Author Archives: Arielle Medina

1. In the article Apu’s Brown Voice: Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents, author Shilpa Dave mainly discusses the cultural narrative of Indian accents portrayed in “Brown Voice.” The most notable brown voice in the media comes from Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a recurrent character from the widely popular animated series on television, The Simpsons. Dave argues that the white actor that voices Apu with an Indian accent strengthens the characters personality and humor and The Simpsons utilizes Apu as a figure to represent real racial and immigration issues in the media. However, Dave notes that there is a real debate in the Indian American community that argues whether Apu, being the most notable South Asian American representation on television, is enhancing Indian popularity in the media or hindering chances of future Indian characters to appear in the media due to the fact that Apu is not voiced by an Indian American but rather a white person.

2. Apu from The Simpsons is a powerful character on television as Dave notes, “Apu is the only recurrent South Asian representation on television today, and is now a beloved popular icon” (315). However, why is Apu so popular and notable? To start Dave states that “the character of Apu offers an ideal case study to portray how South Asians are situated and understood in the popular American imagination” (316). The most distinguished feature of Apu is his voice which is practiced as what is now known as “brown voice.” Voice actor Hank Azaria gave Apu his Indian accent and thus “defined Apu and created not only a humorous speaker but a culturally popular and significant South Asian American representation on American television” (322). Dave discusses the unique nature of the Indian accent compared to other accents stating, “unlike other forms of Asian English often seen as broken English, Indian English has a unique phonetic signature in which meaning is indicated by which syllables are stressed in particular words” (317). Dave also emphasizes that the Indian accent is “foreign but understandable” (317). Although it may appear offensive in nature, the utilization of “brown voice” in The Simpsons is not targeted from critics as much due to the fact that it is practiced in an animation style. Dave notes that “because of the audience’s suspension of disbelief, animated series can often tackle issues and situations that would be unbelievable or inappropriate on live action sitcoms” (321). Animation is a powerful tool to create and visualize anything beyond imagination. Even the animators were self-aware of the controversy it may create when having a white man conduct an Indian accent stating that “the impression of a good joke trumped any concerns they might have had about the stereotype” (324). However, even outside of animations there are stereotypes that denote the appearance of Indian Americans stating, “people’s general perception that Indians speak English intelligibly (though not without an accent) amplifies the notion that all Indians are educated” (329). This perception of Indian Americans reinforces the common myth of the “model minority” that frequently prevails in the Asian community.

3. The main recurrent concept that is highlighted throughout this article is the term “brown voice.” Dave describes it as “the act of speaking in the Indian English accent associated with South Asian nationals and immigrants” (317). Hank Azaria who voices Apu from The Simpsons is the most notable individual of brown voice. Being a white actor, Azaria’s performance of an Indian accent is well received from critics and audiences alike. What makes the Indian accent unique and accessible to be well executed from just about anyone is its use of annunciation and vocals on particular words and phrases. Also, Dave notes that the Indian accent is “an accessible dose of foreignness rather than an irritating form of speaking that resembles American English” (317). It is well understood in English and does not give a sense of mispronunciations of words and phrases. It is unique in that it isn’t reliant on the arrangement of words when spoken but more dependent on the performance of the voice actor. How well the voice actor can speak and annunciate words enhances the conduct of the Indian accent. As Dave reiterates in his article, brown voice is unique, versatile, and can provide humor in certain situations.

4. Apu’s attempt at humor and satire is well received by audiences of The Simpsons despite the offensive nature of brown voice practiced by voice actor Hank Azaria. However, parallel to the controversial brown voice would be the controversial concept of “yellowface” which is defined as the portrayal of East Asians in American film and theater and other Western media. In yellowface, Asian characters portrayed on screen were played by white actors, often using makeup to approximate East Asian facial characteristics. Most notable films that depict the concept of yellowface were Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan. Swedish actor Warner Oland who played both Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan became an archetype of what became known as the “bad Asian” and the “good Asian” stereotype respectively. Fu Manchu was marked as a notorious figure during the time of the Yellow Peril and has become quite the controversial East Asian villain archetype from his fiendish design (most notably his mustache) and his faux Chinese name. He was distinctively depicted as cruel, cunning, sexual, and mystical; eventually becoming a stereotype of East Asian villains in films. Charlie Chan on the other hand was a fictional Chinese star detective. Although he represented the positive stereotypes of Asians in films, his Caucasian actor was still in controversial yellowface. He taped up his eyebrows and drank a few drinks to make his speech more halting in order to portray Asian characteristics on screen. Both characters were not well received in their performance of yellowface as Apu was in brown voice however the difference being Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan were physically present on screen deliberately performing Asian characteristics from the way they dressed to how they spoke. Hank Azaria on the other hand is not physically featured on screen and is more representative of the embodiment of Apu’s voice. Although all three are performing heightened Asian characteristics from the standpoint of a white person, Apu’s performance successfully avoids the profound criticism that the likes of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan have received in the media. Through clever and satirical humor to even cultural and spiritual references, Apu’s performance in The Simpsons allows the likes of brown voice to be acknowledged in the media of today. On a side note, Springfield Heights Institute of Technology gave me quite a good laugh in Dave’s article.

1. In the memoir I’m The One That I Want, author Margaret Cho uncovers the true narrative of Hollywood film producers and executives regarding Asian American representation in the media (in this case, representation in comedy) and with Asian American actors. Although the television sitcom All-American Girl had good intentions being that it would be the first Asian-American family on television, Cho’s struggle to appeal to both the Hollywood industry for giving her the opportunity to star in this revolutionary sitcom and her own heritage being a Korean woman highlights how disingenuous the film industry can be when it to comes to making shows like these that are supposed to set a good example for even better and proper representations of Asian Americans on television in the future. By producing this memoir that narrates the abuse and misconduct Cho experienced during the early days of filming her sitcom, Cho exposes the true intentions of the media and Hollywood industry as being greedy and exploitive of Cho’s “Asian” background in order to appeal to a wider audience.

2. Cho’s first challenge was proper representation on Television. In her memoir she recounts the first time she realized that Television lacked proper representation of Asian Americans stating, “one of my earliest memoires is the day I realized that I was not white, and therefore not like the people I saw on TV” (103). Due to a lack of a role model, Cho believed she could become the role model she wanted to see on Television when she was younger. This memory inspired her to accept the deal of being the main star of the first Asian-American family sitcom stating, “The network deal made me think my life had been saved” (104). However, this realization of stardom quickly went downhill when Cho had to face her next obstacle, her appearance. The first major piece of abuse Cho experienced during her early days of planning the sitcom was when she received a phone call from Gail, the head of the production company, who said “the network has a problem with you. They are concerned about the fullness of your face” (107). This decision from the network executives for Cho to lose weight severely damaged both Cho’s self-esteem and her mental state which eventually led to her being hospitalized for kidney failure. The weight problem got so severe that Cho even said herself “I wanted to be thin more than I wanted to be alive” (114). Not only was weight severely affecting Cho’s lifestyle and health, the backlash she received from critics and her own community from her own sitcom also affected Cho’s mental state stating, “rejection from the Asian-American community was hard to take mostly because the show had been universally panned by critics, panned by every major publication” (129). Due to these experiences Cho felt like she lost her identity on who she really was, questioning “the show was not me, but I thought it was” (131).

3. A concept that Cho focused on throughout her memoir was the idea of authenticity. To be authentic was to be unique, one of its kind, and have an undisputed origin. When something or someone is authentic, they are perceived to genuine and true. This idea of being genuine was one of the backlash that Cho received from her Asian American community. Since Cho was playing a rebellious teenage daughter who conformed to the American society while her mother and brother were still heavily influenced by traditions and culture, the audience didn’t see Cho as being a proper representation of Asian Americans but rather a character that was formed from exaggerated ideas and the media rather than society itself. It got to the point where Cho was also questioning herself what authenticity means whether it would be her on stage doing stand-up comedy or her on set playing a character that she saw as similar to her life.

4. This concept of Cho’s sitcom All-American Girl reminds me of the story of the film Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), directed by Justin Lin. In this film, the main Asian American characters exhibit typical yet exaggerated western high school behaviors such as partying, drinking, drugs, and academic decathlons. The film later turns into a gangster-type style film involving violence, death, and guns. Although the story is quite different from Cho’s sitcom of being Americanized in a conservative Korean household, the idea of interacting with other Asian American characters in a western setting in a comedic fashion is what draws the two stories into being related to one another. Both films have Asian American casts performing comedic acts due to their ethnicity (the main character Ben from Better Luck Tomorrow being described as the “token Asian” on the basketball team and Kim from the sitcom All-American Girl dating a white man and trying to introduce him to her Korean mother). The film Better Luck Tomorrow personally did a better job at using the Asian stereotypes for comedy than the sitcom All-American Girl but both still had a way of portraying an Asian American cast for comedy.

1. In the essay Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema, University of London’s School of Oriental and African studies and lecturer of Chinese studies Margaret Hillenbrand, highlights the struggles of Asian American masculinity in cinema as a lack of identity and frustrating misrepresentations of their characteristics. Hillenbrand describes the representation of Asian American males in films as secondary characters doing laundry, being in an academic decathlon, or even being in kung-Fu clubs. These stereotypes of being academically inclined to school or practicing martial arts portrays Asian American males as being either one or the other with no in between. However, Hillenbrand utilizes the film Better Luck Tomorrow, directed by Justin Lin, as a way to highlight how an Asian American film in Hollywood can portray both the exaggerated stereotypes of Asians in a satirical fashion while also highlighting the problems of racial engagement that perpetuate throughout the Hollywood cinematic industry.

2. A major issue that Hillenbrand reiterates throughout her essay is the struggle for proper representation of Asian American males in films. She states that due to the occurrence of identity politics in films, “the result is a frustrating impasse, in which Asian American masculinity is overrepresented in some quarters, yet denied the most basic representational rights in others” (55). This imbalance of representation and lack thereof depicts the sense of confusion in the media about how Asian American males are to act in films making them more likely to be criticized due to the lack of rigid guidelines. However, Hillenbrand argues that the film Better Luck Tomorrow “bashes stereotypical representation in order to ‘tell the truth’ about the model minority” (60). The film contains multiple layers of cliché Highschool trends such as the pressure of prom night, partying, drinking, doing drugs, the main girl of interest being a high achieving cheerleader, and the bullies being stereotypical jocks. However, with the main characters being Asian and acting out stereotypical western High School patterns often seen in films aimed towards teenagers, Hillenbrand states that “the awkwardness with which Ben and his gang act ‘white’ as a joke not on them but on those audiences that prefer ethnicity to be served straight up and stereotyped” (66). This commentary on the audience’s preferences of viewing such stereotypes on films emphasizes Hillenbrand’s point on the power of the parody in Hollywood. She states that “it’s the strategic use of ‘bad’ parody – the Asian American who can never fit in however hard they try – is all about this pernicious inconsistency” (68). The film was protected from much harsher criticism from viewers because the film was garnered as satirical and a parody, meaning it was not meant to be taken seriously yet it exists as layers of racial commentary on Hollywood’s portrayal of Asian Americans in the media.

3. A recurrent key term Hillenbrand references throughout her article is the term “mimicry”. By definition, mimicry is the action or art of imitating someone or something, typically in order to entertain or ridicule. In this case, the film Better Luck Tomorrow somehow manages to do both in the form of a parody. The films apparent cast of Asians struggling to assimilate into the western High School norms becomes the center for entertainment as they attempt to simulate gangster-like behavior that ends up getting them caught up in a whole mess of conflict and combat whilst simultaneously portraying the blatant real racism that is projected towards Asians in society. Another definition of mimicry is in terms of evolutionary biology which defines it as a similarity of one organism, usually an animal, to another that has evolved because the resemblance is selectively favored by the behavior of a shared signal receiver that can respond to both. This may also apply to, in general, the struggle for Asians to “blend in” into an American society by changing the way they dress and behave in order to avoid standing out be and seen as “foreign”.

4. The struggle for Asian American males in finding their own identity in an American society bears similarity to the 1961 film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway musical the Flower Drum Song. In this film, the lead Asian American males Sammy Fong and Wang Ta both struggle to really identify themselves as Asian Americans due to their conflicting natures in both the entertainment industry and within their own families. Sammy Fong is the owner of the Celestial Garden nightclub in San Francisco (similar to the real Forbidden City nightclub) and is involved in an arranged marriage to the illegal immigrant Mei Li, however, he wants to break both the marriage contract arranged by his mother and the tradition of arranged marriages in order to pursue his true love Linda Low who is his leading showgirl in his nightclub. Similar to Sammy Fong’s situation, Wang Ta also wants to break the tradition of arranged marriages by also pursuing the love and affection of Linda Low, however, he is obstructed by his strict father, Master Wang, due to his obedience to Chinese culture and rejection of the ideals of American society. In the end however, Sammy Fong and Linda Low as well as Wang Ta and Mei Li all get married in order to display that true love and affection should not be decided by someone else. In replacement of the western High School scene present in Better Luck Tomorrow, Flower Drum Song portrays the more cultural and love drama aspect of American society while also still displaying the struggle of Asian American males in conforming to American ideals, especially with the topic of marriage.

1. In Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s article, Assimilation, Parks argues that the term “assimilation” for Asian American refers to many different definitions ranging from the integration into the so-called “White America” to the inevitable progression of societal standards and racial differences. Throughout the article, Park illustrates the representations of Asian communities in America through their social status, marriage rates, and even educational benefits in order to highlight the significant cultural differences that perpetuate within communities deemed “foreign” or “outside”.

2. One definition of assimilation that Park mentions in her article is from another article titled “The Conservation of Races” by W.E.B. Du Bois where he claims that assimilation “was understood as meaning to absorb into white America” (14) and also argued that “racial difference was not the problem; it was the racism” (14). Du Bois argues that because racism and the rejection of other races intermingling with white culture exists, assimilation is more of conforming to the ideals of whiteness under the assumption of racial inferiority. Another definition of assimilation that Park mentions in her article is from Robert E. Park who “viewed assimilation as a solution to racial difference, which he understood as a social problem” (14). In this definition, assimilation is the balancing of racial differences that are apparent in society through the interaction with one another. With two seemingly contradicting definitions from W.E.B. Du Bois ad Robert E. Park, the term assimilation is still being assessed as to whether or not it is helpful or harmful to society.

3. A key concept that Park references in her article is the idea of Asian Americans being perceived as the “model minority”. A model minority is defined as a demographic group whose members are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average. Although it may seem to compliment the achievements of Asians in an American society, it is actually quite a harmful stereotype of Asians. Park denies this concept and denounces it as just merely a myth, however, it is still widely conceptualized in society due to the statistics present in research. Park accounts for the research compiled by the Pew Research Center which claims that “Asian Americans are models of assimilation, enjoying high educational achievement, good (white) neighborhoods, and interracial marriages to whites” (16). As Parks states, “the privileged Asian Americans of today are not the same Asian Americans of a century ago” (16). The positive and high-achieving representations of Asians obscures the history of poverty and low-wage laborers of the past.

4. In the Forbidden City documentary, the Asian American performers all experienced a sense of assimilation into American cultures through the entertainment business (particularly in the night club industry). The perception of “Chinese dolls” in reference to the beauty displayed by Chinese women and the idea of exploring “exotic” and “foreign” land in reference to the cultural theme of the night club was merely just the performers putting on an act in order to appeal to westerners who have never experienced Asian cultures or are interested in viewing Asian Americans in a predominately white society. In order to survive and thrive in the entertainment and night club industry, the performers of the Forbidden City nightclub had to display tremendous acts of singing, dancing, and acting in order to even be acknowledged for their talent among other white performers due to the predominately harmful stereotype of Asians only being able to excel in academics. Although they were criticized by even their own family and communities for breaking traditions and conforming to the ideals and societal standards of America, the performers were truly pursuing their passion in order to inspire other Asian communities to not only be able to succeed as an Asian American but to also negate harmful stereotypes and principles that would obstruct their own goals.