Sai-i-gu and Hip Hop Response

"Ynot.. let me tell ya a story//Okay it was a black man a white man and a Chinese man//The black man of course he was po' (yeah)The white man... he was rich (uh-huh)//And the Chinese man, he owned a sto' (aight c'mon)//Okay the black man lived on Beat Street//The white man lived on Wall Street and at the Chinese man's store is where they all meet//Not really on the good foot "- Common, Chapter 13 (Rich man vs. Poor man)

On this 1994 track, Common, a self-labeled "conscious rapper," assigns the role of shopkeeper to the Chinese man. He goes on to rap about a fight that is ignited by the rich white man's disgust for the poor black man and how this causes the Chinese man, fearing for his safety, to abandon and subsequently lose his store. When I first heard this verse, it surprised me how narrow Common's portrayal of the Chinese man was. The main focus of this verse (as well as the theme of this song) dealt with the conflict between white and black; the Chinese man acts as a sort of buffer, providing the arena for this fight. In the end, the white man is still rich, the black man now owns the store, and the Chinese man is left with nothing. Watching Sai-i-gu flashed my memory back to the layout of this verse, especially when one of the interviewees denounced the riots as an aftermath to the tension between black and whites. The movie implied that the Asian businesses were drawn into the turmoil just like the fictional Chinese man, though both seemed to try and resist any part in the conflict.

In many other hip hop songs, Asians are usually also associated with stores and property. In MC Eiht's 1993 hit "Streight Up Menace ," the Compton rapper spits, "Gyeah, I'm kickin it with the homies and they got the straps//Off to the corner store, owned by the fuckin Japs (subsequently bleeped out in later versions)//See a bitch in the right lane so I comes with the mack//Astro Bam pulls a motherfuckin jack from the back//Now he's got the strap to my homie's head" It seems like this Asian-owned store is a common structure in the hiphop and ghetto backdrop; the store ,however, is not looked upon favorably, but rather with disdain. Maybe this is parallel with the hip hop generation's overall dissatisfaction with establishment (which is expressed by these stores). However, in the songs much of the intangible aspects of establishment are associated with whites, while the concrete elements (like property) are associated with asians. Perhaps this is what that one interviewee meant when she said that the conflict was a black and white affair and the Koreans were caught in the middle. Whereas the first wave was lashing out at establishment in general and because the Korean stores were tanglible symbols of establishment, they were targetted during the riots. On a related note, before this movie, I was not aware of Asians' roles in the LA riots. I heard about Rodney King and I remember a history textbook showing one white truck driver being rescued by two African Americans after he was attacked by rioters. The interviewee claimed that the media tried to make it a Black and Asian affair; more than 10 years later however, it seems that the general public is unaware of how Asians played into it.

Many posters have criticized the movie for not providing more depth into how the LA riots were provoked; though I find many of these points to be true, I also found the movie informative, perhaps not so much by its spoken narrative, but more by its images. It still surprises me how the government failed to acknowledge the loss of many businesses in Korea Town, even after the huge demonstrations shown in the movie. I cannot help, but feel as though the government overlooked the Korean community because it would not make for good PR.

The Wedding Banquet- Secrecy

Similar to much of life, The Wedding Banquet does not progress in any singular direction. At its beginning, the film is composed of primarily comedic elements; many of these later result in serious consequences, such as Wei-Wei's pregnancy and Wai-Tung's eventual coming out to his mother (which, heavily contrasting with the comedic path earlier in the film, is almost heartbreaking). Perhaps it is because of the film's constant shift between family drama and comedy that the movie is not so concerned with many of the loose ends that are a result of the three young protagonists' scheme.

Secrecy plays a large role in many of the movie's unanswered questions. Wai-Tung, out of fear of his father's health, keeps his sexual identity hidden from him. Yet his father knows of this secret and in turn hides from his son his knowledge. Once the credits roled, it was as though no one completely knew what the other was thinking or what was going on within the family. It was as though the idea of a connected family became shattered and disjointed. I wonder if Ang Lee is trying, in some manner, to relate secrecy and homosexuality together. Another point that plays off on this relationship is the contrast between the wedding banquet and the wedding at city hall. In the latter scene, it almost felt as though Wai-Tung knew of no other friends that Simon. However as one can see, there were many guests at his wedding banquet-many of whom were clueless about Wai-Tung's sexuality. So not only did his sexual orientation clash with his parents and their expectations of his lifestyle, it also was hidden from his asian friends. Does this indicate something about asian culture in the 90's? The guests, as one partygoer suggested, are not in any way sexually repressed; however, are they progressive enough to embrace and accept Wai-Tung's lifestyle. It kind of seems unlikely. Even Wei Wei, one of Wai-Tung's few asian confidantes who knows of his orientation, claims (while they are in bed that) she is liberating him- perhaps from his need to form a secretive barrier from those around him.

Enter the Dragon Response

Request from the British government? Check. Jazzy introductory theme song? Double check. Sound familiar? Back when I was in fifth grade, my cable provider accidently bestowed upon our household the gift of 150 extra channels; most of these predominantly featured movies without commercial breaks. This careless error resulted in my inability to sever my gaze from the screen, as move after movie (with very minimal interruption) played out before my eyes. Following a showing of "The Man with the Golden Gun," which featured pop culture's perfect male James Bond, "Enter the Dragon" started playing.

No doubt there are similarities. Like Bond, Lee is established in the beginning as a self-actualized invidual. He represents this very interesting intersection between heritage and practicality; this is emphasized in the difference between his dialogue with his teacher and the British official. With the former, he describes a fight as a play, but more serious. During this moment, Lee is portrayed as someone with deep honor and spiritual understanding. However, there are moments when he diverges from this identification. He slyly asks the government agent why they cannot just shoot Han, suggesting that Lee is not above using weapons. There is a second moment, which harkens back to that idea of the foreign taming/infecting/changing the asian man (as evident in Broken Blossoms and Flower Drum Song). Here, it is evil that sways Lee from his spiritual teachings. After all, I suppose a kung-fu movie without the guilty love for vengence would not be as thrilling.

A couple of bloggers below commented on how Lee doesn't develop any sexual relationships with the female in the movie. As a kid, I was actually afraid there'd be some relationship between him and Mei-Ling- love scenes which might've delayed the great action sequences. I mean the setup was perfect; he was an agent ready to bust Han's drug ring and she was a beautiful operative working on the inside. James Bond would definitely have gotten the girl. In fact most Bond movies work around this plot where he and the girl have to work together to stop the villain. At the end of "Enter the Dragon," Mei-Ling wasn't anywhere to be seen. Interestingly, this lack of romance is common for other famous Asian American action stars. Just think of Jackie Chan.In the 70's Asian males were no longer depicted as cowering missionaries of peace, but have their media-portrayed sexual identities progressed at all since the early 1900's?

Flower Drum Song

I was a sucker for Flower Drum Song; I loved it. Almost every aspect of the movie seemed to fall in sync with that strangely quaint feeling you get from watching a musical, whether it was Sammy's Sinatra-like demeanor, the youngest son's hip slang, or the musical numbers. Perhaps one of the reasons I was so engaged in this film, was that it chipped away at some of my preconceptions of Asian Americans before the 70's and 80's. I think in the first movie assigned, there was Victor Wong, who claimed he had to define his own meaning of Asian American since there wasn't such an idea back in the 50's. In Flower Drum Song however, that dichotic identity confusion is still represented by Wang Ta, but many of the San Francesco community seems to almost embrace the American way of life. The Asian American community, in this movie, was not as isolated from American culture (if at all) as Wong stated. For some, such as Auntie and Linda, the American way was actually almost dominant to Eastern tradition.

What is the moral? Or more accurately, was there supposed to be one? I was not sure what the significance of Wang Ta's "failure" to make decisions independent of his father meant. It is interesting how both father and son try and rebel against the conventions set out for them (with Master Wang humerously facing the consequences of not trusting the bank with his money and with his son's inability to set up his own marriage). Maybe it is not so much a statement about about which conventions are most fit in an Asian American community as it is about rebellion in general.

Juxtaposed Pictorial Portraits of Asian Americans

Asians were first depicted in American comics as a dangerous threat. It was fall 1942; the US for almost a year was officially at war with the axis powers. Back in the states, there was much fervor surrounding America’s current situation. Walls were covered with patriotic posters, theatres showed short accounts of the war in Europe, and on the newsstands were images of Captain America and his sidekick Bucky delivering some painful haymakers to two Japanese soldiers. At least I think they were soldiers. Looking at the cover of Captain America # 18, it almost appeared as though the costumed crime fighters were tackling some Martians. The Japanese soldiers’ ears were drawn almost as large as their heads and extremely twisted. The coloring of their skin was a dark yellow, sharp vampire-like teeth hung from their mouths, and their eyes were contorted into a menacing shape; to any kids picking up this issue, there was no doubt that Asians were evil.

And yet, it is interesting to see how this villainous representation evolves in the next ten, twenty years. After World War II and just before the Vietnam War, Asians were portrayed very little in American comics. But when they were portrayed, it was not only as villains, but also as heroes. In 1956, Marvel Comics released a comic entitled “The Yellow Claw,” which featured Jimmy Woo, a Chinese American secret agent. Woo’s main archenemy was a brilliant madman, know as the Yellow Claw. The Claw’s appearance harkened back to the World War II comics’ depiction of Asians; he sported a fu Manchu and teeth resembling Dracula’s; his skin was also saturated yellow. Woo, on the other hand, was clean-shaven and had perfect teeth. He was also part of the FBI. This brings up an interesting thought; was Marvel trying to say only foreigners were evil and that those who are American citizens are not forever doomed to bad skin, teeth, and evil thoughts? Despite its well-written plots, the series was canceled within a few issues; the public just wasn’t interested.

During the 50’s and early 60’s, Asians were illustrated more in Japanese manga than in Western comics. An example of this was Astro boy, a robot built by the kind Doctor Tenma. Race and ethnicity did not directly associate with good or evil in manga as they did in American comics. Astro boy caught on with an American audience when it was adapted into a cartoon and has since been a classic icon in both Japanese and American culture. I’m still looking and referring back to different genres implementing the comic book genre at the moment; some things that did pop up was the use of Asians as villains again in the sixties. Tony Stark, later known as Iron Man, was captured by Vietnamese communists and forced to build them a powerful weapon. Peter Parker, the civilian identity of Spider-man, battled a Vietnamese sorcerer who had captured his classmate Flash Thompson when Thompson was drafted into the war. Very convoluted stuff. In my paper, I hope to not only address more fully the depictions of Asians and Asian Americans in comics, but also how comics from Asian (and subsequently translated to English) as well as their animated counterparts have made an impact on American pop culture and its consumer market. You’d be hard-pressed to travel back to 1999 and not find a fourth grader who wasn’t crazy about pokemon.
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/captain-america - Issues 18, 38-40

The Yellow Man and the Girl

Most of the movies assigned so far I had never watched before; Broken Blossoms was no exception. There was little in the title, which implied what the film was about. Then I saw the title screen, a flickering stream of gray and white that read "The Yellow Man And The Girl." I still could not infer much about the movie, but at that moment I had an inkling that "the girl" was probably white. It is not "The Man And The Girl;" no that title would be too plain. Upon watching that screen, our eyes are transfixed to the word, "yellow." The title projects some vague sense of controversy, placing the strange label of yellow man next to the normal girl.

Initially I was not sure how the protagonist was going to be portrayed. The general idea that had always been pounded into my head was that media portrayal from the past was rarely ever kind in regards to those who weren't caucasian. So yeah, I assumed the worst. I had watched D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" back in high school. That film featured a black man lustfully chasing after a white nurse, a chase which ended with her death. What would this "yellow man" do to the woman? What sadistic and savage machinations would the writer instill in the character's mind? So imagine my surprise when watching the man solemnly standing in a Buddhist temple. This astonishment soon turned into a nagging sense of confusion; perhaps I was better off not trying to find any specific meaning in the Chinese man's character. To successfully find such meaning would require a good understand of Griffith's intention. And unfortunately, this is difficult as the silent film does not expand on much of the characters (beyond their two dimensional represenations). It instead almost entirely plays off on this "crazy" idea of a Chinese man spending time with an English woman. Many of the bloggers below touched on this platonic relationship, one that might not even constitute to any real sense of love. I wonder if Griffith intentionally did this because he didn't want to push any boundaries, or if he felt it was more in tune to the man's emasculate personality to not be able to kiss the girl. What was he trying to point out about the man's personality, especially with his use of a hangun at the end? Did he finally become a man, or instead did he let the savageness of England overwhelm him? Essentially is his use to defend himself a positive or negative?

I did not find the effect of the film to be intentionally racist. Rather most of the racist connotations it portrays to a 21st century mind seem to be a result of the film's simplicity. It oversimplifies Buddha's teachings of peace, with its brief paragraph texts. It is too simple that it depicts all Chinese foreigners are those with a love for opium. And yet, isn't that where popular culture resides? In the accessible and simple? Surely a film based solely on accurate depictions of religion, much like opera or a scientific textbook, would not be categorized as pop culture. Perhaps we could expand on our definition of popular culture. On a final note, pianist William Perry was amazing. To be able to play nothing but minor arpeggios (during those ~40 minutes depicting London and Burrow's viciousness towards his daughter) without going insane is nothing short of talented.