“Twas yellow skin and slanted eyes

That did betray us with their lies.

Until they crossed the righteous path

Of our Prophet’s holy wrath.”

http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2013/04/01/bioshock-hall-heroes-640_r640x400.jpg?5f283927f7404204a81e453b153d50eb7d86d89b

A motorized Patriot stands at the door and recites these words. The building is a museum that glorifies both battles of The Boxer Rebellion and Broken Knee. In the Boxer Rebellion half of the museum the cardboard cutouts representing the Chinese pop up from behind stones, represented as hunch-backed demons with talons, fanged teeth and pointed ears. Over the loudspeaker a man boasts how he “Put the city to the torch” in Peking, angered that the prophet Comstock took credit instead.

The Boxer Rebellion is portrayed as something that was necessary, as well as a fight for glory. The Chinese are portrayed as monsters, who were mercilessly slaying white people – even portrayed a devilish monsters. Nowhere in the game is this seen as a negative event. It’s only seen as a savior saving his people from monsters. The men who participated are seen as heroes, even if the experience leaves them broken.

I think that the game shows an interesting pairing, using a character who sees the battles depicted in this museum as a fight of glory. He even demands a soldiers death towards the end of this section of the game. On the other side there’s the character who is ashamed of the part he took in these battles against people he came to realize didn’t deserve what happened to them. Despite this pair of opposite characters, it’s interesting to see the two different mindsets in an overly racist atmosphere provided by the museum.

But I don’t think these two characters should overshadow the fact that this museum shows the acceptance of racism towards people of different nationalities within this city.

This week for my Rock category I decided to see what was in the news since I ran out of Asian American’s in the NBA (which is sad). I also thought it ran with the class since we have talked about Indian-American’s and bullying. I found a video of a young high school basketball player being targeted by racial slurs while he shoots a free throw. This article came out in January but it is news to me and probably many of you.

A young man was shouting out “We want Slurpees” at a basketball game while an Indian-American player shot his free-throws. Of course this leader thought it was funny because stereotypes say that Indian-Americans own 7 Elevens. This happened in New York city. Happy to say the boy who started all of this did get kicked out of the game and wasn’t aloud to be the leader of the fan club. Its sad to see that people can’t play a sport without being racially targeted. Not only was it bad enough that this boy was being bullied while playing basketball but the comments people have left on the website is horrible. Hopefully one day…..

http://deadspin.com/high-school-students-chant-we-want-slurpees-at-indian-1511159652

Monty Oum

This past week, I found myself (yet again, for the first time since December) without a laptop. As most of my hobbies have to do with my laptop, this unfortunately left me with not very much to do in regard to my passions.

That’s why I thought I would challenge myself to look up what I could about one of my passions with only my phone. This proved difficult, but I decided to look into the fantastic creator Monty Oum. I was first introduced to Monty Oum’s work a few years ago when a friend pointed me towards Red vs. Blue, a web series that Oum did most of the actions scenes for in later seasons. With animation skills that are frankly amazing, he’s provided expertise on a number of projects, including some of the action scenes from Afro Samurai. He was actually hired by game designers because of his work in fan videos over the years, and is considered a pretty big authority when it comes to web-based series.

In addition to this, Monty is genuinely a pretty great guy. He makes most of his character designs with lots of pockets so that cosplayers won’t be out of luck when it comes to storing their wallets or phones (a pretty big issue for cosplayers). While American, he says that he is “Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese”, making him a pretty diserve Asian-American. While I don’t think he does very much in the way of activism, he’s certainly a wonderful example of Asian-Americans influencing popular culture. Red vs. Blue and a newer project of his, RWBY, are both insanely popular. Additionally, he does the voice acting for one of the only obviously Asian characters in RWBY, Lie Ren.

This week I was inspired by Indian culture, since we watched Mississippi Masala and My Name is Khan a few weeks ago. So an art that is from India that I found is Mehndi.

Mehndi is an Indian art of ‘painting elaborate designs on the skin with Henna.(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mehndi)

Henna is a plant, and the dye is made from the plant to make temporary tattoos on the skin. Mehndi was originally only used on women, but is now more common with men too. The most intricate designs are placed on the brides. Her and her close friends will get together a few days before the wedding and paint all kinds of beautiful designs mainly on the hands arms and feet. Mehndi is also sometimes placed on the fingernails.

Mehndi designs have meaning behind them. Some seen often are:

Birds: They are the messengers between heaven and Earth, They can also stand for freedom.
Flowers: Happiness
Mandala: The Universe
Paisleys: Fertility
Vines/Leaves: Longevity
Butterflies: Transformation
Lotus Blossom: Femininity , Sensuality, Beauty
Sun/Moon/Stars: Lasting love with your partner

The placing of the mehndi on the body is also important. On the palms, there are usually suns, mandalas, or flowers to represent offerings. On the back of the hand, you put designs that resemble defending or protecting. The feet are where the humans and earth meet, so they are a point of “divine contact”.
(http://www.hennaheaven.co.uk/section381901.html)

http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2013/01/10/cosplay-is-not-consent-anime-conventions-attack-the-problem-of-harassment

The cosplay community has been recently faced with a lot of issues with harassment (mostly sexual) towards many different types of cosplayers. (As if we didn’t already have enough to deal with on top of elitism)

Individuals that have been labeled “Cosplay Creeps” have begun to appear at cons (short for conventions) all over the country.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Things like this have caused cosplayers to stop wanting to cosplay certain things or stop attending cons all together (acutally it’s because of creeps that I don’t go to conventions by myself and if I’m dressed as a character I know will get unwanted attention, I carry a weapon of some sort that goes with the costume). And  because of reaction videos like those, there have been complaints that the female side is just targeting guys giving them “extra attention”. And that is not the case, people of all genders have been effected by this!

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is “Cosplay is not CONsent”?

Hello All! So my rock obsessions have jumped around due to lack of information. I wanted to educate more about drag culture in Asia, but I wasn’t successful in finding that much information. So in this post I will throw as much as I can find…at you!

Drag Queen

The etymology of the term “drag queen” is disputed. The term drag queen occurred in Polari, a subset of English slang that was popular in some gay communities in the early part of the 20th century. Its first recorded use to refer to actors dressed in women’s clothing is from 1870.

A folk etymology, whose acronym  basis reveals the late 20th-century bias, would make “drag” an abbreviation of “Dressed as A Girl” in description of male theatrical cross-dressing. However, there is no trace of this supposed stage direction in Dessen and Thomson’s Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580-1642.

Queen may refer to the trait of affected royalty found in many drag characters. It is also related to the Old English word “quean” or cwene, which originally simply meant “woman”, then was later used as a label both for promiscuous women and gay men (see Oxford English Dictionary definition number 3 for “queen”).

Terminology

Drag as a term referring to women’s clothing worn by men has less clear origins. According to one theory, it was used in reference to transvestites at least as early as the 18th century, owing to the tendency of their skirts to drag on the ground. Another possibility is that it derives from non-English languages. Bardah was a Persian word meaning “slave”, which developed into the Spanish term bardaje referring to a catamite. This was borrowed into French as bardache. The French word was then used in America in the American-English form berdache, and was used in referring to indigenous men who assumed the role of homemaker and dressed as a woman, while the wife left the home to assume warrior duties.

Female Impersonator

Another term for a drag queen, female impersonator, is still used— though it is sometimes regarded as inaccurate, because not all contemporary drag performers are attempting to pass as women. Female impersonation, has been and continues to be illegal in some places, which inspired the drag queen Jose Sarria to hand out labels to his friends reading, “I am a boy,” so he could not be accused of female impersonation. American drag queen RuPaul once said, “I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses?” He also said, “I don’t dress like a woman; I dress like a drag queen!”.

Celebrity drag couple “The Darling Bears” go so far as to sport full beards for their performances, which could also be referred to as genderfuck. Going in drag while retaining clearly masculine features is referred to as skag drag.

Some performers draw the distinction that a female impersonator seeks to emulate a specific female star or celebrity, while a drag queen only seeks to create a distinctive feminine persona of his or her own.

I was scanning through you tube the other day and came across a surfing video, and was intrigued to learn some of the origins of the sport. I knew their was a huge connection between surfing and my obsession of Hawai′i and thought I would look into the sport a bit more. Here’s some of what I found to be interesting.

Surfing is believed to have originated in the Polynesian Islands, and has deep roots in Ancient Hawaiian culture. To Ancient Hawaiians surfing was like in todays sports world a way to distinguish oneself. A person who was a commoner could become, “famous or infamous” by their skills of riding waves. Also the Chiefs utilized their skills in surfing in a way to show their dominance. I found this interesting because it seems to connect somewhat with todays sports where a person who is particularly good at a sport can set himself/herself apart from the rest of society due to his or her skills in the athletic arena.

Furthermore as European and Hawaiian cultures met there was a dismantling of the Kapu (taboo) code of living which before the 19th century ran the Hawaiian peoples everyday life. This change can be associated greatly to the Calvinist missionaries who first arrived in the 1820′s and began converting the Hawaiian population to Christianity and by the turn of the century surfing was scarcely seen on the island.

However with the Haole’s (white person) intrusion on the island and its link to the demise of surfing, white people also played a key role in its revival. The big turning point was seen when George Freeth who is believed to be born on Oahu Hawai’i came to California to demonstrate the art of riding the waves. Also Duke  Kahanamoku was an ambassador to the sport and helped it spread and grow in popularity as he brought the sport to Australia in 1915. These early ambassadors to the sport were essential for surfings growth and its spread to different cultures and nations. But the biggest spread of the sport had yet to come

This would be seen in the mid 1950′s to early 60′s. As we know from this quarter, media plays a large role in the spread of popular culture and we see this in the case of surfing. In the mid 1950′s a filmmaker by the name of Bud Browne would “pioneer the surf movie.” From this more cinematographers, musicians, and photographers aided in spreading surfing culture and made surfing into not just a hobby, but into a ”full fledged industry.” Now we see surfing to have grown to an international sport with a pro surfing circuit which hold events from Hawai’i, South Africa, Australia, and Tahiti.

Though this is just a brief bit of History of surfing and how it came to be associated with popular culture, if anyone is interested to look further into surfing, I have been able to see a few documentaries that are quite interesting and give great backround and detail of the sport. One of which is titled, Riding Giants, and the other is Odyssey or also titled Billibong Odyseey.

Also here is a  link to where I got my information on the surfing’s history-  http://www.surfingforlife.com/history3.html