A Cross Cultural Interpretation and Semiotic Analysis of the Stereotypical Visual Material Contains Slant-eyed Imagery Produced by the Contemporary Western Fashion Industry A Dissection of a Photograph Displayed at ART’N DIOR Exhibition in the year 2021 in Shanghai

Sammanfattning

ABSTRACT This thesis, by using visual analysis, content analysis, and discourse analysis to comprehend and explain mainly a controversial photograph, shot by a world-renowned Chinese visual artist named Chen Man, containing slant-eyed imagery which was displayed at ART’N DIOR Exhibition in Shanghai from November 12 to 23, 2021, reveals the practices of the contemporary Western fashion industry overzealously depicting Asian figures with a genre that slanted eyes are one of the key components in their promotional and advertising materials. This article then demonstrates how the stereotypical slant-eyed imagery associated with Asian people when it comes to their appearances could be understood in varied cultural perspectives, to be more exact, a generic cultural sphere of East against West paradigm in which this kind of imagery is of drastic different symbolic meanings and myths throughout changed historical context. Following this analytical process driven by Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory is a discussion regarding how such a supposed genre of ought-to- be racially disparaging imagery containing Asian figures with slanted eyes has been created, solidified, and normalised by the Western fashion industry as the signifier of imagined oriental exoticism reinforcing the institutional Western-centrism through the perspective of discourse, the cultural phenomenon reflecting societal power structures proposed by Michel Foucault, among the global society. The conclusion drawn from these case studies and analysis in this thesis is that the slant-eyed imagery described in the article clearly exemplifies the cultural aspect of postcolonialism in which the Western culture maintains an influential, dominating, even oppressing position over other cultures.