Subject:  Isn't it romantic…for who? |
Author:
Azuka Nzegwu
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Date Posted: 01:35:38 02/20/01 Tue
Isn't it romantic…for who?
Last class, the discussion that centered on Julia Robert was very interesting and shed some lights on some different viewpoints. So, I am sure that some people have a lot to say on this issue. Well I do have one or two things to say.
What is baffling about the class reaction reinforced the extent of stereotype that has penetrated through the culture and perhaps racism that is synonymous to America as Apple Pie. I read the M Butterfly, and I had marked the scene where Song tells Gallimard why she (he) thinks that Gallimard found Butterfly beautiful. When Song placed it that it was the Asian who died for the American, Gallimard sees it as beautiful and romantic. But when Song placed it as a white woman who suffers from the hands of her Asian husband, it becomes less romantic, less beautiful, and less pleasing to the Western audience. And if we have failed to see it, what kind of students does that make us? And what are we really saying if we don't find anything wrong with it? Does it mean that we too believe the notion that it was okay for the Asian to die for love and not the white? What kind of double standard is this? To take this example even further, let's say that it is an African-American woman or man, well this is a taboo. But the irony is that for some odd reason, perhaps due to societal conditioning and to our own stereotypes, it becomes OKAY for the ethnic women or men to suffer and for them to die, for the sake of pure love, and yet for the white counterpart to live, not to suffer, and to find other ways to validate their love without killing themselves. If you were one of those students that laughed and in some terms accepted the situation, why would you hold different standards of love for different people?
To those who proclaimed themselves to have a liberal mind, how can we find it funny that the Asian killed herself for love? As Prof. Yun has suggested, she would be brandishing a gun in the air, but most of us, I wonder, is it hilarious that the woman killed herself for love? And if that is the case, then how come some of you were not content when Julia Roberts was placed in the same situation? Are we saying that the lives of the ethnic men and women are not worth as that of white men and women?
It is no doubt that race is an active ingredient of the values and morals of Americana. It is hard looking at people these days without thinking of them as "racial beings." Perhaps in a class like this, these views will be brought out and examined.
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