In TED talk about avoiding single story, the speaker introduced the danger of single story, which might cause stereotype; and her way to avoiding single story, which was writing novels to demonstrate different stories about her homeland.
Her story meant something to me, since I also came from a “mysterious” country. I felt better than the speaker, maybe because China is way more large than the speaker’s country. But I could also find stereotype in films and TV shows. In the film Transformers IV, almost every Chinese character was good at Kongfu; In Gravity, when Sandra Bullock floated into Tiangong 2 (Chinese space station), there came a ping-pong and ping-pong bats. Come on, who can play ping-pong in a zero-g environment?
I didn’t mean these things were all bad. I treated these things as a process of western people accepting Chinese culture. What I really felt pity about is, there so many beautiful things in our culture and history, but only a few people tried to share these things with people from different cultures well. An Li, the director of film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, did what I expected. But only one film is far from enough. We need more art works to introduce our culture and spirit, and avoid single story.
Her story meant something to me, since I also came from a “mysterious” country. I felt better than the speaker, maybe because China is way more large than the speaker’s country. But I could also find stereotype in films and TV shows. In the film Transformers IV, almost every Chinese character was good at Kongfu; In Gravity, when Sandra Bullock floated into Tiangong 2 (Chinese space station), there came a ping-pong and ping-pong bats. Come on, who can play ping-pong in a zero-g environment?
I didn’t mean these things were all bad. I treated these things as a process of western people accepting Chinese culture. What I really felt pity about is, there so many beautiful things in our culture and history, but only a few people tried to share these things with people from different cultures well. An Li, the director of film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, did what I expected. But only one film is far from enough. We need more art works to introduce our culture and spirit, and avoid single story.