Hey everyone – you have just 24 hours left to enter our Giveaway to win an ‘Amigo’ Poster Signed by John Sayles and Joel Torre, provided by 8Asians and Variance Films! Read this post for more information, and enter today!
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A variation of this piece was originally written for AsiansOnYouTube and has been reposted here with permission.
By AsiansOnYouTube
You can say that the all-girl pop group phenomenon began in Japan and was perfected by the Koreans and copied by the Taiwanese. But has the phenomenon spread to others parts of Asia? Watching these videos, I would say abso-freaking-lutely! I started this list last week, and we continue with these groups from Thailand, after the jump.
Shopping With GASP!
If you watched the video above and asked yourself, “What the F did I just watch?” you’re not alone. People on Buzzfeed and Reddit have been asking themselves the same thing. While it’s easy to assume that this is just another example of another “crazy Japanese” thing, if you dig a little deeper, it turns out that this music video is actually a really clever parody.
If there’s one thing I took away from Amigo, it would be that I am totally disconnected from my Filipino heritage and it took a white, super-literary independent film director to make me realize that.
In Amigo, director/writer John Sayles gives us a fictional account of the often overlooked Philippine-American war which “officially” lasted between 1899 and 1902. The epicenter of the movie takes place in the rural village located in Northern Luzon during 1900. In the midst of the aforementioned war, a group of U.S. troops are told to station themselves (or, as they say, “garrison”) in the village by the tough-as-nails Colonel Hardacre (Chirs Cooper). Rafael (Joel Torre), the mayor of the village is then put under pressure to help hunt down some of the Filipino guerrillas lurking in the surrounding jungle. Rafael is further conflicted considering his brother Simon (Ronnie Lazaro) is the leader of the guerrillas in the jungle. Ultimately, Rafael is conflicted and any wrong decision (or even right one) could result in dire consequences.
From Asia One about a witness’s account at a bear farm: “A person…claimed that a mother bear broke out [of] its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile…Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and eventually strangled it. It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.” Apparently, the bile of bears is used in medicines to treat “high fever, liver ailments, and sore eyes.” When I read this first I seriously thought I would vomit. I actually prayed that this would just be some bizarre, awful urban legend because I just didn’t want to think that humans could be so horrible and disrespectful to a living being. And still, what’s maybe even more disheartening is that people reading this will focus on the “strange Chinese and their strange medicines,” instead of realizing there are occurrences of animal cruelty that happen in similar ways all around us, but for us, it’s our food.
I have had about enough of the “Made in USA” propaganda. Be a patriot. Create jobs for Americans. Keep money in America. Manufacture in the U. S. of A. Here’s a burst to your bubble: “Made in USA” may not benefit the Joe Shmoe American as much as folks would like to think.
A fashion designer I know, a white woman with a popular ready-to-wear label, is quick and proud to declare that her entire line is made in the USA, because she is a true patriot, and she supports America. The woman is settled quite far over on the political right, is in strong favor of strict anti-immigration laws, and for the most part when she thinks of “American,” thinks of someone who looks like herself: white.
She gets her line manufactured at a U.S. garment factory I happen to know a lot about. The factory company is owned and managed by Chinese immigrants. Considering the rampant Sinophobia in America, that would probably be considered point one for China, zero for America already.
From The Wall Street Journal: “For much of the past millennium, Jews in Kaifeng— descendants of merchants who arrived here from Persia, probably around the 11th century—have been struggling with an existential question: What does it mean to be Jewish?…The question has surprising consequences in this dusty walled city in central China. According to the Chinese government, there are no Kaifeng Jews because there are no Chinese Jews. Judaism isn’t one of China’s five official religions and Jews aren’t designated as one of the country’s 55 official minorities…Except there is [a Jewish community], though it’s divided and diminished. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people in the city say they are descendants of Kaifeng Jews and cling to at least some Jewish traditions.”
This is a fascinating look once again at the cultural and ethnic roots of a religion, particularly Judaism, and what it means for its adherents if they are not born Jewish, according to the traditional definition. The larger issue is the inevitability of any religion to be influenced and transformed by a new culture resulting in a hybrid or mixed expression of that religion. Often, traditionalists (or those more orthodox) resist it, but those more progressively-minded cultivate those expressions because of the added depth the culture’s interaction with the religion offers to all its followers. In the end, I hope that Chinese Judaism is embraced by both the Chinese and Jewish faith communities for the sake of a broader, richer expression of that religion.
[Photo courtesy of WSJ]
Nowadays, it seems like there are documentaries about everything. I wasn’t surprised to hear about My Other Me, an upcoming film about three cosplayers as they build, prepare and show off their new costumes in anime conventions. Who would have thought that cosplay, a term that emerged from Japan about wearing costumes and embraced by self-proclaimed otakus, could be worthy of a full length feature film?
Photo by Mary Cybulski, Courtesy Variance Films and Anarchists’ Convention
UPDATE 8/22/2011: Congrats to our winners who each won an autographed AMIGO poster: Pat and Andy Tang!
As Edward wrote a few weeks ago, starting August 19th, you’ll be able to watch a piece of Philippine AND American history hit movie theaters in the United States. Amigo, the 17th feature film from writer-director John Sayles, stars Joel Torre as Rafael Dacanay, the mayor of a rural village caught in the murderous crossfire of the Philippine-American War in 1900. When Rafaelʼs rural village in the Philippines is occupied by American troops hunting for Filipino guerrillas, he comes under pressure to collaborate from both the blood-and-guts Colonel Hardacre (Chris Cooper) and the head of the local guerrillas, his brother Simón (Ronnie Lazaro). Rafael must carefully make the near-impossible, potentially deadly decisions faced by civilians in an occupied country.
A story that is Filipino and American, Amigo is an early chapter of Filipino American history. Understandably, the film is first opening in cities with strong Fil-Am communities. Groups all over the nation are welcoming the movie; including: Tagbilaran Association of Northern California and the Filipino American Chamber of Commerce (San Fernando Valley, CA), the Filipino American Federation of New Mexico and more. Nearly all of the Amigo crew is from the Philippines. All post-production sound & picture was done in Quezon City and Makati. All Pilipino-speaking roles (Tagalog) are played by Pilipino actors only. Amigo is distributed by US company Variance Films, was shot on location in the Bohol.
Ok, ok, you just want to know how to win a poster signed by Amigo director John Sayles and lead actor Joe Torre? Read on!
via PopSci: Some states in the U.S. are already on their way to passing driverless legislation. Google is not the only one working on driverless cars. Back in July, China tested the Chinese driverless car on the busy Chinese Expressway. The car traveled 175 miles at 55mph, passed cars and changed lanes with practically no trouble. It also did not need any navigation assistance during the test drive. This technology was developed by National University of Defense Technology. It shouldn’t be long before China produces a commercial version of it. Will all vehicles soon be fully automated?
With the start of the new school year, the usual topics around which school to send your child, and the extra-curricular activities your child is attending become the common topics of conversation around the water cooler at work. For Asian Americans those conversations are a little more intense, and a little bit imbued with criticism when your responses don’t quite match up to the other person’s expectations.
We’ve talked previously on 8Asians about the lofty ideals some Asian Americans have with regard to sending their child to the best schools and making sure they learn a foreign language like Mandarin Chinese. So it should be no surprise that an article appeared on the Wall Street Journal this week discussing whether children in general should be learning Mandarin Chinese. The author, Tom Scocca is a white American married to a 2nd generation Taiwanese American.
I read this interesting story the other day on Taiwan begins to deal with its amateur spies caught by China. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Taiwanese government recruited businessmen to help “spy” on China because Taiwanese businessmen were the only ones allowed to enter China to help build China (i.e. no Taiwanese tourists like there are today). Many of these civilian spies were arrested and imprisoned, but since China and Taiwan do not officially have diplomatic ties, no one really knows how many there are. Some of those prisoners over time have been released and are now seeking redress for their work as a spy. It’s an interesting read if you’re into knowing a little spy-vs-spy history between Taiwan and China.
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