Author Archives: Gary Zhou

Blog Post #4 – Week 5 Readings: Cyberspace Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks

Posted on September 4, 2018 by | 6 Comments

 

  1. In “Cyberspace Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks,” Rachel Rubin, the author, writes about the use of zines by Asian Americans to break stereotypes about Asian Americans, such as “submissive woman or de-sexed man”. In addition, young Asian Americans, especially females, have found zines to be great for self-expression and self-definition.
  2. Cyberzines or e-zines are electronic zines that can be distributed much more quickly and easily than typical zines. Normal zines are photo-copied and hand distributed, which takes more time and manpower than publishing a zine on a website, such as a personal blog. Hand-distributed zines are limited by the number of physical copies, while “the potential audience is practically limitless” for electronic zines (12). This makes the Internet a cheap tool that can achieve the same goal of breaking stereotypes.
  3. A key term in this article is zine. A zine is similar to a magazine, which is a word that is much more commonly used. In fact, reading this article was the first time I’ve seen the word zine. The differences between a magazine and zine is zines are self-publicized works that are usually reproduced by photo copy. Whereas, magazines are groups of zines that are published by a large company. A better comparison of zines would be pamphlets, leaflets, or brochures; all of which are short works/articles, usually about one subject.
  4. While writing about cyberzines in this blog post, I started to think about and question the effectiveness of using the Internet to distribute zines. In my “Blog Post #2 – Week 3 Readings: Beyond Finishing The Game,” I wrote about the grassroots strategy of self-distribution and community for advertising about Asian American films. Distribution via community, through film festivals and events at campuses, was noted to be more effective than advertising by big companies. While the Internet is a cheap tool to distribute cyberzines, it contradicts what I learned from the grassroots strategy.

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Posted in Week 5 readings

Blog Post #3 – Week 4 Readings: If we are Asian, then are we funny?

Posted on August 28, 2018 by | 6 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,” the author, Sarah Moon Cassinelli writes about a girl named Margaret Cho. While starring in an Asian American sitcom, Cho had not so pleasant experiences, such as being pushed to follow Asian stereotypes. While the show ultimately failed, Cho later wrote in her memoir, I’m the One that I want, about who was actually being racist. Was it the audience who asked for authenticity by using stereotypes, or was it the person who reinforced the stereotypes by following them on the show. In her memoir, Cho answers saying “the real racism is wrapped up

    in the audience’s expectation of an “authentic” Asian American family, especially in consideration to sitcom comedy (132).”
    2. The producers of the sitcom, All-American Girl, wanted Cho to stress Asian American culture while being relate-able to the audience, leading to physical and mental unhealthiness. Cassinelli writes, “The show’s demands are also made visible on the body of Margaret Cho, and have subsequently influenced her body of work (133).” The producers had requested Cho to lose weight, saying “

    I don’t care what you have to do. We have two weeks before we shoot the pilot (133).”
    3. A key term from the article is “model minority,” which was also brought up in a previous reading (Week 2 – Assimilation). The model minority is “commonly associated with high academic achievements and upward socioeconomic mobility (138).” This is very similar to the idea of “model minority” from Assimilation, which was high educational achievement and living in good (white) neighborhoods. However, Cassinelli adds “obedience, self-control, and individualism” to the idea of model minority.
    4. Reading this article reminded me of Panda Express, an Americanized Chinese food chain that no one would say is even close to authentic Chinese food. Most, if not all, the entrees served at Panda Express doesn’t even exist in China’s vast styles of dishes.

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Posted in Week 4 readings

Blog Post #2 – Week 3 Readings: Beyond Finishing The Game

Posted on August 20, 2018 by | 1 Comment
  1. John Fong, author of Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach, argues that many recent Asian American films use an “aggressive grassroots strategy” to reach Asian American audiences. This means that they utilized community-focused marketing, instead of using billboards and television commercials, to advertise for the films. Community-focused marketing proved to be a more effective, low-budget strategy because “big budget companies refuse to
    invest dollars into figuring out how to market to Asian Americans” (4).
  2. In 2007, a second film by Justin Lin, a co-founder of the grassroots strategy, used a “more extensive grass roots campaign” (8). For that film, Finishing The Game, Lin and the cast spent several weeks to promote the film. They visited many college campuses, such as: UC Davis, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Stanford, and held events with community organizations like the Chinese Historical Society. The campaigning led to the generation of great word of mouth, which is “magical, elusive marketing gold” and made up for the limited resources of the film’s distributor, IFC Films (9). With the help of the grassroots strategy, the opening weekend figures for the film were very good.
  3. In the article, Fong introduces the grassroots strategy, which also ties in with self-distribution and community. Instead of relying on big companies to market and advertise for the films via billboards and television commercials, the grassroots strategy utilizes community to spread the word. When the cast appears at events and school campuses to advertise for the film they are in, it shows that the cast are dedicated to their film. Additionally, the grassroots strategy has proved to be more efficient than television commercials and billboards, while staying low budget.
  4. The Asian American International Film Festival is held every summer in New York. The first festival was organized by the ACV, Asian CineVision, in 1978, featuring 46 of the best Asian and Asian American films over a span of three days. The ACV is a non-profit media arts organization that was founded in 1975 by several grassroots activists whose goal was to promote and preserve Asian and Asian American media. This is a ver

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Posted in Week 3 readings

Blog Post #1 – Week 2 Readings: Assimilation

Posted on August 13, 2018 by | Leave a comment
  1. In the article, Assimilation, by Lisa Sun-Lee Park, she begins by introducing the word ‘assimilation’ and the word’s importance to society. She talks about the varying definitions of the word, depending on different authors. The general definition of assimilation is to copy or become something. In this particular example, Asian Americans, being a minority group, attempts to blend into the dominant, white-American culture. However, cultural assimilation is unnatural and difficult.
  2. The first example that Lisa Park provides is an article by W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races.” The article Du Bois argued that assimilation was unnecessary because “racial difference” is not the problem. Instead, the problem is racism and the thought that some races were inferior, while others are superior. He says, “there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop (14).”
  3. An important concept that Park brings up is “model minority myth (16).” She states the idea that Asian Americans being the “model minority” or ideal minority is false. According to the Pew Research Center, Asian Americans have made immense progress since a century ago and are the minority group to most likely marry non-Asians, making them the ideal models of assimilation. They “enjoy high educational achievement, good (white) neighborhoods, and interracial marriages to whites,” but, not included in the research is, many Asian Americans still live in poverty and experience racism (16). Additionally, the research only focuses on the six largest and wealthiest subgroups of Asian Americans; Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. This makes the comparison, to the low-wage Asian immigrants from a century before, unfair.
  4. In the documentary “Forbidden City,” there are young Asian Americans girls, who forgo traditional Asian culture by working at a nightclub. They wear very little compared to the tradition of “covering up.” This is an example of assimilation of American culture. While the performances at the nightclub gained traction with white Americans, it eventually lost it popularity due to Asians slowly losing their supposed “exoticism” and little to no change of the shows.

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Posted in Week 2 readings