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A Response to Who Killed Vincent Chin? and The Cheat

Before you start reading, this post seems to be perpetually popular in my traffic statistics. The question this brings up for me is whether this is one of the few commentaries on these specific texts / films, or if there is another reason. I would appreciate insight, if you care to leave a comment. If not, you should probably read my statement on plagiarism. Thanks! On to the reason you’re here:

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Both Who Killed Vincent Chin?and The Cheat should cause a modern audience to cringe. Because these cringes may be for two different reasons, the visceral reactions to these films deserve some investigation and explication. In the earlier movie, The Cheat, the orientalist approach to the representation of the villain and the exploitation of popular prejudices against Asian people serve to drive the narrative. Looking back on this film from 1915 offers a chance to examine the unquestioned prejudices and expectations of Asian people during early 20th century America. Who Killed Vincent Chin?, on the other hand, is a much more recent production and offers an examination of both the similarities and differences to those prejudices and expectations in late 20th century America. That the changes displayed between the two films mostly offer only superficial effect offers commentary about the distance still remaining to be traveled in treating prejudice and racism in America today.

Continue reading “A Response to Who Killed Vincent Chin? and The Cheat”

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Between Finals & My Abbreviated Summer Class,

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to post recently.  As before though, I intend to continue posting responses to readings and films (most of which are assigned for the class, Asian-American Literature).  These will be shorter posts, and I just wanted to start them off with this particular note, which I think all citizens of every culture need to be aware of: Continue reading “Between Finals & My Abbreviated Summer Class,”

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Our Postmodern Selves Paralleling Our Postmodern Stories.

Although in class we have discussed the tropes of orientalism, techno-orientalism, feminism, and post-modernism in use in the SF/Anime genres, I wanted to take a look at how some of these exact same tropes are beginning to play themselves out in real life.  Last week and this week, we are beginning to look at texts that are beginning to come close to home in terms of our current technological development. Continue reading “Our Postmodern Selves Paralleling Our Postmodern Stories.”

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What do the WikiLeaks Hunt, TSA Screenings, and DNS Seizures have in Common?

It is a small question, really.

These issues have each been in the headlines recently, especially online.  The problem is that they have not been linked by common characteristics.  For example, the stories often run in entirely separate sections of news sites, newspapers, or even entirely different websites altogether.  What do I see as common characteristics?

Continue reading “What do the WikiLeaks Hunt, TSA Screenings, and DNS Seizures have in Common?”

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Beginnings

One of the many tasks associated with Grad School is the creation of an annotated bibliography for use as a source in a dissertation / thesis.  With this in mind, and the opportunity through a class to create a new blog and use it toward developing a sense of Cyberculture theory, I am making Blogger a platform for the annotated bibliography.

The first entries will be concerned with academic journal articles as related to this class, but I also intend to add other sources, including texts (in all manner of speaking), which I come across during my slog.

I hope this provides an accessible and easily understandable resource for both myself and those peers who find this blog.

Eric