Ethnic cliches in a smile

The Christian Science Monitor has a feature running where you can take some sample questions from the US State Department Foreign Service Exam. Among them is the following question:

16. A smile or laughter from a Japanese person may not be an expression of happiness. What other emotion could it signify?

  1. anger or distrust
  2. shame
  3. depression
  4. nervousness or discomfort

The correct answer is, of course, D-nervousness or discomfort. I saw this question yesterday and was somewhat taken aback that the Foreign Service subscribes to the view that the cross-cultural human behavior of a fake smile as a defense mechanism against nervousness is intrinsically and uniquely Japanese, with the implication that it does not exist in other cultures.

Coincidentally, I am right now – the day after seeing the above question – translating answers to an employee survey from a fast food chain that I will not name. One response was as follows:

Convey the cheerfulness of the entire staff by never having them stop smiling while in the store.

One can easily imagine the grim rictus of the fast-food worker forced into a fake smile; we have seen it all innumerable times. One particularly good description was the final anecdote in Johann Hari’s widely read 2009 article on the Dark Side of Dubai.

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city’s endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. “It’s OK,” she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can’t stand it. She sighs with relief and says: “This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers’ contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!” But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. “I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand.”

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: “And how may I help you tonight, sir?”

17. A smile or laughter from a Dubai Pizza Hut worker may not be an expression of happiness. What other emotion could it signify?

  1. anger or distrust
  2. shame
  3. depression
  4. nervousness or discomfort

13 thoughts on “Ethnic cliches in a smile”

  1. How about:

    5) Superduper happiness. Ecstasy, even.

    -catone
    -after all, Curzon, on this very site, rhapsodized about that little place, with its tall, refulgent buildings and delicious sushi restaurants, and warned us that we should be wary of critical reporting by unkind foreigners.

  2. Had the same question in 2010 and picked D– not because I’m an expert on Japanese culture, but because when I get nervous I can’t quit smiling. I don’t think oddball questions on the exam are a problem so much as the QEP, where the majority of applicants will be rejected for not meeting some unseen bureaucrat’s mysterious checklist of qualifications.

    Then again, I’m probably bias because I passed the exam but failed the QEP :/

  3. the view that the cross-cultural human behavior of a fake smile as a defense mechanism against nervousness is intrinsically and uniquely Japanese, with the implication that it does not exist in other cultures

    Reading the question literally, I don’t think it implies that. There are many cultures where this could happen, and Japan just happens to be one of them.

    I got 19/20, by the way… the only question I missed was the fable question, which I still don’t really “get” even after seeing the answer. Many law students seem to be taking the foreign service exam nowadays instead of the bar exam, figuring that it’s a surer bet to a secure and interesting career, though I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t want to spend my career apologizing to despondent civil war participants about the fact that the US doesn’t give a damn.

  4. That article was quickly proved to be a fraud — from the first line of “The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed” (he is never smiling) to the use of tumbleweeds in his imagery (which are native to North America and not found in the Middle East), it’s a total sham. For more: http://cooltravelguide.blogspot.com/2009/04/dark-side-of-dubai-hilarious-must-read.html

    Sure, Dubai has issues, as everywhere does, but that article is not to be taken seriously, at all.

  5. 1. Anger or Distrust (Ishihara, Tamogami)

    2. Shame (Hatoyama, also Loopiness)

    3. Depression (Late term Abe)

    4. Nervousness or Discomfort (Kan)

    5. That’s just the way his mouth is (Aso)

    6. Love of Elvis (Koizumi)

  6. Yes, that particular article may be nonsense – I really have no idea personally not having been to Dubai nor having even read much about it – but the particular anecdote I quoted still works very well as an example of the globalized, genericized, bored and yet mildly terrified fast food worker experience.

  7. Just so you know, the “Dubai response” that you quote is from an Emirati, but he is from Sharjah, not Dubai.

  8. Are the Emirates considered more like states in one country called the UAE or a federation of countries like the EU?

  9. The EU has a unique status in which it kind of works like a federal state for many purposes, but is not quite there.

    The big legal difference is that the UAE, US and other federations are each sovereign states with a unified foreign policy, whereas the EU has limited foreign policy functions and basically lets each member represent their own interests in diplomacy, war, etc.

    There is a big difference in the intent of the two entities: the UAE (like the US) was given a list of federal authorities by its member states at the time it was set up, and that list has not changed much over time, whereas the EU started out as a mechanism to share coal and steel production between France, Germany and the Low Countries, and mutated from there to become a state-like entity with whatever functions seem convenient to its members. The EU’s shared functions are not even consistent among all members; one subset of EU members does not use the euro, and another subset does not participate in the common immigration area.

    Another difference is that EU members are free to leave, whereas you generally can’t break up a federation without a consensual process or a civil war.

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