8 Asians

Ming-Na rocks. Seriously. Rocks.

And I love her even though she’s seriously messing with my fall season TV mojo. The thing is, I’m really trying to limit the number of new shows I get into this season. Originally, I only had Glee and Three Rivers on my list, but now I have to add Stargate Universe (SGU), too.

SGU is a military science fiction television series– part of the Stargate franchise– which debuted last night on Syfy (let’s not talk about the stupid re-branding of this cable station… whatevs!). The show follows the adventures of a present-day, multinational exploration team on board the ancient spaceship Destiny that is stranded in a distant corner of the universe and unable to return to Earth. Ming-Na is part of the regular cast as Camille Wray — the first regular Asian-American lesbian character on a TV series.

According to Wikipedia:

[Camille's character] is an International Oversight Advisory (IOA) accountant who becomes the highest-ranking IOA member left stranded on the ship. She has “a false sense of importance and superiority to the other military and civilian population along with a stubborn way of asserting it”… She is the first openly gay character in the Stargate franchise. Her long-time partner back on Earth, Sharon, will first appear in “Life” in a possibly recurring role.

Incidentally, the role of Sharon is played by 24’s Reiko Aylesworth, who is part-Asian (she’s of Dutch, Welsh, and Japanese ancestry). According to SheWired.com, fans of girl-girl action “can expect a fleshed-out relationship replete with some on-screen intimacy.” (If that doesn’t get people to watch this show, I’m really not sure what else would!)

This character is history-making, not only because of the character’s openness and ethnicity, but also because it comes at a time when there is a dearth of (regular) lesbian characters on television– the only other one is played by Jessica Capshaw on Grey’s Anatomy. Among the varied roles Ming-Na has played– animated heroine Mulan, a doctor on ER, and Chun-Li in Street Fighter to name a few– this is her first lesbian character, which also gave her the chance to do her first on-screen kiss with another female. (Yes, it has already been taped, says Ming-Na.)

Even though the show is brand new, leaks about the storyline have already hit the Internet. A few months ago, it was reported that Camille’s character is ostensibly depicted having sex with a man, causing an uproar in the LGBT community. When SheWired asked, “Why do you think people responded so vigorously to that plot point in which outwardly, it seemed as though the writers copped out on the whole lesbian aspect of you character?”

Ming-Na responded:

There was a lot of misunderstanding, because when you get a breakdown, it’s never what the end product is—at all. It was an eye opener because I did see the passion from the lesbian community.

I wish my own community, the Asian-American community, would be as passionate about stuff. I really respect that. I think the producers were definitely aware of it and then they tried to correct some of the wrong impression that was made based on the breakdown. And to me, it was just truly an incredible episode. I’m kind of nervous about just watching the outcome –not what the reaction is – because I think once you watch it you’ll realize that it’s about what we take for granted and if that is stripped away from us, how do people deal with what they’ve lost?

And that’s sort of the crux of our show. All these people stranded on Destiny have lost everything except the shirt on their back and all they’re left with is really facing themselves. There are a lot of great morality plays to be dealt with. It’s about life. It’s about all of us. We’re so distracted by the computer, by Twitter…by television, shopping, and all this bombardment of commercialism, but if you take it all away? Who are you really? [full story]

So who is Ming-Na really? Well, according to her Twitter profile (@MsMingNa), she (briefly) describes herself as an “Actress, Geek, Cook, Knitter, Gardener, Decorator and now twitterholic.”

I’d add “role model” and “kickass rockstar” to that list. Hooray to Ming-Na for depicting an Asian-American lesbian character– giving visibility to an often invisible community (she didn’t find out the character was lesbian until after she was already cast). I’m looking forward to watching her character develop on SGU.

If you missed the premiere episode, catch it for free on iTunes or at SyFy Rewind.

In what’s probably not a surprise to any Asian-American gay youth, Hyeouk Chris Hahm of the Boston University School of Social Work published a new study indicating this group often faces extended family and cultural social stresses that affect their ethnic and sexual identities. The study was published in the Journal of LGBT Youth, and indicated that both young men and women mask homosexual behaviors to avoid alienating their family and parents’ communities. In their relationships with others, they often have to decide which identity will take precedence — their ethnic or sexual identity.

“In the Western gay and lesbian community, ‘coming out,’ is final revelation that you are homosexual while for Asian and Pacific Islanders in America of Korean descent, there is ‘coming home,’ where you want to integrate culturally and be both an American and Korean,” Hahm said in a statement. “This is not staying closeted but rather alluding to your sexuality to a family member, who may not challenge it, as long as the status quo within the family is maintained.”

For many in the Asian American gay community there’s the notion of balancing two lives, and the life you have with your family, where you are closeted, and the life you live based on your sexual identity. I straddled both worlds for much of my life, having the face I showed at family gatherings and events, and even bringing my “friend” along for many of these events. It wasn’t until I turned 30 that my two worlds collided. While I know some Asians who considered, and even married someone of the opposite sex to keep their cover with their family, that was something I knew I would never be able to do.

I’m not sure what it is about turning 30, but that seems to be the magical age in Chinese culture when you’re supposed to be married, and if you’re not, all hope seems to be lost. That’s the age my parents decided it was time for a sit down confrontation, and asked me point blank when I was getting married. At that moment, I came out to my parents and although they had problems accepting my sexual identity, things got better with time. But to the rest of the extended family, my husband was still just my “friend”, and that’s pretty much the way things stand today. My husband gets invited to all the family events, and everyone understands he’s also our daughter’s other parent, but no one mentions the word gay or homosexual; everything is just understood or implied. We even had a wedding reception, and family came, but the family doesn’t talk about it. It’s the two world culture that Hahm writes about in her study, and one I’m sure you’re all too familiar with if you’re Asian-American and gay.

Throughout the last five or so years, there have only been two shows that have really piqued the interests of almost everyone I know, the first being ABC’s mega-hit Lost (which I’ve only begun watching). The second one is HBO’s comedy Entourage, which never seems to lose any fans and always seems to be adding more by the minute.  I remember watching it for the first time right after the second season had ended, and finishing both seasons over a period of less than 24 hours; its an entertainment phenomenon that fulfills our need to laugh, but also our obsession with life in Hollywood.  Still as seasons progressed and I grew with the show, I couldn’t help but realize that Entourage was the  “same ol’ same ol’”, in that Ari Gold was still clinging on to the same antics he had four seasons ago, and the boys were still the characters they were when we first saw them debuting Head On.   Compared to other comedies, such as How I Met Your Mother or The Office, there never seemed to be any character depth, and the entire series was driven entirely by the plot.  Not that I’m complaining because its a wonderful plot-line, but besides Eric and Ari, all the other characters seem as superficial as… well Hollywood.

But this year seems different, because you can already see the growth of each of the five main characters, who have their own personal problems that extend beyond crashing a Ferrari or losing a movie role.  Instead they seem to be trialed against independence and loyalties, destroying or salvaging relationships that inhibit each individual’s career goals.

Most interesting is Lloyd, the openly homosexual Asian assistant to Hollywood super agent Ari Gold, played by Rex Lee.  While the relationship between Lloyd and Ari has always been a highlight of the show, there was never a true challenge to their bond.  Lloyd is Ari’s perfect assistant: independent enough to challenge Ari when necessary, thick skinned to withstand Ari’s trademark homophobic and racist slurs, and so loyal that he is perhaps Ari’s only true friend and ally.   Yet all good things have to come to an end, as Lloyd’s own ambitions and parental pressures pit him against Ari’s need for a good assistant — you can only put up with being a lowly assistant for so long.  This conflict puts the character into a rare position for adequate Asian American and homosexual representation in television.  Lloyd’s character is stereotypical in the way Entourage plays stereotypes; it doesn’t so much offend as much as draw attention… and it flirts with that tight line perfectly.   Despite that, Lloyd’s character growth (at least the potential for it) is something unique in television because the character can openly fight down those stereotypes that are presented right on the screen.   Rex Lee’s subservient, ambitious, and kind character (think  of John Cho’s Harold, especially the opening scene) evolves into an independent, strong, and determined agent… something we don’t see much of on television.  Of course, the writers could make it so that the two are co-dependent of each other and write it otherwise, but after watching the first episode, I doubt it.

I don’t think that this “opportunity” has ever presented itself so openly in popular media (save for Harold and Kumar).  Sure we see Jin-Soo Kwon and Sun-Hwa Kwon.. or Hiro and Ando and their trials and tribulations to knock down Asian American sterotypes in popular entertainment, but they’re distinctly Asian, and not Asian-American; not to mention that their characters still hold onto hard line stereotypes.  Plus, those cultural conflicts aren’t important to their perspective plots as it will be for Entourage’s.  Other notables, such as Grace Park, fill a racial quota on shows like Battlestar Galactica or The Cleaner, in that they’re Asian, but if you read the script you wouldn’t be able to tell they are.  Rex Lee is in a unique position, and as much as my focus on Entourage will still be on Vincent Chase and his escapades, I’m now really excited to see if Lloyd  lives to his potential, both on and off the screen.

Shi Pei Pu, the inspiration of David Henry Hwang’s acclaimed play, M. Butterfly, was reported by the New York Times to have died recently at the age of 70 years in Paris.

Shi Pei Pu and his lover, Bernard Bouriscot, an accountant working for the French embassy in Beijing, were convicted by France in the mid 1980s for espionage after Bouriscot was caught giving French documents to the Chinese after the Chinese government found out about the affair between the two men.   According to Shi, however, Bouriscot was led to believe that Shi was actually female first by claiming that he was actually a woman forced to live as a boy by his family.  Later as the affair became sexual, Shi kept up the charade by hiding his genitalia and always having sex with Bouriscot in the dark, even showing Bouriscot a 4 year-old boy who Shi claimed to be their son. Bouriscot and Shi were both arrested for espionage by the French when Bouriscot tried to bring Shi to France even though Bouriscot openly had a male partner.  Howvever after Bouriscot learned in prison that Shi was actually male and had deceived him for decades, he attempted suicide.  Bouriscot has lived as a laughingstock ever since, especially since people have wondered, “How could he not know his lover was male for decades?”

Hwang takes this bizarre story in M. Butterfly as a way to explore various themes that have always been dominant in Asian American literature: the exoticizing of Asia to Europe and the US, otherwise known as Orientalism; gender roles and expectations of both Asian American men and women; and finally it was one of the first Asian American literature pieces to openly talk about queerness.  Hwang brilliantly turns the question of, “How can Bouriscot not know that his lover was male?” on its head, and fires back to the audience, “Does it really matter if his lover was male?”  It also explores the question of what white men are falling for when they take Asian lovers, male or female: are they falling for their lovers because of who they are, or is it because of what they represent?

I’ve always loved reading the play, and it was one of the first pieces of literature I taught when I taught Asian American literature at UCSB and SFSU back in the day because it explores these questions so brilliantly. Unfortunately, the movie is something that’s always given me headaches.  I have heard that the DVD of this movie just came out, so I’ll have to see if I can actually watch this movie without getting a headache or throwing the DVD out the window.

So I had heard a while ago that Thomas Beatie — a celebrity transman — is a mixie much like myself. He too has a white mama, an Asian daddy, and originally, an Asian surname. He too was born with all the plumbing to make and be pregnant with a baby. He too made the decision to get folks to recognize him as male. So I get the whole need to change your gender thing. However, I’m not sure why he changed his name to something rid of all associations to his Filipino heritage. I too had the option to change my name to rid myself of my Asian ethnic associations, however, I didn’t based on the fact that so often trans folks of colour are told they are doing a white thing by being trans. As if the gender binaries of male and female were a universal thing, common and rigidly adhered to in every culture.

I wanted to keep my Asian association when renaming myself, to let people know that just because I’m trans doesn’t mean I’m white. There is a rich history of third gender or other wise non-male and non-female specific people within many cultures, including pre-Spanish Philippines. The rich history includes these societies valuing these people specifically because they are outside the norm of gender. Often times, folks like this would be held in high regard, chosen for positions of spiritual power and authority. However, rigid reforms in gender occurring in the white west, coupled with the need to topple indigenous authority figures influenced European colonizers to seek out and destroy these people. Violent and strategic colonization means that history validating Thomas’s and my trans experience as Asian genderf*ckers now is hard to come by. Transphobia is rampant in former colonized places, as a legacy of colonialism.

And now, because of this erased history, it is our very Asianness that is often used against us to make transphobic and racist comments: “Oh it must be hard with your Baachan more so than on your mom’s side,” “Hey, we don’t do that kind of freaky shit, we’re Asian.” Which makes me sad. Maybe it doesn’t make Thomas as sad as me, what with now two little ones to worry about, not to mention his book tour and the other burdens that fame and fortune bring.

It has been a couple of months since we’ve last blogged about BoA, and her self-titled American album hasn’t become the mega crossover album that a lot of Asian pop fans have hoped for; it had a peak position of #127 on the Billboard 200, selling only 8,000 copies of her album nationwide.

But one fan base that has given BoA some much-needed exposure has come from the GLBT market. One of the few radio stations to have I Did It For Love on heavy rotation has been San Francisco’s Energy 92.7, one of the few dance music radio stations in the United States and actively targets the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian community — SF Badlands, a popular gay video dance club in the Castro actively rotates Eat You Up between Kylie Minogue and Ciara videos. (And not to gloat, but for the record, I totally called it.)

So it makes a lot of sense to have BoA perform on the San Francisco Pride Festival. Unlike other Asian American pop stars that have been relegated to the smaller Asian American Stage — sorry CoCo Lee, I’m talking about you — BoA will be performing on the main stage with other heavy hitters such as Solange Knowles, and is guaranteed an audience of tens of thousands of people, even if half of them are too busy getting drunk on $9 light beer or making out with the guy they just met hours before. (Oh come on, I’m gay too; I’m allowed to say these things.) No word yet on if the interaction between Pride attendees and heterosexual Korean guys only there to see BoA will be awkward or hilarious.