Post #2: Asian American Grassroots

Posted on August 20, 2018 by by | 1 Comment
  1. In the article, “Beyond Finishing The Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach” by author John Fong, the main problem/question articulated is how do Asian American films make their way to success, despite all the obstacles. John makes it very clear that access is the biggest challenged faced upon Asian American films. To be more specific, “finding a way for the films that are being made…to reach the eye balls of people.” is something that was overcome by John’s main argument. (Pg. 3) His main argument was that a sense of community, a bit of old-school, innovative distribution methods, and a period of change has brought the Asian American film industry to an exponential growth track.
  2. In the article, John states that “companies…are reluctant to invest dollars in releasing a film in a marker that they don’t know much about”. (Pg.3) But later on, he acknowledged the fact that community was a “tool and resource” to work around this obstacle. (pg.3) This argument holds strong merit due to the notion that members of the film helped spread the word of their film to an audience the film was already intended for. This compatibility in return helped spread the word to an appealed crowd. Second, the use of an old-school method, previously used by African American, helped solidify trust into the Asian American film industry. This method used something called mail newsletters that “would alert folks to when Asian American films were opening in theaters”. (pg.5) This proved to be successful as it not only helped Asian American films make more profit, but it elongated the number of weeks that those films stayed in the box office. And lastly, as John’s argument claims, a period of change, a change in which how Asian American films were viewed, continue the down bringing of long standing societal rejection of this these films. Films like Better Luck Tomorrow and The Debut led the way and created paths that “many other films… would follow.” (Pg.7) These films popularized the Asian American films in addition to laying the groundworks on approaches films’ ads and promotions are spread.
  3. One of John’s keywords is “grassroots.” Whether it’s used to describe communities or “aggressive…strategies” the word holds more meaning than its definition: the most basic level of an activity. To John grassroots means that Asian American movies don’t need the exclusive opportunities other films receive. It means that the most basic tools like email newsletter and a deep connection among its community is just as effective or even more effective than other means of ads and promotions money can buy. It comes back to the idea that less is more. A second keyword is community. Like previously said, John goes back to the core fundamentals to which community is one of them. Community is a bondage of people that support one another and held together by common things. By understanding this John is able to see that Asian American films can succeed with a strong community and even serve as a platform to reach for more success.
  4. John shows how Asian American films struggled and later succeeded. He along the way introduces films like Better Luck Tomorrow that serves as an example to illustrate the influence and paths created for Asian American filmmakers. This is related to the article “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian American Cinema” by Margaret Hillenbrand where the author goes more in depth with the film Better Luck Tomorrowand its struggles in the industry. Margaret tells how Asian American films suffered. One reason being that its content would often not sync up with the expectations of the profitable-making movie companies’ ideas. These companies that distributed movies expected films that reaffirmed the stereotypes of Asian Americans. This inevitably put Asian filmmakers in a place where they either have to make films acceptable to the companies or make films with low grossing income. Margaret reveals how Better Luck Tomorrow got around this. The film used parody to show the confirming stereotypes of the time but the parody itself presented the stereotypes as less truthful. This allowed Asian American films to overcome the struggle of being rejected, as both John and Margaret acknowledged in their article, and to continue the process of the growing acceptance of these kinds of films.
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