Author Archives: Matthew Dion

Shilpa Davé’s book, East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture, deconstructs an American speech practice Davé refers to as “brown voice.” The practice, in which a non-Indian uses a fabricated accent to imitate Indian Americans, creates a set of expectations of cultural otherness and model minority status. Consequently, the perception of Indian Americans associated with the voice remains perpetually locked in unintegrated success.

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In her article “If We Are Asian, Then Are We Funny?”: Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl as the First (and Last?) Asian American Sitcom, Sarah Cassinelli argues that the family sitcom All-American Girl’s desire to both appeal to an Asian American audience and to maintain a proven white sitcom formula leaves it lacking in both aspects. Cassinelli argues that the show’s production team cannot reconcile the concept of Asian American as a single culture, so they simultaneously attempt to portray the Asian American cast as more “authentic” and traditional in their Asian practices while also hiding their Asian bodies behind a growing mass of white side characters. The show’s lack of a valid target audience leaves its representation as shallow, uninteresting, and unoriginal.

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John Fong’s online article “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots” recounts a history of Asian American film distribution and dissemination campaigns. Fong uses multiple examples of successful marketing outreach campaigns to explain how independent Asian American filmmakers must substitute expensive advertising budgets for an “aggressive grassroots strategy” if they wish to compete with a racially exclusionary, high-budget industry that is “reluctant to invest dollars in releasing a film in a market that they don’t know much about” (Fong, 3). Such a strategy supplants more traditional print marketing forms with public appearance efforts by the actors and producers, and Fong argues that the strategy works due to a communal Asian American desire to see themselves belonging in mainstream media forms.

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In his book “Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture,” Robert G. Lee examines instances of international, cultural, and economic events that developed model minority race relations throughout the American Cold War era. Lee defines the concept of model minority in accordance with a 1960’s conflict in race relations between Lyndon Johnson’s recognition of the historical effects of racism on a minority’s ability to succeed economically and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s blaming of “culturally deprived” families for their inability to effectively make use of supposedly equal legal opportunities (Moynihan, qtd. Lee, 151). In this lens the model minority myth acts as a cultural product of Moynihan’s work that aims to praise ethnic assimilation into a white-centric society while simultaneously demonizing minority requests for governmental welfare. It promotes an institutional practice of continuously trying to ethnically integrate into society while remaining racially exoticized. Continue reading →