MS 190: Authorship is the course website for the Fall 2006 Media Studies senior seminar at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
projansky
making films asian american
Submitted by gwen on 20 September 2006 - 11:50am.Last week's bell hooks essay discussed the fine line between African American authors becoming defined by broad stereotypes of African American culture, and dismissing or distancing themselves from the identity completely. "Making Films Asian American" touches on the same issue, asking whether Asian American filmmakers can push the boundaries of categorized "Asian American low-budget cinema" while resisting the crossover to mainstream (white) hollywood cinema. Projansky and Ono quote Roddy Bogawa's essay, "An(other) Reflection on Race?": "For artists of color, expectations of what their work should investigate simultaneously dictate what the work should not explore...They construct Asian-American filmmaking as a uniform practice, ignoring the diverse complexities of each film and each filmmaker. Their function is to stereotype, control, and marginalize" (277). Still, Asian American filmmakers who wholly resist definition as Asian Americans compromise an important part of their identity: "[Peter X. Feng] notes that Asian and Asian American filmmakers tend to cross over to relatively big-budget Hollywood pictures only when they "have either submerged their Asian identities to make films about white Americans or have added Asian 'flavor' to Hollywood films" (265).
- gwen's blog
- Login to post comments
- Read more


Recent comments
1 year 41 weeks ago
1 year 41 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago
1 year 43 weeks ago