Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the impact of media representations of violence during the Vietnam War on people in the U.S., specifically how images of violence done to and by the Vietnamese were traumatic in ways that deeply affected the American psyche.
Trade Review“
The Oriental Obscene is fresh, original, scrupulously researched, and tightly argued. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong uses the psychoanalytic categories of trauma, the primal scene, and fantasy, relying centrally on the work of Jean Laplanche. She quite rightly contends that the theories of Laplanche and Deleuze can enrich each other, and she demonstrates how this works as she rethinks representations of the Vietnam War in visual media. Her book will attract a broad interdisciplinary audience, including scholars of film and media, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and critical race theory.”—
Sharon Willis, author of
High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film“Sylvia Shin Huey Chong has located the Vietnam War as the constitutive trauma of modern American nationhood, one that is particularly attached to a visuality of violence. She argues, moreover, that this trauma also serves as something of a primal scene around which whole sets of gendered and racialized positions are generated and then solidified in the public spheres of American politics and sociality.
The Oriental Obscene offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, American racial politics, popular culture, and the making and endurance of American Orientalism.”—
Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University
“Chong makes an intriguing contribution to the scholarly conversation about Vietnam War imagery with her analysis of the rise in popularity of martial arts films in the US…” -- Heather Stur * Journal of American Studies *
“Taken in the context of scholarly investigations into representations of the Vietnam War, Chong’s work is a thoughtful and important contribution to the canon. However, as an exploration of otherness and the construction of racial identities,
The Oriental Obscene also provides a valuable resource to broader areas of research in film and media theory, cultural studies and other critical approaches to race.” -- Josh Nelson * Screening the Past *
“Chong's enlightening, comprehensive study serves as an excellent addition to Asian American and media studies.... Highly recommended.” -- A.F. Winstead * Choice *
“This is an evocative study…. [A] masterful and courageous study in which the author weaves multiple theoretical strands into an integrated whole to pierce the pornographic undertones beneath the consumption of images of violence…. [T]here is no hint of exploitation or sensationalism, only a compelling argument for how the state can be imposed upon the human condition.” -- Stella Coram * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
“Chong has written a detailed and well-argued study of the portrayal of Asians in American media and society as a response to the Vietnam War. She takes the time to explain her use of sometimes difficult literary and psychoanalytical theory, making this text accessible to enthusiasts as well as academics.” -- Patrick Condiffe * Media International Australia *
“Chong’s book is a thoughtful consideration of complex, contradictory meanings in the visual archive of the Vietnam War. Her argument usefully delineates a cultural logic of race and the oriental from before and during its rescripting by the post-1965 generation of immigrants and Asian American cultural politics.” -- Paul Lai * Journal of Asian American Studies *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii
Notes on Terminology, Proper Names, and Film Titles ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Specters of Vietnam 1
1. Bringing the War Home: Spectacles of Violence and Rebellion in the American 1968 33
2. Reporting the War: Ethical Crises of Action in the Movement-Image of Vietnam 75
3. Restaging the War: Fantasizing Defeat in Hollywood's Vietnam 127
4. Kung Fu Fighting: Pacifying and Mastering the Martial Body 173
5. Being Bruce Lee: Death and the Limits of the Movement-Image of Martial Arts 209
Conclusion. Returning to 'Nam: The Vietnam Veteran's Orientalized Body 249
Notes 283
Bibliography 325
Index 353
