May

9

2008

(9) Comments

Asian Americans: Be Ready for Backlash

02:34PM by Alvin Lin

Here is an interesting article out from AsianWeek.  I think it is an excellent piece that summarizes a lot of points.  It doesn’t address much to tie in how anti-China sentiments affect all Asian Americans, but it’s not hard to see why.  An easy example is how Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was murdered by two auto workers, who were frustrated over Japan.  Here are some excerpts from the article

“China is now America’s number 3 Enemy. A February 2008 Gallup Poll found that Americans declared that China had replaced North Korea as our number 3 enemy. Is anyone surprised that China is perceived to be a greater threat than the long time trouble maker North Korea? It seems that every day our fellow Americans are feeling more and more threatened by China’s growing economic power, in addition to China’s growing international influence in Asia, Australia, South America, Africa and the Middle East..”

Apr

12

2008

(7) Comments

Chicago Screening of ‘Vincent Who?’ Documentary

07:44AM by Alvin Lin

Though it’s only showing in Chicago, this is post-worthy because many aren’t aware of the story/murder of Vincent Chin, and how his killers basically got away.  Come see the documentary VINCENT WHO? during the Asian American Film Showcase in Chicago. Director Tony Lam will be there for a Q & A.

In 1982, Vincent Chin was brutally murdered in Detroit at the height of anti-Japanese sentiment. In a travesty of justice, the judge ruled it a case of manslaughter and the two killers, both autoworkers, never served a day in jail.

More than twenty-five years later, that case remains a touchstone in the struggle for civil rights and the advancement of the Asian American community. In this new documentary, VINCENT WHO?, we take a quick look back at the case, but more importantly we examine the effects the case had on the leading community activists of today and the future leaders of tomorrow.

Saturday, April 19, 2008
5:30pm - 8:30pm
Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street
Chicago, IL

Apr

11

2008

(4) Comments

CNN: Is Mike Myers’ new film asking for trouble?

07:35AM by Alvin Lin

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/01/film.theloveguru.ap/index.html

[LOS ANGELES, California (AP)—As the people of Kazakhstan know all too well, mockery of culture and religion seems to be kosher in Hollywood, under the following conditions:

The humor must be so over-the-top, so beyond reality, that it could never be misconstrued as mean-spirited. That, and the targeted groups cannot be large enough, loud enough or organized enough so that their hurt feelings make an impact at the box office.

Just ask Borat. Though Kazakhs complained that their country and customs were grossly misrepresented in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the film was a $128 million domestic success—among the top-grossing films of 2006.

In the context of Sacha Baron Cohen’s uncomfortable in-character interactions with unwitting Americans, Mike Myers’ parody of another cultural minority in the U.S.—as the oversexed, overly ambitious, American-born spiritual leader in the summer comedy “The Love Guru”—would hardly seem cause for complaint.

Myers’ character is an amalgamation of Eastern-style spiritual movements, never making reference to any particular religion. And yet the Guru Pitka—billed as “the second best guru in India”—draws a distinct picture.

He wears long hair, a long beard and a flowing caftan. “Prepare to get your enlightenment freak on,” Pitka tells visitors to his MySpace page, where he blends real information—such as the Sanskrit origins of the word “guru”—with silliness, including impossible yoga poses that would require elastic limbs. He plays sappy pop songs on the sitar. His mantra is “Mariska Hargitay.”

Pitka identifies himself as “a spiritual teacher affiliated with no one faith” and has the same crass-and-goofy charm as Myers’ Austin Powers and “Wayne’s World” characters. And the movie’s plot—he heads West when he’s offered $2 million to heal a hockey star’s romance so the team can win the Stanley Cup—is harmless enough.

Still, weeks before the movie is even ready for screening, some in the Hindu community feel that “The Love Guru” has the potential to ridicule important elements of their religion.]

Apr

10

2008

(4) Comments

“Model minority” goes nutzoid

11:16PM by Alvin Lin

Link to the article
(excerpt below)

“Dark Matter,” the filmmaking debut of Chinese-born opera and theater director Chen Shi-zheng, gets full credit for slamming head-on into any number of hot-button topics in American society. First and most interestingly, Chen’s film captures, from the inside, the strange and insular world of the Chinese graduate students who increasingly dominate the math and science fields at major American universities. It also engages the subtle forms of racism and stereotyping that continue to inform non-Asians’ perceptions of this “model minority.” I guess this is a spoiler, but there’s no way around it: Finally, “Dark Matter” tries to convey how an underslept, overworked, culturally dislocated student could erupt in a psychotic outburst of violence, as has happened in a couple of notorious cases.

Chen’s film (written by Billy Shebar, from a story he co-wrote with Chen) is based on a shooting incident at the University of Iowa in 1991, and was completed well before the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007. Neither the movie nor the Iowa case bears any resemblance to the Virginia Tech case, in which the shooter was an undergraduate English major and a longtime legal resident of the United States, not a foreign student. (If you don’t want to know more about the plot of “Dark Matter,” don’t read news accounts of the Iowa case, as the fictional events follow the real ones closely.)

“Dark Matter” is rich with interesting themes and ideas, from the slippery, sycophantic nature of academic success to the Orientalist attitudes of rich Americans and the outer edges of astrophysical theory.

Apr

10

2008

(6) Comments

Mad TV Clip about IR Couple, Revealing Closet Racism

07:33AM by Alvin Lin

Here is a clip I’ve been looking for a long time. It’s a Mad TV clip of a Black guy and White woman couple, where the woman reveals her closet racism as they talk. Same thing applies to certain Asian-White couples, especially some recent prominent and controversial ones in recent news (like those NYC radio hosts with the racist Asian jokes that got them fired, who used the ‘my wife is Asian so I can’t be racist’ defense).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fKDP__q0pw

Apr

9

2008

(5) Comments

Minorities with Internalized Self-Racism

07:00AM by Alvin Lin

“When you have Asian American women who are ignorant of history and that the desire from these people goes back to the colonization of Asian countries, the media portrayal of Asian women, and Asian American women being socialized into the White supremacist world of media, it makes perfect sense. Underlying it all is a form of racist love, not an equality. These Asian American women get hit on or propositioned by White men, but they don’t realize what lies beneath; that they’re coming onto you as a prostitute or massage woman, because that’s what they see, first and foremost, regardless of educational level. Conversely, an Asian American woman in White supremecist America will value anything White. I won’t say it’s instinctual, but almost at the preconscious level.”

-Prof Darrell Hamamoto, Asian American studies at UC Davis

http://www.audreymagazine.com/Sep2005/Features03.asp

Apr

6

2008

(5) Comments

FYI: Exclusion in Trans-Continental Railroad Photo

12:25PM by Alvin Lin

http://www.8asians.com/2008/04/01/the-mit-tech-movie-21-discriminatory-casting-unjustified/

“For some reason, when writing this ‘21’ blog posting - I was reminded that when the Central Pacific Railroad joined the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 at Promontory Point - to create the first transcontinental railroad, not one Chinese laborer was included in the famous photo, although up to 12,000 Chinese worked for Central Pacific (making up to 90% of the workforce).”

Apr

4

2008

(6) Comments

Harvard Paper on Asian American Youth Identity Formation

07:23AM by Alvin Lin

This is an excellent paper out of Harvard, studying Asian American youth in various high schools in America.  A common phenomenon was Asian American youth who, in order to fit in, felt they had to reject their ethnicities and assimilate by ‘acting White’ as their model.  Additionally, it covers negative stereotypes about Asian students, damage from the model minority stereotype in college admissions, and how some Asian Americans were embarassed or ashamed to hang around other Asian Americans (no solidarity).
The link to the paper can be found here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1082148

Here is a Washington Post article about this.
Fallout Central also had a link awhile ago about this.

Mar

25

2008

(4) Comments

‘Slanted Screen’ Documentary

12:00PM by Alvin Lin

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi wrote, produced and directed an independent documentary called “The Slanted Screen,” which examines the history of Asian American men in American cinema. Adachi covers Hollywood’s stereotypical portrayals of Asian men as either an evil “Fu Manchu’’ character or as an asexual nerd. The movie was shown at a previous San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The movie features interviews with Mako, James Shigeta and Dustin Nguyen.

Here is a link to the documentary website and a news article:

There was a segment on NPR awhile ago, and I took some notes of the interview below.