Vietnamese in American media constituted an "oriental obscene" which encapsulated a host of US anxieties about Asian immigrants, Far East politics, and challenges to race and gender conventions since the 1960s, in addition to reflecting American conceptions of the Vietnam War." - Journal of American Studies, February 2013

Notă biografică


Cuprins

List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Terminology, Proper Names, and Film Titles ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Specters of Vietnam 1
1. Bringing the War Home: Spectacles of Violence and Rebellion in the American 1968 33
2. Reporting the War: Ethical Crises of Action in the Movement-Image of Vietnam 75
3. Restaging the War: Fantasizing Defeat in Hollywood's Vietnam 127
4. Kung Fu Fighting: Pacifying and Mastering the Martial Body 173
5. Being Bruce Lee: Death and the Limits of the Movement-Image of Martial Arts 209
Conclusion. Returning to 'Nam: The Vietnam Veteran's Orientalized Body 249
Notes 283
Bibliography 325
Index 353

Descriere

This book explores the impact of media representations of violence during the Vietnam War on people in the U.S.—specifically how images of violence done to and by the Vietnamese were traumatic in ways that deeply affected the American psyche. Chong argues that films like "Apocalypse Now," "Deer Hunter," and "Rambo: First Blood Part II" were attempts to process that trauma and come to terms with the legacy of the war. She links the images to the political turmoil of the time, showing how they were used by pro- and anti-war groups, and by African Americans, whites, and Asian Americans, all for very different ends.