Inventory of Pain: Watching the Asian Body on Western Screens and But the Girl

Abstract

The title of this thesis, “Inventory of Pain,” draws on Edward Said’s idea that Orientalism was an attempt to “inventory the traces upon me [him], the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals” (25). In this thesis, I make an inventory of the painful traces upon me and others like me from being constructed both vaguely and specifically as an “Asian” body in Australia. In my work, being constructed as an Asian body is not taken as an abstract or theoretical idea. Rather, it is described as a material and mundane, sticky and violent, lived and living experience. I use mainstream Australian and American films and television sh..