I really enjoyed this film.  It wasn’t my first time seeing it, but it was the first time seeing it through the lense of Asian/American studies.  I think that in spite of the blatantly racist comments made by Walt, this movie wasn’t meant to be racist in the typical sense.  I think that even though on the outside Walt was blatantly and shamelessly racist, on the inside there was much more to him.  I also really appreciate the fact that in the beginning of the film there was a scene in which Walt and the Hmong old lady were both outside, and were both saying racist things about each other in their own languages.  I think it was meant to show that racism is built from ignorance of different cultures and beliefs.

One of the things that I really liked about this film is that it showed Walt, an ignorant, old, and grumpy man who was able to put aside his racist and biased feelings and open himself up to a culture that he had previously not cared to know anything about.  I also think that his decision at the end of the film wasn’t necessarily meant to be portraying the ‘white savior.’  I think that he had grown to really care about Thao and his family, and he blamed himself for what happened to Sue.  He also knew that he was going to die anyway, so he wanted to make things right.

I found this movie to be hard to watch.  It was beautiful, but it was also terrible.  While watching the part where Tam gets sick I remember thinking how mad I would be if he died.  I was just going to get up and leave.  And then he died…and I was mad, but I didn’t leave because obviously that wouldn’t be very productive of me.  But I was still really sad and I think that set the mood for the rest of the film.  One of the other super emotional parts of the film was when Binh realized that Tam never had to die because he could’ve just taken a plane to America since his dad was a Veteran.  This part was so sad because Binh just broke down.  It was also a turning point in the film.  Binh set off with more motivation than ever to find his dad.

What I really liked about this film, however, was that even though the mood throughout most of the film was sad and hard to watch, it ended on a hopeful note.  Binh finally found his dad and realized that he was a good man.  I think it shows that with enough perseverance, some good can come out of a bad situation.

What can I say about this movie?  First I have to say that I wanted to break down and cry so many times throughout it.  I literally could not deal with it.  But I was in class so I had to control myself.  But I didn’t want to.  Just to make that clear.  However, my first impressions of this movie were a little biased.  I was judging it as any other Bollywood film.  But I was very wrong.  It was so beautiful is so many ways.  One of those ways was Khan’s character.  I think if I tried to analyze his entire character it would take me forever, so I’m just going to talk about how adorable he was.

When I say adorable, what I mean is how sweet, gentle, and caring he was.  Like when Mandira kissed him on the cheek and he ran away.  So adorable.  Or when he told her that she sucked at singing, but she couldn’t get mad because he was so damn adorable.

After doing some research on the director of the film, Karan Johar, I learned that this film is very different to other films that he has directed.  Usually his films follow the same Bollywood style of romance, singing and dancing, with elaborate clothes.  This movie however, is meant to portray a message.  He purposefully portrayed it in the mainstream format, and I think he did this so that it could break out of the Bollywood audience and reach other audiences as well.

I think that the reason the director made Khan’s character disabled was because sometimes it’s the innocent people in the world that make the most difference, and have to most affect on us.  And I believe that Khan’s character was innocent because of his disability.  He loved his family without question, and determinedly set out to do what Mandira had told him to do because he loved her and Sam so much.  There was a quote at the end of the movie that Mandira said that made me understand this more.  ”Sam..Our Khan has managed to achieve, with his love and humanity..what my hatred could never achieve.”  I think that this is one of the major themes in this film.  Every action that Khan took was done in love and loyalty.

sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karan_Johar

http://www.subzin.com/search.php?title=My+Name+Is+Khan&imdb=&q=sam+&search_sort=Popularity&genre=-1&type=All

Enter the Dragon is a mixture of real-life Kung Fu and fantasy.  Bruce Lee’s performance in this film transformed the idea of Kung Fu because he brought his own personality into it.  He made it his own in this film.  (Kato, pg. 114)

After watching the film, I saw that there were many similarities to the two Kung Fu documentaries that we watched and this film.  I don’t know anything about Kung Fu, but it looked as though Bruce Lee was trying to be true to his knowledge of Kung Fu.  It seemed realistic and believable and didn’t seem stereotypical.  I mean the movie was made in 1973 so it is going to be a little corny, but the content was good.

From what I watched in the two Kung Fu documentaries, I saw similarities in how Bruce Lee’s character went about defeating the “bad guys.”  I feel like he tried not to fight with people as much as he could.  In one scene, there was a man who was bullying another man while they were on the boat going to Han’s Island.  Then he started trying to mess with Lee.  Lee easily could have beat his ass, but instead he ‘checked’ him first.  We learned about ‘checking’ in one of the documentaries.  In the philosophy of Kung Fu, one should avoid a fight if he can.  And ‘checking’ is a way to do that.  Also, in that same scene, Lee still didn’t beat his ass.  He just outsmarted him instead.

Pop-osition 3) The meaning and authority invested in the word “father” or “pappy” comes from a globalized legacy of European imperialism.

I found this chapter interesting because it reminded me of something I learned about in a previous class I took.  I took a Women’s Anthropology class before I came to Evergreen.  I absolutely loved it and learned so much about myself and about many different cultures all over the world.  However, we were looking at the Patriarchal systems that run most of the world, and were questioning why it is that men seem to run things in many different cultures throughout history and all over the world.  ”The digression is the point: terms like “pappy,” and like his pedos for that matter, have an interestingly wide circulation in time and space, and have original meanings that can be remade, and can be remade in the interest of tapping sources of authority, or even deflecting their reach.” (Diaz, pg. 103)  We studied many different cultures, most of which were Patriarchal.  Specifically we looked at, a Matriarchal system.  What we came up with was that Patriarchy isn’t something that is innately in us as human beings; it is cultural.  It is formed by a Patriarchal society that has the power to make it that way.  So in terms of this chapter, and the term “pappy” and it’s many forms, it’s interesting to see how Patriarchy plays out in so many European countries.

“There’s no going back.”  This is the last line that was said in the film Better Luck Tomorrow.  Better Luck Tomorrow took the stereotypes of Asian Americans and put a spin on them.  The film did include the typical stereotype of the brainy and determined Asian American, however, underneath those stereotypes is a whole different world.  This movie takes advantage of the idea that not everything is as it seems.  It also shows how quickly things can escalate from making cheat sheets, to doing drugs, to killing someone.  Why?  Because the more you break the rules, the more rules don’t affect you.  The line between what’s right and what is wrong becomes blurred and all of a sudden things are out of hand.