1 In his article, “How good it is to be a monkey: comics, racial for1mation, and American born Chinese”, which appears in An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal on March,2010, Min Hyoung Song explains that Comics, especially “American Born Chinese” which is written by Gene Luen Yang, could help us to consider that how difficult race study in US is. This is because the author thinks that comic’s combination of visual and textual is one of the important vehicle in order to realize race and racism. These problem could have changed such as more or less complicated with the passage of time.
2 One good example is just “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang. In his comics, we can see Chin-Kee, who is a cousin of Danny and he seems to embody the old-fashioned stereotype for Chinese. For example, he speaks English with strange accent, and he has slant-eyes, and buck teeth as well as Chinese character who was in propaganda illustration against Chinese Coolie in 1880s. Chin-kee basically invades and ruins Danny’s life, for instance Chin-kee has interested in Danny’s girlfriend and he is also depicted like cunning people as well as Fu Manchu. However, he embodies not only nineteenth-century’s stereotype but twentieth-century’s figure like earnest student. The readers could interpret him as not troublesome Chinese but might be an ordinarily teenage boy. “American Born Chinese ” is divided into three parts, and this Danny and Chin-kee’s story is one of them. These stories ultimately lead to one story and all of them is based on the cultural and social experience of Asian American, just as Chin-kee was initially depicted as a nuisance.
3 In this article, the author uses “racial information” as important term in his introduction. It is the way of thinking for racial problem defined by Omi and Winant. According to the author, they considered reinforcing inequality in society by interpreting specific physical features as racial in various everyday situations while Gilroy thinks experience of race minority as a failure example of assimilation. Gilroy also thinks that “simpler hatreds” makes these racial problem more acute rather than it is going to settle as the times advance. The author explains that comics, especially “American Born Chinese” has played an important role of making readers think this problem and showing them what kind of factor are there.
4 I would like to refer to one movie “Der Furher’s Face(1943)” by Disney during WW2. At the beginning of this animation, Donald Duck was forced to work under the control of The Nazis after Axis Powers won. This short movie is propaganda against Germany, Italiy, and Japan and animators drew these leaders face with malice. That is to say, Hitler who was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, Mussolini who was the prime minister of Italy, and Hirohito who was the emperor of Japan. The emperor face was look like Chin-Kee even though their race is different. I think that can be proof that Yang’s study drawing Asian people in US during the past two hundreds is quite faithful. Although China was not hostile country against US at that time and some movie which we watched in “Slaying the Dragon” depicted Chinese as good citizen, there was miscellaneous handling for Asians and the associated fixed stereotypes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy3T8V5G9c
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