Gaze And Oppositional Gaze

In August 2018,the movie Crazy Rich Asians(2018)was released in North America.The film focuses on the life of Chinese society and its cultural circle.It presents cross-cultural communication issues such as conflicts between East and West values and identity of separated ethnic groups through a Chinese family conflict.As soon as the film was released,it broke the box office record in North America and set off the cultural upsurge of Chinese whirlwind.Numerous Western media and professional film critics praised Crazy Rich Asians,arguing that the film has broken the long-standing negative stereotypes of the West towards the East,reflecting "Asia’s rise" and the development of Asian culture.However,the film was generally cold in China and other Asian countries,and caused a lot of controversy.This externally hot and internally cold cultural phenomenon is thought-provoking.The interaction between film text and audience acceptance reflects cultural issues such as the West and the East,self and the other,and gaze and oppositional gaze.This research takes the gaze and oppositional gaze,and other related research as the theoretical perspective.Combining with the relevant theories of cultural research,it mainly uses text analysis to focus on the interpretation of the text encoding of the film Crazy Rich Asians,the audience acceptance of Douban movie reviews and the tension between the two,and tried to explore three issues: First,in what sense does the movie text encoding of Crazy Rich Asians break through the negative discourses that the West has imposed on the East in the past,enabling overseas Chinese to reconstruct their cultural identity expression in the context of oppositional gaze;Second,in the face of the Chinese society and culture presented in the film,why do most mainland Chinese audiences in the cultural home country interpret the film from the perspective of oppositional gaze,what specific confrontational gaze strategies do they use to interpret the film,and what kind of audience psychology is reflected behind these interpretations;third,based on the analysis of film text encoding and audience acceptance perspectives,observe and summarize the relationship between East and West,gaze and oppositional gaze and then explore the key issue of "how do we stare" in cross-cultural communication.The study found that Crazy Rich Asians made the effort to resist the Western hegemony,but it still mainly showed the tendency of self-Orientalization.In summary,it was the deconstruction and collusion of the Western hegemony.On the one hand,the film tries to break the orientalist stereotypes in the West,show a rich and diverse Chinese society,and promote equal dialogue between East and West.On the other hand,the film also consciously or unintentionally caters to Western expectations for the image of the East and attracts Western audiences with Oriental wonders.It also obliterates the Asian culture and ethnic diversity,and strengthens the Western society`s generalized understanding of Asia.Therefore,in response to the Western gaze perspective presented in the text of Crazy Rich Asians,Douban viewers mostly responded with oppositional gaze,mainly as follows: First,realize and point out the hegemonic gaze implied in the movie text,and the power framework of Binary Opposition;the second is to dare to make a voice with subjective consciousness,to personalize the gaze against the distorted facts of the West;the third is to actively exercise the power as the main body of culture and advocate the establishment of a discourse system that belongs to Oriental culture.Compared with this part of the political oppositional gaze that emphasizes power reconstruction and inter-subject confrontation,some viewers’ viewing angles point out a more effective way out for gaze beyond hegemony,restraining your own racism and cultural centralism,advocating viewing the other and understanding the other from an open,inclusive,and identity perspective,and then gaining the power to construct yourself through communication and interaction,and establishing a reciprocal understanding between different and equal subjects.To sum up,this study believes that the West staring at the East is essentially a power relationship for establishing domination and realizing domination.Western Centralism is its starting point,and the dualist essentialist position is its core logic.Under such a gaze and the system of discourse established thereby,the marginal East has long been relegated,distorted,and completely reduced to the other who speaks and sets off Western hegemony.Oppositional gaze is an effective way to eliminate hegemonic gaze and reconstruct the gaze relationship.This viewing method not only means that the subject being gazed can identify the gaze violence of the gaze,but also means that the confrontational hegemony turns to constructing itself,dare to exercise the power of the subject,make its own unique voice,look back at the other party who imposed hegemonic gaze,and establish Set up a new subject discourse system.But to truly transcend the gaze of race and cultural hegemony,it is far from enough to emphasize the identity political practice of subject power.This also requires us to inject "the wisdom which learn form the other" into the gaze relationship and turn to reciprocal understanding to find transcendent answers.Dispelling the hegemonic gaze and re-establishing the meaning of gaze are crucial for establishing an open,diverse,and free viewing style,and are also important issues that must be explored to achieve cross-cultural communication.