ReadingAgambenatCafeLu Cafe Lu is an excellent example of various ideological apparatuses converging and intersecting all at once.

The cafe is a selfdescribed Vietnamese Coffee house (which is a product of French colonialism)andthereforerepresentsthebeginningandtheendofanythingrelatingculturallytoVietnam. We are then pitted with a question ofauthenticity.Howisthisresolved?Thewaitstaff,whoare ofEast or Southeast Asian descent maintain the illusion of authenticity. Another apparatus is maintainedbythe fact that their uniform are bikinis, lingerie, and minidresses. I carry no moral objection to the attire. The issue is with the apparatuses that maintaintheattiresuchasheteronormativesexualityandcapitalist desire. Another apparatus at work is the phenomenon of Asian fetishism or colloquially referred as yellow fever. Another feature of the cafe is the panopticonlike positioning of the flat screened televisions installed at the peripheries of the room. Televisions surround thespacemakingsuretheyare seen. The spectacle rests for no one. The background music is hardly background as the bass is inescapable. The music selection is mostly contemporary songs associated with what would be played at a nightclub. This review will attempt at a working definitionofapparatusasitappliestoCafeLuand workthroughthespecificapparatusstatedabove. What exactly are ideological apparatuses and what are these actual apparatuses I am referring to?PhilosopherGiorgioAgamben,borrowingfromMichelFoucault,statesthatanapparatusis

literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of liv ing beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disci plines, juridical measures, and so forth (whose connec tion

with powerisinacertainsenseevident),butalsothepen,writing,literature,philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers, cellular telephones andwhynotlanguage itself.(Agamben2009,14)

In other words, apparatuses are the structural qualities of life that dictate behavior in a certain way. They can be locations such as schools, workplaces, clubs, cafes they can be objects such as computers, smartphones, shoes, clothes, cars they can be ideologies or entities such as governance, philosophy,literature,realitytelevisionshows.Thesearejustsomeexamplesofapparatuses. So how does this relatetoCafeLu?Letstacklefirsttheuseoftelevisionandmusicinthe cafe. The hyper use of the television screens and loud music are to generate a similar experience of a nightclub without the expectation of dancing. Like most clubs, there is an attempt to create anonymity among conspicuous uses of sound and spectacle. Thus creates a rather disorientating experience in which space and time are absorbed, therefore creating a new reality. In Guy Debords terms, The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by massmedia technologies. It isa worldview that has actually been materialized, that has become an objective reality (Debord). Sothe accumulation of excessive sound and television screens are not serving as some sort of escape from reality but rather unifying the reality of the cafe and whatever is being presented in the screen. It gives way for a hyperreality, in which everything becomes indistinguishable. Everything is stimuliand oneis nottodevelopanunderstandingofthespacebutratherbeapartofitwithoutreflection. The apparatus of sexuality atCafeLuisreproducedinthreeways.First,thesimplefactthatthe waitstaffsuniform,anapparatus inofitself,islingerie,bikini,minidress,andothermicroapparel.This helpsperpetuatethegaze.Thegazeismorethansimplylooking,butrathergeneratinganapparatusonto

thosewhoarebeinggazedupon.AsThomasBlomHansenstates,citingtheworkofMerleauPonty,

What appears asimmediatelyvisibletotheeyeisbutonedimensionofwhatweperceive.What we actually see is culturally and socially conditioned byreceivedframesandformats.Whenwe see the front of a house, we also see its full form and begin toassumeitsfunctions,andeven its people. The visible is always supported and supplemented by a range of social conventions and tacit, embodied forms of knowledge of howobjectslookfromothersides,assuch,intheir totality.(Hansen2012,3)

Gazing upon a female wait staff dressed skimpily has more to do with what is expected of a female rather than who that particular female actually is. In other words, the apparatus of heteronormative gender relations and structures are what inform the gaze. As said before, the gaze isntsimplylooking, butrather,tryingtoprojectaparticularconsciousnessontothatperson.Becausewhenonegazes,there isanimmediateassumptiononthetotalityofthatobject. Nevermindwhattheindividualsofthewaitstaff are enduring or as to why their agency has led them to work in the cafe. The simple fact that they are female, their uniform is a particular aesthetic, and are willing to serve you is already enough to understandthem.Thus,theapparatusofgendernormsismaintained. Second, capitalism also dictates such a norm because there is a supposed market or demand for it. There is a value for such gaze because it provides surplus or profit for the cafe. Of course, one can make a moral or ethical argument saying that the wait staff being objectified themselves or that this is their choice since they are all adults, but capitalism complicates this binary. As stated before, I have no moral issue with the wait staffs uniform. The issue is that theuniform isnt

determined by individual agents, the womenthemselves,butrather,abusinesspractice.Suchapractice has been determined by the discourses of sex. What makes something sexy and appealing may have little todowiththesexualityofboththewaitstaffandthepatronsbutinstead,whathasbeenestablished by gender norms and the capitalist value of desire. Since discourses of sex and sexuality have yet to be genuinelyopen,theremustbe awayofrethinkingsuchanapparatustohelpgeneratenewdiscourses or waysoftalkingaboutsexuality.Suchconsiderationscanleadtoawayofexpressing,inearnest,what is desirable, interesting, sexy, and appealing. This in no way will solve the problem of the gaze apparatus, but can help inform us on how we can rethink of such an apparatus and thus can,perhaps, beusedsensiblyandwithmoreagency. Lastly, because the wait staff is primarily of Southeast and/or East Asian descent, the problem of Orientalism arises. Cafe Lu isnt simply a Vietnamese Coffee house, whose cultural attachment is dubious, but a place inwhich theapparatusofAsianfetishimflourishes.Thepremiseofsuchafetishlies in othering. This strongly relates to the gaze discussed before because to other is to assume what they are about. To other is to engage in an ideological fantasy. Hansen defines it as, a kind of knowledge of the other that appears as more truethananyappearanceorconcreterepresentation,and is thus a construction beyond argument or falsification (Hansen 1999, 12). Because there have been assumptions about Asian women, andwomeningeneralhistorically,itcreatedacategoryofknowledge that seems natural and thus is not questioned. The category seeks to represent all women as a homogenous entity that supposedly experience the same thing at anygivenmomentintime,irrespective ofcontextandculture. Cafe Lu is an incredible example of embodying apparatuses such as spectacle, sexuality, Orientalism, and ideology. While an institution based on the premise of awaitstaffwearingoutfitssuch

as bikinis, lingerie, and minidresses is hardly a new business model, experiencing very loud music, televisions that flood the environment, dilutedbeverages,mediocrefood,andawaitstaffnegotiatingthe (male) gaze every single day makes for a genuinely bizarre reality in which everything is in relation to consumption. One does not visit Cafe Lu for the food and service,butrathertoreinforce amicrocosm of societys best apparatuses: sexuality,gender,ethnicity/race1,and thegaze.CafeLucontinuestoexist as long as we continue the samepoliticaleconomicrelationshipofseeingvaluedeterminedbypriceand nothing more. Because sexuality, gender, and the gaze itself is not limited to social relations, but economic ones, and since we expect people to do something for a price, then we may have already given up our agency or free will to market forces. And such forces or apparatuses will continue to dominatewithoutanyreflectionandthus,noreimagination,andfinally,nowayofcriticallythinking about theworldaroundus.

Iacknowledgethatraceandethnicityarenotseenasoneinthesame,butIplacedthemassynonymsfor convenienceofargument.

WorksCited Agamben,Giorgio.WhatIsanApparatus?:AndOtherEssays.Stanford,CA:StanfordUP, 2009.Print. Debord,Guy."TheSocietyoftheSpectacle."(1)(Debord).Web.20Oct.2013. Hansen,ThomasBlom.MelancholiaofFreedom:SocialLifeinanIndianTownshipin SouthAfrica.Princeton:PrincetonUP,2012.Print. Hansen,ThomasBlom.TheSaffronWave:DemocracyandHinduNationalisminModern India.Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUP,1999.Print.