asianness, whiteness
angry asian man did a great interview with John Cho recently; this is my favorite part, Cho explaining why he thinks Harold & Kumar resonated so strongly with Asian American moviegoers:
I think there’s something, from a racial standpoint, an attitude that feels accurate… And I think it might be the fact that it addresses race as we do—as people of color do—that we’re aware of it, that we live with it, but it doesn’t consume us. And sometimes, white media thinks that we’re obsessed with it, and then Asian American films… we make films that obssess over our race. It’s an hour and a half of people talking about what it means to be Asian.
But Harold and Kumar addresses it, then doesn’t, then addresses it, then kind of addresses it, then laughs at it… and then somebody smokes pot. You know, which kind of feels like life, which feels accurate.
Which brings me to Stuff White People Like, which lots of people—most, if not all, of them white—sent me all throughout March. if you’re wondering why I never talked about it here, it’s because it really ticks me off and I couldn’t articulate why until Adam put his finger on it, in a conversation with someone else:
me: it’s all over because it’s by white people for white people and it doesn’t challenge them on race
bexns: so white people trying to make fun of themselves?
me: it’s a celebration of whiteness pretending that it’s a critique of whiteness
Bingo! So of course, one of the top posts on there is entry 11, asian girls, and the person that sent Stuff White People Like to my alumni mailing list was a jackass I briefly dated who turned out to have a raging asian fetish. Ugh, so gross.
Stuff White People Like is a bit of a mystery to me. I quite like it, but I’m not entirely sure what my reasons are for liking it, and I’m also not entirely sure why the people who don’t like it, don’t.
There are so many people that like and don’t like it among people I like that I can’t invoke the usual coping mechanism and say that the people who don’t like it are wrong. So it must be a question of taste (unless it’s something deeper and even more interesting). But–huh? And what taste? People feel quite strongly about it.
Is there agreement that there is a category of “white people,” in much the same way that “soccer moms” and “investment bankers” exist? (With a less provocative name, perhaps, but do there exist people with the same likes?)
“it’s a celebration of whiteness pretending that it’s a critique of whiteness.” This one I don’t get this. I think of the joke of SWPL as structurally similar to say, The Colbert Report, which is not a celebration of conservatism.
I’ve always found the ‘Stuff White People Like’ website really irritating too, and I also couldnt quite explain why, but your friend Adam nailed it. It’s the same reason I don’t like all that ‘jewtopia’ stuff.. just another way to keep up the exclusivity…