Through this film, I could find the hard times moving to America, or living in China, and so on. However, even though they experienced hard times, they looked happy after their problems were solved. I think that the reason why the first scene and the last scene were the same scene taking the picture with mothers and children was that the director wanted to tell us they’re happy. Even when we are in trouble, we are forced to stay where we are. And, to live there, we have a hope that someday we can release from there. After I watched this film, I wondered about if I am okay with who I am. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never had hard time like in this film. I think the mothers in this film were wonderful, because they changed and made their life from unfortunate situations. Continuing from last quarter, I want to know more about first generation Asian Americans, because their powers were amazing and I don’t want their hard times to be forgotten. I think to study and know their time is important not just for myself but also for them.

In addition, I learned about how big the issues where the older generation. I think the environments where people grow up develop their characters, and usually the environments are made by parents or relatives. This is because character is largely formed by heredity and environment. I’m sure my parents are the best people who can understand my mind, although I sometimes have quarrels with my parents. I want to spend more with my parents, and not lose them the way June lost her mother.

This picture is with my mother and my younger sister taken in the summer of 2012.

Today I’m looking for connections between this weeks book (Orientals), the documentary Slaying the Dragon, our small group discussion and our afternoon film, “The Joy Luck Club”.

The documentary was examining the roles of Asian women in film. While it’s not surprising the handful of films that Asian women lead in are chick-flicks– such as The Joy Luck Club, our discussion turned to naming the movies where Asian men play leading roles. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li… action films. We could’t think of any other movies where Asian men played lead roles– even beyond the action genre. Surely there are many films today that fit the bill, but without Google at our disposal thats as far as we got.

China Silk Qipao in Hangzhou

Our group also talked about where the term dragon lady came from. None of us knew for sure, but offered some interesting ideas nonetheless. I’ve always associated dragons with two main things; traditional Chinese parades, and Dungeons & Dragons. Again, since I’ve always had a different perspective on things, the term dragon lady always brought to my mind the traditional dresses worn by some Asian women– so I never gave the term a second thought. Though one of my classmates thought it probably derived from the dragon being a scary, sneaky creature then projecting those attributes onto Asian women– thus dragon lady.

A much better connection came to me through this weeks book. It mentions Ricardo Manitoban playing an Asian in the film “Sayonara.” According to the author the Cuban-born Manitoban was cast to play the role to avoid the taboo of an Asian man romancing a Caucasian woman– a taboo also referred to in Slaying the Dragon. The idea being it was acceptable for a Caucasian male to romance an Asian woman, but not the other way around. The connection that jumped out at me is  obvious to any Sci-Fi fan my age– Star Trek.

Manitoban played one of the most iconic characters of the genre; “Khan Noonien Singh …a genetically-bred “super man” of Earth’s India in the late 20th century.“Manitoban connects Sayonara to Star Trek, which was one of the few mediums in popular culture to directly confront taboos and stereo types such as those side-stepped in Sayonara. The Indian-born Khan romances the Caucasian Lt. Marla McGivers in the famous 1967 episode Space Seed. In November 1968 Star Trek also featured the first interracial kiss on TV– between Lt. Uhura and Capt. Kirk.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Science Fiction genre has a long reputation for confronting taboos and controversial social topics, with Star Trek among the leaders. There are even college courses based on the franchise such as this from Georgetown University; “Philosophy and Star Trek. Sadly, Robert G. Lee’s book Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture fails to mention the positive role Star Trek plays in the crosscurrents of Asian/American Pop-culture.

Before I came here, most of my friends who used to live in America told me that I had to be careful because there is a sexual stereotype about Asians. So, I came knowing about the stereotype, but I still can’t understand the reason why Asian people are viewed sexually. Through this documentary, I didn’t want to think about that but I felt that I would be misanthropic if this stereotype was in everyone’s mind. This is because I’m afraid that I can’t understand exactly what people think about me. Since I came here, I have had some bad experiences caused by this stereotype against Asians. For example, one person made an assumption and asked me when I would sleep with him, it came completely out of nowhere. So, I couldn’t understand the reason why that person asked me something like that, and at the same time I felt angry because I felt like I was being stereotyped. Why do people expect this sexual image of Asian women? I know this is because the looks of Asian people are exoticism. However, also the Asian history relate with this stereotype. As we know already, in this book and the films, they talked about a lot of sexual scenes acted out by Asians for a long time. Because of these images from the media, they instilled this stereotype in people that they were not familiar with. However, this stereotype which Asian people tend to look as sexual is from many years ago. Nowadays, we have many roots to know the truth. I think it is very important to learn about the truth.

So this movie talked for a little bit about interracial relationships, mainly on screen. In my mind I always think that the time when interracial relationships weren’t okay, was like a LONNNNNG time ago. But really, it wasn’t that long ago at all! My mom was born in 1956, and it wasn’t until 1954 that interracial relationships were even allowed to be on screen! This is crazy to me. It was literally a few years before my moms generation that this wasn’t allowed! And roughly only  20 years after interracial relationships were okay to be on screen… she married a black man. (my brother and sister’s dad.) It is just an interesting thing to think about that if she was born just a few years prior then she was, she may have had a whole different outlook on interracial relationships? Who knows. Anyways, I am completely PRO interracial relationships, plus mixed babies are just so adorable

These reading and two films are very interesting for me to get to know as Asian female. I like those films. There are four connections  between Reading and two films I found.

• “Film historian Nick Browne writes that ‘the imagery of the movie world linked and intermingled exoticism and consumerism… for cultural possession and incorporation of the ancient wealth of Asian sexual secrets and material life.’ ”(Lee, p.120)

I quote this part because it is related to “Slaying The Dragon”. In the film, Asian American actors say that the film makers required them to be exotic, mysterious, and sexual Asian women as stereotype because consumers wanted to see it.

• According to “The Joy Luck Club” and the reading, I think that both two focus on female roles more than male.

“At the very moment that over-civilization and weightless of middle-class life have weakened the self-confidence of the middle-class male, the New Woman offered a direct challenge to his late-Victorian masculinity.”(Lee, p.120)

Additionally, the leading characters in the film are all women. Chinese mothers had difficulty in China and finally came to the US to success. It really describes women strength. Also,  Chinese mothers and ChineseAmerican daughter are against each other because their culture and identities are different such as Chinese or American. But, mothers teach something important to their daughters and they understand each other after all.

• Orientals were seen as weird and awful people by White people.

“He presents the cosmopolitan world of Empire.Yet this cosmopolitanism masks his evil intent, which, Nayland Smith warns, ‘is to ‘pave the way’ … for nothing less than a colossal Yellow Empire. That dream is what millions of Europeans and Americans term ‘the Yellow Peril!’”(Lee, p.116)

Also, Chinese husbands are described in the film as terrible Chinese men. One has many wive and the forth wife is like sex slave. The other cheated on his wife cruelly.

• According to Slaying the dragon, many films used couples of Japanese wive and White husbands in oder to show consumers mysterious and new stories. The Joy luck club describes these couples too. Japanese wive are often portrayed as reserved and it made stereotype. Before Asian males, Asian females were accepted by White society as new and interesting things.

As a Rom Com (Romantic Comedy) enthusiast it was nice to not only see a film in this genre that focused on People of Color but was also produced in America. It was the first feature film I’ve watched that Filipinos and aspects from their culture were part of the main story. I enjoyed a lot of the dialogue that took place in this film mainly around race and culture. There were two distinct spots that really stood out for me.

The first, was at the debut when everyone initially first eats and they go around the room to different tables and show us the conversations that are going on. The conversation about the proper word to use when referring to Filipinos or other people from Asian and/or Pacific Islander decent. The conversation I liked was when the white man at the table in telling the rest of the table that saying “orientals” is not the correct term to use anymore because it’s too “touchy” and the proper word is “Asians”. However when one of the Filipina women reefers to herself and other Filipinos as “Asian”, the white man gets  flustered because the Philippines are not part of Asia but Malaysia so they aren’t Asian. I found it slightly amusing that it was okay for Filipinos to be labeled as “oriental”, a term that did not take into consideration anyone’s geographical location. Not only that but instead of using one word to refer a ton of different people and cultures why not use their actually nationality.

The second piece of dialogue I really enjoyed was when Rose and her friends were dancing as Ben and Rick re-entered the party. Rick, says something along the lines of the dance looking like dances his Mexican cousins did. My first thought to that comment was that while they dancing looks similar it’s really not okay to generalize cultures like that. And then I remembered my history and realized that that comment could also be a reference to Spain having colonized both the Philippines and Mexico.

I started reading Robert G. Lee’s Orientals after watching and writing about the “How I Met Your Mother” episode, which was a bit unfortunate because then I could have used parts of the reading in describing the messed up things in that episode. Anyway that’s not want I want to spend this post talking about. In the “Introduction” when talking about the United States vs. Thind case Lee says, “The important thing about race, the Supreme Court held, was not what social or physical scientist at the time may have had to say about it, but rather how “popularly” defined it.” (pp. xxii *note that my copy of the book has way different page numbers than most others…) in the context of further oppression non-white people from America.

I think that it’s statement worth talking about because of how true it was then, but more imrotantly still is. There’s a series out called “The Power of an Illusion” that really gets into the historical social contract of race and it’s effect on peoples lives up to the present. It questions why we still associate stereotypes with people, even after having disproved them or finding out the factors that lead to those stereotypes, because society still perpetuates inaccurate portrayals of different social groups. Which leads to another reason I found this quote to be essential, the power that media and pop/popular culture have on the general public. From music videos, to video games, to t.v. shows to commercials, people are influenced by what is constantly being portrayed through media and popular culture and because of that it’s dangerous to have misrepresentations of Asian/Americans in them.

I’m writing this as I read so I don’t loose any good thought processes so bare with me.

“In such cases, white common laborers were sometimes called “white niggers’ and the work “white slavery.” In the post Civial War decades the problematic pre-abolition metaphors of “white slavery” and “wage slavery” gave way to ‘Nigger work” and “coolie work”" Pg. 57. This directly relates to my post about the N word. Do you see how rooted in hate this word is? Like they couldn’t think of another word for horrible working conditions so they just put the worst fucking word ever in front of it. If that doesn’t say something then I don’t know what does.

Side note on that “Twelve Hundred More” song. Someone recently told me that liking a song doesn’t make a difference. I think people underestimate the power of pop culture. I think that whether you like what’s happening in pop culture or not, it represents what happening at that space in time. You really think people were just singing the lyrics to this song blindly? You think this had no effect on the Chinese laborers?

I’m super into the fact that they’re being specific with the white group of men. I mean, I know I’m guilty of doing this but I totally lump white people together. Russian? German? Irish? It’s all white and that’s not cool. It’s cool that the white man is being specified…even if what he was doing was complete bullshit.

On page 77 there is a line where they are talking about one of the songs written against the Chinese (The Marriage of John Chinaman) and it says something about him ‘saving a lot of gold’ and I totally thought about How I Met Your Mother.

So that Pacific Railroad Complete thing? That picture of the white woman and the Chinese man? The cover for the damn book. Can I just…I mean… Why is it that no matter what minority is the new ‘threat’ people are always worried about the ‘white women’. Like seriously, if I was a white woman I would be so mad at the fact that people that I was that defenseless. Its insulting.

“The land itself was feminized in the metaphor of the virgin land, and the westward movement was imagined in terms of masculine penetration and conquest” Pg. 87. I don’t even know where to start on that one…wtf.