Bioshock: Infinite

 

On the surface Bioshock Infinite is a shooter that starts when the main character, Booker Dewitt, goes to the floating city of Columbia for a job, the description of which simply being “Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.” Believing he either has the option to die or to go to this sky-city and bring back ‘the girl’, he opts for Columbia.

The reason that I decided to take a look at this game in particular is the ideals that Columbia was founded upon and the reason for its secession from the United States (which is referred to as ‘The Sodom Bellow’). The city was built as a representation of American ingenuity and was sent out to fly around the world to show off America’s achievements in building it. Everything went horribly wrong when Columbia flew over China and revealed itself to be a heavily armed military flying ship disguised as a city. Columbia, on command of Comstock: the one who funded and ultimately ends up running the city, opened fire on Chinese civilians accused of holding American hostages. After these events the American government laid blame on Comstock, who decided for Columbia to secede instead of accepting blame.

While the racism Columbia is built on isn’t the main point of the game, there are certainly major plot points that revolve around it including a rebellion group called the Vox Populi constructed of both race and class minorities. In each turn of the game there are subtle racist propaganda that becomes so common place and hidden that it can be completely walked past. The game centers around a city so entangled in itself that racism is openly accepted to the point where its common place and easily overlooked even by those outside of the population of the city.

Cat Island

Cat Island otherwise known as Tashiro Island is located in Japan and is located near Miyagi. This island is covered with cats! To access the island tourists take a ferry to the island and are able to pet cats, visit buildings shaped like cats etc. Theres about 100 peoples living on the island and a majority of the residents are over 70 years old. Apparently theres more cats than people.

 cat-island-japan024

“In the past, the islanders raised silkworms for silk, and cats were kept in order to keep the mouse population down (because mice are a natural predator of silkworms). Fixed-net fishing was popular on the island after the Edo Period and fishermen from other areas would come and stay on the island overnight. The cats would go to the inns where the fishermen were staying and beg for scraps. Over time, the fishermen developed a fondness for the cats and would observe the cats closely, interpreting their actions as predictions of the weather and fish patterns. One day, when the fishermen were collecting rocks to use with the fixed-nets, a stray rock fell and killed one of the cats. The fishermen, feeling sorry for the loss of the cat, buried it and enshrined it at this location on the island.”

http://blogs.evergreen.edu/beccalovescats/wp-admin/post-new.php

catisland

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Dave’ Thursday

The connections I noticed from the Dave’ reading of chapters 1,2,5,15 is the notion that music is transnational. It can be used as a way to express oneself in a unique fashion and throw away pre-conceived notions of a culture and the stereotypes with which goes along with being associated with a cultural group. It can also be used as a tool to market stereotypes and create pre-conceived notions of cultural groups. Furthermore I noticed how it is a form of expression for artist who want to set themselves apart, or to do the opposite to link themselves to a place or culture which they are linked too.

For example we see in the rave culture the popularity of “Goa Trance” which is associated with India and South Asia while its origins really have nothing to do with South Asian culture. Furthermore these “Party goers” often dress up in costumes that are “Oriental” in representation, or are also subjected to advertisements for these parties that contain Hindu or Buhdist depictions. The marketing display and marketing of the exotic and the use of labeling is depicted in the essay regarding Cibo Matto a Japanese hip hop/ alternative girl band who can be seen as debunking the notion of Japanese female pop bands as exotic novelty. What is great about Cibo Matto is how they are shaking up these “racist and sexist lables” attatched to Asian American woman. From both of these chapters we see the images and labels created in regards to Asian Americans in the world of music, and also how artist like Cibo Matto can express themselves in a different light to shed the images that coincide with their race and their sex.

Music can also be a tool of connecting people to others or to a certain place. We see this in rave culture as this young group of individuals are using rave culture as a way to connect with others and has formed an international group who identify with this newly formed culture. Also this can be seen in the chapter on transnational Vietnamese music, which can provide feelings of nostalgia for those who fled Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. It connects them back to the homes they left behind and reminds them of elements of their country that they miss.

Overall I noticed how music can be seen as a way of creating stereotypes but also as a tool to undue those same stereotypes, as well as being an outlet for expression and connectedness with others.

 

The Wedding Banquet

The wedding banquet was a great film, but my least favorite that we have watched so far. I did enjoy the fact that instead of a woman couple it was men and a majority of the movies i’ve seen starts a lesbian couple. My favorite role in the film was Simon who played Wei-Weis boyfriend. I loved being able to get more of a glimpse of the role as the ‘other’ significant other that doesn’t really have the viewers as focused on them. What I truly enjoyed about this part was seeing him do everything in his power to make sure he was pleasing Wei-Weis family and just presenting himself so well. Underneath I knew that it was him wishing he could’ve been in the place as the ‘bride’ but used it as a in to still present himself. In the end it sort of reminded me a lot of Saving Face with sort of the same ending and same scenario that the couples had to live through, so it was a bit obvious to what the ending would be. Overall, I love how traditional the wedding was once they decided to have a true traditional wedding as well as the banquet was fun and was truly showing the side of how the Chinese celebrate, not as quiet as most films and media portray

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South Asian and Bollywood Science Fiction

I found a great interview with South Asian/American science fiction author Anil Menon, linked right here. He talks about the history and current state of science fiction in India. Really interesting stuff, and a well written article. There is a long history of Bengali sci fi, with J.C. Bose considered the founding father. The earliest Bengali science fiction was written in the 1800s (pre War of the Worlds). It’s important to note in Menon’s interview that there is a connection between science fiction and a history of British colonial rule. I’m constantly questioning the utility of the categorization of science fiction and fantasy. It’s easy to see how genres are gendered and raced. I.e. fantasy is written by women, fantastical writing by people of color is often grouped into magical realism. There are South Asian authors (including Salmon Rushdie), and South Asian/American authors who draw on Hindu mythology, and often portray elements of magic or the fantastic in their stories. It is usually only when these texts are “scientific” in nature or clearly inspired from the works of Western science fiction that they are classified as “sci fi”, so many authors are overlooked. It seems that many of the Bengali writers were inspired by the British, and Menon notes that science fiction has not been embraced by most of the population, but is gaining popularity.

This brings me to my next question, where is the science fiction in Bollywood? Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood, yet the first Bollywood science fiction movie only came out in 2003. Koi…Mil Gaya is a film that offers up a Bollywood version of the E.T. story, a nerdy student makes contact with an alien. The film has many references to Hindu mythology and gods, and plays with Western genre conventions. Koi Mil Gaya enjoyed immense popularity and seems to have sparked an emergence in science fiction troupes in Bollywood movies. Enjoy a scene from the film below!

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

The Fast and The Furious

 

I figured that I would write a bit about this since I just watched it and it ties in pretty well with not only my last post but my rock category as well. I have gone ahead and read the article concerning the series that Chico posted on the Moodle for March. However, I will not be addressing the topics of that article until later in the quarter. I will instead go over the things that I picked up on as I just watched the movie again this weekend.

This picture of the Nos, the energy drink not the fuel additive, girls shows how The Fast and The Furious pretty much thinks of women. Let’s just grab some pretty girls and portray them as prizes for the male racers. This tactic can be seen in other movies such as The Transformers which has scenes of Megan Fox wearing short shorts and a tiny top while wrenching on a car. I can’t recall how many times I heard people in my high school talking about how they would want to marry a girl like that -_- Although there are women who race in each series, they never address or show any discomfort with the way these women are usually treated. For example, in the 2001 The Fast and The Furious, the first race that takes place involves this portrayal of women. A girl walks up to the window of one of the racers, tries to tease him, and says that if he wins he can “have” her and her friend after the race. Some of the later movies show girls being provocative towards the racers and acting as their “prize” for winning. Objectifying is the name of the game in Hollywood and I am sure that there are roots of that portrayal within the history of racing and car culture as well. Being a male dominated sport, culture, etc. it is not surprising that this can be found throughout the series. What is surprising is that they are on the 6th or 7th film and things have still not changed, possibly due to the lack of people challenging the series.

Something else that I noticed about the movie was the way they portrayed each of the racer gangs. As for the Asian American gang, almost every time they appeared in the movie they were at an Asian food market that happened to be their business front. Whenever the Latino/a group was on the screen they played hip-hop that was all in the Spanish language. When the white guys were at the car meet, they played Limp Bizkit, a white hip-hop/rock group. God forbid they show the Asian American gang somewhere other than the Asian market riddled with Asian-style decor and statues. It doesn’t help either that the Asian American gang members are portrayed as the villains, following the history of Asian American’s in American film. At one point in the movie an FBI agent, played by Thom Barry, talks about taking down those “Asian punks” once and for all. The main villain, played by Rick Yune, doesn’t play much of a role in the movie, only appearing in a few scenes to be a cold, emotionless jerk with one too many sub-machine guns and an itchy trigger finger.

All-in-all, the movie has some major issues. Brian, the main character played by the late Paul Walker, is the white outsider siding with the law who eventually turns on the FBI to help his racing friends who are all of different a ethnicity. It is an outreach to showing a color-less world while yet capitalizing on the diversity of the cast and desperately trying to paint images of those different groups by using stereotypes. The movie isn’t all bad, the racing scenes are fun and there are even some explosions and fight scenes. Being a person involved in the real world of car culture, this movie has some sort of weird draw that pulls me in despite all of it’s faults. Aside from that, it definitely has the potential for doing more harm than good.

R.I.P. Paul Walker

Performing Kawaii – Fetishism and Yellow Fever

For my paper posts this week, I’m experimenting with new ways of synthesizing the reading. I just spent the morning falling very far down an internet rabbit hole. I’d like to present some of what I found, and how it relates to East Main Street. 

I began my inquiry with kawaii and Cibo Matto.  In her article, “Cibo Matto’s Stereotype A”, Jane C.H. Park describes kawaii as “gendered aesthetic style that melds the image of the underaged, sometimes coyly innocent nymphet with the pleasures of consumer capitalism” (295). The members of Cibo Matto, Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, playfully critique this fetishism through their lyrics. Unfortunately, they are often still lumped into the kawaii category by critics and their fans. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

This 1997 performance of Birthday Cake clearly falls outside of the kawaii archetype of coy, shy, and innocent girlishness. Hitori and Honda are seen screaming, head-banging, and jumping around the stage. Cibo Matto’s persistent categorization as kawaii is deeply rooted in anti-Asian racism and fetishization of Asian women. There were many anime loving white students in my high school, self-proclaimed otakus  who would use the word kawaii to describe anything cute, often with the accompanying peace sign and giggle. The popularity of the kawaii aesthetic with white American youth contributes in part to the infantilization of Asian and Asian/American women. Japanese people are seen as “cute” objects, costumes, and props. This is only the latest evolution in the stereotypes of Asian women. As a consequence, it doesn’t matter how much screaming or head-banging Cibo Matto do, they will continue to be trivialized and infantilized as kawaii by Western viewers. 

While looking into kawaii and fetishization, I stumbled upon Donna Choi’s art project, “Does Your Man Suffer From Yellow Fever?”, which I copied over to my blog. Choi uses caricatures and parody to present “8 simple steps” to figure out whether your partner suffers from “yellow fever”. I would consider kawaii as being a part of “yellow fever”, as is instanced in Step #6 “[he relates to you through food...] And other Asian people”, where a man is hugging an elder Asian woman and baby while proclaiming, “so kawaii!”.

Does Your Man Suffer From Yellow Fever? (By Donna Choi)

An interview with the artist is up on Bitch Magazine

1) He is obsessed with authenticity
2)But nothing too authentic
3) He is disappointed that you were born in Texas
4) But he will forgive you because now he is the expert on your culture
5) He relates to you through food
6) And through other Asian people
7) Most importantly he doesn’t see race
8) In fact he is the most post-racial person he knows

Dave’ Tuesday

.From the assigned reading from the book “East Main Street” I noticed this link between the chapters assigned with the idea of how pre-conceived notions and ideas of different cultures and races are spread through the media which form different stereotypes and many times misconceptions about people from Asia or with Asian ancestry.

In the essay entitled ¨Model Minorities Can Cook: Fusion Cuisine in Asian America” by Anita Mannur I noticed how the two main examples of Asian Americans who have become famous from television shows on the FoodNetwork displaying fusion cuisine are what one could be considered perfect for representing the young Asian community. Both Ming Tsai and Padma Lakshmi can be seen as poster children of not only fusion cuisine but even more as the fusion of Asian- Americans into American culture. They are portrayed as these sexy young ethnically and culturally diverse Asian Americans who can meld between two worlds of the foreign and the upper white class in America where Asian fusion cuisine has become desirable. They are almost chameleon like and are portrayed as exotic and beautiful and this pre-conceived notion being displayed is unrealistic. I say this because it is apparent that the media almost handpicked these two individuals because of their good looks, ability to speak clear English, but still maintain and exude exoticness to the public. This pre-conceived notions of a new wave of up and coming Asian Americans can also be related to the pre-conceived notions of Hawaii as this tropical paradise with exotic plants animals and people, with only the beautiful elements of the island being displayed to the public. However we never see the slums in Honolulu or the drug problem (i.e. meth) that has stricken the islands. Furthermore from the essay “Allooksame” we see that often times our visual perceptions of different Asian groups is wrong. In the website it test one’s ability to identify if a person is Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or any other group within Asia. However many times people are unable to identify the differences between the groups. It shows how we have put people into categories and grouped them together without noticing the uniqueness that fits between the different Asian groups.  I personally feel that media, in particularly films, have made us unable to notice the differences between Asian groups. The film industry often will cast people of multiple Asian groups for a film based in Japan or China for example. It causes us to fit the Asian race into one big category without noticing the differences and uniqueness of the different groups within this large pre-conceived category in which we have developed.

Overall the use of media and the visions of different races and places aid in creating these pre-conceived notions of different Asian groups, and cause us to create assumptions which overall can be skewed and in all actuality false

East Main Street’s Reading Ch. 1, 2, 5, 15

Chapter 1 – Trance-Formations: Orientalism and Cosmopolitanism in Youth Culture

Never heard the term of “Goa Trance” until viewing this chapter. It could probably be because I’ve never gone a rave or that type of dance before, and probably never will. It was strange that they used all the Hindu imagery for these types of events, to impose a “trance” when entering these types of parties. Sure they might have involved some sort of transient meditation, but not in the form that includes loud music, drugs, and not-so-bright behavior. This thing apparently happens with young people, around the ages of teenagers and young adults, and is giving them a misconception of South Asian culture.

Chapter 2 – Making Transnational Vietnamese Music: Sounds of Home and Resistance

It seems as though the music of Viet Kieu has lost some of its appeal over the years. The main point I saw in this chapter was that regardless of your origin, either born in Vietnam or a Vietnamese American, as an artist one should just find an audience to entertain, even if they are the complete opposite of what you think. There was all this talk about the anti-Communists, mainly consisting of Vietnamese Americans, shutting down singers and musicians from Vietnam since they believe the music of Viet Kieu promotes Communism in some way. The same could be said for Vietnamese Americans trying out their musical talents at Vietnam. All these artists want to do is demonstrate their skills, but due to public pressures they don’t really get that oppurtunity. Fortunately it seems that as time progresses on, the pressures lessen and these musical artists are able to do what they originally intended to do: perform.

Chapter 5 – “Pappy’s House”: “Pop” Culture and the Revaluation of a Filipino American “Sixty-Cents” in Guam

I was born in Guam, but my memories of living there are a blur. My cousins still live there, so I guess I still have family over there. Anyways, this chapter was very confusing to me. The term “Pappy” kept popping up in the reading. I assumed it was intended for the father of the narrator, but as the author mentions at the end, this is a possibility. At least I know now why my family decided to choose Guam as a place to live in at the beginning. Never thought Guam reminded them about the Philippines, despite how much smaller it is. It took me awhile to understand the picture on p.106 with the “Guam” person and the American man on the “Advancement” stand. If I’m right, I think it signifies how Guam, this land populated by Chamorros and Filipinos, is finally “measuring up” to what the American mainland is like.

Chapter 15 – Cibo Matto’s Stereotype A: Articulating Asian American Hip Hop

This is my first time hearing about the band Cibo Matto and Shonen Knife. Never thought that food could be used as a way to represent life and culture. What kind of threw me off was how the bands recognized themselves. Though I’m not quite sure which exact band it was, one of them identified as not being feminists, but believing in feminist ideals while the other band was the complete opposite. After seeing a few songs they did, I must admit they did not turn out to be the kind of band I imagined. It seemed surreal, such as the chicken song, but others said that their genre of music has changed as of lately. Maybe it was the time that inspired their type of approach to music, such as social conditions or what was popular back then.