Author Archives: Erica Lee Tan

Extra Reporting

Posted on September 11, 2018 by | Leave a comment

This weekend I watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before which is a Netflix original film.Watching the movie made me think of our in class discussion of Crazy Rich Asians, which premiered the same week as To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I thought that it was interesting that both movies both featured an Asian American cast but one movie (Crazy Rich Asians) got more attention than the other.

Many of the films that we watch and discuss in class have to do with Asian American representation in media. I found To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to be a refreshing movie to watch because it was a movie that featured an Asian American lead that did not focus on racial issues surrounding the Asian American community. The film did shed light on the fact that the main character was obviously a different race (they do this by including a scene where one of the Asian actresses explains to a non-Asian actor that she is drinking a Korean yogurt drink that is commonly given to Korean kids as a snack) but it was a brief moment that didn’t distract from the plot line.

Seeing a Asian American actress play a role that is typically played by an American actress reminded me of the in class screening of Better Luck Tomorrow which was also a movie about a high school experience. While the plot in Better Luck Tomorrow centered around their experiences as Asian Americans in high school (which is different from the high school love story of To All the Boys I’ve Loved), both movies casted Asians in roles that were not typically given to Asian actors such as main lead, head cheerleader, and the jock. 

 

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Posted in Extra Reporting

Blog Post 4: Cyberspace, Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks

Posted on September 3, 2018 by | 2 Comments
  1. In “Cyberspace, Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks”, Rachel Rubin discusses how Asian Americans have used zines to redefine what it means to be an “Asian American”. Rubin uses the historical context of anti-immigration laws, mass immigration of Asians into the United States, and the growth of the Internet to describe the evolution of the term “Asian American”.
  2. In the article, Rubin talks about how “zine writers bolster the symbolic nature of ‘Asian American’ ” (pg. 5). Rubin recognizes that using the term “Asian American” is just “lumping together the dozens of ethnicities of the huge continent” (pg. 4). However, she also points out that the “Asian” part of the term “Asian American” is gaining more relevance as it is entering the mainstream and that the term can be used to the advantage of Asians by uniting people through their “shared experience as Asians in America” (pg.5). By embracing Asian American identity as a way to identify with other people who have shared the same experiences and struggles, rather than just with one’s own racial background, Asians are able to facilitate their own cultural empowerment through the sharing of their experiences on zines.
  3. A concept that Rubin introduces in her article is “new Asian immigration”. Rubin uses the idea of “new Asian immigration” to describe the return of mass Asian immigration into the United States following Hart Cellar Act, which liberalized the quota system. The “new immigration” was made up of two different groups of immigrants. The first group consisted of educated and skilled workers. They were the best of the best from countries such as India, China, Korea, and the Philippines. The second group consisted of low-skilled and poor immigrants. A majority of these immigrants were refugees from Northeast and Southeast Asia following the devastation of war. What sets the “new” immigrants apart from Asian immigrants who came a century earlier to work on the railroad is that they came to stay in the United States permanently. The “new” immigrants were being naturalized in large numbers bringing over extended family, forming new Asian communities and revitalizing the already existing ones.
  4. The “indie” aesthetic of the distribution of printed zines closely resembles the grassroots distribution strategy of Asian American films, such as “The Debut”, as described in John Fong’s article “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach”. In both the distribution of printed zines and Asian American films, the content producers (the filmmakers and authors) relied heavily on the Asian American community to be their audience and supporters. The zines and films were also produced in the same grassroots nature where they were driven by passion rather than profit.
  5. What would be the present-day equivalent to a cyberzine?

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Posted in Week 5 readings

Blog Post 3: “If we are Asian, then are we funny?”

Posted on August 27, 2018 by | 4 Comments
  1. In “If we are Asian, then are we funny”: Margaret Cho’s “All-American Girl” as the First (and Last?) Asian American Sitcom”, Sarah Moon Cassenelli discusses Margaret’s career playing the lead role in the short lived sitcom “All-American Girl”. She uses Margret’s memoir and comedy routine, “ I’m the One that I Want”, to describe the reasons for why the show was unsuccessful. Cassenelli argues that because the show was too focused on “ethnic authenticity” of the characters, the show was unable to succeed as a sitcom.
  2. “It is disturbing that others would ask Cho to try and alter her face, believing that the features she puts out in the world are not only undesirable but somehow fixable.” (pg.134). Before shooting the pilot of “All-American Asian”, Cho was asked to lose weight because her face was too full. It is not of unheard of for Hollywood to cast “thin leading ladies” so it is not surprising that Cho was asked to lose weight. What makes asking Cho to lose weight significant is the fact that it was to make her face slimmer so that her facial features would better match that of her character on the show. The producers of the show believed that because she was Asian her face could easily be altered to resemble the face of another Asian. This is an example of how producers of the sitcom put too much emphasis on the “ethnic authenticity” of the characters.
  3. A concept that Cassenelli introduced in her article is that the jokes in the show were not “so much stereotypical as stale”. Using the example of Mrs. Kim being compared to Yoko Ono, Casenelli calls the joke “stale” because it ignores the significance behind Yoko Ono’s fame. Yoko Ono is an Asian female in the entertainment industry who is widely known for her work in performance art and filmmaking. Rather than focusing on the fact that she is well known for her work rather than her ethnicity, the show uses her simply because she is a well known, Asian public figure. Other than the fact that both women were asian and wearing sunglasses, Mrs. Kim and Yoko Ono bare no resemblance to each other.
  4. Cho’s struggle with her physical appearance after being asked to lose weight reminded me of “Letter to my Sister” by Lisa Park from our first class. Both Park’s sister and Cho struggled to make themselves look like what society expected them to look like. Both their struggles with their physical appearance raises a question of racial representation in media and more specifically in Cho’s case on television.  

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Posted in Week 4 readings

Blog Post 2: Beyond Finishing the Game

Posted on August 20, 2018 by | 3 Comments

 

  1. In John Fong’s “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian America Grassroots Outreach”, he shows us how Asian American filmmakers have been able to overcome the obstacle of marketing and outreach through adopting an “aggressive grassroots strategy”. Instead of relying solely billboards and television commercials, Asian American films are using a community-focused marketing strategy in order to obtain box office numbers that are high enough to keep the films in theatres.
  2. “Mobilizing the student population, personal appeals to audiences by filmmakers and utilizing the growing worlds of Asian American media, would all allow filmmakers to reach audiences for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign.” (pg. 7)  One of the main challenges standing in the way of success for Asian American cinema is access – a way for the films to reach audiences. Because companies are hesitant to invest large amounts of money in releasing Asian American films, the budget for marketing and distribution of Asian American films is extremely low in comparison to Hollywood films. Asian American filmmakers are able to overcome this obstacle by going directly to the Asian American community to ask support. By adopting an “aggressive grassroots strategy” that is based on personal interactions with the community, the cost for marketing is cut significantly.
  3. A key concept that the author introduces in this article is community. In the article, Fong defines community as “something that they know they can rely on”. He believed that an Asian American filmmaker’s greatest resource is the Asian American community because they are reliable and cannot be bought. In order to obtain support from the community, Asian American filmmakers have developed a strategy of creating a pan-Asian campaign around the content in the film which encourages Asian Americans to see the film in order to become a part of the movement.
  4. I think that the recent release of the film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before goes against John Fong’s idea that Asian American films need to market themselves through the Asian American community in order to be successful. Although the film features an Asian American female lead, the advertising that I have seen for this film seems to follow the traditional marketing campaign for a teen rom-com. Despite the fact that the film does not use the “aggressive grassroots strategy” that Fong defines in his article, the film has received rave reviews. 

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Posted in Week 3 readings

Blog Post Week 2: Cold War Origins of Model Minority Myth

Posted on August 13, 2018 by | 4 Comments
  1. In Robert Lee’s “Cold War Origins of Model Minority Myth”, he argues that Asian-Americans were being labeled the “model minority” during the Cold War not because they were successful people but because they were “politically silent” and “ethnically assimilable”.
  2. “At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent on uplifting Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,00 Chinese Americans are moving ahead on their own with no help from anyone else  .” (151)
    1. Lee uses this quote from a U.S. News article to show how the success of Asian Americans as immigrants in the U.S. is overshadowed by the political issues of other minority groups. During the cold war African Americans led a civil rights movement demanding equal rights and opportunity and an end to Jim Crow segregation. The civil rights movement was supported by the President Johnson and members of his administration. In contrast during the cold war Asian Americans were not as politically involved out of fear of being deported and distrust of the government.  Despite receiving virtually no help from the government the Asian American community was still able to assimilate into American culture through high educational achievement, moving into good (white) neighborhoods, and interracial marriages to whites. Rather than being recognized for their self reliance and ability to assimilate without government intervention they are praised for not being as outspoken and troublesome as other minority groups.
  3. A key term that Lee introduces is model minority. The concept of a model minority is built upon the idea of minorities being “politically silent” and “ethnically assimilable”.
  4. In the last part of the reading Lee mentions how there is a “domestication of exotic sexuality” (179). He spends a great deal of time describing the dramatic shift in the portrayal of Asian women in American films during the Cold War. Rather than being the exotic mysterious women in films, Asian women are being portrayed as women who are “suitable for marriage and motherhood” (179). This made me think of the in-class screening of Slaying the Dragon, which is also about how the portrayal of women has changed since the silent film era. The movie shows how women go from being portrayed as the dragon lady, to the seductive and exotic Suzie Wong, then to the submissive wife of the 50’s. Both the movie and the reading indicate a change in representation of Asian Americans from exotic to acceptable in American films. 
  5. Why do Asian Americans (the minority) have to be the ones to be completely accommodating to America (the host society) by having to be the group to assimilate? Why can’t the host society be more accommodating?

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Posted in Week 2 readings