Author Archives: Emily

Week 6, Friday. Kato, chpt 3: Mutiny in the Global Village

“As if it were attempting to sea the leakage of ‘reality’ from the factory of fantasy, Hollywood resorted to every possible means to eradicate the voices of labor. It ranged from an outright violent repression- deploying thugs, private police, and the (social) department (in case of Warner Brothers)- to the use of collaborative unions, and, most significantly, the rhetoric of ‘anti-communism’” (page 75).

While it is important to look at the lack of representation in films when it comes to oppressed people it is also important to look at the representations that do exist, especially when there is an overlapping theme among those who portray characters. On page 74 there is a quote on motion pictures being silent propaganda; a visual stimulant that one subconsciously takes with them past the time the screen is turned off. I once heard that Leave it to Beaver‘s June Cleaver was meant to show women who had “forgotten their place” outside of the home post-WWII how incredible the pumps-and-pearls lifestyle was. It was meant to remind them how glorious it was to be a stay-at-home mother and wife. Of course, the “them” that was being reminded of this American dream were not those who had already found the dream one they weren’t allowed to experience in waking life. Looking back, we can clearly see how the absence of opportunity and representation for women of color was exhibited through a women meant to represent only the white, middle-class family. And, in this representation the propaganda for who was middle-class, who was pumps-and-pearls, an who was the all American wife was obvious.

It is through this form of representation that stereotypes and type-casting becomes problematic. On page 104, Kato describes how the extras for what seems to be the “bad guy’s posse” were contrived of Chinese addicts without housing in Hong Kong. Not only does this give us a view on how people treat those with addictions (immediate villains)and in poverty but it creates this face-to-the-lifestyle sort of propaganda. Our subconscious remembers the bad guy from on screen and moves that image out of Hollywood. And as discussed through pages 100-104, there is a large amount of concealing the reality of those images that goes into the production of the film. No one wants to see the green screen, and that is understandable, but it’s the “Disneyland myth” in terms of labor that proves to have the negative impacts; “[...]where the trace of labor, not to mention of resistance, is completely erased in the final product” (page 104). The viewer begins to become disassociated with the labor that is necessary for the product and this issue expands into clothing and food production (among others).

However, there remains to be activism through alternative methods . I looked into this when researching the art that came from the American Japanese Internment Camps during World War II and found that by discrediting resistance that does not fit the common definition, we are erasing both the voice and the courage that came through the art. On pages 89 and 108, we are given examples of how Hendrix and Lee (respectively) used their power as pop culture icon and their art to fight back as activists.

Week 6, Thursday. Films and kung fu influences

I noted the differences in the mindset and practice of those who are from China (Shaolin monks) to those who found kung fu as a way to escape and grow (Americans), which provides a look into the different ways two people can practice what seems to be the same art, and how those who really refine their skill come out with the same outlooks (such as the necessity to bring your mind into the practice).  The Shaolin monks are also similar to those immigrants in the labor field who, in their homeland, were seen as professionals and officials, whereas post-immigration they are treated as lesser workers and not as intelligent [such as those we read about in Takaki and Lee]. Similarly, those in America who “get it” may treat the monks as though they are high in level but otherwise they are treated as (and quote) “nobody”.

During the explanation of Shaolin temple history, I thought of a connection between the temple being rebuilt multiple times since the Ming dynasty and how perhaps kung fu has also been “rebuilt”, as its reason for popularity and the lens through which people view it as important have changed. This led me to thinking of my own lens on kung fu; I am not an avid movie-watcher and did not grow up watching kung fu movies, so when I was watching the movements and styles I did not think of Bruce Lee or other famous kung fu stars. Instead, I thought of Avatar: the Last Airbender (from  here on A:TLA) and Kill Bill. I am also very ignorant to the different styles of martial arts and/or kung fu so while neither of these media examples may have kung fu influence I wonder if others like me who are ignorant to kung fu make these connection as well. And if so, how does this “tear down and rebuild” the temple of kung fu in pop culture?

For instance, when the Snake style was mentioned as being inspired by viper, cobra, python, and mamba snakes I thought of how there in Kill Bill there is the fictitious Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (an all of those affiliated within in have snake-influenced code names, although they do not all match with the kung fu animal style snakes). Is the symbol of a snake or use of snake identity influenced by the animal styles?

In A:TLA, the nations are divided by types of “benders”, which are those that are able to manipulate thei specific element [ of the four elements] with the sole use of their bodies engaged with the element. Below is a sort of “making of” or “behind the scenes” style video of A:TLA which explains the influence of style behind each kind. It has specific references to types of kung fu (including Shaolin kung fu and tiger/crane stlyle) an shows the animation is action juxtaposed with a live action example.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(For more on A:TLA, here is the specialized wiki.)

I found both of these important because they allow us to look at alternative ways that kung fu is being represented and how the styles have influenced pop culture beyond the definitive sub culture made popular by Bruce Lee.

 

Week 6, Tuesday. Pop-ositions and Kato readings, Chpts 1&2.

Poposition:  The use of vernacular in pop culture by means globalization by turning certain words into buzz words,.  Examples; merci, voila, skosh/sukoshi, sayonara, and various tattoos (such as kanji on those who do not know kanji).

I’m choosing this one of our our four pop-ositions because it was influenced by a chapter I wrote a previous blog entry on, so instead of focusing on that again I chose to focus on the vernacular of this book and how the book takes the subject of pop culture (which some might argue as lacking substance) and place it into the academic realm (which has a high level of importance placed onto it).

First,  the language of this book, as discussed in class, is heavy with culture theory words. Occasionally, some of these words are turned around  be seen as negative or condescending. For instance, how “privilege” has become a word around Evergreen that some use to make fun of how “PC” people are. On the other side of this, however, is that the book’s “vernacular” in other realms, such as blogs, creates a barrier between those who are only venturing into the blog to “troll” (internet language) and who will be deterred by the language. Of course, this backfires, as it also lowers its accessibility to those could highly benefit from the material. This somewhat mirrors the way that vernacular among people of color also keeps them safe because it allows them a voice that is their own an which creates barriers that keep others out. However, as mentioned in the proposition, those words can be caught ono as a catch phrases or buzz words and then appropriated or misused.

A common theme throughout the first 2 chapters of Kato’s From Kung Fu to Hip Hop was the wide-spread student riots that were taking place, something that combined both youth culture vernacular and academic speak. This sort of cross between cultures allowed students to speak for the families and cultures they were from (such as the Chican@ movement or the Black Power movement) while creating a new vernacular that was deemed “safe” because it was within the “intelligent” community. It also created a bridge; if you’re coming from one side, the bridge becomes accessibility by using vernacular into political academia while the other side leads into representation of themselves. To have a pop culture representative was another way in which youth and entertainment culture merged with activism in a way that was accessible (and subconscious through representation) an another instance as to why Lee was so beneficial to the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Week 5, Thursday readings on Davé (focus on article 5)

I’m focusing on “‘Pappy’s House’: ‘Pop’ Culture and the Revaluation of a Filipino American ‘Sixty-Cents’ in Guam¨ by  Vincent M. Diaz for this section because of the use of vernacular and because we didn’t discuss it in class. This article also strongly demonstrated the way that context really influences translation and how language has been used both as an oppressive tactic and cultural resistance.

First, the oppressive tactic. The roots and usage of pappy/pappi and then leading to Mammy in this article put the words into a new light. While Diaz illustrates how pappy/pappi has been used to signify race relations (page 104), the use of “papa”, “daddy”, and “padre” in a mixing of languages still produces pappy to signify the patriarchal father figure (page 110). However, Diaz also points out that the use of mammy brings one general archetype to the mind; the women who lived the real life hardships of the Southern Mother without ever being given credit to what she did and how she worked. We do not picture a white southern women when Mammy is mentioned because even if the white women was the female head of the house and the mother of the white children, it was the black women who became the Mammy. And while these are two exact examples that are given in the article it demonstrates how vernacular has been used to impress stereotypes in such a subliminal way that it can be hard to recognize the intent withou knowing the history.

Despite this (and secondly) this vernacular can be the cultural resistance which powerfully remains after physical resistance is pushed down. As discussed in the lecture, resistance vernaculars (Tony Mitchell) usually associated with native/local/indigenous languages. (Those which have been historically ridiculed and used as a way to discriminate.) By using one’s own native/cultural language, and thus vernacular, it is a form of cultural resistance.) It is not only in the actual usage and speaking of the language, but also the reappropriation of terms. Throughout the article Diaz uses vernacular to pull the reader in and to also use words that may not have always been acceptable in an American academic writing. His style goes against the created and accepted “norm” and in doing so he establishes the racist history from where some words came from (107-109) as well as using humor to show how normal the “not normal” truly is. (Seng it out, page 103!!) Contemporary artists do this in mainstream music, such as lecture-introduced artists Blue Scholars and Black Eyed Peas. Both use pop culture and personal history vernacular to challenge their images and their stereotyped identity.

However, another point this article led me to was the response to this year’s Superbowl commercial from Coca Cola:

Click here to view the embedded video.

**Here is where I add that I have no affiliation with Coke and rarely drink it nor do I watch the Superbowl but Go Seahawks and hey, yeah, here’s the commercial**

I wanted to mention this not because I think Coke is doing some amazing thing because I’m sure the speculation on their intentions can go one way or another, but because of the unbelievable response to this commercial! The outrageously racist comments this commercial received demonstrated how native languages other than English are still being majorly rejected. NPR did an interview about the responses to the commercial which can be found here (includes both a written dialogue and audio). I will allow you to make your own judgments on the interview, but I did have a few things I wanted to point out.

1. I don’t speak any of the languages used other than English, but it’s stated the one of the languages is Keres Pueblo. Meaning that every other language used is, at the root of it, an immigrant language.

2. When two people are trying to communicate and both are doing so in different languages, that is frustrating (for both parties). But not being able to speak a language does not inherently mean that one person isn’t trying or that there is a personal attack happening, etc. When I lived in Arizona and came across people who struggled with English because it wasn’t their first language, my frustration did not give me an excuse to be an indecent, rude person. The song “America the Beautiful” is a known song so it being sung in a different language- whether parts of it or the entire thing- is not language barrier. You still know the song.

Week 5, Tuesday: Davé readings (13, 16, 17)

“‘Alllooksame’? Mediating Asian American Visual Cultures of Race on the Web”, Lisa Nakamura (13)
vs.
“Secret Asian Man: Angry Asians and the Politics of Cultural Visibility”, Yasha G. Oren (17)

I was immediately drawn to article on alllooksame.com, as it opened with internet usage and I’m a true nerdy tech. Because I’ve been a constant computer and internet user for about ten years now I’ve spent a lot of time surfing through the weird, entertaining, and educational nooks and crannies of the internet. And yet, while reading this article, I was realizing how visually influenced my browsing was by white culture unless I was specifically going against that (and unfortunately for the majority of my years on the internet, I  had yet to find those resources and have them be apart of my usual browsing). However, as soon as I began reading this article I thought of one predominant internet uses; the claimed “take off”of the internet (that also happens to be another HUGE can of worms that I am not going to open right now): porn. Because I’m writing this at work I can’t really search for the online articles on the portrayals of women of color in pornography nor those written on the entire sub-genres which fetishize Asian American women (even though the articles themselves are safe, I worry about other NSFW results. Yikes.) To sum up my train of thought without linking the articles: If a large part of the internet is accessible porn and if, with the lack of sex ed in schools (another can to be opened later), porn is a big “teacher of sexuality”, then these genres which portray Asian American women in a very aggressively fetishized way are making up a large part of the visual Asian American “culture” despite the actual, authentic representations by Asian Americans.

And then there are the websites which debate this depiction instead of affirming (a concept constructed on page 265). One of which being alllooksame.com, which challenges its audience to question their “imagining of Asianness”. A quote I found particularly important when considering the necessity for those who are racially oppressed to have accurate representation they determine authentic is on page 268: “The site exposes the participation of the user in this construction; it shows how individual acts of viewing and ‘typing’ or clicking create race just as surely as do large institutions such as schools, medial establishments, and the law.” The article also mentions the difference between Life magazine’s WWII publication of how to identify Japanese people through racist text of visuals )page 269). Because both the article and the magazine contain images that prompt the audience to try and identify what visually constitutes as Japanese or Chinese (and with the website- or Korean), the difference is in the intent. And from the intent comes the consequential results. With Life magazine, the intent was to truly make people believe they had the answer to identify (and that the necessity of identification was appropriate). The results of this belief were and are harmful, racist, and in some case even deadly. The website’s intentions oppose what the magazine taught: you cannot pin-point exact features to create another person’s identity. The results of the website lead us to realizing that we are wrong.

Another website which debates instead of affirm these depictions is discussed in chapter 17′s article on webcomic Secret Asian Man.  The webcomic not only challenges stereotypes applied to Asian men and the fetich of Asian pop culture but it was also written in a way that cut it up into bite sized pieces for the all-consuming white audience. For instance, the article mentions films Come See the Paradise and Snow Falling on Cedars are “not so much experienced as witnessed by the narratives’ white male protagonists, mirroring what a cautious film industry imagines to be its ‘general’ audience” (page 342). When I saw these films I felt the same way; disenchanted that the “safe” thing to do is create for a white audience which implies that the anger of a white audience is more relevant than the anger of people of color. Secret Asian Man (or SAM) uses comedy as the vehicle for responses to racist stereotypes of Asian Americans. (Just the title itself negates the stereotype of submissive, docile Asians and with anger so often equated to masculinity it also challenges the idea of the emasculated Asian American man.) The article also talks a little bit about the “bad form” of anger and how it is seen as a loss of self-control. In this sense, anger is seen as a double-standard depending on who is angry (page 344). In these ways this website, along with alllooksame.com challenge the visibility we see when it comes to Asian Americans online.

16. “Apu’s Brown Voice: Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents”, Shilpa Davé .

This article made me questions a lot of things when it comes to acting and fictional characters. For instance, Bart Simpson character is voiced by female Nancy Cartwright. I thought of Bart/Nancy specifically because in our seminar’s small group discussion part of what was talked about what money and casting being a part of who gets picked. One can assume that with Azaria playing so many chracters on the Simpsons that he is a very talented voice actor, and some in our small group asked “why hire someone else for one role when another person can play them all?”. However, I think the difference comes with the history and the misrepresentation.

The article talks about the use of blackvoice or brownvoice and its history with radio shows. The use of these sound affectations is in the way we begin to accept them as the accent which erases the many different parts of a place (such as India or the use of an “all-inclusive” Asian accent) but it also attributes the having of an accent to the being of the Other. While European accents are seen as sexy or hot, the historical use of blackvoice, brownvoice, yellowvoice, etc. has been to make fun of the people its portraying. So while the character of Apu does have his examples of being a political vehicle in the fictional Springfield (pages 322-323) and may break some stereotypes he still held the position of the only representation of Indian Americans for quite some time. And that representation was inappropriate and comedic. “In other words, the way you speak determines the way you are treated and the community to which you belong even before you are visually recognized” (page 328).

Language by those who have been deemed as the Other has been a part of culture that was forcefully stomped out. This article not only reminded me of immigrants who felt the pressured necessity to learn English and did not feel comfortable speaking their native language out of their home or community, but also of the Deaf community. Similarly to the way Native Nation children were forced into Indian schools that punished them for using their native language, there was a time when Deaf schools did not allow sign language and instead forced the children to practice oralism (reading lips and learning to speak without “Deaf accent” which has been proven to be not work Arden Neisser and Oliver Sacks both have books on this cruel practice). In both instances, English was forced upon those who did want to use and who did not benefit from it. So to have a character on television representing these groups who have, for so long, been ridiculed and oppressed for their accent who, at the end of the day, gets to hang up that accent on a shelf and walk out of the studio without it? Not okay!!

Indian American television writer and comedian Hari Kondabolu did a segment on Apu and the representation of Indian Americans on television. After this segment, an article by Huffington Post (September 2013) was post out stating that the voice-actor of Apu (done by white Hank Azaria) saw this and commented. That article can be found by clicking here. And then Kondabolu responded on his Tumblr, and to see this you can click here. His Tumblr post DOES include the original video segment where Kondabolu calls Azaria out.

 

Week 5, Friday Scissor Clips.

The reunions between North and South Korea that were meant to take place later this month have been threatened to be canceled by North Korea. This is not the first time reunions have been canceled and you can click here to read more about the current reasoning from CNN.

In other news, here are some Asian Americans to look for in this winter’s Sochi Olympics!!

1&2. Maia and Alex Shibutani, a brother-sister ice dancing team from Michigan who will be competeing in this winter’s Olympics. From their website they are the first “ice dance team of Asian heritage to win a medal at a major ISU Championship – 2011 Four Continents Championships.

3. Madison Chock (part of ice dance team with Evan Bates) is Hawai’ian-Chinese decent on her father’s side. Below is a video of her and Bate’s AMAZING performance which helped determine their naming in these Olympics and here is an interview with both Bates and Chock on going to the Olympics which is conducted by Michelle Kwan, two-time Olympic medalist and Chinese American woman.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Felicia Zhang, a 20-year-old Chinese-American skater. This will be her first Olympics and she is skating with Nathan Bartholomay in ice dance team. Below is a video of their Senior Pairs skate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

5. Julie Chu! Chu is a 31-year-old hockey player for the United States women’s team. She is the first Asian American woman to play for the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team, as well as a veteran of the Olympic. She will be making her fourth appearance in the winter Olympics this year. Here is a brief article which includes a video of personal interview with Chu and her mother.

6. J.R. Celski, a Filipino American short track speed skater. In 2010 during short track trials Celski fell and cut his leg with his blade however since then he has worked through his injury and is now completing in Sochi! Below is a video interview with him and his mother which goes more into detail on his injury, how he started, and where he is now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. Jen Lee is member of the U.S. Paralympic Sled Hockey Team. Lee is of Taiwanese heritage and had his left leg amputated above the knee in 2009. For those interested in hockey, they website The Color of Hockey is about “Players of Color” and here are the entries with Jen Lee tag.

There is also the notable figure skater Mirai Nagasu, who sparked some controversy about racism when she was not named to go to the Olympics despite her bronze medal in the U.S. National Championships. The rest of that article can be found here.

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.

Week 4, Friday’s Obsession: Spoken Word

From the spoken word poetry community Button Poetry, here is Rachel Rostad of Macalester College, performing “To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang” on finals stage at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also with Button Poetry, Alex Dang performing “What Kind of Asian Are You?” performing for the Portland Poetry Slam at the 2013 National Poetry Slam.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

Week 4, Thursday. Talking points (fri seminar)

Chapter 6.

Other than discouraging male Asian American immigrants to stay in America by not allowing female immigrants to easily join them/their communities, in what other ways did this set Asian American men and their self-created communities up for queer discrimination?
Influenced by quote on page 124: “Until the post-1965 era, Filipino American communities were not exactly conventional domestic units” (Bascara).

Chapter 10.

“With the increase in multiracial participants, people’s attention was drawn to the issue of who, racially, could claim to speak for or represent the [Japanese American] community as a whole,” (page 215, King-O’Riain).
In this context, the focus is on beauty pageants, but on a broader scale: is there ever one perfect-fitting representative for any oppressed minority/community? And who gets to choose these representatives vs. who gets to choose if these representatives are accepted (both within and outside of the community)?

Chapter 14.

How do we, as a class looking at Asian Americans represented by others and representing themselves in pop culture, begin to look at those in the media who are passing white but multiracial (such as Keanu Reeves). How do we begin to interrogate our ideas of “what an Asian looks like” vs. begin to look at possible privileges of those who are passing white, multiracial people?
Influenced by quotes on page 284: “Is [Reeves] Asian because he ‘looks Asian’? Or Asian because he self-identifies as Asian? Or simply Asian because he has Asian blood” (Nishime) and, “Yet the two issues cannot be separated since Reeve’s stardom may depend on his ability to pass as white in the majority of American theatres” (Nishime).

 

 

Week 4, Sunday. Davé et al. reading: 6, 10, 14

6. “Within Each Crack/ A Story”, Victor Bascara.
This article on the “queering” of Filipino American history opens up new world to both the queer definition and the domestic unit of the original Filipino labor men. The usage of queer in this article creates an even broader umbrella for the term which serves up both pros and cons. Of course, the pros of “queering” history come from the vices that arise out of what was a very silenced time for queer individuals. Those who broke the nuclear family model and went against the heteronormative expectation were majorly underrepresented, so for those who still find themselves outside of the nuclear, heteronormative mold it is important to see those stories grow from the silence. However, the cons of opening up the word queer could come into play if those using the word were doing so in an inappropriate reclaiming, as the queer community is still oppressed and victimized for being queer.
However, with that caution in mind, the article still demonstrated the way in which the Filipino men created their own communities, mostly composed of other men in a unit. Of course, despite Filipinas being unable to immigrate initially, there were still men who married and had relations with women. However, these marriages were still seen as being beyond the proper nuclear family and determined unassimilatable. Perhaps, this was a strategy created by those who dictated the proper family structure and who wanted to keep immigrant of color out; to not allow their wives or female family to immigrate as well they were setting those first Filipinos up to create their own queer communities. “A horizontal brotherhood rather than a parent-child model was the idealized social ordering” (page 124).

10. “Miss Cherry Blossom Meets Mainstream America”, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain.

This article was extremely important in the way that it showed both the major influence of western beauty standards on Nisei girls as well as their resistance in losing their own culture. They found ways to represent themselves in a way that felt comfortable and appropriate to them while participating in an event that was most definitely meant to exclude them. Of course, there were drawbacks to the pageants, because there was still a heavy focus on assimilation (such as having a part of the pageant be peaking with unaccented English, page 209). And when feminism began to move its way into communities and media there was still exclusivity as to who had the voice in the feminist movement.Instead, the Asian American women pushed back against the white feminist ideas that did not apply to them, such as being more outspoken. Once again they were resisting the loss of their culture while finding platforms to feel beautiful.

This article reminded me immediately of Miss America 2014. I have never participated in a pageant nor have I followed them closely, but this last year’s winner made quite a stir. Her name is Nina Davuluri and she is the second Asian American Miss America and the first Indian American. While she participated in ball gown dress and bikini walk, her talent was a Bollywood dance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I associated Nina Davuluri to this article not only because she is Asian American, but also because she has taken a part of her culture which is often under-represented and mocked or appropriated and showcased it as a part of who she is. Of course, there was major backlash and after her winning many people took to the internet to share their racist opinions on why she shouldn’t have won. But for both Davuluri and the Japanese American women, the pageants have given them the opportunities to speak out publicly and represent themselves in a way they choose. They are given the stage, and even if they do not win, it can be an empowering act.

14. “Guilty Pleasures: Keanu Reeves, Superman, and Racial Outing”, LeiLani Nishime.

To begin, I’ll say I was pleased and surprised to read this article because for a few of my elementary and early middle school years I was a huge Smallville fan, so to read the “queer and raced readings” of the show was both exciting and shocking. Other than the brief reminiscing, however, I was also really interested in the take on Reeve’s perceived identity and how that asks the questions of who can count as “someone” (page 277) and the dismissal of mixed-race people who do not meet the standard “look”. (I am interested to see this juxtaposed with an analysis of those who are passing-white.) By creating a standard look, however, it forces communities to either fit the mold or “deny” their identity. But like the queer Filipino communities that pushed back against the traditional domestic household as well as the creation of Nisei beauty pageants, Asian Americans in the media who do not fit the stereotyped role are pushing back to create their own representation.

Within the community of Smallville, however, those representations come more subtly. For the actors, of course, Nishime points out that seemingly Pete [Sam Jones III] and Lana [Kristin Kreuk] are the only people of color in the entire town which also tells us that they are the only people of color on the cast. And, that Lana’s character was portrayed as white until the racial outting of her character could become progressive towards the plot (page 286). But perhaps the most beautiful and subtle ways of the “race reading” is the symbolism of kryptonite in its comfort and danger.