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Oriental Monk as Popular Icon: On the Power of U.S. Orientalism

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 79; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jaarel/lfr014

1477-4585

Mark Lewis Taylor,

Asian American and Pacific Histories

What images has U.S. popular culture deployed in representing Asian societies and religious life? How might U.S. popular culture call for new critical engagements of Edward Said's theories, as in his Orientalism? In what manner do popular impressions of the Asian sage, such as the “icon of the Oriental Monk,” as Iwamura terms it, catalyze such old stereotypes as “the inscrutable Oriental, the evil Fu Manchus, Yellow Peril, heathen Chinese and Dragon Ladies?” More particularly, how was the Oriental Monk icon and his “spirituality” variously reconstituted by media treatments in the 25-year period marked, first, by D.T. Suzuki's impact in the U.S. (1950–58), then by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1966–69), and the television series, Kung Fu (1972–75)? How might the Oriental Monk icon still be at work today in the kid-friendly orientalist dimensions of Star Wars, Karate Kid, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Xiaolin Showdown, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Kung Fu Panda? Moreover, what happens if we view all this within a matrix of sexual and racial politics, and against the backdrop of a U.S. search for global sovereignty from the end of World War II to the present?