Goodnight, Grasshopper.

[hannahchan]

So. David Carradine just died.

I've always had a very conflicted relationship with Carradine. When I was younger, we watched Kung Fu (reruns--I'm not that old) all the time. We used to quote it to each other, call each other Grasshopper. We also watched Quincy (because of Sam) and Star Trek (because we were dorks, but also because of Sulu), but

Comments

psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[wasabi_poptart]

This is what I see from an outside perspective:

I see a Caucasian woman who culturally identifies as a Chinese bitterly resenting a Caucasian man who assumes the physical charactersitics of a Chinese. This makes perfect sense. You are Chinese on the inside, but not on the outside, and I imagine this caused quite a bit of conflict for you growing up. A Caucasian person "becoming" Chinese simply by applying bad pancake makeup therefore poses a personal insult to you, way more so than to a racially-born Chinese person, who wouldn't have the same sharply conflicted issues of cultural identity.

Remember that movie "Imitation of Life"? How Sarah Jane tried so hard all her life to "pass" as Caucasian and deny her African-American heritage? Because in the 1950's it was a good thing to be white and a bad thing to be black? We live in way more complicated times; there is no good or bad, just what we look like and what we identify with. No wonder David Carradine pretending to be Chinese would piss you off so much!

I recommend watching "Gentleman's Agreement" ASAP. Not just to drool over Gregory Peck.

Re: psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[hannahchan]

Ha! You know, I totally didn't even see it till you pointed it out, but yeah, I kind of pulled a Carradine myself, didn't I? Except I didn't really have a choice: One day, I just woke up and my whole family was Chinese, and as a kid, you just roll with that kind of stuff when it happens.

Race is such a weird subject, intrinsically, isn't it? The other day, someone brought up a mental exercise they'd had to do in grad school, of deciding whether, if you had to change one thing about yourself, you'd choose being less smart, less educated, less attractive or a different race. "Oh my god, there was a point in my life when I would have killed to be Chinese!" I piped up, without thinking. "It would have made my life so much easier!"

It turns out that, in constructing the exercise, no one had considered that 1) someone might consider being non-white an advantage, and 2) someone might consider "non-white" to refer to anything other than African-American. We have a long way to go for our ideas and discussions about race to catch up with the realities on the ground, is I guess what I'm saying.

Re: psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[wasabi_poptart]

What a strange question. The obvious answer is "less educated." Because you can always get more, if you really want it. And if you don't really want it, then it's not such a priority for you that it would really matter.

Education is over-rated. Being over-educated has made me a lot of fun at parties, but that's about it, really.

Re: psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[hannahchan]

I think the question was supposed to be about which factor you thought would reduce your chances of getting a good job or something. But yeah, dumbass question to start out with--though I was getting it re-told to me at a party after a few beers, so I might not be doing it justice.