Being college students,
many of you may have had the chance of seeing the US version of a TV
show called “The Office.” In season 7, episode 10 of the show,
entitled “China,” there is a large talk brought upon by regional
manager Michael Scott into the office with regards to objects being
made in China. He exclaims that “stuff used to be made here in
America, but now we're falling behind.” this reflects upon me as a
remnant of the xenophobic racialization of degradation brought upon
by the Chinese immigration scare during the 19th century.
It also demonstrates the extention of american exceptionalism into
material culture, by giving this premise that anything china makes,
the US can make in a much better quality.The underlying artifact of
xenophobia is further expanded by the comments made by receptionist
Erin Hannon, and saleswoman Phyllis Vance, when they showed
distraught and asked “What do we do? How do we stop this?”
The episode hinted upon
material culture, but seemed to primarily focus on foreign fear, not
wanting to be bested by foreigners, such as in the case of the debate
between Michael Scott, and Accountant Oscar Martinez. Oscar is
portrayed to be the smartest peron in the office, completely
contradicting Michael Scott's thoughtless and foolhardy mind process.
The debate was with regards to China, and michael was clearly
overwhelmed, but he gives a small speech with regards to freedom,
which is completely out of the topic, and manages to win the cheer of
the employees. Even though Michael scoot was completely incoherent at
the end, he is a white male, and was then portrayed to being
victorious.
Not everything in the
episode is negative with regards to foreigners. Oscar does give the
remark that nowadays, everyone uses china as a scapegoat, being
similar to japan during the 1980s, due to the immense economic boom
of the time (Japan had the second highest gross national product in
the world, just behind the US, thus bringing up concern from
Americans).
Scott is talking about our freedom that we can chose to win or lose to China, but really what freedom do we have? Again, some Americans think that we can achieve anything if we put our heart and mind to it. But we have glass ceilings for groups of people: females, minorities, homosexuals and disabled people. In America, we are a capitalist society where capitalists, who are mostly white males, control or exploit the working class. They try to make it seem like everything, the American Dream, is okay and achievable for everyone to hide the fact that they actually create inequalities and exploit the environment. Therefore, we always need government interventions such as high taxes on rich people to fund poor people, excise taxes to control pollution, and affirmative action. China is just a way to distract Americans from actually seeing what is really going on in our capitalist society. Capitalists do not want a revolution to change society and focus on a fake enemy, anyone who is doing better. So that Americans think that we need to work harder, the self-made man, and continue the progressive cycle of capitalism.
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