Foul Fish

by 8RG

The infamous Courtney Stodden is apparently continuing to develop her acting bug. She's made a commercial for some company playing the role of a mermaid fished from the sea by two young men. One of those young men happens to be Asian (Peter Kim, according to the credits). You can find it with a search, I'm sure, if you want to see it.

Sadly, despite the fact that he 'gets the girl' in this sketch (or, actually, half the girl considering her fishy nether regions), his role is once again as a caricature of an Asian man living in the West. He wears nerdy glasses while he fishes off the cliff, and speaks in a heavy, halting, broken accent - repeating the phrase "I score!" several times.

References are then made to 'hooking up' in connection to 'scoring' by his fellow fisherman (played by Steven J. Robinson), just to make sure the audience is in the correct mindset for the next gag lined up to play on stereotypes. His first catch of the day is a smallish fish while the background music switches to a pseudo-Asian twang. His buddy proclaims it only an appetizer in frustration - since he is starving by now.

Oh, I see what you did there... yeah - a small fish - and all those other symbolic implications of small in reference to Asian men. It's all resolved of course when the Kim character gets a "bigger hook". I can only shake my head at such ham-fisted story lines - even in this small change commercial.

Courtney wearing a tail is then hauled onto shore so that she can flop around and prune up her face in her trademarked weird looking, non-sexy convulsions while making an overly obvious double entendre. Just more blah, blah, blah at this point. Nothing original or creative here.

This 'fish' is just old. And foul.

YouTube Trying to Fix What "Ain't Broke"

by 8RG

We're not pleased to see that YouTube has removed our 'Friends' module (apparently this is part of the new 'upgrades' which we are avoiding as long as possible). Our purpose for having these modules visible on our page is to help others locate and support new creative artists, visionaries, histories, experiences, perspectives, opinions etc. from the Asian community.

By removing the public module and channel icons from our front page against our will and replacing it with what seems to be a clunky invisible 'Contacts' list in our 'Inbox', YouTube has destroyed what we consider to be an important networking tool in our efforts to bring more positive exposure to those in the Asian community who are working so hard to be seen.

So far, our 'Subscribers' module has survived these recent changes. Though there are no plans in the near future to create our own videos (though that may change down the road as we continue to grow), feel free to subscribe to our channel if you wish your own channel avatar and link to be more easily available to anyone who browses our pages. And of course, we attempt to subscribe ourselves to as many Asian related channels that we stumble across as we can.

We get frustrated because we feel that we have to spend as much time attempting to overcome or work around regular glitches, adapting our pages to the unexpected 'upgrades' which alters everything that we thought we had set just the way that it would work best for our purposes, or relearning where all of the functions have been moved after each 'change' as we do seeking out new Asian related information to share with others. It is even more frustrating when functions and tools that we used regularly because they best served our purposes for existing are removed completely and there is nothing that we can do about it.

Thanks for your patience and we apologize for the changes that we really have no control over...

Small Steps

by Lori:

So often in online community discussion groups we hear complaints about how the western media have marginalized Asians, largely relegating them to stereotypical roles and casting Caucasian actors even in movies based on Asian heroes. We're hungry to see art truly reflect life, and we know that a wealth of Asian talent exists out there which is being overlooked, if not outright snubbed. However, positive portrayals of Asians have lately been sneaking in through one of media's unlikely back doors...reality shows.

While I'm not generally a fan of reality TV, it's certainly heartening to see Asian contestants making a good showing in, and often winning, a diverse array of competitions on reality shows. Some of these include Peter Wong of HGTV's All American Handyman; John Jung and Carolyn Bee from Ford Focus Rally America, which received coverage on Current TV; and multiple members of various dance groups on shows like America's Best Dance Crew. And of course we can't forget the original Asian reality star, Yul Kwon from Survivor. The great thing about these programs is that they're showing Asians in non-stereotypical circumstances, acting just like anybody else, and letting mainstream audiences see people who resemble their next-door neighbors, once you look past their ethnicity.

So while we're still waiting for a true blockbuster Asian superstar in the western media, these humble folks on reality shows deserve some serious kudos for quietly representing Asians in a positive light, through an outlet that reaches millions of "average Joe" viewers. It may well be that these small steps end up going further toward creating a more color blind society, than would one big star who could easily be dismissed as an exceptional talent. If nothing else, it gives us one really great reason to tolerate reality TV!