Section 01
Week 7
I remember that at some point when I was in high school, I noticed that people were getting into 'Asian culture.' My cousin and I are one of the few people of asian descent in an area of mainly Chicanas/os and whites. We asked "when did being asian become cool?"
The few Asians in my community have always been aware of J-Pop, K-Pop and all these television dramas from many countries in the Asian continent. In Jung-Sun Park's Korean American Youth and Transnational Flows of Popular Culture across the Pacific, it shows the complexity of the production of Korean comics, shows and so forth. The many interpretations and the origins of inspiration of the work is still centering colonizing countries like the U.S. and Japan. So there are many ways in which the popular texts in Asian countries are still a form of consumption for the West as it is created with a discourse of Western eyes. Is this then truly representative of rooted cultural paradigms? As stated in the reading, there are unequal dynamics at play. Asians have always been Othered and been seen as passive and emasculate as a way to reaffirm white supremacy. Even when portrayed in acceptable ways such as a martial arts master or exoticized woman, it is still removing agency from these people and allowing them to become an object to be consumed. So why is it that 'Other' cultures are cool once the U.S. can appropriate it?
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