Respond to one of the following quotes/clips:
1) "The subtle ingenuity of the multicultural advertisement campaign is the way it is able to profit off a multi-racial consumer base through greater inclusion while maintaining White male supremacy through the visual consumption of Asian/American women’s bodies. By highlighting the ascribed “foreign” nature of Asian/American women, the cultural schemata of corporate advertisements aim to profit off the sense of identity and place they provide for White males in the U.S. through their products, while simultaneously targeting an increasingly diverse global audience" (Kim and Chung, 88).
2) "Asian American adolescents in homes where English is the primary language spoken were more likely than other Asian Americans to be nonvirgins and to have engaged in heterosexual genital sexual activities" (Okazaki, 35).
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETegyBzAQnc
In watching the Lucy Liu clip, I can't help but think of the classic Asian "Dragon lady." Liu's aggression, self mastery, physical violence (roughly in the realm of dragon lady martial arts) and strong sex appeal all speak to the stereotype. I also noticed that she invokes a sexy-cute Asian schoolgirl type when she drops her guard and asks if they can "show" her. This is the Asian woman's media dichotomy embodied. However, I think that this same sequence could have been handled by a woman of any race with the same results. Yes, there is an overtone of Asia, but put Drew Barrymore in that place, and you get a white woman controlling her sex appeal, using it to both dominate and entice through aggression and cutesy charm. If it had been a woman of another race in that spot, would we not have simply critiqued the way women in general are portrayed? My reading of Lucy Liu as a Dragon Lady comes from the history of Dragon Ladies, and I am just as guilty for trying to liberate her via that reading as those who created the category in the first place.
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ReplyDeleteThe Charlie's Angels clip manages to exoticize and oversexualize Lucy Liu, while simultaneously showing her as representative of a "model minority" and as a danger to white American masculinity. It exemplifies an incredible number of common, problematic portrayals of Asian American women for a clip that is only a few minutes long.
The clip starts off with Liu in a tight leather suit, and quickly goes to a close-up of her butt as she is walking. This serves to objectify her through a reduction of her body to a single, sexualized part. A woman tries to keep up with Liu as she walks and talk to her, but Liu is severe and unfriendly - a "bitch," notes the other woman. Again, this moment draws on stereotypes of Asian Americans (specifically, the stereotype that Asian Americans are not sociable) for the purpose of achieving comedic effect.
The next scene shows Liu with a whip - again, serving to oversexualize her and represent her ability to influence men as based purely in sexuality. It's a notion as racist as it is sexist and heterosexist. The speech she delivers uses the rhetoric of U.S. nationalism that positions patriotism as economic success against East Asian competitors. She talks about "falling behind" and "innovation." The way she speaks is authoritarian and cold - playing into ideas of East Asian nationalism and political ideology as threatening to U.S. interests. This directly ties in to the model minority myth - a stereotype constructed to create resentment and violence against Asian Americans due to their perceived "competitor" status.
The ambiguously violent/sexual interaction between Liu and the white male programmer relies on ideas of Asian femininity as being based around cunning and manipulation of white men. Liu is put in the role of a castrating, "bitchy," masculine woman to play into fears of supposedly feminine Asian cultures threatening white American masculinity and individualism through economic competition. This clip illustrates why Lucy Liu is such a contentious figure in discourse about representation of Asian Americans in popular media, and the ways in which Hollywood continues to use racism and sexism to sell its films.
Kim and Chung's essay points to larger politics of representation, looking, and control. Namely, who has the power to create, manipulate, and disseminate images? Under whose gaze are these images scrutinized? What I find most troubling about multicultural advertising is how it strategically targets a multi-racial consumer. Championing multicultural visibility as the end goal, this advertising scheme appeals to people of color through immediate representative identification; simply put, it can be comforting for people of color to see images on screen that are not solely white. Yet multicultural advertising ultimately sidelines how, by whom, or to whom such individuals are portrayed, capitalizing on the appeal of visibility. If advertising caters to a white male gaze in an image economy where bodies are constructed and consumed by all, Kim and Chung suggest that the white male gaze is not ascribed solely to white male bodies. It takes cooperation from people of color to perpetually reinscribe value to the white male gaze, and in that process, also internalize that gaze. Proactively taking control over one's image-making is one way these racialized dynamics of media exchange may be disrupted. Self-representation can avoid some of the commodification of multicultural advertising and shift power from those who represent others to those who present themselves. When we create and inhabit our own frames, we are able to move beyond the sole desire for visibility and consciously construct how we wish to be seen.
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ReplyDelete3.) An example I can remember of the "the multicultural advertisement campaign" which also further demonstrates the connections between "globalized" consumption and hyper-sexualization are the ads that American Apparel ran a couple of years ago exclusively of mixed race people. In true AA fashion, the ad consisted of hypersexualized hipsters in "edgy poses." But this time we were treated to a new hawt trend: "Meet _____. Ethnicity/Ethnicity/Ethnicity." These ads highlight the models' racial identities as a commodity, something fashionable to further distinguish AA as a brand. Similar discourses around an exoticized, commodified, and sexualized mixed-race identity are found in the fashion industry's interest in "racially ambiguous" people (didn't you know? they're in this season!) This is part of a broader project through which racially "ambigious" people, therefore, are presented both as foreign and familiar, legitimizing certain forms of racial mixing while erasing others and in the end cementing white supremacy.
ReplyDeleteIt is an understandable to respond to these ads to assert personhood (aka "we're people too!"). I remember having conversations about what was good and bad about these ads; some of my friends felt appreciative that they could finally see people who looked like them. Yet I would argue strongly against the idea that this represents any "progress." Asserting personhood constrains the analysis to an individual level and remains blind to the ways many others, included some mixed-race people, are not recognized as being "desirable." More importantly, what these ads and what the article suggests is a broader way of looking at how racialized, gendered, sexualized representations are created and maintained in relationship to White "normalcy" and how this is an exercise is domination and power.
However, as the above quote suggests, really the intended audience is for people w/ White dominance. This ads set up AA as more inclusive, but in reality relies on existing tropes to further differentiate, exoticize, and glamorize certain "desirable" people. The discourses around mixed-race people in the context of a so-called post-racial era are a product of the consolidation of racial hegemony in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. These ads demonstrate the relevance of "the multicultural advertising campaign" and with that the idea that equality has been had, even as these ads point to the continued power of selling raced/classed/gendered embodiments.
This is in response to prompt two.
ReplyDeleteWhile data demonstrate that English-speaking Asian American households are more permissive regarding sexual discourse and health, it is evident that cultural assimilation, though clearly correlated to household language usage, is in fact responsible for the variations of levels of sexual openness among Asian Americans. The Okazaki reading distinctly concludes that second generation Asian Americans are more open to discuss sexual health than are first generations, and the quotation from the prompt only serves to affirm that conclusion. Although I agree with the statement’s validity, I do find problems with the possible extensions and implications that the article glosses over. While Okazaki does not explicitly mention it, her analysis does hint to a normative and ultimately prescriptive observation of sexual health among the Asian American community.
First, I felt that the article values assimilation and its outcomes too strongly. Nearly all the studies in the reading concluded that better assimilated Asian Americans received more sexual health services, e.g. pap tests, which is empirically true. I nonetheless contend that they do not consider class and racial differences among assimilated groups. Is assimilation related to income which affects the results? What about race and institutionalized policies? Indeed, I personally felt that too much emphasis was placed on assimilation, neglecting other also relevant factors.
Second, while I am not an expert in public health, I am weary concerning another assumption: that the Western/American approach to sexual health can be applied to Asian Americans, namely first generation. I believe that more evidence should be collected to assess the efficacy of current health policies before concluding that “it is the fault of Asian American culture why they don’t make better use of health services.”
3. HAHHAHA! I so remember this clip from when I was a kid and thinking it was so hot. I LOVE leather. And whips. And chains <3. Oh my. SO HOT when she breaks the whip. Dominatrixes(spellings?) will always and forever have a special place in my heart.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as for analyzing this, I feel it is important to keep the context of the clip in mind. Here we have Lucy Liu (playing one of Charlie's Angels) with Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore dressed as men (the other two angels) infiltrating a company to steal some information regarding the main villain's evil plan (if I remember correctly.) Lucy Liu's job is to distract the staff of the company while the other two focus on getting the information. What better way to do so than send one of them in, dressed up as the programmer's leather dominatrix fantasy? I am not saying this clip is not enforcing any stereotypes of Asian women or that there is nothing wrong, but the whole bitchy attitude from Liu's character in this scene is not supposed to be representative of Asian American women, but rather of dominatrixes.
I mean, for one she is wearing all leather and has a whip. How else is she supposed to act? Clearly she is supposed to be vicious violent dominatrix. A bitch. I am sure if one of the other characters had played the role, they would have acted in a very similar bitchy fashion, and also had close ups of their leather covered ass as well.
Does Liu being an Asian American have to do with her being putting put in this hyper sexualized position? Maybe, but Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz also have equally over sexualized scenes. (Drew Barrymore has a scene where she is naked in a guy's backyard, wearing nothing but an inflatable tube and Cameron Diaz also has a scene where she is highly suggestively riding a mechanical bull and in pigtails and slightly moaning) My point is all the girl's are sexualized, and I think this particular scene had to do more with capturing the character of a dominatrix than anything having to do with being Asian American.
What is best to be done here then? They could have not had an Asian American woman at all, but then people would complain there was no representation. However, they decided to put an Asian American woman here, and people complain about the way she is used, when in reality she is doing the exact same thing as her co-stars are. Im not saying that any of this is right (Yes the woman are sexualized).
But honestly at its core, I think the movie has good intentions. It has women being sexy, confident, smart, and kicking ass. And to top it off, none of them are too entirely one-dimensional. Not too bad I'd say. (Aside from Lucy Liu stereotypically dating a white guy, and the other two also are dating white guys....they should have got more creative. Lucy Liu could have got paired with a black guy, Cameron Diaz with a guy of middle eastern descent, and drew barrymore with an Asian guy. That would have stirred controversy at the time and done something for underrepresented minorities in American pop culture.)