After watching JJ Chinois and Terminal, USA, I was as weirded out as everyone else who posted before me was. I actually had absolutely no idea what went on in JJ Chinois until I did more research on his (her) character. Completely ignoring the fact that the video was incoherent to me, watching it did get me thinking "who would watch something like this?" The same question I think also applied to Terminal, USA. Who is the audience for these types of media, and perhaps more importantly, what is the filmmaker trying to say through the films?
After reading various articles and websites on the character Lynne Chan portrays, I can see some how her character is a commentary on many things, including Asian American identity, transgender identity, as well as suburban vs. urban environments and attitudes towards the former. Many people on the blog commented on Chan's use of Bruce Lee clips and images of herself to sexualize the Asian American male body, as well as to mainstream the image of a transgender person, specifically an Asian transgender individual. However, what end is she attempting to achieve through this short clip? In all of the articles and research that I read about JJ Chinois, it never came across clearly what her intentions are. Specifically regarding Asian American identity, I felt like she used her ethnic connection to Bruce Lee to push her portrayal of transgenders in the media.
I found Terminal, USA extremely interesting and coherent, as opposed to JJ Chinois. While I was completely weirded out while watching the movie, in retrospect I see that it was able to critique the concept of a perfect nuclear family and the concept of the Asian model minority through its absurdness. While the movie took the breakdown of these ideas to the extreme, it also showed viewers that there is no such thing as a perfect nuclear family or a true model minority. Ignoring the absurdity of the sons and daughters of the family being either crazy druggies, sluts, or closeted fetish homosexuals, the very process of growing up as a teenager is riddled with change and experimentation, very much in contrast to the static image of perfection that both the nuclear family and model minority ideal tend to portray.
Monday, April 28, 2008
My new favorite Brown alum: Jon Moritsugu
Wow...what the fuck did I just watch? JJ Chinois is gonna have to wait, because “Terminal USA” was one of the most bizarre movies I have ever seen in my life. It seemed like a mix between a twisted Asian American Sitcom and a cheesy zombie movie with all of the fake blood. I would love to meet Jon Moritsugu’s family when he was younger or to read his family’s reaction to this film. Moritsugu is certainly one of Brunonia’s gems.
The characters of the film made it so interesting and twisted. Moritsugu did an excellent job of developing such strange and unique characters that viewer attempts to follow throughout the film. As I took notes during the film, I found myself creating profiles for all of the different characters in an attempt to follow everything that was happening. Underneath the characters, there was some very interesting social commentary. Using the classic nuclear family American sitcom for the film, it offered a scathing satire of model family structures and interactions. In that sense the film reminded me a lot of the popular film “American Beauty” (1999), which also critiqued the model nuclear family.
There were some interesting race relations in the film. In one of the first scenes the father comes home from work complaining about death threats towards him because of his race (“I am not a chink, I’m a Jap”), which can be read as response to the killing of Vincent Chin and animosity towards Asian Americans in the workplace. The two skin heads in the film are also racist towards Kazumi. This film came out following the Rodney King riots when Asian/Asian American race relations were tense. It wasn’t a coincidence that an Asian male in the film shot one the white skin heads out of self-defense.
It was comical to watch the father in “Terminal USA” struggle to “spend time with his kids” only to be increasingly shocked that none of his kids were meeting his expectations. Kazumi is a drugged out teenager (“a real blooming freak”), who lets himself bleed to death in film. Marvin is a sexually-suppressed homosexual (“the pervert in the backroom”), who spends all his time in front of his computer. And Holly, a sex crazed cheerleader, who runs off with a pedophilic lawyer/producer of childhood pornography. The characters were hard to wrap my head around. After consulting IMDb, apparently both Marvin and Kazumi were played by Moritsugu (perhaps, the characters he most identified with at Brown).
Weird is right: JJ Chinois and Terminal USA
So, I also agree with everyone that both JJ Chinois and Terminal USA are weird and difficult to discuss simply because there was just so much going on and nothing seemed very coherent…. I mentioned JJ Chinois in class last time because I seriously thought that that film was a real music video and didn’t know how to fit it into the Asian-American music category. After watching the video for a second time, reading his/her wikipedia profile more closely, going onto his/her website, and reading the article Bruce Lee I Love You, I’m just starting to have an inkling of understanding about what the heck is going on. Only after reading Nguyen’s article did I see that JJ Chinois (rather ambiguously) sexualizes the Asian masculine body, which historically had been “soft” (think Broken Blossoms) or “hard” (Bruce Lee) but sexually impotent and chaste in either case. This, in turn, reconstructs the Asian male body as a more subversive but comprehensive/complete masculine body. I guess what is “subversive” about the sexualized Asian male body is that, according to Nguyen, the “Bad Asians” reclaimed parts of pop culture (again, the soft or hard but still irregular Asian body) by forging a “perverse identification and relationship with pop culture that uncover … and play with the racialized fantasies, fears, and representations that make culture popular.” Umm, I *think* that means that Chan and others who work underground to recreate Asian-America do so by working within the confines of popular culture because pop culture is shaped largely by mainstream American audience’s subconscious fears and fantasies, and so pop culture offers many opportunities with which artists can twist and pervert it and thereby change Asian-American representation.
If this were the case, then I guess it sort of makes sense why the director of Terminal USA chose to use the family sitcom genre to explore issues of stereotypes and sexuality, etc. Working within pop culture domains allowed him to present seemingly familiar yet horribly different and perverse characters who seem even more dangerous or crazy or kooky because the white American audience’s subconscious fear of the Asian-American – of “the other” – being exactly like that. Maybe the super studious Asian nerd at your school actually is a closeted homosexual and has violent sexual fantasies about leather-clad men – how would you know? Maybe the “problem kid” in that nice Asian-American family down the street is actually dating an alien – how would you know? The film may be disturbing for more than just its bad acting and terrible special effects because, as JennAhn said in her blog, like American Beauty it forces the audience to rethink how it has previously perceived Asian Americans by using cues and settings that people are already very familiar with from pop culture.
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......
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......
weeeeird: JJ Chinois and Terminal USA
Both of these films were really interesting and thought-provoking. However, I feel like whatever message each one was trying to convey was so out there and so complex that I'm afraid it's reserved for a very small group of people (MCM concentrators?). With JJ Chinois, for example, I didn't even know that the imagery used was supposed to be Bruce Lee, or any impersonation of him, until I read the reading by Nguyen. After reading her analysis, I think JJ Chinois made a little more sense as to its purpose, but I still have a hard time grasping it.
Terminal USA was similarly confusing. Given the cheesy "Brady Bunch"-like music in many of the family scenes, it seems to be some sort of satire of the American sitcom family. I found it kind of annoying that not one character could get through one line of dialogue without sounding really weird. But I think what that manages to do is make it very clear that these stereotypes (both the Asian one of the nerd and the traditionally non-Asian one of the drug addict and pregnant teenager) are being performed. So I guess it exposes stereotypes as a performance and disassociates them from their racial associations...or something like that.
Terminal USA was similarly confusing. Given the cheesy "Brady Bunch"-like music in many of the family scenes, it seems to be some sort of satire of the American sitcom family. I found it kind of annoying that not one character could get through one line of dialogue without sounding really weird. But I think what that manages to do is make it very clear that these stereotypes (both the Asian one of the nerd and the traditionally non-Asian one of the drug addict and pregnant teenager) are being performed. So I guess it exposes stereotypes as a performance and disassociates them from their racial associations...or something like that.
What is Asian American Music?
I found a very interesting article on JSTOR that grapples with the question of what is Asian American music.
It's called "Between Notes: Finding Asian America in Popular Culture" by Oliver Wang, published in American Music, Vol 19. No. 4, (2001), pp 439-465.
You can find the article on JSTOR (I've tried to copy and paste the link but failed)
The author talks about a musicologist named Joseph Lam, who says, "Asian American music is not dependent on the text (e.g., lyrics, images, even melody, timbre, rhythm) or even a tradition of musical practice. Instead, Asian American music is so designated based on the context of production (who makes the music and why? as well as reception (how is the music used, how is it understood)."
So according to him, it is the combination of production and consumption that makes music Asian.
The author comments that Lam's definition aims to "establish a point of common reference that future discussions can work from--even if it is to deconstruct Lam's own theories," as supposed to serving as the canonical definition of what Asian American music is.
This definition and the article pretty much refute the argument I made in my previous blog because I placed the emphasis on the musical text rather than the people who perform and listen to the music. So, is Yo-Yo Ma's music Asian American? I still want to say no. He is Asian American but his music does not really have any race categories because it doesn't really belong to any race.
I still have the desire to stand by what I've said, but it is interesting to read a counter argument.
Terminal USA and JJ Chinois: "over-assimilation"?
I too, am a bit confused about the direction JJ Chinois was trying to take with the music video, but I do see that it goes hand in hand with Terminal USA in the shock value that it generates. It was confusing (and still kind of is) until I did some research on JJ Chinois, which unfortunately there isn’t much of, and realized the music video was about transgender roles in the media. Nevertheless, I think that it does spark the necessary curiosity for one to go out there and do the research to ultimately create more awareness about the taboo topic.
Taboo does seem to be the theme of this week’s videos as Terminal USA pretty much brought every ludicrous social “stigma” to the table, Asian American or not. I think it was interesting to shed light on such issues that are expressed as stigmas today. As they are generally discussed, one would say that homosexuality, drug abuse, and sex are not “wrong” per se, but rather quite natural and recurring themes of growing up, and in the case of homosexuality, merely one’s sexual preference. They do however create shame and disgrace in a more closed-minded model community, and I think that the sheer chaos and exaggeration in Terminal USA create a good contrast to the absurd expectations that people have of model citizens, or model minorities in this case. I found it interesting that the father alone, rather than both parents, played the role of the “perfect TV dad” as a NY times review puts it, and it added to the degeneracy of the family as a whole. Even as far as appearances and wardrobes go, the grandfather on his deathbed was the only character who did not have an exaggerated costume. That is to say he looked the most “normal” in everyday conventions.
On one hand, I see in Terminal USA the American Beauty appeal, of a seemingly normal family suburban family riddled with problems underneath it all. On the other hand, I think this film takes on the lens of a first generation Asian American parent, the grandfather in this case, mourning the corruption that the subsequent generations’ “American-ness” has created. Even the title of the film, Terminal USA and Kazumi’s girlfriend, who turns out to be an alien, imply that this family is a true representation of a suburban American family gone wrong. Yet there are many references to the family being Japanese, and it is even apparent in the names of some of the characters like Kazumi. There are a lot of issues to fork through in both the film and the music video, and it’s not as simple as an Asian American family struggling to assimilate anymore. Perhaps now we are dealing with Asian Americans who are “over-assimilated” that must reconcile their ethnic differences with the classically “American” problems they are dealing with.
Taboo does seem to be the theme of this week’s videos as Terminal USA pretty much brought every ludicrous social “stigma” to the table, Asian American or not. I think it was interesting to shed light on such issues that are expressed as stigmas today. As they are generally discussed, one would say that homosexuality, drug abuse, and sex are not “wrong” per se, but rather quite natural and recurring themes of growing up, and in the case of homosexuality, merely one’s sexual preference. They do however create shame and disgrace in a more closed-minded model community, and I think that the sheer chaos and exaggeration in Terminal USA create a good contrast to the absurd expectations that people have of model citizens, or model minorities in this case. I found it interesting that the father alone, rather than both parents, played the role of the “perfect TV dad” as a NY times review puts it, and it added to the degeneracy of the family as a whole. Even as far as appearances and wardrobes go, the grandfather on his deathbed was the only character who did not have an exaggerated costume. That is to say he looked the most “normal” in everyday conventions.
On one hand, I see in Terminal USA the American Beauty appeal, of a seemingly normal family suburban family riddled with problems underneath it all. On the other hand, I think this film takes on the lens of a first generation Asian American parent, the grandfather in this case, mourning the corruption that the subsequent generations’ “American-ness” has created. Even the title of the film, Terminal USA and Kazumi’s girlfriend, who turns out to be an alien, imply that this family is a true representation of a suburban American family gone wrong. Yet there are many references to the family being Japanese, and it is even apparent in the names of some of the characters like Kazumi. There are a lot of issues to fork through in both the film and the music video, and it’s not as simple as an Asian American family struggling to assimilate anymore. Perhaps now we are dealing with Asian Americans who are “over-assimilated” that must reconcile their ethnic differences with the classically “American” problems they are dealing with.
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