differentiate between the five traditional styles of Shaolin Kung Fu -

• tiger
• leopard
• crane
• snake
• dragon

Chapter 1:

Goa trance is inspired by ignorant appropriation of Indian culture by hippie-tourists.

Chapter 2: The arrival and immigration of the Vietnamese to the US after the influence by exile and anticommunism has initiated the production of Viet Kieu, which has now formed and evolved in multiple ways. With the enthusiastic individuals of Vietnam and the advances in all different forms of technology the Vietnamese have formed a “special blend of nostalgia that appeals not only to the members of the diasporic communities but also to the residents of Vietnam, ultimately evolving Viet Kieu over time.

Chapter5 : Due to colonization, Languages have affected one anthers meaning and created new words and meanings for exsiting words. It has lead to a sense of privledge in some cases due to education and has influenced popular music by being able to have double meanings and be interchangeable in language.

Kato:

Hollywood has a desire for  the kine-aesthetic and performative narrative in the forms of Samurai and Kung Fu films, which is the art born of reclaimation of culture from post-colonialism.

FUSION CUISINE!! 

More thoughts on different chapters from Dave. “If fusion is heralded as the democratic melding of cuisines, it is largely because it is a type of culinary multiculturalism that seems to challenge the rigidity of national boundaries and fixity.” In Ashland, MA there is a restaurant based around the idea of fusion cuisine. On the website this is the entry of the restaurant and its basis for meals. “Welcome to Fusion Cuisine located in Ashland, MA. This stylish and modern restaurant blends a variety of different Asian cuisines into an extensive and delectable menu featuring Chinese, Thai, and Japanese tastes. Red, plush suede booths, private tatami rooms, an eye-catching marble top bar and an array of plasma televisions are just a few glimpses into this contemporary and relaxing dining experience. Large groups and private parties are easily accommodated in our spacious rooms by our knowledgeable and friendly staff. Come explore a feast for your senses as we prepare unforgettable Asian inspired tastes and drinks in a setting meant to inspire a most memorable experience.”( http://www.fusion-cuisine.com/d ) I’d absolutely love to visit a restaurant like this, they attack all your senses and let you experience the ‘asian’ culture and I believe that it would be fun to go somewhere like this, but I also feel that its not a true experience as its all combined together when all the cultures have different traditions. I’m sure the food has also been somewhat ‘americanized’ but thats sort of the idea of food fusion cuisine, right? “Fusion cuisine, defines it as “a harmonious combination of foods of various origins.” “The burgeoning popularity of fusion cuisine in  urban metropolises can be understood as part of the trend toward high income gentrification within certain sectors of the urban landscape in global cities such as New York, London and Tokyo.” Basically my thoughts on this chapter and the idea of Fusion makes me want to learn more and experience it, but it also confuses me as I don’t understand if they want people to get the ‘asian experience’ as its referred to on the restaurant description but I sort of hate the idea of it being called that as all cultures had traditional ways they go about things, cook things etc and truly experiencing those would be completely different, but than again thats the idea of this, not sure why I can’t wrap my head around the thought truly.

I’ve started looking up some texts that have to do with gender and race in video games and I’m gonna start reading them and writing my preconceptions of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Z.O.T.) in light of the texts. If people know of anything please pass it along!

First up this week is an article coming from Cracked.com, 5 Prejudices That Video Games Can’t Seem to Get Over by J.F.  Sargent.  The five categories talked about are: “Racism as a Gameplay Mechanic; Relationship Mini-Games Create Exclusively Unhealthy Relationships; Strong Female Characters (Are More Satisfying to Demean); There Are No Gay Men, Just Lesbians (And Those Chicks Can Be Converted); The Fundamentals of Game Design Make Racism Easier”. Except for the, “There Are No Gay Men, Just Lesbians (And Those Chicks Can Be Converted)” and somewhat the “Relationship Mini-Games Create Exclusively Unhealthy Relationships” part of this list, I feel that the prejudices are very relevant to Z.O.T.

“Racism as a Gameplay Mechanic”:

In this section Sargent talks about how depending on characters race/humanoid species they have certain characteristics that are solely because they come from that race. Sargent also points out that most of the races are based off of real races and use real stereotypes for portrayals. Sargent just so happened to mention the Gerudo race in Zelda as one of the examples. Sargent states that they are based off of Gypsies, and I would say have some Indian undertones as well and are referred to as a the “thieving Gerudo race.” It’s also pointed out that Ganondorf (for those of you unfamiliar to the game he is the protagonist), who is the only male of that race (I’ll get into the male part later), is a non-white character and is very power hungry. Looking further though the other races in the game from Gorons, and Zoras to Kokiri and Sheikan all of them have certain characteristics that end up affecting Link (who is the Hero).

“Relationship Mini-Games Create Exclusively Unhealthy Relationships”:

Sergent uses this space to talk about how female characters are used in romantic ways in video games for the hero’s gain, and how in some games these relationships are based off of what character you chose to play. However in Zelda it’s pretty simple, while there is only one obvious “romantic” relationship, all of Link’s interactions with females in up with him gaining something from them. Starting with his friend Saria, she gives him an ocarina, and ends up being one of the seven sages who’s power helps him bet Ganondorf. Till the last female character Link encounters, Nabooru, who sorta ends up forfeiting the Silver Gauntlets and also ends up being one of the seven Sages.

“Strong Female Characters (Are More Satisfying to Demean)”:

Gerudo Guard

Basically the more independent and stronger a female character is, the less clothes she is wearing or the more sexed up she is. While there are a lot of female characters in Z.O.T. the most independent one is Impa who is Princess Zelda’s bodyguard and then there is the clothing for the women of the Gerudo race. While Impa’s outfit is nothing compared to the Gerudo’s, compared to other females that war dresses, she is in a skin tight short body suit that accent her boobs.

Impa

As a race the Gerudo only have a male born every hundred years and besides that they are all women which makes them pretty independent from men and because they are thieves they need to guard their treasures. They wear low cut pants and basically bras.

“The Fundamentals of Game Design Make Racism Easier”:

This basically talks about how the bad people in video games are usually people of color and that you need to kill them in the game. It’s pretty obvious from the other implications with the Ganondorf, but in case you’ve missed it he’s non-white and evil and you need to kill him in the game to win.

A mix of my notes & thoughts

Manong/manag – referring to a brother or older male figure typically (Filipino)

‘contentless’ –problems of keeping it real for the black eyed peas

hegemony or hegemonic-fighting the attempted dominance, any language music etc. that defies a mainstream group without shame

black eyed peas are creating music without shame

heavily modified multiculturalism – a tactic that is born of diasporic  experiences and rooted in the aesthetic language of Filipino strategies of colonial resistance

bebot, the APL song, where is the love = black eyed peas

Where is the love ended up becoming an overplayed song somewhat and sort of losing its power over time compared to when it first came out.

“As I get older, people get colder” – black eyed peas, where is the love

APL song (black eyed peas)

-remembering and alternate storytelling

bilingualism – song is half Filipino and have English ( back an fourth throughout)

“resistance vernaculars” (tony Mitchell)

-sampling and the dialogics of hip hop (Mikhail bakhtin

“Balita”

loss- the war war 2. When the war was over Filipino fighters had their benefits taken away after them being promised for fighting with the americans against Japan in the war

Bebot a dollar a day a dime a dance reference

Stockton California labor work

No flipinos allowed signed at beginning of video

Generation 1 & 2

Adobo

Definitely not all Filipino girls (I think?)

Mama Filipina

Take me to the phillippines

(in the own separate album unfound??^^ last two)

Blue scholars

HI 808 ( Hawaii. Area code)

Morning of America

Notion of morning and mourning America and the loses occurring through the 1980s

People power and political movement in the Philippines

Caught em shipping arms to Iran for Nicaraguan Contras – weren’t supposed to have contact w Iran but we were selling them arms….big embarrassment for the government (usa)

Asian American in Detroit in the 1980s –idea of all the jobs being taken from american car companies.

-The school of the Americas – help train a lot of future dictators in latin America                   -Just say NO – started in a classroom with majority African American children and she (teacher) whispered it and was completely obvious to her surroundings

“…not much work has been done to carefully examine what it means for white American youth to consume these symbols of ‘otherness.’”

What are the consequences of thinking about, or representing, a culture in one set way? Goa trance is a teenage culture that uses Hindu gods and symbols in their dance clubs, a representation that Hindu and Buddhist people didn’t want to be associated with. Even some of the ‘kids’ at the rave were trying to pull away from their association as ravers and more towards the title ‘dance kids’, in an attempt to pull away from the negative connotations of raves and drug usage.

But while the culture of trance alienates those that it finds as inspiration, music itself has a way of bringing cultures together. “…I’ve always lived in the West, …but for me, the music is a worldwide thing and that’s why it’s so important to me because I feel that it’s a force that can connect us all, regardless of our origins, our gender, our physical characteristics” (pg. 22), “Music at this time had more meaning than just entertainment; it also served the important role of connecting refugees and exiles to the homeland they thought they had lost.” (pg. 35)

not done yet

Music videos
& East Main Street 1, 2, 5, & 15

One of the best things about the music that we listened to on Thursday was the rawness of some of it, but likewise, the diversity. Many of the songs were touching in a number of ways, but there were also a few songs that weren’t about anything too specific, even if that was because of a language barrier. It was really wonderful to see the way that some of the artists changed with their music overtime as they better perfected their sound. I think the biggest example of this was Cibo Matto, who went from singing songs about chicken (because they didn’t know very much English) to  instead singing about racism in the industry. Watching their evolution and the way their music could have an impact was really wonderful.

Similarly, if I’m understanding the sentence correctly there’s a line in Dave in which it says;

“Blood may run thicket than water, but the flow that counts is neither genetic nor racial, but narratological in constitution.” (Dave, pg96)

It seemed that this quote was a rather fitting match. If I’m interpreting the meaning correctly, it implies that you should not necessarily base family just by race or by blood, but rather by the culture that you have lived in and grown with after looking back on it. This is something that a great deal of people neglect to do, myself included, and which I think many of the artists that we were able to listen to on Thursday were able to accomplish with their music.

MANEKI NEKO!

Otherwise known as a lucky cat. Which paw should be in the air, or both? What color should i get?

“What does it mean when a beckoning cat has its right paw or its left paw raised? What do the different cat colors mean? What about the coin the Lucky Cat holds, or the bib?  The meanings can vary from region to region within Japan, and some meanings have changed over time, but here is a general summary:

Tri-color Cat: (modeled after the Japanese bob-tail breed, this is a popular & traditional color for lucky cats, beckoning general good luck, wealth, prosperity)
White Cat: purity, happiness
Black Cat: safety, wards off evil and stalkers
Golden Cat: wealth and prosperity
Red Cat: protection from evil & illness (especially illness in children)
Pink Cat (a more modern color): love, relationships and romance
Green Cat (also a modern color): educations/studies

Right Paw raised: invites money and good fortune (usually to businesses)
Left Paw raised: invites customers or people
(Some suggest the right & left paws both invite business-related prosperity, but that the left paw is for businesses of the night, such as bars, geisha houses & restaurants. Use of lucky cats in homes is more recent)
Both Paws raised: invites protection of home or business
Coin: wealth and material abundance
Bib and Bell: may relate to protection, as well as wealth and material abundance”

Lucky Cats don’t have much of a specific story as to how they began, but they did start showing up in the ‘Edo period” in Japan

On wikipedia I was able to find this information about the Edo Period

“The Edo period (江戸時代 Edo jidai^?), or Tokugawa period (徳川時代 Tokugawa jidai^?), is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country’s 300 regional Daimyo. The period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationistforeign policies, environmental protection policies,^[1][2][3][4] and popular enjoyment of arts and culture. The shogunate was officially established in Edo on March 24, 1603, by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration on May 3, 1868, after the fall of Edo.http://luckymanekineko.wordpress.com/”

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.

“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

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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