Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Oops, They Did it Again.

A discussion on hating media.

By Edward Hsu

Rotten Bananas Staff

I skulk along the wall of new videos.  Appearing to peruse, instead I am driven to one premeditated goal.  I feel dozens of imaginary eyes pricking the back of my neck as I reach my forbidden destination.  There it is, my red ripe apple sitting there encasing an hour and thirty minutes of raw, unadulterated ecstasy.  As I finally sit alone in my room with the lights off, door locked, my guilty pleasure erupts.

Crap.  I think Jackie Chan kicks ass.

Growing up, these were my heroes – Bruce, Jet Li, Yun-Fat, even Samo.  Get them in a room with any dastardly villain and it would be over with a few lethal heavy-duty blows or several sporadic sprays of an automatic weapon.  No need to read the subtitles, just know the overwhelming feeling of greed, violence, and vengeance.  It was awesome.  The combination of bloodshed, testosterone, and sex caught me at exactly the right age.  It was pure entertainment.

Then somewhere along the way at the centers of higher education, someone declared it was wrong.  We learned that what we considered to be “trophies” of our heritage were deemed “stereotypical”, “exploitive” and down right racist.  We had an academic backing to our feelings of potential public inadequacy.  Anything that was widely released was worked over with a fine tooth comb.  And undoubtedly most of them in some way infringed on the movement for equality, so we quickly shut these away stamped with our sign of disapproval.  It was decided that these movies pandered to the lowest denominator of ignorant viewers.  We became ashamed of everything that was us to them.

I bawled when I found out that the movies which I had spent most of my childhood watching no longer fit into my new political Asian American mentality.  Two years ago Romeo Must Die was released with an ESL English Jet Li playing the unwanted heir to a ruthless Asian gang.  He was the played out version of an asexual Asian gangster with a black belt and unused Chinese-English dictionary.  Last year Rush Hour 2 stormed the box office amidst much protest from the Asian American community.  The lowbrow racist jokes of Chris Tucker as well as Jackie Chan, himself, seemed to showcase two minorities crawling over one another to pander to the funny bone of the movie’s predominately white audience.  This year, Better Luck Tomorrow, the first Asian American film sold at Sundance, was muddied with controversy about the misrepresentation of Asian Americans under the guise of the “model minority myth.”  

But before we again toss these movies into the library of travesties against Asian Pacific Islanders, we should take another look at these pieces.  Perhaps, take the privilege of watching both as an American as well as an Asian American.  We all can find our own individual intersections somewhere within this duality.  However, too often, we only allow one lens to shine through.  And many times as educated Asian American Studies students, we become a slave to the reactive subculture rather than true intellectuals of the art. 

I don’t have a problem with those holding these critical viewpoints, because we all must choose our own sides in a battle.  Some of us opt for the art over the artist while others will parade some cause about some work not really even knowing what its author intended.  Instead, I am questioning the dogmatic and sweeping nature of our discourse against everything pre-1900’s and challenging our beliefs to remain progressive and dynamic.  We must not only question the social constructions, but also ideals that wish to deconstruct them.  Then maybe one of these days we can dig up an old martial arts movie and not feel as bad.  Because its fun – even as a fleeting moment. 

As for me, I doubt the historical power relationships will never change in our lifetime, but at the same time we shouldn’t let them ruin our own.  The racial reformation process is an information transfer that is taken in very small steps over many lifetimes.  And too often, we as Asian Americans want to change the world, change what people think, change the future - in two hour increments.  An Asian American doctor is the model minority.  An Asian American criminal is the triad or "Asian gangsta".  The normal Asian American is unseen and marginalized.  It's too hard to make everyone happy.  Sometimes if your work has merit you need to be selfish.  And if its for that reason, who are we to judge?  So choose your battles and your causes but stop once in a while to smell the roses you’re blazing through, they aren’t always that bad.  To look at the world like that all the time would be as fun as stepping into the ring with Mister Miyagi.