Blog Post Week 3: Asian American Success through Grassroot Strategies
- In the Center for Asian American Media CAAM article “Beyond Finishing The Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach” by John Fong discusses the topic of accessibility of Asian American cinema. Compared to other cinematic projects, Asian American cinema lacks the funds to launch large-scale marketing campaigns to entice viewers into theaters due to the lack of large investors. The lack of resources for ordinary marketing and outreach techniques has led to the Asian American cinema community’s use of other out of the box methods to get build an audience. Fong goes into depth on how the use of grass root outreach methods and community involvement have become the primary methods of promoting Asian American projects. Fong then articulates the success of these methods by describing the success of 3 Asian American movies from the mid-2000’s.
- Fong presents popular Asian American Films that were successful in theaters due to the use of grass root and community involvement. Included in these examples are 2001’s “The Debut” and 2002’s “Better Luck Tomorrow”. The Debut a Fil-Am independent movie drew crowds due to the clever timing of presentations, community outreach and the release of the film. While “using an almost exclusively grassroots, self-distribution strategy, it grossed over $1 million in the box office” (Fong). The film also attributes its success to the work of the producers and director spending weeks before the release conducting meetings and presentations in the Filipino community and other on the street strategies to inform the community. This lead to the team using this strategy from city to city allowing the film to become a success. The Debut’s success allowed for an increased demand for Asian American cinema which was filled by the 2002 film “Better Luck Tomorrow”. Better Luck Tomorrow took the strategies of The Debut and applied an additional aspect, the connection factor in which Asian American youth supported the film to develop a sense of identity and community through the viewing and understanding of the film. These films have become the launching point in which Asian American Films reach their audiences and profit through low budget nontraditional marketing campaigns.
- To understand the problem Fong discusses access to Asian American cinema the concept of the industries reluctance to invest in these films is a critical barrier that must be overcome. The lack of support from studios stems from the uncertainty and unknown outcome synonymous with the Asian American Film community, the lack of absolute popularity leads the industry to stay with previously viable film genres than gambling on jumpstarting the Asian American Film scene. The lack of studio support leads to the use of other strategies to market these films leading to the key term “Grassroot”. Grassroot is defined as the basic level of an activity or organizations, or the ordinary people regarded as the main body of an organization or group. Grassroot in terms of the article pertains to the use of outreach strategies that use a low budget, high involvement of the production team to conduct low-level tasks that reach the primary audience.
- In terms of the current climate of Asian American cinema, the ideas brought forward by Fong are still prevalent. In the second photo of the article depicted is Dante Basco a prominent Asian American actor known for his roles in Hook as “Rufio” and from Avatar the Last Airbender as “Zuko”. Dante also employs similar grass root strategies to fund his film projects as well as support other Asian American films. An example of this is the support for the film “Crazy Rich Asians” many prominent Asian actors including Dante have taken to the streets and social media to persuade the community and their followers to support studio produced Asian American films.
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