Portrayal of people of Asian descent in American/ Western culture

Same applies to Matt Lucas and David Walliams really. The only difference is that they don't play on racial stereotypes (but they do love exaggerated voices/accents generally).

wtf dood I'm a huge sci-fi nerd and you know it!

? WTF is that the Koreans then?

Khan Noonien Singh is not to be confused with Noonien Soong, the scientist who created the android Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The characters' names have the same origin (they were both named by Gene Roddenberry), and an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise has hinted at some link between the characters beyond a coincidental name similarity.

still reading this but so far it's pretty lol

“You can’t help but feel like there must be another way,” he explains over a bowl of phô. “It’s like, we’re being pitted against each other while there are kids out there in the Midwest who can do way less work and be in a garage band or something—and if they’re decently intelligent and work decently hard in school …”

it all could have been so simple... *throws SAT book out window, picks up guitar*

ahahhah

This is the implicit question that J. T. Tran has posed to a roomful of Yale undergraduates at a master’s tea at Silliman College. His answer is typically Asian: practice. Tran is a pickup artist who goes by the handle Asian Playboy. He travels the globe running “boot camps,” mostly for Asian male students, in the art of attraction. Today, he has been invited to Yale by the Asian-American Students Alliance.

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/

oh yeah forgot to link thx for the assist

I really can't believe this guy is devoting a 10 paragraphs to explaining how PUAs work and how that's beneficial to asian american males

Raj, a 26-year-old Indian virgin,

he explains over a bowl of phô.

phở not phô.

^^^ SS with the dunk

This, of course, was madness. A child of Asian immigrants born into the suburbs of New Jersey and educated at Rutgers cannot be a law unto himself. The only way to approximate this is to refuse employment, because you will not be bossed around by people beneath you, and shave your expenses to the bone, because you cannot afford more, and move into a decaying Victorian mansion in Jersey City, so that your sense of eccentric distinction can be preserved in the midst of poverty, and cut yourself free of every form of bourgeois discipline, because these are precisely the habits that will keep you chained to the mediocre fate you consider worse than death.

???

And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.

glad this guy is taking a stand for asian-american women everywhere http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9627011/emot-golfclap.gif

anyway probably not too many others out there that are interested in reading an 11 page article about the first world problems of mediocrely successful asian americans but I'm gonna come out and deem this article bullshit, thanks for your time everybody

cool man see you

fuckin lol forever at
What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?

冷静的人看到你

do they have those asian pride/korean pride kiddie gangs on the east coast or is that a bay area thing

socal azns are a bay area thing but its spreading

in high school one of my friends tried to start an azn pryde thing and all our aim screennames had to begin with "AzN-nWo" which stood for azn new world order, I forgot what mine was tho

and move into a decaying Victorian mansion in Jersey City,

would totally live in a victorian mansion in jersey city...

if it weren't for bay area azn pride, i don't think we'd have late night sushi in Oakland, so ...

I would get all o_O when I was younger and doing group projects if we were exchanging aim info and half the list was like SeXI_CHinki3-PrYDE

I still haven't read the whole article is living in a victorian mansion in jersey city supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing

reminds me of this (1:00)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-0ha0NlRNk

er, something one of you said, reminded me of that.

it's the part of the article where he goes through his 'invisible man' phase... after attending classes about becoming a PUA

is this article all about east coast asians

this article purports to shatter stereotypes about asian americans but actually ends up confirming them in the end, feel like the white people in power at NYMag planned for this all along *shakes fist*

Huang had a rough twenties, bumping repeatedly against the Bamboo Ceiling.

I'm just gonna copy and paste the PUA parts becuase lol PUA

What if you missed out on the lessons in masculinity taught in the gyms and locker rooms of America’s high schools? What if life has failed to make you a socially dominant alpha male who runs the American boardroom and prevails in the American bedroom? What if no one ever taught you how to greet white people and make them comfortable? What if, despite these deficiencies, you no longer possess an immigrant’s dutiful forbearance for a secondary position in the American narrative and want to be a player in the scrimmage of American appetite right now, in the present?

How do you undo eighteen years of a Chinese upbringing?

This is the implicit question that J. T. Tran has posed to a roomful of Yale undergraduates at a master’s tea at Silliman College. His answer is typically Asian: practice. Tran is a pickup artist who goes by the handle Asian Playboy. He travels the globe running “boot camps,” mostly for Asian male students, in the art of attraction. Today, he has been invited to Yale by the Asian-American Students Alliance.

“Creepy can be fixed,” Tran explains to the standing-room-only crowd. “Many guys just don’t realize how to project themselves.” These are the people whom Tran spends his days with, a new batch in a new city every week: nice guys, intelligent guys, motivated guys, who never figured out how to be successful with women. Their mothers had kept them at home to study rather than let them date or socialize. Now Tran’s company, ABCs of Attraction, offers a remedial education that consists of three four-hour seminars, followed by a supervised night out “in the field,” in which J. T., his assistant Gareth Jones, and a tall blonde wing-girl named Sarah force them to approach women. Tuition costs $1,450.

“One of the big things I see with Asian students is what I call the Asian poker face—the lack of range when it comes to facial expressions,” Tran says. “How many times has this happened to you?” he asks the crowd. “You’ll be out at a party with your white friends, and they will be like—‘Dude, are you angry?’ ” Laughter fills the room. Part of it is psychological, he explains. He recalls one Korean-American student he was teaching. The student was a very dedicated schoolteacher who cared a lot about his students. But none of this was visible. “Sarah was trying to help him, and she was like, ‘C’mon, smile, smile,’ and he was like …” And here Tran mimes the unbearable tension of a face trying to contort itself into a simulacrum of mirth. “He was so completely unpracticed at smiling that he literally could not do it.” Eventually, though, the student fought through it, “and when he finally got to smiling he was, like, really cool.”

Tran continues to lay out a story of Asian-American male distress that must be relevant to the lives of at least some of those who have packed Master Krauss’s living room. The story he tells is one of Asian-American disadvantage in the sexual marketplace, a disadvantage that he has devoted his life to overturning. Yes, it is about picking up women. Yes, it is about picking up white women. Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean, and it is about having sex with them. He is not going to apologize for the images of blonde women plastered all over his website. This is what he prefers, what he stands for, and what he is selling: the courage to pursue anyone you want, and the skills to make the person you desire desire you back. White guys do what they want; he is going to do the same.

But it is about much more than this, too. It is about altering the perceptions of Asian men—perceptions that are rooted in the way they behave, which are in turn rooted in the way they were raised—through a course of behavior modification intended to teach them how to be the socially dominant figures that they are not perceived to be. It is a program of, as he puts it to me later, “social change through pickup.”

Tran offers his own story as an exemplary Asian underdog. Short, not good-looking, socially inept, sexually null. “If I got a B, I would be whipped,” he remembers of his childhood. After college, he worked as an aerospace engineer at Boeing and Raytheon, but internal politics disfavored him. Five years into his career, his entire white cohort had been promoted above him. “I knew I needed to learn about social dynamics, because just working hard wasn’t cutting it.”

His efforts at dating were likewise “a miserable failure.” It was then that he turned to “the seduction community,” a group of men on Internet message boards like alt.seduction.fast. It began as a “support group for losers” and later turned into a program of self-improvement. Was charisma something you could teach? Could confidence be reduced to a formula? Was it merely something that you either possessed or did not possess, as a function of the experiences you had been through in life, or did it emerge from specific forms of behavior? The members of the group turned their computer-science and engineering brains to the question. They wrote long accounts of their dates and subjected them to collective scrutiny. They searched for patterns in the raw material and filtered these experiences through social-psychological research. They eventually built a model.

This past Valentine’s Day, during a weekend boot camp in New York City sponsored by ABCs of Attraction, the model is being played out. Tran and Jones are teaching their students how an alpha male stands (shoulders thrown back, neck fully extended, legs planted slightly wider than the shoulders). “This is going to feel very strange to you if you’re used to slouching, but this is actually right,” Jones says. They explain how an alpha male walks (no shuffling; pick your feet up entirely off the ground; a slight sway in the shoulders). They identify the proper distance to stand from “targets” (a slightly bent arm’s length). They explain the importance of “kino escalation.” (You must touch her. You must not be afraid to do this.) They are teaching the importance of sub-­communication: what you convey about yourself before a single word has been spoken. They explain the importance of intonation. They explain what intonation is. “Your voice moves up and down in pitch to convey a variety of different emotions.”

All of this is taught through a series of exercises. “This is going to feel completely artificial,” says Jones on the first day of training. “But I need you to do the biggest shit-eating grin you’ve ever made in your life.” Sarah is standing in the corner with her back to the students—three Indian guys, including one in a turban, three Chinese guys, and one Cambodian. The students have to cross the room, walking as an alpha male walks, and then place their hands on her shoulder—firmly but gently—and turn her around. Big smile. Bigger than you’ve ever smiled before. Raise your glass in a toast. Make eye contact and hold it. Speak loudly and clearly. Take up space without apology. This is what an alpha male does.

Before each student crosses the floor of that bare white cubicle in midtown, Tran asks him a question. “What is good in life?” Tran shouts.

The student then replies, in the loudest, most emphatic voice he can muster: “To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women—in my bed!”

For the intonation exercise, students repeat the phrase “I do what I want” with a variety of different moods.

“Say it like you’re happy!” Jones shouts. (“I do what I want.”) Say it like you’re sad! (“I do what I want.” The intonation utterly unchanged.) Like you’re sad! (“I … do what I want.”) Say it like you’ve just won $5 million! (“I do what I want.”)

Raj, a 26-year-old Indian virgin, can barely get his voice to alter during intonation exercise. But on Sunday night, on the last evening of the boot camp, I watch him cold-approach a set of women at the Hotel Gansevoort and engage them in conversation for a half-hour. He does not manage to “number close” or “kiss close.” But he had done something that not very many people can do.

so many of the students in my undergrad chemistry classes are azn

wonder if theyre good with women

i'm glad that drunk white lady showed up to provide crucial insight

drunk white lady is the new manic pixie dream girl

seriously

Here was a drunk white lady speaking what so many others over the years must have been insufficiently drunk to tell me.

^^^ new ILE board description

(... or maybe ILTMI)

fyi

http://www.amazon.com/How-Date-White-Woman-Practical/dp/0919637264

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513DDK48XAL._SS500_.jpg

STOP LOOKING AT ME QUAN

(sorry that was pretty racist, also his name probably doesn't even rhyme with swan! I'm gonna put myself on timeout)

http://www.asianworldpress.com/ReaderComments.html

5 out of 5 stars(Asian man) A reviewer, (USA) July xx, 2003, (gave rating: 5/5), At Long Last

I was so happy to find a book on this topic. Adam Quan makes it easy to do something you always wanted to do, meet and get to know white women as a dating choice. And don't listen to any of those who object to it because of personal insecurity , learn to see other ethnics as people..

(A man) A reviewer, (USA), December xx, 2005, (gave rating: 4/5),Great way to fire up an interracial relationship!

As a white law student, it was interesting to get a new perspective on what asian men are thinking. Personally, I have had horrible luck with women, but I got this book for my asian friend in hopes that he could land a girlfriend for himself. I highly recommend it, as I know I certainly have a thing or two to learn from asian investment bankers about picking up women.

Asian man) A reviewer, (California, USA) Aug xx, 2005, (gave rating: 3/5), I haven't read this book, there is a demand of East-West for relationship!

I bought this book from Amazon. I am an Asian man. I always attracted to Caucasian / Hispanics woman. This started when I was in high school. As for the big picture, here my observation of other Asian-men may share similar situation with me:

Asian-Americans ......We are evolving, certainly, relationship between Asian-man and White woman as no exception. However, we still have some gap to close .......

As far as the current situation, we expect this to be an issue we need to address to bring the gap closer. We cannot be quiet on this as we see there is a demand for both relationships.

Personally, I seen Asian-man and White-woman relationship. Including myself had experienced couple of them approached me in the past. I was picky but one I felt regret I should have go for. As for other Asian-male friends, I know some like White woman. Basically, I conclude ... this book brings us the subject Just-In-Time ...

okay i haven't finished this entire article and i wish the author hadn't used that PUA example and he admits himself that the "bamboo ceiling" thing he's talking about isn't a dire problem in the grand scheme of things, but i don't know, the part i read was interesting. i feel like it's kind of impossible to talk about real experiences of race without veering uncomfortably close to affirming stereotypes sometimes. the parts of the article that talk about white perceptions of Asian Americans as robotic/somehow less fully human than white people are...i believe that's a real perception out there in the world and i find it easy to believe it would affect asian americans' lives.

some parts of it are undoubtedly wack but i...kind of like it.

and the trying to get white women thing...i just feel like that's a real thing experienced at some point by men (not all men, obvs) in almost every racial minority group in this country? i'm not excusing it...it just seems like it's part of the mechanism of race ideology meeting gender ideology...that was horribly expressed, but you know what i mean.

i should probably finish this article before i defend it, huh.

pretty much the entire article can be chalked up to 'cultural differences'

I mean it's like asian american immigrants growing up in asian household w/ asian values have difficulty in fitting in with american culture shocker.

a lot of things i enjoy reading can be chalked up to "cultural differences" tbh

I mean, advocating the bagging white women primarily for trophy display purposes as evidence of having conformed to and becoming successful at Western cultural notions of dating and relationships seems pretty reprehensible, imo.

i might have misread it, but it didn't seem like the author of the piece was advocating it. that PUA dude, for sure. i don't disagree with you!

i mean, yes, he reports on that dude too neutrally.

I'm going to quote the concluding part again

And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.

yes okay that part is wack

that whole sentence is wack. he makes observations that seem like they could build to a really good article but this is not that article. he falls back on some dumb ways of synthesizing those observations.

the reporting in that piece is really great, but the editing (in the sense of creating an arc and coming to conclusions) is not as good

I mean this article gets my craw. I don't like the fact that this is only about successful Asian Americans instead of Asian Americans as a whole. and it's like, oh, socially awkward yet academically successful Ivy Leaguers have trouble picking up girls? and it's because they're Asian? so all those other white socially awkward nerds are eating a pussy buffet, because they're white and know how to smile, yeah?

I don't need to point out that a large majority of Asian Americans are perfectly mediocre in school, do not attend top tier colleges and don't really have any ambitions of making it big!

and wouldn't you know, America is not really a meritocracy at all- the straight white male still exerts a disproportionate amount of influence, and that proportion only increases the higher you go in society!

I mean yeah horseshoe the article does make some good points but they go hand in hand with a whole lot of WTFery.

I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry that we use to sort through the sea of faces we confront. And although I am in most respects devoid of Asian characteristics, I do have an Asian face.

and uh, instead of ascribing these things to cultural differences, this suggests a (pretty racist) genetic essentialism. o rly

and it doesn't really help his case at all that he spends the last part of the article going "I AM AN ARTIST WHO HAS BEEN POORLY FED IN THE PAST BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN ~IDEALS~"

I mean, the author is really kidding himself if he believes he's rejected American ideals along with his Asian ones - the figure of the iconoclast principled artist carries a lot of weight in certain circles! it's not like individualism is frowned upon in America.

to be fair, again, i think the author does disclaim at one point because he's at least aware of how "first world problems" it sounds to be like poor ivy league graduates who don't end up running the world like their white counterparts! i think he could have stood to draw more clearly the distinction between an image of Asian Americans (evidenced in the whole oh no Asians are taking over our schools, and maybe even in some of the mythology that PUA dude is defining himself against) and the real, far-from-monolithic experience of being Asian American. But the one does influence the other. anyway at this point i'm not disagreeing with you at all, dayo, and also i am uninformed so i should shut up.

xxp

yeah I remember that part as well. I'm kind of on edge because I had someone forward this to me today with a "fuck yeah, finally someone who ~understands~ us" note attached, and I cringe that this article might be considered a net positive for portrayals of Asian Americans in America.

I just read this response

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/05/10/a-response-to-wesley-yang-s-paper-tigers.aspx

and it pretty much sums up my reaction to the article in a much more elegant and thoughtful way.

I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry that we use to sort through the sea of faces we confront. And although I am in most respects devoid of Asian characteristics, I do have an Asian face.

and uh, instead of ascribing these things to cultural differences, this suggests a (pretty racist) genetic essentialism. o rly

― a board in which there is lively and fuiud debate? (dayo), Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah. the second sentence you quoted is so vague to me that it actually seems in opposition to the first one. like, doesn't he just mean, people make assumptions about people of other racial groups? i don't know why he didn't just say that. but yes, i disagree with him about the "wired into our neural circuitry" part.

xp great whenever i actually finish this article i'll read that one

the whole thing is OTM, but I'll quote

The fact is, every individual is marked by several overlapping forms of identity—not just ethnicity but also gender, class, attractiveness, intelligence, and distance in time and space from the emigrant country. Ignore these other factors, as Yang does, and naturally everything becomes a simple reflection of ethnicity.

In my professional life, for example, I've dealt with many of the issues he describes. I'm not as assertive as I'd like to be. I often fear that I'm more tenacious than creative or canny. These are precisely the "typical" Asian qualities Yang describes. But do I feel this way because I'm Asian? I could just as easily see those issues as a reflection of my status as a woman. In reality, both factors have probably played a role—as have other aspects of my background and personality. Yang builds a lot of his argument on thumbnail sketches of individuals, and in many of those examples—including his own, personal tale, which he seems to have trouble seeing past—I didn't come away convinced that Asian-ness was the key element at play.

my sister alerted me to this article in a "this might actually be a net positive for portrayals of Asian Americans" spirit. (i know the article is focused on East Asians and not South Asians, but there are resonances.) she was ambivalent about parts of it. i think in part the over-positive response just comes of being sort of starved for this kind of analysis, especially in something like new york mag. but i am happy to read something smarter!

it's a really smart response!

http://www.ninashenrastogi.com/

I think I have a new crush!

http://img.timeinc.net/time/images/covers/1101870831_259.jpg

the army's secret army of army armies

far as east asians in american pop culture, i was surprised to see an asian guy in the new fast and furious get the (white) girl. that was pretty unusual. but i still do see WAY more white guy/asian girl pairups on tv and in films than both-asian couples.

most south asian characters on british tv, they seem to be either given english names like that woman from mistresses, so have no relation to any concept of asianness (as if they did, they would prob have to succumb to any number of stereotypes/cliches) and/or seem to only get to be exciting when they are with white/non asian partners. its like some new blanding out of corny liberalism.

(dont watch eastenders to know what the asian family in there are like, but they look pretty cardboard)

*its like some new blanding out of corny liberalism (and white male wish fulfillment)

it's facking eastenders san, they're all facking cardboard

yeah i know but the asian and most of the non white characters in general tbh are really thinly/cornily characterised. they dont feel fleshed out or rounded out as the white characters.

id like them to be as crazy/unrealistic/idiotic (in an exciting, rather than boring, worthy) way as the white characters basically.

A girl i know was a member of the first Asian family in Eastenders. They were (rightly) written off by most Asian viewers as unrealistic and beset by terrible cliches but there was also a strange sense of pride in a lot of quarters, often from the same people, that there was at least some kind of representation, no matter how tokenistic or stupid.

I've caught bits and pieces of the new family and it just seems to be the same kind of arranged marriage / gay-son-horror / 'you will run family business!' stuff repeated again and again.

STOP LOOKING AT ME QUAN

― a board in which there is lively and fuiud debate? (dayo), Tuesday, May 10, 2011 8:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

thought this was hilarious, tbh

far as east asians in american pop culture, i was surprised to see an asian guy in the new fast and furious get the (white) girl. that was pretty unusual. but i still do see WAY more white guy/asian girl pairups on tv and in films than both-asian couples.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Wednesday, May 11, 2011 6:21 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

heh i was gonna mention this - as soon as i saw the am/wf action in Fast Five, i thought to myself "i bet justin lin considers this his greatest achievement"

anyway i thought this article wasnt that bad - the slate rebuttal is good too though

also the part where he talks about amy chua kinda made me want to read her book

half of my childhood was spent in extremely middle class asian american environments and most of this shit just comes off as whining to me

then again I kind of just skimmed it to look for lines to laugh at so

After Tran attended one of Mystery's bootcamps, he began to develop his own methods of attraction, concentrating on developing his own holistic approach to the art of seduction. Through his personal blog in which he talked about his adventures in the dating game, his successes and failures, he received a telephone call from a woman whose son was being harassed and bullied at his high school. She had been reading The Asian Playboy's blogs and believed that he could help her son overcome his shyness and help him to be assertive enough to get through the bullying. She paid for Tran to fly out to her home in Canada and he spent three days helping her son improve his confidence and social skills. This chance decision of flying out to Canada was the initial spark for Tran's career, and the starting point of his company, ABCs of Attraction, which he launched in 2005.

Tran introduced the concept of the ABCDEF structure which incorporates three main components, namely: thoughts, actions, and words. The concept teaches men how to develop their attitudes, change the manner of their dress, and convey sexuality while courting and dating women. The Asian Playboy mainly teaches shy Asian men confidence and communication skills.

Tran appears at a wide range of events and seminars, offering bootcamps which last from three days to several weeks. Each boot camps is designed to help men improve their social interaction skills. The Asian Playboy works along several instructors and coaches including Johnny Wolf, Andrew AKA Showtime, Ozzie AKA The Latino Gentleman and William AKA Man Cannon.

tiger in the sack mother

ok I actually read this shit and the entire thing isn't horrible or anything, the scope is just incredibly small. One immediate thought was that the only place where he doesn't really focus on financial success is with the seduction artist shit, which actually is pretty horrible now that I think about it.

I guess uh in the end my main critique is that the article makes the world seem so small and horrible, and the world is pretty horrible, whatever that means I guess since I've been typing the word a lot I'll keep typing it, but its so horrible in so many new ways to discover during your life

I sort of know W3sl3y Y@ng from school -- he was my good friend's boyfriend for a while but I never really got to know him [/pointless, unremarkable brag]

Unrelated admission of racist thought: there's this Chinese girl in my basketball weekly clinic -- she's relatively good and I couldn't help but notice that she had a very "disciplined" attitude, like she seemed to focus extra hard on every drill and be very demanding of herself. She also gets on my case about every little thing I do wrong and it's started to piss me off (I'm practically a beginner at basketball and I've been practicing my ass off and making huge progress so I really don't appreciate it). I had this massive urge to start calling her "tiger mother," like to her face, like as in "hey, take it easy there tiger mother." Obviously I don't actually think this is a good idea. Also I think I'm developing a crush on her. That is all.

She sounds pretty annoying.

Yeah, like on one play in a drill I made a bad cut that would have cut off the guy with the ball from getting to the rim, and the coach says to me "Where were you going with that cut?" and SHE says "I don't know coach" -- or we'll be doing some simple full-court running and passing drill where we have to make some ostensible effort to score and she'll actually talk to her group about what she thinks is going wrong and why they're not scoring.

lol pp

http://www.noisetosignal.org/images/posts/warushmore09.jpg

l-r: hurting, Chinese tiger girl

it's kinda a harsh double bind cuz nymag are saying azns are pussies, but then if an azn was to be assertive and actually do something about it like shoot up their offices or collude with the chinese govenment in a massive ddos attack on every company that advertises in nymag, ppl would be all 'lol crazns be crazy'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-n7aeqMzis

I actually want this wesley yang fellow and The best of Marc Loi : Facebook Feminist to duke it out

maybe in a kung fu match

because they're both asian, you see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1S0oFoyucs

damn this is old school. i remember downloading this song on napster. i even made my website peaceoutside . org because of this track heh
D0CH0LIDAY 10 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMOZRk74QrY

Did Jin get any attention when he did Learn Chinese?

I definitely had that tai mai shu mp3 when I was 12

true fact: mc jin is now in hong kong doing raps for the government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te-TiL9YVaE

(dude with the bow tie is donald tsang, chief executive of hong kong)

Ha! That's awesome.

damn I never would've guessed that that tai mai shu shit would hold up well

Maybe the whole tiger mother thing prepared me for that article, but i wasn't too upset by it... well, the PUA stuff was kinda depressing. And the article was way too long. And especially by the end it got kind of self-gratifying. So it wasn't actually... good, but I don't know, I do think there is still a painful lack of self-awareness / willing self-blindness to these issues, so I can forgive it a little? The tiger mother article, OTOH, seemed to actually be encouraging those cultural stereotypes to non-Asians, though I think in the end it the sample was selected to court controversy.

But at the same time I can slightly cop to AAM's take of "eh we've heard it all before, who carez".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbW-XYqbol0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx67ZUY9c2o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fXa9hTowY

Minus: asian tech support guy there to answer the white lady's questions
Plus: white lady actually flirts with asian guy

i'd say this video is thoroughly unproblematic. he doesn't even seem like a great tech support dude, just a bewildered salesman.

http://theaerogram.com/how-many-times-has-your-favorite-actor-played-a-guy-named-raj-a-guide/

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/star-trek-beyond-george-takei-sulu-really-unfortunate

making an asian character gay = another way to ensure the asian male in a major hollywood films doesnt get to 'get the girl'.

yeah, a little torn on this one. i get that it's a personal tribute to Takei and in the show's progressive fashion
but ya know, of course it's the Asian guy
otoh Harry Kim was probably worse on the whole

personal tribute, shmersonal tribute. its BS.

There's nothing wrong or worse about a male character "getting the guy" instead of "getting the girl", and your comments are suggesting you think otherwise. I hope that's not what you actually believe. But I do agree that if the person you're supposedly paying tribute to thinks there's something fishy about your tribute, you should maybe actually listen to them.

"There's nothing wrong or worse about a male character "getting the guy" instead of "getting the girl", and your comments are suggesting you think otherwise. I hope that's not what you actually believe"

theres nothing wrong with it, in isolation.

but looking at the history of asian male representation on american tv and in the movies, i see it as the latest attempt to demean asian heterosexual men.

thats not to say that i think being gay makes one less of a man, but hetero asian men are the majority of asian men in the US, and they are routinely denied sexual agency on screen.

so i cant help but see it as a victory for gay men/gay asians, but not really a victory for the majority of asian men in the US, who are still under represented in hollywood.

basically, its interesting that they will allow a notable asian character to be gay, but wont let him be heterosexual.

i hope Simon Pegg dies

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/simon-pegg-defends-gay-sulu-after-george-takei-criticism

zzz

I want to talk about Crazy, Rich Asians. I enjoyed it for a lot of reasons –– and I was struck by the use of female gaze. It's an old-fashioned kind of movie, but from a significantly different perspective. I suspect it'll be dismissed as conservative rom-com pablum by (white) (male) (American) audiences, but I think there's a lot of canniness to its construction and its politics of representation.

there is and there isn't. i mean, it adheres pretty strongly to rom-com cliche and basic story has been done to death a million times...

but i admit i saw it opening night last week just to support the Asian/Asian-American casting and existence of the film. every time I read the factoid about "25 years since The Joy Luck Club!" i palm my face

I liked this movie a lot but I don’t really have anything smart to say about it vis a vis Representation. It was a delightful romantic comedy with a phenomenal cast of oughta-be-stars (Michelle Yeoh and Ken Jeong were probably the most famous people in this movie, at least in the USA).

Rly the notable thing abt this movie to me is that it’s a big genre movie marketed towards a general audience that really does Just Happen To Be about Asian and Asian-American characters. It didn’t have to do anything to justify itself to white audiences–no “white friend” character added due to studio notes, nothing about being Chinese was the Motivating Problem or Second Act Twist for any of the characters. Certainly it should’ve been a no brainer that such a movie could be successful but maybe the $100 million domestic box office his movie will do will provide the motivation Hollywood needs to make more movies like this.

It wont