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

• Kumu Hina
  • Hina Wong-Kalu
  • Māhū (embracing both masculine & feminine) (American colonizers wanted to outlaw this, among other facets of Hawaiian culture)
• Aloha (dignity + respect)
• Hina’s worry about filling role of feminine wife for her husband
• Hina’s husband’s expectation/jealousy in their marriage (cultural difference?)
• Documentary structured to show both Hina’s feminine and masculine side (life with her husband, her role at the charter school)
• The husband referring to Hawaii as “America” after moving there
• British flags in background (heavy presence) – (presence in the performance at the end by the school, the blanket on the bed)
• Hina – “having a relationship for the sake of having one”

some Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers annotations:

• Shirley Temple movies to the main character, like Fred Astaire movies were to Donald Duk – source of escapism, an idealized life, a happy ending, although the main character never got to see the endings and had to make them up with Jerry (pg. 3-4)
• contrast between the main character living in poverty vs the well of kids of Honolulu, through the lens of pop culture (seeing them on tv) (makes the gap seem even wider, the idea of ever escaping poverty and being wealthy surreal?)
• The main character’s English teacher dismissing pidgin, promotes that the students speak “standard English” in order to be “perfect little Americans”, pidgin makes them sound “uneducated” (pg. 10) (theme of assimilation)
• Theme of shame of culture/ethnicity and once again striving for the “American Dream”: “Sometimes I secretly wish to be haole. That my name could be Betty Smith or Annie Anderson or Debbie Cole, wife of Dennis Cole who lives at 2222 Maple Street with a white station wagon with wood panel on the side, a dog named Spot, a cat named Kitty, and I wear white gloves. Dennis wears a hat to work. There’s a coatrack as soon as you open the front door and we all wear our shoes inside the house.” (pg. 11-12)
• vivid depiction of the “American Dream” contrasted with Lovey’s poverty, through description of name brands (pop culture), colors, clothing and Christmas (pg. 23-25)
• same contrast between poverty and upper middle class through food: “The butter dish gets passed from one person to the next, each one rubbing lots of butter on their rice. And when the butter comes to me, I want to be a Beckenhauser so bad, I rub butter all over my rice and swallow each bite like a mouthful of Crisco.” (pg. 27)
• Ginger nicknames Lovey “Jenny” after her friend from Kenosha (pg. 30) – similar to Forgotten Country where the girls’ names where “American-ized” for the convenience of everyone else, although this one comes off as more narcissistic, as if Lovey is just a doll for Ginger
• the effect of media influencing a romanticized lens of upper middle class culture to those in poverty: “Then he convinces Mother to go along with his new wage-earning weekend idea. A Magnavox console stereo with wonderful carved wood engravings of elephants like it came right from Taiwan. Like the ones you see the Raggedy Ann and Andy couples win on Let’s Make a Deal. The Family Money Pot will pay for this new stereo system.” (pg. 39) – slaving away for expensive commodities, to align with the idea of the American Dream?
• “Her first egg, the one with no name.” (pg. 81) – connection to Katy and Lovey discussing baby names (Lovey’s fascination with names in general, her naming all of her bunnies, and this chicken laying an egg with no name – deprived of being a mother.
• Lovey shooting the Japanese blue pheasant – indicative of her feelings about her ethnicity?
• people becoming birds when they die – (birds were a huge symbol in Otsuka’s book, part of Japanese culture?)
• Lovey’s decision to go as an Indian princess for Halloween – influence of seeing Native American women as “exotic” through the pop culture that she obviously consumes a lot of
• Lovey being embarrassed of her period for feeling “dirty” (pg. 136) – does she have a want to be considered pure because that’s how she perceives all of the pop culture icons she looks up to ?
• Lovey brings up ajaxing a lot, going to that idea of purity, but also something she wants to do only out of affection whether through her Barbies or in this case for her teacher (pg. 145)
• “Now tell the truth about Bruce Lee. He wears makeup, eye liner and lip liner, and he’s five foot three, and I swear he cannot speak a word of English, but Fu Sheng, he knows English like “Okay, cowboy. Wanna rumble?” And I saw him say “Cigarette?” which matched with the dubbing. Not “Ciga-lette,” like most Chinese who cannot say the r, but “Cigarette.” Now that’s talking English.” (pg. 160) – Bruce Lee not as popular with Lovey because he wears makeup (aka not masculine) and isn’t as proficient in English (therefore Fu Sheng can kick his ass)
• “Animals, they know when something is not right. And Nanny, I could feel her heart beating, I knew her so well. I knew she didn’t want to live here. I knew she was scared. And I knew that she knew we were leaving her.” (pg. 178) – Lovey is actually sympathetic towards animals, and is only desensitizing herself to what her father does to live up the masculinity (to toughen herself up? influenced by something in the media? to gain his affection?)

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I didn’t really make any progress on my paper this week, due to it being a pretty busy week and also because I feel run into the ground mentally. I still need to come up with a way to integrate my research in the second half in a non-contrived or clunky way. Hopefully a few days off will do me well, and I can do some supplemental research and writing towards the back half of the week. My goal is to have it done by the middle of week nine, and hopefully I can get someone to read it for some late game feedback. Until then, I’m going to bed.

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Mississipi Masala 

• Indian kids playing cowboys and indians
  • (someone says “send them back to the reservation” )
• Comparison to The Debut – the two parties, the Indian family party, and the black night club
• Someone asking Mina if she’s Mexican
• British brought Indians to Africa to build railroad
• Ethnicity and home – Demetrius saying he’d never been to Africa, Mina saying she’d never been to India
• Recurring theme in some of the movies we’ve seen: Mina’s father wanting her to go to college
• Africa’s dismissal of Asia and the stereotypes they used in broadcasts to justify it to the people
• “Your brother thinks he got a white chick” – referring to Mina
• Mina saying Demetrius’ family felt more home-like
• Demetrius saying that Asians come in to the US and act white but in the US there is no difference between brown and black

“South Asian Representation in the Media + US Pop Culture”

• Muslim Bengali peddlers first arrived in New Orleans
  • integrated with communities of color in Detroit (and other cities)
• Targets of anti-Asian sentiment, many of these early migrants left Canada for the US, communities along the Pacific coast
• Model minority idea- linked to assimilation
• Yogananda
  • crossover with beatnik movement with South Asian philosophy (+ Dylan, Beatles, Jobs)
  • Fascination with mysticism (which Yogananda sort of perpetuated)
  • Influenced sci-fi
  • Hindu philosophy influential on media, but often not referred to outright
• Misrepresentation (since the 70’s)
  • Associated with cultural artifacts or practices
  • a source of comic amusement
  • Peter Sellers and the Indian character trope
• Effect of 9/11
  • Rise of Islamophobia, hate crimes rise against South Asians
  • Moved from more mystical/orientalist stereotypes into more menacing ones
  • Confusion of Sikhs with Muslims
• Malala attacked by Al Qaeda – US cultural icon as opposed to the girl attacked by the US who was largely ignored
• Norah Jones + Freddie Mercury (downplaying of South Asian ethnicity)

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on week 7 notes

(Not as many notes as usual due to the schedule this week but..)

• The Beautiful Country (2005, dir. Hans Petter Moland)
  • Bui doi – “less than dust” (referring to Vietnamese children with American fathers left behind after the war)
  • The Amerasian Homecoming Act (1987)
  • Scene where Binh is working at Chinese restaurant after getting to America – dumps out a full plate of food, contrast to the ridiculously small amount of food given to the passengers on the ship over
  • Binh finds out that GI’s children fly for free after getting to America (misleading of Vietnamese people by Americans during the war, not making information well known, seen also in We Should Never Meet)
• Ken Burns – Vietnam
  • April 21st, 1975 – bombs on Saigon
  • 60,000 refugees were picked up
  • Kissinger misinformation about attack on Saigon
  • April 29th – North Vietnam bombs an airport
  • White Christmas playing after report of 105 degree weather in Vietnam (not the Bing Crosby version)
  • 10 to 12,000 people surrounding the US embassy trying to evacuate
  • “Let’s hope we don’t have another Vietnam experience.” – Kissinger (also how US wanted to sweep the war under the rug as soon as possible due to defeat) – “Put Vietnam behind us” – Kissinger
  • Active misleading by US radio messages to South Vietnamese people about being able to leave
• A common theme in all of the works this week was gross miscommunication on the part of the US to the South Vietnamese people. How much of this was due to the shame of defeat in an already largely unpopular war? How much of it was not seeing the South Vietnamese as human beings?

Some annotations on We Should Never Meet:

• Kim posting out that there isn’t a difference between Vietnamese orphans who finish and don’t finish high school as far as their futures go (pg. 44) – “For her eighteenth birthday, her foster mother gave her a fifty-dollar bill and an old suitcase. You’re an adult now, she said. Don’t do anything stupid. (pg. 44-45) – this seems like a contrast to when Lien was leaving her family for the city to work and they reiterated to her not to bring shame to them
• Kim’s wanting to assure herself that she is tough and in control due to her upbringing, much like Lien’s want to be powerful (pg. 51) – same with the motivations behind Vinh and his gang (pg. 51) – “For years they had been denies so much from their new country and government-issued families. They robbed these buses and stores to break even, to survive. They believed they had no other choice.” (pg. 52) – being a gang the inevitable manifestation of the social workers/teachers/foster parents telling them they would be nothing (pg. 53)
• “That’s why Vietnamese gangs robbed their own people. Gangs knew their people wouldn’t trust the police to protect them. Police in Vietnam were a step below street merchants, they were so corrupt. They had no reason to believe the Americans, who couldn’t understand their accents anyway, would be any better.” (pg. 107)
• Vinh’s gang members ending up having more of a conscience about Vinh beating Bac than he has (pg. 111) – the relationship between Vinh and Bac not only parallels Bac and his son’s relationship, but also shows a generational gap between young and old Vietnamese in America
• Steven’s initial eagerness about getting to work a sign of his blind patriotism — believing that the States is doing the right thing? –  “At first she found their chat dispositions intrusive, but eventually understood that their curiosity indicated a genuine concern. She tried to remember this with Steven, because of all the Americans entering her country, his intentions, like those of many of the center volunteers, were unselfish.” (pg. 119)
• Desensitization to death for Vietnamese workers, especially in the orphanages, contrasted with Stephen’s (and Americans like him) sensitivity to death due to their eagerness to help: “He was grieving. He was in shock. It was not the time for Hoa to tell him that the place he regarded as death was what she still considered home.” (pg. 127)
• Sophie and the staff marrying the Vietnamese staff to get them over to America, Sophia insisting that Hoa marry Steven even though she is already married (pg. 138) – goes back to this idea of thinking you’re doing the right thing – preferential treatment for Vietnamese working with Americans, not the average Vietnamese citizen
• Hoa’s decision to stay after learning that her son and husband were alive, albeit in prison. The decision to stay in a place in turmoil, after being promised a way out, showing the dedication to family over politics that Bac mentioned in the previous chapter.
• “Colleges liked essays on triumphing over adversity and learning important values from a life lesson.” (pg. 146)  – does this capitalize on adversity, rather than celebrate overcoming it? – her life ended up being “too good” for her college essay due to her moving in with a stable family (pg. 147) – Mai embellishing the rest
• “He didn’t understand how lucky he was already to have a set of adoptive parents waiting for him in America. There were still unassigned children at the center who would leave for America unsure of their future homes.” (pg. 181) – this concept of the children being lucky also came up when Mai was reading her speech and someone referred to her as lucky for earning her scholarship
• The final part of 208-209 shows that Bridget is insecure about her trip overall, and wants to use Huan to ensure that what she did was valid, and that once they see him they will instinctually know that this was the right move and that all the time was worth it, instead of feeling more alienated by Bridget.

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on Week 6 Notes

• 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)

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on Assorted Notes: Week 5

“Black Humor”

• Gerald Early
  • Humor does not translate well among separate groups
  • The complex intergroup – relationships related to humor (member vs. non member)
  • Humor as a survival mechanism/weapon
  • Guarding culture, guarding humor
  • the evolution of the Black stand-up comic
  • the nature of “profane” language (i.e. the Blues)
• Glenda Carpio
  • The relationships among race/gender and humor/comedy
  • major theories of humor
    • the relief theory (a way to release pent up aggression)
    • the superiority theory (laughing at the misfortunes of others)
    • the incongruity theory (expectations vs. reality)
• Werner Sollors
  • the nature and function of satire
    • the primary function of satire is destruction (but best satire always reconstructs)

– All American Girl (94-95)

• “Korean American” family played by non Korean actors outside of Cho (seeing them as separate entities instead of a cohsive family unit)
• First Asian American family on television sitcom
  • Who is it catering to?
• Laughing at stereotypes because you know they are true (as inside group) vs. laughing at stereotypes because they’re stereotypes (outside group)

-Margaret Cho

• Use of deadpan/facial expressions/physicality etc.
• Self deprecating humor (prevalent in ethnic humor)
• use of subjects that aren’t funny to build up jokes

Some notes from Forgotten Country annotations:

• “Until now, he had not done much in the process of searching for Hannah, content to grill me instead on what progress I had made.” (pg. 19) – is this a play on the “model minority” stereotype in which Asian parents put heavy pressure on their children to do well in areas like school, but in this case to find her missing sister, for which they have given all responsibility of to her – she also addresses his pressure and influence on her school work as well (pg. 22)
• The main character’s skepticism towards herbalism when her father takes up the tea that could help, thinking he knew better. (pg. 40) – reminds me of how Donald Duk was skeptical of herbalism as well, that point being made that he shunned all things Eastern. Main character’s motivations in this situation seem more based on practicality, but could be a subtle reflection of her own identity
• The Principal telling the girl’s mother that they need American names (pg. 85-86): “He spoke loudly. In those days, everyone spoke more loudly at my parents than they seemed to speak to anyone else.” (pg. 85) – getting them to claim more “American names” not only erases their actual names and by extension their culture, but also only serves to benefit all of the teachers, and other students. More with the theme of things being forgotten: they are told to forget their own names
• Jeehyun’s identity as being the protector of her father as well as the one to achieve the dreams he never could (pg. 163) – martyrdom? – Her parents telling her “It is for you we work this hard. It is for you we do everything.” (pg. 165) – is she projecting that back?

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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)

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on week 3 assorted notes:

• “Culture” and “Nature” being the two most confusing terms (Raymond Williams)
• Culture being:
  • “intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development”
  • “a particular way of life, people/period/groups”
  • “the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity”
• Clifford Geertz: “(Culture) is simply the ensemble of stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves”
• Williams and “popular”:
  • well liked by many people
  • inferior kinds of works (don’t know if I missed more of this..)
  • work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people”
  • “production and destruction”
  • made by people for themselves
• Storey (and various problematics) on popular culture:
  • culture that is well liked by many people
  • what is left after what is decided as “high culture”
  • the culture which originates from “the people”
  • Gramsci and hegemony – struggle between dominant and marginalized cultures
  • postmodernism – no distinction between “high” and “low” culture (relativism)
• Common denominator: “popular culture is a culture that only emerged following industrialization and ubranization”
• “Splendid Messiness”

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashise: 

• one note in relation to Otsuka: the focus on water, especially represented in a dreamlike manner
• Further viewing: Emiko Omori – Rabbit in the Moon (the psychological phenomenon of looking at something and it appears to be something else)
• Further reading: Alison Landsberg – Prosthetic Memory (collective trauma)
• Collective trauma and Otsuka: “I want to be sick by myself”, said the girl. “That’s impossible,” said her mother.

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on Assorted Notes: Week 2

• I’m interested in how Japanese audiences (and original creators) reacted to the film vs. Asian American audiences
• Japanese ghosts in white shells – purpose? Does this change anything about the ideas of the source material?
• Heavy Chinese and New Zealand production influences (based on credits)
• Are Kuze and Major the only ones who have the Japanese ghost/white shell combination?
• Was the setting supposed to be a Neo Tokyo or Neo Hong Kong-type setting? If so why was everything so bare in terms of the actual population outside of the non-Asian cast?
• Considering the majority of the cast is non-Asian, is the setting needless?

One extra note on Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction: 

• One aspect I found really intriguing that Hsu talked about was the self exoticism that some Asian American entrepreneurs implemented in order to make a living (i.e. Chinatown and how that commodified exoticism, and the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker)

Posted in Paper | Comments Off on Some Notes on “Ghost in the Shell”