Archive for April, 2008
(Asian American?) Hip Hop: Cool Calm Pete’s “Black Friday”
Jane Park, — April 29th, 2008|
Cool Calm Pete is a Korean American rapper who grew up in Queens, New York, studied fine art at Cooper Union, began rapping as a member of Brooklyn-based trio Babbletron, and is on the independent hip hop label Embedded/Definitive Jux with Dizzee Rascal, R2J2, and others. Along with M.I.A. and Rob Wall, he won Hip Hop Site's Rookie Award in 2005 for his debut album Lost. Unlike fellow New York-based Chinese American rapper Jin, Cool Calm Pete rarely refers to his racial identity in his songs. Wh [...]
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Asians Can Dance ~ Check out: JabbaWockeeZ, Kaba Modern, and Planet B-Boy
L.S. Kim, University of California, Santa Cruz — April 29th, 2008|
One of my interests as a media scholar who is concerned about racial equality, supports activism, and loves dance is the relationship between race and genre. While the Western is thought of as a white American genre or the soap opera as a form of female narrative, what do you think when you put together Asian Americans and comedy?... Naw. Asians and dance? “What the h***?” as the director of the new documentary PLANET B-BOY (planetbboy.com) astonished when he learned that some of the best b- [...]
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“Speaking American: Cultural Expressions of Race and Nationality in Harold and Kumar”
Shilpa Dave, Brandeis University — April 28th, 2008|
“Speaking American: Cultural Expressions of Race and Nationality in Harold and Kumar”
In the first film, “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle,” (dir. John Leiner 2004) Harold (John Cho) and Kumar’s (Kal Penn) cultural and national identity was bound up in their quest for American masculinity (burgers). Both men had to resolve issues of career and profession, and social prowess (with both women and pot consumption) all in one night. The film was a sleeper hit of the summer that dr [...]
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“I don’t think anyone has an obligation to do anything”: The pop politics of coming out
Craig O. Stewart, Old Dominion University — April 25th, 2008|
If you live in the United States and you’ve not heard of Mika, you’re not alone. Although his debut album has sold over 3 million copies worldwide, he has sold only about 200,000 copies and has yet to chart a top 40 single in the U.S. (Wikipedia). Indeed, he is perhaps most famous for refusing to answer direct questions about his sexuality. While there has been some controversy over his refusal to answer “the question,” this interview with Logo’s Jason Bellini allows Mika to articulate [...]
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Yaari, men in drag, and gays: tracing the changing dynamics of queer male sexuality in popular Hindi cinema
Sreya Mitra, University of Wisconsin, Madison — April 24th, 2008|
Male homoeroticism in yaari (colloquial Hindi for buddy) films; masquerade of often hypermasculine actors in drag; transvestites, effeminate men, and masculine women – these are all familiar queer tropes in popular Hindi cinema. However, contemporary Hindi cinema seems to be witnessing a gradual but crucial shift in representations of queer sexuality, particularly queer male sexuality – from the earlier tropes of homoeroticism and effeminate men to more distinct gay characters. Though mostly [...]
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Television’s New Publics and Privates: From Mobile Privatization to Trans-Spatial Publicity?
Hollis Griffin, Northwestern University — April 23rd, 2008|
Ads for emerging technologies often trade in utopian rhetorics when reaching out to audiences. Consumers are courted via fantasies of space; ads for a variety of products proffer notions of “gadget-enabled mobility” that promise the merging of spaces for the purposes of publicness. I unpack one example here in order to nuance recent scholarship on television in the age of digital.
Raymond Williams coined the term “mobile privatization” to describe the paradox of modernity in which he [...]
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“Where Does a Girl Have to Go to Find a Pool Table: Gender Performance, Leisure, and The L Word in Second Life”
Kelly Kessler, Rutgers University — April 22nd, 2008|
In 2004 Showtime launched The L Word. Viewers simultaneously hailed the show as groundbreaking and critiqued the sudsy dyke drama for its narrow presentation of lesbian life: white, femme, and upwardly mobile. Jumping to her own defense, creator Ilene Chaiken described the show as a representation of her own specific Los Angeles lesbian community. Over the past few years, the promotion machine of The L Word has sought to draw in existing fans and increase its fan base by delving into online a [...]
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“Jumping Your Bones Was Extremely Atypical For Me”: Brothers and Sisters, Queer Hollywood Labor, and Textual Possibilities in a Post-Network Era
Ben Aslinger, University of Wisconsin, Madison — April 21st, 2008|
Many of the cast members for Brothers and Sisters said they agreed to come onboard because playwright and series creator Jon Robin Baitz was attached to the project. Baitz made a name for himself as an out gay playwright who was able to tackle thorny political issues in plays such as The Substance of Fire. This month Out magazine placed Brothers and Sisters producer Greg Berlanti (of Dawson’s Creek fame) on the cover as one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.
In film and media s [...]
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Hmong Bollywood
Jigna Desai, University of Minnesota — April 18th, 2008|
Is it possible to be a diaspora without a “homeland” cinema or media? What happens when there is not a homeland media to produce and narrate belonging? In the case of Hmong refugees, a cinema had to be made where one did not exist prior to exile. Hmong Americans are an ethnic group who have migrated primarily from Laos under the conditions of political exile due to their covert assistance to US CIA as guerrillas in the secret war SE Asia. Fleeing Laos primarily to Thai refugee camps, Hmon [...]
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“Barack OBollywood”: Afro-Asian Connections on the Viral Video Trail
Shalini Shankar, Northwestern University — April 29th, 2008