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AAST355 - Asian Americans in Film (Sebastien Lair), There is a sharp…
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There is a sharp contrast between the "It Gets Better" narrative compared to portrayal of Queer Asian American characters where although their lives might get better, the path is very arduous and taxing, and in some cases their lives do in fact not improve (pg. 3).
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The film the Fall of I-Hotel is an example of third cinema. It centered the oppressed Filipino immigrants as the main topics of the film. Third cinema is usually in relation to social movements and in the film there were large protests against the city for the prioritization of corporate interests over the Filipino immigrants.
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I think this relates to Shimizu's text about Hypersexuality of Race. In the text she talks about how Centering sexuality as Asian American Women's own allows them to redefine sexuality on their own terms and allows it to be reflective of their own identity, Nancy Kwan took on a lot of Asian roles like as Suzie Wong that portrayed her being very hypersexualized but through this it would have given her more power and to contest the construction of her identity.
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A lot of the sounds Bruce Lee made when fighting sounded animalistic which goes along with the themes of Asians being exotic. I thought the sounds were similar to how there were gong sounds played in the Daughter of the Dragon when Asian characters like Fu Manchu would show up on screen.
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The strength of the Asian community theme in History and Memory where despite being relocated to the internment camps, the Japaneses Americans were still able to maintain strength and resilience reminded me of other films like the Fall of I-Hotel and Who Killed Vincent Chin where major events impacted their lives and instead of giving up, it promoted unity for the Asian American community.
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I think using Desai's thinking regarding looking at a topic not just for being good or bad but in relation to the power struggles at the time can be applied here. Obviously Asian violence is bad but if we look at the motivations behind why there was such negative attitudes towards Asians at this time it can help us better understand why Nitz and Ebens committed the murder (no reasoning would justify the murder though). In this case, we can see that due to the decline of the American automotive industry people started blaming the Japanese which many people assumed all Asians were Japanese.
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I think that Evelyn from Everything Everywhere All at Once made very similar actions in order to save face that Wil's mother did in this film. Evelyn would constantly hide the fact that Joy was lesbian to her father because she didn't want her father to disapprove of her, similarly Wil's mom followed all of the expectations of her and was even going to get married to a man she didn't love in order to save her family's reputation.
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In both Saving Face and Mississippi Masala, Wil and her mother as well as Mina go against the cultural expectations that have been established for them by their families. For Wil it involves following her heart and getting into a relationship with Vivian and for Mina it involves following Demetrius rather than marrying someone her family picked out for her.
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The point about refunctioning representation seemed very similar to Shimizu's point regarding hypersexual representations not being inherently bad since they can be used to further political agendas and give power back to the actor when exploring their identities. Similarly for the refunctioning representation model, using a straightforward stereotype and converting it into a more powerful image can be politically productive in benefiting Asian representation.
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We saw the theme of brown peril showing up in the Reluctant Fundamentalist where Changez represented both being a model minority who was able to enter the United States and achieve great success at the financial firm but also being a symbol of fear of being a terrorist due to his South Asian ethnicity.
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The point regarding images as not purely white or black and instead looking at the power struggles of the time is very similar to Desai's thoughts. In both they believe in not being too quick to make judgements and criticize but rather explore how the images came to be because it is more productive and informative to understand how these misrepresentations came to be.
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You could see a similar effect not just in Toll of the Sea but also in the World of Suzie Wong. Suzie is often wearing colorful dresses that paint her as exotic. A good example of this is when Suzie is wearing a red dress in the bar while all the other men and people have much more greyed out suits and dull colors. This causes Suzie to stand out and be an object of fetishization.
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In the Robot Stories film, the Asian robot who shows up is treated as emotionless and someone who should devote himself solely to following his order and completing the tasks expected of him. This is very similar to the robot representations Bui discusses where they are portrayed as having very minimal functions that don't fit into society.
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I believe that this relates to Bell Hook's Making Movie Magic because since movies have the ability to create a new reality and show us a different world it means that Asian American Cinema doesn't necessarily need to fit into certain constraints in order to be considered Asian American. If the films are showing Asian American perspectives and pedagogically teach us about the subject then it doesn't matter the subject.
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I think Feng's "Recuperating Suzie Wong" has some ties to this because Feng critiques Nancy Kwan for being dishonest when she claims that the success of the film is not based on the harmful images of Asian American women. Even though it was fine that she took on the hypersexualized image, denying the harmful images of Asian American women reinforces negative stereotypes which is similar to what Hooks discusses on filmmakers should be careful in the representations that they portray since it has the ability to change people's perception of the world.
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One of the films that we watched that had multiple examples of yellowface was Daughter of the Dragon. Many of the Asian main characters in the film were played by white actors and they utilized make-up, prosthetics, as well as other movie effects to make the white actors appear more Asian. It displays the situation in Hollywood at the time regarding the unwillingness to cast Asian actors and the preferation to cast white actors.
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The World of Suzie Wong has Suzie's identity being erased and converted to fit Western standards. Also, Robert takes on a lead role where he situated as an expert on Asia and plays the role of the savior of Suzie Wong.
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Toll of the Sea has a similar orientalist depiction where Asians are portrayed as exotic and primitive. Lotus Flower is also a symbol of fetishization where the men are attracted to her but would never marry her for she doesn't fit into Western standards. A similar plot occurred in World of Suzie Wong except that Suzie was accepted only after becoming culturally acceptable for the West by discarding her past.
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The straitjacket sexualities does relate to Ben from Better Luck Tomorrow where Ben is cast as an asexual non masculine man who desires Stephanie. He does what Shimizu advises against and he becomes fixated on becoming macho and turning to violence eventually killing Steve. Shimizu believes that these asexual cast men should focus more on ethical representations of manhood rather than trying to imitate the masculine white characters.
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This seems similar to when Mimura talked about how third cinema came about where there was a collective action against colonization and the film portrayed social movements combatting control by the powerful. The unity of third world countries and struggles of colonization seems like some of the same steps involved in the production of third world cinema.
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Many of the films we have watched place Asian characters as perpetual foreigners that will never fit in. An example of this is in After Yang, one of the posters in a shop contained messaging suggesting that yellow Asians would never be part of the United States and always be alien. This was interesting because the film supposedly took place in the future which was symbolic of the continuous struggles that Asians have been facing in the country regarding discrimination.
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In Everything Everywhere All at Once, a lot of the film created new meanings for what it meant to be Asian. The film significantly widened the scope of Asian American representation showing that Asian Americans are constrained by certain set of roles but that they can also be quirky and weird.
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Aka Don Bonus also showed the difficuly immigrant experience that Asians experienced but in a different light. Don Bonus portrayed the struggles that he endured whether it was familial or financial while escaping the war in Cambodia and coming to the United States. Everything Everywhere All at Once provides a more surface level description of the immigrant experience compared to Aka Don Bonus but still portrays the difficulties.
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Displacement was a major theme in many of the films we watched. In Aka Don Bonus he provides a firsthand account of the struggles that his family experienced after moving from Cambodia and how it took a long time to adjust. Similarly, the residents of the I-Hotel were displaced from their home and given no replacement in terms of housing despite being evicted and losing a lot of their belongings.
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I think that Bell Hooks Making Movie Magic applies to this film. He talks about how movies have the ability to change people's perception of the world and I think this film does a great job of portraying the Asian American struggle and helps to fight back other stereotypes like the model minority myth that tend to downplay Asian immigrant experiences. Just from watching the film you can see the enormous amount of struggles that Don Bonus suffered through when he was growing up.
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Although both Aka Don Bonus and Better Luck Tomorrow have the theme of the model minority myth, they are applied in different ways. In Aka Don bonus you can see that it Don Bonus is not a great student and his life is filled with daily struggles. Better Luck Tomorrow on the other hand has Ben trying to break out of his role of the model minority where he is doing illegal things to get a taste of breaking out of his expected role.
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Interracial romance being impossible is a common theme that shows up in many of the films like Daughter of the Dragon where Ling Moy is killed off so she doesn't end up with Ronald Petrie. In Toll of the Sea, Lotus Flower will never be able to end up with Allen so she decides to kill herself at the end of the film. Interracial romance being impossible is also highly connected with the theme of bad endings for Asian characters where in both films Asian characters met their end.
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In Better Luck Tomorrow, Ben attains a duel identity as well to break out of his role. Ben still maintains his good grades and academci excellence while simultaneously breaking the law by doing drugs, stealing, and cheating. Changez's dual identity involves his balance between loving America and the opportunity but also being Pakistani and being treated differently for that cultural part of him.
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Many films cast Asian men to be villain or violent. In Enter the Dragon, Han is the main villain and he is reponsible for crime including human and drug trafficking. He represents the main person that needs to be taken down in order to maintain peace. Arakau, similarly represents the Burmese Ivory trader who is treated as a villain for attempting to force Edith to be his lover. Despite being shot by Edith, he is treated as the villain and sparks mass outrage over his branding of Edith.
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In the Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez who plays a South Asian character is treated as a important tool for the company but he eventually is treated so badly for the color of his skin that he must leave the country and return back to Pakistan. Archie in Machine Love is also treated as a tool and the female robot from the other office is also badly where she was groped essentially being a tool for their desire.
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The World of Suzie Wong also has major differences in the depiction of characters from the West vs. from the East. Suzie Wong is depicted as an exotic female that is good to fetishize about but not someone that you would want to marry while Kate who is a white woman is respectable and pure. This is similar to Ling Moy's depiction being seen as ormenatalism where she is an object of desire while Joan wears a plain looking dress and is much more respectable.
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In both Robot Stories and After Yang, the people realize that the Asian robots have more humanistic characteristics than they expect. In Machine Love, at the end of the film Archie goes over to the other office and sleeps with the female Asian Robot. In After Yang, the memories that Jake sees help to represent how humanistic he actually was.
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All of the films changed and helped to widen the scope of Asian American representation in film. For Better Luck Tomorrow it showed Ben combatting that model minority myth and the struggles associated with having that label placed on you. In Everything Everywhere at Once it demonstrated the familial struggles and unique identities that Asian Americans could take on.
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This relates to Kido Lopez's reading on cultural citizenship where Asian American Activism is ultimately a fight to attain cultural citizenship and a feeling of belonging. Much of Asian American filmmaking is aimed towards self-representing and promoting more Asian American perspectives to the public the improve inclusion and the feeling of belonging for Asian Americans in the United States.
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In the Fall of I-Hotel many communities came together not just Asian American communities but also other minority groups and this represented a sense of shared solidarity and unity regarding opposing of corporate interests and prioritizing the well being of the residents of I-Hotel
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I think that a lot of the acitivism that was performed as a result of Vincent Chin's provided great strives in improvement towards cultural citizenship for Asian American which relates to Lopez's reading. Lopez discusses how in order to obtain cultural citizenship it requires the collective not just an individual which is what occurred here with many individuals coming together and forming groups and coalitions to fight for what they believe is right.
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