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My Thoughts on the HRE Theme Year of the Dragon
On Stereotypes:
The HRE's 2000 theme and subthemes obviously promote
stereotypes of Asians, thus affecting the Asian-American
community. Stereotypes can not only be wrong or create
wrong impressions, but they can also project simplistic
images of entire cultures and peoples. In every day life,
encounters that reinforce my impression that stereotypes
run quite rampant are very very annoying. In the long
run, the existence of stereotypes can cause various forms
of social oppression and create social barriers between
peoples of different ethnic backgrounds.
On the Usage of the Theme & Subthemes:
First of all, I would like to point out how very wrong
it is to use any one aspect of any East Asian culture to
represent all of East Asia. Every culture in Asia is
very different, even if many non-Asians think that
they must all be quite similar.
Secondly, the lumping together of Japanese themes
("tsunami" and "shogun") and Chinese ones
("China doll" and "fried rice") implies that these
things represent the same culture. East Asians have
always been made to seem homogeneous, which causes
people to tend to blur the diverse cultures of East Asia.
On Cultural (Mis)Representation:
Using the least poetic-sounding of common menu
items (fried rice, happy family) to supposedly promote
cultural awareness seems like a dire mistake to me.
I'm quite embarrassed to think that the essence of my
sister culture is symbolized by a platter of greasy rice,
vegetables, and chicken. If the HRE truly cared about
cultural awareness and all of that, would they not have
picked subthemes that were more representative of the
cultures' values? I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure
that fried rice says anything particularly significant
about Chinese culture, or that tsunamis are considered
the root of what it means to be Japanese. Moreover,
wouldn't the HRE have done more research on East Asian
cultures if their intentions had truly been so noble?
On "Exotification":
I consider exotification really dumb, because basically,
it happens when people of one culture notice certain
external aspects of another people's culture and customs
that are quite different from their own, and then, blow
it up to represent the culture itself. This irritates
me so much because the dumbest things are always exoticized:
soy sauce, egg rolls, chopsticks, etc.
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