http://www.policymic.com/articles/76097/why-young-asian-americans-are-fleeing-hollywood
The above link is a fascinating article that I feel relates to the lack of roles in Hollywood for Asian Americans and why they are essentially “migrating” back to Asia for better opportunities.
Chapter 10
“Japanese American women in the pageant were working with white standards of beauty pageants in mind and re-creating them with a Japanese American twist” (206)
“…the pageant was a way to “mimic” mainstream America and to show how “American” Japanese Americans were.” (208)
“…changed it’s racial eligibility rules from 100 percent Japanese ancestry to 50 percent.” (217)
side note: I was very happy to read from Keith Kamisugi about whether or not girls with a white last name should be allowed to enter. My full name is Lisa Elizabeth Foster and I have been told by far too many people in my life that I am not truly Japanese if I have such an American sounding name.
Chapter 11
“When children of every race can proclaim, “I am Tiger Woods,” race becomes insignificant” (229)
Chapter 14
“…multicultural exoticization of difference” (281)
“Is he Asian because he “looks Asian”? Or Asian because he self-identifies as Asian? Or simply Asian because he has Asian blood?” (284)
It was interesting to see the differences between the stories from “The Joy Luck Club” and “Saving Face”. Both movies deal with an older generation that holds on to their traditions and values of the old country. The common denominator here is that the older generation wants to provide a better life for their children than the lives that they lived in the old generation but sometimes along that the path, the way of the old life can be very hard on those living in the new life.
One of the things I ponder about is that while “Saving Face” has a couple resolutions, one of the resolutions is that her mother accepts her homosexuality but I cant help but ask myself “would she be just as accepting of this had she not been in a situation where her own family and community turned her into an outcast because of her pregnancy?” I feel like Wil’s mother would have been less understanding towards her daughter coming out of the closet had she not gotten pregnant because she would still be a part of the old Chinese community and within that community, essentially homosexuality is “sin”, but because her mother had already committed a different sin, she is then provided with a better understanding towards Wil’s “sin”, almost as if Wil’s mom can’t be angry at her.
I appreciate in both movies, it showcased that daughters of Chinese mothers have a certain obligation to their mothers. I would say this is true of my culture as well. Anytime I start dating someone new, I have to explain to my partner that I am going to complain about my mother a lot, and I am gonna be angry at her and my mom is gonna say some fucked up things to me but to ever suggest to me that I should just not be a part of that family and abandon it, is useless and disrespectful. It’s very much a cultural thing. When I moved out of my moms house when I was 16, my entire family (even the ones all the way in Japan) were in hysterics about it and even to this day, they punish my mother for allowing me to do such a thing. As an ONLY child, my obligations to her are even bigger and no matter how hard she might be on me, no matter how much I feel like she might drag me through the dirt, at the end of the day, I have to understand that it’s cultural.
There were two things in which I was able to vividly see the connection between “Orientals” and “Slaying the Dragon” and that would be chapter three in Lee’s book: “The Third Sex” and chapter four “Inner Dikes and Barred Zones”.
“…Oriental (male or female) was constructed as a “third sex” –Marjorie Garber’s term for a gender imagined sexual possibility.” (85)
In the film, the narrorator describes the development of fetishization process of Asian women. How the fact that women tend to men and take care of them in a way that’s done in a submissive manner which can be viewed as sexual. In American society, we either have an interest in men or women but with the exotification of Asian women in particular, you can view it as though these women are essentially the “third sex” in that they are a whole different category of sexual attraction. In one case, I knew a person who was suspicious of me hanging out with her boyfriend but not because I am female but because I am an Asian female.
One thing I immediately recognized as a theme that connects Lee and the documentary to the The Joy Luck Club is that there was little representation of Asian men in Amy Tan’s movie and what little representation there was, they were represented in a fairly negative light such as June’s husband in her first marriage. At the party, they eventually show June is with a new Asian man but we never even learn his name and his role was incredibly minor.
“Race is a mode of placing cultural meaning on the body. Yellowface marks the Oriental as indelibly alien.” (2)
“This early definition of “alien” emphasized the unalterable nature of the foreign object and its threatening presence” (3)
For me I feel as though these two quotes go hand in hand together, the reason being is that because of the way Asians look, they are always going to be viewed as an alien no matter how assimilated they may become to White America. It shows that even back in the 1920′s and further, the Asian race has always been objectified, and viewed as a threat. Yet even now, in the year 2014, Asians are still being objectified and seen as a threat especially with the recent rise of the nation of China and the threats of North Korea. When Kim Jong-Il passed away in 2011, I heard from Korean Americans and read blogs from Korean Americans who were asked if they felt sad by the passing of Kim Jong-Il, even though they had no relation to him what so ever, but because they look Korean or because they have Korean blood in them, some people have tended to assume that they are related to a corrupted leader.
“Food habits, customs, and rules are central symbolic structures through which societies articulate identity; you are, symbolically at least, what you eat.” (38)
In this section, Lee discusses about how minstrel shows caricaturize the Chinese. From what I gathered from it, I felt like it was a way for White Americans to mock the Chinese and others who were more unfamiliar to them such as African Americans as well. Luke Schoolcraft wrote a song titled “Heathen Chinee” and not only does it satirize the Chinese language, but it also makes gross assumptions about the Chinese diet.
I see this connection to the modern day culture with Asian cooking because not only am I still asked by dense people about whether or not I have tried dog but also there’s been this incredible rise in the popularity of Asian food such as sushi or pho. Even though most people come from a place of appreciation for the food, I have noticed that they tend to make assumptions about my everyday Japanese diet and am asked if sushi is something I eat on a daily basis with my family. There was one time in particular when I was riding the bus with a friend from Japan and someone on the bus noticed we were speaking Japanese, he began telling us that some years ago he had traveled to Japan and when he went, he visited Kyoto which is well known for their grilled foods like Takoyaki (octopus dumplings) and Okonomiyaki (savory pancakes), instead this young man tells us that he ate sushi every single day while he was in Japan including while he was visiting Kyoto. After that gentleman got off the bus, my friend and I turned to each other and said “mottainai” which roughly translates (within our context of use) “what a waste”. I make this connection because even though what Lee describes in the book as a terrible assumption, in 2014, those sorts of assumption aren’t too far off from what they were back in those days.
“Chinese workers were not the ideal, docile labor force the employers had hoped for.” (66)
“Within a few months, forty-three of them were summarily dismissed after rioting and attempting to murder their Chinese foreman…”(66)
“Chinese workers were themselves engaging in strikes and that many had left the plant.” (66)
Perhaps it’s the fact that I live in 2014 but so far anytime we have read historical texts about the experience of immigrants
Lisa, Bill and Ted’s Not So Excellent Kind of Awkward Adventure Slapping People
rioting at their jobs, I feel as though I have to throw my hands up in the air and yell: “Well what do they expect? If they keep treating human beings like garbage, regardless of what they look like on the outside, they are going to start a riot and get angry!” I just can’t wrap my brain around the idea of someone back in those days saying “well we need to fire the Irish because they are rioting towards unfair treatment in the factory so instead we will just bring in a different set of humans, treat them the same way we treated the Irish and then cross our fingers and hope that all bodes well.”
The logic of seeing those who were not white and equating them to not being humans is so preposterous because at the end of the day, we all have a heart that beats and we all have emotions and we all have boundaries that can be crossed.
I wish I could go back in time with Bill and Ted and slap some of these people across the face for their logic in workers rights.
“Both mark the racial parameters that simultaneously created and constrained new possibilities for relations of desire, conflating the sexual with race, class, and gender formations.” (103)
I really appreciated the discussion in the book comparing and contrasting the stories of “The Haunted Valley” by Ambrose Bierce and “Poor Ah Toy” by Mary Mote. I was mostly appreciative of it because “The Haunted Valley” was about the murder of Ah Wee who was female whereas “Poor Ah Toy” was about the suicide of Ah Toy who was male. So reading about how the two compared with each other on how the controversy with love was more problematic because of their race rather than the fact that the relationship in and of itself is problematic.
I really loved that Lee points out that “…Ah Wee has neither voice nor agency while alive.”(95) Mostly because films in this day and age still have a hard time showcasing the inner conflicts within women and only giving them the choice of wanting a man’s love, when really women or human beings in general are just more complex than that.
I also questioned whether or not Fanny’s maternal love for Ah Toy is one of the first incidences in media where white people are portrayed as the white savior. Yet it’s also interesting that after Ah Toy is adopted by Fanny, he “…symbolically shifts him from an object of exchange, a commodity, into an imagined family member.” (100) I think it’s really sad that until someone who is white takes you in as their own, then that is when mixed raced people are no longer viewed as an object. However, with our current times, there has been an issue of interracial couples, primarily between whites and other ethnicity’s, that receives criticism because the person of the different ethnicity is seen as a trophy to their white partner. So even with Fanny adopting Ah Toy into the family, he isn’t really a part of the family especially when Fanny gets disgusted by his gestures.
For this entry I am going to talk about the differences in the Japanese and American ‘Sailor Moon’ theme song.
Obviously we will start with the Japanese version. In the Japanese version, the theme song is actually called “Moonlight Densetsu” which translates to “Moonlight Legend”. So this version I am posting right now is the English translation of the original Japanese song. The video I have provided for you is the first season opening of the show with the original Japanese lyrics:
Click here to view the embedded video.
I’m sorry, I’m not honest
I can say it in my dreams
My thoughts are about to short circuit
I want to be with you right now
The moonlight makes me want to cry
I can’t even call, it’s midnight
But I’m so innocent, what should I do
My heart’s a kaleidoscope
We are lead by the light of the moon
We meet by chance again and again
The countless shining stars above us foretell love’s whereabouts
Born on the same Earth
A miracle romance
So, reading the lyrics, the song doesn’t explain a whole lot about what this show is going to be about. It’s pretty subtle and if you are a big fan of Sailor Moon, you can see in certain parts of the song that there are some hints of what the shows basic premise will be like. Overall, I think this song is really beautiful and I love that it sings about inner conflict and feeling lost, yet having the opportunity to meet with someone again and how basically we are all human beings.
Now, let’s take a look at the American opening and lyrics.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Fighting evil by moonlight
winning love by daylight
Never running from a real fight!
She is the one named Sailor Moon!
She will never turn her back on a friend
She is always there to defend
She is the one on whom we can depend
She is the one named Sailor….
Sailor Venus!
Sailor Mercury!
Sailor Mars!
Sailor Jupiter!
With secret powers
All so new to her
She is the one named Sailor Moon
Fighting evil by moonlight
Winning love by daylight
With her Sailor Scouts to help fight
She is the one named Sailor Moon
She is the one named Sailor Moon
She is the one . . . Sailor Moon!
Wait… Who is this song about? What’s her name?
As you can see and hear, the American version of the song and the opening animations alone have changed a lot from the original version. Obviously the biggest change we hear is that the American lyrics are much, much more straight forward. They really throw in our faces that Sailor Moon is our protagonist and even introduce the supporting characters, when in the first episode, the supporting characters are not even there, we don’t even get to find out their names until later episodes. The song alone sounds a lot more like a rock and roll song with the addition of an electric guitar solo in the middle of it. (WHHHHYYYYY???)
As far as what the eyes see, they use the ‘Star War’s opening with the words flying backgrounds that is not included in the Japanese version (and really those words seem so unnecessary.) Then sprinkled about in the opening, they started showing actual clips from the show with a very colorful 90′s background. They show all of the characters that will be introduced in season one as well, which to me takes away the magic of the unveiling of the different cast members and yes, I understand that in the Japanese opening they show Sailor Mercury and Mars but with no real implication of who they are or what “element” they will be based off of. Sailor Moon is an incredibly repetitive show, but when they throw in episodes of introducing new characters or new major enemies, it makes up for it’s repetitiveness.
Another thing that the American version does is it takes away is the excitement for the transformation sequence by showing it in the theme song. In the first episode, when Sailor Moon first transforms, it’s kind of a huge deal! Then after that, you really don’t wanna see the transformation sequence anymore because they’re gonna start using it in every episode. With the American version, I will now be somewhat forced to watch that transformation sequence again and again and again. The transformation sequence is what makes the “Magical Girl” genre (in my opinion). Below I have embedded a video of Sailor Moon’s first transformation sequence that she ever did and yes, that is a talking cat. The video underneath that is the American version.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
(I will most likely further discuss the transformation sequence at another time.)
Lastly, my other issue is that not only do they show Sailor Moon’s most powerful weapon in this season (the Crescent Moon Rod) but they also show her DEFEATING the main antagonist of the show! This opening song is FILLED with spoilers!
Overall, I’m sure it’s obvious which one I prefer, but remember, I am more than happy to admit that I am bias. The Japanese ‘Sailor Moon’ is what I was raised on, that’s not to say I didn’t watch the American version! I was happy to! I know that there are a lot of other girls who were raised on this show and hold the American version near and dear to their heart and that is great! I’m not trying to start some sort of war on which version is better, you have your opinions and I have mine.
There were three points in this movie that made the wires in my brain go haywire.
When Ben was at the party with his friends from school, the female character makes a joke about him eating dog, and then eating a cat and then she calls him a ‘fucking chink’. His friend tells him to blow it off, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. Ben responds with “yes, she did.” This moment took me back to a time when I was in high school. I was about 17 years old at the time and I had just started dating an american boy. The first time I went to his house, he showed me a home made sword that his friend had made for him, when he introduced me to the sword, he said his friend named it “The Gook Killer”. I remember being shocked by that name and asked him to never say that word to me again. A little later into the relationship, I was hanging out with that best friend of his who made him the sword and a few other of his friends. We were all playing Mario Kart and I was winning, everyone started calling me a chink, or a gook. I said to them “get it right, I’m not Chinese” and as I was about to cross the winning line, his friends turned off the game out of frustration, turned to me and said “alright, how about this for taste, we bombed the shit out of your family and your country, we killed them and fucked them up!” I broke down, ran into my boyfriends room, and I remember my boyfriend coming after to me, trying to calm me down and basically saying “he doesn’t know what he’s saying, you know he says things like that all the time and doesn’t mean it.” My response was “yes, he did.” I don’t think I will ever, ever forget this.
It was at this point that I was able to see Ben’s awakening, that moment where “that’s right… I’m not white” because I had that same awakening when my exes friends said those words to me. No matter how fluent you are in English, no matter how much you feel like you have assimilated to American culture, people only see you from the outside in, and that shell that we are wearing is essentially a billboard in lights that says “I am not 100% white”.
Similar to the home made sword that my ex had.
Another part of the movie that I saw in myself and in my home life was the relationship between Ben, his father, and his grandfather. At the beginning of the movie, Ben’s father says he’s spoiled and that he gallivants around. Then later in the film, Ben’s grandfather is yelling at his father and basically said the same thing; that he gallivants around. It’s this strange circle that I have noticed is also very prominent in my family. My mom would get mad at me for my behavior and the amount of weight that I had gained, and when I overheard conversations of my mom and grandmother (or my moms older brothers) fighting, my grandmother or uncles would vent their frustrations to her about my moms behavior and then harass her about the weight that she had gained. It makes me wonder if this will ever end.
bottom: My aunt Masako, my cousin Chihiro top: My mom, me, my cousin Hitomi and my uncle Satoshi 2008
The last point I saw was that Gusto referred to Ben as a coconut, white on the inside but brown on the outside and this made me think of last quarter when we learned about Bamboo, Bananas and Bees. More specifically with the term ‘banana’ (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). The internal struggle that young Asian Americans go through with feeling stuck between two different worlds. I could really see in Ben’s character that he felt like he was at a fork in the road of which culture he should put himself in and analyzing the pro’s and con’s of each side.
I am going to define the following words in the way that www.urbandictionary.com defines them. You’ll have to excuse the spelling errors as this website allows for anyone to define a word, however they want. These definitions were the top rated definitions voted by those who have visited the site.
Maybe this style of defining words will look familiar to you guys as well.
Zipperhead:
A derogatory term used in reference to people of Asian descent.
It is said to have been coined during the Korean war by frontline troops whom had run over enemy troops in jeeps.
2,751 people liked this.
Gook:
A derrogatory term used for the purpose of describing a korean. (Obtained form the korean pronunciation of their country, Hangook.)
3,668 people liked this.
Chink:
A racist term used to describe the Chinese.
7,027 people liked this.
Nip:
A Japanese person (derogatory, from Nippon, the Japanese word for Japan)
1,071 people liked this.
The reason I included the number of likes a definition got is because I think it paints a sad picture of language within our society. The fact that anyone can attach the word ‘like’ to a word that so many of us have been called in a hateful manner paints a grim painting for the future. Now, people could have ‘like’d the words purely because it is the closest definition to the word and paints the most accurate portrayal of that word and there will always be reasons but I guess that in some sense this relates to pop culture because sometimes we aren’t really sure why we ‘like’ the things that we like that pertain to our pop culture and we just might ‘like’ things purely for the fact that they are just there. Not adding any weight to anything.
I tried to keep count how many times Walt and any other white characters used a derogatory term towards or about Asians. The total was 27 but I may have missed some words. It doesn’t sound like that much especially considering how prejudiced Walt was but that’s still 27. To some people, those words are just words, but for people like me, for the people like the Hmongs, that sort of language, carries so much depth and pain. 27 words could easily equally to 2700 times that we have been called that, 2700 times we felt we weren’t welcomed because of what we look like, 2700 times just in one year, 27,000,000 times throughout our history in the United States, starting from now to when we first landed on the shore of the Land of the Free.
Powerpuff girls and Sailor Moon!
I really want to tell you all everything there is to know about how shows like Sailor Moon influenced shows in the U.S. but I have a lot of excitement for this topic and it’s something that I want to talk more about potentially in Week 9 so I am going to hold back as much as I can in this entry.
Nik Holmes is the artist behind this image and it was available on Tee Fury for only 24 hours! I am so incredibly sad that I missed this deal! 
In case you don’t know what this image is referencing, it was a cross between the famous 1998 show by Craig McCracken’s ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ that debuted on Cartoon Network featuring three young girls who saved the world and kicked butt! This image also includes my obsession: Sailor Moon! So you can already see here how a show like Sailor Moon that premiered in Japan (and in the U.S. but that’s another post) influenced American cartoon shows by having an all butt kicking female cast!