If this doesn't get you guys angry, I don't know what will

That racist jackasshole Elkhay actually celebrated the launching of Chinese Laundry by bringing in a real, live, and nude Asian American model.

http://www.bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view.bg?articleid=1079100&srvc=rss

And to make matters worse, the oxygen thieves over at the Herald have to be racist towards Jenn too.

New Asian eatery’s wanton ad leaves bad taste for some

By Inside Track
Monday, March 10, 2008

Chinese Laundry, a new fusion eatery in Providence has drawn the ire of a blogger called “Angry Asian American Woman” who is steamed about provocative print ads placed by the restaurant to promote tomorrow night’s opening.

The glossy ads, which have run in Providence Monthly, show a nearly naked woman with Oriental symbols tattooed on her torso with copy that reads “Good things come to those who wait” and “The wait is over.”

The ad, according to Jenn, the Angry one, “relies on Orientalist fetishization to sell the store: The message of the ad is that the Asian food of the restaurant - like Asian women - are exotic and different, and will represent a new experience.

“Diners are urged by the ad, then, to come and consume the Eastern food much as they would hope to consume and conquer the Asian woman,” she writes on her blog at www.reappropriate.com.

Whoa. What if you only want a bowl of chow foon?

Jenn’s noodle would have been really fried if she caught the scene on Friday night, when Chinese Laundry threw an opening-night party attended by New England Patriots [team stats] Dan Koppen, Matt Light [stats] and Sam Neal.

Apparently, the star of the night was a live Asian model draped in red silk sheets and sushi - and not much else - posing atop a long table that could be viewed from the glass floor in the main dining room.

John Elkay, the restaurant’s owner, posted on the blog over the weekend that “The only thing I was trying to conquer was a guest’s appetite.

“In today’s overstimulated world is it possible we were just trying to get the attention of the reader and not trying to conquer the east and their woman?” he asked.

Despite the response by the owner, fired-up bloggers are still calling for a boycott and a campaign backed by a national civil rights organization. And one over-zealous poster suggested torching the North Main Street eatery! But the Angry Asian American woman threw cold water on that one.

And speaking of Koppen, we hear the almost-bachelor-no-mo’ offensive line biggie was roasted and toasted by his buds Tedy Bruschi [stats], Light and many more at Abe & Louie’s steakhouse in the Back Bay the other night.

Koppen and fiancee Amber van Eeghen, an ex-New England Patriots [team stats] cheerleader, are tying the knot veddy soon. Rib-eyes all around.

Reading Wei Wei in The Wedding Banquet

I want to focus my post on an earlier point Melissa brought up in her post.
I also think that much of the “happiness” and keeping together of the family are dependent on Wei Wei’s procreation and ultimate decision to have her baby. Her body is, in many ways, placed at the center of the narrative. How much agency does the character of Wei Wei have?

I agree that in the beginning of the film she is depicted as this independent, “starving” artist.
It would be helpful to quote Clarissa’s earlier post about Wei Wei and her artist lifestyle:
“As for Wei Wei, avant-garde artists’ lifestyles have frequently been associated with challenges to the dominant social order. Women artists in particular were seen as deviant because their creative energies were channeled away from baby-making into the “selfish” pursuit of individual expression. Thus, they were castigated as being loose or somehow degraded women.”
By agreeing to marry Wai Tung and undergoing the wedding banquet process and tradition, Wei Wei is summoned for domestic patriarchal control and domination by all parties involved.

Simon attempts to teach Wai-Wai how to cook in the efforts that she quickly learns her role as a “domestic servant” in the household. “Wei Wei you don’t know how to cook eggs?!” This question is based on the expectation that Wei Wei knows how to cook because she is a woman.
Wai Tung parents expect Wei Wei to play multiple roles as the female in the relationship. From taking care of Wai Tung, to domestic servititude, to procreating, many burdens are placed upon Wei Wei in her entrance into (heterosexual) marriage.

Wai Tung’s intensions for his relationship with Wai Tung are driven by his parents need for him to marry a woman and start a family/have children, Wai Tung’s control over Wei Wei is also demonstrated outside of the domestic sphere as her landlord. Not only does Wai Tung have control over her through marriage, but through her money. He, in essence, controls her physical space. Also, at the Wedding Banquet specifically, Wai Tung controls the kiss. He first kisses her on the cheek, and because the audience is not pleased with such a non-aggressive, friendly peck, he goes in a longer, more aggressive smack on the lips. Mark Chiang contends, “The transformation of Wai Tung into a patriarch, the declared project of the film, can be seen as fundamentally dependent not so much upon the reconciliation with his father as upon the solicitation of ideological consent from Wei Wei and her submission to his hegemonic dominance” (282).

By the end of the film, our early encounters with Wei Wei’s somewhat “sexual aggressiveness” is controlled. All parties in the film play a central role in confining Wei Wei to the domestic sphere, her sexuality, and essentially her submission to the patriarch.