THE TIGER SONS Tape - Online Now!

MODEL MINORITY is proud to present THE TIGER SONS Tape, following up on their previous release, THE MODEL MINORITY REPORT.

On THE TIGER SONS, emcees D-One, Grand Master Chu, and Inglish continue to speak about the lives of young, modern, Asian-Americans with their signature wordplay. Humorous, self-deprecating, and thoughtful, they address a range of subjects from growing up in Asian-American households (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Sons), online romance (Twitter Girl), historical struggles against racism (Vincent Chin.), and drop bilingual party tracks like Xian Kan Kan Wo (a Mandarin cover of Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now”) and Ooh It’s Just Genetic, Girl.

The lead single from THE TIGER SONS, Invisible People (Where’d You Go?), and its accompanying music video, are dedicated to those people whose voices and stories have been lost or ignored. With a music video shot in San Francisco, directed by Angela Yu, the song sees the three rappers speaking out against injustice in the classroom, courtroom, and media.

THE TIGER SONS Tape is available for free download & streaming at http://grandmaster.bandcamp.com/album/the-tiger-sons

The INVISIBLE PEOPLE music video is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tqpEF9-_lw

Contact links:

Model Minority - http://www.facebook.com/themodelminority

D-One (@DavidBFung) - http://www.youtube.com/davidbfung

Grand Master Chu (@JasonGLChu) - http://www.facebook.com/grandmasterchu

Inglish (@AndrewJFung) - http://www.youtube.com/andrewjfung

Vincent Chin. - memorial song

In March, Model Minority recorded "Vincent Chin." for our upcoming mixtape THE TIGER SONS, in the hopes of continuing to use music to educate our listeners and friends about the struggles and victories of Asians in America.

With Thursday being the 29th anniversary of his death, we decided to release "Vincent Chin." early, before the rest of the project, as a sign of respect for those who have come before us, and in the hopes that the tragedy that ended his life would never be forgotten.

The video clips that play during the song are selections from Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña's 1987 documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? and the instrumental is from Fort Minor's Kenji.



-Model Minority

Grand Master Chu
D-One
Inglish

The O

"The Office, Season 7, Episode 10 – “China”
After reading an article about China growing as a global power, Michael decides China must be stopped before they take over the US. Everyone in the office complains about Dwight’s building standards and Pam threatens to move Dunder Mifflin to a new building."

I haven't watched it yet (queueing it up to stream right now, though...), but I'm already half-concerned, and half-hopeful, about the content of this week's Office episode about China.... [continued on my ethnic studies blog]

A new beginning.

"All Good Things..." -English Proverb. Or Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.

Even the humblest of things can spring from a humble beginning; but every humble beginning must come from the end of some other beginning (it's profound. [no it's not]), whether more or less humble.

And so, I must, with misty-eyed regret, contemplate the end of a thing; and the beginning of another.

It's one of the oldest voices in the book of tragically spurned love: "I'm sorry; there's another...". But here we go: while American Dream, Chinese Hero has served as a wonderful jumping-off point for my musings, personal and professional, I now find it more useful - if not necessary - to divide the two spheres of my identity.

But this is not an end! It is a beginning!

American Dream, Chinese Hero will continue on in more or less of its present (and traditional) form: a forum for me to post shakily-taken photographs from my camera(phone), eject musings of a highly unprofessional (and undesirable) nature, and post about the latest and greatest in the sneaker/mixtape/rap album world.

But there will be no more of the wittily incisive (yeah right) commentary on race, ethnicity, politics, philosophy, or theology that have preceded it. Instead, new things arise:

1) For vague (and unqualified) sociological discourse - both personal reflections and public musings - having to do with the field of Asian-American studies, hip-hop discource, political discussions (such as Affirmative Action and Just War theory), and other academic subjects, please head to Iason De Silentio.

The title - "Jason from the Silence" - comes from the pseudonym of Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Johannes de Silentio, referencing the Biblical John the Baptist: a voice out of the silence, speaking into silent world around him. This was literal and prophetic: John came into prophetic existence in the wilderness of 1st-century Judea, far from the urban centers of his time; and his voice came into the public sphere following four hundred years of prophetic silence. John's voice - strident, urgent - was the wake-up call preparing the people for a new revelation.

Kierkegaard found himself in similar circumstances. In his 19th-century Denmark, he faced an overbearing church hierarchy, a numb national congregation, and inadequate, distant theologies. Kierkegaard's voice awoke, aroused, and enlivened his people, Church, and philosophy forever, in his role as the Father of (Christian) Existentialism.


2) For formal and informal reflections on Evangelicalism, ministry, the global Church, Scripture, and faith, I am establishing a third space, seeking my name.

Names, in short, have power: when they are forced onto us (as by a schoolyard bully), they are repugnant, hateful, instruments of spite and derision. When snatched from the lips of a lover, they are glorious, shimmering, eternal things.

As a Christian, one of the things to which I cling dearly - desperately - is the thought that my name - given to me not only by my earthly parents, but my eternal Father - is written "in the Book of Life", a book within which no hand could ever dare raise the power to blot or inscribe a single character.

The Biblical conception of naming is an interesting thing: not only does a name describe who we are, a well-chosen name - a true name, as it were - prophecies (tells the truth) about who we will be. Names are not only references, but serve as stories - signifiers - prescriptions.

As a young, immature man seeking - seeking Christ, God, Grace, and Love - I think, ultimately, I and all others who are on a journey of faith are simply seeking our names. Our true, eternal, right names.



The long and short of it:
-3 blogs:

1. American Dream, Chinese Hero - an informal personal blog: photographs, personal updates, and my music.
   
2. Iason De Silentio - a formal ethnic studies blog, particularly touching on current events, Asian and Asian-American studies, hip-hop culture, and philosophy (primarily ethics) blog.
3. seeking my name - A reflective and contemplative faith and ministry blog, discussing Christian living, Evangelicalism, Scripture, and theology.

Complex.com - 50 Most Racist Movies

Full disclosure: my homegirl sooey is on her hustle over at Complex mag's digital division, so I have a personal stake in this...

Still I am not gonna front like complex.com's commentary is anything but 50/50 (at best) in their track record... half of the time, they're profiling dope outfits, brands, personalities, etc.; and the other half of the time, it's puerile attempts at lowest-common-denominator frat boy comedy that blow up in their faces (sorry, "ironic" misogyny is still misogyny...).



And this time, it looks like they got one mostly right, calling out 50 flicks that (more or less) deserve to be called out for their B.S.: Complex.com's 50 Most Racist Movies.

I'm not all that crazy about some of their choices - Passion of the Christ, for one - but all in all, I'll shoot off some props (none) where they're deserved.

I Don't Want To Be Racist Against White People.

All my White friends, here's one to you.

Am I Being Racist Against White People?

There is a twofold concern for me as I explore ethnicity and the systematic, generational sin of oppression and cultural violence: (1) Am I demonizing and objectifying Whiteness, Western tradition/authority, and European culture? And even if I am not, (2) am I being perceived as doing so?

This question concerns me for several reasons: (A) if I am, I am being hypocritical. Hypocrisy is not only bad in itself, but it (B) leads to me, and other similar critics of power, being discredited or invalidated. This all contributes to (C) a widening divide of miscommunication or silence between those who are set to inherit the reins of traditional structures of power and contemporary voices who seek to point out the outstanding flaws in those systems.

If you'll bear with me - I'll try to be humble - let's examine these points:

The Natural Response to Violence or Assault

(1) A natural response to injustice is to render the unjust oppressor as inhuman. No one wants to think that someone who is in any way like me could do something so horrific to another; no, there must be something about a criminal, about a rapist, about a murderer, that makes them fundamentally different from me. This mental distance works both ways: slave masters, in order to justify the status of their slaves as property, dehumanized them along racial and cultural lines. If an African exists in a lesser form of being - whether a vastly inferior species of humanity, or not even as human at all - then, in a literal sense, it is not inhuman to claim possession over an African man or woman. Psychologists and historians who worked with post-war Nazi soldiers have noted that one of the ways that the German people coped with the horrific actions of the Holocaust was through a willing dismissal of the shared humanity between German Jews and German citizens of Germanic descent. [1]

Similarly, if, say, a close friend were to be murdered, I know that my temptation would be to see his murderer as a horrific, bloodthirsty, psycho bastard with no humanity, and nothing shared in common with myself. I think it's a general rule: we don't like to admit that we could share anything, even the slightest trace of fundamental humanity, with someone who could do such a thing. It is a natural coping mechanism, tinged with a trace of moral self-righteousness: how could anyone do such a thing? combined with well certainly, I would never be capable of such horrors.

This Is Wrong - What's Going On?

The problem here is twofold, both a problem of reality and effectiveness: first, the reality is that no entity or individual is blameless, and responding to evil by mentally distancing oneself from it is just wrongminded. Brokenness and perversity, when glimpsed in others, should not elicit my recoiling from them as diseased and inhuman, but rather my embracing them, knowing and acknowledging that I too have had my times of ugliness, hatred, anger, and violence. The reality is, as much as White, western cultural imperialism has hurt many people and cultures, I too, even in my short 23 years, have insulted, demeaned, and objectified many. To pretend that I am not also a participant in brokenness is to lie.

Secondly, by creating distance between myself and my oppressor, I lessen the possibility for her to reconcile herself with me and make amends to me, even if she desires to do so. As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right, and responding to a slight by slighting another only draws both parties further from reconciliation and mutual growth. Even if I were perfect, and my enemy were an incredibly spiteful person, distancing myself from him - while perhaps a useful coping mechanism, and a helpful step towards healing from the injury - ultimately does nothing to prevent the recurrence of the exact same slight, whether towards me or another.

Of course, the burden should be on the oppressor to make amends to the oppressed; even if the oppressed does not ask for apology, it is common human courtesy that if one has created a problem, one ought to fix it. If I kicked down your fence, appropriate apology is not to return bearing a hammer, hand it to you, and let you fix it; it lies on me to return, hammer in hand, and repair the broken fence.

But the simple and sad truth is that many people - myself included - are blind to the wounds we create for others. So to those of us who can be gracious - who have received grace from One who has been wounded by us, and are thus in turn in position to go to those whom we have wounded - it makes sense to do so. Just because I didn't create the problem, doesn't mean I can't be part of the solution.

In the Eye of the Beholder

(2) Tragically, even if I am just telling the truth - or, at least, the truth insofar as I understand it based on fact, evidence, and reasonable inference - I can be perceived as demonizing others. This is difficult.

One thing that I have learned, through reading accounts like Tim Wise's incredible White Like Me, is the unforeseen degree to which people coming from different backgrounds actually possess vastly different experiences. I am not talking about simple social distinctions, like a family only being able to afford bus passes vs. a family being able to afford an SUV. I am talking about completely different perceptions of social order. For example, I grew up with the explicit understanding that police exist to protect me and my friends: I was constantly instructed, in school, at home, and at church, to go to a police officer if I was scared, on my own, in trouble, or lost.

How far is this from the experience of an undocumented immigrant child growing up in, say, downtown Los Angeles! Disregarding the legality of her immigration, an undocumented immigrant girl not only cannot trust the police, but will likely actively distrust them - after all, the legacy of the LAPD is rife with scandal, corruption, abuse, blatant brutality, and more.

Imagine if eight-year-old middle-class suburban Chinese-American me could talk to that Los Angelena. When told about her view of the police, I would have considered her ill-informed, crazy, making up stories, and worse. And while, perhaps, her view of the police would be no more true than mine, I hesitate, now, to say that it is less worthy of consideration.

This is something that often concerns me when I disseminate information into the aether, as it were. I have no way to tell whether my audience is receptive or dismissive; and, while the information that I have uncovered is damning and even sickening to see, it is most terrifying to think that my desire to share the truth could be easily read as simple reverse racism. You can't handle the truth!(?)

After all, it is easiest to respond to an unpleasant message by disengaging from it: writing it off as fallacious, exaggerated, or irrelevant. Whether because a voice is too uncomfortable, too hypocritical, or personally offensive, it is very easy to be discredited, especially in circles into which you are speaking as a critic.

Vision for Reconciliation

But this is distinctly not what I want to do. I do not think that it is the time - at least, in the arena of racial reconciliation - for voices to only be present in the wilderness, crying out to those few who are attracted to them and who are willing to put up with their personal quirks. In this age, I think that the call is to go before not just those who want to listen, or are willing to listen, but especially to those who do not want to listen, and to convince, persuade, or somehow beg them to lend an open ear.

If the persecuted speak only to the persecuted, they cannot proclaim on behalf of the hurt and those crying out for justice. Proclamation comes into a community, and prophetic [2] voices and communities do not retain or hold in prophecy, but share it and spread a message of truth. The difficult, sad, and exhilarating mission for those of us who want to speak truth in love is that communication requires speaking to others, not merely at them.



[1] This is usually how it goes in war crimes: the object of one's transgression is seen as not human and, therefore, not possessing value on par with the subject's humanity. An alternative occurs in the case of child soldiers in Africa: there, instead of being taught that the targets of their violence are subhuman, the humanity of victims is often acknowledged, but simply devalued. Child soldiers are forced to rape, kill, and maim friends and family members, resulting in a general devaluation of all human life, rather than a specifically targeted dehumanization.

[2] Here I use "prophecy" in the general and original sense of "a true proclamation or statement," rather than the more contemporarily common sense of "a true statement about the future".

Repurposed words: Context and Content

[In the hopes of continued agility of thought, and to spite mental atrophy, a present hope is to dedicate myself to writing of a substantial character. Once a week, generally on Thursdays, I will be sitting down to hash out some brief comments of varying rigor. Your mileage may vary.]

Words are undoubtedly powerful. Biblically speaking, the Word - Hebrew Dabar (), or Greek Logos (λόγος) - is centrally located. One could reasonably say, in fact, that the very essence of Christianity (and the Judaism from which it springs) lies in a theology of words: divine words given to humans from God (Inspiration/Revelation), words used by men to represent to themselves those divine words (Scripture), and words used to systematize, explore, share, and find application for those divine words (philosophical theology, mystical texts, etc.).

Socially speaking, as well, words bear power. Creating terms for systems of oppression and dismissal can serve to reinforce and legitimize them through lexical acceptance, as labels guide identity both overtly (i.e., "Illegal" vs. "Undocumented" immigrants) and subtly (i.e., the normative-neutral "White" versus the marginal and umbrella term "Colored").

This latter point may be unfamiliar to some of my readers, and - though initially I was hoping to cover this in a footnote - it is interesting to explore. You see, beyond the obvious connotations in Western societies - snow, purity, cleanness, and light - White is a generic default, aesthetically a "blank canvas". By creating Whiteness and identifying it with people of Anglo-Saxon European descent as White (rather than, say, Pink, Tan, etc.), the connotative implication is that non-Anglo/non-European persons are less of a blank slate.

I would like stress here that this is not a uniquely White, American, European, or even Western pattern, either. The same is present in modern Chinese: Anglo people are White (白人, bai + ren = white + person) [1], people of African descent are Black (黑人, hei + ren = black + person), but Chinese are 中国人, people of the middle kingdom. And humility is far from a trait of dominant cultures (Consider also the other common term for the Chinese diaspora, 华人, hua + ren = magnificent/splendid + person).

Whether identifying ourselves at the center of all things, or as White (and hence pure/unsullied/adaptable), so long as we have the power to do so, we nearly always ascribe normativity to ourselves. This is a fair move to make internally; after all, processing external input would be highly confusing were it not for the normative presumption of our own internal processes. However, to ascribe normativity to our own points of view in a broader sense overwrites and overrides the experience and authentic reflections of others, creating dissonant systems for those who are not-Us but subscribe (willingly or through coercion) to that prescription. For a majority member [2], most such suppositions pass unquestioned; but, for a minority member, it raises significant existential - even ontological - questions that express themselves as internal anguish and confusion.

Of course, words can also be recontextualized, forcefully and defiantly if need be. The homosexual community (and, increasingly, other communities as well), in accepting, embracing, and finally repurposing the label "Queer", has demonstrated, it seems, a praiseworthy amount of perseverance and deliberate, systematic, activism. It is also one of the rare examples of a community embracing marginalization, for the very etymology of the identifier names its referent as on the fringe.

The N word (as if you're going to get me to spell it out for you... get outta here) is an example of a slur with a far more controversial present usage. While some advocates of the word claim that the same process of acceptance-embrace-repurposing has been undertaken successfully, it is hard to successfully argue that the word has been rehabilitated in the same fashion as the Q word (if you would). To nudge this intuition, let me point to two pieces of evidence: first, that I am myself hesitant to type out in full "the N word", while having no such qualms about "queer" [3]. Second, the ongoing dialect debate over "the N word with a -a" and "the N word with a -er" suggests that the process of linguistic evolution and drift away from offensiveness towards repurposing is far from complete [4].

What separates the two? Without entering into a rigorous discussion, the apparent answer seems to be that "Queer" is a word that preceded its use as a slur, while the N word - though possessing a historied and not entirely negative etymology - springs up in its proximal form as a slur. When those who self-identify as Queer (or queer-allied) do so, they are actually not re-defining the word, but instead actually maintain the definition of the word while re-defining the moral landscape within which it is situated, shifting from normativity to a non-normative field. Not being queer is therefore descriptive, rather than normative, and so queerness becomes as normal as non-queerness.

My (self-)allotted time is drawing to a close and is, indeed, even now nigh. Interestingly, all the above was initially only to be a brief footnote to a larger discussion; at this point, I will turn to a summary of my intended discussion, and pick up on it when next we speak.

So, why all the thought about Words? A natural response would be: the author's hubris leads to an egotistical confluence of form and content, wherein his verbosity is buoyed by the ostensible topic of exploring the power of words.

But no.

Actually, the choice of topic upon which to spend my meagre reserves is prompted by some reflections on the recent Malaysian religious scandal. In short, Malaysian courts recently ruled that it was within the civil rights of non-Muslim organizations (read: Christian churches) and individuals to freely use the Arabic term "Allah" to refer to God - God the concept and God the being. As far as I understand, certain elements within society - pre-radicalized, and definitely not all of Muslim Malaysia [5] - seized upon this ruling as a foothold from which to launch an extremist agenda, including vigilante attacks on various Christian churches and schools.

Malaysia is, of course, a country with a complex history of diversity along ethnic, economic, and religious lines. I am ill prepared to speak on it in such fields, and thus reticent.

While the proximally inciting incident of word usage seems to be more a case of finding excuses than of actual outrage, I am still interested in the idea that word usage can be made into an excuse for action; an excuse that is, at the very least, not horrendously implausible. And even if, in this case, the implausibility of gross offense through word usage is very high, there are definitely cases - slander, defamation, and libel - in which words alone are legally acknowledged to have the power to harm and damage.

To be continued.

[1] It is undeniable that other societies also associate people of Anglo descent with the color white. An interesting study would be a linguistic excavation of Whiteness in other cultures: for example, modern Chinese refer to Anglos as White People. Was this phrase introduced by cultural transmission along with the concept of Whiteness during the opening of Sino-American relations, or does it stem from a natural response to skin tone? Consider also the association of white with death in Chinese cultures (hence, red wedding dresses and white in funeral rituals): in this case, arguments for the nonpreferential nature of white-connotative language seem to obtain more readily.

[2] Majority here, of course, does not necessarily connotate numerical majority, but instead a majority of power. As examples, the racial politics of South Africa and the religious politics of Hussein-era Iraq come to mind.

[3] This does beg the question: ought I be so free with my diction? So far as I understand, queer-sensitive allies are allowed to use this word in such contexts. I may be wrong.

[4] Naturally, as a straight Asian-American male, I am an outsider to both these debates, and I may be reading social cues entirely wrong. This raises another question: do Asian-Americans have a repurposed label? I suspect not. Why not? Interesting.

[5] I hope not to evoke a sense of the Muslim Panic all too familiar in Western rhetoric.

Avatar thoughts: 2nd pass, post-viewing

This morning, after a round of in-house (literally) family celebration, my sister, father, and I went to see Avatar.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I had some serious reservations about the film's narrative arc.

To simplify a host of fairly irreducible ruminations is difficult; long story short, the film is problematic, but still quite a good film. I would say that most of my concerns were found to have reasonable warrant within the film: some of them aren't so bad, but some - one in particular - are still troubling.

Just a few of the thoughts that I was having while I watched the film, and in discussion afterwards [spoilers to follow]:

1) The film's casting directors acquitted themselves well in presenting often-marginalized faces & bodies.
-While much of the primary cast is Anglo, at the same time, the protagonist is disabled (paralyzed), which is the first time that I can recall, off-hand, a film which has a - the - lead character handicapped throughout the entire film. Big thumbs up to that.
-Non-Anglo characters were present throughout the background and foreground. In my previous post, I was concerned that, of all the primary cast human characters, only two were people of color. This is true; but both had substantive roles, and Michelle Rodriguez' fighter pilot actually had my favorite character arc. There were also several minority faces throughout the background, weakening any charges that Dileep Rao and Rodriguez were token casting choices.
-Female characters were, similarly, represented well in both primary roles of intelligence, strength, and authority, as well as throughout the background.
-In short: Cameron's casting director(s) did a very good job of presenting a wide gender and ethnic spectrum, didn't shy away from presenting a handicapped protagonist, and managed to do so in a way that seemed to bypass typecasting boundaries (except poor Michelle Rodriguez, who just cannot shake the tough-girl image she's born since The Fast & The Furious).

2) I'm still unhappy with the story of Jake Sully's rise to prominence within the native tribe.
-He gets the girl, lives to see the future, rides the bad-shut-yo-mouth flying reptile-bird, and so on.
-Maybe this is more just my general concern with how Hollywood films treat their protagonists: with the universe-on-film revolving around them, every action, person, and event, whether past, present , or future. conveniently happening with them in the center of the action. If this is true, which it seems like it is, then I can't specifically cite this as a shortcoming of either Cameron or Avatar.

3) I'm more displeased than I thought I would be by the conclusiveness of the film's ending.
-The film concludes, seemingly, on a high note: the outsiders are banished from the edenic world of Pandora (an incredibly silly name for a developmentally high-priority planet, by the way: who in the universe would want to "open up Pandora"?), and the tribes, united, stand behind Jake Sully.
-First off, internally, this ending doesn't make much sense. If "unobtainium" (another incredibly silly placeholderish name) is actually so valuable ($20M/kg... although, with inflation in 2154, who knows how valuable that actually is?), then history - economics - and sociology all seem to point towards this not being a permanent victory, but rather an incredibly fleeting respite. But this is neither here nor there; it's more of a technical concern than critical commentary.
-Second, more importantly, this ending is a happy one. This is my major concern remaining after a first viewing:

-The film ends on a happy note: in a literal deus ex machina (or, more properly, ex natura), Eywa, the Gaia-figure of the film, unites the power of the planet (Earth! Wind! Fire! Water! Heart!) to save the indigenous peoples and herself from the plundering, pillaging earth-humans with their murderous technology. Even if the future is indeterminate, at least, for the moment, the victory has conclusively been won.
-This simply is not the way that things have always turned out: for most native peoples, facing encroaching empire or exploitative harvesting, there is no end to the story, and certainly no end that has turned out well. For the Australian aboriginal peoples, the North American first nations, and African native tribes, the story still continues. In some cases, progress has been made; for other peoples, however, the story is simply one of unvarying neglect, social marginalization, economic oppression, and widespread apathy towards their plight.
-This is why Cameron's Avatar is still, for me, so strongly redolent of White Guilt. To tell a story about native peoples is one thing; to mirror the true story of native peoples, as awkward, uncomfortable, or embarrassing as it may be, is quite another.

-I can understand that this film is a fantasy. But I hope that it is a fantasy that stirs us to action, rather than a fantasy that provides all-too-easy catharsis: after three hours in the movie theater, we leave feeling sympathetic toward native peoples, guilty about our own exploitative/imperialistic ways, but satisfied knowing that the Na'vi got their measure of justice - even while native and aboriginal people the world over have yet to see their reparations in kind.


But still, on this day, I celebrate with family and friends, rejoicing in - remembering - and hoping for - the presence of one among us who did not just come to save, but to suffer.
And, having suffered to the point of death, and having died, and having been given life again, he was not content that only he might have life, but did not see his work as complete until all poor, heavy-burdened, and unvalued people could come to share in that life. This is true.

Avatar: James Cameron's colonial - racist - fantasy

This is an important one.

If you read no other entry that I ever write, please read this.

Why?

I'm sure that some - many - of you are used to me talking about racism by this point. You may have wondered:

Why is race such an issue for Jason? Does he see racism in everything?

Well, no. Not everything. But almost everything.

Can't he just get over it?

Maybe I could; but I won't.

I want to share how I see racism manifest in places that others don't; and why I am not willing to "get over it". Regardless of whether or not you agree with me: please hear me out.

What Are You Talking About, And Why?

What prompts this? Well, over the past couple days, I've been reading various commentaries [warning: both links have spoilers] on the current 20th Century Fox blockbuster, James Cameron's Avatar, and I thought that it might serve as an excellent example of how racial - racist - beliefs are interwoven into our daily lives, and exactly why I think it's so important to call them out when we see them.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen Avatar yet. I was, for a while, eagerly anticipating it, especially as I saw advance reviews - from reputable sources like Roger Ebert - excitedly calling it the best new sci-fi property in decades. But in the course of reading through various blogs and reviews, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the film's themes, and sought out more information, hoping to be proved wrong, or at least have doubts allayed. This did not happen.

Just what are these troubling themes? Well, let's take a quick look at the narrative arc: it doesn't ruin the story to say that the film is about a race of peace- and nature-loving alien natives, who come under attack from menacing, technologically-advanced humans wanting to plunder their world. But, just as all seems lost, salvation for the natives comes from the most unlikely quarter: a human soldier who switches sides because, get this, he realizes how awesome the natives are. [Slight spoiler:] He woos their princess, out-competes their best warrior - her fiance - and takes headship of their tribes to lead them in battle against the evil imperialistic humans.

This lone hero, savior of the colored (literally) folk, is, of course, a Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon man.

In fact, all the primary Human roles are cast White, except for Latina Michelle Rodriguez, typecast as a scrappy soldier, and a single Indian-American, Dileep Rao, cast as - shocker - a scientist. The primary speaking Na'vi roles, on the other hand - the native people - are all filled by people of color, including Black, African, and Cherokee actors.

I've Heard This Story Before...

Avatar's story is, at heart, familiar. From the innocuous (Superman) to the insidious (The White Man's Burden), this metanarrative underlies much of Western thought: a community's salvation coming in the personal form of an outsider savior. Nothing is wrong with this version of the story and, in fact, it can be argued that it is derived from the Christian story, a narrative I cherish with great regard [1]. But what happens to the concept of a savior-from-outside when we write ourselves into the role of the savior? This is the root of Colonialist thought: when we begin to see ourselves as that outsider-savior figure, and see native peoples as fundamentally noble but backwards. These good-hearted but incapable (whether technologically, morally, socially, etc.) natives need someone else to map out their progress, and we do so by setting them on the path of integration into Us-ness.

This is the Colonialist story: they advance if we force ourselves on them. The twisted logic echoes the rationalizations of the overbearing boss, the abusive spouse, and even serial rapists.

Hold on, though. What I'm describing doesn't quite match what Cameron plots out in Avatar, does it? In fact, he is writing precisely the opposite kind of story: in Avatar, the literal colonizers - humans toting Science, Technology, and magnificently-rendered spaceships - are the bad guys. How is it a colonialist narrative if the protagonist turns his back on the oppressive ways of mankind and leads the Na'vi natives to victory?

Re-read that last phrase: the protagonist (who is, we are reminded, Human just like us) becomes the salvation of the native peoples.

Here, the story's thrust becomes clear: Cameron's Na'vi natives may be an exotic and attractive people, but they are still ultimately incapable, doomed without the leadership and capability of the Human outsider. And this is precisely the colonialist narrative, advanced to its next logical step. These more sophisticated works acknowledge the overt shortcomings of forced cultural conversion. But, in such cases, the reassurance that "we did it to them for their own good" is instead replaced by the more subtle triumph of seeing a character that we know is supposed to be dominant - a White, Male figure - rising to his natural place of leadership. As these stories draw near the end of their arcs, we can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that the guy who was supposed to be the good guy, is; even if he or his people were the ones who caused the ruckus, in the end, he fixed it, atoning for his own transgressions in the process.

This is the story of white guilt, and it is a story told with increasing volume and insistence as the Eurocentric world has been brought face-to-face with the terrible legacy of the "Age of Exploration": genocide, pestilence (more), forced relocation, massive-scale theft, and more. Unable to deny the horrors inflicted by their forebears, the descendants of colonizers had to convince themselves that they could be the exception to the ancestral rule: as their fathers had destroyed lives and cultures, they would save and value them.

But What's So Wrong With That?

The problem with this is that, regardless of what the theme or internal plot rationale may be, in the end, the movie presents a White Man romancing the exotic princess and proving himself superior to the best warrior in her tribe. If we are White Men, this makes us feel good about ourselves; and if we are not, we either put ourselves in his shoes, or are forced to cast ourselves as a romantic object or inferior competitor.

In the end, Avatar still places "me" - if I understand myself to be Anglo, and Male - at the center of the story. And, in it, the oppressed native is valuable not because he is, but because I tell him that he is. If the sins of my ancestors have harmed others, whatever the damage, I am the one who has the power to set it right. Parallel arcs are traced out in a few sets of identical films: Fern Gully & The Jungle Book, where the White Male saves an exotic, magical Nature from his society's aggressive industrialization. Freedom Writers, The Blind Side, Radio, and Hardball - among many others - where an experienced, open-hearted, caring White authority figure mentors a minority kid or kids to success [2] . Films like Australia, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and The Last of the Mohicans, that all share two aspects: a White Male protagonist, and a dying, endangered culture whose future depends on him [3].

Of course, in our media, there are many stories of a person or culture in need, and not all can be traced to White Guilt. Films like The Patriot, Gladiator, Dirty Dancing, and Braveheart all share key aspects with the films listed above: a community in need, and a man who rises to the occasion. But notice two things about them: while heroes arise from within those cultures, the communities being portrayed in these films and others like them are exclusively Eurocentric, Western communities. Apparently, when the culture being portrayed is White, a cultural insider serves as a satisfactory hero. But, when the culture is not White - and instead Urban, Aboriginal, Native, or Japanese - then an outsider is needed to step in as savior. A White outsider.

At this point, I can well imagine someone saying: you're talking about the media, and the media is simply in the business of providing what sells. Since most people in the country are White, it is profitable to provide protagonists to whom a White consumer base can relate [4] . It's not about actively being a racist, but simply good business.

This objection is wrong. Is it not about race? Then name me a single film where the opposite happens, where a non-White character assimilates into a clearly White society and winds up in a position of power or leadership.

I can't think of a single one * **.

So, then, apparently the interests of the White consumer demographic are so strong that they completely drown out the interests of consumers of color. This is a problem for two reasons: first, if it were to be true, it is a textbook case of tyranny of the majority, where the dominant group exercises such complete power that the interests and even well-being of the minority are completely disregarded. Second, it suggests that the media believes that White audiences are incapable of doing exactly what they demand of their minority audiences: to relate to a protagonist who is not like them.

This may be good business; but it is immoral, unethical, and dangerous. It is not racist to the level of a hate crime or muttered slur, but negative public perception nurtures bias, and bias leads, in its own inexorable way, to violence.

In the end, for whatever reason, the message being communicated is that a White person - usually a man - will be a hero, regardless of whether he finds himself in his own culture or outside it. But rarely a woman; and never a person of color.

You're Thinking Too Much.

"Come on, Jason. They're aliens, not minorities. Why can't you just watch it for what it is: fun, entertaining, light action?"

Online humor site Something Awful has an article (note: about halfway through, it gets silly. But I points 1-9 are suitably insightful) pointing out how obviously Cameron cribbed bits and pieces of native peoples for the "invented" Na'vi culture, from their "primitive" weapons to piercings, tattoos, and more. And the phonetic proximity of the two terms (Na'vi + "ti" = native) makes for either an odd coincidence, or a clever - and damning - subliminal. And if it weren't already clear enough, Cameron himself has repeatedly drawn explicit connections between Avatar and White cultural fantasies like Dances with Wolves. He obviously wants desperately to be an auteur, producing work read as political, social, and ethnic commentary.

And, you know what, it's almost worse if this narrative has come about unintentionally. If Cameron set out to simply make the freshest, most interesting, most entertaining work that he could, and the themes of White Guilt just happened to manifest themselves in that work, this is immense justification for the post-colonialist critic. Such a scenario signals that the co-opting of other cultures has gone so far that it has ingrained itself into the grand narrative of Western culture, deeply enough that even the production of a new mythos (and there is reason to believe that Cameron hopes for an extended universe) has the fingerprints of eurocentrism and White Guilt all over it.

In Closing,

Avatar is a problem. It seems like a great piece of entertainment: eye-popping special effects (or at least, so my sister and Roger Ebert both claim), a fun ride, the event movie of the season. But, at the same time, to buy into Avatar is to perpetuate a harmful, oppressive story that silences many in favor of further empowering those who already hold power. White Men bed the alien princesses, and defeat colored alien warriors related to her (how novel), while anyone who is not a White Man... doesn't do anything, really, unless it's pertinent to the actions and viewpoint of the White Man.

And make no mistake: 20th Century Fox, James Cameron, and many others have a vested interest in our literally buying into the film. With a release not more than a week ago, the film (with a shooting & promotional budget of over 500 million $USD, the most expensive in Fox's history) has already been used to sell video games, a toy line, apparel, cross-promotional schemes, novels, and a budding franchise.

[Please comment, discuss, and share as appropriate. I am actively interested in feedback & critique.]

---

[1] Even if the Christian story is the original source of this trend, it has not itself been immune to whitewashing, with a White (if tanned) Jesus saving the colored Jews from their ignorance. The most recent and aggressively popularized portrayals of Jesus - Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ and The Jesus Film - have seen the role of Jesus go to a Slovak-Irish American and Oxford-educated Englishman, not to mention the proliferation of decidedly Anglo, non-Semitic images of Christ. Such depictions raise few eyebrows, while portrayals of Christ as a colored man - usually Black - are still highly controversial in many Christian circles, despite African cultures and races being no more (and even perhaps less) distinct from early 1st-centruy Middle Eastern societies than European analogues.

I also feel compelled, as a Christian, to mention that Jesus, in utter contrast to the narrative of cultural subversion, became (a) an insider in order to (b) redeem culture, rather than removing a fetishized culture from its context as an outsider.

[2] In this genre, there have been a few films - Akeelah and the Bee and Stand and Deliver come come to mind - that provide hope, where mentors are cast with actors of color (Laurence Fishburne and Edward James Olmos, respectively). Still problematic is the proliferation of White women in this setting; initially, it may seem to be giving prominence to a female, but ultimately it winds up simply furthering another common Western trope, that of the nurturing, caring, emotional woman in opposition to the strong, aggressive, physical man.

[3] In all of these works, I notice a strong emphasis on the uniformly White outsider protagonist being termed the Last or the Best. This hints at a quasi-Hegelian progression, where a raw and basic culture (Native tribes, Samurai ways, Nature itself) gives birth to an advanced, more-evolved organism: the White man.

[4] This is, by the way, not a justifiable argument. Increasing amounts of data are available that may indicate (has this work been done?) that upper-class White consumers, while having more disposable income, actually spend less of their available leisure resources on purchasing entertainment than other demographics.

* I have thought of one: Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. Take that for what you will.
**After Dallas kindly reposted this piece on his site, commenter 6 100 pointed out that Blade may stand in opposition to this trend - I think he's right, and Blade is actually, the more I think about it, a pretty great film in terms of racial statements.

Personal reflections on Chinese America

A request from a friend taking a summer Ethnic Studies course at school served as the excuse to finally get some thoughts down that I've been hoping to commit to paper ("paper") for a while, now.

Thoughts are scattered, quite randomly arranged, and topics range wildly about. Many thoughts are unsupported, at best, and citations are nonexistent. This is more to have this on record and for those who care to get a stronger sense of my background and current stance on certain issues.

Reading over my thoughts - or, properly speaking, even as I typed them out in more or less stream-of-consciousness flow - I worry that I am myopic. My image of Asian America is gilded and almost universally positive: at least, my first responses to Chinese-American culture is always to assume that the minority has been victimized, is guilt-free, and has taken at most a passive part in the lead-up to the current state of affairs. I acknowledge freely, I think, that Chinese immigrants have been complicit in their own sufferings: but I do not first jump to the domestic abuse epidemic rampant in our communities (and countries of origin).

I tend to lionize the underprivileged and vilify the dominant. This is not wrong, but it is not right: worst of all, it is not true. The causes of current circumstances are manifold, and to simplify it down to Western imperialism (cultural, political, economic, and military) is to discredit my own claims. I worry about this, in the long run: I will have to become far more balanced and willing to critique China, Chinese America, and the Asian milieu if I am to be a credible and caring commentator.

I also have large holes in my discussions of gender. I make assumptions about female roles, rights, responsibilities, and representations (3 cheers for that alliterative streak) that are founded entirely on my male understanding of the female experience and role in society. This is dangerous, and I apologize if I wrongly offend. It's on my list of things to work on.

That said, the text of my response is presented below (cleaned up & edited in brief, most portions of the original text/questions remain):

1. experiences:
a. family traditions/customs/holidays
b. experiencing racism
c. basically, how was it like growing up chinese american?

(attempting to answer the breadth of a-c in one long breath:)

Basically, when I was young, being Chinese-American (which is, I might note, a different term than "American Chinese" or "American of Chinese descent") wasn't something that I thought about at all. There are a few factors that contributed to this: my parents were second- (or greater) generation, already, being born in Southeast Asia to families that had previously immigrated from China, so I was at least two degrees separated, on both sides, from direct ties to Chinese culture and heritage. I knew, on a fairly abstract level, that there was something tying my past to "China" - but that word, "China", referenced an empty concept, for me. Apart from Geography Bee-level details - the Yellow River, the Yangtze, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, etc. - I had no knowledge of China, and definitely no personal connection. The only glimpses of Chinese Culture that I received were in our shamefully irregular visits to my Nai nai/奶奶 (father's mother), who lives outside Washington, DC with her second husband (now deceased). There, I got my most transparent hints of the rich culture underlying our family's roots: conversations carried out in incomprehensible tongues; homecooked Chinese food utterly unlike my mother's Western cooking or greasy "Chinese" takeout; red envelopes of New Year money (that were, I realized much later, not months late, but simply operating according to a different calendar), watercolors of tumbling Chinese mountains, etc.

In short: our family traditions, customs, and holidays were as utterly middle-class, suburban American as one can get: dressing up for Easter Sunday, stockings on the mantle & gifts under the Christmas tree, ice cream cakes at birthday parties.

Which is why, I think, for me, racism was always a little bit of a surprise. After all, the far greater part of my upbringing was indistinguishable from your average American Dream: in the middle of the upper-middle-class, attending a Protestant church and Sunday School every weekend, straight-A report card, etc. But a few incidents stick out, in particular:

• While growing ever-more-increasingly Westernized, my parents, throughout my youth, continued to frequent the local Asian Groceries (albeit more and more infrequently). One of the snacks they would occasionally purchase there - and which I found not so much tasty as intriguing - was made of this sort of cheeto-like material; except, instead of being coated in "cheese" and "cheese" flavoring, it tasted like shrimp. One time, during a kindergarden lunch, I made the mistake of bringing - or my mom made the mistake of packing, in the best of intentions? - a bag of them to school. The White girl with whom I usually traded sandwiches and snack foods turned up her nose at them, declaring them - I'm paraphrasing - "smelly" or "yucky". I must have been 5 or 6; that was, I believe, the first time I had ever been told that something which I considered normal - banal, even - might be Different.

• Towards the end of my attendance of that Christian school (I realize, only at this moment, that the reason my parents probably entrusted me to them was that both my mother and father grew up going to Christian schools in Southeast Asia; and they were likely sending me to this school in hopes of my attaining the same education with which they had been bestowed), I recall that I came home one day and casually, after dinner, reading some book about geography or cultures or something of that nature, pulled my already asiatic eyes up into an exaggerated slant, telling my mom: "look. Chinese!" I can still remember her horrified response, the shock with which she realized that this so-called Christian education (I don't blame the church, of course; I do blame the ignorance and idiocy of young children, coupled with the race-blind/PC-disavowing/culturally underinformed nature of many well-intentioned evangelical communities) was actually driving a wedge between her son and her own background (I recently discovered that she had actually been planning, prior to the time she became pregnant with me, to go into law to help out asian-american and immigration issues). Shortly thereafter, for a host of reasons, my parents pulled me out of that school.

• Something that's often echoed by various generations and varieties of Asian-Americans is the sentiment of being a "perpetual foreigner": a Japanese-American senator, whose family has been in this country for over 80 years, once remarked that he still continually receives compliments for speaking English "so fluently". As a youth, I too had these jarring encounters: trivial at the time, I brushed them off casually, dismissing them as isolated incidents of ignorance or misinformation. Of course, the fact remains, at 23, and with a far broader range of experiences in the intervening years, I can still remember, vividly, the repeated confusion of being asked by young White children, "So, where are you from?" and the frustration of having to, repeatedly, explain that I was from Illinois - or California - or Delaware. I knew who I was, and where I was from; so why couldn't these other kids? A dilemma emerged: either they were simply stupid and couldn't see the blatantly obvious (which seemed unlikely, given that my American-ness seemed to me overt), or the premises on which I had established my identity, with my internal concept of The Normal American Childhood derived from my own experience, were faulty.

2 & 3. as a chinese american, how do you identify yourself? what does being "chinese american" mean to you

Given the circumstances of my upbringing, and my parents' immigration, I think it wouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that my view of myself, in my younger years, was basically that line about "diversity" that we were fed back in the day: "We want to be color-blind." I bought into the construal of Ethnicity that said the best way to accept everyone was to "just look at people as people, not as their skin color." So I applied this happily homogenizing view to myself, and those around me, and assumed that our points of view, personal experiences, and inculcated values more or less lined up. The emphasis in those days was definitely more on "American" than on "Chinese".

In recent years, I've been coming to hold a more subtle approach towards regarding my ethnic heritage: without running out the clock (because I definitely could), the basic outline of my thoughts go as such:

• The term "Asian-American" is in itself dangerous, because it is an umbrella term for vastly disparate groups: in the same way that pitting inner-city Boston Irish youth with jailed parents against as Upper East Side, trust fund, private school kids is unfair in terms of social neediness, so is judging the children of Hmong, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Filipino refugees against the kids of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean businessmen, professors, etc. Not to mention that thinking that every Chinese immigrant is privileged, well-educated, and well-behaved - the "Model Minority" myth - is itself damaging in many ways to Chinese-American communities, for a whole variety of deep-seated reasons.

• For those of us who identify as "American of Chinese Heritage," there is a fine balance to be struck between that "American" and "...of Chinese Heritage". It's foolish to think that I am Chinese: in China, I might be allowed to call myself a "hua ren" (华人) that is, one of the Han Chinese, but I am not a "zhongguo ren" (中国人) that is, a Chinese person. Culturally, in terms of my fundamental assumptions about the world, I am a product of the West. It's important to point out that I don't harbor unnaturally Sinocentric political sympathies, and I'm not going to be a threat to peace in the American homeland or abroad (well, I oppose American hegemony - but that's for entirely different reasons): it's important to remind myself, and others, of this, because the reality is that many still fall into the mindset of Executive Order 9066 and "Yellow Peril", where any Asiatic face is viewed as a potential defector to the long-left-behind "Motherland." Of course returning to China - or heck, even Asia - gives me a warm feeling. But I have White friends who acquire the same sense of Homecoming upon their return to England, France, or Poland; and there is no forbidding sense of fraternizing with the enemy that lies upon their journeys.

• One interesting thing that I have realized is that "Asian America" exists: even as I decry the use of the term, the fact is, whether for right or wrong (I would say more wrong than right), we are seen as a monolithic group. But that makes certain connections possible in the American "melting pot" that otherwise may never occur: a Chinese person in China may never deign to bridge the gap and initiate a friendship with a Japanese individual. But my relationships with my Japanese and Japanese-American friends - heck, even your own parentage, right? - demonstrate that "Asian America" can serve as something of its own melting pot; even if we remain, perhaps, to the side of the rest of the "melting pot" (whether cultural, genetic, or otherwise), at least Asian America has served, it seems, to bridge divides that may not have happened in our mother countries.

There are other thoughts, but these are the ones that first come to mind.

4. how do you think "chinese american" is being represented? by AA? by the public? How accurate are these portrayals?

I think that the public image of Chinese-Americans is problematic, with the blame being distributed all around (though perhaps not equally): Chinese-Americans are at fault for playing into the role of a "Model Minority", passively or actively unwilling to speak out against a dominant and domineering culture, choosing to succeed by means of intellect or behind-the-scenes work instead of through protest and resistence (to generalize largely). Of course, Chinese immigrants' approach to a hostile culture is not to blame: given particular cultural values held by Chinese-Americans, this was the natural, moral, course. And the White media and government is at fault: anti-miscegenation laws, portrayals of the threat of "China Rising," anti-Japanese WWII propaganda (but no propaganda supporting our allies, no pro-Chinese or pro-Korean messages to counteract the inevitable conflation of our three sister cultures), E.O. 9066, all these were designed to Otherize and tokenize Asian peoples, to aggrandize the panic of American businessmen and laborers concerned with increasing competition from across the Pacific. The inherited reminders of these shackles - whether in popular culture or governmental representation - is still evident.

When talking about public, popular, media images of Chinese-Americans, three concepts spring to mind: Kung Fu Master, Exotic Asian Beauty, and Smart Chinaman.

• These portrayals are all highly damaging. Exoticism has been dealt with in a lot of gender/ethnic studies literature, but, in brief: to describe someone as "exotic" is to claim that they are attractive because they are not-me: they are the Other. Exotification is objectification and tokenization taken, in many ways, to its height: a person no longer represents a valued individual Self, but instead an alien, unrecognizable, unable-to-be-sympathized-with culture.

• Media obsession with Exotic Asian Beauties is particularly disturbing given that much contact between Americans and Asian women was in the form of soldiers interacting with wartime prostitutes during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The stereotypes of the Shy Asian Girl and the Seductive Asian Woman (the "Dragon Lady") conflate into a figure that is deserving of both moral scorn and sexual depredation. This is, of course, a faulty stereotype: it is an incredibly transparent attempt to remove en masse the femininity and womanhood of Asian females, in the same way that Black women were degraded by simultaneously being sexualized and defeminized by becoming the unacknowledged mistresses of slave-owners.

• Of course, one subtype of the Exotic Asian Beauty, that deserves particular mention, is the Madame Butterfly: caught up in the wiles and victimized by her brutal countrymen, this woman must be saved by the noble White hero. This stereotype is particularly notable because it implies that the Asians can't be trusted with taking care of their own: whether the next generation, the land, the businesses, the government, or the military, the natives need to be rescued by the strong white Savior. While it's true that Asian - and, yes, particularly Chinese culture - has been incredibly behind in terms of gender parity, and while I am by no means an anti-miscegenist, I do worry about the more or less pervasive idea that an Asian woman's dream is to escape the bonds of her culture and fly away to Western civilization and, apparently, cultural enlightenment.

• The Kung Fu Master is, in its own way, a dangerous stereotype. On one hand, it is fairly empowering and masculinizing. The downside of it is that any Chinese-American who shows strength will be associated with the Kung Fu Master. A strong Black man is not automatically compared to Mohammad Ali: but strong Chinese (or even broadly Asian) men will almost inevitably be compared to Bruce Lee. Again, this stereotype - while not necessarily negative - strips the target of his or her individuality, and places them within a narrowly defined role with little room for expansion beyond.

• And the Smart Chinaman is the very type of the Model Minority myth: the backhanded insult, the barbed compliment. It can be simultaneously dismissive of individual accomplishment - "Of course you did well on the math test, you asian" - and concealment for more subtle racism - "OK, so maybe Chinese-Americans have some problems, but you guys are doing so well! Look at your college acceptance rates! How can you complain about a couple of movie roles and some jokes on the radio and TV?"

Reflection on Mulan (pun intended)

I don't remember much about the summer that Mulan, Disney's 36th animated feature film, was released to theaters. Wikipedia (the most accurate source of information in the world, and my go-to facts checker) indicates that it must have been the summer of 1998, when I was 12 years old.

I remember that my family - dad, sister, me, and perhaps my mother - went to watch the film together in a small cineplex, during a summer vacation spent in Orlando, Florida, one of a small handful of favorite family destinations (along with Williamsburg, VA and the Poconos). Emerging from our dark A/C-cooled haven 87 minutes (plus previews) later, I charged out energetic and hyper - not an uncommon state for the 12-year-old me - and, naturally, my 9-year-old sister found that energy infectious.

That my younger self left a Disney movie with an excess of high spirits was little surprise, and I can't recall ever since sparing a second thought in analyzing that response. However, in light of my recent reflections on portrayals of Asian-Americans in popular media, plus a spate of personally-mandated viewings of selected minority filmmakers' works, I decided to take Mulan for a second spin, possibly (if memory serves) my first full viewing since that humid Florida midafternoon.

Watching the film, I'm struck by an uncanny déjà vu, as were I communing with my 12-year-old self. Of course, I'm quite the sophisticate now: at the time, I knew virtually nothing about China/中国 (now 2 summers' experience and frequent return trips), could speak no words of Mandarin/普通话 (8 semesters' study), had never studied kungfu/功夫 (6 years). But there is still something of the chubby, bookish 12-year-old Chinese-American boy in me that watches this film and marvels at it.

At the time, I had no lexicon with which to articulate my experience of the film, and so I relegated it to the same continuum as all other pop culture phenomena with which I had sated my indiscriminate whims: located at a point, indistinct, between my parents' collection of early-80s TIME/LIFE magazines (low interest, high availability) and my budding STAR WARS/Tolkien fanboyism (high interest, low pre-Internet re-release/film adaptation availability). I had no experience within which to locate the film's effect on me, simply because it was, at the time, pioneering for me: apart from the occasional visit from relatives, or yearly Christmas visits to the grandparents' in DC, my parents, sister, and I were the extent of Chinese America to me. Apart from a single hardcover volume describing contemporary (1995!) life in China (well-worn out of interest, with a rough red fabric cover under the dust jacket), for all I knew, we were the extent of Chinese.

Now, flicking through the half-familiar, hazily-remembered scenes of the film, I'm amazed by it on so many more levels*: the colors redolent of the Chinese countryside (glimpsed in my sojourns to 西安, 河北, 广东, and the like); a character sighing with the distinctly Eastern "Ai! /哎！" phoneme instead of the Western "Oh! / 哦"; the food portrayed - rice porridge (粥), Chinese noodles (面), still staples of Chinese food/中菜. And, most of all, the distinct, plastic framework of the Disney Fairytale (as opposed to a Fairy-story) fleshed out with Chinese faces and Asian voices: the Handsome Prince, instead of a wavy-locked blondie with light eyes, an almond-eyed, black-haired "Captain Shang"; the Model Father cast in a model not entirely unresembling my own paternal figure (albeit a far more svelte and, perhaps, picturesque figure).

I can only imagine the twofold impact on the psyche of young Asian-American girls: the dual revelation that a woman could be both Asian and, without renouncing her culture, a Disney Princess (the latter being, admittedly, a dubious and debatable distinction among gender critiques); and that her handsome prince could be an Asian male (yes, I know this statement can be problematized; humor me).

I am not now who I was then; but still, tonight's viewing of Mulan has reaffirmed for me - and this time, in a primarily affective manner - the importance of strongly positive portrayals of Asian-Americans (and, in general, minorities) in popular culture and the media. Eleven years after my first viewing of Mulan, watching this film still causes emotions to stir: the sight of Real Characters - not background characters, not secondary characters, not 2-dimensional jump-kicking, med-school-graduating, lab-coat-wearing ciphers - that look like my family and me? Astounding!

And how can it be that, in the intervening years, I have still not seen anything so well-produced, well-promoted, and ethnically true to itself (with little-to-no yellowface!)? If even Disney could get it right in the late 90s, how is it that another similar production has yet to surface? When the day comes - God help us - when I have a young daughter, or son, to what will I turn for aid when teaching my child to be proud and grateful for her, or his, features, family, and culture**?



*not least of which is that several members of the cast are related to one another through the network of the highly respected East West Players, the seminal Asian-American theater ensemble.
**I am aware of, and incredibly grateful for, the Ni Hao, Kai-Lan (你好，凯兰) series currently airing on Nickelodeon, a Chinese-American version of the similarly bicultural Dora the Explorer. I saw its content briefly at a friend's house, and was astounded at the extent of the multiethnic programming now available to her daughter, which I could neither have imagined nor hoped for as a youngster.

The question; and a thought.

The Question

After a respectable (or thereabouts) deal of reading and thought (particularly reflecting on Frank Chin's repeated critiques of Maxine Hong Kingston), this is the question that presents itself:

How to be American without being White? How to be "of Chinese descent" without slipping into reactionist sinocentrism?

Of course the cultural inheritance of The West isn't to be lightly discarded or vilified, nor is the East (or even the immigrant experience) to be mindlessly embraced and valued. The answers' typeface is far from black-and-white. But among shades of grey (not shades of greige), where does one alight?

(Hint: God is the answer. [No, this is not just a flip answer; Yes, this is still a Christian, and not only ethnic theory, blog, appearances to the contrary])

The Thought
That said, another thought occurs to me at the moment (A few minutes ago, I jokingly told a friend that tonight was my Asian-American Film Studies night): while I have previously been a proponent of the narrative-as-description(e.g., NWA's Straight Outta Compton can be justified as a descriptive, not prescriptive, outline - "not a glorification, but a presentation"), I am increasingly understanding of the need to present balanced-but-idealized portrayals in the media, serving the function of a corrective to unbalanced and two-dimensional portraits of Americans of Asian/Pacific Islander descent.

I had a fairly strong and disconcerting response to viewing, Monday night, Justin Lin's modern Asian-American crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow: there is a scene in the film, in a backyard party, where the core group of four Asian-American protagonists (portrayed as and by a varied group of Asian-American males) confront a group of White antagonists. After a brief fistfight, instigated by implicitly racial (but only indirectly racist) comments, one of the Asian-American gang pulls a gun on the lead antagonist. The subsequent beating of the White varsity athlete - leaving him bruised and bloodied, but not permanently physically harmed - both signals the core group's increasingly rapid descent into crime and materialistic excess, and foreshadows the nadir of the film, where a similar beating takes place: this time, against a spoiled Korean-American private-school kid; and this time, to the death (based on an actual incident in early-90s Southern California).

What disturbed me about my response was that, in both cases, Lim took care to portray the Asian-American protagonists as complex, well-rounded characters: morally speaking, they were on neither the high nor low ground. In both cases, there were senses of moral indignation and vindication ("getting back" at the White bullies; retaliating against the rich prep school kid who treats his girl like dirt), and also a sense of excess and transgressed boundaries.

However carefully-laid-out the mores of the film, my responses were affectively discrepant with my moral construals of the situations, and I have little choice but to admit that the distinction was likely simply because of the race of the tragic protagonists: whereas I would unhesitatingly condemn the actions in abstract, the fact that violence originating from Asian-American sources, especially against a Caucasian figure, is contradictory to my construal of the stereotype of expected Model Minority behavior (albeit a malformed and, in fact, highly inaccurate stereotype) seemed to serve as justification for my emotional consent towards the action.

This is, I willingly and mournfully agree, evidence of a shamefully akrasic mental process, the ramifications of which I'm concerned, especially regarding my vocation as a minister, a profession part of the call to which is love for the Other above the Self, love for all facets of God-created diversity, and striving on behalf of reconciliation, healing, and understanding (Gal. 3:26-29, among others). However, it is not, I would guess, a drastically atypical response to such media depicting violence from an oppressed (or, more often, nowadays, suppressed) minority directed towards the dominant majority.

One thing that I always wondered, watching the incredible HBO series The Wire, a bastion of verisimilitude and narrative-as-depiction-of-reality, was how so many Black voices (not only, or even particularly often, academic Black voices, but definitely a predominance of street voices, as seen anywhere from nahright.com to the Smoking Section) could willingly applaud explicitly villainous figures, or at least what seemed to me at the time to be: the drug lords (Marlo, Stringer, Avon), shooters (Snoop, Christ Partlow, etc.), and other Baltimore inner-city hood figures (the more complex morality of characters such as Omar Little, Bubbles, etc., is of course less cut-and-dry).

Of course, what I didn't understand at the time, on a subjective level (and am now only beginning to scratch the surface of, as I begin to analyze my personal response to depictions of violence by the oppressed), is that the characters are not usually being lauded for their actions: their actions are the signifiers of a larger motivation, that is, defying power and breaking stereotype. The problem is that reactive stereotypes - the clever, tactical, chess-piece-moving crime lord as a response to the dumb, happy, bumbling Sambo - are also a system of entrapment and limitation for minorities: we sketch out extremes, but fill in no grays, leaving room for the Huxtables and the Barksdales, but fewer and fewer Redd Foxxes in between [note: by "Redd Foxx," I meant, a sympathetically- and humanely-portrayed member of the honest lower class, i.e. in Sanford & Son. Not quite sure if this was too opaque a reference.].

So, another question: where do we locate the line between audience discernment and filmmaker's discretion? Certainly the filmmaker should feel at liberty to create Art: but, and this is a topic on which I've touched before (specifically, in my senior Philosophy thesis), what is the intersection between Morally Good Work and Good Art? In that previous work, I strongly advocated for the imposition of moral sanctions on a work of art (humor, in that case), due to both a priori and a posteriori factors that seem to fall in favor of morality being a determining factor for the quality of art.

But the question then becomes one of reasonable doubt, or burden of proof: does the filmmaker (or rapper, other musician, artist, etc.) presume an audience comprised of the Lowest Common (discerning) Denominator, and simply create art that is unabashedly moralizing? In such cases, films become preachy, and subtlety is specifized out of the equation.

But the alternative seems more and more distasteful: choices of presentation content and form are, implicitly, choices to condone audiences' viewing of particular material (for this reason, I recently started but could not finish both Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho [novel] and Jody Hill's Observe and Report [film]). Previously, I held to a reasonably extremely high view of individual volition: I acknowledged the real occurrence of akrasic mind states, but did not pragmatically concern myself over them. More and more, I regret this: both personally, discovering the truth of the saying that "once seen, you cannot un-see" certain materials; and pragmatically, in terms of furthering social progress and harmony, realizing (as I did when watching Better Luck...) that portrayals of immoral or unconscionable behavior, even when within the framework of a largely critical work, have the potential to grasp the imagination in a much stronger net than I had previously wanted to believe.

Of course, the potential remains: I may merely be particularly weak-minded, an outsider. I am familiar with the major arguments: kids know the difference between DOOM and the halls of their High School, and killing a few hundred digital representations in GTA IV won't lead anyone to the slaughterhouse. In fact, proponents of the gaming industry argue, such artificial violence, far from promoting violence, actually helps those in whom rage and anger have built up to let off some steam, destressing and potentially averting a future tragedy.

Previously, I was highly sympathetic to such claims; in fact, I agreed (as do I still now, though with greater qualification) that freedom of speech was a paramount right. But, as recent developments in the video gaming world have shown, freedom of speech, as with any other freedom, can be abused, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of commerce: in such a case, use of freedom does, I increasingly believe, actually constitute abuse or exploitation of speech, leading to negative social repercussions and, ultimately, indirect disenfranchisement of or disconnection from the Other (whether Otherization occurs by race, gender, or simple emotional distance). That such depictions constitute a legal problem, as statutes currently stand, is highly unlikely, I assume; still, my concern is not with the present legality, but rather the present ethics of the situation and, based on an increasing understanding of the ethical landscape, future policy decisions.

Several other areas remain to be addressed. Among them: a persistent question, so far as I understand, in Asian-American Film Studies is the pragmatic response to limited roles for Asian-American actors: marginalized as "wimpy businessmen... or villains with balls", several Asian-American actors have chosen to play the "villains with balls" (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, The Slanted Screen). It's difficult to blame them; but it's also easy to be troubled by this response, on both sides of the racial divide (Us and Other). The Mortal Kombat villain Shang Tsung is, while not emasculated, possessor of a twisted and villainous strength: it is easy to see in him the same archetype as a Stringer Bell or Avon Barksdale, wealthy, organized, manipulative boogeymen. The choice (and I pray it is a false dichotomy) presented to Asian-American actors seems to be marginalization or villainization: is it a wonder that many chose to be villainized?

And of course, one doesn't have to look far to see why an Asian-American presence was Othered and, subsequently, villainized: the widely-documented phenomenon of Yellow Peril was a racial agenda explicitly furthered by the spread of anti-miscegenation laws in direct response to (among other factors) a fear of competition by the Other.

As a friend commented on one of my several earlier posts, the point is not to find a scapegoat: White American dominance, Asian American complicity, and industry/industrial greed have definitely all played key roles in bringing the place of Asian-Americans in the media to their contemporary position. The point is, however, to find the roots of a pernicious construal of an entire section of American society, to see how it insinuated itself into wider American culture, and to find a healthy, healing, reconciliatory means of mutual affirmation and support.