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.