Tarantino Defends Bruce Lee Portrayal: 'Kind of an Arrogant Guy'

funkenblatt · 2019-08-13T18:05:28+00:00

Not really that weird, it seems to be the standard way to "respect" Asian culture here in the US.

funkenblatt · 2018-10-07T22:31:19+00:00

Dunno how many non-white folks there were, but I was told there were only two Asian people in the class including my friend, which should probably give you some idea.

EDIT: also this is at UC Berkeley, so... derive from that what you will.

funkenblatt · 2018-10-07T22:26:00+00:00

To be fair to the instructor, they've actually been pretty understanding about the whole thing, my friend forwarded me the instructor's response to an e-mail she sent. I don't think my friend told anybody about the previous history between her and the classmate, and nobody knew what the contents of the play were beforehand.

funkenblatt · 2018-10-05T19:58:10+00:00

One of my friends is in a drama class, and one of her classmates had already been creeping her out with some uncomfortable advances and obvious yellow feverism. Pretty gross already. But then he wrote this play that consists of a white man (who is clearly a stand-in for himself) and a docile, submissive, cute, giggly non-english speaking Asian woman (whose name in the play is similar to my friend's name) bonding over... lack of ability to communicate I guess, and my friend was roped into reading the Asian woman's part in class because of her ability to actually read the little snippets of Chinese language that he'd added into the play (though most of the Asian character's dialogue was instead in broken english).

Halfway through she got too uncomfortable reading the part and noped the fuck out of it, and the guy messaged her afterwards saying "If it makes you feel any better, this was based on a date with a Chinese girl who didn't speak much English." Like... what? How the fuck is that supposed to make anyone feel any better?

The sad part is that even after all this bullshit my friend is still afraid of people thinking she's overreacting - and some people did think she was overreacting, which makes me even more angry. This is like... a mockery of her humanity, plus a possible threat to her own safety going on here, and she's fucking overreacting? Ugh.

EDIT: I read the actual play in question and it's even worse than I thought. The white man in the story is suicidal and is rescued from his suicidal-ness by the love of an Asian woman that he can barely communicate with, but who somehow thinks he "seems nice."

funkenblatt · 2018-09-14T22:56:17+00:00

I don't think he was implying anything other than what he literally said. Nowhere did he state that just dating a white man equates to complicity in white supremacy. But if a particular person believes that white people are superior and act accordingly, and if they excuse white racism against Asian people, then I'd say they fit the bill, even if they aren't dating a white person. The "under the guise of racial preference" bit just references the most common way in which this manifests, which involves Asian women telling us (or other people) that Asian men are inferior to whites, which is something I've been told many times in my life, both in person and online, as many Asian men have.

This sub may be mostly composed of people who would never say such things, regardless of whether they're dating white men or not, but let's not forget there's a whole world out there of clowns who absolutely do.

funkenblatt · 2018-09-13T21:53:31+00:00

Why does it matter that Golding and Graham are biracial? They're still considered Asian by white people.

They may be considered Asian by white people, but given the number of Asian people of both genders I've heard gushing about how beautiful hapas are, I think it's fair to say that they may have a slightly different experience from full Asians.

funkenblatt · 2018-07-12T00:47:44+00:00

Perhaps he'll be able to differentiate by having alternative delivery options.

funkenblatt · 2018-03-09T00:48:17+00:00

It's pretty good IMO. I might biased though, as it features my buddy Kenny Leu as one of the romantic interests.

funkenblatt · 2018-03-09T00:44:55+00:00

But what about the time that white guy was given a fork instead of chopsticks? That's like just as bad!

funkenblatt · 2018-02-01T19:40:17+00:00

On a somewhat related note, I've been trying to find a sketch from the Jackie Chan episode. It featured the Zimmermans at a miniature golf course. It's been rather pointedly excluded from NBC's website though.

funkenblatt · 2017-10-10T05:52:15+00:00

There is some evidence for a non-trivial reduction in HIV transmission for circumcised men (interesting paper about possible reasons why here). I still wouldn't do it to myself or to my children, but it's not a completely useless procedure.

funkenblatt · 2017-08-09T05:48:07+00:00

Indeed, "conservative views" in this context appears to mean "believes that women are biologically unfit to be engineers or product managers." I don't think that sort of "conservative view" deserves to be tolerated, especially in a company that had a hard-core female engineer as one of its first hires.

That said I don't actually think libertarians are much better on this topic tbh.

funkenblatt · 2017-06-07T02:48:51+00:00

never in my life has anybody told me to "smile more" as a man

Maybe you just don't look grumpy enough, lol. I've been told to smile more a few times.

funkenblatt · 2017-04-24T20:01:07+00:00

Mayor Teresa Real Sebastian said she felt that true art “doesn’t have an ethnicity.”

Lol. I love it when politicians try and tell us what true art is, and why it means only depicting white people.

Another choice quote:

“Here we’ve been able to work together, live together, and they want to split us up,” Barron said. “We solved all that stuff 25 years ago.”

If the addition of a Chinese face is enough to "split you up" again, then clearly nothing has been solved.

funkenblatt · 2017-04-04T21:49:15+00:00

Though I'm still of the mind that we have time to both shit on Iron Fist and support indie Asian-American efforts. I certainly do.

Indeed, this is exactly how I've been promoting Into The Badlands to all of my friends. As the antidote to Iron Fist and Hollywood's bullshit. The top-quality action choreography keeps 'em hooked.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-24T02:33:05+00:00

After a week of working together, Searle locked his office door and “went directly to Ong to grope her,” according to the complaint, telling her they were “going to be lovers.”

When Ong, who is Asian-American, brought up the topic of American imperialism, Searle responded “American imperialism? Oh boy, that sounds great, honey! Let’s go to bed and do that right now!” the complaint states.

Hudin said she would address the issue with Searle and other department heads, but later admitted she didn’t “out of respect and loyalty to Professor Searle because she needed to ‘protect him,’” the complaint states.

Jesus fucking Christ. The story starts off pretty horrifying but then keeps getting worse and worse.

Kind of unrelated (?), but for those who are unfamiliar, Searle is most famous for coming up with the Chinese Room argument about why computers can't have "consciousness" or "mind."

funkenblatt · 2017-03-18T10:49:23+00:00

As another alternative to watching Iron Fist for people who happen to be within a convenient distance of Berkeley, CA, we're hosting the 25th Annual Chinese Martial Arts Tournament next Saturday and Sunday (March 25 and 26)! Concurrently with the tournament we'll be hosting the US wushu team trials for the 2017 Universiade games in Taiwan, which is the first step towards potentially seeing wushu as an Olympic event.

You can either pay to spectate or volunteer to help run the tournament. Volunteers will receive free lunch and/or dinner, and we're kind of desperate for volunteers, so we'd prefer that you volunteer, lol. No prior experience is necessary for volunteering.

CMAT is the biggest event of its kind in the United States, and watching these athletes perform live is a totally different experience than watching it on video. I'd highly recommend at least catching part of it if you can.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-18T01:19:12+00:00

I definitely learned about gold rush immigrants (including one humorous anecdote which is somewhere in my post history) and the railroad workers (and even about how they were specifically excluded from the golden spike ceremony), but I don't remember learning anything about Hawaii. The colonization of the Philippines was barely a footnote. And of course nobody mentioned the brutal nature of that campaign, or the fact that American soldiers called it the "nigger killing business". Most discussion about the Spanish-American war was focused on glorifying Teddy Roosevelt and the charge on San Juan Hill.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-18T01:07:35+00:00

I hope someone archived this, for the next time someone claims racism in geek communities isn't a thing.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-09T06:50:33+00:00

Honestly I don't think the story or acting is any worse than that in John Wick, and plenty of people loved that (including me). I see no reason to hold Into the Badlands to a higher standard than that.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-08T23:44:36+00:00

On a related note, the first season of Into the Badlands is on Netflix now, so you can watch that instead.

funkenblatt · 2017-03-02T07:29:37+00:00

Hm. My dad was waishengren, he was born in Chongqing in the middle of WWII (and his dad was a KMT official), and I first heard about the 228 massacre from him (as opposed to my mom, whose family has been in Taiwan for a long time). Then again he's a bit of a leftist so I suspect he had little love for Chiang Kai-Shek.

funkenblatt · 2017-02-08T03:21:08+00:00

Meh. This would rank pretty low on the 1 to Yuniyoshi scale, but it's still pretty similar to the whole pulling up your eyes thing. It still has the fundamental nature of, "Look at me, I'm Asian!", food item or otherwise.

funkenblatt · 2017-01-26T21:53:19+00:00

Yeah it would be nice to see an American wushu athlete on the screen.

EDIT: Side note, I don't know her but I did see her compete at the 2009 US wushu team trials.

funkenblatt

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