Last day to change obsessions is Monday.

Radicialious (sp) website for Asian Studies,other zines and blogs.

Pop Culture: Playground or battleground

Selling airlines,meeting mothers,Katy Perry,How I met your Mother and other racial sterotypes.

“Coded language” using racial slurs in history and present.

Culture:The intergrated pattern pof human behaviour that includes thought,speech,action and artifacts;depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge yto succeeding generations;the customary beliefs,social forms and material traits of a racial,religious,or social group.

PoP Culture: “Culture Theory and Popular Culture”

-culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people.

-culturfe which is left over after we have decided what is high culture.

-mass culture

-culture which originates from “the people”

-culture rooted in exchange and negotitation between dominant and subordinate groups.

-(in post modern terrain) culture which no longer recognizes distinctions

-Antonio Gramsai(hegemony)

hegemony-indirect form of government and of imperial dominace in which the hegemon (leader state) rules geopoliticially subordinate states by the implied means if power, the threat of force,rather than by direct military force.

-Gramsci’s(1891-1937) theory is one social class can manipulate the system of values and mores of a society,in order to create and establish a ruling class.

-sterotyper-n.-something conforming to a fixed or general pattern;especially:a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified attitude or uncritical judgement.

-Eurocentrism-centered or focused on Europe or European peoples especially in relation to historical/cultural influence.

-”Far East”; wilderness (American context)

-”yellowface”-slang-people of ASian background or racial sterotyping of Asian ideals or people. Historically used to incite the common man to racial superiority or violence by journalism,race riots etal

Movie: “The Debut”

I remember the Challenger accident very well as I was a 16 year old high school student on the day of the accident.

The day was like in other in school except we had the telly turned in all over the school not because of Mr. Onizuka,but, because of Christa McAuliffe who was going to be the first school teacher in space. It was a big event to have a teacher go into space and teach her classes while on the mission.  We were excited to have such chance to see science in action! It was heady stuff. So, on the cold day in January we huddled around the tv’s that had been set up to watch the launch. The countdown begun,liftoff and then the unthinkable happened approx 73 seconds later the space shuttle with her crew exploded on live national TV. It became our generations “Where were you when JFK was shot?” except in this case the question was different. Because of Mrs. McAuliffe we knew next to nothing about about the crew members who had perished. Most of us wouldn’t know the other names until sometime later either.

Who was Ellison Onizuka?

Outside of the having the misfortune to be on the Challenger he was the very first Asian-American in space and overshadowed by another in the crew. He was from Hawaii from an average family.But, he did get a degree in aerospace engineering and later a Master’s degree in the same subject. He would go one to become a Lt Colonel in the Air Force and serve in other missions before Challenger. He had a wife and children. He had dreams to see the stars.He was mostly likely still alive after the explosion because the survival packs had been deployed along with two others,we will never know what his last moments on this earth were like and we can only hope that it was painless for him.

His legacy as being the first Asian-American in space  was followed by 11 ,including the first Iranian-American woman in 2006, others as most recently as 2009.However, in his home state of Hawaii he lives on,yearly with Astronaut Ellison Onizuka Science Day promoted the University of Hawaii-Hilo for budding little astronauts,teachers and parents to foster the love of science and space.

He paved the way for others to live his ill-fated dream that a Asian-American can go to space,can be successful and have  a lasting legacy for others to follow him.

It is always tough to be first and even tougher for those that have followed to live up to the legacy of a man that gave his life so tragically doing the thing he loved the most.

I,frankly,had to Google the news articles and then watch the episode in question to see what all the fuss was about. Honestly, while I do see what the Asian American community found offensive,I have frankly seen and heard worse.

When not at school I live overseas in a little country called Belgium with a rather large Asian population,Antwerp even has a tiny Chinatown that is all of a city block long give or take a bit. When I first got to Belgium the very first people I interacted with was a lovely Asian couple from Shanghai who happened to run the local fry shop. Met some other fine folks along the way that were,also, of Asian descent. However, all this being said there is another group in Belgium that would simply “love” if all of us immigrants would hit the bricks and go somewhere else. They aren’t nice about either in fact they are downright evil. This group has always reminded me of the Nazi’s of the 1930′s variety where the caberets were for the tourists and not the locals.And about as pleasant too.

They have billboards all over that state in many languages that you are not welcome here unless you learn the language,adopt the culture of the host country and dress Western. This group is vicious in the fact that there have beatings in the past to the point people have been in hospital because of some groups small minded notions about nationalism. Where is the local government you may ask when this group so obviously anti-immigration? Well, Belgium allows it because of some very complicated laws that would take too long to explain here. The point that I making is this…a television show may have acted in poor taste,however, that is nothing in compared to what I have seen first hand in a country that is home heaped towards immigrants. What it boils down to is this,if you don’t like what is on the telly no one is making you watch it so turn the channel,don’t watch it or don’t support because in the grand scheme of things there are worst things out there.

I know because I have seen it.

Run Run Shaw-Director of many of Bruce Lee’s film in Hong Kong, founder of Shaw Brothers Studios

William Gibson,writer, notable works include “Burning Chrome”,1982, 1st book in the “Sprawl” trilogy early futurist of the cyberpunk movement.

47 Ronin

-Real vs reel history

Chushingwa

Seppuku/harakiri

Stomach is the source of power in martial arts.

How does Asian culture influence American pop culture and to extent?

Why is pop culture important?

Instead of Asian-American pop-culture isn’t human culture as a whole?

What are your obsessions?
1.Forensics
2.NASCAR
3.European World War II history
4.Art History
5.Star Trek
6.Dr. Who
7.Music everything except rap
8.Photography -Urban Exploring