Asian American Film: Introduction

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Asian American Film Introduction
Instructor Kirk Denton Office Hagerty
375 Office Hours T 2-4 Email denton.2_at_osu.edu
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I. Defining terms

• Whats Asia? Who are Asians?
• Whats an Asian-American?
• when was the term invented and why?
• avoid essentializing (the primordial origins
  model) notions of identity, recognizing cultural,
  regional, gender, generational, linguistic,
  educational, class, political, and historical
  contexts

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C. Whats Asian American Film?

• Jun Xing films by, for, and about Asian
  Americans (Xing 1998 28)
• Renee Tajima socially committed cinema
  created by a people bound by (1) race (2)
  interlocking cultural and historical relations
  and (3) a common experience of Western domination
  characterized by diversity shaped through (1)
  national origin and (2) the constant flux of new
  immigration flowing from a westernizing East into
  a an easternizing West (quoted in Xing 1998
  28-29, fn 6)
• Denton films, videos, and digital videos made
  by Asians in America and dealing with Asian
  American experience

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• History of US is a history of racial and ethnic
  encounters
• Slavery displacement and destruction of native
  Americans immigration civil rights movement
• Asian Americans are an important part of this
  historical experience
• with the 2000 Census, we know that Asians are a
  rapidly growing sector of the US population in
  2000 they formed 3.6 (10 million) of the total
  population by 2004 it was 4.2 (12 million), and
  in 2006 it was 4.4 (13.1 million), and in 2010
  it was 4.8 (14 million)

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• General patterns of immigration
• early generations came as contract laborers
• as they became established, would venture into
  private small businesses laundries, restaurants,
  hotels, shops, or their own farms
• second generation would sometimes continue the
  family business, or would become educated and
  then move into professional careers
• Chinese tended to hold on to their culture more
  than the Japanese and Koreans Koreans and
  Japanese more likely to be Christians and not
  form separate towns
• the politics of the home nations follows the
  immigrants into the US (1) Korean anti-Japanese
  patriotic movement (2) revolutionary versus
  reformist views of change in China before 1911
  (3) PRC/Taiwan conflict (4) Hindu/Muslim
  conflicts in India.

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• First wave of Chinese immigration
• Chinese first went (or rather were brought) to
  Hawaii in the second half of the 19th c. to work
  on sugar can plantations
• then, after 1848 Chinese go to California and
  work on the railroad, in mines, and as farm
  laborers, with a particularly significant
  presence in San Francisco, where the first
  Chinatown was set up

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which was not
  repealed until 1943,
• during this period there was terrible prejudice
  against the Chinese, who were perceived as a
  yellow hoard or the yellow peril who in sheer
  numbers were going to take over the world

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• after the Exclusion Act, Angel Island was
  established as a processing center for Asian
  immigrants
• paper sons and daughters
• poetry expressing suffering and humiliation

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• Second Wave of Chinese Immigration
• with the repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1943 and
  the institution of the Immigration Act of 1965, a
  new flow of Chinese speaking immigrants came,
  mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan
• From PRC 1980s-to present, some of it illegal
  (mostly from Fujian province), but mostly not

Up-scale Chinese market in Monterey Park, CA
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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• Japanese Immigration
• occurred primarily between the 1880s and 1920s
• to Hawaii and California
• worked first as farm laborers in the California
  farming communities, were subject to a tremendous
  amount of resentment there among white farmers
• in the early 1990s, they began to buy their own
  farms, but this stirred even greater resentment

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• Japanese Immigration
• after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt issue Executive
  Order 9066 authorizing the imprisonment of
  Japanese Americans (US citizens) in concentration
  camps, their property seized

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II. Overview of Asian American immigration

• Korean Immigration
• also brought to Hawaii and California as farm
  laborers, but in much fewer numbers than the
  Chinese and Japanese, as a result they tended not
  to be able to form their own communities, though
  they did have a strong sense of cultural and
  ethnic consciousness
• many left Korea in the early 20th c. after their
  country was occupied by the Japanese
• second wave of mostly educated Koreans occurred
  from the 1960s on

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Early History
• before a self-conscious Asian American film
  developed, there were Asians active in the film
  world
• some sought to resist Hollywood stereotypes
• James B. Leong Productions set up in the early
  1920s in Los Angeles to counter negative images
  of Asians in Hollywood film
• Hayworth Pictures, founded by Sessue Hayakawa
  produced 25 movies, including The Dragon Painter

Still from The Dragon Painter
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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Early History
• in 2006, an early film was rediscovered
• Marion Wongs The Curse of Quon Kwon (1916) is
  now believed to be the earliest Asian American
  film
• whats remarkable is that such an early film
  could be made by an Asian American and a woman!
• depicts The curse of a Chinese god that follows
  his people because of the influence of Western
  civilization (Motion Picture World, July 17,
  1917)
• incomplete and without intertitles

Title still from The Curse of Quon Kwon (1916)
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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, both Asian
  actors in Hollywood, protested against Hollywood
  representations of Asians
• there were occasional protests by Chinese
  against certain Hollywood film images of Asians,
  particularly opium smoking

How should we be, with a civilization thats so
many times older than that of the West? We have
our own virtues. We have our rigid code of
behavior, of honor. Why do they never show these
on the screen? Why should we always scheme, rob,
kill? I get so weary of it allthe scenarists
concept of Chinese charactersAnna May Wong
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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Visual Communications (VC) Group
• grew out of Ethno-Communications program at UCLA
  in the 1960s
• first films were of anti-development
  demonstrations in Little Tokyo in LA
• influenced by notions of triangular cinema
  (which sought a unity of community, storyteller,
  and activist) and notions of Third Cinema (a
  reaction against Hollywood classical cinema and
  the European art film)
• the VC group began in 1970 to promote Asian
  cinema self-definition, self-determination,
  cultural reclamation as a reaction to
  Hollywood images of Asians
• three main concerns identity politics,
  historical injustices, and contemporary racism

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• first full-length feature produced by the VC
  Group was Hito Hata Raise the Banner (1980),
  devoted to WWII experience of an Issei (first
  generation Japanese immigrant) in the Little
  Tokyo district of LA

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Rise of documentary film
• response to several factors (1) counter to the
  dominant representation of Asians in Hollywood
  cinema (2) desire to create a truer, fuller
  history of Asian Americans, accounting for
  racism, etc. (3) give Asian voice to Asian
  experience (4) draw attention to politics of
  exclusion and racism
• important themes identity and generational
  conflict personal history and cultural heritage
  
• style generally personal, intimate, and
  emotional but with obvious political and social
  implications

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Examples of documentaries
• Yellow Tale Blues An Anatomy of Two Families
  (dir. Christine Choy and Renee Tajima)
• Banana Split (dir. Kip Fulbeck), about a
  biracial man
• Whos Going to Pay for these Donuts Anyway?
  (Janice Tanaka)
• My Mother Thought She Was Audrey Hepburn (Sharon
  Jue)
• a.k.a. Don Bonus (Spencer Nakasako), about a
  Cambodian boy who escapes the Khmer Rouge and
  makes his way to San Francisco
• Anatomy of a Springroll (Paul Kwan), Vietnamese
  American director looks for cultural roots in
  food
• History and Memory (Rea Tajiri)

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Styles of Documentaries
• History as Subject Personal Diary Films and
  Family Portraits
• History as Consciousness Biographies and
  Communal History
• History as Agency Social Issue Documentaries

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III. Brief history of Asian American film

• Rise of feature film
• Wayne Wang and the emergence of an Asian
  American style (e.g., Chan is Missing, Dim Sum,
  Eat a Bowl of Tea)
• the mainstreaming of Asian America
• change in narrative style toward a more
  Hollywood form of melodrama, epic or comedy
  (e.g., Joy Luck Club, Wedding Banquet, Saving
  Face, Red Door, Yellow, Better Luck Tomorrow,
  Asian Stories)
• difficult relationship with Hollywood and
  orientalism