Is the 'chinky eye' cartoon an insult to the Chinese?


Recently, the cartoon "I Am What I Am" has caused quite a stir, with some suggesting that the images of the animated characters, who do not have the handsome faces taken for granted in such a product, have been cast in stereotypes more expected of some racist Western artworks.To get more news aboutchinkyeyes, you can visit shine news official website.

This criticism is unfounded for the following reasons.

Firstly, beauty is skin-deep, probably an impression created at first sight, but constantly enriched or modified by in-depth knowledge.

In this animated comedy, we follow the growth of three left-behind children, A Juan, A Mao and A Gou, who, under the capable hands of former lion dance master Xian Yu Qiang, overcome numerous difficulties to become first-rate lion dancers.

Since its debut in Guangzhou on 12 December, the film has become a box office hit, promising even greater things for the upcoming Spring Festival.

Through its realistic portrayal of these underprivileged youths, the film sends the message that for those who dare to pursue their dreams, their humble origins need not be a hindrance; because these youths are inherently ambitious, they exude a charm of their own, and their commonplace physiognomy, rather than a handicap to their motivational power, makes them more realistic and commendable, for these faces are exactly what we might encounter on the street.

If beauty is as beauty does, it is heartening to learn that this is still true, if box office receipts are any guide.

Secondly, as beauty becomes increasingly deceptive, available for purchase in clinics and aggressively propagated on the ride of Hallyu (Korean Wave) or its Japanese counterpart, decades of exposure to these highly artificial images of internally empty beauties is boring, and clearly many find it refreshing to see someone like you and me. As one critic remarked, someone who saw "I Am What I Am" would wonder, "When was the last time I saw such a slice of life in a film?

Zhang Miao, the film's executive producer, concurred, saying, "In our conception of the images, we deliberately tried to keep a distance from the kind of beauty typical of an online celebrity or the effect produced by a mobile phone filter ... think of your friends in real life and conjure up the images of A Mao and A Gou for yourselves.

Thirdly, the accusation of creating Chinese images to pander to some Westerners' distorted perceptions of "chinky eye" or "slanty eye" Chinese or Orientals is unfounded, because these images were only derogatorily Orientalised in certain contexts to highlight the kind of beauty canonised by some Westerners. Such compromising contexts and connotations, as explained above, do not exist in "I Am What I Am".
Ironically, some people's instinctive reactions to these "chinky eyes" reflect on their judgement as fatally dictated by Western aesthetic standards.

If you look at the beauties of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) or the models in Shanghai advertisements at the beginning of the last century, you will marvel at how our standards of beauty have changed. To put it mildly, most of these beauties were much healthier.

In other words, for the director to portray these heroes in this way, refusing to conform to the Procrustean aesthetic criteria of the West, the film defiantly shows a kind of cultural confidence in refusing to conform to the homogenised images of beauty that are seen as 'universal'.

The portrayal of these faces as commonplace is also a technical imperative. As the director Sun Haipeng explained, if the hero were shown as a handsome figure with big eyes, it would somewhat undermine the story's power to inspire and motivate.

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