Author Archives: Haruka Fujino

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

1  In Sarah Moon Cassinelli’s document “If we are Asian, then are we funny? :Margaret Cho’s All-American Girls as the First (and Last?) Asian American Sitcom”, the author argued that how Asian American have been portrayed stereo-typically in show referring Margaret Cho’s minor “I’m the One that I Want(2001)” , her sitcom of the same title, and her television show ”All-American Girl(1994).” In these comedies, characters showed what “ethnic authenticity” is to “authentic” Asian American family whose expectation might have wrapped the real racism after watching them even though these comedies dealing with everyday subject matter for audience

2    “Mom, Dad, This is Kyle” is one of the episodes of “All-American Girl” which broadcasted on 14 September 1994, and Stuart who is Margaret’s older brother appeared in this story. He is an obedient, successful person, and works as a doctor. When this TV series was broadcast, Jonathan Friedman argued that Asian American is the group that became the model minority after the Jew did. For this reason, Stuart embodied model minority, giving viewers a stereotypical image of the traditional Asian American family even though Margaret said “Stuart’s American!”(Sarah P.139)

3   In this article, the author used “authentic” Asianness as important key terms. She said “authentic Asinanness means the audience is not given enough non-racial material to create a relationship with the characters.” (Sarah P.132) In fact, stereotypical characters and Asian American family’s image helped to attract audience. Margert Cho and executives expressed conflicts of common mother and daughter as a joke, which meant a conflict of conflict as to whether to accept or reject assimilation of culture as a consequence. Therefore, Margaret Kim was plagued by the gap between herself as a true American and as a Korean girl even though her fashion and style is like an American teenage girl.

4  　The reason why Margaret had to lose weight for television comes from the idea of ​​Orientalism rather than Assimilation. According to Edward Said and his book ”Orientalism(1978)”, Orientalism is largely formed by “ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority. ”(Said P.42) It is problematic because it’s western style for dominating restructuring and having authority over the orient. It is also pointed out that the women who are in the countries and cultures recognized as being inferior are depicted as sexually exploitable women. For example, Orientalistic viewpoints are seen in Harem, Geisha, Miss Saigon and Disney movie Pocahontas. I think the producer ignored Margaret’s intention and ordered weight loss to protect this image was obsessed with this dominative idea regardless of his realization.

1 In Johnfong’s article ”Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach,”,he shows us that how Asian American’s filmmakers confront the challenges of attracting people using many films created from 2000 to 2007.Since Asian American’s culture and its movie are not popular with companies which invest money in movie project,  companies sometimes expected this project may not pay off and refused to invest it. Therefore, filmmakers have to make every effort to “reach the eyeballs by people”and encourage grassroots in their community to support it by community-focused marketing. This marketing method brought them success in recent years.

2 Gene Cajayon made and released “THE DEBUT” in 2001. This movie and its marketing method is a good example to discover how effective the approach to community is. This movie was targeted at Filipino population. Cajayon and producer prepared massive e-mails, postcards, and T-shirts and gave audiences to chance that they were able to meet film’s stars. While “THE DEBUT” achieved huge success by this method, Asian American community became more sensitive to these movie.When filmmakers advertised the new movie “BETTER LUCK TOMORROW”, they paid attention to this social phenomenon,and spread not only this movie but also the definition of ”cool” which they tried to express.

3 An important term the author argued is “grassroots .” Grassroots usually means that ordinary people in society or community rather than the leaders or people who make trend or fashion. By using these marketing method and attract grassroots, Asian American’s movie have aimed to become more popular as a trend that came up the bottom of the community, rather than a dominant one that was pressed as mainstream.

4   I think the movie version of “Crazy Rich Asians(2018)” shows exactly how people who work on Asian American movies face to these problems to us. This movie is a story about one Chinese American woman who suffered from a fact that her boyfriend is super rich man and their difference of backgrounds in Singapore. I felt it is remarkable point that Asian actors are playing almost all of the main characters following the original novel by Kevin Kwan. Because this movie prove that Asian main characters can yield a large profit if it hits in Hollywood. For the promotion of this movie, Asian Americans working in Silicon Valley have purchased tickets and distributed them free to youth Asian Americans as part of the #goldopen campaign. Due to this attempt, Deadline reported that this movie is expected to sell approximately 30 million dollars in the first five days. The high box-office revenue of first week will attract public attention especially non-Asian people. The author of this article mentioned this phenomenon as “it is still to be seen how these efforts [invest or publicity] will pay off, through first weekend figures for the film have been very healthy in each of the sites the film has opened in.”(Johnhong 9) I think that the #goldopen campaign method will be used more and more to boost movies focused on minorities groups,for instance it was conducted for Asian American youth in this movie and it was also conducted for African American youth in Black panther from Marvel. Because consumers and audiences are sensitive to the trends which was created by media and dominance, and movie maker can get people once they break into the mainstream.

Reference: https://deadline.com/2018/08/crazy-rich-asians-jon-m-chu-opening-weekend-box-office-phenomenon-1202448078/

1 In Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s “Assimilation,” she argued the term of “assimilation” and its definition using some authors Views. In this chapter, Assimilation means the ethnic minority culture forced to change into majority ,more specifically, paying attention to racial formation.
The first person she mentioned to is Du Bois, who claim Assimilation in US demands whiteness.However, Robert E Park thought Assimilation will become a solution for social and racial problem. That is to say, Assimilation is essential events for US society where many immigrants live beyond the barrier of discrimination and prejudice.And also there is a view from Sociologist Richard Alba and Victor Nee. They repudiated “legitimacy of assimilation” for domination and thought that it helps us to deepen mutual understanding among races.

2 One question of assimilation that Park shows us is “assimilation into what?”
Du Bois thinks the word of assimilation assumes that the culture of other ethnic groups such as Asian Americans will change to white American culture. For example, even if one Asian American is from United State and can speak English as native speaker, that person will be treated as outsiders from American society. Contrasting Bois, Aihwa Ong states it helps promote Asian americans develop in social and economic objectives.

3 Park introduced the term “model minority myth” in this article. It refers to Asian American people who is minority group but has success in society. For instance, they get high salary, have an advanced academic background, and can get married to white person, such as Priscilla Chan who is married to Mark Zuckerberg. So the myth and stereotype has come up because US society think Asian American is the good example of assimilation and other ethnic group have to follow them. Even though model minority myth looks it has positive aspect, there is also a negative aspect that ignores the existence of Asians suffering from low income and racial discrimination. In fact, Park shows us that the model minority myth only applies to the six Asian races that seems to be successful in US and the incident that white supremacists kill Sikhs has also occurred.

4 As with myths of ethnic minority models, American society may impose a specific impression such as sexy, or exotic on Asian American. I think “Slaying The Dragon” which is a documentary movie we watched in class is a good example for this problem. Nancy Kwan played a role of Suzie Wong who was a famous prostitute in “The world of Suzie Wong.(1960) ” This character came from the image of “China Doll” and Suzie was depicted as ”good”Asian woman who is innocence, docile, and sexy. In addition to “The World of Suzie Wong,” we can watch images of such a stereotyped Asian woman from “Sayonara.(1954)”.This story depicted the tragic love between US soldiers and Japanese geisha girl which was taboo at that time. Moreover, once the relationship between Asian countries and the United States changes, the image of Chinese and Japanese also changes easily.Like the problem of assimilating into white,  the United States is neglecting the identity as an Asian and also its society is pressing the expectation and impression of what Asians should be, and I felt that Asians were deprived of freedom of self-expression.