During the final act of M. Butterfly, Song says that, "The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine--weak, delicate, poor . . . but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom..."
This quote stuck out to me because I believe that people feel this way to this day. It may not be direct, but one could tell by the tendencies of the people from either side of the world.
For example, I am going to use video games to describe this idea of The West being masculine and The East being feminine. In The West, games like Call of Duty are HUGE. Shooters in general are huge in the west. These games consist of mostly shooting, which is seen as "tough" and "manly" according to American norms. If one would see statistics of what games sell the most in Japan, the games are more likely to be less gritty/violent, and more innovative with unique art styles. I've seen people from The West blindly hate Eastern games because they were too "soft".
How do you all feel about the idea of The West being masculine while The East is more feminine?
2 comments:
I think that the stereotypes our society projects of the East play a huge factor in the way the West views the East's masculinity. Likewise, the East's stereotypes of the West plays a large role in forming their view of the West's masculinity.
I definitely think that the steroetypes are upheld today, especially in our economy. The East is big competition, mainly for the U.S. and the automobile industry. Honda, a Japanese company, is able to make smaller more efficient vehicles, while General Motors was making Hummers. I think these stereotypes can be seen through this scenario because of the U.S.'s need for "bigger and better", while Japan is focusing on simply the efficiency of the vehicle, with smaller cars.
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