Thought Asian chicks couldn't rock out?

Experimental pop musician Jihae (a 1.5 generation Korean-American currently living and working in Manhattan) released her debut album My Heart is an Elephant in December 2007.  Though she may be relatively new to the scene, Jihae's work has garnered so much attention among the New York art crowd that the album features cameos by both filmmaker (and drummer) Michel Gondry and Lenny Kravitz.  It was also produced by Patrick McCarthy, best known for his production work with REM.

Jihae's vocals are delicate and breathy but never overly sentimental (think a depressed version of Feist), and usually set up against a backdrop of low-res electronic washes, creating a sort of disillusioned, urban beauty.  Every moment of the album seems devoted to artistry and experimentalism, and her website displays a fascination with the relationship between audio and video. Though her lyrics contain very few references to her ethnicity, the music creates a feeling of being lost within a dreary, industrial reality, and this effect, I think, speaks for itself.

Below is an excerpt from the documentary "Chorus," featuring Jihae. After so little mention of her heritage on the album, it's interesting to hear her talking about her mother and grandmother.

And here's another clip of Jihae performing a cover of Nina Simone's "Do I Move You."

Another one of my favorite independent Asian-American musicians is Vietnamese guitarist Carol Bui, who I first found out about after she performed in the AIR (Asians in Rock) Tour a few years ago. The girl can definitely rock out, and songs like "Hyphen-American" and "Bangkok" directly address her Vietnamese-American heritage.

Unfortunately, she still only plays small venues, and there are only a few grainy videos on YouTube. I have to admit, her music's not always as melodic as I usually like, but I think the overall effect is fantastic.  Here's the title track from her 2004 album "This is How I Recover."

If You're Not White, You're Colored

One of the scenes in Mississippi Masala that I found particularly intriguing was the one in which one of the Indian men in the motel approaches Demetrius and Tyrone trying to prevent Demetrius from suing for whiplash. It is one of the few (if not the only) instance in which he speaks in favor of solidarity among different minority groups. “As long as you’re not white, you’re colored,” he says. It’s interesting that these sentiments are only brought out when it’s strategically useful, in the context of a financial dilemma. This early scene, in which the idea of cooperation among minorities is exploited for a financial end, criticizes the possibility of genuine third-world solidarity.

I guess the story of the relationship between Mina and Demetrius demonstrates a reach across racial borders in a more genuine way than this manipulation-- and, of course, as the main storyline, this relationship is more important to the overall theme of the film. However, even this model of inter-minority cooperation is full of problems. In order to be together, both Mina and Demetrius have to leave their families, which suggests that their relationship is not possible within the spheres of their communities, and that it can only exist in some isolated limbo land (which is never shown in the film). Their ending isn’t exactly a happy one, or at least not one that holds much suggestion of future success.

As Mississipi Masala suggests, the relationship between the African-American and Asian-American communities is a problematic one. Why is it that two groups with similar histories of mistreatment by the white majority have such trouble getting along? I think a few important differences between these groups contribute to this. First, as we’ve discussed, the African-American community is larger, visible enough to create a black-white racial dichotomy that other races-- including Asians-- have trouble fitting into. Second, a key aspect of the Asian-American experience is the immigrant experience. The stories in Sa-I-Gu are part of a standard trope of the Asian-American narrative: couples who left everything in their home countries to struggle in the Land of Opportunity for their children’s sake.

I was struck by one interview in Sa-I-Gu, in which the woman tells of how she’d expected America to be, essentially, whiter. She’s surprised by the number of Hispanics in her new neighborhood and says she could have believed it was Mexico, but not America. It made me begin to wonder whether the Asian immigrant’s American dream was a _white American dream. This brings up an interesting idea. We’ve talked about the Asian-American as the perpetual foreigner; but this interview suggests that, at least to this Korean-American woman, all other ethnic minorities are just as foreign. If you’re not white, you’re colored-- and, perhaps, not quite American enough.

An early sequence of Sa-I-Gu shows a Korean church singing “Amazing Grace,” a traditional African-American spiritual. This clip perhaps suggests that Asian-Americans and African-Americans have more in common than either community will admit. Watching _Sa-I-Gu reminded me of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which deals with race in Brooklyn in the late ‘80s. While it mostly deals with black-white relations (no surprise there), the film also addresses tensions between other ethnic groups, and it features a corner grocery owned by a newly immigrated Korean couple. Below are a few clips from Do the Right Thing which focus on the Korean couple (it also includes the looting/burning scene, which I think is pertinent in light of the L.A. riots).  

Especially interesting is the moment in which the mob turns away from the burning, white-owned pizzeria, toward the Korean grocery, and decides to leave it alone after the owner yells, "I'm black! I'm black! You-- me-- same!"  Is this what it takes for people to even consider minority solidarity?  Angry mobs and threats of lawsuits?  Well, if these extreme situations are what it takes, then so be it.

Better Luck Tomorrow (playing a little catch up, sorry)

Better Luck Tomorrow seems to both challenge and reaffirm the stereotype of the model minority. Ben, Virgil, Daric, and Han are bright students exhausting all of their energies in ensuring that they’ll get into good colleges. Ben’s methods are particularly formulaic (his repetitions of SAT vocabulary definitions, for example), while Daric fills the role of the ubiquitous extra-curricular overachiever. The four friends are also members of the academic decathlon team, a clear symbol of nerd status in any high school story. Of course, the foursome deviates from this stereotype in rather extreme ways. The film ostensibly reveals what Asian-Americans are really like; yet the fact that it preserves these nerdy and somewhat mechanical characteristics seems to me like an affirmation this part of the stereotype holds true. It’s as if the film says, “We may be awkward, sexually inexperienced, and geeky, but we can be just as reckless as the next teenager”-- not an terribly comforting tagline.

That said, Ben is certainly a far cry from Sixteen Candles’ Long Duk Dong. He’s a well-rounded and believable character. The simple fact that he is the protagonist rather than a source of comic relief or some other kind of typified background character is a significant step away from other stock Asian characters.

However, as was the case in Flower Drum Song, there are few non-Asian characters in Better Luck Tomorrow. It’s interesting to consider how the film would have been different if Stephanie or her boyfriend had been white. I think the image of a group of Asians brutally murdering a white man would probably have been too offensive for MTV-- it would perpetuate the image of the savage, dangerous yellowman. And if Stephanie had been white? In Sixteen Candles, the Long Duk Dong’s crush on Molly Ringwald’s character is a source of comic relief-- as if scoring a white girl is some kind of absurd dream, some prize elevated above the rest.

Really, it’s unfortunate that the different races that Stephanie could have been would signify pretty different implications. If she were white, Ben’s pining may have suggested that whiteness is valued above other races. If she were black or hispanic, the film would have been about multi-cultural relations within the minority community, about third-world solidarity. An Asian Stephanie perhaps suggests that Asian is the only spectrum that Ben can conquer. I can imagine that, if I were the filmmaker, these radically different significances would become frustrating to me. After all, I think Stephanie is supposed to fill the standard role of the female love object in a typical (read: white-led) high school movie-- she is a cheerleader, after all. But in order to create an Asian equivalent of a white high school movie, it seems as if the director has had to create a new Asian universe within which the narrative can operate. As an Asian-American that didn’t grow up in New York or California, I’d like to see more Asian-American films that showcase more provocative interactions between Asians and whites-- something more true to my own experiences.

Gay or Asian?

I don’t know if anyone remembers this spread in the magazine Details a while back, but I thought it’d be interesting to bring up, considering our discussion about the Asian male body, and especially the homosexual Asian male.

One interesting thing about this spread (aside from the horrendous stereotypes it employs) is the question “Gay or Asian?”, which implies that Asianness and homosexuality are mutually exclusive, two distinct spheres that cannot overlap. As Chiang’s article suggests, this supports the idea that alternative sexualities are associated with Western cultures and that queer Asians have been somehow influenced (even infected) by the American homosexual, as when Wai-Tung’s mother asks him if Simon “led him astray.”

One implicit rephrasing of the question of the spread is: “Gay, or Just Asian?” It equates characteristics that would, in white men, normally be read as particularly effeminate with those of Asian men (regardless of sexuality). While at first glance this seems to relate back to the representations of Asian men that we discussed a few weeks ago, that body was portrayed as impotent and asexual rather than homosexual. The article uses stylishness as a point of comparison here. Interesting.

I really enjoyed the Wedding Banquet, and especially liked using the varying degrees of specificity to imagine the same story being taken place in other settings. Chiang mentioned how it could have taken place in any city in the world, as there were few specific (and significant) references to Manhattan. I think because the film does follow a fairly standard structure, the arc of the story would have been remained pretty much the same had Wai-Tung’s parents been a conservative couple from another part of the U.S. The Gaos’ Chinese ethnicity is what fills in the details. I don’t think this necessarily downplays the Asian-American theme of The Wedding Banquet; rather, it’s what makes the bulk of the movie, what separates it from every other he’s-marrying-the-wrong-girl comedy (for example, the awful The Wedding Planner). So, in answer to the question raised in class, I would qualify The Wedding Banquet as a gay movie with an Asian twist, and not the other way around.

Angry Asian Man, You Are Not Alone.

Bruce Lee’s not the only angry Asian man around. This is Beau Sia, one of my favorite spoken word poets, performing on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam (sorry for the low quality).

Sia said in an interview that he actually prefers performing for non-Asian audiences, because of the opportunity to present a new voice, and not just reiterate frustrations with which Asian-American community is already familiar. This means this piece was written as a direct address to a non-Asian audience; it’s deliberately confrontational, reactionary.

So how does this angry Asian man compare with the one we’ve seen kicking ass in Enter the Dragon? For starters, there’s the image that each chooses to portray. Bruce’s powerful, muscular, battle-scarred body is a direct contrast to the hunched, fragile-looking Yellowman of Broken Blossoms. Beau, on the other hand, chooses to go with the fluffy pink turtleneck. Baffling at first, but one can compare the sweater to Bruce’s often-imitated falsetto yells. A comedian in an earlier video post claimed that Bruce Lee was the only person in the world that could make those noises and still be scary. Similarly, I think Beau Sia’s got to be the only guy who can wear that sweater and still be just as badass.

We discussed how Bruce Lee seems to portray himself as almost superhuman-- or at least otherworldly. He chooses to abstain from sex and alcohol, and he promotes the art of “fighting without fighting,” which is a noble statement (on top of being plain ol’ magic). Whereas Beau seems to scream that he is just as human as everyone else. He doesn’t claim to be above sex-- just better at it. Bruce Lee’s character (though significantly more impressive) still retains much of the oriental exoticism we’ve addressed-- yet in his hands it seems more like an expression of pride in Asian culture than an exploitation of it. After all, the “finger pointing at the moon” line isn’t just kung fu movie hocus-pocus, but comes straight out of Buddhist scripture.

One sequence of Enter the Dragon that I found interesting was the final fight scene with Han. In its final moments, Bruce literally becomes lost in a maze of images, and is confused by the multiple shifting reflections of himself and of his enemy. He is only able to defeat Han by shattering the phantom images in order to confront the real villain. The scene is a powerful statement. We, too, must first study and become absorbed by the images of our own bodies that are projected around us. But studying them isn’t enough. Our ultimate goal has to be to destroy these images, and thereby to get at the social problems that underlie them.

As a final parting gift, here’s another fantastic clip from Beau Sia, this time addressing pop culture in general.

Flower Drum Song

Annoying theme songs aside (how long did I have "A hundred million miracles" stuck in my head?), I enjoyed Flower Drum Song, much more than I expected to. Not that I'm normally a big fan of musicals (not that this was a particularly outstanding one from that perspective), and not that the film presented any groundbreaking new ideas. So why did I have such a positive reaction to the film? One line of my notes is particularly telling: "Asians without accents!!!" 

Is it really that easy? If an Asian that doesn't talk all funny is all it takes to get me hooked, then my standards must have sunk pretty low. No, I think it's more than that. Seeing an Asian-American cast that succeeds in acting, singing, and dancing seems to prove that we could have done it all along, if only white Hollywood would let us. Of course, there is also spectator identification, the idea of my Asian-American experience being reflected back to me; in Wang Ta's speech about "the Oriental half" and "the American half", in Wang San's difficulty in communicating with his father, in the conflict between old Asian traditions and new American ones (the terms "old" and "new" open, of course, for discussion). It's also the reversals of familiar stereotypes, such as when Master Wang says that all white people look alike. The Asian-American audience perhaps take this as a nod from Hollywood, a recognition of what we've had to deal with all these years.

Really, it's not much more than a nod, because Flower Drum Song is just as problematic as the next movie, perhaps even more so because the problems are less visible. Though Wang Ta seems to ride that hyphen gracefully, the film is sorely lacking in strong female characters. Instead, the Asian female is presented in two extremes: the glamorous, exotic, dragon lady who's manipulative and obsessed with her own sexuality; or the naive, submissive china doll who's so weak she allows men to stand her up on a stool and examine her mouth.

I found it interesting that both Master Wang and San, the younger son, were both sources of comic relief, one because he refused to assimilate, the other because he tries to assimilate more completely than he possibly can. Flower Drum Song is another example of a supposedly radical Asian-American work that nevertheless continues to draw on the foreigner as a source of comedy (Margaret Cho's impression of her mother comes to mind).

Although what does assimilation within the world of Flower Drum Song really mean? After all, the only white people in the film are a few extras at the restaurant. The policeman, the principal of the citizenship school, the bank teller, Ta's friends, and all of the waiters at Celestial Gardens are Asian or Asian-American. How does one measure assimilation/foreignness when everyone looks foreign and even those "fresh off the boat" speak grammatically perfect English? To me, the absence of white characters suggests that anything groundbreaking about the film can only exist in an alternate, all-Asian universe (then again, I don't know whether this is in fact just an accurate representation of life in San Francisco's Chinatown). It would have been interesting to see how certain interactions in the film would have changed if the story of Mei Li and the Wang family had played out against a white majority background.

Otak-Who?: Anime as Asian American Culture

Though anime has long been a staple of the popular youth culture of Japan, the medium has only entered the mainstream consciousness of the United States in the past fifteen to twenty years. Even now, years after both Time and Newsweek ran feature articles about the phenomenon and almost a decade after the height of the Pokemon craze, the majority of anime followers are members of a distinct subculture, many of whom are not Asian or Asian-American. How does one explain this fascination with Japanese animation? To what extent do animated films and television series reflect Japanese culture, or Asian culture as a whole? And how have anime and its cultural implications changed since traveling to the U.S.?

Anime (a Japanese abbreviation of the word “animation”) can perhaps best be defined by making a comparison to animation traditions of the U.S. While American cartoons (with Disney as the prime example) are usually geared toward children, anime targets a wider age range, including young adults. Perhaps as a result, it also covers a broader range of genres, from fantasy, to post-apocalyptic science fiction, to romantic comedy, and so on. As Susan J. Napier says in Anime from Akira to Princess Monoke, “anime works include everything that Western audiences are accustomed to seeing in live-action films,” which is reflected in a visual style more similar to mainstream feature films.

Another distinguishing feature in anime is the human body, which undergoes some interesting changes, including morphed proportions, Caucasian or racially ambiguous features, and high sexualization. I would like to explore how non-Asians form ideas about Asian bodies-- and Asian culture more broadly-- through watching anime, both on the part of devout fans and of typical Americans who have perhaps seen only a few images of Sailor Moon.

What Makes You So Good To Me, Chinky?

The first time the "Yellow Man" appeared in Broken Blossoms, I laughed aloud. The absurdity of trying to pass off this white actor as Asian, was just too much, especially because this introduction comes immediately after a series of shots of real Asian extras. Today (or at least to those of us inclined to take an "Asian-Americans in Pop Culture" class), Richard Bethelmess and the various actors who played Charlie Chan are completely unconvincing, looking painfully like white men squinting their eyes. Could Griffith's audiences possibly have been "convinced"? I suppose one make the excuse that many viewers may not have seen an Asian person before-- why, then, did the practice of yellowface continue long after blackface had become taboo? One of this country's most cherished Hollywood movies, Breakfast at Tiffany's, features Mickey Rooney in full Yellow Man garb, complete with slanted eyes, buck teeth, thick glasses, and a horrible, horrible accent. (The film was made in 1961, about twenty years after Executive Order 9066, more than forty years after Broken Blossoms.) Not to mention Jonathan Pryce's 1990 yellowface performance in Miss Saigon. Search for "yellowface" on YouTube and you'll find several examples from the last few years.

Why have racist impersonations of Asians in mainstream American media been so acceptable for so long? Perhaps it's because, as we discussed briefly in class, Asians are viewed as less threatening, less likely to lash back. If so, this stereotype both feeds and is fed by unbecoming portrayals of Asians in the media. Or maybe it has to do with the Asian-American's position as the perpetual foreigner; maybe if he weren't so strange he wouldn't be the center of such ridicule. If only the "dear little man," as Audrey Hepburn calls Mr. Yunioshi, would learn to be like the rest of us!

Chan is Late! Late! Late!

I, too, missed last week's blog entry, so I'm making it up here:

Chan is Missing was fantastic. On a purely cinematic level, I enjoyed the film noir-reminiscent style and the unconventional structure of the narrative. As a point of comparison to other appearances of Asian-Americans on film, Chan is Missing provided some of the first Asian-Am. characters who weren't depicted as foreign-- discontent, wandering, perhaps, but never quite alien. Having gone to a predominantly white high school, and I've felt somewhat separated from the Asian-American community for the past few years, so this portrayal of an Asian America was reassuring in a way.

Yet, as I said before, as comfortable as these characters are in their community, they seem somehow displaced. Perhaps it's the mystery of Chan, stories about his unhappiness in the country, and the uneasiness that his absence creates. Throughout the film we are searching for a person we've never met, much in the way Renee Tajima-Pena went looking for the nebulous idea of an Asian-America. The narrative winds almost aimlessly, and the mystery is never solved. Does this ending denote a failure? What, if anything, has Jim learned by the end of the film? I can't decide whether the film contains a moral, or whether it's meant to be simply descriptive of a single tone of the Asian-American experience.

Watching the film, I wondered at times who the intended audience was. Chan is Missing was considered experimental, underground, perhaps because it was produced independently of Hollywood. I don't think it was aimed at a mainstream audience, but rather at Asian-Americans. In fact, the few scenes containing dialogue in Chinese (without subtitles) suggest that the film was produced specifically for Chinese-Americans. I think it's important for more characters like those in Chan is Missing to make appearances in mainstream media: real, round, non-typified characters, emphasis on the hyphen-American.

Honk if You Love Reneé Tajima-Peña

I saw Reneé Tajima-Peña when she came to Brown to speak at the opening event for Asian/Asian-American History Month. It was so inspirational to hear her story and see her work, a welcome contrast to the usual images of Asian-Americans who have "made it"-- actors, businessmen, scientists, the occasional Amy Tan. I started thinking that night about the difference between navigating the preexisting notions about one's ethnicity and defining it on one's own terms. Attempting to do the latter takes more courage, I think, but is also pretty problematic. Isn't a conscious rebellion against a stereotype in itself a recognition of that stereotype?

More than anything, watching "My America" made me itch to take a huge road trip across the U.S. The title's spot-on; this is my America as much as it is anyone else's. And, as limited exposure as Asian have gotten in mass media, there *is* a definite Asian-American presence in this country (how awesome is Yuri Kochiyami??). Reminds me of something an Asian spoken word poet (was it Beau Sia?) said once: "This, too, is what American English sounds like."

Watching the film made me realize how narrow my definition of Asian-American is (second-generation, middle class, East Asian). I hope this class will help me broaden that perspective.

--franny