Yellow Fever/Yellow Immunity

[greywing]

You probably don't know who Yani Tseng is. But that's ok, because I don't even remember why I know who Yani Tseng is. She does, however, have a few things in common with SNSD: she's an '89er who's claimed a heaping chunk of #1s and just happens to be Asian. She's also the non-face face of the LGPA . . . at least in America

Comments

[greywing]

Yes, I feel that this is how race matters have run as well and replied to JKO above in that same vein. That there are certain stereotypes working against Asian Americans in these pop culture fields and that they might not be easily overcome. It's a built-in prejudice that may be more subconscious (and insidious because of that) than anything else.

Sports is an interesting field because we do have Asian American athletes that we have been proud to lift high, like Kristie Yamaguchi. Or Michelle Wie.who is of Korean descent. There are also foreign athletes that leak into our fields, such as Yao Ming. But these can often be exceptions rather than rules: I remember watching the trailer to "No Look Pass," which follows a young Asian American woman basketball player and her best friends make a remark like, "She's one of the best basketball players I know and she's Asian," as if to imply that Asian and basketball do not go together--they're as big, they're not as strong, they're not as talented, etc.

So I'm not quite sure where and how the line gets drawn. That is, in the world of music, where do you expect to see Asians? As the classical prodigies. I think the lines are redrawn as occasions arise, but I don't know what the mix of ingredients or the criteria of circumstances has to be for that to happen.

(And hello~ Have we spoken before?)

[koganbot]

I cannot say for sure if we've spoken before, this being the Web, where everyone changes names every six minutes. But probably not. Twas Mat (askbask) who brought me to snsd_ffa, twas a Spanish fellow who calls himself anhh and who was interested in my writing because he thinks some of it's "theory" who introduced me to K-pop, twas E.via and 2NE1 who made me fall in love (there's an off-the-wall post where I decide that E.via is the Rolling Stones).

Also (to change subjects), I'm a massive Jane Austen stan. Didn't click the links where male gaze gets discussed, however (such articles usually make me want to throw things), but in reading P&P I get a huge sense of Elizabeth's emotional sensuousness and a sensuousness to her strength of character. So as Darcy is falling in love with her during her visits to Bingley's bungalow (this is suggested by Austen in a very few admiring words of his) I can, with absolute conviction, feel that it's necessary and feel it happening. And none of this takes away from Elizabeth being an agent of desire as well as an object, or her being most of the eyes and ears of the novel, and carrying most but not all of its insights.

One thing that hit me in re-readings is how extraordinarily isolated Elizabeth and Darcy are, from each other and everyone else. Elizabeth's isolation isn't as all-encompassing as Darcy's; in her world she can't talk about Darcy with anyone, so she's all alone in having to figure out her truths about herself, relating to him; but she does have emotional connections to the people around her - she generates emotional connections - so even though no one else has as discerning and subtle a vision as she does, she can share her other truths. But Darcy... he's isolated all around, not only is there no intellectual match for him among his friends and relations, there's not much of an emotional world, either, except for what he tries to generate in his heart for the few people he really cares about. Elizabeth has more to offer him than he to her,* but she doesn't need as much from him, either. In one way the happy ending is unfair to her, since she doesn't get as much; but there is a romance-novel rescue fantasy/power fantasy in it too, for her, since without her he'd have been hard and stunted.

*Even if the story arc is swiped from Cinderella.

[greywing]

I saw you featured over at Intl Wota, kogan! Unfortunately, our theory heydays here at FFA seem to be behind us, but occasionally we dive into a meaty subject. And you can always hit up AG if you want to get deluged with Jpop. XD

Some people reading this comment may be confused as to how Jane Austen fits into K-pop and let me just say: She doesn't. XD

Sort of an aside: As a lesbian, I often find myself in a bind when talking about the male gaze. It's an interesting problem, crocodile brain vs. indignation.

Certainly, however, the novel is channeled through Elizabeth. What visual adaptations have done--or even fanfics--is actually to introduce a wider range of points of view. There is very little direct treatment of Darcy in the novels themselves and because of that we actually don't know the make up of his social circles. We can make assumptions given his status and position. He obviously is a man of great influence and leisure: he can winter in London, for example. He is blessed with a good, jovial friend in Bingley, though Bingley will cave to Darcy's opinion.

But as Darcy says to Elizabeth, he was raised with all the right values, just not guided in the manner in which to practice those values. He was raised to be selfish, to look at those beneath him as those beneath him, and thus why he doesn't cultivate connections the same way Elizabeth. But Elizabeth is about wit and fun; she is about laughter and being able to see the silliness in the world around her. Hers is a vision with a cynical edge, whereas someone like her older sister Jane is about believing in the best. But Elizabeth is also an idealist, a dreamer, a romantic. Charlotte, really, is the grounded one in the novel: the woman knows what she has to do to secure her place. She is a font of wisdom, just not of romance.

[koganbot]

Some people reading this comment may be confused as to how Jane Austen fits into K-pop and let me just say: She doesn't. XD

Well then, we'd damn well better make her fit.

I got the sense, reading Emma, that in Austen's world a smart woman who didn't have the opportunity to constructively use her intelligence was a danger to herself and others (this of course is presented very lovably, but it's there nonetheless, in the subtext). This never flowers into a critique of that world, and presumably if Austen had been allowed to vote, she'd have voted Tory. She was a contemporary of Byron, and was a generation younger than Paine and Wollstonecroft, and she knew how to read, and knew of alternatives.

What does this have to do with Korea? I don't know. I know very little about Korea. My guess is that if I can find a way to see myself in Austen's (different) world, any Korean could too.

East Asia has had as tumultuous and traumatic a previous 150 years as anywhere I can think of except maybe the Congo and Poland. This doesn't mean that it's wrong to call Asian cultures "conservative" or "traditionalist," as they sometimes are called, and or that it's wrong to talk about their not yet having had certain revolutions, as is suggested downthread. But my guess is that if there are Koreans who have a sense of "this is the way things have been and are," they're subconsciously putting themselves at odds with a good deal of their own experience. I would guess that the legacy of the Reformation and the Enlightenment was as unavoidable for them or their ancestors as it was for my Eastern European Jewish ancestors. And I think the legacy inevitably upends an ordered sense of authority and hierarchy. But I don't assume that people in the "West" have a leg up as to what to do with such legacies. Not sure what I'm saying, except that it's problematic for me to expect that "progress" will lead other people in my direction, even though that is kind of an expectation of mine when I'm forgetting to remember to think.

Ack! Just did a search for Intl Wota and I see that it's the site of someone whom I hadn't heard of until a few days ago and whom I wrote a critical post about yesterday. I don't think my post was mean, but I did call something he said "shallow." Well, it was shallow, even if the fellow seems to be a good guy. The comment thread it was on was under an lj post from last June, so he probably won't see it.

[greywing]

It's funny you say that Elizabeth can't talk about Darcy to anyone, but that's not necessarily true. (Nor is it true that Darcy doesn't talk about Elizabeth: certainly his little sister Georgiana is quite eager to meet Elizabeth because her older brother has been speaking about her--even after Elizabeth has turned down his proposal! Bingley certainly gets the good news of their engagement as we can see from the way he greets her the next day.) She dug her own hole. She badmouthed him so badly to everyone--i.e. she talked of him, but so negatively--to begin with that it was hard for her to eat her words and suddenly change tact. Not only that, but she'd spent considerable time also fawning over Wickham, who loved to air his grievances about how wronged he was by Darcy, so that by the time she learned of the true circumstances, she was faced with the heaping prejudice wrought by the incorrect talk and gossip that she had helped set in motion cautioning her to silence. One of the huge plot points is how that silence comes back to haunt her family: If she had cleared Darcy's name and revealed the taint on Wickham, we wouldn't have had the whole crisis with Lydia. Even then, the only time she truly speaks out and finally admits, publicly, that she was wrong in her originally voiced opinion is when Darcy proposes to her and asks her father for her hand. Mr. Bennet can't believe it! Mr. Darcy, whose name his daughter besmirched, asking for her hand! Elizabeth has to assure her father that she was wrong--and wrongly prejudiced--before.

What is delightful about P&P is that Elizabeth isn't as discerning as she wants to think she is. Comeuppance comes for both her and Darcy, so that they walk parallel paths of character development, of rising high and being brought low. Which is why I think it's interesting that you think that she gets less in their marriage than he does. What Elizabeth grew up fearing was to be stuck in a marriage like that of her own parents: a marriage of unequals, without respect, without really love or regard. Darcy, however, gives Elizabeth all of those things, comes to her as her equal--and some money, to boot (which ensures that she can, in fact, look after her family in the wake of her father's death and the entailment going to Mr. Collins; Kitty especially benefits because her marriage prospects go up considerably with two sisters married to such men with good standing who open up the doors to larger society for her). The vision Austen is pushing us toward is a partnership in truth. They give each other fuller lives: more society, more openness, more interactions. Even Georgiana benefits. You think only Elizabeth taught Darcy lessons? Not at all. He humbled her by not being the things she thought he was and rising to the occasion, by making her confront and admit that she isn't always right. She did the same for him. It's a hard lesson to learn, especially for two very prideful people.

Ah, P&P~

[arbitrary_greay]

Sort of an aside:
Look at this, I can link it to Kpop!
Hah, have you seen this? My sister is always very vocal about her opposition to implicating females regarding the male gaze, so I was feeling the unease throughout that article. We so need a separate thread on these topics, so many seemingly chicken-or-egg scenarios that need to be worked out.

[greywing]

My sister is always very vocal about her opposition to implicating females regarding the male gaze

Clarify that. She thinks women are complicit or not complicit in the ogling?

I had not seen it and reading it one of my first thoughts was, "Skinny jeans less sexual than hot pants? HA!"

Ah, the male gaze. What's the shortest route to this issue . . . Way back when, when I was a wee little one, my sister's best friend said something that would warp and rationalize the way I saw women for many years: "Women look at other women to compare."

Turns out it wasn't necessarily true in my case, but it felt nice to know that any checking out of other women I did wasn't so unusual or uncalled for, filtered, supposedly, through the "male gaze."

I'd actually love to have a discussion about this topic with a bunch of people if we could ever achieve a sit down, round table format.

[arbitrary_greay]

This basically sums up her stance. Whether that means complicity or not is the entire chicken-or-egg discussion.