For those fine folks interested in the arts and you’re around in San Francisco this next week, it’s the 10th Anniversary of Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture: a whole slew of fabulous events which will showcase great artists, performances, film, and other creations by emerging Asian Pacific American (APA) artists. It’s fun for the whole family and a great way to participate and support in the creative arts community.
My good friend Claire is live-blogging all the events to give you a taste of what the arts festival is all about, what you’re missing out on, and why you absolutely need to rally and make it out for all the fun, and if you’re interested in broadcasting and sharing the feed on your blog you can add the feed link your blog or iGoogle or My Yahoo! page.
A schedule of events can be found online and includes the previously mentioned LapPOP featuring myself and 8Asians’ Ernie – there are also comic expos, happy hours, spoken word and stand-up comedians. Most events $15-25 sliding scale. For our friends, family and supporters (YOU), we are offering an “insider” discount: Mention “10 for 10″ at the door and get a special price of $10 at all APAture events.
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I finally got around to seeing Sixteen Candles. I had blogged back In March about NPR’s story on Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes?, but had never actually seen the movie (to the surprise of many). I saw that Sixteen Candles was airing and decided to record it on my DVR and got around to watching it last night.
Oh My God!
I’m still debating what I am finding more offensive – Long Duk Dong or Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I am wondering whatever drove the director John Hughes to include the character Long Duk Dong in the movie, except purely for comedic relief throughout the plot line. Some questions and comments:
- Why is a “Chinaman” being played by a Japanese American? As a native born American, I *guess* Gedde Watanabe does a decent job of faking some sort of foreign accent. I’m not saying that all Chinese roles be played by Chinese, I am just curious. I imagine back in the early 1980’s, there weren’t too many Asian American child actors (not like there are a lot today either).
- Long Duk Dong – that’s doesn’t sound like a Chinese name to me at all? I don’t know anybody with the last name Long or Dong. This sounds more possibly Vietnamese to me…
- Why is Long Duk Dong being hosted as an exchange student by an elderly couple? From what I recall, most exchange students are hosted by families with similarly school aged children.
- How can Long Duk Dong be driving a car in the United States? Sixteen Candles takes place in modern day 1984 when the film was released. I don’t think many mainland Chinese “Chinamen” had cars, or even had a license, let alone a Chinese teenager. And why would Molly Ringwald’s Samantha’s (Sam) grandparents let Long Duk Dong drive?
- Do you know anybody that has ever acted like Long Duk Dong in real life, let alone an Asian American or Chinese American? I have a hard time believing any exchange student who is not fully fluent in English being so audacious in his behavior. What was John Hughes’ point? Why a “Chinaman”? Because China was far an exotic and needed to be “different” from white suburban America?
- If Long Duk Dong is so odd, foreign and weird, why is he hooking up with a white teenage girl? Wouldn’t white America be concerned about their daughters being seduced by a “Chinaman”?
- And finally, what the hell is it with the movie having a gong sound whenever Long Duk Dong is on screen – it’s just plain ridiculous.
Overall, I enjoyed the film, despite its lack of realism. I’m kind of shocked at how supposedly popular Sixteen Candles was. I don’t have a recollection of the movie really when I was in middle school – maybe I was just sheltered and clueless. I wish I had known more about this movie – I probably would have been very insulted about it. Personally, while growing up in predominately white suburb, I don’t recall ever getting called Long Duk Dong in middle school or high school while growing (but do recall being called Bruce Lee, Mr. Miyagi or Daniel-san).
I’m wondering, what are the most obviously racist and ridiculous depictions of Asian Americans in cinema today in the 21st century?
Shopping With GASP!
I just read on Slashfilm that Stephen Chow has been confirmed to co-star and direct in the latest superhero installment of The Green Hornet with none other than Seth Rogen. Chow will play Kato, a role made famous by Bruce Lee.
Could anyone have predicted this pairing? EVER? I couldn’t. And Stephen Chow? I wasn’t too excited after watching CJ7 (I still get lots of angry hate comments on my personal blog about this…get over it, people) and as much as I loved Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, there’s always that little voice inside my head that wonders why Chow must a) always put himself in the starring (sympathetic hero) role in his movies and b) why does he depend so much on CG?
I’m curious to know how the Chow-esque method of filmmaking will turn out with Seth Rogen’s self-deprecating pot humor (which I LOVE) but it is awesome to see an Asian filmmaker get some huge recognition in the action-comedy world.
Yeah, that’s right, people. We don’t just do martial arts and pretend to be geishas. We can be funny, too!
Oh, America’s Next Top Model, how I love thee. Now that the show is in its eleventh season, the show is one part self-esteem booster for teenage girls (“No smoking, even though you’re all models! It’s okay not to be a size zero; we’ll even let one of you win a season!”) and one part trainwreck circus. Which isn’t so great for the modeling industry, but an absolute joy for anyone keeping up with the season. And by anyone, I mean me, and by “keeping up,” I mean reading the episode recaps on fourfour.
Asians on America’s Next Top Model have always been hit or miss: There’s been Anchal, the doe-eyed South Asian girl who wore blue contact lenses and got called out by Tyra. (Oh Tyra, always calling out Asians.) There was Julie, the refreshingly down-to-earth girl that had, like, 90 seconds of screentime before promptly eliminated. And who could forget the trainwreck that was Gina?
This season, there’s Half-Japanese Half-Korean Sheena, the girl from Harlem:
What’s definitely going to give me an advantage in this competition is that I’m the only Asian female and I’m not like the other Asian females that was representin in the past couple of cycles. I’m definitely a bit more outspoken, a bit more edgier and confident, and I’m just…
… just hella ghetto. But damn girl, I think you just won me over. If you believe YouTube commenters — really, why wouldn’t you — Sheena is “a stripper … turned go-go dancer, turned wanna-be model,” only living in Harlem from a year from Hawaii. To which I say: if it is true, fucking awesome. This is after all, America’s Next Top Model, not America’s Next Two-Term President, and she rocks a lovely bikini photo without making me hate myself. All she has to do now is out-fierce the actual transgendered contestant and we’ll be good to go.
Last night, per the efforts of Congressman Mike Honda, the San Jose city council endorsed the bid to rename San Jose’s main post office on Lundy Avenue after Chinese-American community leader Gordon N. Chan (House Resolution H. R. 6558), as reported in “San Jose council endorses post office honor for Chinese-American leader“:
“Chan, who died in December 2001 at age 65, ran his family’s plant nursery in San Jose for 30 years and became an influential leader in the area’s Asian-American community. The organizations he was involved with included the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Association, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, the Santa Clara Farm Bureau, the Santa Clara County Planning Commission, the Open Space Commission and the Santa Clara County Fair board. He also was an active member of the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.”
Now you may argue that naming a post office after a Chinese-American is not a big deal. On the surface, I would probably agree. But for every post office, public school, street or building named after an Asian American is a small, but significant effort in raising the consciousness that Asian Americans are Americans that are to be honored and are no less Americans that have served the public good in some significant way. I would be honored if almost any building was named in my honor. I say almost any, because I don’t think President George W. Bush will be happy if San Francisco’s Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant gets renamed George W. Bush Sewage Plant this November (Measure R: Renaming the Oceanside Water Treatment Plant (PDF) )
Asian Americans in San Francisco comprise of approximately a third of San Francisco’s population. In this fall’s election, San Francisco will be electing a supervisor for the Richmond District, where half the residents are Asian Americans. Well, the top three contenders running for Richmond Supervisor, as outlined in “High-profile race for Richmond District supe“:
- Sue Lee, 56, Executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America
- Alicia Wang, 56, Teaches English as a second language and citizenship classes at City College.
- Eric Mar, 46, Lecturer in Asian American studies at San Francisco State University
With the Richmond District being 50% Asian American, I’m surprised that the current supervisor for the district isn’t Asian American. Not saying that people should vote based on race, but you would think that Asian Americans within the Richmond District would have run for the seat previously and that there would have been some qualified Asian American candidates that could have one.
I don’t live in San Francisco, but I have met one of the candidates — Eric Mar — at a few Asian American and Democratic Party events. I don’t know what the issues that the Richmond District face and what Mar’s stance on those issues, but from my brief meetings with him, Mar struck me as a seriously committed person to meeting the needs of the public. I hope those of you eligible to vote for this particular race to give him serious consideration. In general, I am ecstatic to see that there are active Asian Americans running for office – as there should be when the district is 50% Asian American. (How sad and pathetic would it be if there weren’t any viable contenders.)
Something like 10 years ago my adventure in blogging started. I blame Ernie mostly and other regular writers in the APA linkrings (remember those?) who, at the time, encouraged my willingness to rant about things stupid, have occasional anthropomorphic conversations with body parts, eviscerate the previous night’s date, or wax giddy and silly about the latest ridiculous conversation I’d had with my Daddy.
It was this experience in blogging and learning my voice that I started writing more regularly and secured myself even a few regular writing gigs where I got to rant about things stupid to a larger audience. This confidence in writing encouraged me to submit some writing several years ago to Kearny Street Workshop and their APAture festival.
Well shut my mouth, I was selected to participate and read for the very first time in front of a live audience.
This was in 2001 and immediately after the insanity that was my European adventure and short term stay with Parisian Nuns following 9/11. It was a crazy nervous thrill to be in front of an audience. Something that I still get shivers up and down my spine over.
And it’s happening again. This Sunday.
You see, not too long after I’d started blogging, I attended and helped out with my friend Derek‘s Fray Day performances in both San Francisco & Austin as part of SXSW. I thought it was pretty cool.
And then, invited by Locus Arts to brainstorm on an event that focused on new media/digital media and bloggers, I melded what I knew and enjoyed from the blogosphere and the APA arts community and started up LapPOP.
LapPOP! was created in October 2005 as a way to get great Asian American bloggers and the APA arts community to mash it up, in that “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter. You got your peanut butter on my chocolate” kind of way. You know, two great tastes that taste great together.
An intersection between geekery, personal expression, and pop culture. We’ve had some fabulous folks perform in the past and have brought a few veterans and some new folks to perform at this 4th LapPOP! as part of APAture’s 10th year anniversary. This is my way of saying thanks for everything coming full circle and a way for me to say farewell to the APA arts community and some friends in San Francisco before my hubbycakes and I also move to Seattle next month.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
12:30pm – 3:30pm
Theatre Rhinosaurus
2926 16th St, San Francisco, CA
View MapLapPOP! – a afternoon showcase of performance, readings, film and whatnot from notable APA bloggers and artists. An intersection between geekery, personal expression, and pop culture.
Guest MC & Curator of Lap-POP! is Min Jung Kim of www.minjungkim.com
Featured Performers
Eric Nakagawa Co-Founder http://www.icanhascheezburger.com
Kari Unebasami Co-Founder http://www.icanhascheezburger.com
Ernie Hsiung, Writer http://www.littleyellowdifferent.com
Dino Ignacio, Artist http://www.dinoignacio.com
Annie Koh Writer http://www.undisclosedassociation.org
Hasan Minhaj, Comedian http://www.hasanminhaj.com
(Photo of Min Jung at a 2006 LapPOP Event by Courtney Patubo.)
I have done a lot of traveling abroad in my life (Asia, Europe, Russia, Turkey, etc.), but the one country that has always fascinated and elluded me is North Korea. North Korea you ask? Yes, North Korea! As a complete, totalitarian “1984″ Orwellian state, North Korea has always fascinated me (as well as scared me).
Out of Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” I’ve aways been most concerned about North Korea. I mean, say what you want about Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they may have been evil, but I do not think they were/are crazy. I am not sure the same could be said of Kim Jong-il (and his brother, “Mentally ill” as David Letterman would say) nor his father, Kim Il-sung. Well, while reading The Washington Post, I read Yale senior Jerry Guo’s story on his visit to North Korea this summer in “My Excellent North Korean Adventure“:
“I recently got the rare chance to travel here. I came expecting a real-life version of “1984.” But the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPKR] turned out to be more like the set of “Austin Powers 4,” minus the hot blondes… The truth is that the DPRK I toured this summer is, in many ways, no different from countless other struggling fourth-world nations, with its share of haves and have-nots. And in the capital of Pyongyang, where the country’s elites dwell, I saw — beneath the veneer of Western paranoia and Stalinist mind-control — fleeting signs of grassroots capitalism: street vendors hawking junk food, indoor markets brimming with imported goods, even murmurs of drug use in the swanky underground casino.”
I think once North Korea collapses (hopefully peacefully and without incident), the world will see how an economically devastated a country it is (I’m thinking of Ethiopia of the 1980′s). Today, there are only a few options for tourists to visit North Korea – primarily I hear from a flight via Beijing to Pyongyang on officially approved tours, during limited times of the year (usually during the Mass Games in August – September), and you will always usually be accompanied by a North Korean official. Visas for Americans are hard to get. My high school friend who has been living in Australia is hoping to visit North Korea one day soon once he gets his Australian citizenship.
If you are fascinated by North Korea, I highly recommend the 2004 documentary, “A State of Mind,” which discusses North Korean and two North Korean child gymnasts and their families for over eight months during training for the 2003 Pyongyang mass games. 60 Minutes back in January 2006 also did an interesting profile of North Korea in “An Inside Peek At North Korea,” as well as a profile in July 2007 on an American Korean War defector to North Korea in “Joe Dresnok: An American In North Korea.”
When I mention my interest in visiting North Korea, most people think I am crazy. What do you think? Is there anybody out there who doesn’t share my fascination of this dictatorship?
In today’s New York Times, the newspaper profiles Asian American director Wayne Wang, most noted for his Amy Tan adapted film, “The Joy Luck Club.” Wang has two new films coming out:
In “A Thousand Years,” opening Friday, a Chinese widower arrives in an American suburb for an extended stay with his divorced daughter, who has lived in the States since college and who resents her father’s intrusions into her private affairs. “The Princess of Nebraska,” which is being distributed free on the Web starting Oct. 17 (youtube.com/ytscreeningroom), concerns a newer arrival, a young woman from Beijing attending a university in Omaha who has traveled to San Francisco to get an abortion. Both films are subtle updates of the immigrant story, revealing the complexities beyond the customary themes of alienation and assimilation.”
More recently, Wang has been directing more mainstream movies like “Maid in Manhattan,” “Because of Winn-Dixie,” and “Last Holiday.” Personally, I liked Wang’s “The Joy Luck Club” a lot (as I had mentioned – despite some shortcomings) because I was *amazed* at how well Wang was able to translate the novel into a movie (tying eight different characters and their intertwining stories.) I’m curious as to how the producers plan on making money on “The Princess of Nebraska” if they are showing it for free on YouTube… From the trailers below, I think I am more interested in seeing “A Thousand Years.”
A Thousand Years
The Princess of Nebraska
In my opinion, such backlash from John about the LPGA policy just does one thing — it makes it so that sponsors quit supporting smaller league play. And for those places that DO NOT have the NBA, NFL or any larger professional leagues, this type of attitude basically tells those places to bend over and take it since (1) most players cannot afford translators like Yao Ming and (2) those that participate in those smaller leagues speak English, and thus are targeted in such a fashion by those sponsors. Again, every single argument out there currently fails to take into account the business aspect of the game and how smaller tours must adjust to certain more local atmospheres.
Remember the old adage of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do?” This applies much more to smaller leagues than with their larger brethren; the comparison of the NBA with LPGA is like trying to state that WNBA people should be equal in play and pay as PGA, and we all know that’s nowhere near true regardless of talent or skill. And having the actual PGA tour run through our small piece of land here in the South and knowing how much it effects our economic base? When was the last time any of these people tried to help with economic development of cities that don’t have high rises?
The change of policy by the LPGA makes it seem like liberal backlash wins yet again, on the backs of smaller leagues and not caring about whether or not it effects how sponsors react, how players are paid, and if there’s even a chance for these type of leagues to survive, let alone grow. Having been a part of many conversations for economic development in the past, I know that the original decision didn’t just come out the murky depths of who-knows-where. Remember one single thing here: the LPGA didn’t implement this policy out of the blue. They probably had sponsors that had given back end discussions about it before it was implemented.
So for those that lashed out? Good job. Hope you can sleep at night with your ideals while the others struggle in the reality of how smaller organizations are managed.
Ben previous blogged about the LPGA policy for speaking English in 2009. Well, personally, I thought the whole policy was ridiculous, especially with the backlash that the LPGA has gotten. The LPGA has since relaxed the speaking English requirement and the Wall Street Journal this weekend has an excellent recap of the controversy, as well as the implications of the language requirement.
“The communication program itself enjoys broad support, but the penalty proposal was a tone-deaf blunder Almost immediately it attracted a storm of protest, primarily because it was seen — by the media, by some players and sponsors, by civil-rights groups and even by a couple of California lawmakers who questioned its legality at tournaments taking place in that state — as aimed at the Tour’s large South Korean contingent… The LPGA’s single biggest source of income these days is not U.S. television, but Korean television.”
That fact alone — that the LPGA’s single biggest source of income is from Korean television — blew my mind as to why the LPGA would want to impose a language requirement (about 45 of the top 120 international players on the LPGA tour are Korean). That’s like if the PGA would ban Tiger Woods in the age of segregation because he isn’t white.
When Yao Ming came to the United States to play for the Houston Rockets, his English was far from perfect (and he had an official translator during his first season – see the interesting documentary Year of the Yao.) Should that have prevented Ming from playing in the NBA? No! And now the Chinese are wild about basketball and the NBA – having more television viewers than in the United States. (You saw how popular Kobe & LeBron were at the Beijing Olympics, right?) I’m glad there was a backlash and that the LPGA revised its language requirements. I say no to any 21st century “Language Exclusion Acts” for any sports league!
Tomorrow, Saturday, September 12th, the San Francisco Opera premieres ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter,’ the opera. The opera? you’re asking – yes, the opera. Amy Tan has adapted her novel into an opera, as described on the opera website:
“… this world premiere tells a resonant story of belated intergenerational understanding that leads to emotional healing. A troubled Chinese-American woman learns the horrible secrets of her immigrant mother’s past in this touching and terrifying tale, set in both modern-day San Francisco and the Chinese countryside during the tumultuous events surrounding World War II”
I’ve never read Tan’s novel, but did read Tan’s popular “The Joy Luck Club,” which I enjoyed (as well as the film (despise some shortcomings) – which I was impressed at how well the director was able to weave the story of all eight characters). I think I also read Tan’s “The Kitchen God’s Wife.” You can read more about the process of how the opera was developed in an interview with Tan in The San Francisco Chronicle back in August.
The opera runs until October 3rd, and the approximate running time of the opera is: 2 hours, 40 minutes including one intermission and is sung in English with English supertitles. If anybody does wind up watching this – let me know how it is (I’m kind of curious and might see it myself, though I’m not a big fan of opera).
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Oct 14: (Seattle, WA) From Fields to Family: Asian Pacific Americans and Food
Mar 1: (Atlanta, GA) The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946
Apr 26: (New York, NY) June 4, 1989: Media and Mobilization Beyond Tiananmen Square
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May 16: (Seattle, WA) May SpamORama
May 24: (San Jose, CA) Sake San Jose
May 24: (New York, NY) A Conversation with artists Arthur Ou, Hai Zhang, and Julie Quon in Conjunction with America through a Chinese Lens
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