Stereotype And Orientalism : Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirt Mocks Asians

Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) is an American retailer that focuses on casual wear for teenage consumers. It has over 300 locations in the United States, and is expanding internationally. The company also operates three offshoot brands: Abercrombie kids, Hollister Co., and Gilly Hicks. A&F open its first flagship store in central, Hong Kong on 11 August 2012. The marketing and sales strategy of A&F : appeal to “cool” and “popular” kids to make the brand distinctive and desirable. While the company hired many masculine models to promote their brand images in the opening day, it stir up a upsurge of visiting the store among Hong Kong teenager.

However, Abercrombie & Fitch has released a line of T-shirts depicting Chinese laundry workers and smiling Buddhas in 2004 which captioned by groan-worthy puns. The T-shirts lead to Asian American  students protesting the reproduction of century-old caricatures. We can see from the picture above, the T-shirts showed fully Orientalism. Orientalism is first introduced by Edward Said. It is a mythology in which the East and the West were set in opposition and the East was used by the West to define its own, superior identity. It gives us a specific language that governs how we conceive of Asian people and naturalizes our stereotypes.

The company's first infamous "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make It White" T-shirt is not meant to function as an "accurate" representation of Chinese masculinity but is alluding to the yellow race (Chinese) are mainly doing laundry. Because many of the Chinese immigrants in United States are not highly educated,  they can only opened laundries or Chinese food to maintain their livelihood. We can see form the T-shirt pattern,  Wong is wearing hats, looks like the style of the stereotype Qing Dynasty in the 19th century, and the role is either cheap labour or laundry staff. It is obviously to satirize the lower class Asian immigrants.Other"orientalism" merchandises like "Get Your Buddha on the Floor" or "Wok-n-Bowl, Let the Good Times Roll -- Chinese Food and Bowling" are also denigrating Asian and trivializing entire Asian religion and philosophy. It shows that western society is superior than asian society.

In the other hand, the offensive caricatures on A&F T-shirts seems have no negative effect in Hong Kong. The teenager in Hong Kong still consume this brand and treat it as an “uniform” that represent stylish. It may means the interpretation of those caricatures are flexible. The asian who might buy them are "whitewashed" or willing to "whitewash" which are affecting by the western advertising or marketing strategy. This above instances also break the hegemony as the caricatures images are not just belong to only one category, there are two : stereotypical (negative) and realistic (positive); and Asian themselves can be either authentic (protesting) or assimilated (buying). If we understand these images as kitsch, we can understand them as a function of marketing strategies such as parody and irony. Otherwise, it is just a kind of racial stereotype.

The cultural hegemony of fasting dog meat

Last month, i travelled to mainland China with my friends. One of my friend have a pet and it was a mongrel(唐狗). At night, we went to have dinner and i ordered one of my favorite home dishes------spiced dog meat pot. However, my friend who have a mongrel felt disdusting when we enjoyed the dishes. After this meal, i wondered if the reaction from my friend is caused by cultural difference or the identity of a dog owner.

The culture of eating dog meat has a long history among Chinese society. Historical cultural records in China have shown chinese treat dog as one of the “six livestock”. Li Shizhen in "Compendium of Materia Medica" records that eating dog meat is good to Qi, kidney, stomach, blood and  virility. Dog meat and bone have even used as one the of Chinese herbal medicines.

But in British,  the people treat dog as a pet and never put them on the table. And now most of the of Hong Kong people are generally considered eating dog meat as a very cruel culture. The fasted for dog meat seems to be the disciplinary under British cultural hegemony.

Since long time ago, eating dog meat is traditional for Hong Kong people, but in the 1950s, due to the introduced of the Dogs and Cats Ordinance by the colonial government, people cannot eat dog meat anymore. The reason of introduced the Dogs and Cats Ordinance in 1950 was the spread of rabies, the colonial government  prohibited members of the public from eating dog meat for protecting public health. Later, the 1992 Act amendments abolished most of the provisions in the old version. However, the colonial government reserved one provision--- “prohibit the slaughter of a dog or cat for food". This

reservation of fasted for dog meat is solely based on the culture of British that treat cats and dogs as  'forbidden meats'. This legal provision in Hong Kong is the most demanding one on  fasted for dog meat among all of the the non-religious legislation around the world.

"Eating dog meat", in fact, is full of contradictions, strict Jews, Christians and Muslims refused to eat  pigs and dogs because they are dirty omnivores ; Hindus refused to eat cow because they think cow is sacred. However, the British refused to eat dogs just because they are pet but they still eat wild rabbit although some rabbits are treat as pet.

British claimed that dogs are loyalty friends of human beings. In fact, apart from the skilled dogs such as guide-dog, anti-drug dogs, others are just pet or livestock. What conditions can we use to distinguish between the pets for feed and the livestocks for food? In my opinion, it is just a cultural differences about the matter of  history, religion, geography. Hong Kong’s culture is influenced by the British during the colonial period, thus,  the hegemony of fasted for dog meat is formed.

Nowadays, Hong Kong people imperceptibly absorb the British food taboos as our own food taboos. As a Hakkas(客家人), i have tasted the hometown dishes---spiced dog meat pot in the Mainland. I also raised a dog when i was young. And I think the fasting for dog meat is much about the culture hegemony built by the colonial government. Despite the morality of the cooking to killing process, it seems that the majority of Hong Kong people have draw a consensus under the colonial hegemony : “dog is the most loyal friend.”

Due to this cultural hegemony, i can only taste the hometown dishes in Hong Kong until the Laws of "Dogs and Cats Ordinance" modify or delete, but i am strongly confirmed this day will not come.

REALITY SHOWS AS A CULTURE INDUSTRY

Reality show currently appears in this way: the core survival and competitive, the wild reality show, the environment for the spectacle of the original multi—region, the most typical of the United States (Survivors) series, my all time favorite among all reality shows. They are just digging the audience that can grasp the thrill element to enhance the attractiveness ratings to obtain substantial return. Actually, reality TV shows is entirely western part of the Culture Industry.

Admittedly, these programs do have with the people’s daily lives and experiences coincide this may be one reason for the audience they attract, But more importantly, the program is hidden behind the commercial and business capital of the logic. And this is the Culture Industry in the entire television business logic.

Adorno said, the culture industry product as a commodity, it is all the motivation to put the pursuit of profit devoted to various cultures. Formally, the culture industry is now straightforward to put efficiency into the first place, its ultimate purpose is to pursue profits. The culture industry product as a commodity , is a cost—effective, and therefore can be traded.

From this perspective, reality show have been treated as commodities to be traded, because you want to play the program must first obtain broadcast rights funding, while the broadcast The reason to buy the broadcasting rights were nothing more than to derive greater Economic benefits. The purpose is to collect from the advertiser that advertising costs can be realized. In television culture industry, television programs and the homogenization of content and business logic of the internal operation is obvious.

TV has been or is becoming a consumer culture, and today’s consumer culture is a pleasure culture, and television programs are fully exploited with pleasure significant resources. hidden in people’s hearts desire to become a physical material they choose to direct basis. In  <survivors> in a brutal competition for human consumption in the infighting and intrigues. In these programs, sex, privacy, and brutal competition is not only constitute an important element in the program, and became the program itself, and they’ ve become important elements to attract audiences. In <survivors> such programs, the money become the only goal, in order to focus on conflict and the digestion of the living conditions of people in real life and goals of diversity; show strongly stained people to achieve their goals by any means, exposing all the dark side of human nature, at the same time cooperation, mutual assistance, tenderness side of human nature is good and others were the greatest degree of weakening.

Today,many television stations are under the control of commercial capital, and therefore must follow the business logic, commercial capital purpose of profit, the West is the current reality show, is an effective carrier, such as the United States <survivors> to create the nation’s highest continuous thirteen weeks top of the ratings, the ratings up to 28, its advertising revenue also set a single set of 3 36,000,000 in the price. The reality show is the culture industry in the television ratings can be achieved by the business logic of the carrier, the ultimate goal is to maximize Economic benefits. The reason why China introduced the West to mimic and even reality TV show, nothing more than also see such programs received high ratings bring good Economic returns.