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I just listened to a pretty good NPR discussion on positive stereotypes.
Are Positive Stereotypes Racist, Too?
L’Heureux Lewis, assistant professor of sociology and black studies at the City College of New York, said, “…we have to recognize that [positive stereotypes] are gross generalizations. They may have a kernel of truth based on some social reality but ultimately they limit the choices and limit the opportunities and limit the things that people can do.”
In retrospect, I think this is…sort of…what the humor in Yo Teach! is trying to do with the teacher telling the Asian student that she will never be the president, and should instead aim for menial work. However, my problem is that the Asian kid is THAT “Asian kid.”
I think that the more common complaint about Asian American portrayal in the media these days is that the Asian characters are always either imported from Asia (and thus, Asian, not Asian American), or they are specifically ethnic Asian American characters. There are very few (though their numbers are growing*) simply “American” or “normal” characters that happen to be Asian American.
If you missed it earlier, check out this wonderful NPR piece:
Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes?
It features founders of Giant Robot magazine, Martin Wong and Eric Nakamura, as well as Gedde Watanabe himself, the actor behind Long Duk Dong.
And here’s Adrian Tomine’s take on it (also on the NPR page):
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*Here’s a short(hand) list of some characters that just so happen to be Asian American. Some aren’t the greatest actors, characters, or parts, but hey, “The Donger” set our standards pretty low, and anything is better.
John Cho and Kal Penn as Harold and Kumar in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
I remember that when this first came out, “grownups” from my Chinese church were recommending that we go see this. “Finally!” they said, “A movie featuring two Asian protagonists in a non-stereotypical way!” I don’t think they realized that the main reason they aren’t stereotypical is because well…they’re in a stoner flick.
In any case, Cho is widely recognized a big groundbreaker for Asian men in the media, especially beginning with his work in Better Luck Tomorrow.
Not my favorite film, but certainly noteworthy as an Asian-Am film.
On to more recent stuff, Daniel Henney plays a pretty swell Agent Zero in the latest X-Men: Origins film.
Zero is a pretty slick character with some nice gun-handling skills, though he’s a bit of a d-bag and is pretty much William Stryker’s lackey. At least he makes it look good!
Aaron Yoo: I want him to be my best friend.
Yoo plays a really great best friend to Shia LaBeouf’s character in Disturbia.
Of course, he’s usually stuck as a supporting actor. Kind of like James Franco. He’s always stuck being the backup man: Pineapple Express, Milk, Spider-Man. Some actors never really catch a break.
As for actresses….this one’s a tough one. In my opinion, Asian American women have it the hardest getting into non-specifically-Asian roles in movies.
Well…here’s a shoddy list:
Maggie Q sort of gets the short end of the straw in Die Hard 4, and is pretty much the serious lady on the wrong side who gets owned by her prickish evil lover. And then by Bruce Willis. But who wouldn’t get owned by Bruce Willis?
At least she has a good sense of humor about it:
She was also in MI:3 and a bunch of Hong Kong films, where she got her start.
Hmmm..a bit like Henney, who also started in Korean films/dramas.
So…I guess for some of these newer stars, they’re following the ol’ Imported from Asia path, though in Asia, they’re imported from America.
Ah, Asia-America.
Dear E3,
It’s been my lifetime dream (ok, since 7th grade when I first learned about the awesomeness that E3 is) to attend E3.
I was 12 years old, and back in 2000, E3 used to be a really overblown event, inundated with booth babes, fanboy bloggers, and what someone ultimately decided was unprofessionalism.
I wholeheartedly agree with that decision. By 2007, however, the entire event restructured, and became invite-only. Mostly to weed out bloggers and welcome “real” journalists (yay newspapers!).
The video game industry needed to change its public face in order to match the new market it was pursuing. Video games are no longer just for children (and many games simply aren’t for children). The gaming generation is aging, and the industry must age with it. Plus, with the millions of dollars poured into game development and marketing, the video game industry needed to distance itself from Anime Expo and Comic Con (sorry) in order to be recognized and even more aligned with say, the film industry.
But still, E3 is filled with so much promise, so much excitement, forward thinking! So many things that I also care for, deeply admire, and would love to be a part of!
However, E3’s decision to privatize the convention meant that despite the fact that I was working as a college journalist, reporting to the largest target demographic that the industry would be interested in, I wouldn’t be invited. I’m in the trade, for a print paper, I’m not a fanboy (I’m not even a boy) or a blogger (except for here). I dutifully attended the sparse, almost dull first year of E for All, the consumer “replacement” for E3. It really didn’t cut it. I even more dutifully attended a second year at E for All, which proved to be even slower. I was deeply disappointed. I strove to bring back video game reviews and coverage at the Daily Bruin, both to serve my gamer-heavy readership and peers, as well as to better link the industry better with its consumers. I even dared to suggest more video game coverage at my internship, and got to write a silly little blurb on competitive “professional” video gaming.
All that I’ve done was not simply to build a resume for myself. It was largely to one day get to see you.
But this year, I got cancer, had to move home (with my parents) for medical care, and lost three jobs at college, one of which was my job at the Daily Bruin. The job that would qualify me for this year’s E3, which is now open for applying members of the media.
I’m sorry…the one year you’re available to me, and I can’t be there for you.
And now that I’m graduated, it’ll probably be a very long time before I find a job, let alone one that will qualify me as a member of media reporting on the industry (that’s my dream job, still).
But…I have cancer, so who knows if that can ever happen. I hate to pull the cancer card, but you (hopefully) and I both know that this is a card that no one wants to have.
I thought we were destined to meet, E3. But each time…my plans to attend you were foiled.
This year is the most frustrating of all, ESPECIALLY since, I assume, you are going to be revealing the next Hideo Kojima project.
Alas, perhaps we were never meant to be.
But I still ask you, from the depths of my heart to yours, if you will grant me access next year, whether I’m reporting or not. Just to be there, with you.
Nevertheless, I hope you have a good time this year. I’ll be keeping up with you.
With Love,
Jessica
Just saw the latest movie.
Films are very telling of our times.
In the past, Indiana Jones flicks were all about relics, religion, legends, and lots and lots of ancient rich cultural (possible) history, plenty of dusting off artifacts, and looking things up in books.
And now what culture (and Jones) has boiled down to is one thing:
Knowledge.
Knowledge is our new God.
Knowledge is our new Gold.
I just finished watching Death Note today.
It really reminded me of the Flaming Lips’ song, Yeah Yeah Yeah:
“If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it?…So we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do”
I hadn’t made this connection earlier, but the “person” (more or less a group of people operating under a pseudonym) who posted the Edison Chen scandal photographs called themselves “Kira”.
This is most likely in reference to a popular cult anime called Death Note (what I finished watching–ah life imitates art!); the main character is dubbed Kira (romanji/engrish for Killer) by the news media in Japan. Kira, a very smart, successful, but bored high-school student, Yagami Light, discovers a celestial notebook from a Shinigami, Death God. The notebook has the power to kill when a person’s name is written in it, either by the hand of a shinigami, or by the human who possesses the notebook. Light realizes this ability to kill strategically can be used to reform the world (which he will rule over as God), and he sets out to cleanse the world of evil people. He begins by killing criminals whose names appear in the nightly news, newspapers, and on the internet.
I imagine that in some odd way, the Kira in real life felt it was justified to post the scandal photographs and to reveal the hypocrisy in Hong Kong media.
But this is where things get tremendously fascinating. Ah, the parallels!
What is most fascinating to me is the prominence of the media in both the fictional anime and the real life situation. The media, in Death Note, is both a tool that Kira uses to find victims, and eventually becomes a tool that Kira uses to announce his intentions to the fearful public (that proves to have a malleable, manipulatable opinion of Kira).
In the Edison Chen situation, Kira and the media fed off of each other. The media simply ate up everything Kira posted, and for an estimated 28 days, Edison Chen ran on the cover of at least 3 periodicals or newspapers each day. Newspapers, which have suffered from the same trend plaguing print news internationally, suddenly began making profits again (but unfortunately fell into the trap of tabloid exploitation).
In the words of Tupac Shakur (again, ladies and gentlemen), “The media’s full of dirty tricks”. I find it terribly intriguing that Death Note was able to predict a very realistic behavior of the media and news industry–the media will jump on the gory personal details if they will sell. I’m referring mostly to the media in Asia, but of course we see this in all the Britney Spears coverage in the U.S. too.
(Not to rag on the media industry; I hope one day, however far or near, I can work for print. I just pray to God that I won’t fall into the tabloid trap.)
“Netizens” also played a special role as well. Netizens would plead Kira to post more photos, Kira would make deals, announce that he would post more on certain days at certain times. He enjoyed the control, knowing that thousands would be waiting at their computers, searching forums to find the photos.
After a certain point, it wasn’t vigilante justice to show these photos. Kira became a sick sycophant, obsessed with the power to ruin lives and end careers. And people loved him.
Well, all of that is over now. In other news, Edison Chen has made the big conversion to Christianity. I hope that he’s genuine; it’s so hard to be genuine even when you aren’t rich and famous.
Read here.
Few do.
This guy does not:
So I’m guessing “all those Asians” he talks about comprise maybe…..5-10% of the Colorado University’s 13% “students of color”? (http://www.colorado.edu/pba/qfacts/demog.html)
Karson makes a sore attempt at being clever/witty/original/cava
lier by mocking a stereotype after feeling victimized by reversed racism. It could have worked, but it definitely does not. This guy sounds like a complete muscle head, and of course, while he’s working his well-toned abs, the scrawny Asians with small eyes and thick glasses are playing–no duh–racquetball. And probably ping-pong at the other end of the gym.
Something like this would be much more clever, if the race card must be pulled: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
There is a way to be cleanly cavalier about racelessness and race, yet still remain throughly humorous. Funny enough so that regardless of ethnicity or the ethnicity of the author, we can all sit back and chortle a bit at our stereotypical, often cultural/ethnic antics. There is no need for war, which is in itself an extremely overloaded term.
Nor do we have to be serious about racial tensions all the time. It is a dangerous field to play on, and most, like Karson, fail to mock the stereotype in a useful way, and instead perpetuates it. “When I blow my whistle, we will scatter in every direction and catch as many Asians as possible. Make sure to pay special attention to the Rec Center, the UMC, the math and engineering buildings and Lollicup. If you’re not sure if someone is an Asian, give them a calculus problem to do in their head. If they get it right, net ‘em.” Yeah, I might be in the Rec Center–I’ll be one of the few girls in the weight room, so what. But trust me, you will not find me anywhere near the math and engineering buildings, and likely not in Lollicup either, I’m not a big fan of boba. Though I am pleasantly surprised that there is one in Colorado. It must be for that >13% of “colored” students.
I recently wrote an article for the Daily Bruin Arts and Entertainment section about students who make successful videos on YouTube. (http://www.dailybruin.com/news/2008/jan/24/youtube-makes-hot-venue-amateur-artists/)
A week later, I got a message via our website from a reader who chose to remain anonymous (and therefore I could not contact him/her back). Essentially, they complained about the fact that I had only represented Asians in my story (we hadn’t), and accused me and my co-writer of being biased because we are both Asian. (We happen to be possibly the only two Asian writers in our beat, and two of the (guesstimation)four writing for a 25+ person Arts and Entertainment section) They concluded their rather curt email by saying “All the rice sticks together”. Needless to say, I was outrageously offended. It was like saying that if I wrote about women, I am potentially biased because I am a woman. While I could understand that the reader might have liked to see Hispanic or African-American talent represented, the fact of the matter was that the videos that happened to have the most web traffic happened to be created by Asians or a group containing more than a few Asians. I wasn’t actually out on the lookout for Asians to cover, otherwise I might have changed the angle to be solely about Asians–which would have made for a rather flat article. And I had no intention or thought of writing such a piece. But in three short, bitter sentences, I had been the one labeled racist, biased, and a bad journalist. Just because I’m Asian. Which is funny, because even though I attend UCLA, and am constantly surrounded by Asians, I choose to work for the Daily Bruin as a photographer and writer, where suddenly things are a lot more diverse, and I almost had forgotten that I’m Chinese-American. (Oh I’m sorry, maybe my eyes were too small to notice, and I forgot to wear my heavy prescription, black-rimmed glasses Made in China) Most of the time, race really doesn’t matter to me–until of course I’m labeled racist by a racist.
Asian Reporter, signing out for the night.
http://www.angryasianman.com/2008/04/farewell-azn.html
It really seems like more people are angry about this station shutting down than people who actually watched AZN on a regular basis.
Why is this?
AZN, quite frankly, sucked. Perhaps it was doomed for failure from its conception. The programming was terrible, presentation bad, and for some reason, I recall that it looked really static-y.
I think it’s the name itself, AZN, that threw a bunch of us off. I mean, didn’t we invent that word in what, middle school? That’s right, a network named after a middle school slang. It’s like trying to call Comedy Central LOL, or Spike WTF. AZN is what the little wannabe gangsters with their left pantleg rolled up with a rubber band from the newspaper called themselves.
Okay, I called myself that as well, though sans rubber band. I was too poor to be cool like that. But I have to admit, my first sn (and current one, aside from my business AIM is “cheapaznz”).
So it comes down to this: despite the fact that none of us ever respected AZN due to its close association with our own silly dreams of middle school grandeur (the ever-elusive thug life), we still liked the fact that it existed. Perhaps it gave us a dose of nostalgia and hope that we like but didn’t really care much about. It’s kind of like watching reruns of Digimon before season 2 rolled around and ruined it all. We know it was horrible and doomed for an end, but while it existed and was okay, we put up with it. (Hannah Montana, anyone?)
But we’re still sad because despite AZN’s lack of quality and interesting programming, at least it was something. Versus now, nothing. Except Imaginasian (ok, one!). And we all know how thinly Asians are spread throughout the media.
Asian Reporter.
Hot exotic female.
Kung fu fighter.
Occasional awesome dancer.
…and thats a wrap.
This is probably why AZN existed, and why it fell. It bought into those genres, and limited itself to them. Nothing else. But Asians want variety. And Asian networks need to market to more than just those Asians who want variety. Asian networks need to market to non-Asians and Asians alike. Why are so many people interested in BET? Well, aside from half of the Asian Americans watching BET to get real, more than just black people watch it.
No one watched AZN, not even the Azns. What a horrible failure.
I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Asian American Media.
Now make some changes.
