Essay On China Blue Discussion Question

After viewing the movie China Blue identify and explain one example for each level of the Iceberg Metaphor (p. 28­–37) that you observed in the movie. The levels are (1) Surface-level culture; (2) Intermediate-level culture; (3) Deep-level culture; and (4) Universal human needs. How are the examples you selected from Chinese culture similar to or different than U.S. culture?
The movie China Blue shows the life of laborers in China and the human rights violations therein by following the life of a teenage Chinese girl who works in a company called Lifeng Jeans. If the iceberg metaphor is applied to the movie, the following deductions can be made.
The surface-level culture is exemplified by the company owner’s interest in calligraphy and his lifestyle. He is the true epitome of the world’s image of a prospering China, where the lifestyle of the common man has improved with the economic boom. The U.S., is similarly given an image of the land of “rich and immoral” by many eastern nations because of the media propaganda. However, the fact that many Americans continue to struggle with poverty and strive to live decent lives is often forgotten.
Intermediate-level culture is shown by the owner’s conception of the difference between iron fist and relaxed styles of management and a democratic society. The westerners’ view that the workers lead a “good” lifestyle as they can “go home for lunch,” the owner’ is another example, and here the western or American view that having a lunch break is difficult during work hours is shown. However, they fail to realize that this issue in the Chinese context.
The deep-level culture is rampantly exhibited in the entire film. The manner in which the owner conceives his employees’ lifestyle in context to his own is obviously ill formed. When he arrived in the city, he was poor and young, and this leads him to believe that his young employees should work inordinately hard to reach a good place in life. Similarly, he justifies his use and exploitation of underage laborers because he was himself underage when he worked as a laborer and thus, deprived of a childhood. Contrarily, in the U.S., people remain very aware of the labor rights, and the degree of exploitation is very less.
The universal human needs are shown when the young girls, who live and work in conditions of exploitation, talk about their looks and tease each, for instance, when one of the girls maintains a secret diary they tease her for writing a love letter. Thus, they seem to have interests similar to any American girl of their age, who thinks about her looks, maintaining diaries, a love letters.