Devising Journal #4

Week 4, 31st August 2022

For the entirety of Week 3 through 4, my group and I had been reading up on this phenomenon called Cultural Politics. It was our research focus and would form the backdrop for our graded presentation. Together, we decided to focus on the male gaze and orientalism, and tie them together through the common theme of the self and the other, as well as how superiority complexes lead to the objectification and sexualization of the voiceless other.

One of my primary concerns for Lady White Snake, as I have explored in my previous journal entry, is the idea that she is either the holy mother or the unholy war, with absolutely no room for her character or individuality. When we dig deep into the roots of feminist ideology, we realize that the message is simply about allowing women to exist and thrive on their own terms, without the burden of labels issued by a patriarchal society and its unwarranted consequences. As a result, three of the guiding questions that shaped my role in the presentation would be: 

1. How do you tell a snake demon from a human - what stereotypes or proxy measures are we using?
2. How accurate are those stereotypes or proxy measures?
3. Why do we feel the need to tell the difference anyway?

Furthermore, in considering the concept of cultural politics, I reorganized the term into the question of how power shapes culture - which I then explored through the idea of the male gaze and orientalism. The commonality between both types of prejudice comes from a superiority complex and an inflated sense of ego, which leads to the subjugation of the other through social structures that have been inflicted by the dominant voice. As a result, any deviance from this imposed structure is regarded as unnatural and therefore evil. There is hence a sense of constant suspicion which pervades across such politics, in which anyone who is, or is suspected of being, the other would be subjected to undue scrutiny for their words and deeds.

In this way, our group planned an activity that seeks to allow the class to ask themselves those same aforementioned questions, and uncover our individual biases towards Lady White Snake. The premise was simple: We gave each classmate a prompt on paper, where they are either a human or snake. The catch? It's a very specific movement that would cause confusion to most people - how do you tell the difference between a commando crawling in terrain and a snake slithering on the ground? After much discussion and speculation, we revealed the answer and quite often, the results surprised everyone. Some of us were so sure that one of our classmates would be a snake that when we revealed there were no snakes in that around, we were met with stunned silence.

While this was merely a fun exercise, we wanted to bring in the concept of discrimination, which extends to the male gaze of Xu Xian and Fa Hai. Why did we consciously or subconsciously gravitate towards one choice? Did anyone consider that no one in Harlem was a witch? Did anyone guess that no one in Lady White Snake was a snake demon? While our final presentation may change, I simply wanted to say today - yeah, they are different, maybe they are demons. But did they have to be demonized? Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing are naturally good souls who try their best to help others and to protect the people they love. However, every choice they make is construed as something evil and insidious, or worse, something that they must be punished for.

After the break, we were given a poem - "Syntax". We could do anything with it, and we were given a prompt to improve on our performance after the first round of presentations. One of us used an orange umbrella as a prop. I improvised a song out of it. Some turned it into an ensemble scene. Some of us even performed it in Mandarin. Through this exercise, we discovered the individual strengths and possibilities which each of our members could bring to the table.

Between this week and Week 5, we will be visiting Haw Par Villa to experience the space and culture of Lady White Snake, before we regroup to discuss our thoughts.