R1 Response Edit - Sam McFadden

Veronica Bruscini

“…Perhaps the most compelling similarity between Asian and Native American film portrayal is again, the lack of strong leading men. Asian characters are pigeon-holed as the “wimpy” businessman, the mystic Oriental, the karate expert or the thug; Native Americans fare little better, relegated to the roles of the scalper, medicine man, spirit guide, or embittered resident of an “Indian” reservation…”

Rebecca Meekins

“…Yang’s story harbors a deep racial theory that is expressed in each of the three articles, that theory being Orientalism. It is no longer simply a means of domination as Said explains, but as Ma points out, it has become a way of life for most Asian Americans living in America. Orientalism is so prominent in the United States that those “misrepresentations”, as Ma calls them, become the idenitity of Asian Americans in the United States today”

Keen Hahn

“…Jin/Danny’s psychological shapeshifting and the Monkey King’s literal, physical transformation move in the beginning to conform to the projected stereotype, but then later, upon both characters’ realizations of the severe instability of such an image, the characters shift, once again psychologically and physically, into the state that they are most comfortable in, regardless of the views of the Orientalist presecription surrounding them.”

Anna Malefatto

“I find that what I am taking away from this combination of texts is a need for a way for Asian Americans to embrace their culture and heritage without being cornered into stereotypes. The young actors, writers, and directors interviewed in The Slanted Screen were certainly proud to be Asian American, but they also expressed a feeling (at least when they were children) of embarrassment that accompanied being Asian…”

Andrew Anderson

“The Asian American struggle is primarily and race struggle, but it is also a class struggle. The initial emigration of the Chinese to California in the 1800s upset the class divisions that has already been established….the anti-Asian sentiment probably has more to do with class relations that it did with race, but it set a precedent that allowed Asian Americans to be seen as inferior and exposed racism for years to come.”

Micah Martin

“The Chinese are, for a short while, regarded by the post-Civil War south as hardworking, dependable replacement for the “uppity” black workforce. Here one can see a willingness to stereotype Chinese or ‘Celestial’ culture as industrious, subservient and uncomplaining. One supporter of Chinese plantation labor even advocates the creation of a permanent caste for the Chinese in America that would leave them subject indefinitely to white authority.”

Angie Woodmansee

“…The violent hypersexuality that traditionally defines African American masculinity at least allows for the individual to retain a sexual identity – this sexual quality has been, on the other hand, entirely eliminated in the dominant discourse of Asian American masculinity, except when present as deviance or perversion. Asian American men ceased to be a threat after having been successfully feminzed, providing the opposite, though equally powerful, alien image in comparison to African American masculinity.”