Abstract

When Anda, the main character of Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang’s 2014 graphic novel In Real Life, completed her first raid, her inventory includes both lobok (the Chinese word for white radish) and omusubi (a kind of Japanese rice ball), revealing an interesting quirk about Coarsegold Online—the massively multiplayer role-playing game that is the novel’s primary virtual setting. Coarsegold Online is not representative of real life (as the title might suggest) but an uncanny reflection of the disparate and dismissive ways people often engage with consumption in media and in real life. The game’s careful ambivalence regarding the cultures it draws inspiration from which allows for the curious creation of restaurants displaying a fork-and-spoon offering a “” (111) containing a miscellany of blue fantasy foods, (Japanese) tempura shrimp, (Chinese) xiaolongbao, and a slice of (Western) cake. By examining In Real Life using the definition of techno-Orientalism proposed by David Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta Niu, I argue the digital society in In Real Life is “driven by the imperial aspirations and the appetites of consumerist societies” (Roh et al, 3) and ignores broader social implications of Orientalist Othering in favour of a marketable and consumable superficial depiction that merely ‘borrows’ from Asian culture and aesthetics. This paper explores the worldbuilding potential of incorporating Asian and Western epistemologies, and how food media (especially video games and graphic novels) might be able to engage with ideas both helpful and harmful in shaping our relationship with food.

Presenters

Shuyin Yu
Student, Ph.D., University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2022 Special Focus—Imagining the Edible: Food, Creativity, and the Arts

KEYWORDS

Media Literature Asian Orientalism

Digital Media

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