Battleground America

As you may have noticed, the theme of today's Zuky posts has been "Battleground". All around the world, monumental human struggles are being waged right now. And here in America, we have a sex scandal.

I'll be honest: I don't think this is about protecting children. It's about grabbing power. It's about shifting leverage in backroom deals. Neither politicians nor corporate talking heads could care less about some teenage boy being preyed upon — beyond the rhetorical platform it gives them to grandstand for power. How cynical is the city of Washington DC? There's a saying among Beltway types that in DC there are only two things you can't get caught with: a dead girl or a live boy. Mark Foley got caught clumsily trying to arrange the second one; his political life is over. Anyone who helped him hide his dirty little secret is in big trouble too; rightly so. But how about taking a look around the world and getting some perspective? A predatory IM is bad; but in my book, war, upheaval, and genocide score higher on the severity scale.

Meanwhile in the "liberal" blogosphere, I feel obligated to comment upon Firedoglake's latest paroxysm of racism, this time applying Mikado yellowface to George W. Bush. The central problem with this image is that it deploys foreign ethnic imagery as a weapon of mockery, which amounts to a satirical statement as intellectually hollow as it is culturally shallow: "Bush is a Jap! Samurai sword and funny hair and all! Haha! Look at him!" A secondary problem is that the image inherits the harrowing racism thoroughly built into The Mikado's yellowface depictions. Like a bunch of good ol' white boys bonding over ethnic jokes in a locker room, the benighted souls at FDL appear to have a hard time doing the substantive work of constructing satirical imagery that doesn't rely on Mocking The Other. As we've all come to expect, FDLers will surely dismiss such criticism as overly-sensitive political correctness, a phrase which has become the preferred mechanism for intellectual laziness among bigots of all stripes.

While FDLers are busy slapping each other's knees ("Good one, buddy!") and chortling at Yellowface George, the Battlegrounds rage. All around the world, monumental human struggles are being waged right now.

UPDATE (2006-10-04 20:40EST): Now that I'm home from work for the evening, I'd like to take a moment to elaborate ever so slightly on my critique of Yellowface George.

Personally, when I look at this image as an Asian American, 4 visual features jump out at me: (1) the stance, posture, and awkward clutching of a red fan project a meak femininity, yet this is ostensibly a male Lord, a warrior with permission to carry a samurai sword; (2) the outfit makes no sense in any historical context with which I'm familiar; (3) the background of a black Shoji screen, bamboo paneling that looks Southeast Asian, and artificial blossoms simply screams White Person's Orientalist Crap; and (4) worst of all for me, the manner in which the samurai sword is being gripped (with one ill-formed hand!) and wielded (alongside the face and throat!) is not just wrong, it's downright dangerous. With these 4 points in mind, I suppose it remains feasible that the creator of this image consciously assembled these contradictory elements in order to imply, quite indirectly, that everything about Bush's photo ops is a false construction and nothing is as it seems.

However, if these contradictions were not obvious to either the creator or his audience, then these ethnic elements were implemented without proper understanding and were therefore ignorantly appropriated. You see, if an actual Japanese warrior were to publish this picture (i.e. within an Asian cultural millieu), his audience would be in on the absurdity of all the crossed elements and everyone would know that he was parodying a white Orientalist construction (still hard to buy, but logically feasible). But when a white person in America publishes it for a largely white audience, the cultural cues are lost and we're left with a decontextualized spectacle of Mocking The Other.

Comments

[Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez]

It would be giving too much credit to them to say they were aware of all these points you make, and that the creator meant to use them in such a context. That's being very kind. I think these people (with their track record) should just know better than to use this type of imagery, any type of racially loaded jokes, until they learn to see what's moving their hands at all times.

I see that comments at FDL are closed after but two comments questioned FDL's use of the image's and the ethnic implications.

[Sunrunner]

Ha! I noticed that the FDL comments shut down as well. Quite a contrast to the ongoing debate which has gone over this and other related issues on blogs like Pandagon, Punkassblog and bitch lab.

One thought I have had about the Foley mess is that it does relate to (in a weird way) and overshadows another question of who knew what and when. I heard a spokesperson for Crew being interviewed on NPR this evening and she said that they handed over the inapropriate Foley emails in July, on the day they recieved them. And yet, the FBI, which according to Ashcroft, was charged to make the prosecution of child predators a top priority did not even begin a preliminary investigation until asked to by Hastert the other day. (someone is going to have some splainin' to do about that)

Meanwhile, according to Bob Woodwards book, and now confirmed by Rice and Tenet, the FBI warned the Nat's Sec Council and the FBI (then under Ashcroft) that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent.

In both cases the FBI did not move -- it is hard not to speculate that it did not do so in either case because of some kind of directive to "leave it be" that "some other channel" would deal with the situation.

Now one could call this a coincidence, but I don't buy it, the pattern is much too clear.

Speaking of the image, what do you think about the feet? It struck me as kind of an awkward child's stance - the pigeon toes and all. My guess is that image was already a parody of some kind and that Bush's face was photoshopped in.

[Sunrunner]

I meant to say that Rice et al were warned on July 10 2001.

[Kai]

Nezua and Sunrunner, nice to see you both here, and thank you for your comments.

Regarding Foley, the FBI, Rice, the NSC: it's a tangled mess reaching so deep, it's hard to say what's what. This kind of thing requires book-length treatment, and not a Bob Woodward book.

Regarding the image: the feet are indicated in my first point about "stance". There are a variety of stances in Asian culture in which the toes point inward, especially with regard to women in Japanese culture. The stance in this image is not especially stylized in a familiar Asian manner but does project a meak childlike uncertainty. There are also strong martial arts stances in which the toes point inward, with arches flexed, heel-tips and toe-tips biting into the ground, hips pushed down against flexed thighs and knees; such stances are called "rooted" (e.g. I sometimes use such stances in moving subways when I can't grab a pole). All of this simply goes to show that it's generally a bad idea to deploy foreign cultural elements as weapons of mockery; it's a minefield, there's so much nuance; without intimate familiarity, you're bound to screw it up.

Peace.

[Hanna]

Liza was being nice when she called Jane Hamsher an idiot.

Love,

Hanna

[ebw]

Howdy Kai,

My mom has had a boken and a shoji for as long as I can remember -- she was a judoka as a younger woman. So I agree on the stance, the costume (does match the flowers though), the shoji/bamboo/flowers (flowers? How Islander!), and the careless position of the katana.

But I was much more interested in the later post on opera.

[Kai]

Hanna: You're probably right about that. ;-)

EBW: I suppose you're right, the costume matches the fake flowers, so that's one positive thing about this depiction. Seriously though, you're lucky to have been raised by a judoka (quite appropriate to mention at a blog named after the word zuki), and I'm glad you see what I see in this picture (especially about the katana, it makes me cringe!). But yes, the Tan Dun opera being produced at the Met holds far more fascination...

Peace.