Author Archives: Liu Yang

1. In Shilpa Dave’s “Apu’s Brown Voice Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents”, the author discusses the presence and performance of South Asian voices and accents in American culture and the meaning of the term “brown voice”. In order to demonstrate, Shilpa refers to the character Apu performed on the television show “The Simpsons”. Apu represents an Indian immigrant presence, and his brown-voice indicates the racial difference between Americans. The article states the importance of animated characters as an ideal case to study vocal accents with a deeper thinking of racial performance and stereotype, and shows how Indian Americans challenge and expand the privileged positions of South Asians.
2. “Apu’s flawed attempt to impersonate an American with a celebrity accent attaches him to an American cultural history and hence to an American citizenship. But to the audience this is a humorous scene because we know Apu is not culturally American”[315]. This is an example of ethnic assimilation and it represents the stereotype of South Asians’ voice and act. Because American audiences expect him to speak English with Indian accent, although Apu has a great American celebrity accent, which also help us understand racial and ethnic performance in the large realm of animated cartoons. “Many middle-class Indians are educated in English-speaking schools where all subjects are taught in English. However, there are a multitude of accent variations. So although it would be more appropriate to think of Indian English as an inflected version of English that more closely resembles British English or Black English, American culture perceives South Asians talking with the accent of a non-native speaker”[318]. This is another example of brown voice was understood as a cultural difference. It is obvious that Indians were trying to integrate into American society, and Indian accents imply a model minority. However, the main stream of American society just regarded them as successful foreigners. Thus, brown voice became a maker of cultural subjectivity.
3. A key term that the author introduces in the article is “Brown Voice”. Brown voice exposes the flaws of being cast as a privileged or model minority. For example, Hank Azaria’s vocal performance of brown voice becomes a syllable, so when people saw the accent emerging from Azaria’s mouth in an American serial, people would feel uncomfortable, because the face and the voice did not match. Thus, South Asians are not evolving in roles on American television. Meanwhile, the role of Apu and brown voice created a stereotype and ethnicity beyond the visual.
4. This article reminds me of the current situation of Hong Kong serials. Hong Kong serials all speak Cantonese, and Hong Kong serials were well received by Chinese audiences almost 20 years ago. However, due to the lack of originality, limited resources such as capital and talent resources, it is not difficult for Hong Kong to produce popular serials rescently. Through the cooperation between the directors of Hong Kong and the mainland film and television companies, more content creation styles in the Mainland are bound to be integrated into the production of Hong Kong serials. Many serials are dubbed into Mandarin, so many audiences find the experience jarring because the physical image do not match the voice.

1.In Sarah Moon Cassinelli’s “If we are Asian, then are we funny?”: Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl” as the First (and Last?) Asian American Sitcom”, the article states that Margaret Cho clearly vocalizes the complicated and contradictory nature of the show “All-American Girl” and demonstrate her own critiques about her whole experiences as an actor in the show in her memoir. Cassinelli argues that, the show focused on the ideas of ethnic authenticity, rather than a specific comedic form, and cause the failure of the show. Cassinellis also identifies problems within “All-American Girl” and appreciates Cho allows people to understand and analyze the misleading nature of televised, mediated presentations, and powerful authorities.

2.“In the pilot episode, the show features one scene where Mrs. Kim enters the kitchen and Margaret quips: What’s with the glasses, Mom? You look like Yoko Ono! While a certain level of obviousness may produce a stale affect, the reference that any Asian woman who wears large glasses resembles Yoko Ono is also stereotypical” [133]. This is an example of how racialized jokes are obvious in the show. The show unintentionally relies on prototypes and race, using stereotypes as the dominant source for the Kim family characterizations. Because there are not enough materials to explain the connection between the sitcom character and Yoko Ono, the American audiences may misunderstand this stereotypical scene. “Over the course of the season, Cho is pressured to lose a lot of weight through the unhealthy work of extreme exercise, starvation, and diet pills” [133]. “It’s made evident that show’s producers believe the American audience would prefer their entertainment devoid of racial specificity”[134]. This is another example demonstrates the show producers do not care about Cho’s self- loathing and masochism because of the extreme weight loss, attempting to create an authentic Asian body. This racial representation also shows that television and other medias are under control of powerful institutions and the fear of one Asian body with too much “fullness” carries the potential proliferation of many ethnic bodies.

3.A key term that the author introduces in the article is “authentic”. The show did not provide enough no-racial material to audience to create a relationship with the characters, attempting to create “ authentic Asianness”. Meanwhile, the show was also conflicted in terms of Amercianness. The show is mocking its Asian viewer and antagonizing its non-Asian audience by showing Margaret Kim and her mother’s generational conflicts of culture and assimilation. Margaret Kim is a rebellious daughter, and the idea that she could pass as a traditional Asian girl by using parody implies that Asianness is an act to be performed. All of those joke structures are severely lacking a punch line.

4.This article reminds me of a Chinese popular TV serial, the serial is talking about a ethnic minority called Hui in China, attracting a lot of attention. The TV serial of Hui have emerged in an endless stream. In order to increase the dramatic effect, it is inevitable that there are some plots ignore ethnic authenticity, creating stereotype characters. However, most Chinese audiences lack the knowledges of the minority’s culture. Therefore, the TV serial is often criticized for its suspicion of tamping history and reality.

1. In John fong’s Beyond Finishing The Game : A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach, the article states the process that Asian American films finding ways to attract people’s eyeballs and to overcome an big obstacle getting people into the theatres. Relying on the community as a work-around to reach Asian American audiences, through self-release strategies to establish a sustainable growth market.
2. “ Cajayon and producer John Castro spent several weeks in the Bay Area for the fim called Debut. Massive email lists were created, street teams roamed Daly City and other locales with postcards and t-shirts and the film’s stars were present and available to meet the Filipino audience for the film.” [5] This is an example of how Asian American film directors use the self-distribution strategy to get connections with target population, to mobilize audiences to watch films to generate great numbers of people to see the film at the first week. The cost for marketing decreased increasingly. The great success achieved in the end by focusing almost entirely on the Filipino American community. Another example is the film called Tomorrow. “Mobilizing the student population, personal appeals to audiences by filmmakers and utilizing the growing worlds of Asian American media to Hypehen to AngryAsianMan.com.”[7] Through this strategy, more audience could be attracted through internet with less cost.
3. A key term that the author introduces in the article is “grassroots”. Asian American filmmakers use traditional marketing methods with grassroots efforts to get succeed. They galvanized target community, built a massive pan-Asian campaign , mobilized the student population to generate great ticket numbers and to create an awareness among more Asian Americans community. By grabbing these people’s attention, Asian American cinemas got more support.
4. It reminds me a recent successful movie called Dying to Survive. Zhang Jie and Zhang Bichen’s two Weibo help the popularity of the from the fan circle to the fan circle. From a small range of points, the spontaneous discussion around the film formed a small peak of heat. As the biggest social media platform for the big V to gather voices, Weibo has become the main front for the audience and big V viewers to exchange their viewing experience, which provides space for film word-of-mouth fermentation. The film was released in 12 days and received more than 2.8 million Weibo users. The data shows that the fans participating in the topic discussion are distributed in the second, third and fourth-tier cities, with 28.62%, 27.52% and 28.67% respectively. There are 9 cities with more than 2% of fans, both traditional ticket warehouse cities.

1. In Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s article, Assimilation, Park states the debates around the term “assimilation” from different authors perspectives. Trying to discuss the meaning of assimilation from different parts of history, and social problems arising from assimilation.
2. Park uses two forms of evidence, the first one is from the article “The conservation of Races” published by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1897 who argued against assimilation. In this article, Du Bois states that “assimilate was understood as meaning to absorb into white America, which requires the negation of black experience and knowledges [14].” He thinks “racial difference was not the problem, it was the racism [14].” Because his statements based on racial experience, and he believes that African Americans hardly have differences with whiteness American, assimilation has no reason to exist. The second one is from Robert E. Park’s who viewed “assimilation as a solution to racial difference, which he understood as a social problem [14].” Because these two different kinds of social groups are distinctive, if they want to exist at the same time in the same physical environment, it is inevitable to conflict with each other. After this process, they certainly move towards to assimilation. W.E.B. Du Bois and Robert E. Park’s points all care about the necessary existence of assimilation and social reasons that led to assimilation.
3. The concept that Lisa Park asserts is the model minority myth. “The idea of Asian Americans as the “model minority” is a myth- meaning, untrue [16].” Usually, Asian Americans are models of low-skilled, low-wages labors lived in gathered colonies governed by whiteness Americans. However, Asian Americans are totally different today, and they have made considerable progress compared a hundred years ago. They live in different community areas and marry people from different races. Meanwhile, their social status is normally high with great educational achievement, good living environment, and get marry to white people. Although the development way of Asian Americans is unbelievable and preeminent than other groups of Americans, it is actually harmful for Asian Americans in a long term. Park opposes this point by saying that “the significant role of the state in structurally determining who gets ahead remains hidden within a linear, ahistorical progression toward cultural assimilation. [16].”
4. It reminds me of a social news happened in China created a great sensation. Children who studies in a private kindergarten containing middle class outsiders’ children in Beijing suffered abuse by teacher. They are not Beijing’s residents, so they are not eligible to attend to the public kindergartens which are price reasonable and well organized by the local government. These parents have no choice, but to pay 3 times higher tuition fee to let their children have better education in private kindergartens. Although these outsiders have great social status, well educated, and have made tremendous progress from 20 years ago. Local residents still enjoy priorities, isolate, and set barriers to outsiders.