The chapter that I enjoyed the most out of the reading we did for today was Chapter 15: “Cibo Matto’s Stereotype A“. I am glad that this is the one chapter that we talked about in class, and that we got to watch the music videos. Watching the music video’s helped me to connect back to the reading, although while I was reading, I didn’t expect the videos to be anything like what they are! They were so different then what I had imagined. In the first music video we watched : Sugar Water, I have to say I was extremely confused through out the whole thing. When it was over I felt like I had no clue what just happened!

I think it is interesting that all of their songs are based on food. I also think it is interesting that they decided to name their band an Italian name, although they are in Japan and they are an American band..sort of.

In both The Wedding Banquet and East Main Street: Chapter 4, the typical Asian stereotype is being broken.

In the book for this weeks reading, I focused mostly on Chapter 4: Model Minorities Can Cook, because I found it the most interesting. After reading about Ming Tsai and Padma Lakshmi, I would really like to watch both of their shows. They both have their own show on the Food Network, and they are famous for their fusion cuisine.

Ming Tsai focuses on combining the Eastern and Western world. ¨fusion cuisine, defines it as a harmonious combination of foods of various origins. Offering more precise term that circulates in the restaurant industry, Andrew Dorenburg and Karen Page define fusion as a ‘melding together of the cuisines of more than one country in a single dish.¨ (p.75) Ming Tai is also known for being very hot… which is interesting because at least in films, according to The Slanted Screen, Asian men are usually desexualized. ¨ Ming Tsai is not the bumbling idiot who prepares egg foo yung and chop suey and cannot speak English…He is presented as the future of America”(p.78)

Padma Lakshii is also not the typical Asian American cook that you would think of. She is from South India and is very popular for her sex appeal and sensuality, along with her exotic cooking.

In the Wedding Banquet, the stereotype of Asians are broken during the scene of the big wedding ceremony. The two white men in the room look at each other in shock and say”Geeze, I thought Asians were just quiet math wizzes.” This is while the whole room is partying, and drinking a ton! Also, they have a huge party in the newlyweds hotel room.

Overall, these few examples show that the stereotypes for Asians are not always the case.

So I’m pretty sure that this is the only movie I have ever seen that has lesbian Chinese actress’s as the main characters. Probably the only movie with any gay Asian main characters period. They really played against the Asian stereotype in this movie. I think they were shined in a new and different light, because usually they are smart, quiet and reserved. It shows that they Asians are average people with the same problems as everyone else in this world. The only Asian stereotypes that were still used in this movie was that Wil was a doctor, and the movies that were in the “Chinese Section” of the video store, had pictures of very hyper-sexualized and half naked Asian women… like we learned about in Tuesdays movie ‘Slaying the Dragon’.

For our “theme” there was definitely crisis in this movie. Crisis is defined by dictionary.com as “a stage in  a sequence of events at which the trend of future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point”  The main crisis in this movie is when Wil didn’t prove her love to Vivian in time, and Vivian got on the plane to Paris. This was a turning point for Wil because she realizes she shouldn’t have been embarrassed to be with Vivian.

Overall I liked this movie, I thought it was pretty corny in the beginning but I liked that we were able to see something that is so out of the ordinary in most movies.

So this movie talked for a little bit about interracial relationships, mainly on screen. In my mind I always think that the time when interracial relationships weren’t okay, was like a LONNNNNG time ago. But really, it wasn’t that long ago at all! My mom was born in 1956, and it wasn’t until 1954 that interracial relationships were even allowed to be on screen! This is crazy to me. It was literally a few years before my moms generation that this wasn’t allowed! And roughly only  20 years after interracial relationships were okay to be on screen… she married a black man. (my brother and sister’s dad.) It is just an interesting thing to think about that if she was born just a few years prior then she was, she may have had a whole different outlook on interracial relationships? Who knows. Anyways, I am completely PRO interracial relationships, plus mixed babies are just so adorable

I like how Lee describes the difference between ‘Aliens and Foreigners’.

“Not all foreign objects however, are aliens- only objects or persons whose presence disrupts the narrative structure of the community. It is useful here to distinguish between alien and merely foreign. Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they carry different connotations. “Foreign” refers to that which is outside or distant, while “alien” describes things that are immediate and present yet have a foreign nature or allegiance.”

I never thought about the difference between these two words until I read this section of the book, and I probably have always used Alien and Foreigner interchangeably. It’s funny how we think of aliens as less desirable, at least according to Lee. It makes us so unwelcoming.

Lee goes on later to talk about two different court cases, Ozawa v. United States and then United States v. Thind. I think I remember talking about the Ozawa case last quarter. But these two completely contradict each other! In the Ozawa case, he had the right skin color, but not the right race…so he could not become naturalized. But in the Thind case, he had the right race, but he also could not be naturalized. The United States definitely was not steady with their laws!