modern political heroes: jj and kazumi (?)

i have to agree with everyone that these films were, well.. interesting to watch. i didnt know that jj chinois was bruce lee imagery either until i did the reading and terminal usa felt like such a postmodernist parody of ..well, suburbia? asian stereotypes? modern parodies?

jj chinois really required a lot of background information (which is still hard to find) to understand even slightly. it was interesting what the text said about the re-masculination or using bruce lee's body for the other extreme. by this i mean instead of viewing bruce lee's as having a zero sex rating and representing a "puritan" moral cleanliness, using his body to present the other extreme of desire, physical manliness, etc. it is also interesting how this 'manliness' is represented through a transgender individual and what statement jj chinois is making by ultimately 'performing' this piece. is jj chinois saying that all manliness is performance or 'fan labor' as nguyen suggests?

i felt nguyen's final statment was most provocative when she stated:

"this is an important part of the utopian impulse...the desire to transform popular culture into a counterpublic for a radically different imaginary. because popular culture is imagined as a shared cultural resource with access to an audience of millions, we might wonder whether desire for the star's body--especiallyone like jj chiois;s--can deliver a ground on which to do politics" (297). [emphasis mine]

we've been talking about the importance of popular culture all semester long and i feel these lines pretty much summed up the reason, especially when counterculture becomes that pop phenomenon.


as for terminal usa, it was just so many different themes packed into that hour-long film and i really dont know where to start. what resonated most within me after watching the (sorry) creepiness in that film was that most all roles in life was a performance. i especially felt this way when i realized that the only "normal" depiction or close-to-life depiction of anyone was the drag queen who picked up the like when marvin call a phone sex service. it seemed to make that contrast that not only is drag queen-ism a performance, but everything else in life is, so why the hate?
it's also interesting that the movie is called terminal usa, which seems to mean that the 'terminal' to the united states for the alien girlfriend 8-ball was this suburban japanese american family. i just cant really make much more out of that right now ^^;; to be discussed in class......

watching mississippi masala was an interesting turn of discourse for me in context of this class for a couple of reasons. foremostly, this would be the first time we are focusing on an example of south asian 'pop culture' in the class. the prevailing stereotypes of south asian communities are usually very different from those of east asian nations like those we've studied so far. if anyone has read vijay prashad's the karma of brown folk, we know that historically south asians, especially indian immigrants in america have distinct histories of travelling and staying for good in the US, whether it is because of the "brain drain" or jsut because of economic troubles in the motherland and the bring-your-family-over policy offered to asian technicians by the american government. what i felt was really interesting in watching this film in particular is that the indian family was not from india, but from africa. the most meaningful line in the film seemed to be unassociated with the major love story but with the theme of belonging when the Ugandan African man says to mena's father, "uganda is for black africans." this raises an a couple important issues: 1. second-class citizenship due to racism in a country other than america and 2. skin color.

i raise the first issue because even though this situation is unique to the family in this story, it is important because it forces us to venture more into the historically complex diaspora of Indian populations throughout other continents and different forms and accounts of discrimination against Asians in the past. I have to admit, I did not know about the Asian deportation in Uganda and this movie made me do some research. I had American images of the taxi-driving-New-Yorker-Indian stereotype and the wealthy-traditional-indian-technician-from-north-carolina in my head but studying diaspora is important because like the family in the movie, many asians have travelled as fugitives from one country to another to wind up finally here.

the second issue is a little more interesting because it ties in the love story and the issue of miscegenation and mixed-race marriages. though the image of the strict traditional asian parents who wont allow mixed race marriages is something i've been exposed to a lot in the past, the line that really stuck out for me was when demetrius spoke to mena's father about the indians' skin tone being just a couple shades lighter than his own. the issue of "darkies" that the indian women gossip about in the film is also something i'd like to discuss in class because it really is pertinent more in the south asian context. how does skin color affect racism in the asian american community?

from banquet to brokeback

a couple things crossed my mind as i was watching the wedding banquet. i felt everyone had some interesting comments to say about the film itself; i dont know if its just me, but i couldnt help but compare and contrast this movie to brokeback mountain all teh way through.

i dont know if ang lee directed any other movies with protagonists struggling with gay identity issues but it seemed interesting to me how these two pieces completely clash. i dont know why but it keeps coming back to that question that we asked on the first day -- is brokeback mountain authentic asian american art?

the two movies differ most obviously in the sense that wedding banquet is about a naturalized chinese man and brokemtn is about a couple midwestern cowboys. the second important difference is that ang lee wrote and directed wedding banquet whereas he only directed brokemtn, but i think comparing the two movies really reveals how ang uses the concepts of homosexuality intersecting with politics of race and ethnicity in Wedding Banquet.

when chiang quotes Ang in a movie review, Chiang explains how Ang describes The Wedding Banquet as a "comedy about identity." However, Chiang afterwards points out that "in Lee's remarks, sexuality is conspicuously absent from teh various categories of identity, an inidication that homosexuality is a sign for the very confusions of idenity that the film seeks to resolve" (279). This suggestion supports a feeling I had throughout watching Wedding Banquet that the movie almost uses homosexuality as a supplementary factor/issue that together with gender politics and american racial conflicts paints a picture showing what Chiang calls the modern transnational postmodern identity politics of the chinese family. in other words, wai tung's homosexuality is just a side element that further shows how confusing and messed up his life is in this postmodern capitalist world, whatever that's supposed to mean egh.

i'm not hating on Ang for not 'giving enough credit' or researching enough into queer studies and objectives in wedding banquet, because like other's have already pointed out, there were some things that seemed kind of lukewarm in terms of taking a queer activist stance in wai tung's character. he is deemed still pretty 'manly,' with very limited scenes of intimacy (his one hot kiss is mostly covered with an angle of the back of his head) with simon and in the end, triumphing through biology as a man that (though accidentally) overcomes wei wei's resistance and becomes a father. the film is a great work in terms of showing modern transnational identity dynamics, showing the complications in identity formation of a man who has deep historicaly roots in china and taiwan but struggles to come out as a man also deeply entrenched in middle class white american values (he is referred to as a yuppie by simon in the film).
My only deal was that since I have seen brokeback mountain first, and seen how powerful the message was about queerness and queer struggles in that, i felt wedding banquet almost didnt do enough or shied away from making too strong a statement about homosexuality.

but then again, i enjoyed the film as is and i cant imagine lee providing all that context plus all the stuff about asianness, the banquet, transnational identity, etc. all within a 2 hour film that was under a 400K budget.

props

i agree with most people's posts on the reclaiming of asian masculinity portrayed in this film in particular, enter the dragon. i think prashad portrayed a fairly positive portrayal of bruce lee in his chapter, which i ambivalently but overall tend to support (lol talk about indecisiveness).

Though Prashad does not dive into the specific close readings that are possible in the film regarding sexism, traditional asian representation, etc, and instead backs his claims up with a lot of history, i do agree with his overarching argument that bruce lee's films were an inspiration as a cross-racial breakthrough in resisting "the man." this is because even though bruce lee doesnt exemplify "traditional manliness" he does represent the sense of an ongoing development of a new masculinity and identity with which asian american men should be characterized--asian american 'manliness' should be something that we should continously be searching for.

This brings me back to the Feng reading during our Chan is Missing unit. The essay spoke about how Asian American idenity is a fluid process, a "journey" and not a solid "answer" as to what asian america is. With his ideas on race and martial arts, Bruce Lee is insightful in his philosophy to break borders and boundaries, especially racial ones. he seems to get to the core of things, martial arts and otherwise, streamlining and cutting out outdated concepts and being famous for being the first to train non-asians. it is important to note the historical background of the movie periods too, because we know now that return of the dragon was a big f you to us imperialism when he beats up the "us soldier" and "south korean soldier" and then finally chuch norris. ^^

Though the sexism in his works as well as perhaps a shortcoming of depth within his own roles (anyone of color actually) is surely disappointing, there is no doubt that bruce lee was pivotal in portraying a new and emboldened image of Asian American men on the big screen. i know it's been annoying growing up with all those people asking "do you know bruce lee?" and even the occasional "hey are you related to bruce lee?" (my last name being lee) but man am i proud to see an asian guy really gracefully kicking some ass in these movies. it almost makes me not really mind a little bit almost. ^^

flower drum song. the entire time i was watching this movie, i was seriously conflicted because of a couple of things. for one, i was shocked/pleasantly surprised that a movie with an all asian-american cast like this one was possible in '61. i kept on waiting for the punch line or the yellow face or something to pop up so i can say, 'yeah, of course.' secondly, though produced in '61, this movie did portray a lot of... well, stereotypical images of asians/asian americans that this country can't seem to get enough of out of any culture. my deal was, here we have this semi-breakthrough film with asian actors portraying very asian, specifically chinese, themes. however, there were still many serious flaws with the way we were being portrayed... or were there?

i know that this movie got a lot of beef because it came out during the civil rights period when people had changing views of how to portray minorities in film in a way that was more legit. but still, this was pretty much a breakthrough for asian american film/art... plus, all these themes were portrayed by Asian Americans themselves... so here we have the first all-AAPI cast film displaying stereotypical images in their own way. is it a problem when asians are doing it? we know that the red flag goes up immediately if a white woman in yellow face starts singing chop suey but if an asian american woman does it, is it better? maybe even right? i'm having a hard time liking this movie but completely disliking it at the same time because i can only imagine how excited all the young asian children would have been watching this asian-american-sound-of-music pop up on the big screen. but still, even if it was a 'correctional' film trying to better represent the aapi community in san francisco, they couldve done a better job to resist showing hackneyed images to the white public, repeating them over and over in their head (chinese traditional stereotypes, etc etc). i dont know. i have to admit i enjoyed the film. it was funny and provocative at times, though idealistic and couldve used some work especially with the two "wetback" characters and ta's father.

i especially think it would be interesting to compare and contrast the characters of mei ling and linda in class.. also, i didnt get to talk about this in my post, but speaknig of asian american (especially female) representation for children in modern media, what about mulan? what about disney's mulan works or doesnt work in contrast with flower drum song?

"The taste that launched a thousand parking tickets"

“Sorry ice cream, I’m on my way to Pinkberry.”
-from The Pinkberry song

Two winters ago, I was so excited to return to my hometown—koreatown, LA—to taste what was supposed to be the ultimate frozen dessert—Pinkberry. I was shocked to hear all my white friends tell me about this amazing new product that people were crazy about—fat free frozen yogurt with delicious fresh fruit toppings, but the part I could not believe was that it was an Asian American product. I could see why the LA Times lauded the treat as “the taste that launched a thousand parking tickets,” because it took about an hour to find parking anywhere near the original structure that was erected on the corner of 6th Street and Berendo. Previously a sketchy k-town corner with a couple Korean bars, apartments, and restaurants, now I saw people of all different ethnicities piled up in a line curving outside onto the sizzling sidewalk (yes, this is LA in the winter), waiting for their cups of this mysterious treat.

After about 30 minutes of standing in line, I finally got my Pinkberry—an original medium size with strawberries, mangoes, and kiwi, and then I thought…wait, this is just Korean yogurt!! A couple of Korean American business partners, Shelly Hwang and Young Lee, had mixed a popular Korean snack with a revival of the ‘80s frozen yogurt trend and developed what actually turned out to be a hit new product. This was an amazing experience for many people in our community, and people still talk about it all over town because this was the first time a Korean American product turned into a popular national franchise.

Pinkberry first opened in winter 2005 when Shelly Hwang, a business student, and Young Lee, an interior designer, partnered up and opened a store in Los Angeles. Since it began to pick up popularity, it came across some minor problems (not enough yogurt in it to be called frozen yogurt by the FDA) but mostly, they have been on the path to bigger corporate success 3 years in a row. They recently introduced a new flavor of yogurt—coffee—to celebrate their 3rd year anniversary. Recently, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz invested some million dollars into Pinkberry, expanding it to locations across the US. Their website boasts over 20 locations in California and 9 in New York, with more pending. Pinkberry has also started to appear in television commercials advertising joint efforts with major credit card companies.

The ultimate concept of the product seems to be a healthy, delicious treat that is low in fat (it’s ultimate trendy appeal) with a range of fresh fruit, cereal, nut, and even some distinctly Asian toppings (mochi and sweet red beans). The yogurt comes in three flavors: original, green tea, and coffee. The store designs and products (designed by co-founder Lee) reflect the healthy, modern artsy lifestyle of young trendy nutritionists -- pastel colors, bubbles and all.

Business owners all across Koreatown (and even Thayer St!!) have emulated faux pinkberries lol, off the top of my head, I can think of Juniper, Snowberry, Kiwiberry, Mr. Berry, Red Mango (the original South Korean store that Pinkberry actually semi-copied), Cefiore, Yogurtberry...you would think they would at least significantly change the name to not include -berry. But apparently there are lots and lots more.

I feel Pinkberry is relevant to Asian American ‘popular culture,’ because of how it’s taken an Asian dessert and combined it with American marketing techniques to produce a new “cultural phenomenon.” Because of the small-business stereotype of most Asian-owned businesses, especially in places like ethnic (Asian country here)-towns, Pinkberry is important, representing a breakthrough to the larger corporate world of entrepreneurial success. I’m not saying that people will eat Pinkberry and think,
“wow this Asian product totally gives me a new outlook on the Korean American community,” but I feel in terms of Asian businesses, it is a step in a good direction ^^.
sources:

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-pinkberryaug04,0,7985455.story?coll=la-home-style
http://www.myspace.com/yourfellowgroupie
http://pinkberry.com/html/pbmain.php
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/06/pinkberrys_legal_jam.php