This essay is part of a collection contained in the book, East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Our five-person seminar group discussed the essay in chapter 14, Guilty Pleasures: Keanu Reeves, Superman and Racial Outing. Even though we only had about 30-minutes to spend on it we ended up with a lot of insightful dialogue. One of our groups members began tracing the ideas on our chalkboard:

My perspective on the reading was different than the others in the group for one main reason– I never thought of Keanu Reeves as a happa– a Japanese word meaning racially half-and-half. I also did not know that he is surrounded with rumors of being a homosexual. It was all news to me, but not our group, and that made for some good discussion about identities.

Identities of the people mentioned in the essay centered around a secret knowledge. Keanu Reeves has neither confirmed or denied his racial background, or his sexuality. For some strange reason– maybe because he is favored by many of Hollywood’s elite– he is rarely pushed on the subject during interviews. We questioned whether or not Reeves is simply playing the Hollywood game, or just wants to keep his identity a secret. Sound familiar Mr. Kent?

Yep, Clark Kent of Smallville was also keeping (trying to keep) his identity a secret. Not yet Superman, Kent still had his super powers and during his formative years in Smallville was harboring secret knowledge. I never watched the TV show; once I learned Clark and Lex Luthor were portrayed as school-yard chums I didn’t want anything to do with the butchering of the Man of Steel’s backstory. Turns out there is much discussion about the implied homosexual relationship between Clark and Lex; another piece of secret knowledge? Is young Clark Kent suffering an identity crisis.

We also enjoyed considering Kent’s alien identity. Being from another planet, Kent is obviously an alien. Not having been born in Smallville, or the USA, is Kent could also be considered an illegal alien– unless of course Jor-El was an American soldier stationed at Krypton…

For the reading, one of the things that stood out for me was the mention of Blade Runner and how its setting resembles a future that is pan-Asian and apparently controlled by the multi-ethnic corporations such as the “Shimato-Dominguez Corporation”, which was a mash up of Asian and Latino forces. This represented the crisis of the apparent multi-culture dominance rather than just the white American culture. While it did not necessarily say it was bad directly, through the background and interactions in society it was perceived as “messy and polluted”. They also mentioned how the Asian American can also be perceived as an “invisible peril” in that one moment they may be doing their daily thing, the next they become hostile and threaten the peace, such as the girl in Year of the Dragon.

Regarding the movie, it was pretty good. For a moment I thought the movie would end in a bittersweet note, with Wilhemina’s mom regaining her liveliness in realizing that Little Yu loves her, but Wilhemina losing Vivian. Turns out in a last minute save that everything turned out all right for everyone. I know most audiences would want the happiest ending possible, but sometimes a bittersweet ending can be as equally satisfying when executed at the right time or in certain conditions. The crises in this movie were the the Chinese culture crisis and a crisis on sexual orientation.

Wil’s mom was discovered to be pregnant, which shamed her father and surprised Wil. Knowing she is too old to bear children, she basically becomes a couch potato and does not try much to make her situation any better, but still intends to keep the baby. Not only does her father think negatively of her, but her friends at the salon as well, who skipped out on the Mahjong party Wil’s mom had planned. She starts feeling alone and after Wil attempts to help via arranged dates with other men, she “settles” on Cho after Wil’s grandma dies. Even though it seems Wil’s mom is willing to be someone she isn’t, Wil comes in with startling news, which causes Little Yu to confess his love to Wil’s mom. Wil and her mom both depart and the mother’s attitude is suddenly uplifted again. The crisis here was that Wil’s mom wanted to remain in Flushing, but since she violated Chinese tradition by being pregnant not only at an old age, but without a husband, she is shamed not only by her father, but the community of Flushing. This causes her to basically remain in the house mostly throughout the movie.

In the case of Wil, her friend Vivian tells her that they both knew each other long before, back when they were kids. After a visit to Vivian’s place, the two finally rekindle their friendship from way back then, but it evolves to something more of an intimate relationship. The two start seeing each other daily until Wil’s mother and her needs get in the way of their relationship. Unable to make the trip to Vivian’s party (I think), Wil instead insists on staying at Vivian’s place for the whole night, the same night her mom is having the Mahjong party. The two get really intimate, but Wil is disturbed again by her job. Eventually the job demand takes a toll on their relationship with Vivian waiting all the time, causing her to “break up” with Wil and leave for Paris on a bad note. Wil, with nothing to lose, confesses to her mother she is homosexual, but her mom doesn’t believe that. After Wil helps with her mom’s marriage debacle, her mom tries to save Wil’s relationship, but it’s too late. 3 months later they attend a dance party, where Wil meets Vivian again. Regardless of the people around them, they kiss and everything turns out alright for everyone, or mostly everyone. Grandpa was still irked. The crisis was that Wil kept her sexual orientation hidden, not only from her mother but from her community. She doesn’t reveal why she is always out with Vivian, but her mom had her suspicions. Wil was unsure on how to live with this type of lifestyle, but was unable to do so because she wasn’t sure what relationship they were really having. Aside from offending her mother, she did not want to be seen in a negative light by the community in Flushing, especially by her grandfather and grandmother. It was not until her break up with Vivian near the end that she musters the courage to come out, which makes her mother understand and get Vivan and Wil back together.

Chapter 10

I came up with a question for this chapter.

“why could the pageants  never completely assimilate  with American style?”

I wonder why Nisei did not present only American culture without Japanese culture despite they wanted to be accepted by white community. “The addition of the queen pageant reflected the larger goals of the festival, namely, to ease the mounting economic and social tensions between Japanese Americans and the larger white community while trying to bolster the ethnic economy of Little Tokyo(Lee, p.205).” According to this quotation, I can also tell that Japanese American wanted to be adapted to Americans socially and economically.

My answer for the question above is that the pageants wanted to keep their own culture in the US. In addition, although Nisei had citizenship unlike Issei, they got put in the interment camps during the WWII. Thus, after the war, they still struggled with their identities whether Japanese or American. That’s why, the pageants combined Japanese and American culture forms.

Chapter 14

I found interesting sentences.

“Evidence of gay sexuality seems ti erase racial markings, an absence that is read as white.”(Lee, p.275)

“Race and sexuality seem ti cancel each other out in both the popular imagination and the zero-sum world of identity politics.”(Lee, p.275)

These two quotations mean that Race and Sexuality cannot be accepted by people at the same time.  Being gay is already strange, thus,  additionally being foreigner is so strange that people ignore a point of race.

Chapter 6 

“Rather than viewing the term queer as synonym for homosexual identity, I use it to question the formation of exclusionary norms of respectable middle-class, heterosexual marriage.” (Lee, p.120)

As Chinese immigrants, Filipino immigrants were seen as weird or queer people beyond the distinction of sex by White people.

Ch. 6

• Identity-based oppression vs. identity-based exploitation
• Queerness and it’s relation to political economy
• “They were, in Raymond WIlliam’s useful terms, “residual” rather than “dominant,” the vestiges of an earlier historical moment that found their exploitation legitimate or at least manageable. But they are paradigmatic because they were also an “emergent” formation that may have tragically arisen to dominance.” (125)

Ch. 10

• How to effectively create change (The Slanted Screen) in relation to Japanese American’s appropriating “Americanness” to further their own inclusion in the nation

Ch. 11

• The term “Cablinasian”- can we all make up our own races/cultures into a new category? How does this help us as a whole/effectively make change?
• The struggle in having the racial background of two or more minorities
• “Woods’s multiracial identity is recuperated as a kind of testimonial to racial progress that simultaneously celebrates diversity in the form of Cablinasianness and the multiplicity that category suggests while erasing the histories of black disenfranchisement, racial –sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism that generate, result from, and entrench the legal, scientific, and popular definitions of race, including each racial component of Cablinasianness and their various amalgamations.” (223) Can we really erase the history behind racial barriers?

ch10

Reasons for beauty pageants starting in the Japanese American communities?

Problems in promoting the ideal feminine image of beauty queens?

Why did beauty pageants continue even after the feminist movement in the 70s? Problems with the feminists?

Stigma of the beauty pageants? Intelligence?

Problems with “racial purity” and cultural integrity with the introduction of mixed raced candidates?

ch11

Black citizenship in the modern day? p225

Combining stereotypes? Black and Asian?

Racial categories becoming retrogressive and dangerous? P227

Importance of group recognition? Minority racial mixing? What group does he represent?

Foreign mothers bear the burden of miscegenation while their country is forcibly occupied? p240

ch14

Importance of celebrities playing significant roles not “looking Asian”?276

Asian men portraying “cool macho hero roles” ? p284

Lex and Clark relationship, obsession with finding more about the “foreign alien”?