Category Archives: Week 3 readings

1. In Margaret Cho’s, “I’m the One That I Want” article, she discusses about the ways in which she was asked to star in a sit-com based on her life and how she was raised by an Asian household. As well as how she was scouted to do this show. Not only does it discuss this fact, it also shows that the ultimate main idea that is that you shouldn’t have to feel like you need to change yourself for anyone.

2. An example that can prove my point stated above is on page 104, she describes how the producers of the shows approached her and how they ultimately convinced her to do the show. She shared that they gave her many compliments and they shared a really strong desire and hope for her to be the star of the show. Of course, these type of actions would make anyone feel great about themselves and their confidence level would have shot up. These are movie/TV producers/writers flattering you and asking you to take part of the show and be the main character. Anyone at this point would give in and agree to it. These were just empty words that were being said in order to cast someone who had low self-esteem and was seeking for love. However, it turned out later that the exact same people who flattered her and asked her to be the star of a show that’s about her own life, asked her to lose weight and said her face was a problem. It’s crazy to see and realize how selfish some people may be. They were just there complimenting her and now they’re here telling her that something is wrong with her. I don’t think I can understand how she had to lose weight to be in a show that was about “herself”. If it really was about herself and her life, she didn’t need to lose weight in the first place. This really speaks out to me because it shows the standards one has to be to be attractive in the eye.

3. A term Margaret Cho introduces in this article that I felt was important to know and understand was “multiculturalism” on page 129. This word was use in the context that someone close to Margaret Cho commented that the sit-com All-American Girl was doing actually a lot more harm than good. The word means the support for the presence of several distinct cultural ethnic groups within a society. It’s important to receive love and equality as well as to give love and equality no matter the race or gender. We are all one.

4. This article reminded me of Eddie Huang, who wrote an autobiography called, “Fresh Off the Boat” that was turned into a TV Show. He explained that this show was not about his life nor was it about Asian Americans.

Benjamin Pimentel mainly argues about the Asian English-language publicans, the founders’ background, purpose, and experiences; the hard time the publicans took through before they showed up in front of the public; the benefit(for the most time) and shortness the publicans bring to their target Asian American community; the significant and influences of these publicans.

Almost all the examples Pimentel gives mentions about how the publicans struggle between the young and older-generation readers, mainly about how to balance the distribution between this two generation, which are the older- immigration generation and the younger-American-born generation. To people who don’t really know about the backgrounds’ and values’ differences exist between these two generations, James Ryu’s (the editor-in-chief of the KoreAm Journal) example would show readers how the struggles were mainly about. In Ryu’s example, Pimentel states that the older immigrate generation are more interested in socio-historical issues while the younger ones care more about the pop culture and the youth issues. Pimentel reminds that most of Ryu’s staffs were the younger second-generation Korean Americans. Pimentel shows us the gap between the generations by giving the example as the following: “When he(Ryu) assigned a staff member to write a profile on a Korean American preacher who helped set up a university in China, the writer turned in an uninspired piece of work. Most contributors would rather do stories on Korean American personalities on MTV or the top-ten nightclubs (51)”. This example shows us the gap between the two generations vividly and helps readers to image how struggling it could be for the publicans to balance between the two groups of readers.

Just like what I wrote in the former paragraph, Pimentel goes through the struggles brought about by the differences between the generations almost in every Asian-English-language publican’s example he gives. He uses many different terms to describe the American-born, younger generations who are more Americanized comparing to their parents’ generation. For example: “MTV generation(49)” in the AsianWeek example; “second-generation Korean Americans (50)” in the KoreAm Journal example; “the second generation (52) “, and “intergenerational(53)” in the India-West example. All of these terms implicate the children of the immigrant generation who are more Americanized than their parents, and it helps complete readers understand better.

In Pimentel’s article, there was an unforgettable sentence at the end of this article which was said by Yuchengco, the Filipinas Magazine’s founder, “I do this because I love the community (the Filipino Americans) and it’s my way of giving back.” This shows the ingrained connections between different Asian-American groups, we hear facts about how they help each other and unit together all the time. This reminds me about our former reading “Success Story of One Minority Group In U.S” from U.S News and World Report, December 26, 1966. Although the report is a little bit idealistic and segmentary, part of its theme is similar to Pimentel was trying to show in his article, which is the ingrained connection between different Asian-American groups. In this report, it state:” A sizable number of Chinese-Americans who would move out if they wanted to are staying in the NewYork’s Chinatown–not because of fears of discrimination on the outside, but because they prefer their own people and culture (8, U.S News and World Report).” This shows that most of the Asian American group are not just seeing themselves as simply Americans but Americans who have root culture in other countries and just like what both stated in Pimentel’s article and this 1966’s report, Asian Americans have such an ingrained feeling of connection with each other and their root culture.

1. In Sarah Moon Cassinelli’s piece titled, “If we are Asian, then are we funny?”, the author identifies some of the problems involving race in the American sitcom, All-American Girl. Within the show, that starred Margaret Cho, there were multiple instances and examples of racism and stereotypes being perpetuated, along with the pressures that came with it. The author raises the question of what it means to be Asian-American. Additionally, they show the negative effects of stereotypes that are presented in American television, which causes confusion and frustration in society.
2. Cassinelli utilizes quotes from Margaret Cho’s memoir, I’m the One that I Want, in order to exemplify some of the direct experiences and insight from what it was like to be on the show and reactions to it. For example, the author cites a moment from Cho’s memoir in which she states, “…the Kim family caused many to deem All-American Girl as racist because the familial portrayals ‘did not ring true as an ‘authentic’ Asian-American family’ (Cho 140)” (Cassinelli 132). In this quote, Cho provides her own personal take on what it was like to be on All-American Girl and some of the societal problems that stemmed from it. Because people had a clear expectation of what they wanted to see from Asians or Asian-Americans, the show would often receive backlash or negative comments if they did not meet these expectations. The pressures that Cho faced were also cited, such as when “others would ask Cho to try and alter her face” (Cassinelli 134). This illustrates the types of situations that Cho was forced to be in during these moments and show some of the racist and rude responses she would receive along the way. Comments such as that one emphasized some of the problems present in society as they are unaware and have unreasonable expectations.
3. One of the key concepts the author introduces is the idea of “Yellowface” and the term “stereotype”. Yellowface is the “performance that ‘marks the Asian body as unmistakably Oriental…” (Cassinelli 136). This is related to what would appear in All-American Girl as they were often stereotyping, or oversimplifying of cultures.
4. Similar to the body issues that Margaret Cho was facing in her time on All-American Girl, in Lisa Park’s piece, “A Letter to My Sister”, the author’s sister faces similar struggles. Cho had undergone “self-loathing and masochism…and extreme weight loss” (Cassinelli 134), in order to be accepted and to fit in. This mirrors some of the actions taken by Park’s sister, by undergoing surgery and facing mental illness.

In John Fong’s article “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach”, Fong told us about the difficulty of making films about Asian American in America. Lacking of money was the main barrier of making Asian American film. The Asian American filmmaker attract Asian American grassroots to overcome this obstacle.

In Fong’s article, he wrote “long been the biggest challenge in Asian American cinema has been one of access- finding a way for the film that is being made (and we know that they are being made, and are good!) to reach the eyeballs of the people (who we know will want to see them, as evidenced by the long lines at any of the fine Asian American film festivals out there).”(page.5) These Asian American filmmakers didn’t have enough budget to advertise their films, which made their films have less audience than the Hollywood film.(page.5)

Aggressive grassroots strategy was an effective approach to attract Asian American audience. Fong stated that grassroots was a “community-focused marketing”(page.3) and it has been the “de facto marketing approach to reach Asian American audiences, a no-frills, low budget strategy that can be more effective than billboards of tv commercials” (page.3). As Fong mentioned about, grassroots strategy was a labor-intensive way of marketing. “Via emails from film directors asking for support, campus visits, connections with community-based organizations, opening night parties, entire screenings bought out by employee groups, street teams, major on-line/social networking pushes and appearances by cast and crew.”(page.4) This approach was not perfect, but it did help the Asian American films to be viewed by more people than before.

The current number one movie at Box Office, “Crazy Rich Asians” is a revolution in Hollywood film history because it’s the first movie performed by all Asian American actors. It shows that the traditional Chinese and Asian Americans hold very different values. I believe and hope that the success of this movie can help the future Asian American films achieve greater success.

1. Margaret Hillenbrand first lays out the issues that arise when Asian American males are portrayed on screen in her article “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema.” She characterizes the representation of Asian American men in cinema with three different categories:
   close-focus empiricism, political grandstanding of one kind or another, and art house avant-gardism. She then uses specific films such as Wayne Wang’s Eat a Bowl of Tea and Better Luck Tomorrow to provide examples of the different representations of Asian American men in cinema.
2. Hillenbrand uses the film Eat a Bowl of Tea as an example of a film that portrayed Asian American men using close-focus empiricism. In the film, there is a particular scene in which the bachelors have a party for a young Asian newlywed couple. One of them claims this as a “historical” moment. This claim in addition to the lack of female characters in this scene is meant to emphasize how many of these bachelors left their wives and children back home during the war, and due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-miscegenation laws. As Rachel Moon mentions in her blog post, many Asian American films attempt to enlighten its audiences; however, often times these audiences are not the target audience. Films such as Better Luck Tomorrow use common cinematic genres to portray Asian American men in a way that strides away from the stereotypical “model minority” character. Perhaps ironically, the Asian American male protagonists in this film who are supposed to be the smart and good students are feared by the white/Caucasian characters who are the jocks and the cool kids at school.
3. One word that comes up in Hillenbrand’s article is ‘metacinema,’ which is a term used by a film to inform the audience that the film they are watching is fictional. I find this interesting and a little ironic because these so-called metacinema films are used to convey messages pertaining to real social issues regarding Asian American culture, struggles, and representations of men.
4. Another metacinema film that I was reminded of while watching Better Luck Tomorrow is a Thai movie called Bad Genius. The female protagonist starts out as an extremely smart student (or at least she is good at studying). She portrays a very stereotypical character of an obedient Asian child who listens to her parents. However, after a series of events, she decides to help her classmates cheat on exams as far as to travelling abroad to Australia to help them cheat on the SAT, breaking the stereotype of the ‘good Asian student.’ I think the catch to this is that she was trying to earn money to help lift some of the burden from her single dad. In a sense, she still demonstrated filial piety but in the wrong way.

1.  In John Fong’s article “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach” he conveys the challenges of making and exposing Asian Amerian films in mainstream America. The author argues that the main obstacle to the struggle of getting exposure for Asian American cinema is due to the lack of money to produce the film and then having to promote the film. They overcame this obstacle by spreading the word about Asian American films through grassroots.
2. Fong mentions that “long been the biggest challenge in Asian American cinema has been one of access- finding a way for the film that is being made (and we know that they are being made, and are good!) to reach the eyeballs of the people (who we know will want to see them, as evidenced by the long lines at any of the fine Asian American film festivals out there) (paragraph 3). These Asian American content creators don’t have as big a budget as Hollywood films’ marketing budget; making it harder for them to let people know about it so that they can watch it. On top of that “… companies are reluctant to invest dollars in releasing a film in a market they don’t know much about” (paragraph 3).  According to Fong Asian American filmmakers relied on the community to spread the word about their film.
3. John Fong introduces the word grassroots into the article.  Grassroots is a” community-focused marketing” and it has been the “de facto marketing approach to reach Asian American audiences, a no-frills, low budget strategy that can be more effective than billboards of tv commercials” (paragraph 4). Grassroots was a very labor intensive way of marketing- directors email different groups/ organizations to ask for support, go on campus visits, etc., but this was the only way to overcome the hurdle of not having enough money for a marketing budget. Through this movement, many Asian American indie films were launched and viewed by many people. Films like ” The Debut” and “Better Luck Tomorrow” were well received by its audience.
4. Like many have said before, the all-Asian cast of the new movie “Crazy Rich Asians” is currently number one at Box Office. It is truly revolutionary to see an all-Asian cast in mainstream  Hollywood film. I think the plot does a good job of portraying the struggle of being an Asian American- your either not Asian enough or not white enough. It also shows the difference in values and ideals of someone who is from China (very traditional) and someone who is an Asian American ( have American or westernized ideals). This movie shows that Asian Americans can make content that can be up to par with typical Hollywood films. I hope that the success of this film can pave the way for future projects for many struggling Asian Americans who are in the movie industry.

1. Hillenbrand first analyzes and explains the barriers specific to Asian American men breaking out of a emasculated stereotypical mold as well as historical events that have contributed to them. She then categorizes the bulk of Asian American films into three categories (close-focus empiricism, political grandstanding, art house avant-gardism) and discusses why these films haven’t been effective in breaking into the mainstream cinema market and dispelling stereotypes. Finally, she uses the films Better Luck Tomorrow and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle to describe how, as an amalgamation of parodies of common American film tropes, roles for Asian American men might most effectively be transformed to include complexity, diversity, and (of course) masculinity.
2. “The problem with ethnic “explaining,” and the failure to be a “filmmaker”…is that it keeps the Asian American battle for representational space and accuracy squarely in the trenches” (pg 54). While well-intentioned, many Asian American filmmakers’ works come off as preachy and usually preach to consumers who are the least in need of hearing their messages. Better Luck Tomorrow and Harold and Kumar take a different route by utilizing common mainstream cinematic genres but using Asian American male protagonists who don’t fit the “model minority” character. The stark difference between the two is that the latter makes “racial representation…a far less labored affair” by parodying “in a manner that is…artfully blasé” (pg 71, 70).
3. Hillenbrand defines parody as a balance of its two components: “simultaneous qualities of faithful appropriation and vengeful revisionism” (pg 62). Metacinema is a mode of filmmaking in which the film informs the audience that they are watching a work of fiction.
4. I think the ideas behind this article provide an interesting viewpoint when discussing the movie Crazy Rich Asians. With an all-Asian-American cast, the wide array of characters that Asian American casts can take on is displayed in one feature film. We can see the diversity without having to compare it to a majority/Caucasian standard. The film also weaves an intricate fabric with Asian and American cultures: the clash of values between Rachel Chu and Eleanor Young, the introduction scene of Goh Wye Mun playfully pretending to speak broken, accented English, the very “American” bachelorette party scene contrasting with an Asian-heritage-specific scene like Rachel making dumplings with Nick’s family.

1.  In John Fong’s blog Beyond the Game: A look at Asian American grassroots outreach, he explains how in order for Asian American films to succeed and compete with big budget films they had to improvise since “companies were reluctant to invest dollars in releasing a film in a market that they don’t know much about (ie: Asian America).” The main technique they used was to market directly to the grassroots Asian American community, this ranged anywhere from the actors interacting with their audiences by going from city to city (pg. 6) promoting their film, to going to Asian American and other film festivals and showing their movie there. Some other techniques used were emails being sent out by the directors asking for support for their films, going to college campuses where Asian Americans had a decent presence such as UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Stanford, San Francisco State University among others (pg. 4). This aggressive but effective strategy helped with the spread of word on the movies which helped several of the films mentioned in the articles succeed such as The Debut(2001), Better Luck Tomorrow(2002) and Finishing the Game(2007) amongst many others.
2. Fong mentions how “the bottleneck of distribution is definitely there but an equally big obstacle is marketing and outreach…” (pg. 3) this, in turn, is what led to the aggressive strategies of promoting their films within the Asian American communities. Fong continues by saying that these forms of outreach are needed to hopefully one day be able to get “companies and distributors approach the release of Asian American films [to the US market]” (pg. 9). This is especially important because we know the market is there but it is harder then it should be trying to reach the community because of how much work is needed to accomplish anything in this era of big budget marketing campaigns. ***Some examples with page number are included in part 1***
3. Grassroots refers to a community that shares common interest, values and or traditions in our case the Asian American community. Bottleneck of distribution refers to how something is limiting you from being able to distribute the goods, in this case, the films to the Asian American communities.
4. Fong mentions how grassroots outreach was essential in the promoting of his film. This type of outreach typically stems from how certain political groups within the U.S government rely on appealing to certain communities in order to get support for their cause and to get them to ultimately vote for it as well as fundraise in order to continue their campaign.

In John Fong’s article, Beyond Finishing the Game, he analyzes how Asian American film makers access pathways to market their films. Because these films don’t have the same budget as Hollywood films, the film makers must utilize different forms of promoting.

Some examples that Fong used as the ground work for accessing the mainstream population are The Debt by Gene Cajayon and Better Luck Tomorrow by Justin Lin. Both films used email listings to send newsletters about Asian American films opening. Cajayon was able to identify and appeal to his target audience by doing meetings and presentations in the Bay Area’s largest Filipino community, Daly City. He relied on the community for support but had to be mindful to not ask too much as to “create the turn-off of obligation” (pg. 3). In 2002, Lin implemented these same tactics with the release of Better Luck Tomorrow. He also created a campaign around the controversial themes of the film, which allowed Asian Americans to rally and find a sense of belonging. This created a platform for Asian Americans to feel influential through “voting” by buying box office tickets. These forms of marketing “allow[ed] filmmakers to reach audiences for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign” (pg. 7).

Some key terms used by Fong are “grassroots campaign” and “target audience”. The term grassroots was used in this context as utilizing a community-based strategy to create buzz and to help the films be successful in the box office with little monetary investment. The target audience must be identified to promote these films successfully because if these strategies are used on an audience that is not interested in the subject matter, the efforts are useless.

This article was written in 2007, before major media had Asian American actors in the forefront of film and television. Some examples include Fresh Off The Boat, that has a Chinese family as the central topic and has been running since 2015. Another example of having an Asian actor in mainstream media is when the TV series The Walking Dead aired in 2010 with the Korean-American actor Steven Yeun playing a series favorite, Glenn Rhee. More recently, the movie Crazy Rich Asians has gotten a lot of media attention for having an all Asian cast and has been able to utilize mainstream strategies to promote this film. In the Netflix movie, To All the Boys I Loved Before, the Vietnamese-American actress Lana Condor is the lead role. With the more recent success of films with Asian-Americans as lead roles, I hope to see more Asian representation in American media.    

Just like what John Fong states in his article, “Having a film in a theater doesn’t necessarily mean people will be sitting there watching it”, one of the hardest parts for the Asian American filmmakers is to earn more audiences. In this article, Fong mainly argues the methods did/do the Asian American filmmakers used for getting more potential audiences, which are mainly the Asian American grassroots community, how these brought Asian American films to where it is today, and the reason of why the filmmakers are doing it in these ways which is mainly because of the limited resources and money they have.

Fong uses many Asian American films as his support evidence, the most impressive one to me is how the film The Debut using a good timing at the “Closing Night of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as a kick off (Fong 6)”, the immense meetings presentations to the target audiences (the Filipinos), the massive email advertising, film stars meeting with audiences…and so on. It’s not hard to imagine how these were like when Fong listing the specific methods the filmmakers used for letting more target audiences know about their film before it released. Fong indicates:”Amidst calls to rally around the historic moment of a Filipino American film being released in the US, and a genuine interest in individuals wanting to be a part of something, something special did happen, and the rest is history (Fong 6)”. After giving all the examples, this analysis strongly persuades readers why and how the advertising methods worked so successfully which brought filmmakers “over $1 million in the box office”.

The key term Fong uses in his article is the “big first weekend”, derived from another key term — “APA First Weekend Club”, email newsletters inform target audiences about the releasing time of Asian American films. “Big first weekend” means to earn a huge box office on the film’s first weekend of release, so that it can ensure they have enough money to hold more releases of this movie in the future.

The strategies Fong argues remind me a recent movie — “Crazy Rich Asians”. The method the “Crazy-Rich-Asian” filmmakers used to reach the target audiences is very similar to what Fong writes in his article. For example, the actress Michelle Yeoh who participate in one of the main roles in this film is a Chinese Malaysian who is very well-known in Chinese film markets while other actors/actresses are not. As the growth of globalization, films are not only earning box office from one country but to all the courses where it could earn a lot. China as a country with a large population, most people in China have money and time to watch movies as many as they like to. So the movie was introduced by many famous bloggers on Weibo, which is a very popular Chinese social media like the Twitter to the U.S. a long time ago before it’s going to release. The bloggers mainly mentioned the participant of Michelle Yeoh to gain people’s attention. I’m a Chinese and I knew this film from Weibo since the end of the April.