Author: sirale30

Connections Week 2 Reading

Julie Otsuka-When the Emperor was Divine

Week 2, Friday Seminar Notes

Characters: mother, boy, girl, (father)

Narrators

  • 3rd person-distance/dissociation/”off center”
  • 1st person as “we”

Symbolism: horses/freedom/illusion, color white (used in a non traditional way),  dark stain(s), clock, birds/animals

Poetic, similar to haiku format minimalist style not simplistic.

*Note: Implications made when using the word simplistic alludes to the piece being unworthy of scholarly use or being considered as such.  These methods have been heavily utilized to minimize the experiences of various oppressed peoples narratives historically and currently as an artifact of evidence that there experiences of oppression are valid.

Themes: Internalized racism/ state violence/ assimilation/ dehumanization+re-humanization/ freedom+incarceration/ coping mechanisms/ erasure/ identity (individuality, renaming, #’s)

Q: When does _____________ group become “American”?

  • parallel practices between Japanese internment camps, enslavement of African people and the modern creation of the prison industrial complex

Fact & fiction/personal accounts of historical events create room for storytelling and re-imaging history from the perspectives of those whom are normally erased to benefit the mainstream narrative.  In addition representation in the most mundane ways should never be glossed over, these are the contributing factors that really humanize characters to disprove the myths of why they have been “othered”.

 

Small Kine Talk Story

Writing Activity/Writing Workshop Week 2

When the moon waxes and flaunts it’s crescent, half is still whole.  Just as a mix plate or a poi dog isn’t a second thought but a mundane memory of local familiarity; neither was being raised hapa on an island separated from the tales of the mainland by an abyss of rolling aqua hills and the crisp salt air, that tainted the tongues of the people who flocked to this promise island like minabirds when one keiki went drop their musubi.  Looking for an opportunity, a lively hood, their own special grain of rice.

“Aqueducts and black and white photograph became the treasure map to an almost forgotten history.  Submerged in lumbering stocks of bitter sweet sugar cane and sleeping grass.  The graves once forgotten.”

Practicing Sankofa

Debunking the myth of Hawaii as a “racial paradise”

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/15/377197729/hawaii-as-racial-paradise-bid-for-obama-library-invokes-a-complex-past

An important conversation that hurts to have (Who gets to be hapa?)

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/08/08/487821049/who-gets-to-be-hapa

 

 

 

Wait Scarlett Johansson Isn’t Japanese ???? (°ロ°)

Ghost in the Shell Notes

Representation/Stereotypes:

  • Asian men played roles that enabled tokenization, as the “diverse” sidekick in assisting the two central white characters funneling into the model minority trope. Asian men also fulfilled the role of the villain which seemed to hint reference to the Yakuza, demonized as being criminals and violent yet were strategically placed to remind the viewers that (fem) white bodies are the most beautiful and desirable especially in the eyes of nonwhite men. And let’s not forget Major’s boss who only spoke Japanese the entire movie and was completely othered as a perpetual foreigner in the seemingly “Neo Tokyo” inspired environment decorated with oriental aesthetics but with a lack of human Asian representation.
  • As for Japanese women their lack of presence in the film was instead replaced by geisha robots that served to fulfill every fetishized personality and physical attribute white men adore about east Asian women, from their petite stature, lips so teensy and pursed they dare not move nor wiper an opinion or thought.  They are of coarse painted as  submissive and docile by “nature”- or in this cased programing, adorned in traditional/”exotic” apparel. They presence represents the following stereotypes, “Geisha Girl/Lotus Flower/Servant/China Doll: Submissive, docile, obedient, reverential; the Vixen/Sex Nymph: Sexy, coquettish, manipulative; tendency toward disloyalty or opportunism; the Prostitute/Victim of Sex Trade/War/Oppression: Helpless, in need of assistance or rescue; good-natured at heart.” But after being hacked, they take on a demonic, Grudge like appearance complete with pitch black eyes. They are never seen as people but as servants, decorations and disposable props only equipped to pour tea, satisfy the male gaze and to market products on holographic billboards.

Other Themes:

  • Consent
  • “Trans-racial”
  • Eugenics
  • Dehumanization/Re-humanization
  • Reincarnation
  • Science/Ethics???
  • Eurocentric Beauty Standers/ Plastic Surgery
  • Assimilation/(Forced Assimilation)
  • Internalized Racism
  • Whitewashing-film surrogate
  • PTSD
  • Orientalism

Prior to our in class viewing of the American re-make of Ghost in the Shell I remembered seeing this interview done by Yuta being weaponized as a tool to minimize the experiences of racism and oppression experienced by Asian Americans, (in this case Japanese Americans) specifically in the context  of America.  This method of divide and conquer is nothing new to white supremacy and in the realm of pop culture, especially weeaboo heaven (anime) nothing less can be expected, when you see white viewers trying to validate the whitewashing , by pinning misinformed native Japanese peoples opinions against the opinions of Japanese Americans who directly are effected by these fetishized, demonized and dehumanizing images in American media.  

What Japanese Think of Whitewashing (Ghost in the Shell, Death Note, Interview)

Note: Once Yuta gives them more context they are taken back and seemingly less sure how to feel about the directorial choices.