Five hours for the history of Asian Americans!? Wtf? That's a lot of ground to cover. I just finished watching Ken Burns/PBS 2014 documentary on The Roosevelts. It was 14 hours. It was great, incidentally. Beautiful music too.
For anyone who didn't see last night's shows check it out online. The story of the Uno family is one of those that would be great fiction if it wasn't true and an amazing look at how Japanese Internment and WWII divided a family.
Yeah the actor does seem pretty wooden but I think it serves the character well and his being half white is not a throwaway line it is important to understand his motivations. Why did you make the Carradine comparisons the actor definitley does not look white IMO.
14 hrs? Yikes! I am watching the reruns on PBS and I can't see how they can stretch this out for 14hrs.
To me he doesn't look all that Asian either. As soon as he appeared on screen I could tell he wasn't all Asian and not Chinese.
Indians usually left out under that umbrella. Oriental and Desi is a better fit than East Asian and Indian, but I'm not touching that landmine just to simplify things. Using those words does overshadow people from countries outside of mainstream frequency. Speaking of overshadowing...There's some Asian groups that are more successful on a per capita basis (indian, korean, etc...) but that overshadows groups that are brought here as indentured servants and live pennies to the dollar doing menial tasks. That inequality gap might penalize dirt poor students who can't qualify for scholarships, grants or even college admissions because of quotas taken up by "similar looking" people. So comparing minorities is a big trap. Crossing an ocean to get here usually means you have the money or smarts to make a living. When ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns were encouraged as unofficial segregation, that movement brought a lot of outside money and access that other minorities did not have. Government welfare was helpful, but wasn't the only thing keeping those communities alive and thriving. Heck this article claims Asian successes also came because attitudes against Asians changed before, not after. Tons of info there on the origins of the "model minority" (new to me too).
The series does include Indian and other immigrants from the Indian subcontinent as Asian American and there are several stories about them. One is how Indian Americans tried to get the USSC to classify them as "white" and while the court said that they were "Caucasian" they weren't "white".
[shameless self-promo] Now that the series has aired I can reveal that I got a preview of it. I was in the running as a local Asian American artist by Twin Cities Public television to be part of an event around this series. If I had been selected I would've been commissioned to do an original piece of art based off of the series. Unfortunately didn't get it but while I was being considered did record a song dealing with Asian American history. I wrote this years ago and had performed it publicly but didn't have a good recording. I redid it and recorded it at home but was too late to submit it. Am sharing it here. This song is about the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad. They worked under brutal conditions with little pay and many gave their lives to build the railroad. The first pic of the video is the ceremony when the railroad was officially completed at Promontory Point in 1869. There was no recognition of the Chinese workers. The last shot is descendents of railroad workers and other Chinese Americans at Promontory Point 150 years later.
I think the real turning point for Asian and WASP relationship was the late 70's. There were a large number of Asian immigrants most from Vietnam that came and there was very little crime. There were also a lot of American soldiers that were in Vietnam and Korea that increased understanding between the cultures. Americans got a group that worked hard, didn't complain much, and didn't increase crime.
I'm going to beg to differ. The wars in Korea and Vietnam I think hardened negative attitudes towards Asians. The term "gook" came from the Korean war and was reused to refer to the Vietnamese. See the movie "Full Metal Jacket" and the attitudes the US Marines displayed towards the Vietnamese, from what I've heard from friends families who served in Vietnam that was a pretty accurate portrayal of how US troops felt about the Vietnamese, both the VC and the RVN who were US Allies. In the early 80's Vincent Chin was killed in Detroit by a white father and son who were upset about loss of US car manufacturing jobs to the Japanese. Vincent Chin was even Japanese they just saw an Asian. These incidents were covered in the series. Also in the 80's there were tensions between white shrimpers and newly arrived Vietnamese refugee shrimpers in Galveston Bay. That reached a head when the Klan burned several Vietnamese boats in Kemah. Unfortunately that incident wasn't covered in the series.
Risking entering D&D territory but relations between Asian Americans and the rest of America isn't perfect now either. During this pandemic there have been attacks, harassment and fear of Asians over the Coronavirus. Like Vincent Chin isn't doesn't matter if you're Chinese or not as a Korean woman had her jaw broken and Hmong in Minnesota have been targeted. Thankfully things have quieted down in the last few weeks. This is one area where I will give Trump credit. He did, after awhile come out and say that Asian Americans weren't to be blamed. I noticed he's also stopped calling it "the Chinese Virus."
read your history book the socio economic drivers leading to the Chinese exclusion act in the late 1800s in the early 1940s, when Japan torpedoed the Oregon coast and bombed pearl harbor
It'll always be like this with China breathing down our necks. Americans aren't used to feeling outcompeted. I think it'll get worse till November before it gets better...
@jiggyfly I've watched the first 5 episodes of Warrior and it's winning me over. Like I said I'm glad that it was made and addressing a part of history that most don't know about, along with giving a vehicle for Asian American actors and story, but just judging it critically as a show wasn't sold on it. I think it's gotten better as it's gone along and I guess that's just natural for a show especially one with a lot of characters to get going. I'm still not going to say it is great TV. For me I still think the biggest weakness is the main character. I understand Ah-Sam is in the mold of the John Ford quiet type heroes but I just think Andrew Koji doesn't have the acting chops to pull it off. His character is supposed to follow what Bruce Lee envisioned but while his martial arts are decent I just don't feel either the charisma or the menace of Bruce Lee. I know that's like saying that I just don't get the same feeling about Andrew Wiggins that I do about Michael Jordan but this is the guy who's supposed to carry the series. When he does the Bruce Lee smirk and winks before he kicks ass he looks more like a rich annoying pretty boy than he does a Tong enforcer. Also the romance between him and Penny seems both too obvious and forced but also neither actor really seems to have much chemistry. Many of the other characters are very interesting and played really well. The police Seargent Bill is great as a good man in a bad place wrestling with his own demons and the actor does a great job. The fixer Choi is a great character very well played and I wish they would give him a bigger role. Ah Toy the scheming Madame is also a great character very well acted who I wish would get more screen time. Young Jun played by Jason Tobin is essentially the same character he played in Better Luck Tomorrow but he does a great job at portraying someone trying to live up to an image but very troubled by his inadequacies. My favorite character though is Mai Ling the blood thirsty concubine and power behind the throne. I had never heard of the actor Dianne Doan but will look for her in the future. She looks and talks like a typical cute Californian Asian girl like many that I went to school with at CAL but that just adds to how great of a villian she is. There's a scene where she's watching a man she poisoned die and while her expression is completely calm she just conveys a sense of menace as she's enjoying watching the man die a horrible death.
Glad you are enjoying it and I feel pretty much the same except that I think Ah-Sam is supposed to be a rich pretty boy based on his background but I agree he is not a great actor but Its not distracting for me and I certainly don't judge him on a Bruce Lee scale. This would have been a great vehicle for Bruce Lee, who would you have liked to see in that role? Yeah the romance with Penney falls flat and does not really make sense.
The role was made for Donny Yen but he's too old and too big of a name for this production. Tony Jaa might be a good choice but he's also too big and I don't think he speaks English. There are a lot of good HK actors out there. Howabout Max Zhang fighting Donnie Yen here from Ip Man 3 Of that matter Danny Chan who's played Bruce Lee in the Ip Man franchise. Neither of these guys English is probably as good as Andrew Koji but the character doesn't say much and Bruce Lee's accent never held him back.
Interesting choices but I am not as down on him as you are and will be interested to see if he grows into the role, I don't think he is written very well so far so maybe they can refine the character.
