- In the Article “Cyberspace Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks”, by Rachel Rubin, she talks about how Asian American lives have been influenced by zines and with the introduction of zines the “Asian American image” could be changed. Asian Americans at the time used the internet to publish both parodic and serious zines to put their voice out somewhere.
- According to Iijima, the “Asian American identity is a deliberate and motivated thing: experiential rather than biological, grounded in the present as much as or more than in the past” (p.5). This quote means that for Asian American cyberzine writers, who’s families are immigrants, they can use the invention of the Internet as a opportunity to make people aware of their culture and history. Struggles of Asian American families can be voiced through the Internet for people to read. With the coming of Asian culture reaching mainstream American media, “zine production, with its anti-professional stance and its edgy aesthetic, would snowball at precisely this cultural moment” (p.14). The Asian American image would change following both mainstream media such as Jackie Chan Films, Pokemon, and Hello Kitty and print and cyberzines.
- A keyterm the author introduces is “zine”. Zines are any kind of non-commercial amateur publications someone can put up through print or the Internet. These publications have radically changed the entertainment industry on a national scale.
- Today, people send both satirical and serious messages through social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram in the same way Asian American’s used zines in the early 21st century. Using these platforms, cultural images can change. For example, the YouTuber David So uses his popular YouTube channel to create a strong Asian American image of a minority family that has struggled, fought through it, and pursued their dreams, all in a satirical manner. David So makes videos documenting his life and also makes videos if him ranting on certain topics.
- In Paul Niwa’s article “News Coverage”, he argues about how Asian Americans representation is lacking in news media. This lack of representation is due to the fact that there are very little Asian Americans working at the top of media businesses. Non-Asian news-media supervisors are far less likely to report on Asian American communities compared to Asian news supervisors. For big news media businesses to hire more Asian American workers would alleviate this issue but there are still some faults that come with hiring more Asian Americans.
- Paul Niwa uses statistics on Asian American news to exemplify how Asian Americans are underrepresented. “A study of Asian American neighborhood coverage in metropolitan daily newspapers found that only .3 percent of articles published by the Boston Globe in 2006 contained the word “Chinatown”” (663). Even though Boston’s Chinatown has a large and dense population with a high percentage of it’s residents living in poverty, the Chinatown still makes little to no news coverage. Sometimes when Asian Americans do make it on the news, they are portrayed in a bad light. “CNN and other news organizations went to Korean American Churches” after a tragic mass murder done by a Korean man and ” [asked] people for their reaction to the attack” (665). All the people interviewed were apologetic for the murderers crimes, giving a bad image for all Korean Americans.
- A keyterm Paul Niwa introduces is the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). To improve news coverage on ethnic minorities, organizations such as this can help news managers to “find qualified Asian American employees” (666). Organizations like this also help to improve the skills of Asian Americans by “[organizing] dozens of workshops at its national convention on writing, editing, and multimedia skills” (666).
- A tragic event currently happening in the world is Hurricane Hector passing over islands in Hawaii. Residents of the island have been recommended to take shelter for the next two weeks as the hurricane passes. Outside of the Asian American community, this hurricane has made very little news coverage to the rest of the world.
- In Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach, by John Fong, he talks about methods Asian American filmmakers use to advertise their film to the public. The biggest factor in all the methods used is the community and how filmmakers reach out to the community to make them feel a part of something bigger. Asian American filmmakers have employed a aggressive grassroots strategy to reach Asian American audiences.
- One of the earliest methods used by Asian American filmmakers to advertise their films was the APA First Weekend Club, which was a newsletter that would alert subscribers when Asian American films were opening in theaters. This newsletter helped to “mobilize audiences to watch films on their first weekend of release, to generate box office numbers high enough to ensure a second weekend, and then a third and so on”. The following year, Gene Cayajon used a “almost exclusively grassroots, self-distribution strategy” to advertise his film The Debut. He “used the Closing Night of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as a kick off” for his own film. He also held many meetings and presentations directed to Filipino Americans in the community.
- A key term John Fong introduces is “grassroots” and he mainly uses this term to describe the common people in a community which makes up a majority of it. He combines the term with traditional marketing strategies to come up with a method that is even more effective for advertisement.
- The movie that recently came out in theaters, Crazy Rich Asians, was directed by John M. Chu. Chu has directed popular films such as Step Up 2: The Streets, Step up 3D, and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Using both his own grassroots and fame as a filmmaker, advertised country-wide in most communities. His marketing reached most communities and as a result, his film is currently the #1 selling title in box offices currently.
- In Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s writing, she argues the true definition of assimilation and what it does to people of minority. In America, minority groups are forced to integrate themselves into white culture in order to succeed socially and economically. Park refers to different authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert E. Park, Richard Alba, and Victor Nee to epitomize how “assimilation” entails racial inferiority. Using this definition of “assimilation”, Park relates Asian Americans to a model minority that thrives by being foreign and succeeding when fully assimilated into white culture.
- For Asian Americans to assimilate to white culture, they must feel “compelled to adapt their history to fit into an Orientalist drama that requires they play the outsiders repeatedly” almost like an act to entertain the majority (p.17). Park also uses Priscilla Chan as a concrete example of someone that has assimilated into white culture after she married Mark Zuckerberg. Chan lives a respectable and wealthy life now, joining “the 37% of all recent Asian-American brides who wed a non-Asian groom” (p.16).
- A key term Park uses in different ways is the word “assimilation”. By W.E.B. Du Bois’ definition of the word, “assimilation” refers to acts done to “center whiteness as the national identity” and “marginalizes African Americans” (p.14). Robert E. Park uses the word as a way to describe how “two different social groups follow a cycle of progressive stages of interaction” which leads into social assimilation (p.14). Richard Alba and Victor Nee use the word as a tool to “‘understand and describe the integration into the mainstream experienced across generations by many individuals and ethnic groups'” (p.15).
- Historically, the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco, California went through this cycle of assimilation. One reason the nightclub did not survive past the 1950s was because the people originally foreign to oriental cultures and ideas became familiar with the practices. Nightly, the nightclub would host traditional Chinese performances with exotic Chinese dancers. The nightclub did not add new performances or modify existing ones to spice up their shows and as a result, the customers were bored of what they had to offer and did not come back. The only thing that kept the establishment going for so long were the dancers and their “exoticness” until people eventually got tired of that as well.
