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7. Race and Empathy in GB Tran’s Vietnamerica

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The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Narrative Theories
This chapter is in the book The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Narrative Theories
7Race and Empathy in GB Tran’s VIETNAMERICASue J. KimThe phenomenon of facial emotion recognition technology, while well known in law enforcement circles, is not much discussed in narrative studies and will probably strike literary and cultural critics as somewhat bizarre. Paul Ekman, the well-known pioneer of facial emotion recognition who was named one of Time’s 100 most infl uential people in 2009, is founder of the Paul Ekman Group. For $99–299, you can take an online training programme that will enable you to become ‘an expert’ on facial expressions that are universal, regardless of race, gender, class, religion, and so on. Their Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) is ‘a research tool useful for measuring any facial expression a human being can make’ (‘Paul Ekman Group’ 2016), used by law enforcement as well as Pixar animators. Their training tools also include the ability to read ‘microexpressions’, or fl eeting facial expressions, that betray a person’s emo-tions; this skill has become the basis for the TV show Lie to Me. According to Ekman, these tools, which apparently can be learned in 50–100 hours, ‘have been used by a variety of organizations – all of the three-letter intelligence and law enforcement agen-cies on a national level’ (qtd in Beck 2015).A 2015 Atlantic article attempts to temper these claims, noting that ‘Ekman now considers physiology, appraisal, subjective experience, and antecedent events (you have an emotion about something) to be distinctive characteristics of emotion, along with facial expression and a few other factors’ (Beck 2015). But this level of nuance is absent from the pronouncements on the training website, which offers these technologies as tools to profi le supposed criminals and terrorists. In the era of Black Lives Matter, Islamophobia, and the alarming popularity of demagogues, this technology of power shows some of the repercussions of the widespread acceptance of certain versions of cognition, particularly empathy and recognition of emotion in facial expression, despite vociferous debates within cognitive psychology and related fi elds. In other words, understanding emotion, expressions of emotions, and our ability to read emotions as situated is politically and ethically imperative.This chapter engages the possibilities and challenges of facial affect recognition and narrative empathy. After an overview of debates over facial affect recognition and its relationship to empathy, I take up GB Tran’s award-winning graphic memoir Vietnam-erica (2010), considering how Tran’s graphic narrative can provide insight into how we read faces and emotions in a racially and politically charged society. In addition to play-ing on the old racist chestnut that all Asians look alike, Vietnamerica both draws on and complicates standard notions around facial affect expression, recognition, and empathy. 5733_Dinnen&Warhol.indd995733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 9906/04/1811:45AM06/04/18 11:45 AM
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

7Race and Empathy in GB Tran’s VIETNAMERICASue J. KimThe phenomenon of facial emotion recognition technology, while well known in law enforcement circles, is not much discussed in narrative studies and will probably strike literary and cultural critics as somewhat bizarre. Paul Ekman, the well-known pioneer of facial emotion recognition who was named one of Time’s 100 most infl uential people in 2009, is founder of the Paul Ekman Group. For $99–299, you can take an online training programme that will enable you to become ‘an expert’ on facial expressions that are universal, regardless of race, gender, class, religion, and so on. Their Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) is ‘a research tool useful for measuring any facial expression a human being can make’ (‘Paul Ekman Group’ 2016), used by law enforcement as well as Pixar animators. Their training tools also include the ability to read ‘microexpressions’, or fl eeting facial expressions, that betray a person’s emo-tions; this skill has become the basis for the TV show Lie to Me. According to Ekman, these tools, which apparently can be learned in 50–100 hours, ‘have been used by a variety of organizations – all of the three-letter intelligence and law enforcement agen-cies on a national level’ (qtd in Beck 2015).A 2015 Atlantic article attempts to temper these claims, noting that ‘Ekman now considers physiology, appraisal, subjective experience, and antecedent events (you have an emotion about something) to be distinctive characteristics of emotion, along with facial expression and a few other factors’ (Beck 2015). But this level of nuance is absent from the pronouncements on the training website, which offers these technologies as tools to profi le supposed criminals and terrorists. In the era of Black Lives Matter, Islamophobia, and the alarming popularity of demagogues, this technology of power shows some of the repercussions of the widespread acceptance of certain versions of cognition, particularly empathy and recognition of emotion in facial expression, despite vociferous debates within cognitive psychology and related fi elds. In other words, understanding emotion, expressions of emotions, and our ability to read emotions as situated is politically and ethically imperative.This chapter engages the possibilities and challenges of facial affect recognition and narrative empathy. After an overview of debates over facial affect recognition and its relationship to empathy, I take up GB Tran’s award-winning graphic memoir Vietnam-erica (2010), considering how Tran’s graphic narrative can provide insight into how we read faces and emotions in a racially and politically charged society. In addition to play-ing on the old racist chestnut that all Asians look alike, Vietnamerica both draws on and complicates standard notions around facial affect expression, recognition, and empathy. 5733_Dinnen&Warhol.indd995733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 9906/04/1811:45AM06/04/18 11:45 AM
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Illustrations viii
  4. Acknowledgements x
  5. Notes on Contributors xi
  6. Introduction 1
  7. I. Mind-Centred and Cognitive Approaches to Narrative
  8. 1. What Does It Mean to Be Mad? Diagnosis, Narrative, Science, and the DSM 15
  9. 2. The Nonhuman in Mind: Narrative Challenges to Folk Psychology 30
  10. 3. Narrative and the Embodied Reader 43
  11. 4. The Fully Extended Mind 56
  12. 5. Sense-Making and Wonder: An Enactive Approach to Narrative Form in Speculative Fiction 67
  13. II. Situated Narrative Theories
  14. 6. Cosmopolitanism, Controversy, and Collectivity: Zadie Smith’s Networked Narration 81
  15. 7. Race and Empathy in GB Tran’s Vietnamerica 99
  16. 8. Till Death Do Us Part: Embodying Narratology 117
  17. 9. Digital Intimacies and Queer Narratives 132
  18. 10. The Cinema of the Impossible: Queer Theory and Narrative 145
  19. III. Theories of Digital Narrative
  20. 11. Cinema and the Unnarratability of Computation 157
  21. 12. Plotting the Loop: Videogames and Narratability 174
  22. 13. Serial as Digital Constellation: Fluid Textuality and Semiotic Otherness in the Podcast Narrative 187
  23. 14. UI Time and the Digital Event 202
  24. IV. Theories of Television, Film, Comics, and Graphic Narrative
  25. 15. Continued Comics: The New ‘Blake and Mortimer’ as an Example of Continuation in European Series 213
  26. 16. Operational Seriality and the Operation of Seriality 227
  27. 17. Closer Than They Seem: Graphic Narrative and the Senses 239
  28. 18. Episode Five, or, When Does a Narrative Become What It Is? 256
  29. 19. Media Theory as Narrative Theory: Film Narration as a Case Study 273
  30. V. Anti-Mimetic Narrative Theories
  31. 20. Digital Fiction and Unnatural Narrative 289
  32. 21. Lyric Poetry as Anti-Mimetic Bridging in Narratives and Motion Pictures: A Case Study of Affective Response to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) 305
  33. 22. Speculative Fiction, or, Literal Narratology 317
  34. 23. Unnatural Endings in Fiction and Drama 332
  35. VI. Philosophical Approaches to Narrative
  36. 24. Narrative and the Necessity of Contingency 347
  37. 25. Local Nonfi ctionality within Generic Fiction: Huntington’s Disease in McEwan’s Saturday and Genova’s Inside the O’Briens 362
  38. 26. The Story of the Law 375
  39. 27. The Centre for Narrative Gravity: Narrative and the Philosophy of Selfhood after Dennett 389
  40. 28. The Body as Medium: A Phenomenological Approach to the Production of Affect in Narrative 399
  41. Index 417
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474424752-011

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Illustrations viii
  4. Acknowledgements x
  5. Notes on Contributors xi
  6. Introduction 1
  7. I. Mind-Centred and Cognitive Approaches to Narrative
  8. 1. What Does It Mean to Be Mad? Diagnosis, Narrative, Science, and the DSM 15
  9. 2. The Nonhuman in Mind: Narrative Challenges to Folk Psychology 30
  10. 3. Narrative and the Embodied Reader 43
  11. 4. The Fully Extended Mind 56
  12. 5. Sense-Making and Wonder: An Enactive Approach to Narrative Form in Speculative Fiction 67
  13. II. Situated Narrative Theories
  14. 6. Cosmopolitanism, Controversy, and Collectivity: Zadie Smith’s Networked Narration 81
  15. 7. Race and Empathy in GB Tran’s Vietnamerica 99
  16. 8. Till Death Do Us Part: Embodying Narratology 117
  17. 9. Digital Intimacies and Queer Narratives 132
  18. 10. The Cinema of the Impossible: Queer Theory and Narrative 145
  19. III. Theories of Digital Narrative
  20. 11. Cinema and the Unnarratability of Computation 157
  21. 12. Plotting the Loop: Videogames and Narratability 174
  22. 13. Serial as Digital Constellation: Fluid Textuality and Semiotic Otherness in the Podcast Narrative 187
  23. 14. UI Time and the Digital Event 202
  24. IV. Theories of Television, Film, Comics, and Graphic Narrative
  25. 15. Continued Comics: The New ‘Blake and Mortimer’ as an Example of Continuation in European Series 213
  26. 16. Operational Seriality and the Operation of Seriality 227
  27. 17. Closer Than They Seem: Graphic Narrative and the Senses 239
  28. 18. Episode Five, or, When Does a Narrative Become What It Is? 256
  29. 19. Media Theory as Narrative Theory: Film Narration as a Case Study 273
  30. V. Anti-Mimetic Narrative Theories
  31. 20. Digital Fiction and Unnatural Narrative 289
  32. 21. Lyric Poetry as Anti-Mimetic Bridging in Narratives and Motion Pictures: A Case Study of Affective Response to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) 305
  33. 22. Speculative Fiction, or, Literal Narratology 317
  34. 23. Unnatural Endings in Fiction and Drama 332
  35. VI. Philosophical Approaches to Narrative
  36. 24. Narrative and the Necessity of Contingency 347
  37. 25. Local Nonfi ctionality within Generic Fiction: Huntington’s Disease in McEwan’s Saturday and Genova’s Inside the O’Briens 362
  38. 26. The Story of the Law 375
  39. 27. The Centre for Narrative Gravity: Narrative and the Philosophy of Selfhood after Dennett 389
  40. 28. The Body as Medium: A Phenomenological Approach to the Production of Affect in Narrative 399
  41. Index 417
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