Author: rosmar19

Class Notes Week 4

Japanese internment camp movie:
Very white saviory.  It reminded me of Baracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, which was released just recently even though Hurston was a writer from the Harlem Renaissance.  Baracoon has a very dubious history, it was an interview of an old ex-slave from Africa and it was funded by the notorious “Godmother” Charlotte Osgood Mason.  Baracoon is held under scrutiny because Hurston never wanted to get the work published and for the Godmother’s involvement.  The Godmother was known to be coercive toward those she patronised and she had a racist agenda of spiritually healing white civilization through “primitive peoples.”  She had tight control over the works she produced and was known to censor and manipulate.  Anyways, Baracoon is suspicious because it had Kasula (the interviewee) overzealously praising the white people who threw him bones throughout his life (even his slave owner) while the majority of his complaints were directed at black people (Africans from his country and African Americans).  The book was full of white saviors and highlighted black on black violence all the way throughout.  Similar to this movie, where a lot of white people were shown being sympathetic and compassionate while Japanese on Japanese violence and aggression was highlighted.

The main character reminded me of when the dad character in South Park spends whole episodes engaging in forced fantasies of living like a hero archetype at the expense (and eye-rolling) of those around him.  He makes an ass out of himself and keeps jumping at every opportunity to play the hero while accomplishing nothing.  Seemed like he’d go out of his way to get himself injured too, from the very beginning it looked as though he intentionally burned himself to fuel his ego as a hero.

Also, he was very creepy and predatory.  This was gone over in class, but it was kind of fucky how he, the handsome white savior, was set up to save the Japanese lady from getting married to the old pervy Japanese dude.

Presentation notes:

The presentation was decent I thought, especially due to the short time they made it in.  I think a different topic would’ve been better for this class though, especially because there’s so many other topics they could’ve done.  Maybe I just say this because almost none of the information was new to me?  It was pretty show-offy of Studio Ghibli even though most of the class is probably familiar with it.  The only thing I didn’t know was Troma Films association with Studio Ghibli in distribution.  I used to watch Troma Films in high school, they’re free on youtube and they are shamelessly stupid.

Lunch Notes:

I talked a lot at lunch with Isaac and AJ.  AJ was having trouble finding sources for his project.  I think Isaac and I helped him with finding more places to look for more connections?  I could come up with a long list of areas he could research for his “Monster Hunter” project.  There is so much history, mythology, media, and pop culture related to monsters and monster hunting from all over the world.

Talking Points: Seventeen Syllables

  1. It was a bit Ironic to see Gandhi used in this story.  His evasion on the question of self defense against male assault disappointed the main character.  Gandhi himself was a sexually repressed pervert who molested a lot of women.
  2. I guess the mother is so insistent that the daughter never get married because she herself is stuck with a dude she never loved.
  3. So Miss Sasagawara’s madness is explained by her poem at the end.  She went crazy because her Dad went crazy.
  4. The drunk guy represents what America truly feels about Asians or at least he spells out plainly the intangible racism that is sensed from Americans.
  5. Gambling addiction and alcoholism are two traps for dads that I’ve seen come up in multiple immigrant family stories I’ve read.  The dad falls prey and the family suffers for his selfishness.
  6. The wild dogs starving, getting overfed, and then roasting sounds pretty tasty.  It reminds me of in Tampopo, the dying gangster boyfriend’s story, about hunting wild boars in the winter and roasting their intestines that are filled with sweet potatoes they had eaten.
  7. That’s how I eat my fried eggs, I scarf em like that.
  8. “(It is a wicked and unfaithful generation that asks for a sign).”  That’s pretty hardcore to say but is also an admission of their vanity considering that they themselves were looking for a sign.
  9. I see a lot of recurring foods in this book show up at once in this chapter.  Fried eggs, rice cakes, bean cakes, pickled vegetables, fish, and vinegar rice.  Japanese immigrant food staples.
  10. The theme of quiet helpless anger and bearing disrespect is recurring in these stories.
  11. The part about Emiko being mindful of criticalness to the art of others resonated with me.  I think most people have self-esteem deficiencies in various areas or perhaps a lack of inner strength to defend their egos.  So people are shaped by what gets attacked and what they let get taken away from them.  The fragile parts of the ego can be torn away by critics or bullies, so all that remains is what goes untouched or what is invincible to attacks.  I think art is a common thing that people get taken away from them in life because it seems for the most part only people who learn to love making art survive the pressures to give up (singing, drawing, dancing, acting, music, etc.)
  12. Muhammed Ali fighting a sumo wrestler is really silly. I had to google that.  The fight looks like it was a total mess and made everyone mad.
  13. This story shows the discomfort and sympathy of interacting with homeless people.  It also shows two detached perspectives of the Japanese from the homeless lady.  Her irrational paranoia plus her idealization and identification with those idealized qualities of being polite and quiet.
  14. Envying the child dancers for seeming worlds apart.  I wonder if Chisato wants to do what they are doing or maybe Chisato just wants to fantasize about having a different life,

Notes: Orientals: Asian Americans in Pop Culture

Dehumanization

Asian aliens

Racial pollution

Threat to America and the white race.

The mythology of the model minority.  1960’s and 70’s cold war.  To use Asians as an example for other races to assimilate.

The invisible enemy.  Inauthentic, disloyal, deceitful.  Asian cyborgs.

A mutating racial stereotype with contradicting images.

PROJECT UPDATE: What I think I want to do

I want to go with crosscurrents in imagination between Japan and the United States.  This is a topic that I’ve thought about a lot on my own but I have never fully researched or explored this in an academic setting.  I want to do research on things like Asian/American creative collaboration on the collective unconscious, nostalgia, fantasy, and horror.  There seems to be a lot of work analyzing these cross-cultural connections that I can look into.  I could also do research to trace the roots of the concepts that get bounced back and forth.  Then I could analyze how the different sides use and relate differently to the same concepts they share.

An example of what I’m talking about can be in cosmic horror.  It is such a popular genre that elements of cosmic horror are seen in a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror media.  HP Lovecraft’s ideas and unique brand of horror can be directly traced to his own racism, xenophobia, and anxieties about his bloodline.  Lovecraft wrote especially unflattering things about Asians, he believed that they would eventually take over the entire world.  So what is it about cosmic horror that resonates so strongly with Japan?  A particular cosmic horror trope that always grabs my attention every time I see it is the idea of a spiritual world or a world of the collective unconscious leaking into, mutating, or invading the physical world.  This idea is shown with many different settings and themes.  Japanese examples: Berserk, Bloodborne, Digimon, Serial Experiments Lain, Paranoia Agent, Paprika, Shin Megami Tensei, Silent Hill, Persona, etc.  Western examples: Sandman, Evil Dead, Stranger Things, Ghost Busters, Gravity Falls, Twin Peaks, Poltergeist, Annihilation, The Cat in the Hat Movie, etc.  This idea is used a lot all over the world, but I have a feeling that it must have some specific meaning when it is used in Japan because Japanese usage of this trope almost always directly connects the alien world to the collective unconscious in some way.  All of the examples I listed do anyways.  This may have to do with Japanese folklore or their cultural ideas about society.  I wonder if Celtic mythology is popular in Japan for similar reasons to cosmic horror’s popularity?  In Celtic mythology, there is also an idea of an alternate world that is formed by dreams.  Spirits and faeries invade from the other world to do mischief.

I think I might want to do some kind of google slides presentation on this topic, as it would make things easier to show visual connections.

Potential Project Concept #3

  • Cultural cross currents in imagination.
  • I think that cross cultural back and forth influence between Asia and the West is leading to a huge acceleration in the evolution of concepts, themes, and creative ideas on both sides.  Some examples being in cosmic horror, spirituality, existentialism, fantasy, and mythology but all through the filter of entertainment media.

Potential project topic #2

  • Asian American visual artists and media producers.
  • With a growing Western taste, consumption, and demand for art media from Asian countries, Asian Americans are gaining more of a platform to enter American pop culture as artists and creators.  There still may not be much room for Asian American filmmakers, musicians, and actors in the West, but when it comes to video games, cartoons, and comic books, Asians are gaining more acceptance as artists and creative contributors in those areas.

Potential project topic #1

  • What are the effects of American pop-culture on Asian Americans?
  • I think immigrants seem to have a tendency to accept and endure a good deal of oppression while trying hard to survive and assimilate into America.  While the Asian children who grow up as Americans with American ideals, perspectives, and cultural literacy are more likely to perceive and resist the subtle oppressions and overt prejudices towards them.  This is shown in the movie “My America or Honk if you love Buddha” where fist-generation immigrants are shown saying “they won’t turn the other cheek like their parents did” and being involved in activism, civil rights, and asserting their identities as Asian Americans.

Talking Point: Internment Camps

  • The man in the moon vs. the rabbit in the moon.  That stood out to me as bizarre yet telling of the American perspective toward Japanese people as aliens.  Even something as petty and trivial as what you interpret the moon to look like is something that indicates your American-ness.  This is a comical indicator of how shallow and thoughtless the people in power were.