The Debut (2000) film notes

Dante Basco -> filipino actor + voice actor (VA)
-> zuko (avatar: the last airbender), jake long (american dragon: jake long), Rufio in that one peter pan movie
fight with his dad about his college/career choices
-> “you’re ungrateful!”
“your just as brown as the rest of us” – his sister, plus the auntie saying “come inside, you’ll get dark”
at the debut:
-> their uncle + the hand-to-forehead greeting to elders
language loss – ruben not knowing tagalog
his aunt’s white husband – “you shouldn’t use ‘oriental’; filipinos aren’t even asian, they’re considered ‘malay'”
ruben and augusto (gusto) as foils of each other
-> ruben: ignoring being filipino + hanging out with lots of white kids to fit into american society
-> gusto: resentment of whiteness but also appropriating black culture as a form or rebellion + resistance
FOB: fresh off the boat -> the (best) character w/ the accent
intergenerational trauma between grandpa+dad+ruben
fight between ruben + gusto and the white girl being racist at the white part as catalysts for ruben realizing his mistakes
-> “coconut”
gusto’s gang + car culture + dancing and DJing
the difference between rose being very immersed in filipino/pilipino culture (the debut, the dancing)
the fake deep pilipino guy speaking truth about pilipino history
similarities between latinos and pilipinos
-> spanish colonization, spanish last names, spanish words in tagalog, United Farm Workers