The readings in Kato have been so amazing because it was making the Afro Asian connections that I’d been making since last quarter. I think having Jimi and Bruce as the comparisons were excellent because they both broke out of a shell that the media put them into. Not only that, they took their careers and completely flipped them upside down and gave a new meaning to it. I was pumped to watch Enter the Dragon though because the readings were leading up to it! I mean, me personally I had read a whole book about the guy and had never seen any of his movies! Honestly, I never really knew anything about him until now. He was just the original Kung Fu movie guy to me. But I had no idea he was buried in Seattle! I didn’t even know how he died!

But the movie? Oh my god I loved it. I loved it. Do you know how cool it was to see an actor actually doing their own stunts and fight scenes? You don’t see that now a days, the fight scenes are from far away so you wont notice the stunt man’s different face. And actually being able to see and know that it was Bruce Lee made all the difference. That kind of fighting skill? How do you not respect that. Yeah sure, sometimes he was hitting a dummy but the fact that it was him hitting the dummy was refreshing.

Something I did find stereotypical was that the black guy was the first to die. Surprise, surprise. It’s nothing new, watch any action or scary movie and the black person is the first to go. I’ve always found this completely out of character because as a black person, I’m never the person that’s like, “oh? did you hear that noise downstairs? Let’s go investigate.” All you have to do is watch a scary movie with my family to know this. The whole time you’ll hear things like, “GIRL! WHY ARE YOU GOING DOWN THERE? YOU BETTER GET OUT OF THAT HOUSE! GIRL! See…now you dead.” I’m just saying that in real life I’d probably survive a scary movie because I wouldn’t go out the cabin in the middle of no where with no neighbors around in the first place. But that’s just me…as a black person. But you know, I don’t speak for the whole community.

It was especially annoying when I heard that Roper was supposed to die and Lee and Williams were supposed to be in the final fight scene. But you know, two minorities making it out alive and conquering the villain? That would be too much.

Overall though, I’d totally watch it again. You just don’t see afros and evil layers like that nowadays.

I was never a fan of rap or hip hop. Sure there are some songs of those genres here and there that I think are pretty entertaining, but not all of it. That’s just my opinion. Anyways, it seems hip hop and rap had their get-go started by a policy called Proposition 13. Its effects “adversely affected the inner city neighborhood…an assault on the at risk youth, by depriving them of opportunities for education, vocational trainings, and jobs…offered ghetto youth little alternative except to join a gang and engage in the illegitimate economy that oftentimes involves narcotics trade,” (Kato 172). Basically, if I have to make a connection, it was like how Bruce Lee, in his youth, was oppressed by Imperial Japan’s control of Hong Kong and could do little to nothing to remove it. Just like Lee, these ghetto youth had no way of turning over Proposition 13, so they had to find a way to get over this predicament. Rather than take up martial arts, though I’m sure some did, they turned to gang life in order to “live”. Eventually the violence got out of hand and some gangs decided to call a trice to resolve the violence and begin expressing their selves via rap and hip hop music. To further their expressions, gangs also took up graffiti, or street art to display to the public their identities.

As for Kung Fu and Hip Hop, Bruce Lee’s use of Jeet Kune Do is what inspired the Beastie Boys to follow suit and make their own type of music, one that was a mix of almost everything. Sure there was the mention of Game of Death and how his opponents each represented a different obstacle, but I thought the most important part was between Lee and the Beastie Boys. If it wasn’t for his “inspiration”, who knows what might have become of the band.

I have grown up around R&B, Soul, and Hip-Hop. Today we hear Rap and hear all the negativity like the harsh cuss words or talking trash about women. We have all heard the bad things that the media has said about Kanye West, Lil Wayne and many more rappers but what we don’t hear in the media is how Hip Hop became an escape. From Kung Fu to Hip Hop the book explains how Hip Hop was able to turn the tables from being a place of violence to a place of social consciousness.

I think that rappers today play into the media and how they are stereotyped. I also think that the media also loves to keep this stereotype going. Look at all the stores buying these records, and radio stations playing these songs.  There has been talk about how Macklemore isn’t really a rapper because he talks about real life struggles and how the hip hop nation shouldn’t support him because of his skin color, white. Hip Hop has been stereotyped into this music category for people living and coming from the ghetto. I think that when rappers get big they start to conform themselves into what the media whats them to be. I think that the book is right by saying that a hip hop has become a reform.

“Don’t think, feel”

I have never seen any of Bruce Lee’s movies. I have heard the name, and knew that he was amazing at Kung Fu but never cared to watch any of his movies. I enjoyed watching and reading about Bruce Lee. Reading the book really makes you understand the deeper meaning of the movie.

Lee is told that his sister was killed by Han’s men you could tell that he was motivated to enter the Kung Fu tournament even more.  He told a young boy in the beginning of the movie not to show emotion like anger but to feel. When Lee and Han are fighting you couldn’t tell if he was fighting for his sister or fighting because he is a bad man overall. You couldn’t tell any expression on his face but you just knew that Han couldn’t handle Lee’s moves. In the book From Hung Fu To Hip Hop its says “The flashback of the scene of Su-Lin’s suicide overlays with ‘Lee’s’ unusually calm facial expression” (120). Even though it is just a movie I would get to emotional. I guess its because Kung Fu teaches you how to react in situations and not get emotional when you have a job to do.

Affect is the Other of rational modernity. All of the readings and texts from this week explored the transformative and revolutionary potential of affective communication. A narrative of resistance can be read in Enter The Dragon by picking up on the affect of Bruce Lee and the extras. In From Kung Fu To Hip Hop, Kato describes graffiti as relying on alternative modes of interpretation. The message is communicated through affect instead of the decipherability of the text. The feeling is articulated through movement, color, shape etc. This raw form constructs a relationship outside of  dominant institutions. This is apparent in My Name Is Khan when Khan gives his speech about Sam in the Wilhemina church. He uses a combination of English, Arabic, and Hindi, so the actual content of the speech is not decipherable to the assembly, yet affect transcends even the boundaries of language and the church is clearly moved by his speech.

For my theme I will be going over all the “Losses” she has been faced with.

Nao feels an abandonment, she feels like running away. She has a loss of self, a loss of a home and identity (feeling American). She goes through loss of losing a war (Kamikaze pilot), she has a loss of purpose (Nao feels like her life is a waste of time) like a wreckage on the beach, a loss of reality. She journals as a way to lose herself in the moment. Nao feels like she lost her father because he isn’t stable anymore.