Tag Archives: norms

BOOK: “Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird” by Henry Lien

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Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern StorytellingSpring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling by Henry Lien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site

I enjoyed, and was stimulated in thought, by the first half of this book, as well as by sections of the latter half, especially in the fourth chapter. (It’s arranged into four chapters, echoing the book’s central idea of a unique four-act approach to storytelling prevalent in Eastern societies. I’ll get to why I was not so fond of Ch. 3 later.) The book employs exemplary works of literature, film, and even video games to support the claim that there’s not just one approach to sound story crafting — but, rather, that Eastern societies developed distinct modes of storytelling reflecting their values and worldview. (A note on the use of the word “Eastern”: while the book draws heavily on East Asian sources, it tries to make a broader case suggesting not only South Asia but also the Middle East [i.e. everyplace not big-W “Western”] fit this mold. The book might have made a stronger case sticking to East Asia, as – for example – it might be argued that Arabia / Persia of the time of One Thousand and One Nights, being Abrahamic, was closer to Europe than East Asia in values and worldview. To be fair, the author does argue that some parts of that book are believed to have come from farther East (India and, possibly, beyond.))

The book proposes that there are two (arguably three) styles of story construction that are distinctly Eastern. The first is a four-act structure that is far from just a rejiggering of the three and five act forms with which English Literature students will be familiar. Incidentally, the book’s rather unusual title maps to the elements of this four-act structure. The second involves circular and nested story structure. I don’t know that the author succeeds in (or even seeks to) convince the reader that this is a uniquely Eastern approach, but -rather – makes an argument as to why it is prominent in Eastern storytelling.

The author picked an excellent set of works to illustrate his points. Generally, the works are both well-known and well-received among diverse audiences. The films he employs as cases include Parasite, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Rashomon (the latter also being a literary work.) Lien uses one of my favorite Haruki Murakami novels Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as a critical example. I was not at all familiar with the video games he describes (beyond name,) but – given that I’d at least heard of them – I assume they are pretty popular (though I can’t speak to whether they have any discernable stories and will have to take that on faith.) [I’m not sure whether One Thousand and One Nights was a good choice for Eastern literature, though it is an excellent choice as of nested structure.]

As for why I didn’t care for the book’s third part. I should point out that is the most philosophical (and the least explicitly concerned with story) part of the book, and it aims to show how values and worldview vary across cultures such that there are differences in story structure and crafting between different parts of the world. That could be a laudable objective and germane to the book’s point and it’s not why I found this section to be muddled and ineffective. The problem is that the chapter oversimplifies the issue in a way that seems to undercut a broader central argument (that Eastern modes of storytelling are underrepresented outside of the East.) Instead of suggesting that people experience conflicts along continuums (e.g. individual to group identity) and that Easterners tend come to different conclusions than Westerners do based on differing values and cultural perspectives, it engages in an elaboration of the distinctions that seems to suggest there’s some unbridgeable gulf of understanding between cultures (and, quite frankly, kind of feels like it’s shifted from making the aforementioned point to just being a thinly veiled critique of Western culture — which is fine, but probably belongs in a different book — or maybe a manifesto.) But if there were no basis for stories to resonate across this gulf, then not only wouldn’t Parasite and Everything Everywhere All at Once have killed it at both the Oscars and American box office, there’d be no reason for artists to attempt to branch out and tells stories across tribal lines. Without establishing a basis for story resonance, it’s ridiculous to argue that Hollywood should use Eastern modes of storytelling and Eastern worldviews to a greater extent. (A profit pursuing entity is always going to seek the largest possible customer base.) I’m not attempting to negate the argument that there are different approaches to storytelling among different peoples nor that more diversity of approaches shouldn’t be seen across cultures. I’m saying that this chapter doesn’t well support the argument for greater representation of Eastern modes of storytelling outside of Eastern outlets (publishers, film studios, etc.) because it spends so much time arguing the cultural differences that it doesn’t indicate how cross-cultural story resonance is possible.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting and thought-provoking read, though it was – for me – a bit muddled in the middle.

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DAILY PHOTO: Half a Tree is Better than None

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Taken December 7, 2013 in Cox Town.

Taken December 7, 2013 in Cox Town.

I took this photo yesterday in Cox Town as we were walking over to the United Charities Bazaar (a great and highly recommended event.) It’s a tree that juts out into the road next to a small Hindu temple. When they put in a flyover, they cut away quite a bit of the tree, but the part that remains seems to be thriving.

When one moves to a new country, one experiences a wide variety of cultural insights. All of a sudden, this invisible thing called culture becomes visible. There are, of course, many norms that grate on one’s nerves with respect to the culture one has been transplanted into. In the vast majority of cases, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the new culture–they are just differences, just shocks to one’s system. There are a few cultural proclivities that one can fairly say are objectively inferior, and it’s a testament to India that they are trying to fix these problems (e.g. by outlawing the caste, by trying to prevent killing off of girl children, etc.)

However, if one is honest with oneself, one also gains insight into one’s native culture, and its particular inferiorities.  As I said, we take culture so for granted that we don’t necessarily even see the peculiarities of our own culture. One of the Indian  norms that I find most laudable is the preservation of living things to the extent possible. Put alternatively, one of the norms of my own culture that I’ve come to find most dismaying is the belief that anything that causes a person the least inconvenience must die immediately.

I imagine that some Westerners in India find it to be a pain to have to step out into the street when walking down the sidewalk because there are occasionally ten-foot diameter trees hogging the whole sidewalk. In the US, they’d just cut down the big tree and replace it with a dwarf tree of some sort that would never give them a problem–and if it did, just get out the saw.

Outsourced as a Guide to Indian Corporate Culture?

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As my wife and I prepare for our move to Bangalore, we are doing research to help us avoid inadvertent insult and blasphemy . We’ve learned such useful facts as: a.) don’t tug on a Sikh man’s beard, and b.) don’t buy a statue of the goddess Durga to use as a hat rack.

Source: Dipankan001 (via Wikipedia)

Durga Source: Dipankan001 (via Wikipedia)

These are just the kind of faux pas a well-meaning but uninformed American couple might make. (Oh, you say, not really?)

Every culture has its little proclivities that seem insane from the outside, but which are so deeply ingrained as to be invisible from the inside. (In fact, I had trouble thinking up such American cultural proclivities, but I believe they exist. Our norms are just so ingrained as to be hard to see. Of course, we are also a  diverse society, a young nation, and tend toward the irreverent in the social domain– all of which may make our cultural idiosyncrasies look a bit different from those of more traditional societies.)

We’ve been reading books like Culture Shock! India, which is one of a series of books that explain the various cultural idiosyncrasies of different countries. (I was first introduced to the series through Culture Shock! Cambodia, though I have read other such books about China and Japan.)  Such guides are extremely useful for explaining do’s and don’ts. However, they don’t necessarily prepare one for the corporate culture of India, which is a mix of Indian, Western, and   multinational business cultures. For insight into the corporate culture we turned to:

OutsourcedFor those of you unfamiliar, Outsourced was a sitcom that ran for one season (2010-2011) on NBC. The premise of the show was that the manager of a novelty company call center is moved from the US to Mumbai. He becomes acquainted with Indian culture as he must teach his staff enough about American culture  so that they can communicate with the customers they are on the phone with all day. Some of the humor comes from the exposure of a very conservative workforce to products that include dildos and slutty Halloween costumes, but much of it is just cultural tension more broadly. The show was popular with critics and Americans familiar with India. Unfortunately, that was not enough to keep it on the air, particularly when Americans who buy tacky crap and couldn’t find India on a map were the butt of the joke at least as much as were Indians. (Americans who buy tacky crap and are geographically illiterate are a large demographic within the television viewing public.) At any rate, the show was clever and well-acted.

One may scoff at the use of a sitcom as reference material, but the show seemed to be well-researched. For example, I know that its discussion of the famous Indian head bobble matched the description in the cultural guide quite well. The bobble is a non answer that can mean virtually anything. The video below gives a more detailed explanation, but the visual is not so good. From what I’ve seen, most people tend to do this action more with the top of the head staying relatively stationary while the jawline swings side-to-side.

This left us wondering whether other elements of the show will ring true. The show introduced me to a new term, “holiduping.” This is when one’s employees convince a manager that a day is a holiday, when in reality it isn’t. To get the joke, you must know that Indians have enough work holidays to make US Federal employees say, “Damn, that’s a lot of holidays!” Furthermore, not all the holidays are national. There may be days taken off in Karnataka that are not in Gujarat, and vice versa. This can make it a challenge for new comers to keep track.

I’m curious as to the views of people in-the-know about how accurate Outsourced was. Most of the cast were Americans of Indian origin, but it doesn’t look like the same was true of the lead writers.