What’s the CRISIS?? What does it mean to be a “Model Minority”? For Asians…Stereotypically..are the smart? nerdy? angry? exotic? predictable? ect…

On page 184, Lee talks about the “Asian American family increasingly has been upheld as a model not only to blacks and latinos, but to whites” as well. Already that crisis has been proven wrong; In the film The Slanted Screen, the film introduced actor Sessue Hayakawa as being the first male Japanese actor to have leading roles with leading ladies…ANND was also dubbed a sex symbol. He was making money for everyone and the ladies loved him. Another example is none other than Bruce Lee. He became a huge action star and role model for all Asian Americans. However, I do have to note that some people do consider Bruce Lee a stereotype now because of the stereotypical “kung fu asian character” that white society expects when they think of a stereotypical asian.

But..What’s the Crisis you ask? The crisis is these asian stereotypes in Hollywood [film] that traps asian males AND females into only specific roles. You have the action hero, nerd/silly, foreign exchange student, brainiac ect. Asian Males are given no love interests because that’s not what the white audience wants to see. Asian males are being desexualized . With the film Saving Face, the crisis that you never see is an unfamiliar sighting with Asian American females. They have leading roles and are lesbians…which is something you never see in film. With this film, you see Asian American women in a new light that other movies don’t show, which is refreshing. You never see a film where there is a gay or lesbian movie, where the main character is a female and she’s a doctor.

To recap, Asian Americans still deal with this crisis…but are definitely making strides to show other Asian Americans that it is possible to break out and not be stereotypical.

I really liked this movie. It was very lighthearted, the characters were entirely believable, nobody was a caricature, all the reactions were very realistic. There were no stereotypes of people in the movie. I liked how the characters had honest struggles with their issues.

I found that the two movies on the various stereotypes in movies were both very informative. I thought that “Slanted Screen” was a little bit more balanced because it sought to find both positive portrayals of Asians in movies as well as negative ones, whereas I found “Dragon Lady” to be more one-sided in that aspect.

With Lee’s readings and watching the films The Joy Luck Club and Slaying The Dragon, I saw a lot of connections with self identity, self worth, and the correlation with beauty standards and assimilation.

On page 175, Lee talked about how all the female characters in Flower Drum Song, ”held the keys to successful ethnic assimilation”, while Nancy Kwan, just by her looks, already had assimilation in the bag…that was an illusion. The film Slaying The Dragon  connects with that because of the “Dragon Lady” stereotype. I do not agree with that at all, but  Nancy Kwans character was cast as manipulative, deceiving, and exotic asian female. Lee also talks about “defining whiteness”, and just like Ozawa, it didn’t matter “how assimilated” he was, he still could not become an American citizen because of his skin color and race. Joy Luck Club connects with this because all the daughters had obvious issues with self worth and identity, and overall, what that really meant for them. If you can compare Nancy Kwans character to the daughters of Joy Luck Club…you could see through what the real issue was. Which was either being too Asian or not enough and struggling with that identity and balance.. I ask myself, do you really need to choose?

Saving Face: I had to think about what kind of crisis the charters have in this movie and really it wasn’t that had to find one. Will is struggling to tell her mother that she is a lesbian. She can’t come out to her own mother because she is afraid of how she is going to react. Even though her mother got disowned by her father because she got pregnant and wasn’t married. It was kind of funny to see how the mother would disown her own daughter when she knows how sad and hard it is to be disowned by her father. How can the mother disown her daughter when she is trying to be happy, the same reason why the mother got disowned by her father?  Lucky, by the end of the movie the mother was able to see that the Will wanted the same thing that she did, to be happy and to be able to love.

The Joy Luck Club: Well in this movie you  didn’t even have to pay attention to find the crisis. There were so many bad things that happened in this movie. I almost cried about four to five times while watching. From each character the stories just got more and more powerful. When you thought that something bad happened another bad thing happened that topped the last. I really enjoyed this movie because we didn’t see the typical love story. We see mothers and daughters coming together, finding that their lives aren’t as great as one expected.

Julie Chen is an Chinese American television host on The Talk. She recently talked about how she got plastic surgery to make her eyes larger to look “more American.” Her bosses would tell her that she looked as if she were bored because her eyes were slanted. It was interesting to compare the difference in what Slaying The Dragon said about how producers wanted Asian actresses to look more exotic and how the lady that got the CNN job had to have her makeup a curtain way to make her look more Asian. With this being said I think its really sad that we can lose ourselves by what the media wants us to be.

The O.C T.V show has always been one of my favorites. When Slanted Screen talked about the O.C they told the viewers that The O.C didn’t have any minorities and when they tried to incorporate more minorities the writers rewrote it.  I have watched the O.C over and over again and never saw any person of color unless they were showing  people in Chino where it was supposed to be a poor poverty area which, would then show Latinos. After watching a show but not really seeing the problems it becomes more real to me how main stream television portrays people of color. We still have very few main stream actors in television that are people of color.

We hardly see movies that have interracial couples that aren’t Asian and White, or Black and White, or Latino and White if they are even showed at all.  In Slanted Screen the film reminded us about Romeo Must Die and how main stream media doesn’t want to see an African American women with an Asian man. Although many people root for romantic endings many wouldn’t want to see Aaliyah and Jet Lee together. Although Romeo Must Die was supposed to me the new version of Romeo and Juliet.

Also with Asian men with their love interest in movies its crazy to see how many movies have Asian men get with a American women. I saw how in Rush Hour, Lee played by Jackie Chan never had a love interest even if Chris Tucker had many love interest in all three movies.

From watching the documentary entitled “Slaying the Dragon” and the assigned readings of Lee I noticed some connection between the information conveyed in the film and the book. One of these connections can be seen in the way in which these racial stereotypes and images of Asian Americans are spread throughout the population. In Lee’s book we see that these images and stereotypes of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century were spread through songs, and minstrel shows. However in a more high tech fashion shown in the film Slaying the Dragon we see the spread of Asian American’s and Asian American Women stereotypes being distributed through films and media.

Some of the stereotypes that are displayed in Lee’s book and in the film is this idea of Asian American woman’s exotic nature making them out to be these sexual beings. This can be seen in the movie characters Linda Low in the film “Flower Drum Song” and Hana Ogi in the film “Sayonara.” As Lee states in reference to these characters, “… Hana Ogi, Linda Low are the personification of sexual fantasy…”(176) This idea of Asian females being exotic sexual beings, are displayed throughout films as well as in Lee’s book, and without a doubt has left an impression of Asian American females on American society.

We also see this idea in films of Asian women becoming these, “model wifes” who wait hand and foot on their husbands every need. This idea of the Asian female being the perfect figure to assimilate into American culture and to be domesticated and, ” transformed from exotics into American girls suitable for marriage and motherhood.”(Lee 179) is displayed in the films depicted in the documentary ”Slaying the Dragon” where the Asain women with her exotic sexuality falls for the white male Hero figure. In one interview in the documentary a white man stated as a child, after watching the film “Sayonara” he wanted an Asian wife because of her ability to comply with her husbands every need. Further proving the fact that the film industry has through its history created this image of the Asian female as a docile wife who in some sick way lives to serve her husband.

What is appalling to me about all of this is the way in which the Asian female is being used in the films as an exotic sex symbol with which the new modern American white male should mate with and transform into this new American housewife. It is almost as if they are just a toy or a puppet in a bigger game in which the film industry is the tool to which this message is conveyed to the people. For me I wish love was depicted as love regardless of race. People are people, with their own thoughts feeling beliefs, and sexuality. However by depicting the Asian female in this light, which was done in great extent in the 1950′s and 60′s it is yet again creating another stereotype which creates an image of Asian American women which may be untrue and de-grading, for future generations in America.