More on the AsAms on screen...

Well I have to say that i definitely found that film very informative and it did bring to light things i never really noticed. Like i always enjoyed seeing Asian Americans on screen, just in any type of role. But now i see how 2D these roles are, like the kung fu artist and nerds, and it kind of ruins my past impressions of these movies and tv shows. I remember seeing my first kung fu/martial arts movie, jackie chan in the drunken master with my dad and thinking that it was soooo cool. From then on, i avidly watched these movies but there never was any other kind of movie that highlighted the asian american as a kung fu film did. I was simply oblivious to it. As i got older, I began watching filipino movies made by filipinos in tagalog and even though they had action movies resembling kung fu and action films made in western civization, they also made dramas and comedies (basically films in every genre). Through these movies and soap operas, i realized how talented and 3-dimensional an asian actor/actress is. Asians have talent too, some were just such amazing performers that i don't really have words to describe them. Then I began seeing a trend of Asian American, more specifially Filipino-Americans, leaving the U.S. to become entertainers in their native homelands where there family originated from but not necessarily where they were born. These talented actors, actresses, performers, etc. are flowing out of the U.S. because of how it is especially hard for an Asian American to make it in their home country, America. We need to create better and more opportunities for our kind to find work and prove how talented and worthy they are for the spotlight. We need to create a demand for them so that more roles for them become available and hopefully they will be able to leave the stereotypical roles that we've grown accustomed to seeing them in. Then once we've created a demand for them, we must continue to support them so that they can continue to grow and evolve. Basically let's create a justified hype for Asian Americans, make them visible to the public eye.

Another thing i wanted to talk about this week was how much i enjoyed our dicussion in class on friday because, even though we strayed from the subject matter, the format actually began to feel like a real discussion. We might have not really talked about what we were supposed to talk about, the discussion got most of the class involved unlike how it usually is with the same students participating and the ackward silences. Did anyone notice that we didn't have to resort to pre-prepared discussion questions because we had so many students actively particpating. I really just wanted to point that out because that was something i especially liked about this week in class. If i could choose, i would like all our discussions to be like that because we were actually really and truly discussing. Hopefully i wasn't the only one that enjoyed it.

-Precious