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AAST355 - Asian Americans in Film - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The dragon lady is made to seem masculine and threatening, using seduction as a weapon and hiding beneath the identity of being both Asian and a woman
      - The butterfly is seen as more naive and self-sacrificing with the end of this character typically ending the same way each time.
  - - - Whitewashing comes out of Yellowface, which let White actors play with identity while implying Asian Americans couldn't play themselves
  - - - Third Cinema itself is a political project, a democratic and participatory cinema that tries to push viewers toward changing society
      - Visual Communications brought Third Cinema ideas to Asian American filmmaking by making films collectively with the communities being shown
  - - - The struggle created a strong bond between the elderly “manongs” and young Filipino activists, who recovered a lost history and built a Filipino American identity through fighting together
  - - - He calls this ongoing awareness “refugeetude,” a way of understanding the forces that create refugees instead of seeing refugees as temporary, pitiful victims
      - Le’s story criticizes the idea that refuge automatically leads to the American Dream, since she feels “cheap and cheated” rather than grateful
- - - - (10:30) Warner exhibits Yellowface not only through his makeup and exaggerated eyes, but also through the clothing and robes that his character wears
    - - (39:50 - 42:00) In this scene, the "incense of repentance" is used to burn away what is considered the weaker half of Ling Moy, which is apparently the "women" side of her. This further expands on the societal beliefs that were held against women during this time period.
    - - This scene showcases the stereotype that an Asian woman's beauty and charm are treated as a disguise for cruelty and vengefulness, while also reinforcing the theme we have seen in previous films where Asians are deceptive figures whose real intentions stay hidden until they turn violent.
  - - - (0:28 - 1:40) In this part we see white text roll across the screen as a scene is described about a father and mother arguing about nightmares their daughter is having. This is then followed by additional context about Pearl Harbor.
        
        Most documentaries rely on footage as proof, but Tajiri puts text on a blank screen where no images exist, so the audience is literally looking at the missing history. Mimura ties this to her line “Our absence was our presence,” which suggests that the lack of images is itself evidence of what happened to Japanese Americans.
      - (13:00 - 13:45) Tajiri says she grew up in “a family full of ghosts,” remembering a place she had never been and a sadness from before she was born, which shows how the trauma of internment gets passed down even when no one talks about it.
      - (30:21 - 31:55) Tajiri travels to Poston, Arizona, where her mother was held, and finds an almost empty landscape. The film ends with the canteen image from before, but now it’s clear and it’s Tajiri herself kneeling at the faucet. She admits the image is partly invented, but it still stays true to what her family went through, and she offers it to her mother as a way to restore the memory she lost.
        
        The empty landscape shows how both the place and the history in the camp have been partly erased. By retracing her mother’s journey, Tajiri turns a memory she only heard about into a place she can actually stand in.
  - - - The film is also Third Cinema because it uses film as a political tool, siding with the Filipino tenants against the corporate developers and city powers that evicted them.
        
        Instead of only showing the community, it also shows how the eviction relates to bigger forces like “urban renewal” and the expansion of the financial district. Its raw footage, shot over years of the conflict and also includes the police removing the tenants.
    - - We see how much of a Filipino community has developed in Manilla town. Between the hotel itself, senior centers, and food centers where many different generations come together to eat and socialize.
        
        From here, we move towards seeing the motivations and motives of the corporate developers and why they tore down or rebuilt portions of this community. We also see some of the sabotage that occurs from the development company to prevent the signing of leases and continued residence of the manong.
        
        Eventually, the landlord (owning company) posts eviction notices for all of the tenants of the I-Hotel, followed by a series of fierce protests in an attempt to stop this eviction. In response the police come in with a show of force to evict the residents themselves.
  - - - (3:40 - 4:46) Don explains to the camera that his family fled Cambodia because of the war and that they are now safe in America. As a result of this we also see that his father is no longer with them in the US.
        
        (9:54 - 13:20) We can see that someone has thrown a rock through one of the windows of the house. Even with this happening, Don opts not to call the police due not thinking they will actually help.
        
        Even though he is now in a better place compared to Cambodia, he is still not actually "safe". Even in the event of crimes done against his family, he hesitates to call the police because he is scared that either they will get in trouble for it or not respond and will place him on an answering machine.
        
        (31:40 - 35:48) We see that Don's brother Touch is arrested and charged with attempted murder for pulling out a gun at school and shooting a different student he had a conflict with.
        
        His brother pulling out a gun and trying to shoot a fellow student can be seen as him trying to reclaim what little agency and power he has in a broken system. Here, he deems that the only way he can defend himself is to bring a gun himself which just shows how powerless his family truly feels in America and how they never stopped being refugees.
        
        (5:00 - 7:15) We see that Don comes home from school to an empty, absent home. His brother has run away from home because he does not feel safe because of a shooting that happened to their nephew, while his mother is staying elsewhere with her new husband.
        
        Even though most of his family has made it to America we can still see how absent they are from his life. In truth at this point in his life he is not only missing his father in his life but one of his brothers and his mother.
        
        (29:00 - 31:30) Here we see why Don's older brother has been so absent from both his family and his life. It is explained that this is because his brother Chandara has married, started a family with a kid, and is now attending university.
- - - - (1:20:40 - 1:21:30) The crimes from the group culminate in the murder of Steve, when Ben sees Steve hold a gun against him and his friends. Unlike Bruce Lee's heroic fights, this violence is shown with real consequences, supporting Shimizu's point that reaching for macho power to fix feeling emasculated ends up destroying people.