Week 3 Class Notes…

-racialiscious.com

-How I Met Your Mother

-ANA Airlines commercial

-Chozen (TV Series)

-Richard Sherman

-Culture: “The integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, actions, and artifacts and depends on man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations, the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial religious or social group (Webster’s Definition)

-Pop Culture: Examples: Ethnic culture, Evergreen Culture, Athlete Culture, Gender Culture, 60′s culture, ETC.

people/groups/places/time

John Storey’s ‘Ideas of Pop Culture’

1. “Culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people.” (quantitative, how much money it brings in?)

2. “Culture which is left over after we have decided which is high culture.” (Who decides what high culture is? People with money, power, etc.)

3. “Mass Culture”

4. “Culture that originates from ‘the people” (Who are the people ?!)

5. Culture rooted in exchange and negotiation between [dominant and subordinate groups]”

6. “[in a postmodern terrain] culture which no longer recognizes distinctions.”

-Stereotype:

Greek- Stereos: hard, fixed ; Typos: blows, impressions

-Orientals: Paull Shin wanted the word ‘oriental’ out of books.

Whats wrong with oriental? — Oriental is a rug, it is a racial category that lumps all Asians together, “Far East”, The West defined them as being far away, Euro Centric

-Yellow Face: reference to ‘Black Face’ (1830′s-1840′s) , marks them as orientals, “opposition to whiteness”

Class Notes Jan 23rd,2014

Last day to change obsessions is Monday.

Radicialious (sp) website for Asian Studies,other zines and blogs.

Pop Culture: Playground or battleground

Selling airlines,meeting mothers,Katy Perry,How I met your Mother and other racial sterotypes.

“Coded language” using racial slurs in history and present.

Culture:The intergrated pattern pof human behaviour that includes thought,speech,action and artifacts;depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge yto succeeding generations;the customary beliefs,social forms and material traits of a racial,religious,or social group.

PoP Culture: “Culture Theory and Popular Culture”

-culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people.

-culturfe which is left over after we have decided what is high culture.

-mass culture

-culture which originates from “the people”

-culture rooted in exchange and negotitation between dominant and subordinate groups.

-(in post modern terrain) culture which no longer recognizes distinctions

-Antonio Gramsai(hegemony)

hegemony-indirect form of government and of imperial dominace in which the hegemon (leader state) rules geopoliticially subordinate states by the implied means if power, the threat of force,rather than by direct military force.

-Gramsci’s(1891-1937) theory is one social class can manipulate the system of values and mores of a society,in order to create and establish a ruling class.

-sterotyper-n.-something conforming to a fixed or general pattern;especially:a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified attitude or uncritical judgement.

-Eurocentrism-centered or focused on Europe or European peoples especially in relation to historical/cultural influence.

-”Far East”; wilderness (American context)

-”yellowface”-slang-people of ASian background or racial sterotyping of Asian ideals or people. Historically used to incite the common man to racial superiority or violence by journalism,race riots etal

Movie: “The Debut”

The Debut

In the film, Ben is isolated from his Filipino American family. His elder relatives want to keep their own culture. On the other hand, Ben cannot speak the Tagalog language and do Filipino dance. Generation gap that is the difference in the attitude, priorities, and views among generations exists there. Because Ben is getting along with White friends, Augusto calls Ben “White man” or something ironically.

I was surprised when Rose says to Ben “Hiroshima. I’m bomb” during playing basketball….

Ben’s family really respect toward Ben’s grandfather. As Ben’s father is mean to Ben until the end of this film, Ben’s grandfather is strict to Ben’s father too. It shows that Filipino strongly respect for elders. I guess because Ben’s grandfather was especially working so hard to settle down to the US as Asian American, Ben’s family and relatives respect him so much.

Slang

So, lets have a serious rant about the N word, okay? Okay.

So I grew up not using the word. My mom hates it and my dad generally just doesn’t really swear so I just never said it. I’m 21 years old and I still feel weird saying it. It isn’t apart of my everyday slang and you’ll usually only hear me say it when a song comes on and even then it feels odd on my lips. My mom was very persistent about us knowing the origin of the word. And I might be completely biased here but if you knew the history of it then I honestly doubt anyone would say it. It has so much hate behind it.

That being said, I understand the people that want to ‘take it back’. At least, I understand their thinking behind it. Like taking a negative and making it positive. Making it something that is apart of our culture rather than something against it. I get it, I get the thinking behind it. I don’t agree but I get it.

And I wish it was that simple. That it was as simple as someone being like, “hey, I’m black and we’re taking back the N word. Okay, cool.” But it isn’t. There are so many things that are fucked up about the word that it’s impossible to just ‘take back’.

Example One: What about the black people that don’t want the damn word back? Unless every single person who identifies as black or African/American or what have you agrees then this will forever be a problem.

Example Two: By us using the word, we’re trying to take the sting out, yes? Trying to make it this positive thing. Well, when you take the power away it gives other people outside of the culture license to use it too. I mean, not really but it gives off that appeal. Like, if they’re saying it then it should be cool, right? Wrong. We have all kinds of different races walking around here throwing the N word around like they really know what its like to be called a Nigger. And then black people have the nerve to get mad. But why are they mad? I mean…they’re the ones trying to make it positive, right? Just another word for homie or friend, right?

And then we sit in class and watch these Asian/American movies and anytime there is a thug like Asian character they throw the N word around like its no big deal. And honestly, that pisses me off more than anything. And I know it isn’t exactly yellow face but shit, its taking a part of a culture that isn’t yours like it has no weight behind it.

I don’t know, maybe the word is beyond race and its a thug, gangsta culture thing. Maybe i’m over reacting. I don’t know, it was just a rant.

P.S. may I also add that I don’t see any other culture using a word that was meant to oppress them and trying to ‘turn it around’.

The Debut (T.W. Language/Weapons/Weight)

There were three points in this movie that made the wires in my brain go haywire.

When Ben was at the party with his friends from school, the female character makes a joke about him eating dog, and then eating a cat and then she calls him a ‘fucking chink’. His friend tells him to blow it off, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. Ben responds with “yes, she did.” This moment took me back to a time when I was in high school. I was about 17 years old at the time and I had just started dating an american boy. The first time I went to his house, he showed me a home made sword that his friend had made for him, when he introduced me to the sword, he said his friend named it “The Gook Killer”. I remember being shocked by that name and asked him to never say that word to me again. A little later into the relationship, I was hanging out with that best friend of his who made him the sword and a few other of his friends. We were all playing Mario Kart and I was winning, everyone started calling me a chink, or a gook. I said to them “get it right, I’m not Chinese” and as I was about to cross the winning line, his friends turned off the game out of frustration, turned to me and said “alright, how about this for taste, we bombed the shit out of your family and your country, we killed them and fucked them up!” I broke down, ran into my boyfriends room, and I remember my boyfriend coming after to me, trying to calm me down and basically saying “he doesn’t know what he’s saying, you know he says things like that all the time and doesn’t mean it.” My response was “yes, he did.” I don’t think I will ever, ever forget this.

It was at this point that I was able to see Ben’s awakening, that moment where “that’s right… I’m not white” because I had that same awakening when my exes friends said those words to me. No matter how fluent you are in English, no matter how much you feel like you have assimilated to American culture, people only see you from the outside in, and that shell that we are wearing is essentially a billboard in lights that says “I am not 100% white”.

Similar to the home made sword that my ex had.

Another part of the movie that I saw in myself and in my home life was the relationship between Ben, his father, and his grandfather. At the beginning of the movie, Ben’s father says he’s spoiled and that he gallivants around. Then later in the film, Ben’s grandfather is yelling at his father and basically said the same thing; that he gallivants around. It’s this strange circle that I have noticed is also very prominent in my family. My mom would get mad at me for my behavior and the amount of weight that I had gained, and when I overheard conversations of my mom and grandmother (or my moms older brothers) fighting, my grandmother or uncles would vent their frustrations to her about my moms behavior and then harass her about the weight that she had gained. It makes me wonder if this will ever end.

bottom: My aunt Masako, my cousin Chihiro top: My mom, me, my cousin Hitomi and my uncle Satoshi 2008

The last point I saw was that Gusto referred to Ben as a coconut, white on the inside but brown on the outside and this made me think of last quarter when we learned about Bamboo, Bananas and Bees. More specifically with the term ‘banana’ (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). The internal struggle that young Asian Americans go through with feeling stuck between two different worlds. I could really see in Ben’s character that he felt like he was at a fork in the road of which culture he should put himself in and analyzing the pro’s and con’s of each side.

Pilipino experience, race relations, dance off

I have never seen a film about Pilipino people or culture. This movie made me emotional simply because of the inherent importance of visibility and …

Hello Yellow Power Ranger

You go, girl. (Click the pic for the full cartoon; NSFW)

The Debut

“Wake up little brother, cuz you know you’re just as brown as the rest of us.”

I think this was the theme to the whole movie. In the beginning, Ben seemed embarrassed to be Filipino. He didn’t want his friends to go inside of his house, and see all of his Filipino decorated rooms, and his Filipino family. His mom was very welcoming the whole time and always wanted to feed his friends. He also didn’t seem like he knew many Filipino traditions, like the rest of his family did. At the party, he didn’t know he was supposed to bless his grandpa when he walked in. He also looked very surprised when he saw his sister’s dance, like he has never seen a dance like that before, and he didn’t know how to speak Tagalog like many of them did.

Towards the end of the movie, Ben finally starts to accept his culture. He realized that all of the things his family was doing were cool. He looked very proud of his sister when she did her performance, and he was amazed at his fathers performance. I think that he saw a side of his father that he never knew about before. When he heard his family talking about how his father gave up his band when his kids were born and moved them to America, I think he realized that his dad did everything he could to give them a good life! I think it also really showed how he was accepting of his family when he decided to show his dad his art portfolio, and tell him that he decided not to go to UCLA.

January 23, 2014 Notes

-Week 9 is “Anime Week Wong”-No presentations planned for this class
-Tom Ikeda will be visiting Evergreen campus on February 27, 2014
-Racialicious blogs
-ANA commercial, HIMYM, Katy Perry’s geisha outfit, and racial slurs in response to Richard Sherman
+Coded language used against Sherman
-Category “What’s the big deal?” on race issues
-Culture: “the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” (Webster)
+Nerd, stoner, counter, car, Evergreen, athlete, historians, gendered, 60s, 90s, artifacts
+Culture does not have to be defined by people, but also by place, time, and objects
+Transmission of continuity, differed by “dead cultures”
-Definitions of culture
+Definitions are, by John Storey,”culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, “culture which is left over after we decided what is high culture”, “mass culture”, “culture which originates from ‘the people’”, “culture rooted in exchange and negotiation between [dominant and subordinate groups]“, “[in a postmodern terrain], culture which no longer recognizes distinctions”
+For “the people” has to be defined, possibly the majority, or working class
+Culture is a battleground
+Postmodernism is a set of ideas usually found in the arts that define things are relevant (?)
-Post-Structuralism: “If you can’t make it, fake it and over explain it”
+”I wish it was like the good ol’ days,” PS “Which good ol’ days? The days people lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation?”
-Popular Culture: (Storey’s story)
-Antonio Gramsci (hegemony, Greek for “power of leadership)
+Hegemony are people in power who use manipulate the mechanisms to stay in power
-Stereotype: (Stereos = hard, fixed; typos = blow, impression)
-The term “Oriental” in Latin means “in the East”
-Eurocentrism: “Far East”; “wilderness” (American context)
-Eric Lott, most provocative minstrel writer
+Proposed white Americans hated black culture, but liked black culture; complex phenomenon

I want every single cat!!

Theres so many cats in the world, big cats, small cats, fat cats, tall cats sorry to go a little Dr. Seus on your but its true!! I have a bit of an obsessions with cats, I mean who couldn’t love them. I know theres cat haters out there, but think again, their kinda taking over the world ( I sour crazy I know, that just how bad the obsession is) Theres cats in all different parts of the world and almost all parts. Throughout the course i’m just going to obsess on cats to say the least….so prepare yourselves people and I apologize now.