Turning Japanese

Above is a recording of an excellent interview with my personal role model George Takei. There's this other guy too, but I don't know what's the deal with him.

Growing up as an Asian-American in the 80's I didn't have many asian role models on TV. It was mostly just George Takei and Martin Yan. (This may explain why I like cooking and Sci-Fi so much.)

Although it seems that even today a more progressive and racially sensitive age in which we live in, there are still paltry examples of asians in the media. What's more it seems that must be a deficit of Asian-Americans in Southern California, becuase white people are taking the burden of playing asian roles. Everyone from Goku in the Dragonball Z movie to the problematic casting choices of "Avatar the Last Airbender", or the odd casting of Jake Gyllenhaall as the Prince of Persia. Of course good news is that there are groups now that make definate strides in turning this around.

Of course the interesting issue for me wouldn't be in terms of just policy changes, but something more subtle such as actual perceptions. As much as I sometimes fancy the idea of changing perceptions, I often come into the conundrum of who has authority on what is the "right" perception. What is seemingly straightforward can become quite grey in practice. My friend's mother once acused her daughter of "Japing out on her" and she was shocked that her mother was using such language. Although to her defense, it wasn't that long ago that such terms were not taboo. These terms and perceptions of Asia do not exist in a vacuum but are heavily contextual in the events of the time. How we deem them as appropriate or not must always be in context of the country's military and economic relationship.