时间：6月6日 星期四晚上7:00-8:30

地点：丽泽D406

题目：“Chinese-Australian Cultures: Gambling in The Last Chip by Heng Tang”

演讲人：Dr. Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia

Dr. Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia holds a doctoral degree in Literature (2005). She has conducted interdisciplinary research in the fields of visual, gender and postcolonial studies, including on South Asian, African, British and Luso-American authors. She has published extensively in domestic and international journals and is the author of the book Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque: Texts of Contemporary Excess (Peter Lang AG, 2011). Recently, she co-edited the collection of essays Intercultural Crossings: Conflict, Memory, Identity (Peter Lang AG, 2012).

演讲内容简介:

Salman Rushdie has famously affirmed that “multiculturalism is the latest token gesture towards Britain’s blacks, and it ought to be exposed, like ‘integration’ and ‘racial harmony’, for the sham it is.” Australia’s sense of national identity strongly draws on notions of multiculturalism as a way, on the one hand, to overcome the trauma of the perpetrator regarding the indigenous people’s genocide and, on the other, to advertise a culture of tolerance regarding its immigrants as a clear counter-reaction to the long period of the White Australia policy (officially between 1901-1973). However, there have been social signs revealing the cracks in the multicultural veneer, not unlike what has happened in countries like Great Britain and notably Canada.

In The Last Chip (2006), director Heng Tang addresses a major theme of Australian popular culture, gambling. Though the activity is in fact transverse to all ethnic groups, including of Anglo-Celtic origin, it has been associated with the Chinese community almost since the great migrating wave of the 19th century gold rush. From its incipience, gambling has been regarded as evidence of the group’s vice-prone character. In his film, Heng Tang explores the role of gambling in social relations, emotional yearnings, and the flimsiness of one’s success. The director/writer’s focus is on an all-female group where each woman displays distinct personality and attitude towards gambling, supported differently by elements which in Chinese tradition accompany the ritual of gambling.