{"id":6709,"date":"2016-03-12T17:36:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T17:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=6709"},"modified":"2016-03-12T17:36:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T17:36:49","slug":"for-my-next-impression-josephine-owens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2016\/03\/for-my-next-impression-josephine-owens\/","title":{"rendered":"For my next impression, Josephine Owens!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ms29_000_ModernSketch\"<\/a>This is a cover from the Shanghai magazine Modern Sketch<\/em>. If you want to learn more about the magazine, you can go here<\/a>. What I find interesting about this cover is that it is celebrating\u00a0 the success of the “people of color” at the 1936 Olympics. Who is this lady? Helen Stephens <\/a>would seem a possibility, although it does not look much like her.1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 It actually looks like a cross between Jessie Owens<\/a> and Josephine Baker<\/a> to me, which may be the point.<\/p>\n

1936 was of course the Nazi Olympics, and most Americans know how Jessie Owens stood up for the American principle of racial equality and humiliated Hitler.2<\/a><\/sup> As far as I know, nobody has written about these Olympics from an Asian point of view. According to Wikipedia<\/a> there were a number of non-white winners in Berlin. India defended its gold in field hockey, but I am not sure how familiar Chinese readers would have been with that sport. Son Kitei won the marathon for the Empire of Japan, but since he was actually Sohn Kee-chung <\/a>and a Korean it does not seem likely that a Chinese publication would emphasize him. The suggestion that Asians could only be modern under Japanese tutelage does not seem like it would sell many magazines.\u00a0 Khadr El Touni<\/a> of Egypt won gold in weightlifting, and he shows how slim the choices are if you want a non-white, non-colonized winner.<\/p>\n

There should have been another option, however. Lots of Chinese people had been hoping that Yang Xiuqiong would bring back gold for China in swimming.\u00a03<\/a><\/sup> The Mermaid was China’s heroine, model for women, and spokeswoman for the New Life Movement.<\/p>\n

\"YangXiuqiong_0912\"<\/a> \"c2010128111428530(2)\"<\/a>\"43b74a7c6e45996a269d019bfde4d4c8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s complicated. See Gao’s book. When she went to Berlin she stood shoulder to shoulder with blond women.<\/p>\n

\"Scanned-image-4-0\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She lost. China loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser, and so she became a national laughingstock. Here is the back cover of the same issue of Modern Sketch<\/em> showing Yang with her goose egg.<\/p>\n

\"Modern-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So it is not that surprising that the front image shows a woman. If you want to emphasize China’s national humiliation, and that was a huge theme in the 1930’s, you need to tie it to Yang, so you need a female winner. Frankly, given the level of anti-African racism in China it is not surprising that Modern Sketch<\/em> would emphasize the contrast with a figure that is half Jesse Owens (who won) and half Josephine Baker, given that many of the magazine’s jazz-listening readers would have been familiar with the star of Danse Sauvage<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>and her image of African …sexuality and primitivism? <\/span><\/p>\n

So, if you (or I) are looking for a nice set of images to teach about gender and internationalism in China, here you go.<\/p>\n

Gao Yunxiang’s book<\/a> is an excellent source on this. Also see Morris, Visualizing Modern China <\/a><\/p>\n

  1. not that it would much matter to Modern Sketch<\/em> ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>

  2. Soon after that we came to the aid of Poland  ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>

  3. Gao, Yunxiang Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China\u2019s National Crisis, 1931-45<\/i>. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013. p.178 is where all this comes from.  ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is a cover from the Shanghai magazine Modern Sketch. If you want to learn more about the magazine, you can go here. What I find interesting about this cover is that it is celebrating\u00a0 the success of the “people of color” at the 1936 Olympics. Who is this lady? Helen Stephens would seem a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,122,125,197,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diplomacy","category-events","category-gender","category-propaganda","category-visual-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1Kd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6709"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6724,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709\/revisions\/6724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}