My Other AAS Paper

The following is a paper that I wrote this semester for another Asian American Studies class called Asian Americans and Mass Media. The subject matter of this class inspired much of the content in this blog as well as the topic of the blog itself.

"Usually when you see Asian faces on screen, they're there for an Asian American reason. Either they're tourists or kung fu masters or whatever. As an Asian American watching film, that's something I'd like to move away from."

--Justin Lin, The Sundance Kid

AKA Don bonus// Better luck tomorrow

Second Paper Assignment

Before directing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Fast & Furious (2009) and Fast Five (2011), Justin Lin directed a smaller budget independent film called Better Luck Tomorrow (2002). In it he challenged familiar stereotypes about Asians being quiet, obedient students who get good grades and over achieve. In “The Sundance Kid,” (2002) an interview with motherjones.com—an independent news organization—Lin explained that “usually when you see Asian faces on screen, they’re for an Asian American reason. Either they’re tourists or kung fu masters or whatever. As an Asian American watching film, that’s something I’d like to move away from.” Some of the “Asian American reasons,” that Lin was talking about were listed by Richard Fung in “Center the Margins” (1991) when he said that “Asians can invoke mystery, humour or danger.”


I think that Lin is saying that film makers need to move away from placing Asians on screen primarily because they can represent an Asian stereotype and start putting Asians on screen for reasons other than them being Asian. The idea behind Lin’s quote is exemplified in Lin’s own film Better Luck Tomorrow by having characters that counter the model minority stereotype and in Spencer Nakasako and Sokly Ny’s personal documentary AKA Don Bonus (1995) by countering the negative gangster myth stereotype. Although these two films are related to Lin’s quote they also differ greatly in terms of genre, subject matter, and historical stage of Asian American films.

My AAS Paper

The following is a paper that I submitted last semester for an Asian American Studies class called Pilipinos in America.

Why do we Proudly Claim Successful and Famous Filipino-American Celebrities as Our Own?

I would bet that any second generation Filipino-Americans with Philippine born parents and grandparents have had experiences while watching American television where the family enjoys a little game of “is he/she a pinoy/pinay?” It involves looking for the elusive, but revealing clues of brown skin, brown eyes, black hair or a flat nose. It usually arrives at some conclusion like “Yeah, she has got to be at least part Filipino. Look at her nose.” It is as if it is our duty to pick out any trace of Filipino ancestry that can be found among the various ethnicities that can be found in American popular culture. And this difficult detective work goes beyond this household “game.” I’ve experienced time and time again those instances of my friends and family informing me of the fact that some famous movie or TV star, or famous athlete, or famous musician is in fact full or at least partly Filipino. This is not to say that I, in the same fashion, haven’t taken this knowledge and passed it on to my friends and family who might not have known this valuable information. Just to name a few examples of Filipino/a’s that may get claimed as their own there is comedian Rob Schneider, actor Lou Diamond Philips, actress Tia Carrere, WWE superstar “Batista,” Giant’s pitcher Tim Lincecum, singer Lea Solanga, professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars Cheryl Burke and many of the dancers from various groups on America’s Best Dance Crew including the Season 1 champions the JabbaWockeeZ. These are just a very small group of many names of famous celebrities that often get thrown around and claimed by Filipino-Americans to be one of their own.


And who is to say that there is anything wrong with having pride in an exceptional individual who comes from the same background as you? To proudly claim this individual whom the whole world is watching and then turn around and tell that world: “Hey, did you know that he/she is a Filipino/a?”

Gender Stereotypes and iCarly

I know this is a blog about racism in the mass media, but as much as I enjoy critically thinking about racism, I also spend time thinking about how an extremely heavy bias is placed on gender stereotyped behaviors in mass media. If one were to take the time to view some of the things that kids watch on networks such as the Disney channel and Nickelodeon-- and they watched these shows under the assumption that kids will emulate the models that they see on television-- they would find that kids are practically being taught how to be heterosexual and how to follow certain male and female stereotypes (and avoid non-conforming ones).

This is something that is hard to spot since many of us would assume that certain stereotypically male and female behaviors would be considered "normal" while any non-conforming behaviors would be considered deviant from that norm. But try watching the first 50 seconds of this video from Nickelodeon's popular kids show iCarly while keeping traditional male and female stereotypes in mind.

You can see that the male character named Spencer is the target of ridicule for engaging in activities that are  traditionally and stereotypically associated with females (i.e. being a member of a book club, sharing recipes for fruit tarts, and even his overall feminine demeanor at the beginning and end of the first 50 seconds of the video). When the three younger characters enter, you can clearly see that Spencer appears to be ashamed of what he has been doing and it seems as if he has done something terribly wrong. After explaining to the three that he was exchanging recipes for fruit tarts with his book club the three characters immediately start laughing at him-- accompanied of course by some canned laughter to signal to the young audience members that this is something that should be laughed at.

This is of course something that should not be laughed at. As a male I would like to be able to engage in such activities if I wanted to without having to face such ridicule. But the problem here is that these shows intended for children use these stereotypes as a formula for what should be considered normal, then use deviation from those stereotypes as a way to introduce humor to the show. What kid is going to emulate the character that gets made fun of in the show? Of course they would feel ashamed to copy the male character who gets mocked for liking to paint pretty pictures or the female character who is made fun of for not being "girly" enough.

These shows get approved by our rating systems, but I think that they present a problem that is extremely hard to fight. I encourage you to analyze the media that is consumed by the children in your lives. Open your eyes to what is being exposed to theirs. One could easily watch the first 50 seconds of this video in passing and chuckle at it without much thought, but after laughing at it I would like to encourage you to think about why you laughed at that and ask yourself: "is it okay that I find this funny?"

Racism and Petra

I recently came across this hilarious tutorial video of youtube user ashleyslips teaching the internet how to dance in a club. She does this as one of her comedic characters named Petra Mahalimuyak who speaks English with an extremely exaggerated Filipino accent (or what we Filipino Americans would call in a rather derogatory way: a "FOB" accent). This is one of her most recent videos and is the only one to pass one million views (although it is not the only one featuring Petra). I would guess that this could probably be due to her decent dance moves, her general attractiveness, the hilarious things that come out of her mouth or some combination of the three.

Her video is absolutely silly and over-the-top. She replaces her F's with P's and her D's with J's and the whole time she speaks with an intentionally thick Filipino accent. As a Filipino American, I know that alot of us Fil Am's find this to be very humorous-- probably in a similar way to the Latino community laughing at mainstream comedians like George Lopez, Gabriel Iglesias and Carlos Mencia. And while she is indeed receiving lot's of positive feedback from most of her viewers, she also gets some negative feedback from (I am guessing) Filipinos who feel that by ashlyslips doing this character she is mocking the Filipino accent and some say even the Filipino race. Personally, I feel like I could go both for and against this argument. 

In any case, I think that one important factor to consider here is the fact that she is herself a Filipina and that entitles her to make fun of the Filipino race more so than a non-Filipino (in which case I would be more likely to say that they are mocking our race). I think that this is similar to the Latino comedians mentioned earlier who use exaggerated Mexican accents, black comedians who make fun of black culture, and even how homosexuals are allowed to call each other "faggot" in a lighthearted fashion (even though it is traditionally used as a very offensive and even hateful term). 

Also, there are other aspects of the video that are funny that are unrelated to her accent, such as her dance moves and their silly names-- like cleaning the window, folding the clothes and even putting them away. Also the fact that she is an attractive woman and a good dancer makes the video entertaining to watch. Although I have mentioned before that we should think critically about signs of racism in our media, I think that we should just be able to watch and enjoy this video without condemning it.

Racism and Wrestling

As a kid--and admittedly not too long ago as well-- I was always a big fan of professional wrestling. I've always been excited by the high-flying special moves, the overly dramatic personalities, and the nail biting last minute kick outs (yes, I know it's all fake. And yes, I do still get excited). Also, the writers create different storylines for the characters so it ends up becoming a hyper-masculine soap opera for manly men (such as myself). But only recently have I really started paying attention and I all of a sudden noticed that a lot of the story lines are extremely racist (and often homophobic as well).

If you don't think so or if you aren't too familiar with pro wrestling you can check out some of those extremely offensive moments here.


The article above is a compilation of what MTV blogger Andreas Hale believes to be the ten most offensive moments in wrestling. It includes that moment at Wrestlemania 91' when The Million Dollar Man explained why his African American "bodyguard" does whatever he wants because he gets paid to do so to the night when African American wrestler Shelton Benjamin mocked Japanese American wrestler Yoshi Tatsu by bringing up old and tired Japanese stereotypes. One gimmick that I must have missed between my time as a younger fan to more recent times was the group known as the "Mexicools" who rode in to the arena on a lawn mower (which is done because as Hale notes; "Mexicans are always gardeners").

But the earlier years of wrestling were admittedly a time when censorship wasn't that big of an issue, where as today anything that is "live" is actually delayed a certain amount of time just in case anything gets a little out of hand (viewer discretion is advised for those who click). So one might argue that the WWE has gotten better about their blatant racism, but I would argue that today's racism is a bit more subtle and requires a bit more attention.

One of the more recent duos in the WWE is called "Cryme Tyme" and they are essentially based on every single "ghetto black person" stereotype you can think of (and then some). In the video below they can be seen in a short sketch (meant to be funny) where they visit retirement community where they are supposed to entertain the elderly audience, but they end up arriving with baggy pants, a bullet proof vest, and all kinds of "bling." They sing "Christmas carols" about crackheads, robbing white people, and pimping. If you visit the youtube page of the video you will find that well over 1000 people "liked" the video (versus a measly 35 "dislikes").

And the worst part about all this is that these extremely over-exaggerated stereotypes are portrayed as good guys in the WWE. They are the people that the audience is supposed to cheer for. They are the people who the audience is supposed to laugh with whenever they tell their jokes or insult the heels (bad guys). What kind of message does this to the younger non-black audience about black people? What kind of message does this send to young black kids? And what kind of message does this send to the WWE audience in general?

Before, I might have just laughed at this sketch and not given it much thought, but at this point in my life I feel like I need to stop, think and ask myself these types of questions. Afterwards, the next (and hardest) step is to raise these questions publicly. If you just look at the youtube comments on some of these very offensive videos you can see that raising these kinds of questions to some people would introduce a lot of resistance and unwillingness to even begin thinking about such things. Many will just shrug people like myself off as someone who is overly-sensitive about racism and someone who "doesn't know how to take a joke," but we should still continue to try and increase dialogue and raise these important questions until everyone starts thinking.