Asian Literature Analysis

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culture. For centuries, Asia has been depicted in the West as highly exotic, mysterious, and sometimes threatening to Western cultures, ideologies, and physical bodies. This is evident even in contemporary American portrayals of Asia. Popular Hollywood films and series such as The Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Rush Hour all create fantastical and exoticized images of Asian countries and societies. Such portrayals have been thoroughly dissected by scholars across numerous disciplines, who have viewed Western media through the lenses of orientalism, cultural hegemony, and economic opportunism. However, the relationship between Asian Americans and Asia is less well documented. This section seeks to explore portrayals of Asia in Asian…show more content…
As mentioned earlier, ample literature exists documenting interactions between Asia and the West. However, again a distinction must be made in examining the relationship between Asia and Asian Americans specifically. The following section details a portrayal of Asian-Americans in Asian media. This portrayal illustrates Asian condescension towards what one journalist describes as “jiak kan tan, which means ‘eat potato’ and is a derogatory term for someone who has lost his roots and apes the West”. Additionally, the section discusses the extent to which these attitudes can be generalized to include other ‘hyphenated’ or ‘de-Asianized’ Asian peoples who do not live in…show more content…
As one of the youngest nations in the world, modern Singapore’s cultural identity is still in flux, and there are numerous forces and entities that actively and intentionally influence its development. The most powerful of these forces is the Singaporean state itself, which is governed by the People’s Action Party (PAP). From the earliest years of Singapore’s history, its leaders have believed “that the survival of Singapore will depend on the willingness and ability of the Singapore citizen to adopt a new set of attitudes, a new set of values, and new set of perspectives: in short, on the creation of a new man". The Singaporean government strives to instill these values using a wide variety of policies such as public housing quotas, mandatory military service, primary school language education, and state sponsored cultural programming. This array of cultural programming is very broad, and is administered by Singapore’s Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth, an official government agency with nearly 5,000 employees and an annual budget of over S$2.7 billion. Yet despite the scale of the Singaporean government’s efforts, the formation of Singaporean identity is not fully within its control. This section will discuss several other features of contemporary Singapore, such as social stratification and

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