Brett's A-Pop Blog

Birth of the Dragon

• WWE Studios (foreshadowing of the hokeyness to come)
• ‘Real life’ fight scenes play out like stereotypical martial arts movie fights
• Movie ostensibly about Bruce Lee, focuses more on Steve with his plot being the main driving element
• What exactly is it that this movie is based on? (what happened in real life surrounding the fight?)
• Steve doing nothing, getting credit for everyone else’s work

Paper Bullets annotations:

• The narrator outlines that he stores different facets of popular culture into his brain, as they become the key component of contextualizing the period of time in which his recollections/stories take place in. They also inform his reality – creating “one big fiction”. (pg. 3)
• “People meet my father and respect him. People meet my mother and lover her. I’m more hit-and-miss. More love-or-hate.” (pg. 11) – because he is a Hapa child, he is in the middle between these too – seen as hit or miss?
• “While my father loves the sun even as it burns, my mother hates the sun even as it tans. My father, like me, sees a tan as beautiful. My mother sees it as primitive.” (pg. 14) – point of view of the father and mother? is it an exotic thing with the father? influence of western beauty standards on mother? also notice how the narrator doesn’t fit in the middle of this opinion, as he sides with his dad
• The narrator sees marriage as tolerance and dependency – reflected in the scene where his mother and father are in the same bed, but he characterizes them as looking like an awkward family photo that is only projecting the image of happiness (pg. 16)
• The narrator inviting a girl over to watch Enter the Dragon, where he loses his virginity, which he describes as “entering his first woman.” (pg. 18) “She said she had seen it before, but she came anyway.” – the narrator then compares his romantic relationships to the production values of martial arts movies, where once they were low budget and cheesy, they only get better produced with age (experience) (pg. 18)
• The narrator’s mother yells in Chinese in panic when he jumps into the deep end, but after he is out and the panic has subsided, and the mothers are discussing “if that were my child..” she scolds him in English – trying to maintain an image, not wanting to give the other mothers a reason to make judgements of her parenting based on her race/ethnicity? (pg. 20-21)
• The language men (fathers?) use in communication with one another to hide vulnerability/anxiety/fear – posturing for the sake of masculinity at others’ expense, everything is a joke (pg. 24)
• The newspaper articles slowly start to trickle away and Chinese Americans start to focus on pre-pubescent figure skaters and violinists again. I’m still fast in the water, but no one really talks about the Olympics anymore.” (pg. 28) – tendency in America for certain ethnic groups to be associated with certain sports/activities
• The narrator’s fascination with going fast, not just in his swimming, but his idolization of Speed Racer (pg. 29) (which is two tiers above the other Japanese cartoons that play on weekday mornings in his mind) – “It’s like as long as the end counts, it doesn’t really matter how you get there.” (pg. 30)
• “Perfectionism is a way of life. A way of interacting. A way of expressing and showing love and respect and gratitude.” (pg. 39) – the narrator also expresses that through this, he had to relearn how to experience things naturally and with passion – a symptom of living in the “model minority” lifestyle
• Contrast between the narrator’s enjoyment of the Chinese restaurants vs the restaurants his father wants to go to – his enjoyment is based on the speed of the atmosphere of each restaurants
• balance of Hapas being simultaneously ignored and scrutinized (especially in terms of their personal romantic relationships) (pg. 50-51)
• “Think about something else. Bio paper due Monday. 10 percent of your grade. Venomous replies and marine life.” (pg. 72) – reminds me of Better Luck Tomorrow where the main character always went back to going over his vocabulary cards, even when he was getting into all of the crime.
• “I’m waiting for wisdom. I’m waiting to put a first love, a first sex, and a first white-woman fantasy to bed.” (pg. 94) – before Kip started seeing Carly he fell for the idea of her, probably due to being a white woman. what happened in their relationship was the stripping away of the masculinity that he took part in with his friends, and that even led to his fantasizing about her in the first place.
• Kip is asked about the turning points in his life, they all include near death experiences with water –  “Water will never hurt me” (pg. 134) – goes back to the protection he felt from water as a child, being able to dive into the deep end very young. what does water symbolize? his sexuality/the masculinity that informs that? while working at raging waters he basically only remembers it through his sexual thoughts – raging waters/raging hormones??
• “How can you cast me in some random role while pretending you’re neutral. (You’re not.)” (pg. 139) – what makes Mandy “neutral” in the first place, compared to the other two women? is it because one was Hapa, while the other was “more Chinese” shown by her affinity for the Buddha’s feast? but again, why is Mandy “neutral”?
• “Baywatch it’s not. You learn to treat Mexicans as second-class citizens and you learn blacks can’t swim. You learn to smile at your women co-workers and to talk about what they’d fuck like when it’s just you and the boys.” (pg. 149) – I wonder if this was meant to parallel when Kip said he liked his life through high school better because he didn’t have to learn about the intricacies of being Hapa, where here he’s graduated from Raging Waters to ocean lifeguard and is finding out that that world is ugly – “I want to find a better way to be around the water.” (pg. 149)

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on week 9 notes

Since seminar this morning, I’ve been thinking a lot about the title of Paper Bullets, and all the things it could possibly mean within the context of the novel. I think it mostly just refers to all of the different dualities relating to Kip. One idea I had was that it refers to the balance between Kip’s sensitivity (paper, soft) and his masculinity (bullets, hard). In the novel, Kip conditions himself to keep his emotions locked up from other people based on his experiences with abusive relationships as well as indulging in his own masculinity. One one hand, he’s really insecure and sensitive, and has a ‘people pleasing’ complex (which his therapist tells him is a common Asian trait). On the other, he wants to assert his own strength through his relationships, using sex as a tool for that.

The masculine side of him always seemed like more of a projection, or a defense mechanism to me. Maybe an idea of someone he ideally wanted to be, or thought he should be. It could have also been his own insecurity about his identity in regards to Asian stereotypes, particularly ones associated with passiveness. But, this side of him had this certain abrasive quality to it, and it was reflected in his writing when describing his moments of masculinity. I think that mostly has to do with his frank and detailed descriptions of sex, and by extension his feeling towards the woman he was with at the time.

With his sensitive side, I noticed how eager Kip was to have that be brought out, despite his efforts to keep it concealed. With Katherine, she says something about him being a “sweet lover” and he immediately is more taken to her than he was before. He wants to settle down with her and have children, or at least he thinks he does, despite her being a despicable human being (which he acknowledges). It could have to do with his own need of approval, which was probably rooted in his relationship with his father, but I don’t want to psychoanalyze that too much.

I just thought it could be another duality of many that make up his character. It also makes me wonder how many more dualities I missed in this book while reading it.

Posted in Scissors | Comments Off on paper bullets

Welp. The paper’s due date is upon us, and I still am having some mixed feelings about my paper, mostly the second half. Also I guess I’m worried that the direction of my paper doesn’t feel seamless or cohesive, particularly in the balance of research and personal narrative. I’m worried of one overshadowing the other. But, it’s too late to worry about stuff like that, I’m just going to write the fucking thing. Hopefully I can power through it tonight and tomorrow, and end up with something that I feel more than at least 70% satisfied with. Maybe 75%.

During Wednesday’s workshop, I cut my paper up and sharpie’d out parts that I didn’t feel were necessary (including my entire opening paragraph). It was neat to physically edit my paper in that way, and gave me a little bit more clarity on where to move certain things, or where to put sentences I haven’t even written yet.

I still need a title too. I just realized that. Maybe I’ll just keep the placeholder one I hastily wrote on Wednesday: “The Midwest or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace My Home”. I could go minimalist and just say “The Midwest”, which kind of just sounds like a Ken Burns documentary. But, it also doesn’t hint towards any of the APIA connections I make in my paper, so that’s out.

I was never good with titles.

Posted in Rock | Comments Off on I can’t even think of a title for this post either wow (last final project thoughts)