mercuriosity, posts by tag: race - LiveJournal (original) (raw)
30 January 2011 @ 06:49 pm
So maybe you've already seen this, but if not, you should definitely watch the video for Marsha Ambrosius' single, "Far Away". Not only does she have an amazing voice, but the video's creating some shockwaves for portraying a gay couple of color.
[Trigger warning for homophobia, violence, suicide]
Here's a quote from the interview with Rod 2.0:
Already this has had a much larger impact than I thought it would. So many people are loving that they are so open in their relationship, and, they are two black men. Openly in love, not hiding. I didn’t realize it was something that had not been shown before. This is not controversial. It's just two Black men in love.
( Cut for spoilery reactionCollapse )
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
30 January 2011 @ 02:24 pm
Hmm, another article in the NYT about us mixed race young uns and how we even have our own campus clubs and whatnot: More Young Americans Identify as Mixed Race.
I always have a mixed (ha!) reaction when I see headlines like this. On the one hand, yay media coverage acknowledging that we exist! On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I've seen exactly this headline at least once before in the past year. The great part is that you can keep reusing it, probably for the foreseeable future, without ever having to say anything new or challenging. Throw in something about Obama (setting up a false opposition between being black and being multiracial, while you're at it), census data, "people of the future", blah blah blah, HEY PRESTO, you've got yourself an article!
Unsurprisingly, the comments are full of the same fail I've come to expect whenever an article like this is published; i.e., a lot of people Not Getting It and saying, "Why are we still talking about race?" and "Ultimately we're all multiracial anyway"--hahahahahaha NO. Trigger warning as well for outright racism and even fat-hate (wtf?).
Apparently, this is meant to be a whole series of articles. I wish I could say I'm excited to see the rest of them...
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
27 January 2011 @ 11:26 pm
Okay, also?
They didn't even get Jackson Rathbone that tan that was apparently all he needed to be able to play a PoC.
Kid is white. No wonder Sokka and Katara were some of the last survivors of their tribe; the Fire Nation probably couldn't see them against the snow.
I mean, geez, come on, Paramount, if you're going to do yellow/brownface, at least try. Where are the tanning beds and the magical makeup?
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
Current Mood: totally serious
A lot of people are saying they feel vindicated by all the bad--really, truly bad--reviews of The Last Airbender. I understand that; it certainly would have been even more painful to read reviews praising the movie. But I can't really get any enjoyment out of the bad reviews, either; it is not enough for me that the general public heap scorn on this movie, if they still fail to see that nothing could have made this movie acceptable.
Let me repeat that: Nothing could have made this movie acceptable. Not an elegant script, not skillful actors, not good direction, not any of the components of a "good" movie. The casting decisions meant that this movie was going to be a racist piece of crap, regardless of anything else. It gives me no satisfaction to read people's vicious critiques of the wooden acting and stilted dialogue if they are not equally vicious about the inherent racism of the production.
And here is another reason I cannot exult in the bad reviews: I am afraid that this movie is so bad, in every respect, that it will warp the general public's opinion of Avatar: The Last Airbender itself. Few of the reviews I've seen even mention the original show, or how awesome it is, but the epic terribleness of the movie is even more bizarre if you are familiar with the source material. It is like Shyamalan actually made a list of all the good things about the show and set out to change them for the worse. And people are dismissive enough as it is about animation, or anything "for kids", it just horrifies me that now people are going to think this suckquake of a movie bears any kind of resemblance to a show which is so dear to my heart.
Fuck you very much, Mr. Shyamalan.
[**ETA:** The io9 review and Ebert's review are two that do mention the problematic casting and compare the movie (unfavorably) to the original series. Also, a big fucking YES to Ebert pointing out that A:TLA was a story made for animation, and the idea of a live-action movie was never such a great one. But cartoons are not taken seriously; no, instead, if you want to tell an epic tale, you need to make it a "live-action" CG effects spoogefest.]
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
I read this book review for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet in the NYT the other day. To be honest, I was ready with a heaping bucket of scorn as soon as I read the short description:
David Mitchell’s novel describes a young man out to make his fortune who discovers a complicated world in a closed-off country.
---
In related news. Look what I got!
I was upset when I read about the whitewashing of Silver Phoenix. Very upset. In my opinion, the new covers are completely bland and uninteresting. I would not give them a second look in a bookstore, unlike the first cover, which definitely would have caught my eye, if the major bookstore chains had even given the book a chance. It would have caught my eye because of the beautiful artwork of a beautiful Asian heroine on the cover, standing out in a sea of Twilightified covers.
If I like the first book, and I have every reason to think I will, then yes; I will buy the other books in the series, even with the gross covers, in order to support the author. But for Silver Phoenix, I was determined to get my hands on the original hardcover. My local Barnes & Noble let me down, but Strand came through. In fact, as I was looking through the YA section for Silver Phoenix, I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of other Asian-themed titles, just by browsing. So...I went on a bit of a buying rampage. The books in the picture are, from left to right:
Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon.
Dragon Wishes, by Stacy Nyikos; when their parents die, sisters Alex and Isa must leave their home in Oklahoma and adjust to a new life with their aunt and uncle in San Francisco. I just noticed this one is autographed.
Escaping the Tiger, by Laura Manivong; twelve-year-old Vonlai and his family escape from Communist Laos and try to make a life for themselves in the harsh conditions of a Thailand refugee camp.
Sisters of the Sword, by Maya Snow; Kimi and her sister Hana disguise themselves as boys in order to study the way of the samurai and take revenge on their parents' killers. This one is a series, and I very nearly bought the second and third books, as well, since they were right there...but I held off. For now. If I like the first one, I'll definitely go back for the others.
I was also very intrigued by The Five Ancestors series, by Jeff Stone. They only had the second and third books on the shelf, so I didn't buy them, but I will definitely be looking into this series.
I also saw this series: Samurai Girl, by Carrie Asai, which I did not buy for the simple reason that it was too high up on the shelf to reach by myself, and my arms were already full of books. The covers look kind of cheesy? Still going on the reading list.
I have like FIVE THOUSAND books I'm supposed to be reading, so I don't know when I will get to these, but I'll definitely let you all know what I think, when I do.
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
I saw The Karate Kid last night. I really enjoyed it! As a nostalgic reworking of the fail-proof formula of the original film, I thought they did a good job. I was also, I have to say, anxious about how they might handle race/culture issues, but I was mostly relieved. That's not to say it was perfect in every way (hair-touching? um), but. Even just setting those questions aside for the moment, what struck me while I was thinking about the film afterward was this:
I just watched an American movie that had, I think, two white characters with speaking parts. Two. And both those parts very minor.
The contrast with The Last Airbender, the makers of which seem to think it _just can't be done_--a movie? without white people in every shot and speaking almost every line and moving the plot? preposterous!--could hardly be greater.
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
I misread the summary of this fic as "doorman!Watson", and was somewhat confused and disappointed when it did not, in fact, turn out to be an AU in which Holmes is a rich jerk and Watson is his doorman. (Link is NSFW.)
My Mom is a Fob - This site, in addition to amusing me, brings me to near-tears homesickness an embarrassing amount of the time. I was leery when I first saw the title, but I was quickly won over. All the stories are contributed with such obvious fondness and affection; it's basically a big celebration of how much our moms love us and how much we love them. The imperfections of language and expression just let the underlying parental love shine through that much more. Awww! (There's also My Dad is a Fob.)
One blog I don't read anymore is Cake Wrecks. I don't know if anyone else follows that blog, or saw the racefail that ensued awhile ago. The sad thing is, I'm sure they hardly lost any readers over it. "It's a silly blog about cakes! Why does race have to enter into it? You're the one who's racist for bringing it up blah blah blah BINGO BINGO BINGO"
Which is, you know, exactly the point: how silly of me, to want to be able to read a humor blog for some harmless laughs without feeling trampled on! It's jarring, when you think you're enjoying something, you're getting it, you're a legitimate member of the audience--to be told, like a slap to the face, that no, it's not for you.
Uh, anyway. The point is, sometimes I accept a certain level of fail because I want to be entertained. But it's tiring, and I feel like I have less and less patience for it these days. I'd rather expend my energy seeking out other sources of entertainment that won't make me feel actively excluded.
Edit: So I wasn't going to explain the Cake Wrecks fail--I honestly didn't know if people cared, and also I didn't want to spend energy on something that would just upset me--but since it seems people are curious! To my great relief, I remembered that I found this Stuff White People Do post that nicely summarizes it, so I don't have to: stuff white people do: assume that vanilla frosting is "skin" and chocolate sauce is "(white) skin covered in chocolate sauce".
The post itself might have been overlookable, but it was in the ensuing comment discussion that the poster, John, thoroughly made an ass of himself, basically hitting every bingo square possible. Only a couple of his comments are included in the SWPD post; there were many, many more, and they were all terrible.
If you click the link to the original post, it seems that it's no longer around--so maybe someone finally caught a clue? Maybe there's been an apology since then, I don't know. At the time, I just decided I didn't care enough to stick around and hope for things to get better.
You know?
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
I just watched this short (less than 40 minutes) documentary about Asian-Americans: East of Main Street: Asians Aloud.
I don't know how long it'll remain available for viewing online, but if you can, I recommend watching it. The format is simple: individuals speaking about their experiences to the camera. There's a pretty good mix of ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and ages, and some of the participants have really smart things to say about intersectionality. I particularly like Christine (15:12), a filmmaker who talks about how Asian-Americans need to recognize how enormously they've benefited from the civil rights movement. The last segment (30:43) about Paul and James, two Korean adoptees, is also pretty great. They've had similar experiences, yet they've come to such different conclusions about how to construct their identities. The stories about people mistaking them for each other are hilarious, in a sort of appalling way. You have to laugh to keep from crying.
On Thursday, I visited the Museum of Chinese in America (free admission on Thursdays!). Their main exhibit currently is "With A Single Step", which chronicles the different stages of Chinese immigration to the United States. I liked the way the exhibit was set up so that each room represented/recreated a different era, and you were guided chronologically through them. The section on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 seemed particularly salient, in light of recent developments on the immigration front (in some cities, even those "desirable" Chinese who were allowed to stay had to carry several pieces of documentation with them and be ready to present them at all times, as well as have two white people willing to vouch for them, should someone question their immigration status).
Other sections presented angles I'd never thought about before, such as the uneasy status of Chinese-Americans during WWII, when they suddenly became the "good" Asians, in contrast to the Japanese. Articles and pamphlets about how to tell a good Asian and a bad Asian apart were published, such as this TIME magazine piece: "How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs" (unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--the illustrations are not reproduced online). Old stereotypes about the Chinese were rehashed and given a "positive" spin--that is, of course, until the rise of communism made all Chinese-Americans suspect once again, and the Red Scare became the new Yellow Peril.
I also bought a book from the museum shop: Part Asian, 100% Hapa. It's a collection of photographs of multiracial people of Asian descent; I wrote a review of it here.
View original entry | comment(s) | Leave a comment
15 October 2009 @ 07:57 pm
My jaw dropped.
Interracial couple denied marriage license in Louisiana
"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday.
MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED.
Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.
No shit! Huh, I wonder why that could be.
"I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
Newsflash: Your black friends hate you.
My mind is well and truly boggled. How can this man still have a job? Unless he is secretly a progressive JP using this stunt to draw attention to how ridiculous it is to deny any couple the right to marry...right, right?? DON'T LET ME DOWN, WORLD.
Current Mood: WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN