Wednesday, 8/1, afternoon session - Stanley Rosen, USC

[Wen Shi]

Professor Rosen's lecture was very inspiring and interesting in many aspects. For example, the Chinese government spent billions of US dollars to improve the national images how ever it didn't acheive much. My question is what's the purpose of spending such great amount of money to improve "national image" instead of giving the money back to the peope to improve their life quality such as fair eduacation,more efficient  healthcare system and senior care. 

Every year my students who take Chinese class would ask me lots of questions not only about traditonal Chinese culture, but also modern China including pop culture, policies and politics. For example, when asked if I am the only child in the family, my 6th graders were very surprised that I am because of one child policy. There's many different voices about the policies. Therefore, I plan to show students thoese different opinions so that they can come up with their own conclusion.

 

 

[Aileen Level]

This afternoon's lecture fleshed out some of the ideas about Chinese film that we studied earlier in the week. It was interesting to hear more about the lack of even domestic Chinese interest in overt propaganda stories and an interest in streaming foreign series and finding ways to get around censorship. 

The magazine covers made me wonder about ways to incorporate the ideas of political cartooning in some of my lessons. The challenge is how to do so without accidentally encouraging the students to be disrespectful to other cultures and to be sure they don't slide into racist portrayals. With 6th and 7th graders, it would probably need to include a "this is okay/this is not okay" section -- possibly including some historical images such as the racist Dr. Seuss images from the World War II era.

Also, I'm now VERY curious about movies like "Kung Fu Yoga." I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like.

[Gerlinde Goschi]

Dr. Rosen's presentation was very interesting.  I learned a lot about the state of the Chinese economy, how important it is to Hollywood today and about China's soft power.  Soft power, the term coined by Joseph Nye of Harvard, is not linked to the government in the United States.  In contrast, in China, it can not exist apart from the government. Although China spent a bigger sum on soft power than the United States, it has not been as successful as the US.  Dr. Rosen stated a key point very clearly: "In China's hierarchy of values, influencing the behavior of other countries is more important than soft power, therefore, soft power is sacrificed."  An interesting point was brought up in class by our colleague.  In the US, we, the citizens are the executors of soft power. We are exporting and spreading, attracting and sharing American values wherever we go.  I like this perspective.  In my own class, I would show a clip of a movie Dr. Rosen showed us.  We would discuss it as a class, and relate it back to the lesson I will teach about tradition/values.

[Shad Springer]

When teaching statistics and probability in sixth grade math, one of the strands requires students to summarize and describe distributions in graphed data. Dr. Rosen's graphs involving domestic box office sales in China and the U.S. would be excellent tools to use during this lesson. When examing the charts, I could task with them a number of questions like: What's the difference in gross domestic sales of Chinese films versus American films? What is the median film in each chart? How do the two charts compare? How much more does the top grossing foreign film in China compare with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's sales in the U.S.? If you were to take this data and make a histogram, what would your intervals be? And so on and so forth. This is my opening chapter in math--one that I'll be beginning in a couple of weeks--and I'm excited to supplement the boring charts in the book with these much more engaging ones! 🙂 

[Donna Jamshidnejad]

This is a great idea! I once had AP Government students create New Yorker covers and they turned out really creative. When looking at the Economist covers in class, I noticed a trend of continuties and changes over time depending on the historical context of the period. "Continuities and changes" is one of the main themes of AP World History, so I wonder how I can use these magazine covers or an equivalent media source in class. Students are expected to analyze sources and find/analyze the themes of the course. Maybe I can provide magazines, images, etc. and ask students to connect them to one of the themes with an analysis using the documents. 

[Juan Liebana-Mena]

Dr. Rosen’s lecture was not only very interesting but quite revealing about the influence of west culture in modern china. It really helped me understand the focus china wants to play as a leader at a world stage. The John Oliver clip was a lot of fun to watch but it also explained this Chinese global expansion very intelligently. Also, I learned that in china’s hierarchy of values, influencing the behavior of other countries is more important than soft power; soft power is sacrificed. The whole point of soft power is to try to create an international environment where others will be more included to cooperate.

An ironic fact professor Rosen covered is that of how American soft power has been successful precisely because it is not linked to the American government, whereas the Chinese promotion of soft power hardly exists apart from the efforts of the government. This shows of culture and entertainment is can be more influential and powerful than politics and laws.

During the last sections of professor’s Rosen, we were able to dissect graphs about soft power by nation, approval rates, China box office and movie rankings, and analysis of TV shows. This was quite telling about the importance of the Chinese market for Hollywood films, which also connected with the ideas that Michael Berry discussed during his Monday’s lecture.

 

[Nira Sun]

As a Mandarin teacher, I often use movies as a media to introduce Chinese culture values and perspectives to my students.  I found that as an engaging and helpful way for students to truly understand different values and how they are presented in movies. However, I have never been exposed to the concept of “soft power” until today’s afternoon lecture. On the slide, it was mentioned that “Chinese soft power is focused on the domestic audience since political and social stability are higher values to China”. I can’t agree with this statement anymore. I remember when I was little, we used to watch lots of cartoons about historical events, idioms, myths, and legends. What we were asked the most was “What did you learn from the story?” or “What is the educational purpose of this story?”. Instead of serving as an entertainment product, the function of the cartoons changed.

Nowadays, I use movies and stories in my classroom to help my students understand the values and concepts. Certainly, we do not intend to use cartoons or movies to enforce any mentality or values to our students. However, stories are undoubtfully the most engaging way to get students involved. Most of my students comprehend the cultural values more effectively by remembering the plots in the stories or cartoons they watch. We have done a comparison between the Chinese comic books/cartoons with American ones in the classroom. Students found out an interesting fact that in Chinese comic books/cartoons, animals are usually being personized by having the power of talking and thinking like human beings. The most famous one was the monkey and the pig in the Journey to the West. The Monkey King is specially considered as a superhero because he fights against bad guys and saves his Master all the time with his countless changes of tactics. In comparison, humans are usually given special powers to become superheroes in American comic books. I guess we can tell by the names of “superman”, “batman”, “Iron man”, and “wonder woman”. They have to be men and women to begin with before they are given special powers. We use visual arts in classroom mainly to discover similarities and differences between eastern and western cultures. With these many Chinese movies played in theatre now, I don’t know how much Chinese soft power has been imposed into the society or our students’ minds. However, as classroom teachers, we sincerely hope all the visual arts we introduce to the classroom can help our students to become open-minded human beings who embrace and appreciate different cultures.

 

[Jane Shen]

Teaching Mandarin in public high school, I shoe some famous Chinese movies in my teaching, such as " To Live" to explain the Chinese historical transition for the last 100 years, " Earthquake" to show family values , " Hero" for Chinese revenge phylosopies. My intention is to help my students understand Chinese customs and culure. Every time when I showed my classes these Chinese movies, I was amazed to see that my students were quite into the movie . I had never thought of the " Soft Power" which these teaching would make to my students lives.

ThroughProfessor Rosen's lecture today, I had a better idea of the Chinese "Soft Power" to the western world, I would definately include in my teaching more variety of visual medias to enrich my classroom.

 

[Donna Jamshidnejad]

As I mentioned in class, I feel that the discussion of imperialism was left out when discussing American soft power. While Professor Dube mentioned East Asia does not view whiteness as superior, it is still viewed as superior in much of the world. Our culture is not powerful simply because of Hollywood and current popular culture. European and U.S. ideologies such as Social Darwinism in the past helped build our "soft power" earlier than was discussed in class. 

[Mayra Brady]

I felt Professor Rosen lecture had a lot of statistics that I never thought of comparing China and other countries economics with the United States the way Dr. Rosen convey them.   He shared great visual graphs and posters that made it a little better to understand how some movies made lots of money and some didn't. I  also didn't know what Soft Power was.

[Ruth Hickman]

This is the first time that I had heard of the term “Soft Power” with Professor Rosen's lecture which inspired interesting conversations and creative ideas for lesson plans. I learned that China began in the late 1990s to really use soft power, and now stands as the region’s largest investor in various instruments of soft power like social media outlets. In about 15 years, China has created new foreign language TV stations, revamped its management of the foreign media, surged its student exchange programs, founded some 320 Confucius Institutes at overseas universities (with plans for another 1,000), and played host to a series of major events like the Olympic Games. Moreover, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have all started spending significant sums on various aspects of public diplomacy. Even Myanmar has set up English language TV stations and acquired a social media presence. South Korea is expanding the number of King Sejong Institutes, tasked with promoting Korean language and culture, from about 35 to 150 by 2015. I already use lots of visual culture in my classroom teaching tv/video production however, I will be sure to include more visuals about the Chinese-Hollywood connections, Nollywood and Bollywood.

 

 

[Jacqueline Mercado]

Professor Rosen's discussion of the Chinese and American dream is both interesting and illuminating.  The American dream, the idea that regardless of his or her background anyone can prosper due to the freedoms and economic opportunity the US offers to all, is apppealing to many younger Chinese.   The concept of the Chinese dream is relatively new and it is interesting to see the similarities and differences between these two dreams.  Both dreams espouse economic prosperity and as China's economy grows, it is logical that China wants its cultural appeal to grow in influence globally.  In "The Chinese Dream in Popular Culture," Professor Rosen points out that while the American dream emphasizes individual success and prosperity, the Chinese dream is more about the nation rather than about individual success, true to China's socialist ideals.  Younger Chinese, however, are not invested in this vision  but rather find aspects of the American dream more appealing such as individual success and materialism rather than self sacrificing for the interests of the nation.   Happiness is tied to material possessions in China more than anywhere else in the world. This is quite remarkable and points to a shift in perspectives and values.  The collective good while important is now secondary to individual pursuits.  This reality not only creates a dissonance between old and new values within China but also a challenge for the Chinese government as it works to achieve greater influence abroad.   

[Anthony Pollard]

     I am tempted to declare this lecture as the premiere influential lecture of the series. Professor Rosen's exposition about soft power is a new premise for me. Professor Dube's further explanation of soft power helped me to realize the idea, usage, and effect of soft power. My comprehension of soft power is still in the emerging stage, so please add clarity or argue any premise posted herein.

     First of all, it is easy for me to express how I will share the soft power premise in the classroom (additionally, I am excited to share the East Asian cultural background I learned as support my learning about soft power.) I figure I will teach students about soft power (it can connect to American Literature), and then give them an opportunity to develop a social issue of their choice. Students will implement soft power during a week of instruction, while they record their findings, and then share their findings through a oral report.

     I understand soft power, use for this study content, as being the details use to assimulate, foster and enhance interest in a country's cultural influences (Professor Rosen presented Chinese visual culture used as a vehicle.) I realized from the several examples provided by Professor Rosen, that several countries have been using soft power, verifiable through historical contexts such as visual arts (visual arts can be seen as a strategic advantage.) Particularly, after visiting the Chinese museum, I saw the accomplished achievements and contributions brought into the United States from China (especially art.) We are oblivious to these added Chinese achievements and contributions because of the means of our American education (we just assimulate this art as being American endorsed.) The soft power affected on American residents is we greatly enjoy China's influence on American lifestyles without having to accepted China culture as a whole package (how about the idea of Feng Shui.) For example, I have been greatly influenced by Chinese health and physical fitness practices for more than 40 years (I didn't think of it as a method of soft power, but it worked.) 

     Professor Rosen mentioned that soft power is designed to internally affect a country (like its use in China to unify the people.) A possible example of a periodical exemplifying soft power is The Economist. Professor Dube corroborated soft power is a type of cultural influent. We agreed power is attraction, and causing someone to do or agreed with something they normally would not. Professor Dube expounded on the premise that soft power is [something is so interesting and attractive, people want to be a part of it.] Lastly, there are several movies produced with China in mind: soft power.

 

[Kim Leng]

In today’s lecture, I learned that China spends approximately over $10 Billion on soft power projections.  Many Chinese films promote socialist core values.  When Avatar premiered, the Chinese government took out 2D versions of the film to make room for Confucius. While some Chinese films do well domestically, Confucius flopped. People wanted to see Avatar.  Also, Chinese films have not had a successful crossover in the USA since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  

I think the reason for some films not crossing over successfully may something to do with differing messages in the movies.  While the Chinese value sacrifice and the well being of the many over the individual, Americans value the happiness and well being of the individual.  Professor calls this the differing values of the Chinese Dream vs. the American Dream.

I saw Crazy Rich Asians this weekend and when Eleanor Young tells Rachel Chu, “You’re so American.  You care about your happiness,” I am reminded of the differing values between Chinese and Americans. And this film is doing very well!  I think the love story of two people who have to overcome obstacles is a familiar plot line….one that viewers can root for. I think a comparison essay of the Chinese Dream vs. the American Dream would be an interesting assignment.

[Natali Ramon]

Nira,

I think it’s wonderful that you aim to teach our students about Chinese values with the intention of making them more open minded human beings.  I think this really helps to combat the non-reciprocal relationship that Professor Rosen talks about in which audiences in the US are not really open to films from China.  In learning more about Asian culture and thinking, I hope that students at our school will be more open to seeing cinema from other countries.  Additionally, in reading your post I also found a new interpretative lens about US culture. You mentioned that in Chinese culture, animals tend to talk on superpowers whereas in the US heroes tend to be human.  I think this difference highlights an observation I have on US values and frames of thinking.  As opposed to other cultures including my parents’ culture from abroad, many other communities tend to be community oriented whereby they act upon the better good of the community or the family.  When I think about the differences with US values and mindsets, I feel like there is a more me-centric individualistic frame of thinking.  I think the use of humans as heroes speaks a lot to this sense of me-centricity.  I wonder how your students interpret the difference of characters in films.   

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