Category Archives: Week 5 readings

1. The article “Apu’s Brown Voice” by Shilpa Dave focuses on explaining her theory on “brown voice.” Brown voice being popularized in American television inflicts more harm on South Asians more because it “reinforces a static position for South Asians regardless of their status or occupation in the United States. South Asians are represented as one undifferentiated group who are saddles with one accent and one voice”(page 335). Dave uses Apu, a famous cartoon character from the The Simpsons, to explain her theory about brown voice. Apu is voiced by a white man using brown voice to portray an Indian character. She goes on to explain that since Apu’s character is so popular among Americans it creates a stereotype that harms South Asians but is not understood by those on the other side.
2. South Asians are considered “privileged minorities- Indians who are understood to speak a more culturally receptive accented English… the most difficult barrier to be overcome is the reception and communication of meaning of your speech and to achieve cultural fluency” (page 318). This emphasizes the idea of Asians being foreigners- they are only accepted to an extent but will always be seen as outsiders who are not and cannot be Americans. Apu’s “foreignness and “Indianness” are highlighted…” throughout the entire show. The use of brown voice lumps together different groups of people who are from South Asia and believed by Americans to be the same people. This stereotypical brown voice is used as ammunition to fire at all the people that meet a person who fits their idea of a person speaking in a”brown voice.”
3. Brown Voice ” identifies a specific racializing trait among South Asians which simultaneously connotes foreigners and class and cultural privilege” (page 314). Another term introduced is minstrelsy in which “whites voiced black characters” (page 320). Similarly, with black face, Hank Azaria is speaking in a “brown voice” even though he is not from there nor does he understand the complex relations of countries in South Asia. It appears to be that yet again a story of a minority group is told by a higher up which is a room filled with white executives, producers, and writers who have no idea on the minority group’s actual history.
4. I think this is very similar to how many Americans make fun and imitate how other Asian countries, like China, speak in broken English. People say it to be funny which in Apu’s case was perfect because a lot of people thought it was funny and it was meant to be funny, but since at the time The Simpsons were at its prime there were no other representations for South Asian but Apu. This Apu character turned  South  Asians into a one-dimensional charter just like previously how other Asians were perceived like the Fu Manchu and Dragon lady.

1. In  “Cyberspace Y 2k: Giant Robots, Asian Punks, the author Rachel Rubin, talks about the importance of zines to Asian Americans. Zines gave Asian American the power to express themselves and be who they are. Asian Americans also found a place where they can discuss their stories and be seen as an individual and for others to understand and see that it is extremely difficult to categorize all Asians as Asian Americans because of how different each culture is from each other.  Each Asian or Asian American group has their own background story as to why they are in America.  Zines gave Asian American groups a place for them to be heard and understood.
2. Most zine writers “…  claim that they began their zine because they
   could not find publications that suited their
   own cultural needs” (page 7) through zine they are able to freely express what they want to say. Cyberzines made it a lot easier for the writer and viewers alike. The writer now has a plethora of information available at their fingertips and it makes it easier for them to release more content faster. Viewers  “… can jump back and forth among hypertexted pages, potentially creating endless combinations of pages, images, and sounds” and in cyberzines links are available for viewers to click on if they want to read similar writings (page 8). According to “Lorial Crowder of Bagong Pinay, an e-zine with the stated goal of producing a “positive representation for Filipinas on the Internet,” agrees: “It [the zine movement] been really important, a major voice for us” (page 13).  Zines have a lot of varied information written by people whose ideas were rejected and suppressed by the mainstream media. 
3. One key term that Rachel Rubin described is Zines which are “self-produced and haphazardly distributed, they were driven by passion rather than profit, and, although their focuses could literally be on any subject, they generally shared a contempt for big-business publishing, a celebration of the quirky and the confessional, and a respect for the open expression of unpopular tastes and ideas” (page 12). There are 2 types of Zines: paper and cyberzines.
4.  I think zines are very similar to the plethora of social media platforms available to us now. Social media allows people to easily share their thoughts and feeling too many viewers. Though it’s not always positive, it can spread positivity and hope t many. Also, too many who grew up in the digital age, their lives are documented through their social media accounts. Like how many writers published stories of what they thought and believed in many people post on Twitter or Instagram about what they think and believe in.

1. In the reading article called “Apu’s Brown Voice”, author Shilpa Dave analyzes the stereotypical problem about Apu, who is an Indian descent character in the famous TV show, The Simpsons. The main argument in this article is about the reasons as to why the character, Apu and the actor who does the voicing for this character is considered a stereotypical problem that many people who aren’t involved can’t see.

2.  An example that can support my argument stated above is on page 323 where Shilpa Dave states that because of the fame that Apu received in the show, many Indians are portrayed and stereotyped due to him. In other words, Apu is the visual representation that most Americans have of Indians and it’s in fact not the truth. Because of the character Apu, many Indians were faced with racial comments. The accent that was created for Apu was meant for comical reasons, but many saw it as a racial problem that gave people the right to label and stereotype Indians.

3. Shilpa Dave describes the term “Brown voice” as “the act of speaking in accented English associated with Indian nationals and immigrants and is a combination of linguistic and phonetic markers that include stress points on particular words, cultural references, and words out of order.” (Page 143)

4. The author’s ideas is quite similar to an event that happened in 2016 at The Oscars Awards. In 2016, Chris Rock, who was also a host at the awards managed to make three common distinct stereotypes about Asians/ Asian Americans. As Chris Rock was taking a moment to introduce PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that tallies the votes, he made racial comments such as, “a model minority student who is a math genius”, “the foreign child laborer” and “the silent obedient immigrant” to three Asian children. Many people found this issue upsetting even though Chris Rock is loved by many. However, there is a limit to things one can and cannot say. Regarding this situation, many people were obviously upset to hear this and felt that he was targeting these three little children.

1. In Shilpa Dave’s essay, Apu’s Brown Voice Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents, Dave’s main focus is discussing the theory of “brown voice” and the significance of a South Asian accent in popular media and how that in turn acts as a representation for the South Asian American community. When it comes to brown voice. Dave argues that practicing brown voice will harvest different results when heard animated than when performed live-action. The success of having a white face, Hank Azaria, performing a brown voice (Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on The Simpsons) has invoked a lot of debate concerning proper representation and the perpetuation of stereotypes.
2. Although the writers of The Simpsons “thought about the consequences of brown voice” (pg 324), in the end they decided to go ahead and cast Hank Azaria as Apu Nahasapeemapetilon anyway. The reason this decision didn’t completely backfire and blow up in their faces is because, Dave argues, the character of Apu serves as “a vehicle to introduce current views and debates about minorities in the United States” (pg 323). On top of this, Dave further argues that because the show is animated, the practice of brown voice is unlike black face and avoids racist stereotyping exactly for that reason. In animation, the “sound and resonance” (pg 323) of a voice is what importance is placed on, not necessarily the face behind the voice. The writers have however revealed their lack of understanding of South Asian general and has portrayed the region as one huge lump. This representation has in turn “influenced other characterizations of South Asian Americans” (pg 324), and so we are left with the popular stereotypes of South Asian Americans that we see today.
3. Dave discussed in length not only the term “brown voice” but also what it means to speak “Indian English.” Brown voice is defined as a “specific radicalizing trait in South Asian…connoting foreignness and class and cultural privilege” (pg 314), whereas Indian English is actually a dialect of the English language but is commonly associated with the “accent of a non-native speaker” (pg 318). These two phrases are used interwoven discussion about the consequences of practicing brown voice in media and how this representation affects a whole nation that speaks with a variety of accented Indian English.
4. I would tie this discussion back into what Hari Kondabolu discussed in his documentary, The Problem with Apu (2017). His documentary revealed that a lot of accomplished Indian descent actors/actresses have often had to put on an accent when playing a role. Now if the role calls for it, that’s fine. But the problem that many had was that the accents had no variety. Producers and writers wanted a specific accent to be heard, this being one that resembled the accent Hank Azaria used to play his role of Apu.

According to Rachel Rubin’s article, “Cyberspace Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks”, Rubin wrote about how Asian Americans broke “the Asian American image”, such as “submissive woman or de-sexed man”(pg 11), by using “zines”. Asian Americans young people, in particular women, had found in zines to be great for self-expression and self-definition.(pg 1)

“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” (pg 5). According to Iijima, Asian American cyberzine writers, whose families were immigrants, they could use the invention of the Internet as a opportunity to make people aware of their culture and history. “Zine production, with its anti-professional stance and its edgy aesthetic, would snowball at precisely this cultural moment.”(pg 14) The Asian American image would be changed by the following mainstream media such as Jackie Chan Films, Pokemon, and Hello Kitty and print and cyberzines.(pg 14)

Cyberzines are electronic zines that are more efficient than normal zines. Normal zines are photo-copied and hand distributed, which takes more time to publish than cyberzine. Normal zines are hand-published, so they are limited by the number of physical copies. However, cyberzines’s “potential audience is practically limitless.”(pg 12) This makes the Internet a efficient and economic way to break stereotypes.

Internet is the efficient way to distribute cyberzines. People send both satirical and serious messages through social media platforms such a YouTube and Instagram to change cultural images. For example, the YouTuber David So uses his popular YouTube channel to create a strong Asian American image.

1. In the article, “Cyberspace, Y2K: Giant Robots, Asian Punks”, written by Rachel Rubin, it discussed about the usage of zine which a great tool for Asian Americans to express talents, cultural needs, and political realities. Rubin explained how zines are the results of consequential international, national and local processes that have altered the entertainment industry. This not only affects the entertainment, but also the Asian American culture within the United States and beyond. Also, she discussed about the important of zines through its technological innovations as it originated in military power all the way to sexuality of individuals.
2. Some of the examples provided in the article were:

• Ijima’s words emphasized that 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 … for Asian American cyberzine writers, whose numbers include immigrants, the children of immigrants … the contractedness of “Asian American,” coupled with the definitively decentered nature of virtual reality, creates a wide-open, compelling cultural opportunity (5). In this example, the influence of zine can impact Asian American to work together for better opportunities to tell their own stories through zine.
• Because of her needs as a reader, Sabrina Margarita started handing out copies of her zine … to her friends, making up about a hundred photocopies of each issue. Sabrina Margarita’s experience with Bamboo Girl show, in Internet publishing, the lines become thoroughly blurred between consumption, and production to the Net acting as conduit from one to the other (7). This demonstrates that Sabrina was able to launch her own zine because she felt that feminism or queer identity were not geared toward women of color in which zine was the perfect opportunity to showcase her needs through zine.

3. Zine – Which is paper, with an informational website that serves to publicize it; non-commercial “amateur” publication.
4. Rubin explanation about “zine” connects the idea that Asian American cannot only be portrayed through main media such as newspapers, magazines, and television, but through zine as well. Zines gives the perfect opportunities for Asian Americans to make a political and cultural statement.

1. In Rachel Rubin’s “Cyberspace Y2K,” she talks about how the Asian American community uses magazines, or what was commonly known as “zines” at the time, to spread awareness of the Asian American community as well as debunk Asian stereotypes that other have.
2. One of the popular zines at the time was Bamboo Girl, which was created by Sabrina Margarita Alcantara-Tan in 1995. Many zines, were used by many young Asian Americans (especially females), to express themselves outside of what most people thought of them. The content in Bamboo Girl challenges ideas of racism, sexism, and homophobia from the perspective of a feminist Filipino/Asian Pacific Islander, which Tan herself identifies with. The tone of her zine is very casual, humorous, and unfiltered. One thing she did was having a “Stupid Stereotype” page dedicated to debunking Asian stereotypes, such as “Filipinas are sluts” (Bamboo Girl, Issue #2, pg.40). She then goes to explain how that may be true for some, but often times these women did it because unfortunately they were poor and this was a source of income for them.
3. One of the main terms that Rubin uses is “zine,” which is basically another word for magazine, but magazine is more commonly seen and used. A magazine is like one giant compilation of zines published by a big company, and a zine is like a smaller work by one person.
4. There is one section where Rubin talks about what makes someone Asian American and the color of hair, and how Asians were known to have long black hair. The question of how hairstyle and hair color affected others’ interpretation of the Asian body has crossed my mind before. Nowadays, it is a trend among many Asians to dye their hair blonde or brown or even a silver platinum color. I questioned whether, maybe subconsciously, Asians like this trend because of their perceptions of Caucasians or Westerners, how stereotypically white people are portrayed with blonde or light colored hair.

1. Rachel Rubin’s article, “Cyberspace, Y2k: Giant Robots, Asian Punks,” delved into the freedom of the internet and the opportunity it brought for Asian Americans to express themselves and their problems that are associated with identifying as Asian American. Those issues being: finding mainstream content as unrelatable and desiring to be heard, especially with how difficult it is to be approved to publish or be funded to create content for an audience that is not geared towards “White America.”
2. As seen in the conclusions, “…web writing represents a place where they are prominent and visible as cultural producers,” (p. 20). Zines were typically self-published and for passion, not profit, therefore content was abundant and meaningful. Thanks to the internet and its vastness and ability to reach out to many, efficiently, the Zine platform served to be a powerful tool for self-expression for the minority group of young adult Asian Americans. For example, Kristina Wong’s reimagining of Hello Kitty allows the silent character to have a voice that is all surprising and vulgar, saying phrases such as, “Who’s up for a threesome?” (p. 16). As the article continues, it disproves “model-minority myth” and instead frees Asian American oppressed emotions and artistic visions to be expressed.
3. Key terms to be defined are zine, Asian American, and the Internet. Zines are defined as “Non-commercial ‘amateur’ publications…” (p. 1) As for the term Asian American, the paper defined the term closely with Amy Ling’s poem as one with Asian ancestry but with American struggles (p. 2). Finally, for the term internet, it is defined as a network for information to be published, sent, and received without the need for physical travel.
4. Zines are practically the first versions of what are now tumblrs, twitter pages, or even “meme accounts.” These are social media tropes of individuals creating accounts in a specific social media platform to specifically publish works related to a theme and only for that theme (musicians post music, blog writers only post blogs, etc.). With the internet increasing vastness, more cultures have delved into the beauty of the internet that have allowed their voices to be heard with issues that they face and even art that they can express.

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.

1.  In Shilpa Dave’s article, Apu’s Brown Voice: Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents, we get a glimpse of how American media has shaped how we perceived certain South Asian accents. Dave argues how the portrayal of The Simpson’s character Apu has shaped us Americans view all Hindu and Pakistani people.
2. As we see, Dave’s theory of “Brown voice” stems from the identity Americans and British people gave to South Asian people because media wanted to look “civilized” yet not too white(page 314). Dave also mentions how in the Simpsons episode “Much Apu about nothing,” we see how in that specific episode it centers around Apu wanting to be seen as American so he dresses wearing sport jerseys and cowboy hats and tries to lose his accent, however, he eventually stops because he feels like he is not being himself which tries to teach minorities a lesson about not hiding who you are(page 315/16). However, Dave then reveals how Apu is not played by someone who would be considered Indian, but by a white man who uses brown voice, which once again shows us how in media up until today, not all minority characters are played by an actual minority person(page 317/18). And even though the character is voiced by a white man, the character as a whole is welcomed around the world, mostly due to the fact that the white voice actor is hardly ever shown while doing the voice(324-26). Dave finally mentions how while the British were colonizing they tried to set up Indian people to be just like them by educating them completely in English so that they could be a new class of British Indians(page 328). But even though most South Asians don’t have accents since they were raised in English classes, people have been wired to perceive them with accents as shown by the experiment where there was one voice speaking English, where half of a group of people were shown a white person speaking and the other half an Asian person speaking, but even though the voice was the same, people still said the one with the Asian person was harder to understand(229). This shows how by us thinking that Asians have accents we perceive them that way even when they clearly don’t have any and luckily now we have more South Asian actors and directors like M. Night Shyamalan who are showing that not all South Asians among other Asians do not all have accents unlike what we have been lead to believe(page 331).
3. 1.  Brown voice(314): identifies a specific racializing trait among South Asians which simultaneously connotes foreignness and class and cultural privilege.
   2. English Indians(328): another way for the British Empire to construct a tangible other and simultaneously reinforce British identity [on the people from India].
4. This perception of Brown voice that has been associated with South Asian people can still be seen on current TV. In the TV show “The Big Bang Theory” we see an Indian-American character who speaks in with the brown voice accent. Kunal Nayyar, the actor, who plays as the character Raj Koothrappali is an English born Indian actor who in real life does not have an accent which can be seen when he does interviews. However, in the show, while he is doing the voice for Raj he has an accent that is very similar to that of a brown voice. So we can see that even when the actor has no accent he still has to make one up to fit the role of a stereotypical South Asian American.