week 3 assorted notes:
Better Luck Tomorrow:
- Tone shift – got really dark unexpectedly, but was it unexpected due to the ethnicities of the main characters? was that an intentional call from the director? playing off the ‘model minority’ idea, how they could never possibly get involved in crime, murder, etc. (expecting passivity)
- More on tone shift: starts as a pretty standard high school movie of the era (even produced by MTV, which I thought was genius in presenting this movie initially as a standard goofy high school movie), gets really existential and approaches the idea of up keeping the “model minority” identity to the extent that it drives one to violence and other reckless behaviors
- The scene where Ben sees Deric with Stephanie after murdering Steve, who Deric turns into for a sec – playing off of the stereotype that all Asians look the same? Through Ben’s eyes, self stereotyping or struggle with identity? Loss of identity?
- The previous idea kind of comes up when Virgil promises that he saw Stephanie in a porno
- marginalized main cast who are typically less visible make themselves visible throughout the movie
A few annotations from Donald Duk:
- “Fred Astaire. Everybody everywhere likes Fred Astaire in the old black-and-white movies.” (pg. 1) – This reminds me of Chico’s lecture where he brought up how APIA groups are the “mediators of American culture” or “between black and white”. Maybe Fred Astaire existing between black and white in the movies makes him more relatable to Donald? (That might be a stretch.) (but also plays off the idea of Donald seeing everything as black or white at this point of the story)
- Recurring theme of performance, or the performative nature of being a minority in America to please others/acting like a caricature of one’s ethnicity- The twins narrating their lives as if it were a memoir (pg. 5), King Duk telling Donald to act like Donald Duck to placate his bullies (pg. 4), Donald actually performing for the bullies (pg. 5), Uncle Donald Duk being an opera performer (pg. 7)
- “Hey, everybody’s gotta give up the old and become American. If all these Chinese were more American, I wouldn’t have all my problems,” Donald Duk says” (pg. 42) “I think Donald Duk may be the very last American-born Chinese-American boy to believe that you have to give up being Chinese to be an American,” Dad say.” (pg. 42) “When China conquered the south, these people went further south, into Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. They learned French. Now they’re learning English. They still speak their Cantonese, their Chinese, their Viet or Lao or Cambodian, and French. Instead of giving anything up, they add on. They’re including America in everything else they know.” (pg. 42) – I think this exchange goes back to
“what does it mean to be Asian American?”, and I think Donald’s father explains it in a really empowering way. He presents all of these people that came to American as being incredibly multifaceted, and never strictly American first. If anything it is just a small part of a bigger picture. - “Does Donald dare run away from home to another country, another language? Arnold can play Chinese, he can eat Chinese and go gah-gah over Chinese, but no matter what, he is white. He can’t leave Chinatown. He can leave the Chinese. He can go home to hear the spaces between the trees and never come back. All he has to do is cross the street.” (pg. 47) – explaining the idea that non-Chinese people can become “play Chinese” by going to Chinatown, eating the food, taking part in the celebration. But that’s where the line ends, if they want it to. They can shed that cultural skin whenever, whereas the Chinese people cannot. This can go further to the idea of cultural appropriation too, especially if someone who was non-Chinese was using the culture for their own benefit, wearing it like a costume. (i found out today that this my edition was printed differently than in the second edition were it replaces “Arnold” with “Dad”, which siginificantly changes the meaning of the passage)