By some act of divine providence, or perhaps fools' luck, I stumbled across a work very relevant to our previous discussion on depictions of Asian Women, though, I have a sneaking suspicion that someone already did a show and tell on this. If that is the case, please forgive me for being redundant!
As part of the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, a student of Macalester College named Rachel Rostad presented a poem entitled "To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang." The poem is focused on how the character, Cho Chang, falls into the several stereotypes of Asian women, including submissiveness, and a proclivity to be romantically infatuated with American/European men, as well as stereotypes about Asians at large (super intelligence). The author also addresses the lack of non-white characters throughout the book series (albeit briefly). Particularly interesting points made by the author about include:
1) Cho's name- The author points out that both Cho and Chang are last names, popular in Korea., so the Chinese character has two Korean last names (though Cho and Chang both have meanings in Mandarin as well).
2) Comparisons to other movies- The author points out that Cho's depression after being without her European lover falls into a trope begun much earlier by films such as Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon.
I'd invite everyone to check out the video (link below), and offer any comments!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFPWwx96Kew
This is really interesting and I never noticed all the stereotypes that she fell under. This video started off funny but suddenly become really serious so I think that she did a really good job of getting that point across.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about Asian American women's presentation in media until I took this class and now I see it everywhere. I was watching breaking bad last night and the only asian character had a thick accent and acted within these stereotypes. It's ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this poem. I've seen it and was thinking of bringing it in for show and tell, but you beat me to it! I think she does a remarkable job of captivating her audience and getting people to think about this portrayal of an Asian female character that the majority of people would not have noticed before.
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