When The Other Speaks Out:

Identity and Self-Exoticism in The Joy Luck Club, East is East and
Planet of the Apes

Nausheen Ishtiaq

Media Theory Research Paper
The New School
Fall 2013
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
2

When "The Other" Speaks Out:
Identity and Self-Exoticism in The Joy Luck Club, East is East and Planet of the Apes

This paper investigates the process of self-exoticism as a means of articulation of "the Other's"
identity, focusing on three films The Joy Luck Club, East is East and Planet of the Apes. I aim to
explore the formation of the identity of the "Other" in these films and whether the expression
of this identity is assimilative, conformist or progressively re-interpretative, vis--vis the white
supremacist hegemonic discourse (hooks, Hebdige). I will be analyzing the formation of the
Other's identity through three lenses: the role of language in these films, drawing upon Ngugi
Wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind, the depiction of the "Other's" "own" (often discarded)
"native" culture, illustrating Stuart Hall's models of hegemonic ideologies and
encoding/decoding, and the hyperconsciousness of the Other as he/she believes he is
perceived by the hegemonic discourse, employing Dick Hebdige's theoretical framework of
culture and hegemony.

I've chosen these three films because all three represent the Other from the point of view of
the Other (all three have been directed and/or written by members of the minority race that is
being depicted). All three films are also linked by the fact that the Other is displaced from his or
her "original" country (or community) and transplanted into a "Western", hegemonic or
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
3

otherwise imposingly superior culture. Lastly, all the films are made for a "Western" audience
so the Other situates herself in the society that she has been displaced to. The film choices are:
The Joy Luck Club (1993) is a drama film directed by Wayne Wang (a Hong Kong born
Hollywood director), based on a novel by Amy Tan, a first generation American Chinese
author. The film follows the lives of four Asian women who fled China amid war and
severe hardship and arrived in America, and their four daughters who are first
generation American Chinese. The Others in this film are the daughters, who are faced
with negotiating their identities in America as well as diving deeper into their Chinese
histories.
East is East (1999) is a comedy drama film written by the British Pakistani playwright
Ayub Khan-Din, which traces the trials and tribulations of the Khan family and set in the
UK in the 1970s. The family is headed by a staunch, conservative Pakistani patriarch who
marries a British woman and settles in Manchester, opening up a Fish and Chips shop.
The children of the Khan family are the protagonist Other in this case, as they are first
generation British Pakistanis, struggling with forming and articulating their identities
amidst the clash of a conservative Pakistani upbringing and a somewhat racist British
society.
Planet of the Apes
1
(1968) is a classic science fiction film, depicting a futuristic world
where apes have gained superiority over the human race, and man has been reduced to
a mute "savage". The protagonist, Taylor, is part of an astronaut team that crashes on
Earth unknowingly and unintentionally. This film is especially interesting because the

1
I am only using the first film of the Planet of the Apes series for this paper originally released in 1968.
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
4

Other is the human, and the superior, dominant race is that of the apes. The Other has
been displaced from his familiar home planet (Earth in 1972) to an unfamiliar space
(Earth in 2673), and has to confront the dominant race (the apes) as well as a primitive
version of his own species.

As media is often saturated by what Hebdige terms as "dominant discourses about reality",
embodying "the dominant ideologies", I was fascinated by what the Other chooses to say when
he or she seizes the stage and speaks for themselves instead of allowing oneself to be
"Otherised" by the hegemonic discourse. In "Intersections, Representations & Exoticism", Edson
Cabalfin defines self-exoticism as "how art deco became an instrument by which Filipino
architects presented themselves as 'exotic'". This is one definition of self-exoticism. I propose
another definition: the process by which the Other "exoticizes" her own "original" or "native"
culture. I will use the latter application of the term in this paper, to explore the articulation of
the Other's own identity through self-exoticism.

Language The Other's appropriation of English versus "native" tongues:
All three films are mostly in English. The apes in Planet of the Apes have learnt to speak and
write perfect English. The children in East is East can not only speak in English, but their accents
are almost indistinguishable from the "native" speakers around them. The daughters in The Joy
Luck Club speak English fluently. This echoes Wa Thiong'o's claim that "English was assumed to
be the natural language of literacy". He spoke about Africa but this claim could easily be made
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
5

about the American hegemony that the Chinese women found themselves in, the British
society that the Pakistani-British children grew up in and the ape-filled Earth that Taylor finds
himself on. The very fact that the apes in Planet of the Apes could speak in English provided not
only a natural bridge for the human to communicate with them, but also clearly distinguished
the human from the rest of the mute humans around him.

This is the "categorical positive embrace" (Wa Thiong'o) that all the "Others" seem to have
given to and received from the English language. For the Chinese mothers in The Joy Luck Club,
this embrace of English is enunciated very clearly at the beginning of the film. During the
anecdote that is narrated over the opening credits, it is proclaimed that:
"No one will look down on her because I will make her speak perfect American
English"
This echoes Wa Thiong'o's personal experience while studying at a colonial school in Kenya:
English was "the ticket to higher realms", and "became the measure of intelligence and ability".
In Planet of the Apes, the fact that the apes have mastered the English language and
appropriated it as their own is aurally the first indication for the protagonist as well as the
audience that they are "intelligent". On the flip side (from the point of view of the apes), the
usage of English is the most critical indicator that Taylor, the protagonist, is an intelligent life
form different from the "Others" in his species. The other humans are not even given a
primitive language to speak in the film perhaps implying the absolute superiority of English as
a language.

When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
6

In East is East and The Joy Luck Club, the "Other" unabashedly admits to not understanding the
"original" language of the "Other" (the one that belongs to the Other's "native" country) and
this is a fact that is laughed over and treated lightly in both films. In The Joy Luck Club, the
protagonist, June, jokes about how she doesn't like the older women at her mah-jong table
talking in Chinese because she would not know whether they are cheating or not. Incidentally,
Wa Thiong'o predicts this behavior: "the possibility of using mother-tongues provokes a tone of
levity". In East is East, the protagonist sons are stuck at a brunch surrounded by members of
the expatriate Pakistani community. The sons exchange glances signifying that they do not have
a clue about (nor do they care much about) the on-going Urdu conversations around them.

This brings us to a critical pattern of self-exoticism of one's own culture in each film: in all three
films, there is a clearly marked "Other" from within the Other's own culture who cannot speak
English properly. In The Joy Luck Club, all the "mothers" women who originally immigrated
from China to the US speak in broken English. In East is East, the father, who embodies the
"Pakistani" tradition in the family cannot speak in fluent English, despite revealing that he has
been in the UK for 25 years. In Planet of the Apes, the other humans are silent, devoid of all
language. Thiong'o's claim about the dual nature of a language as "both a means of
communication and a carrier of culture" comes into play here as all three films show the
inextricable link between the "Other's" culture and his/her language. The use of Urdu and
Chinese by the "older generations" signifies the speakers' tenacious association with their home
countries. When the older expatriates in East is East get together, they prefer to speak in Urdu.
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
7

The use of broken English by the same demographic signifies the fragility of their forged links
with their adopted cultures.

Thiong'o's claim that the "gradual accumulation of values" is transmitted through language is
evident in the way that the protagonists in both East is East and The Joy Luck Club are not just
fluent in English, but also firmly rooted in the "American" and "British" ways of life. Thiong'o
claims that "the colonial child was made to see the world and where he stands in it as seen and
defined by or reflected in the culture of the language of imposition". This childhood learning
and appropriation of the "colonial" English language is depicted in both The Joy Luck Club and
East is East: in both films, the protagonists belong to second-generation immigrant families and
have therefore grown up learning the colonial language as their own.

The consequent "deliberate undervaluing" of one's "own" culture, according to Thiong'o, is
evident in all three films as part of what I term self-exoticism. In both films, the protagonists
see themselves as "outside oneself as if one was another self" (Thiong'o). This is critical to the
articulation of the self-identity of the "Other", as not just alienated from the rest of the (more
"authentic") "Others" but as clearly equating one's "native language" and thereby one's
culture- with "low status, humiliationbarbarism". In East is East, Tariq proudly proclaims "I
speak English, not Urdu!" during a dramatic exchange with his father about asserting his own
identity as a non-Pakistani. Throughout the film, Tariq also repeatedly refers to Pakistanis
derogatorily as "fuckin' Pakis". In The Joy Luck Club, June, one of the Chinese daughters born in
America, angrily exclaims to her mother
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
8

"I'm not your slave this isn't China"
In Planet of the Apes, this undervaluing of one's culture by "the Other" can be seen as the
underdevelopment of human culture itself and the resultant unquestioned subordination to the
apes by the humans.

The Other's Other -The Other's expression of identity through denouncing
Otherness:
In all three films, the protagonists clearly declare their affiliation with the hegemonic culture: in
The Joy Luck Club, one of the protagonist daughters, Rose, exclaims "I'm American!". In East is
East, one of the protagonist sons, Tariq, says "I'm not Pakistani!" In Planet of the Apes, the
astronaut Taylor vehemently denies the scientist chimpanzee's theory trying to link him with
the evolution of the intelligent ape species: "I'm not a missing link".

The articulation of the Other's identity is made clearer through a diametric opposition to the
Other's "native" culture. The Other illustrates a set of beliefs that often resonate with the
dominant hegemonic ideology. Mulvey claims that voyeurism in cinema often takes the form of
"taking other people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze". Both
East is East and Planet of the Apes depict "subconscious (hegenomic) ideology" through the
"gaze" of the Other looking at the "Other's" "authentic" depictions in disdain. Both films depict
crowds of the "Other" as unruly and chaotic. In East is East, when the family visits a town that
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
9

has a large Pakistani population (unlike the family's hometown), the protagonist sons look at
the crowds of Pakistanis gathering around the shops in the streets and exclaim:
"There's hundreds of them!"
The gaze of the "Other" looking in upon what it was, what it dissociates itself from, is one of
alienation, shock and disgust. In Planet of the Apes, the three astronauts gaze upon the crowds
of "primitive" humans in horror. There is almost no association with this "raw" depiction of the
Other. One of the astronauts exclaims:
"At least they haven't tried to bite us"
These claims of barbarism come naturally from the "Other's" mouths almost as if they were
uncontestable. Hebdige uses Stuart Hall to exemplify this sheer power of being immersed in a
dominant ideology so much so that it becomes common sense: "You cannot learn, through
common sense, how things are: you can only discover where they fit into the existing scheme of
things".

In all three films, the Other also asserts his or her identity through a complex system of signs.
As Stuart Hall states "it is at the connotative level of the sign that situational ideologies alter
and transform signification". In all the films, interior dcor, traditional art and objects and music
play a vital role in portraying the "Otherness" of spaces. In The Joy Luck Club, one can spot
various forms of "oriental-looking" art in one of the protagonist's parent's houses. Critically, this
art comes into view precisely at the beginning of a scene that depicts a clash of cultures
between the young protagonist and the older generation mother. In contrast, the interiors of
the daughter's houses in America exemplify modern and post-modern minimalist architecture.
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
10

In East is East, the youngest son of the Pakistani-British family looks at traditional headgear
used at weddings and exclaims:
"They just look funny"

Music is used at critical moments, not just to signify moods, but to signify cultures and often,
the Other's association or dissociation with the signified culture. Drawing on Frithe's Discourse
of World Music, "the authentic itself becomes the exotic". The usage of "oriental" sounding
music accompanying certain scenes in both East is East and The Joy Luck Club serves a dual
purpose. First, the music signals that what we're seeing on the screen is meant to be
interpreted as the "authentic" experience from the land of the Other. On a secondary level, the
Other in these scenes is often depicted as uncomfortable, indifferent or disdainful which
could imply that the Other denounces the music (and thereby the "authentic" culture) herself.
For instance, stereotypical "oriental" music is used in certain scenes in The Joy Luck Club that
depict the stories of the mothers in China, as well as during "forced" weddings. In contrast, in a
scene depicting one of the young protagonists watching TV, one can audibly hear American
media. In this scene, the young protagonist chooses to actively engage with the media herself,
and is seen enjoying it as her own.

Using Hall's theory that codes signify "maps of meaning" and hence "maps of social reality", one
can decode the music and dcor as guiding our own interpretation of whether the material on
the screen is "exotic" (and hence rejected by the Other) or "hegemonic" (embraced by the
Other). In East is East, two of the family's sons are seen at a cinema, partaking in a family
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
11

outing. The music Indian, from an Indian film. They are sitting, signifying passivity, and they
exchange indifferent glances, implying a lack of association with the content. The very next
scene shows them sneaking away to a disco, playing loud British pop: the scene shows both
sons gyrating to the tunes hence actively participatory, and associative with the music. The
consumption and appropriation of the hegemonic music signifies an appropriation of the
hegemonic discourse.

In both East is East and The Joy Luck Club, the Other depicts the "native" culture as more exotic
than seems to be necessary. I propose a "negotiated decoding" (Hall) of the ritualistic marriage
scenes depicted in both films.

In both films, at the traditional wedding scene, the bride and groom are veiled and have never
seen each other prior to their wedding day as per the traditions followed by their families. In
The Joy Luck Club, the bride is led to the altar by a female figure, and in East is East, the bride is
led by her father, with a hand on her back. In East is East, the camera pans and lingers over long
scenes depicting the bride and groom decked out in traditional wedding garb. In both films,
"traditional" music is used to emphasize the traditional nature of the event. The hegemonic
reading of this scene would take the signs at face value, and interpret that Pakistani and
Chinese wedding customs are usually a traditional affair, infused with the matriarchal or
patriarchal elements shown as dominant throughout the ritual. However, a negotiated reading
would interpret this as the director's desire to illustrate the "Otherness" of the custom by
depicting it as exotically as possible. The focus on the veiling of the bride's and the groom's
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
12

faces could be interpreted as the willingness of the followers of the "Other's" "native"
traditions to be blindfolded and led. The long camera pans could be interpreted as the gaze of
the hegemonic discourse voyeuristically looking in on the Other, taking in every exotic detail
(Mulvey). The resistance shown to the matriarchal and patriarchal figures in both wedding
scenes could be interpreted as the protagonist's resistance to the Other's "authentic" culture
where (it is assumed that) such ideologies would be dominant and pervasive.

Interestingly, all three films depict that the Other can assume the identity of the Other if time
and circumstances necessitate it. This is similar to Fiske's theory about the consumer of popular
culture using it as a tool to "confirm, resist, negotiate" one's own identity. The Other
sometimes uses her Otherness as a robe that she can slip on or off. In Planet of the Apes, the
protagonist aggressively attacks the chimpanzee scientist to get to her notepad and scribble her
a message. In doing so, he conforms to the barbarism that the apes accuse the humans of. In
East is East, the young protagonists in the family half-willingly don traditional clothes in an
attempt to look more "Pakistani" when a traditional Pakistani family comes to visit them. In The
Joy Luck Club, when one of the protagonist daughters introducers her fiance to her Chinese
family, she acts as an insider, guiding him through Chinese customs.

"Am I the Other?" - Hyperconsciousness of oneself as the "Other"
In all three films, the Other is intensely aware of being stereotyped as the Other, by the
dominant culture and depicts this stereotyping in the derogatory language used by some
members of the dominant culture to address the Other. In Planet of the Apes, the protagonist
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
13

Taylor is referred to several times by the apes and chimpanzees as "this beast", "this creature",
"dirty", "natural born thief". These derogatory remarks illustrate Hebdige's claim that "the most
primitive anxieties concerning the sacred distinction between nature and culture can be
summoned up by the emergence of (the Other)".

In The Joy Luck Club, one of the protagonist daughters faces direct racial confrontation by her
fiance's mother, who has a "politically correct" conversation with her about how her
"orientalness" could affect her son's success in his career:
"We're a liberal familybut he's going to be judged by people of a different
standardThey won't be as understanding as we are"
In East is East, the children of the British Pakistani family are apologetically labeled by their own
mother as "a bit foreign". In another scene, when a family comes to visit the protagonists, the
neighbors of the family shout:
"Let one in and the whole fuckin' tribe turns up"
The deliberate use of the term "tribe" signifies the association of the Other with a more
primitive social organization structure.

It is perhaps this fear of being stereotyped that leads the Other to minimize the differences
between her own beliefs and the dominant ideology. In Planet of the Apes, Taylor presents a
cynical view of humanity during his sarcastic speech at the beginning of the film:
"Is man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradoxdoes he still make
war against his brother, keep his neighbor's children starving?"
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
14

This echoes the apes' claims about the barbaric nature of man: at the end of the film, the ape
scientist Dr Zaius asks for a reading of the holy scrolls that the apes follow:
"Beware the beast man, for he is the devil's pawnhe kills for sport or lust or
greed..Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land"

In all three films, the behavior of the Other "incorporating" their Otherness within the
dominant ideology illustrates Hebdige's theories of incorporation of subcultures within the
dominant mythology to "situate it within the dominant framework of meanings". In East is East,
one of the young protagonists happily dances to a Bollywood song, but does not fully
understand it's meaning. In another scene, the boys in the family are depicted in an Islamic
school, repeating Arabic words in different accents without any attempt to translate or
understand them. This demonstrates Hebdige's ideological transformation of the other into
"meaningless exotica".

In The Joy Luck Club, when one of the protagonists introduces her non-Chinese boyfriend to
Chinese customs in her family, she states:
"Thank God I'd already trained him on the Emily Post of Chinese manners"
This reference to Emily Post signifies not only an ideological reframing of the "Chinese
manners" in more familiar terms to a western audience, but also signifies the protagonist's own
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
15

struggle with the "translation" of her "Other" culture. In this case, "otherness is reduced to
sameness" through a process of naturalization and domestication (Hebdige).

Despite renouncing Otherness, the Other in all three films maintains a relationship with his or
her "exotic" self or past: In The Joy Luck Club, the Chinese American daughters indicate genuine
interest and curiosity in their mother's stories. The film ends with one of the protagonist
daughters, Rose, travelling to China to reconnect with her biological twin sisters. In East is East,
the Khan family remains intact, indicating on-going negotiations with the overbearing patriarch.
In Planet of the Apes, the protagonist, Taylor, rides off at the end of the film with an "inferior"
human female, who he has developed an attachment to.

Postcolonial architecture critic Sibel Bozdogan claims: "As much as artists are not creative
geniuses working in full autonomy, neither are they unequivocal instruments of politics or
ideologies they may serve or chose to operate within". This examination of the articulation of
self-identity of the Other yields neither a simple denial of the Other's own "native" culture, nor
is it a confirmation of the assimilation of the Other into the hegemonic discourse. Fiske's theory
about the plaisir of popular culture as a means of negotiating self-identity can be applied to the
negotiation of the self-identity of the Other as well: the Other's identity and its articulation is
rooted in dominant ideology but not conforming absolutely to it. The Other recognizes "social
difference" between herself and the hegemonic discourse and uses the media that she creates
as an assertion of her own "subcultural rights and identity (Fiske). The Other does not always
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
16

wish to be identified as the Other, and neither does she completely get assimilated within the
dominant discourse. Instead, the Other creates a complex space for herself, which is
somewhere in between the hegemonic and the subordinated, and often adopts multiple
identities based on context, time and circumstances.
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
17

Bibliography
Bozdogan, Sibel. Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the
Early Republic. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. 2001.
Cabalfin, Edson. "Intersections, Representations & Exoticism." National Commission for
Culture and the Arts. N.p., 01 Mar. 2004. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
East Is East. Dir. Damien O' Donnell. By Ayub Khan-Din. Perf. Om Puri, Linda Bassett.
Film Four, BBC, Assassin Films, 1999. DVD.
Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Print.
Frithe, Simon. "The Discourse of World Music." Western Music and Its Others:
Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. By Georgina Born and David
Hesmondhalgh. Berkeley: University of California, 2000. N. pag. Print.
Hall, Stuart. "Encoding/Decoding." Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Edited by
Meenakshi Gigi. Durham and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. N. pag.
Print.
Hebdige, Dick. "From Culture To Hegemony, Subculture: The Unnatural Break Media
and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Edited by Meenakshi Gigi. Durham and Douglas Kellner.
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. N. pag. Print.
hooks, bell. Eating The Other: Desire and Resistance" Media and Cultural Studies:
Keyworks. Edited by Meenakshi Gigi. Durham and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2001. N. pag. Print.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. N.p.: n.p., 1999. Print.
When "The Other" Speaks Out
Nausheen Ishtiaq
18

gg a Thiongo. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature. N.p.: Heinemann, 1986. Print.
Planet of the Apes. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. Screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod
Serling. By Pierre Boulle. Perf. Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter.
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 1968. DVD.
The Joy Luck Club. Dir. ayne ang. y my Tan. erf. hin Tsai hinh iu isa u
and France Nuyen. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc., 1993. DVD.