Tag Archives: slaying the dragon

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.

Catching Crisis

Catching Fire is the second movie of the Hunger Games trilogy. In this second movie, Katniss is reaped once more for the 75th Quarter Quell. While this is going on, she is stuck in a love triangle between Gale and Peeta, thus a crisis of the heart. The second she finds out she will be reaped again, she is in an immediate crisis of wanting to runaway to save herself and her family, yet abandoning her entire district who look up and depend on her. As the Quarter Quell begins she gets stuck in another crisis of trying to keep Peeta alive, yet what she does not know is that most of the tributes are working to keep her alive and everything she does somehow counteracts what she intended it to. Peeta ends up getting captured by the capital and she gets out of the arena safely and is told that she is the Mocking Jay- identity crisis.

In Slanted Screen and Slaying the Dragon the documentaries on Asian women and men in the film industry go through a crisis of portraying a “real” image of Asian cultures. So there is a bit of an identity crisis for both men and women in the tone of sexuality and of what Asians look and live like. Also, in Saving Face Wil has an identity of who she is, she is biologically Asian, but culturally she is not accepted. Katniss is not accepted in the Capital at all because of her rebellious meaning, yet she does not fit in with district 12 anymore. She tries to do her best to just leave this rebellion behind, yet most people around her are controlling the things around her and she has no idea. She sees herself as just an ordinary girl trying to escape, but then she has to use this image of the Mocking Jay for the rebellion. Katniss is confused about what is going on around her and what she feels inside. She is caught between what she is told is right and what she feels is right.

 

Week 4, Tuesday. Film representations & Lee.

**Note: For my other thoughts on the end of Lee’s Orientals, go here!**

One of the reoccurring themes throughout the end readings in Lee’s Orientals, the 1988 documentary Slaying the Dragon, and 1993 film Joy Luck Club was the theme of opportunity. There are the opportunities perceived to be had in America, influencing immigration, as well as the opportunities that existed and were created by the Asian immigrant and Asian American community. But even the triumphant success of creating new opportunities in a past time can now be looked at with a more critical lens. Because the opportunities now have grown and because the relationship between Asian Americans and representation has changed (albeit, arguably not enough) we look at the past through eyes that have only known the future.For example, when there were no other starring roles for Asian American women it would be an achievement to play a role that, in hindsight, was problematic and stereotypes Asian women. We saw this through Nany Kwan’s characters Suzie Wong in The World of Suzie Wong and Linda Low in Flower Drum Song. Both of these characters were discussed and analyzed as negative representation these roles created in Orientals as well as Slaying the Dragon. However, in Slaying the Dragon Nancy Kwan speaks out about how there were no other starring roles for her as an Asian American actress; her defense comes from the success of any representation. With this in mind, it is important to consider how activism changes for the time and  when creating a relationship between theory and history to balance our modern, critical lens and our understand-of-the-past lens.

Another theme that I found was that of requiring a white person in a film as the lead so the “audience can identify with them [the white lead]“. (This was influenced by the reference to Farewell to Manzanar.) This is very telling about who movies are made for– if the audience needs someone to relate to and that relatable person must be white, then who is assumed to be the audience? Who is it meant to be consumed by?

This reminded me of a current, popular series that has been released through on Netflix’s original network, Orange is the New Black. For those who are unfamiliar, here is the description of the show from Netflix:

“From the creator of “Weeds” comes a heartbreaking and hilarious new series set in a women’s prison. Piper Chapman’s wild past comes back to haunt her, resulting in her arrest and detention in a federal penitentiary. To pay her debt to society, Piper trades her comfortable New York life for an orange prison jumpsuit and finds unexpected conflict and camaraderie amidst an eccentric group of inmates.”

What this description does not reveal is that the majority of “eccentric inmates” are Women of Color. The creator, Jenji Kohan, talks a little about why she uses white Piper Chapman as the focal point of the show:

“In a lot of ways Piper was my Trojan Horse. You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women, and Latina women, and old women and criminals. But if you take this white girl, this sort of fish out of water, and you follow her in, you can then expand your world and tell all of those other stories. But it’s a hard sell to just go in and try to sell those stories initially. The girl next door, the cool blonde, is a very easy access point, and it’s relatable for a lot of audiences and a lot of networks looking for a certain demographic. It’s useful.”

The importance of this quote is that it allows us to see how those who are making the popular shows feel: they can sell a stereotype or a body but without a white vehicle, they cannot sell a voice.

I thought of Joy Luck Club as a good example of allowing Women of Color to use their own voice in telling their stories and a good example of differing opportunities. It also showed us a brief example of the influence that Sayonara and Flower Drum Song had and have on both the western lens of Asian American women and the internalized feelings Asian American women have of themselves. In the beginning, during the piano receital scene, there is a brief clip where another young girl is singing “I Enjoy Being A Girl” from Flower Drum Song (a scene shown more than once in Slaying the Dragon). The Asian/ Asian American casting of the main women (while not all Chinese) allowed for us to look at a certain kind of representation, the influence of other representations, and the total possibility to have an all Asian leading cast to tell a beautiful, heartbreaking story.

Also, fun fact: Nancy Kwan is said to have “replaced” France Nuyen (Ying Ying in Joy Luck Club) in the film The Life of Suzie Wong. I fond this to be interesting because it shows us the “small world” of Asian American roles and actresses/actors.

two quarters and a heart down

Slaying The Dragon,
& The Joy Luck Club 

Slaying the Dragon took a good look at the trials of Asian American women in media and, as the class might indicate, popular culture. It wasn’t quite as female centered as the film we watched later, The Slanted Screen, but I did feel that it was somewhat female centric, or at least had a good focus on the women’s roles in movies over the years.  Because of the two films being shown very close together, we were given an excellent view into the two parallel but different worlds of Asian American men and women in media.  The most jarring thing about Slaying the Dragon was probably how truly fetishized movies have made Asian women. They either seduce or are made into objects to lust after, and they rarely get to break out of this stereotype unless it’s to be a stereotypical doting housewife-like figure. Not only is this lack of change unfortunate, it’s actually depressing.

The same can be seen in the lives of the women of The Joy Luck Club. Being about a large group of women, it shows the lives and hardships of some of the older women. How one was literally sold at a young age to be married at fifteen, and the emotional abuse she suffered later in life at the hands of her husband. The scars from this lingered with her for years, and I can’t help but feel that was happened to her wasn’t a great deal different from what media does to women as well.

As an aside, I accidentally did the wrong reading, and my comments on the reading that should have been here can actually be found over in this post.

The Perfect Woman

 

 

She would be exotic, mysteriously sensual, obedient, and pamper her man like a real woman should. In Slaying the Dragon: Asian Women In U.S. most of the Asian women were seen in that tone. Whether the character they played was evil, good, or a stand-by character, they definitely got the attention of the white man. One of the few things that was introduced at the beginning of the movie was how many men commented on how Asian women were “exotic” and in movie clips the women were wearing fitted dresses with slits half way up each side. Then, there was this clip about Suzy Wong and how she was seen as this very sensual being that created this trend of the long haired, party Asian girl. I feel like she portrayed the mysterious sensual role that most Asian women have in most movies. Lastly, Sayonara portrayed the image of Asian women having this role of pampering their husbands and being obedient to them. Overall, all these qualities create this image of the stereo-typed Asian woman.

In 47 Ronin there were 2 main women who played the different sides of the Asian woman stereotype. The woman that Kai fell in love with, Mika, portrayed the obedient, quiet, and polite role; on the other hand, the Witch was sensual-like with her graceful movements, she was very exotic, and pampered her master. In Joy Luck Club the June’s aunties, Ying Ying, An Mei, and Lindo, were young Asian girls who broke the stereotypes that were presented in Slaying the Dragon. For instance, Ying Ying married a man who was a cheater and could careless about him, yet she stayed in the relationship and did what he asked. An Mei and Lindo were like the outspoken ones. An Mei spoke out against her Father and “Big Mother” at her mother’s funeral and Lindo lied to her mother-in-law and everyone else present to get out of a marriage. They were all obedient; however, none of them grew up to still be obedient (in a way to roll over and do what they were told), they all became independent women.

Lastly, in Orientals I feel like the stereotypes of Asians in general, were created by the media. For instance, the “Third Sex” was a suppressing label for Asians. How this relates to the stereotypes of women, is how media affects the views of people. Everyone now has an expectation for Asian women to be sexual deviants, for pampering slaves, or Asian men to be this weird in-between sexual being. Overall, stereotypes have shaped peoples view of Asians in today’s society.