This video has been out for a minute, but since the issues it addresses have no end in sight (thanks, Hollywood!), I thought it’d be appropriate to remind everyone that it exists, and that it’s great. Dumbfoundead talks whitewashing, media stereotypes, and more while editing himself into some of the most iconic white movie roles of all time.
Tag: Asian American
Green Tea (Awkwafina x Margaret Cho) and AsAm Bad Girls
Awkwafina encourages young Asian women to “to embrace their quirkiness, their sexuality, their inner-child and their creativity with passion,” something I had trouble with until recently.
By Belinda Cai
About a week ago, my dream girls/dream team Awkwafina and Margaret Cho released the anthem Asian women never knew they needed — a song and accompanying music video, “Green Tea.” It’s aptly timed, dropped on the last day of May, which was Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The song pokes fun at Asian stereotypes in a brazen, NSFW way that’s so true to the zany rapper/comedian duo, encouraging young women (and particularly Asian ones) “to embrace their quirkiness, their sexuality, their inner-child and their creativity with passion,” according to Awkwafina.
This is evidenced with lyrics that go, “Yellow bitches in the driver’s seat… We got that bomb pussy/ That Long Duk Dong pussy/ Make you call your mom pussy/ Get a pair of TOMS pussy/ Got that Soon Yi pussy/ Be all you want to be pussy.”
There’s a lot of satire throughout the video, with traditional Asian garb, mock “Asian-sales lady” accents, Japanese horror movie references and so on; all the while, Awkwafina and Margaret show off their nontraditional sides, smoking pot, flashing tattoos and being generally “unladylike,” singing about pussies.
This brought me back to Awkwafina’s song “Marijuana” from her album Yellow Ranger, with the lyrics: “I’m sorry mama, that I am not a doctor/ That I rap about the vag and I smoke marijuana juana.”
Oh, and here’s that classic song all about vags/my livelihood:
My sister Lisa asked me, a while back, why I think we turned out the way we did. While not trying to reinforce stereotypes, she explained that it seems we were always a bit different than our Asian-American peers — more “alternative,” (as reluctant as she was to use that word, she couldn’t think of another one) in our appearance and career choices. We never quite fit in.
We’re both in creative fields, her as a graphic designer and artist, and me as a journalist and writer. While our parents are mostly supportive and encouraging, there have been many times when they’ve expressed doubt. Deep down, they still wish we’d found paths with more financial security and prestige — you know, the doctors, lawyers, engineers route.
Whenever my mom knows I’ll be around other Asian families, she reminds me to remove my septum ring and hide my tattoos. And I’m not nearly as covered as Lisa, who is working on completing full sleeves and has some kind of permanent art on almost every body part. After watching “Green Tea,” Lisa exclaimed how much she loved that Margaret was “tatted up” from head to toe. That’s something that she doesn’t see often with Asian-American women in the media.
Not only are obvious stereotypes, like the China Doll and Dragon Lady, a problem, but never seeing Asian-American women like us made me feel like there was something wrong with us — that our appearances and life choices, even, were abnormalities when it came to the world of Asian-American women. That we couldn’t live up to some golden standard. This only means that we need more Asians (all kinds!!!! every kind!!!!) in the media encouraging all of us to just be us.
It’s certainly harmful to perpetuate the model minority stereotype, and we discussed how we in no way believe that it applies to most Asians. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of other Asians similar to us and far more “alternative,” but it’s just not something we saw a lot growing up, whether it came to our peers or on TV. The Asian women we saw in the media (which was rare to begin with) were generally doctors or Tiger Moms, all with clean, “presentable” images.
Every time I listen to an Awkwafina song or watch Margaret’s standup, I’m reminded that a. traditional Asian-American stereotypes suck and these ladies are working hard to debunk them and b. I shouldn’t be ashamed of the fact that my parents may perceive my sister and I to be “different” than other Asian kids and c. these are some boss ass bitches and I want to be more like them.
“What Are You?”: Let’s Talk About Asian-American Encounters
This is a bit of an anomalous situation, but once…my sister and I were on a horseback riding tour in Wyoming, and somehow it was just the two of us with the guide. He was a typical white cowboy-type, kind of dashing in his way, until he opened his mouth to say, ‘What are you guys?’ (Humans?) In this situation, where we were literally in the mountain wilderness alone with him, how sassy could I afford to be? So I just replied, ‘We’re Chinese-American.’ He seemed perplexed for a second before relaxing. ‘Cool,’ he replied. ‘I love sweet and sour chicken, I eat that all the time at this place in town.’ Was this a strange flirtation attempt couched in the language of…food? What was I supposed to say, ‘I’ve eaten mayonnaise before and it’s pretty good?’ Here’s a hot tip: don’t treat someone’s ethnicity as something edible. If you have to reach that hard to find something with which to connect, just use, you know, your shared humanity.
by B.C.
[to] customer service guy, fun fact: my race is not a conversation starter and I don’t care that your ‘best mate’ is getting married to an asian girl.
When I posted this status on Facebook about how a customer service rep unnecessarily remarked on my race, I was kind of surprised by how it blew up with ‘likes’ and comments — but also not that surprised.
Among my friends, including those on social media, it’s pretty common knowledge that these types of comments are unwarranted. But I was reminded that it’s not common knowledge for everyone.
To backtrack, I was at a Verizon store getting a phone upgrade. This guy was helping me along and we were making typical small talk. Then, out of nowhere, he asked if both of my parents were Asian. I was unsure of where he was going with this but answered, yes, only to have him tell me he was surprised I didn’t have an accent.
As those words left his mouth, I felt myself cringing. Really? Did you really say that? I told him, politely, that there are lots of Asian-Americans like me without accents and that his comment was a little offensive.
He seemed taken aback, shocked, even; he immediately apologized and said he didn’t mean offense. Okay, I thought, well good. Glad that’s over. But then he continued the conversation by telling me that his best friend was marrying an Asian girl, as if that were a way to redeem himself.
As it to convey, hey, I’m a nice guy. I didn’t mean any harm. My best friend likes your people, so I can relate and it was okay of me to say what I said. I wasn’t so much upset as I was flummoxed by his cluelessness. He was only making things worse without even realizing it. Continue reading ““What Are You?”: Let’s Talk About Asian-American Encounters”
Weekly Link Roundup: 1/6/2015
I have been sadly remiss about this, sorry! So much has happened since our last roundup, and there’s absolutely no way I can remotely begin to cover everything, but here are some of my favorite interesting pieces from the past couple of weeks, including sad/absurd news, food for thought, and more.
- When and how does “adulthood” begin? “All of a sudden you’re out in the world, and you have this insane array of options, but you don’t know which you should take. There’s all these things your mom and dad told you, presumably, and yet you’re living like a feral wolf, who doesn’t have toilet paper, who’s using Arby’s napkins instead.”
- Meta linkspam: Longreads’ Best of 2015
- On constructing feminist identity (or not) through “offense”
- Tamir Rice and the value of life: “Take a moment and time yourself giving three commands, imagining a response from Tamir and making the decision to shoot. Maybe it can be done in less than two seconds. But to my mind, it strains credulity.”
- Anti-muslim actions spread to Sikh communities as well
- Keith Chow bites back at self-hating radio host who claims the idea of an Asian-American superhero is impossible.
- “The social pressure on people of color to keep the peace, not get mad, just make sure everyone keeps having a nice time…can be overwhelming, bearing down on us in so many situations we do not see coming and therefore cannot avoid. What does our dignity matter, what do our feelings amount to, when we could embarrass white people we care about?”
- Cliven Bundy et al. defending their right to owe more than $1 million to taxpayers: why the local militia has taken over federal property and why the double-standard in police response to this situation, versus situations involving POC, is so absurd it’s almost laughable
‘Master of None’ Succeeds In Its Sincerity (ft. Interviews with Actors Diane Mizota and Aaron Takahashi)
By Belinda Cai
New Netflix series “Master of None” from Aziz Ansari. “Master of None” Twitter.
Whether you think it’s hilarious or just miss Tom Haverford, there’s no denying that Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” is important. I haven’t been able to peruse social media without seeing swathes of people and media outlets posting about the show since its release on Netflix a little over a week ago. Among them was actress Diane Mizota, one of my Facebook friends and someone I interviewed for my grad school capstone project about Asian-Americans in Hollywood. She claimed she couldn’t get enough of the show and especially liked the second episode that addressed immigrant parents.
Weekly Dance Break: Four Walls
If you’ve never delved into the deep and wonderful world of live music performances on Asian music shows, do yourself a favor and get there. The relentless pace of newly released material is really unparalleled, meaning you won’t be without a glimpse of your faves for long.
On deck today: my current jam, featuring my favorite androgynous Chinese-American star, Amber Liu. This performance is sure to give you some good 90s throwback vibes, featuring a bit of vogue-ing, a bit of wacking, and lots of flared pants.
Happy mid-week, ladies! Continue reading “Weekly Dance Break: Four Walls”
Weekly Link Roundup: 10/30/15
Editor’s Note: Did y’all hear we were mentioned on my favorite podcast, “The Read”? Check it out if you haven’t yet, Kid Fury and Crissle are hilarious and whip-smart. Now read on for some linky-spamspam! Continue reading “Weekly Link Roundup: 10/30/15”
Weekly Link Roundup!
This week: Teachers and unintentional racism, Claudia Rankine on Serena Williams, suffragettes who sucked, racist presidential candidates, and gun control.
Goodreads and things that caught our eye:
- 10 Ways Well-Meaning White Teachers Bring Racism Into Our Schools: “It is from this place of love that I work with teachers to help them improve their practice. And with the realities of the “education debt” and considering that 80% of our teachers are White while nearly half (and growing) of our students are youth of Color, part of improving teaching practice means paying more critical attention to race in our schools. Though I know there are actively racist teachers out there, most White teachers mean well and have no intention of being racist. Yet as people who are inscribed with Whiteness, it is possible for us to act in racist ways no matter our intentions. Uprooting racism from our daily actions takes a lifetime of work.”
- Claudia Rankine celebrates the excellence of Serena Williams: “The notable difference between white excellence and black excellence is white excellence is achieved without having to battle racism. Imagine.” As my dear friend M put it, “I love Serena. I love Claudia Rankine. I love that these women exist.”
- Suffragettes Who Sucked: White Supremacy and Women’s Rights: reminding us that the phenomenon of “white feminism” (feminism that, in a nutshell, centers specifically white, mostly upper-class women while dismissing racial intersectionality) has been around for a while. The Toast compiles a list of notable feminist figures whose achievements in women’s rights had a dark side.
- 8 Ways Asian Americans Can Stand Up To Racist Presidential Candidates: pretty self-explanatory, and very important.
- Register to vote. Even if you’re jaded by the political circus. Our forerunners fought long and hard to win us the right to vote. You owe it to them, and to yourself, to at least pay attention to what is happening.
- Lessons from the Virginia Shooting: “the lesson from the ongoing carnage is not that we need a modern prohibition…but that we should address gun deaths as a public health crisis. To protect the public, we regulate toys and mutual funds, ladders and swimming pools. Shouldn’t we regulate guns as seriously as we regulate toys?”
Weekly Dance Break: First Love / Late Spring (Mitski)
Sometimes I turn off my kpop (sometimes) and listen to things my friends recommend. This time, it’s indie-rocker Mitski, by way of my dear M’s recommendation. Mitski’s voice makes you feel like the protagonist of an indie romance, but not, like, a dumb or cheesy one (no manic pixie dream girls here). Step light through the streets of Portland or Brooklyn or Austin to this.
Sometimes I turn off my kpop (sometimes) and listen to things my friends recommend. This time, it’s indie-rocker Mitski, by way of my dear M’s recommendation. Mitski’s voice makes you feel like the protagonist of an indie romance, but not, like, a dumb or cheesy one (no manic pixie dream girls here). Step light through the streets of Portland or Brooklyn or Austin to this.
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
The Zellner Brothers’ Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a deeply somber modern-day odyssey with a host of heartbreaking episodes, softened by glimpses of droll humor. It is dark tragicomedy at its finest, and is cinematically stunning from beginning to end. The filmmakers reimagine a now-debunked urban myth involving a Japanese woman named Takako Konishi, who was found frozen in a Minnesota field. The news sensationalized her story, claiming that she died from pursuing the treasure she believed to be real in the movie, Fargo.
The Zellner Brothers’ Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a deeply somber modern-day odyssey with a host of heartbreaking episodes, softened by glimpses of droll humor. It is dark tragicomedy at its finest, and is cinematically stunning from beginning to end. The filmmakers reimagine a now-debunked urban myth involving a Japanese woman named Takako Konishi, who was found frozen in a Minnesota field. The news sensationalized her story, claiming that she died from pursuing the treasure she believed to be real in the movie, Fargo.
**major spoilers ahead**
Our fictional, oddball heroine Kumiko (award-winning Rinko Kikuchi, Babel and Pacific Rim) is an “office lady” who is fed up with her unfulfilling work life. She isolates herself from her co-workers — gossipy and appearance-obsessed young women — and detests her belittling boss. At 29, she rejects other societal expectations of women her age, to her mother’s dismay and boss’s confusion. She doesn’t have a boyfriend and refuses to move back in with her mom; she instead lives in a flat with her pet rabbit Bunzo, her only companion. Kumiko exists in a society that does not understand her differences. Her boss at one point questions her sexual orientation, implying that the only reason a 29-year-old woman can be unmarried is if she is homosexual. She also faces ageism when that boss hires a much younger woman to eventually replace her.
In her free time, Kumiko fixates on the Coen Brothers’ movie, Fargo, in which Steve Buscemi’s character buries a suitcase full of ransom money in snowy North Dakota. She watches this outdated VHS time and time again, carefully mapping out the location of the suitcase. Kumiko is a conquistador, as she proudly proclaims; it is her destiny and purpose to find this treasure. This could be an allusion to Don Quixote, another tragicomic protagonist who sets out on an unlikely quest to revive chivalry. In this world, the boundaries between the fictional and real start to blur.
In a metaphorical sense, the treasure isn’t the ransom money. It’s whatever lifelong goal, no matter how impossible, Kumiko or anyone else finds worthy of pursuing. Something existentially gratifying. In this sense, Kumiko is in fact a conquistador. The film depicts society as oppressive in such a way that the viewer can identify with the protagonist’s desire to break out. It brings to life a sort of absurd and meaningless world found in existential literature. Kumiko seeks to ascribe her own meaning by seeking to find this treasure. Her source of authenticity in this absurd world is recreating herself as a conquistador.
This makes our heroine almost antithetical to the misguided protagonist of Fargo. That character, Jerry, plans a backward scheme involving the fake kidnapping of his wife. He is driven by a need to fit this societal ideal of masculinity: being “financially independent” (not asking for money from his wife’s rich father but instead conning him) and able to provide for his family. Kumiko frees herself from societal pressures. She abandons any kind of institutionalized femininity depicted in the lives of the other “office ladies” and her friend with the child. In the end, Jerry is arrested and Kumiko succeeds in breaking free. Bunzo’s release from his cage and out into the world — one of the most heart-wrenching and adorable scenes in the film — is representative of Kumiko’s own transformative journey. Like her fluffy pet, Kumiko is afraid and unsure of how to handle her newfound freedom, but forces herself to take that leap to North Dakota.
There, several offbeat characters cross her path. They all are caricatures of uncultured Midwesterners who are unsure of how to deal with Kumiko, a lost Japanese woman who can barely utter a word of English. There is the lonely old lady who offers up anything she knows about Japan in order to identify with Kumiko, but comes across as inadvertently racist. Worse is the kindhearted but clueless police officer (David Zellner) who takes Kumiko to a Chinese restaurant in hopes that the Chinese owner would know a little bit of Japanese, as if the two are interchangeable. Both Kumiko and Fargo play up the pleasantly humdrum vibe of the Midwest while simultaneously portraying it as a cold, bleak and death-laden environment.
These characters try their best to guide Kumiko along but are ultimately discouraging. They tell her that what she’s setting out to find doesn’t exist. That her goal is impossible. She is confronted by this when the officer tells her that Fargo is just a “regular” movie, not a documentary, and that there is no treasure. Kumiko doesn’t believe this or let anyone deter her, showing that while she is not all there mentally, she is headstrong and knows what she wants. This leads to both her downfall and ensuing freedom from the absurd world.
When Kumiko starts spiraling into a crazed mania after escaping from a sinister cab driver and running into the woods, the movie adopts a much more surrealist tone. This is when the viewer really slips into Kumiko’s mind, feeling what she’s feeling and seeing what she’s seeing, rather than examining from an outside perspective. Kumiko loses touch with reality and so does the viewer, no longer sure of what’s real and what’s not. The sequences in the woods—when Kumiko is most desperate and unwavering—are some of the most beautifully shot and haunting scenes of the film.
While the ending initially felt like a bit of a cop out, I now realize that it’s empowering even if it results in the death of our peculiar heroine. When she emerges from the snow, in a sea of white, she is reborn. The world, for the first time, is a refreshing and joyous place. It is no longer grim and bleak. Kumiko seems hopeful, and the viewer can sense this newfound hope. She uncovers the treasure right where she expected it to be, and is reunited with Bunzo. This is her goal playing out and she laughs and celebrates. For a character that does not fit into society’s constraints, death may be the ultimate freedom, as bittersweet as that is. While not overtly her goal, this unintentional suicide could be emblematic of a seemingly impossible goal being attained. Again, beautiful but haunting.
acromag.wordpress.com 