Pre-Start

I’ve had a hard time deciding what I wanted to academically obsess over for the up coming weeks and have decided that I need to play Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Z.O.T). This is a game that I have easily played over 20 complete times and probably even more partial times. It is a game that I shut out the rest of the world and play from beginning to end in one go because I love it so much. Everything from the music to why I started playing it to the story line I love. And it’s because of that intense love that I chose to look at racial and gender implications in the game. To elaborate on that, since I’ve started to learn about mis-portrayals of everything from relationships and characterizing of race and gender/sex roles in popular culture I look at the wrong in things without seeing the beauty and when it’s something I already like I acknowledge it to myself but never talk about it with others, which is something I don’t think is right on my part. So because I already have a deep since of beauty for the game I’ve decided to look at some of the issues and talk about them through this public blog (which is really freaky to me).

So, how do I plan to do this? Well I thought I might start off with finding and reading some articles and what not on race and genders in video games along with some on overall impacts that video games can have on people and I will find out about popularity, sub-culture. Since I have played the game so much after each of my reading that I find useful I will vaguely make connections between the text and the game. Once I felt I have an abundance of knowledge I will partake on my final quest of playing the game and paying close attention to the dialogue and portrayals of characters and document my findings while keeping my love for the game.

 

In The News

Paull Shin 

paull-shinPaull Shin was an orphan  and homeless  in south Korea. He was adopted by an American solider. Paull Shin earned his PhD at University of Washington. After Shin graduated from University of Washington he became  a teacher at Shoreline Community College. He was elected into the legislature in 1992. He  than ran for congress in 1994. Shin is retiring  from government because of the awful disease, Alzheimer’s. He has been a huge part of Washington states education system mainly apart of developmentally disabled children. Paull Shin seems like a remarkable man. As I read articles about his retirement I can’t help to read about all the great praises that people have given him. He has helped people coming to America find a home. I’m glad that I got to read about Paull for not having an assignment on him would have been a missed learning experience to see who we once had in office in Washington State. Its nice to hear about people that have had hard times but being able to have a voice and speak on issues that they believe is important.

1986 Challenger Explosion 

OnJanuary 28th, 1986 a space ship the Challenger took flight but beyonce-4-album-cover-thumb-640xauto-3607exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. The space shuttle left seven deaths including the first Asian American to reach space, his name was Ellison Onizuka. He was born in 1946 and had two children. Apart of Pop culture I believe that our assignment is not only to realize what happened to this spaceship but to know what is happening in the news of Pop culture right now. Beyonce, one of the most popular dancers, and singers of this generation has made news with the title of one of her song XO which is featured on her newest album. This song has made the news by the unfortunate event of the 1986 Challenger Explosion.  In this song she puts a clip of the disaster in her video. In the first seconds of the song you can hear a clip of someone saying “Obviously a major malfunction.”  Nasa employees are asking Beyonce to take down the clip and make apologies to those families. She told ABC that she didn’t mean to hurt anyone but to help heal those families that lost someone. I don’t really know about this situation but my first thoughts of her healing the families is why would she release a music video 20+ years thinking that it would heal when families at this point probably just want to put that day behind them. I don’ think Beyonce wanted to hurt anyone when she did released this video/song but I also don’t think that a healing process for the families was a huge thought either.

WWII Stragglers

The last of Japanese soldier died on Thursday. He was 91. Hiroo Onoda was hiding in a jungle in the Philippines. Some would say that Hiroo wasted 30 years of his life fighting a war that was already over but he didn’t. He was taught that he was to remain absolutely loyal to his country and to fight against America.

How I Met Your Mother

SlapsgivingWell I guess its about time that they end there run on Television after eight short seasons. How I Met Your Mother was a funny t.v series that I guess just became serious. Although I never really got into this show I was always rooting for Barney and Robbin but as I read I can’t help to notice that the attention isn’t focused on Barney or Robbin but the fact the viewers saw some racist acts portraying Asians. I can’t understand why the show didn’t hire Asian actors to play parts that were needed to fill the “funny” acts. Hollywood once again made it seem as if Asians only eat noodles,  and do kung-fu. I agree that Hollywood has failed to hire many minority actors to play parts on television. Its sad to see that though all the highs of overcoming race we still haven’t overcome racism. Oliva Pope played by Kerry Washington on Scandal is only the second African American to be played in a major television series on basic cable. We continue to see very little actors that are minorities have larger parts in television. I believe that people are now making a point that stereotypical jokes on television starts to get played out. We have seen the same story line over and over again but now people are ready to voice their opinion. Sorry but not sorry for How I Met Your Mother writers and producers but it happened to be the night that your show aired. I am happy that people are starting to voice their opinions and that Twitter can actually be useful by showing Hollywood that the viewers aren’t happy. 

Chapter 13 Reading

Chapter 13
“One-Tenth of the Nation”

As time moves forward, the amount of Asian Americans continue to increase. The chapter mentions that if things continue the way it is, then 10% of the United States’ population will be Asian American by 2050. Other things talked about in the chapter include the misunderstandings between African Americans and Korean Americans after the 1992 Los Angeles riot. It came down to the Korean Americans not being very social with those outside of their family or friends and difficulty with the English language, while African Americans were poor and on the lower-class of America’s society. These differences caused tensions between Korean Americans and African Americans for quite some time. There was also the removal of affirmative action by Proposition 209, which hampered society’s journey to a society that did not just view things in black and white. Aside from that, the chapter went on to explain how Asian Americans are now mixing with other Asian Americans. For example, Hoyt Zia and Leigh-Ann Miyasato represent interethnic marriage, a Chinese American and a Japanese American respectively who married. Asian Americans have also begun marrying those outside the Asian ethnicities, resulting in a continuously growing amount of mixed-race children in the United States. Not only are the people mixing races, but traditions and music as well, creating something totally new in the process. The chapter reminds us that Asian Americans shouldn’t be treated as strangers, but instead as “Americans ‘from a different shore.’”

Do It Right or Not At All Part 1

By definition (according to wikipedia):

Cosplay (コスプレ kosupure?), short for “costume play”, is a performance art in which participants wear costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture centered on role play. A broader use of the term cosplay applies to any costumed role play in venues apart from the stage, regardless of the cultural context.

Definition of Cosplay according to Hot Topic:

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Now this, along with the various elitist assumptions that have spawned from the series Heroes of Cosplay, has created a huge mass of chaos among the cosplay community. Many cosplayers have started to forget the reasons why people cosplay and began to heavily focus on factors that should not matter. Such as skin tone and body type. Claiming that people should not cosplay characters that do not fit their body type or skin tone, that it is just wrong. Making this seem like one of the unwritten “rules” of cosplay. And for awhile, this was made so apparent in my cosplay life that I was afraid to cosplay any character that was not considered “dark-skinned”.

This was difficult for me. Mostly because there weren’t many characters that were dark in skin tone in any anime, manga or video games. And the ones that were, I wouldn’t want to cosplay because they wore really revealing outfits or because they had very over exaggerated racial features that just irritated me. I got so fed up with people, who I didn’t know at all, telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.

Cosplay was my escape, my chance to be someone else. For all of my worries to fade into the background and not matter for a weekend. I was bullied enough while I was myself, I didn’t want to be bullied while I was cosplaying as well.

So I said, “Screw it! I’m going to cosplay whoever or whatever the hell I want!”

This took time of course, and at first I had to deal with people mumbling things they really shouldn’t. And not really welcoming me into the community. This was very discouraging…

 

(more will come later)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

 

HIMYM: POC being mis/underrepresented in mass media

Link to episode –>  http://www.cbs.com/shows/how_i_met_your_mother/playlist

The reactions to this very, to put it simply, messed up episode were very angry and blunt. And honestly, the members of the audience who were offended by the statements that were made during the episode had every right to be angry. The number of people enraged by the episode’s crude stereotypes and racial tributes, forced the creators to publicly apologize.

 

Sources:

http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/17/dear-how-i-met-your-mother-asian-is-not-a-costume/

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/15/showbiz/how-i-met-your-mother-controversy/

http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/how-i-met-your-mother-creators-apologize-for-racist-asian-episode-2014161

 

(Will write more on this at a later time/date)

Hanboks

A hanbok, a traditional Korean dress. It is composed of a long skirt called a chima, and a short jacket called a jeogori. The sleeves are curved, and traditionally used to hide a coin purse or other small items.

The dress was designed to highlight a woman’s hips, as larger hipped women were more desired for childbearing. The skirts are designed to be very full. In the Chosun dynasty when there were shortages of fabrics, due to wars and tributes, the jackets would become shorter and shorter. Today, longer jackets are still used, but the shorter jackets are more prominently distributed.

Traditionally made from silks, modern hanboks utilize fabrics like chiffon.

Womens-Hanbok

Chapter 12 Reading

Chapter 12
“Breaking Silences”

In this chapter, the Asian American as the “model minority” is explored. It became a stereotype among Asian American students that it later affected their acceptance rates to colleges and universities through “reverse racism”. It also generated more racism, such as colleges having non-official names like U.C.L.A. being called “University of Caucasians living under Asians”. Asian American students who graduated and entered the work field faced the concept of the “glass ceiling”, which prevented Asian Americans from moving up further in their career fields and put a limit on how far they can climb up the work ladder. Despite this, the success Asian Americans were enjoying turned sour when it made them targets to harassment, beatings, and even murders. These anti-Asian sentiments and misunderstandings resulted to the infamous case of Vincent Chin, which is the second time I’ve heard about this, the first being in Japanese American History in the Pacific Northwest. The impact of Chin’s murder got plenty of the Asian American communities to stop being passive about the misdeeds against them and to voice their opinions on the matter.  This also caused many of the younger generations of Asian Americans to pursue knowledge of  their origins to better understand why they’re being treated differently.

1986 Challenger Disaster

A true tragedy but valuable lesson for NASA.

The Challenger was the second shuttle to make it to space and had completed nine successful missions. However, because of two rubber O-rings failing; the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift-off. The explosion claimed the lives of seven astronauts including Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American to go into space.

 

Sources:

http://www.history.com/topics/challenger-disaster

http://www.space.com/18084-space-shuttle-challenger.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellison_Onizuka

 

(More will be added to this post at a later date/time)

Asian American Relevance 1/19

1986 Challenger Explosion- Ellison Onizuka was the first Asian American to reach space.  However there was little time to celebrate but rather tears of sadness as he was one of seven to perish during the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Paull Shin- He was a Korean American and was a state senator. Notable achievements including fighting to end the use of the derogatory term “Oriental” in state code among others. In 1992, he was the first Korean American elected to the Washington state Legislature.

World War II Stragglers-  Soldiers serving in the Imperial Japanese Army who refused to surrender on account of upholding bushido or potentially not believing the war was over. After the war was really over they refused to surrender and continued their holdout for another 30 years in some cases.

How I Met Your Mother- During the Season 9 episode called Slapsgiving 3: Slappapointment in Slapmarra, there was a host of white actors portraying a variety of Asian stereotypes. This sparked an outcry from social media calling the episode How I Met Your Racism.

The Challenger Accident,Ellison Onizuka

I remember the Challenger accident very well as I was a 16 year old high school student on the day of the accident.

The day was like in other in school except we had the telly turned in all over the school not because of Mr. Onizuka,but, because of Christa McAuliffe who was going to be the first school teacher in space. It was a big event to have a teacher go into space and teach her classes while on the mission.  We were excited to have such chance to see science in action! It was heady stuff. So, on the cold day in January we huddled around the tv’s that had been set up to watch the launch. The countdown begun,liftoff and then the unthinkable happened approx 73 seconds later the space shuttle with her crew exploded on live national TV. It became our generations “Where were you when JFK was shot?” except in this case the question was different. Because of Mrs. McAuliffe we knew next to nothing about about the crew members who had perished. Most of us wouldn’t know the other names until sometime later either.

Who was Ellison Onizuka?

Outside of the having the misfortune to be on the Challenger he was the very first Asian-American in space and overshadowed by another in the crew. He was from Hawaii from an average family.But, he did get a degree in aerospace engineering and later a Master’s degree in the same subject. He would go one to become a Lt Colonel in the Air Force and serve in other missions before Challenger. He had a wife and children. He had dreams to see the stars.He was mostly likely still alive after the explosion because the survival packs had been deployed along with two others,we will never know what his last moments on this earth were like and we can only hope that it was painless for him.

His legacy as being the first Asian-American in space  was followed by 11 ,including the first Iranian-American woman in 2006, others as most recently as 2009.However, in his home state of Hawaii he lives on,yearly with Astronaut Ellison Onizuka Science Day promoted the University of Hawaii-Hilo for budding little astronauts,teachers and parents to foster the love of science and space.

He paved the way for others to live his ill-fated dream that a Asian-American can go to space,can be successful and have  a lasting legacy for others to follow him.

It is always tough to be first and even tougher for those that have followed to live up to the legacy of a man that gave his life so tragically doing the thing he loved the most.