Tag Archives: Orientals

Joy Luck & Lee

We viewed Slaying the Dragon, a documentary about Asian American women in film. It explored prominent roles played by actresses like Nancy Kwan, Nobu McCarthy, Kim Miyori, and Anna May Wong. We also viewed The Joy Luck Club. It followed four women, and their daughters’ lives through the experiences and hardships that shaped them.

Each of the Tuesday films covered the portrayal of women in media, the Lee reading also tied into this. I thought that The Joy Luck Club was amazing. I really felt connected to some of the daughters’ due to shared experiences, and they showed such depth that made them feel so much realer. The mothers’ stories were absolutely heartbreaking as well. The cast was amazing, nearly all of my favorite Asian American actresses were in it.

In Lee’s Orientals, the chapter deals with Orientalizing women in media and the stereotypes in film. I thought that this really gave insight into why The Joy Luck Club is so great. Thought it’s about Chinese and Chinese American women, they portray such a wide array of character types that it is so far from where the industry started.

Crisis

Crisis, singular. Crises, plural.

  • 危机
  • wēijī
  • dangerous/critical point

I chose to present the Chinese for “crisis” since one of the films dealt with a Chinese family, and the documentary dealt with a “Chinaman” image.

Saving Face involved many sort of crises. Honor, romantic, personal, occupational. Ma’s crises begin with her pregnancy, being kicked out of her home, dating, and fear of motherhood. Since she was unwed and pregnant, Ma’s father kicked her out of his home. For him, having an unwed pregnant daughter caused him to lose face (a sort of social honor). Wil tries to get her on dates so that she will get married and move out, but she feels insecure about her age. She also kept repeating her fears about not being able to take care of the child well. She’s afraid she can’t manage it.

Wil faces crises over her relationship with Vivian. She is afraid to tell others about their relationship, mainly her mother and the Chinese community because she would seem like a disrespectful daughter. She also struggles to balance her job, her mother, and Vivian. When she lets Vivian go, whether because of her fear or for Vivian’s future, she fully admits she loved Vivian.

The Slanted Screen highlighted the roles that Asian American men have had in film and television. The real crisis about this is the lack of proper roles being presented.

I wish you well

Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture pg. 1 – 50,
& Strangers from a different shore pg.  1 – 75

I could have sworn that I made these posts, but I evidently did not.

“They could feel the liminality of the land awaiting them. Would everything be “familiar and kind”? the newcomers wondered. Or were they merely seeing illusions, harboring hopes that would “vanish,” too?” (Takaki, p. 74)

For all the hardship that many immigrants faced during their years, it’s truly a wonder that they had the bravery to actually leave their homes and their lives in order to set out for something that could have been better for them. It may have been easier with the way that many people spoke of America, but even now I still find myself in awe of the attempts that were made. The people that left everything they knew, sometimes to send money back to their families, and sometimes to try to better their own situations. I don’t think I would have had the courage to do that unless I absolutely needed to. If it were just me, with no one else, I think I may have given in to fear and remained wherever I was. The only way I believe I could be motivated to do it is if it was an unavoidable scenario for the well-being of my family.

In Orientals, we see first hand horrific instances of racism. The extent of this racism is truly startling in some cases, and others can still be seen today. Even among my own family members I frequently see horrible instances of racism. The last time I visited my extended family, an uncle of mine couldn’t stop complaining about his job as a local Casino. He’d frequently say something to the effect of “Those damn chinks,” and complain about them coming down from New York to gamble. He’d cite numerous improbable circumstances regarding them, and the entire time it would happen I mostly just felt sick. I worry a great deal for my distant cousin, a girl of about ten-years-old and also his granddaughter, given that she’s there often. The only reason I would want to be around that portion of my family is probably for her sake.

Alienation/Alien-Nation

There is a lot to digest with this week’s reading: the racialization of labor, industrialization, Irish vs. Chinese immigrants, miscegenation, desire, minstrel shows, and so much more. Avoiding my temptation to summarize the reading, I’d instead like to focus on pieces that were particularly interesting to me. I was intrigued by what Lee had to say about pastoral narratives of California, and aliens.

“God’s Free Soil did not have space for the Chinese, whose presence disrupted the mission into the wilderness…his very body polluted the Eden that California represented” (Lee 50) Lee uses the lyrics of popular music to explore the historical, social, and cultural circumstances for the immigration of Chinese to California in the 1800s.  Many white people fled to California to escape encroaching industrialization, hoping to establish a state built on the artisan labor of free whites. For white people California represented a pastoral paradise where a man could make his own fortune, invoking Edenic narratives of untouched open spaces. The construction of nature and wilderness is inherently white supremacist, often involving the erasure or displacement of people of color. Nature is anything “untouched” by (white) man.

Connecting this back to my Rock research is the parallel idea put forth by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun that techno-Orientalism in science fiction resurrects the great frontier in virtual form. “Open spaces” are embodied by the internet and cyberspace. Western characters are typically savvy survivors, and resistance fighters, they are able to open closed spaces. Techno-Orientalism allows the West to rely on nostalgia to recover frontier imagery of cyberspace and cement the West as a challenger to Eastern economic growth, just as the old pop songs presented in Orientals recall a nostalgic image of pre-industrial California.

Lee repeatedly describes the portrayal of the Oriental as an “alien body”, or “racialized alien”.  Asians are seen as aliens interloping in Western society. Always set apart, and never completely assimilable into whiteness. The alien is a powerful and convenient metaphor for the experiences of Asian/Americans, both for their alienation in the United States and the alien-nation of their homelands.

Book Impressions/Connections: “Orientals” pt1

Reading through Robert G. Lee’s book on Asian Americans in Popular Culture, I’ve been thinking a lot about connections. Some obvious, some less so– all filtered and framed through my love of music and film. Reviewing my reading log for the chapters three and four, there are several notes labeled “connections.”  Here then, is a sample of those notes along with some of the connections I made.

“The ethnic stratification of the labor market and the radicalization of class struggle resulted from the massive wave of immigration to America between 1840-1850, the emancipation of souther slaves in the wake of the Civil War” (pg53).

berlin-wall-coming-down

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

This Reminded of a similar situation be it on a smaller scale, of what happened in Germany when the USSR collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. I was stationed in the Benelux at the time, and witnessed the celebrations and contentions.  Initially nearly everyone in Germany celebrated the fall of the USSR and the wall with a warm acceptance of the East Germans as they flowed into the West. Shortly thereafter unemployment rates grew however, tensions flared and resentment festered for years after. Once the dust settled there was a clear sense of us and them.

Chapter Three talks a lot about “coolie labor” (menial) and “free labor” (craftsmen). The idea that the collie labor was reserved for the Chinese, while the crafts-type work became somewhat nostalgic and the realm of the white-worker. Considering this was in the mid/late 1800s, it is surprising to see these portrayals continue today in some rather unexpected ways. To connect it with my Rock subject, the world of guitars provides a good example of this. For instance, Gibson Guitars has two distinct product lines: US made Gibson guitars, and their imported Epiphone guitars.

electric-guitar-epiphone-les-paul-standard-plus-cherry-sunburst_close

The US line is presented as an “…ambitious quest to recapture the craftsmanship, performance and quality of an area that had passed…” Their vision is firmly fixed in the nostalgic (with rare occasions of exploration in modern technology) and their guitars– the Les Paul model for example– start at $2,000 and skyrocket from there. The Epiphone Les Pauls are imported from several Asian countries; China, Korea and Indonesia to name a few. The price of these new typically run between $200 – $600. The US made versions are hailed as the “holy grail,” of the craft, while their imported cousins are thought of by many as comparatively inferior, low-quality beginner guitars.

One last connection I’ll mention here was hard to miss:

“In the popular press, many a political cartoonist portrayed the stereotyped Irish Mike or Paddy as ape-like, with hideous low brow and jutting lower jaw. Such simian images of the Irish immigrant were as commonplace as similar subhuman images of the Chinese and the African American…” (pg86).

This reads like a page directly from the National Socialist German Workers Party of the 1930s; a title reminiscent of the Workingman’s Party of California the author mentions in this context on page 62; ideologies from 1876 mirroring those of the 1930s.

My notebook is filled with connections similar to those mentioned above; some more direct than others, but all are tied with one common thread; anytime groups of people gather, subgroups emerge, leaders rise, and injustice follows. Carl Marx had an optimistic vision of communism where the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie cease to exist:

“Following the proletariats’ defeat of capitalism, a new classless society would emerge based on the idea: ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’. In such a society, land, industry, labour and wealth would be shared between all people. All people would have the right to an education, and class structures would disappear. Harmony would reign, and the state would simply ‘wither away’” (British Library)

The fatal flaw of course as I mentioned above, is that of group dynamics. History provides example after example of Marx’s failed manifesto time and time again. Leaders will always rise up and assume power which eventually leads to history’s truth that, “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”