Faces Personal Face, Saving Face, and the Face of the Nation

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FacesPersonal Face, Saving Face, and the Face of
the Nation

• Chris Perez
• David Smith
• Alex Wiker

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Identity Personal identity deals with questions
about ourselves qua people (or persons). The most
common question is what it takes for us to
persist from one time to another. What is
necessary, and what is sufficient, for some past
or future being to be you? Rashomon M.
Butterfly
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Personal Identity
Defines who you are as an individual and makes
you unique How you present yourself to
others Identity can be lost or a new one can be
aquired
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Evidence of Identity
How do we find out who is who? How do we know if
a person is the same then as now? Memory Rememberi
ng you did something usually means it was you
doing it. Sometimes the truth is warped or
adjusted to the perception of yourself or how you
would like others to see you. Physical
Continuity If the person who did it looks just
like you, or even better if she is in some sense
physically or spatio-temporally continuous with
you, that is reason to think she is you.
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Rashomon The Face of Truth What you want to
believe and what you want others to believe.
Each retelling of the incident made the story
teller to be the righteous character Protecting
their self-image was so important, that from the
evidence it still isnt known what actually
happened
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Character Identities
Speaker
Can memory supply all evidence, or does it only
work when checked against a third party?
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M. Butterfly The Face of Deception What you want
others to believe that you are, deliberate and
misleading.
Appearance can be deceiving -Random fortune
cookie Song - submissive, Chinese
female Gallimard - masculine, American male Are
these identities acquired in response to each
others needs?
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Saving Face

• f. to save one's face to avoid being disgraced
  or humiliated. Similarly, to save (another's)
  face. Hence save-face adj. face-saving ppl.
  adj. s.v. FACE n. 27, and absol. as
  n.  Originally used by the English community in
  China, with reference to the continual devices
  among the Chinese to avoid incurring or
  inflicting disgrace. The exact phrase appears not
  to occur in Chinese, but to lose face (tiu
  lien), and for the sake of his face, are
  common.
• --Oxford English Dictionary

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The concept of Face?

• Refers to the concepts of mianzi and lianzi
• Lianzi is the confidence of society in a
  persons moral character.
• Mianzi represents social perceptions of a
  persons prestige.
• Face translates into power and influence.
• A loss of lianzi would result in the loss of
  trust.
• A loss of mianzi would result in the loss of
  authority.
• The concept of face is incredibly important and
  historically significant.
• During the Tiananmen protests of 1989, Wuer
  Kaixi, student leader, scolded the Premier Li
  Peng for being late to a meeting in an attempt to
  cause him to lose face.

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Appearances and Characters

• The Greatest Event in Life Hu Shih
• Mrs. Tien - superstition
• Mr. Tien - ancestry
• Miss Tien Ya-mei - progressive

Hu Shih
The True Story of Ah Q Lu Xun Ah Q -
self-delusion Imitation Foreign Devil -
conformity
Lu Xun
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Mrs. Tien

• Mrs. Tien trusts the superstitious forecast of a
  fortune teller and a slip of paper given to her
  by the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin.
• -Spiritual Person
• -Fears offending spirits / the gods / the
  universe
• -Saving face in the eyes of the cosmos.
• Mrs. Tien is not concerned with recovering lost
  honor but instead worries over the potential of
  losing face. Should her daughter marry an
  incompatible man, as the fortune teller has
  predicted, the marriage would fail, subjecting
  Mrs. Tien to
• -criticism for not listening to the fortune
  teller
• -loss of honor from her daughters unsuccessful
  marriage

Kuan Yin
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Mr. Tien

• Mr. Tien trusts rules and customs and relies
  upon the records of the clan to make his
  decision.
• He remains so hung up on tradition that he
  doesnt care about anything else.
• It makes little difference that I dont accept
  it. Society accepts it. Those clan elders
  accept it.
• He maintains a fear of losing face in the eyes
  of society and of dishonoring his ancestors.
  Doing right by past members of the family holds
  more value than respecting current members of
  the family.

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Ya-mei

• Regardless of what her parents say, she is
  resolved to marry who she chooses.
• Upon her fathers rejection of her mothers
  reasoning
• Thank you, we ought to trust our own judgement,
  isnt that so?
• What matters is how one views themselves, not
  how society, spirits, or the gods view them.
• Hint at a progressive way of thinking, dropping
  the traditional importance put on face.
• The final stage direction Mr. Tien dashes to
  the right-hand door, but as he reaches it he
  looks back with a wide-eyed, helpless look of
  hesitation and uncertainty suggests he too
  realizes his daughters happiness is more
  important that the saving of face, yet he doesnt
  know how to cope with it.

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Ah Q
Foolish, tragic protagonist Uncanny ability to
twist any situation to convince himself he has
avoided any insult. Self-delusional to a fault,
so concerned with saving face that he lies to
himself and others to maintain a positive
image. -held his ringworm scars as
honorable -claiming he had been beaten by his
son was enough to win -considering himself
an insect granted him victory Unconcerned with
how others feel He looked down on all the
inhabitants of Weichuang, thinking even two young
scholars not worth a smile Sets a double
standard, so self absorbed yet completely
unconcerned with the honor of others.
Ah Q confronting Young D
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Imitation Foreign Devil

• Concerned with how he is portrayed on an
  international level.
• Sacrificed face in the eyes of his family by
  changing his appearance to conform to a more
  western style to gain face in the eyes of an
  international audience, an audience hell never
  have
• When he came home half a year later his legs
  were straight and his pigtail had disappeared.
  His mother cried bitterly a dozen times, and his
  wife tried three time to jump into the well.
• Ah Q dubbed him Imitation Foreign Devil and
  Traitor in Foreign Pay
• -once again attempting to dishonor others while
  he should only worry about himself

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The Face of a Nation
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Preliminary Comments

• Art is a primary force in the creation of
  nationalism
• We see this not only in film and writing (as
  witnessed in this class) but also in
  advertisements, the news, on clothing, and so on
• One must ask what is the purpose of the creation
  of this piece of art?
• Few writers of consequence write purely to
  entertain
• We should also ask whose voice is it?

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South/North Korean Faces

• This class reinforced the notion that N. Korea is
  a land without art
• Both in depiction and lack of voice
• Thus, it is difficult to identify the face of N.
  Korea
• Always from an outside POV
• N. Korea, on the other hand, seems rife with only
  one issue The N/S divide

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• Shiri was released in 2001
• Beyond the DMZ was released in 2003
• Both were produced by S. Koreans
• Yet, they portray N. and S. Korea vastly
  differently

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North Korea

• In Shiri N. Koreans are depicted as being poor,
  animalistic, mindless, unhappy, fanatical
  nationalists
• NKs repressed economy seems a product of
  backward ideology
• In Beyond the DMZ, however, N. Korea is a
  smooth-running nationalistic machine filled
  with modern, happy people who even dance
• NKs repressed economy seems a product of lack of
  compassion from the world

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Obviously, Shiri is a blockbuster motion
picture and Beyond the DMZ is a documentary.
Is it safe to say that both are biased in some
way? How?
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American Faces

• In The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Whos Irish
  (1999) America is presented
• Through the eyes of immigrants from Taiwan and
  China
• Using both American and Chinese (Taiwanese)
  characters simultaneously
• In America

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• Based on language, the respective audiences are
  different
• WB is geared toward Taiwanese/Chinese
• WI is geared toward the English world
• America and Americans are painted in a more
  positive light in WB
• Simon is decidedly more successful, caring, and
  harder working than the Irish husband
• America is a land of affluence in WB vs. a land
  of adversity in WI

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• Wedding Banquet was directed by a Taiwanese
  director and Whos Irish? written by an
  American
• Why is Gish Jen so much harsher toward America
  than Ang Lee?
• On a larger scale, how do each of these mediums
  reinforce the face of America the melting pot?