Assorted Notes: Week 5
- Popular music: Three Things
- Thing 1: The study of popular music is the study of popular culture
- Thing 2: From Eric to Edward (Liu) – Ain’t nothing but a pop thing
- “Hip hop ain’t just music. Hip hop ain’t contentless. Hip hop ain’t got a third ain’t” (nod to the three ain’t of the Blues)
- Thing 3: “Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps”
- Mikhail Bakhtin (1895 – 1975)
- Dialogism/dialogies/the dialogic (to bring people/ideas/things together for a quarrel)
- Implications of this for sampling text
- Tupac – misogynistic lyrics over love song/ballad sample (love song to the lifestyle)
- Flip (term of endearment/derogatory)
- Rachel Devitt
- “Lost in translation”
- countering hegemonic structures in music
- looking into music considered “contentless” (example of Black Eyed Peas)
- Resistance vernaculars (Tony Mitchell)
- Bilingualism/code-switching
- “The Great Pinoy Boxing Era”
- Representation of marginalized peoples in sports – carrying/representing their communities
- Stockton, CA and the Filipino community
- The boxing ring being one of the few places Filipinos were allowed to participate in the United States
- The Debut (2001)
- Connections to Donald Duk (shunning of one’s culture, connection between Arnold, and Ben’s friends in their interest in their friend’s respective cultures)
- Gusto and Ben – similar in escaping Filipino culture to outside cultures
- Intergenerational trauma (Ben’s grandfather, and his father)
- Character growth/coming of age in ethnic films – ‘a coming of age’ not exclusive to younger people, Ben’s father has a coming of age by the end in seemingly beginning to respect Ben’s dream to be an artist
- Contrast of house party/Ben’s sister’s birthday party
- Connection to Better Luck Tomorrow – Gusto and Virgil and their adoption of outside cultures
- Ben’s father’s want for him to go to UCLA tied to the way his father treats him for not going that route and being a mailman
- Ben’s earlier work in his portfolio being comprised of mostly white women, by the end of the movie he adds a portrait of himself, his father and grandfather
- Ben’s father was an artist/singer in his youth, his father’s suppression of this tied to how Ben’s father feels about his wanting to be an artist?
- Crosscurrents of Hispanics/Filipinos -> linked to Spanish colonization
- Tagalog and Spanish language’s shared words
- Labor union connection – unity clap (coming across a language barrier)
- Theme of gap between generations (the traditional Filipino dance, the line dance and the dance battle)
Some annotations from Dark Blue Suit:
- “Despite their poverty, most dressed well, wearing suits that Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan called “magnificent.” Their splendid clothes and, more impressively, the easy sense of elegance with which they wore them, stood out against the drab backdrop of cheap hotels, pool halls, card rooms, and the dull apparel of Chinatown’s year-round residents.” (pg. 5) – are the suits these men wore used to bend in more to American society at the time? is it indicative of achieving the American dream, but with the subtext that they are still marginalized to the spaces of the seedy parts of the cities they inhabited? The main character’s father compares his dark blue suit to Humphrey Bogart’s (pg. 5), do they dress like this to fulfill the dominant culture’s picture of style/fashion? Assimilationist?
- Connection between growing up in a poor community and then going on to boxing (pg. 29) – a lot of the greatest boxers have come from that background because they had experience with fighting as a means of survival within in their communities
- “He had enough torque in that right to launch his victim on a straight trajectory, like one of Henry Aaron’s line drives, to some southern point where Spanish was spoken.” (pg. 30) – many references to famous athletes of color. In this case a black baseball player, connecting to Rico’s affinity for black culture?
- “What amazes me still is how simple and practical it all was. Like the stance: no contortions and exotic poses, no rigid stances or imitations of legendary animals. Just hands up, with the right hand and leg forward, the latter covering the groin, body weight balanced. Simple.” (pg. 41) – this quote, like the previous quote, touching on the main character’s preconceived notions of what Chinese martial arts were and how they operated. this idea he had having something to do with the martial arts movies he’d seen? especially considering he was at Bruce Lee’s school. he goes on to compare it to something more familiar to his background – southpaw boxing. “Then there were the kicks—nothing above the belt, movie fights
- “His answer stressed simpler moves, functional in a crisis, aimed at addressing one question: Does it work? I’ve carried that hard question with me ever since. I applied it first to martial arts—training sessions, boxing rings, and street fights (short punches, uppercuts, and hooks work)—and eventually beyond to religion, marriages, and careers. Asking the question can be lonely. There are few models. In asking it, history matters less (so-and-so did it, and you can, too) than personal experience and a short supply of wisdom. but each choice I’ve made has always followed that question, that troubling inquiry first raised almost thirty years ago.” (pg. 43) – “Does it work?” – a meditation on one’s personal identity? could be an allusion to the crosscurrent of Japanese/Chinese/Filipino presence at the school, and how they all bring their own backgrounds and experiences into their fighting styles.
- “Unlike Aaron, who skillfully deceived fish, I preferred a less taxing approach: worms, or marshmallows and eggs. That way I could hook, drop it in the water, and forget about it until the bobber stopped or the pole twitched. While waiting on the bank, my attention would drift toward conversations, laughter, daydreams; an inevitable nap also filled each afternoon.” (pg. 59) – playing off the potential symbolism of the predator/prey connection of the fish to the city, does this represent Buddy’s aversion to conflict, being more inclined to indulge in escapism?
- Theme of death within the community, specifically the men in Buddy’s life (the Pinoys): “My father’s death surprised me. It shouldn’t have; he was eighty-seven years old. But I thought he’d live forever, as would his brothers, cousins, and buddies—my uncles—who came to this land long decades ago, when racism and violence, migrant poverty, tuberculosis, and despair should have killed them, but didn’t. Such forces, the afflictions of the poor, didn’t even wrinkle the creases of the foot suits they wore while standing on corners, from Seattle to LA, where they’d laugh and talk loud, welcoming the night.” (pg. 142)