Tag Archives: media

The Shanghai Hotel (Review of Trailer)

I love the beginning of this trailer. They start talking about human trafficking and how bad it is, like they’re performing some kind of public service or something. Then all of a sudden, they cut to some half-nekkid Asian women and good ol’ Asian thugs! They’ve got an oily White dude getting all horny with handcuffs in front of Eugenia Yuan, and some mean and violent yakuza (oh wait…is that Japanese?). They’ve also got some Black guys in it, although I’m not sure how they’re related to the rest of the movie. (You can guess this movie is written and produced by a Black guy (Jerry Allen Davis) because most White Orientalist writers seem to forget Black people exist when it comes to half-dressed Asian prostitutes and violent Asian thugs.)

Posted in Asian American, media | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

The Flowers of War is the Most Expensive Chinese Film Ever

"Looking sexy, Mr. White Man."

The Flowers of War is the most expensive Chinese film ever. The NY Times reports:

“Made at a cost of more than $90 million, part of which came from Chinese government sources, “The Flowers of War” is the most expensive Chinese film ever made.”

After experiencing the nationalistic ridiculousness that is Ip Man, and now seeing this ridiculous history-justified-by-the-presence-of-a-White-man film, I think I can safely say that Beijing needs to get out of the movie-approval and movie-promotion business. Sorry, Chinese propaganda doesn’t have the same appeal here that it might over there. It’s not the Chinese government’s forte.

Posted in media | Tagged , | 39 Comments

The Hoodwinking of Asian America

"“I had read nothing like this before, so it almost feels like I’ve lived my life to this point in preparation for this role.” --Actress Jennifer Lim

I saw this yesterday. It’s about David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, and it was one of the most e-mailed articles. Thank goodness it was Thanksgiving, and I knew better than to let the orientalists ruin my day. Even after all these years, I’m always surprised at the propaganda that certain Asian American playwrights and film producers throw at us.

Posted in Asian American, media, racism | Tagged , , | 71 Comments

Screen Time and Education

I saw these two seemingly contradictory articles in the NY Times recently.

The first article was about a rich, private school in Silicon Valley which discourages the use of technology as a learning tool: At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait. Parents, many of whom work at Apple, Google, EBay, and Yahoo, pay thousands of dollars to send their kids to this school, and yet there isn’t a single computer on campus. Instead they learn with pens, paper, and bright colored chalk. One father who is a Google employee says:

Posted in Education, media | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Heineken Ad and the Power of Money

A friend reminded me of the ad above, created by Heineken, shot in an exotic location with lots of fluffy Asian-esque theatrics going on, and starring our favorite combo: a super cool White guy and an attractive Asian woman. He wanted to know what I thought of it. Eurasian Sensation posted on this a while ago (see here), and I pretty much agreed with everything he wrote. I think this kind of racial coupling is way overdone, and I think the media have typed themselves into a corner. People have stopped wanting to learn more about how cool Asian chicks think White guys are, don’t want to know how much they’re meant for each other, and don’t want to hear about how loving and caring East and West can be when there’s a White man and an Asian woman involved. People just accept it without being interested in hearing more.

Posted in Asian American, media | Tagged , | 84 Comments

The Asian Guy in Breakfast at Tiffany’s


Check out Jeff Yang’s latest column here.  Some of you Asian American blogosphere experts probably heard about the protest against the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservatory’s screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  As you Bruce Lee fans know, Breakfast has a scene with Mickey Rooney portraying Mr. Yunioshi and acting like a stereotype (there was that scene in Dragon where Bruce and Linda go to see the movie together).  With the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservatory’s screening, some Asian Americans have opted to protest.

Posted in Activism, Asian American, media | Tagged , | 4 Comments

“Akira” Looking for White Guys to Play Asian Guys

I was asked to publicize this post by Racebending.com: Akira adaptation courts white actors.  Hollywood is turning the Japanese graphic novel Akira into a movie, and they’re turning the Japanese main characters into White main characters.  From racebending.com:

For the role of Tetsuo: Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and James McAvoy.
For the role of Kaneda: Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix.

Hollywood is once again playing its old games.  First 21, then the Last Airbender, and now Akira.  (That’s oversimplifying it, of course.  Racebending happens all the time when the originals happen to be Asian.)

Posted in Asian American, media | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Gatekeepers and Phantom Players

This post comes from a combination of three web-based writings that I’ve seen on the web.  The first was this hilarious post by Abagond, about the six blind men touching an elephant.

In the post, he talks about how each blind man has an opinion on what an elephant is: the guy who touches the tusks thinks it’s like a spear, the guy who touches the side thinks it’s like a wall, the one who touches the trunk thinks it’s a snake, and so on.  In Abagond’s example, however, the guy who touches the trunk and believes he’s touching a snake is the only English speaking white man, and because he owns CNN, the NY Times, the top universities, and all the other media channels, the world comes to believe that elephants are snakes.

Posted in Asian American, Features, Knowledge, media | Tagged , , , , | 72 Comments

David Blackwell, First Black Tenured Professor at Berkeley, Dies at 91

David Blackwell

I caught this obituary in the NY Times: David Blackwell, Scholar of Probability, Dies at 91.  He was the first black tenured professor at Berkeley as well as the first black scholar admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.  He was an expert on game theory and probability.  If you read his bio, it’s fascinating how he succeeded despite the racial obstacles that society presented.

Posted in media, News | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Teaching Apple to Really "Think Different"

Congratulations, King: 1st EVER Winner of the bigWOWO award! In doing so, he invented the category of “creative interference.”  (Check the sidebar for my new page for award winners.)

It’s not often that someone sends me something so funny that I cry!  I literally had tears in my eyes when I saw this one.  Here’s King’s winning entry to the unplanned contest (see text below for explanation). Click the image to see the full size version:

In an earlier post, Robert clued us on to Apple’s new advertising campaign.  If you check out the new iPhone video, as King mentions, you have not one…but TWO Asian Female/White Male pairings in a ROW.  What are the chances of that?

Posted in Activism, Asian American, media, Strategy | Tagged , , , | 91 Comments