Tag: racism

Why Searching is as important as Crazy Rich Asians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw the preview for Searching when I went to go see Crazy Rich Asians, and my first thought was how it was the blatant obligatory targeted preview because it was the only preview displaying an Asian face, in John Cho.  But upon watching the preview itself, Searching seemed like a pretty intriguing plot, about a dad whose daughter goes missing, and how he has little other than combing through her social media outlets to hope to find out any information, only to discover just how little he knows about his own kid.

Needless to say, I was interested, so I made a point to go see it; even if the flick wasn’t that great, it would still be supporting films created by minorities, as the credits are overwhelmingly names that don’t look like an episode of a CW show, and not just confined to the CGI section.  Because, it’s important to me that Asian and other minority-created media actually cracks into the grossly whitewashed Hollywhite, and it’s going to take way more support than just the fad of going to see Crazy Rich Asians is going to accomplish.

However, it turns out that Searching is a very well done film, and I have a lot of admiration for the acting and the creative execution of the entire film itself, from the perspective of the myriad of phone and tablet and computer screens that saturate the vast majority of all of our lives today.  The plot is linear and pretty basic, but it’s a good example of how execution and creativity can take basic and make it compelling and engrossing.  At no point did I correctly predict any reveals or major plot points, but very much went ohhhhhh and came to realization of several hints sprinkled throughout the rest of the story.

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Too easy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

You don’t say – Atlanta rapper who goes under the name “Young Thug” is arrested and faces up to eight felony charges

Man, who could have seen this coming?  A guy who goes by the name of Young Thug, arrested for doing the kinds of things that young thugs are known for doing, like having drugs, threatening people, distributing drugs, among all other charges.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this guy, because shockingly, he’s had run-ins with the law several times over, over the last few years, but it does not seem apparent that regardless of how much his rap credibility increases, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still subject to do dumb shit under his own volition.

I think the funniest part about this is that it all started with getting pulled over for suspicion of too-dark window tint.  It’s one of the most ticky-tack bullshit violations to be pulled over for in the first place, and no doubt that there was some racial profiling involved with the cop’s decision to pull him over in the first place.  Don’t get me wrong, I see cars all the time with window tint that’s got to obviously be illegal, so I’m a little surprised to see someone actually getting pulled over for it in the first place.

Lo and behold, it turns out that the car is driven by a minor celebrity, and holy shit did he have a lot of drugs in his possession at that time.  Naturally, there’s a gun in the car too, because how can anyone be a young thug without having a firearm as well?  The legality of its ownership is never mentioned, although one can easily speculate.

Either way, it’s the shocker of the century that Young Thug is arrested; again, and it’s not one of those things where anyone can even pull the race card.  The guy had a car that raised red flags, and upon further inspection, it turned out that there were plenty of reasons to arrest the guy.  It’s not like he’s actually going to serve any time, because if the guy can seemingly get back out on the streets after skipping out on warrants and threatening the lives of other people, it’ll be a short stay in incarceration before he’s back out on the streets, and probably not long afterward before he’s busted again for some stupid shit.

The sociological entertainment of Crazy Rich Asians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As someone who agrees that Hollywood is whiter than a Republican national fundraiser, I knew it was something of a social obligation that I should go out and watch Crazy Rich Asians.  I never read the book, nor did I have any inkling of an idea of what the plot was about going into it, but I still figured it would be a good idea to support any progression for Asians in a white-dominated industry, if we want to have any modicum of a chance of earning any respect up in this motherfucker.

The movie itself was fine.  Fairly predictable and extremely formulaic, but refreshing in the simple sense that every face didn’t look like Finn Wittrock or Balakey Lively.  Constance Wu carries the film brilliantly, and it’s super gratifying to hear her speak in her actual voice and not as over-the-top tiger mom from Fresh Off the Boat.  I didn’t even realize it was her until seeing her name in the credits although I thought she looked familiar, but Michelle Yeoh’s presence as a cunningly savage rich Asian mom is like an anime where you can feel an aura emanating from her whenever she comes on screen.

It kind of goes without saying that I rolled my eyes at the casting of some hafu named “Henry Golding” as the male lead of the flim, when surely it most certainly could have been cast to an actual Chinese or other Asian guy that didn’t look like a cross between Lawrence from Westworld and a young Ralph Macchio.  But seeing as how this film was being released in white Hollywood (oxymoron?), there had to be some compromise to make sure white power had some degree of a tether to their oppressive natures.  But it’s okay, because as bland and useless of a character Nick Young was, the film had no intention of being carried by him in the first place.

There’s one character in the film whose storyline carries almost zero correlation with the main plot at all, and could presumably not been needed at all whatsoever.  I’m going to assume it’s vastly different in the book and has more of a connection, but for the film’s sake, I’m going to assume it was included probably solely because the actress involved in it is somewhat known, extremely pretty, and needs to have requisite screen time in order to justify her casting.

As for the rest of the film, it had some fun characters and was moderately enjoyable, even with the obnoxious people in the theater, to where I couldn’t decide which was worse between the incessant commentary in Mandarin from the girls next to me, or the incessant commentary from the stereotypical black women who felt the need to very loudly opinionate on everything.

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Only going to talk about this once (hopefully)

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So Yosemite Sam won the Republican nod to run for governor this November; this is not at all surprising, as victory was pretty much locked in as soon as the Donald Trump gave him his endorsement, which all but guaranteed all of his brainless sheep worshippers would vote him in.  Also not surprising was the relative ease in which he won the primary, defeating Casey Cagle by nearly 40 full points, going to further show just how much power a president that everyone loves to make fun of truly does wield.

So the field is officially set for probably the most important state election that I’ve lived in Georgia for, between gun-toting, Trump-worshipping, immigrant-threatening, unapologetically redneck Yosemite Sam, versus Stacey Abrams, a black woman, in a racist-ass state in busted-ass America, for governor of Georgia.

Obviously, I’ve written a lot of words about this particular topic, more than I ever thought I’d care to ever expend.  But I’m a grown-up (relatively), and I guess this is what happens to grown-ups, caring about politics, and I like the general state of Georgia these days, and I fear that a radical change in the political regime of the state highly jeopardizes such chill state of Georgia.

The bottom line is that no matter how much money, exposure and awareness that the Democratic party has funneled behind Stacey Abrams, she is obviously going to be the underdog by being both black and a woman, trying to make history, by becoming the first-ever black female governor in the United States.  In Georgia.  A state with deep roots involved with slavery, white supremacy and barely a decade removed from when they actually got the Confederate insignia off of its flag.

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A wise man once said

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A futbol team cannot win a futbol game unless they score goals

Furthermore, a futbol team cannot score goals unless they take shots.  Although I counted two times where Sweden’s goalkeeper actually had to move in the box, the box score in Korea’s World Cup 2018 opening loss to Sweden, credits them with zero shots on goal.  ZERO.

How the fuck is it remotely possible to win a game when a team doesn’t even take a single shot?  The answer is that it’s not.  I’m pretty sure Sweden’s goalkeeper doesn’t even take a shower after the game and is able to meet up with whatever model of a wife/girlfriend for dinner without even having to reapply his deodorant, that’s how much of a day off today’s game was.  As for his teammates, they were basically in the Royal Rumble in a game that saw over 40 fouls called, but a big fat zero for shots on goal for Korea.

Yes, I know that getting in position to even take shots on goal is like 75% of the battle in the first place, but that just exemplifies Korea’s general lack of adaptability or creativity to even bother trying anything different from what wasn’t working throughout the span of 96 minutes, to where they could even take a shot.  Sweden’s defense was no slouch, but Korea wasn’t making anything harder by constantly having guys in telegraphed positions, or all the players essentially giving up once their routes were blocked.

But I’m not going to get too salty over this loss.  Korean soccer hasn’t been the same since the 2002 World Cup, and even then, they had the mother of homefield advantages throughout the entire tournament.  They were also coached by the legendary Guus Hiddink who was easily worth several of their wins by himself alone.  They’ve been good enough to qualify for all subsequent World Cups by virtue of a globally weak Asian pool, and once they get in, they’ve regularly been exposed as a class below the usual powerhouses from Europe and South America, and have been getting bounced routinely.

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Not sure if this is a good thing to disclose or not

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Long story short: City of South Fulton Renaissance Wakanda City of South Fulton’s entire law enforcement division led entirely by African-American women; publicly acknowledged as “black girl magic”

Yeah, if I were still living in South Fulton county, I’d be happier if the law enforcement arm they weren’t doing photoshoots and were actually doing some work.  I’m not entirely sure this is such a great story to break currently, because for those who don’t really follow what’s going down in the City of South Fulton, the whole place is kind of in shambles, infrastructure wise.

The fact that they can’t even land on a name for the city goes to show just how disorganized and lacking in structure the whole place is in general, but the law enforcement is a whole other story.  Seldom does a day goes by where the front page of the AJC doesn’t have some sort of story that contains the words “shooting,” “killed,” “crime,” “South Fulton,” or any combination of them on it, because the crime is that out of control down there and continuously getting worse.

It’s the primary reason why I sold my house and moved away, and not a day goes by whenever I see a crime story emerging from down there, that I’m so glad to have gotten out of there when I did, even if it meant taking a loss on the house and going through a little bit of separation anxiety of parting ways with my first owned home, even if it was in a rapidly deteriorating area.

And as I’ve said numerous times, I’m still subscribed to the Nextdoor community online for my old neighborhood, because it’s giving me constant reminders and daily insight to just how much South Fulton is continuing to spiral downward.  I can see first-hand from people that still live there just how much they’re frustrated and exasperated with the escalating crime problems down there, and this is exactly why I’m not the least impressed by articles about how South Fulton’s law enforcement is helmed entirely by African-American women.

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What’s not racist versus what is

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It’s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they’re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they’ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame.  This week’s staged offense is a story about a girl in Utah who went to her high school prom wearing a Chinese qipao dress; it doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but the thing is that the girl wasn’t Chinese or any sort of Asian descent, and suddenly she’s a racist, she’s culturally appropriating, and she’s offending many, many people.

Speaking as an Asian person, I’ll say this: a not-Chinese person wearing a qipao is NOT racist.  Period, full stop.

It also isn’t cultural appropriation, which honestly shouldn’t really exist in terms of clothing, because if the whole world wanted to get technical, it would be quite the contrary and the vast majority of the planet would be appropriating clothing that was manufactured probably in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam or any other country where cheap, slave-wage labor is available.  If place of origin is what decides what culture clothing belongs to, then just about every American is culturally appropriating someone else’s clothing.

And historically, there have been litanies of women who have worn qipaos or other traditional Chinese garments who weren’t Chinese.  Whether they were celebrities or dignitaries from other countries visiting China, or expats living in China who eventually starting wearing local clothing out of convenience.  There is zero difference between people like these and a teenage girl wearing a qipao for her prom.  She’s in fact pretty and wears it well, and the Chinese originators of the garment would probably be proud to see it being worn to a meaningful event like a teenager’s prom by someone who claims to really love it.

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