Theories and researches on post-colonialism and nationalism have long discussed the embodiment of female body into the land and nation. It is often supposed that the imagined boundaries of one's community and borders are tightly administered through masculine fantasy over the female and desirous body, the body that is penetrated by phallus which in its order protected and propertied. Assia Djebar once mentioned in her novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, that women of Arab berber tribes became more cloistered and more veiled under the invasion of French, than prior the colonization. In this case the invaded Algerian territory becomes tantaumont to pentrated female body, the "motherland", the direct consequence of which becomes placebo effect a.k.a. psychological impotence influence by shame, loss of masculine integrity.
The reason I invoked Assia Djebar's work is that, in lieu of my observations in recent years an active cultivation of masculinity in Mongolian society, there emerged almost blatant chauvinism, sometimes even taking form of blind misogyny directed towards women.
Along with cult-like following of Chinggis Khan, the ultimate patriarch to the nation, and endorsing of such masculine activities such as wild animal hunting which are traditionally considered masculine, here it can be observed that my nation has developed almost fetishistic obsession with phallus. The example of once shunned but resumed hunt for misplaced phallic symbol can best be depicted through much talked about exploration for ancient patriarch's remains. It was done as if invoking violent history of Mongol empire could restore the nation its virgin state previously invaded by Soviet ideology or Manjchurian oppression. Thus there is need among Mongolians to look for not recent, invaded by Manjchus, Russians, history, but to look somewhere in pre-history when the myth of the nation woven out of pure Mongol mother's womb, Maral Goo exists. It becomes the ultimate male fantasma to possess the female body and motherland.
If the nation is unable to establish its phallic ideals, the society develops external symptoms of underlying psychological impotence manifested through male frustration and hereto raised alertness towards female population. Perhaps I should recall here one of the early works by Chinese film-maker Zhang Yimou, Judo, where impotent husband is portrayed also as abusive partner who likes to invoke sadistic rituals on his wife played by young Gong Li. In the film we see feudalistic social order as the ultimate abusive but impotent factor that affects the social immobility and frustration all carried out on Gong Li's body. Whereas in our case it can be identified through shifting economic borders, where female bosy is represented as shiftable global commodity and thus male paranoia about Mongolian woman whoring herself to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or to whoever from West.
Our contemporary world dictates certain looked at ness in women as such exhbitionism is encouraged through popularity of traditional model of femininity where women are ultimate beautiful images to cast gaze upon. Social websites with aspiring model girls, modeling agencies, and cultivation of appreciation of feminine beauty is an attempt to control national asset such as the female body and naive female attempt to gain her subjectivity through instant exposure to male gaze. In this instance Lacan was right when he said that image is pornographic. By starring in his film Gong Li, the Chinese screen goddess with Western curves, Zhang Yimou explores delicate matter of male voyeuristic tendency over female flesh, that is casting audience as collective male gaze over exposed and tortured flesh. Thus the female body becomes and object to be penetrated by male gaze and discourse.
Whenever the female body tries to gain subjectivity and tries to return critical gaze, hitherto reserved for male subjects, it threatens to undermine the patriarchial order and create male frustration. The double ended adoration of female beauty on one hand admiration, but on the other end misogyny and chauvinism, is a symptom of our social problematic that threatens our nation's progress upward.
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