Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Week Four: Shopping Malls
"I like it here. Everything is so...perfect. You walk around feeling like all your problems can be solved by the right nail polish or a new pair of shoes."
---Marissa, "The O.C."
"The O.C." is one of those guilty pleasure shows because it is, yes, incredibly vapid, but it has those moments when it makes genuine insights on the world we live in. On of those moments is shown in the video above--an entire episode called "The Mallpisode," which taps into a fantasy you probably never knew was in the collective unconscious of American consumers: being trapped inside a mall overnight. This clip made me laugh because it not only plays out the fantasy of being alone in a mall(getting to play hockey in a department store, eat mall food, sleep in the mattress showroom), but there's this great "consumer moment" when Summer and Marissa stop to check out a new product. "Hey, it's the new body shimmer. Ooh, shimmery." They're unable to occupy the space without shopping.
While the characters on "The O.C." represent the wealthiest of the wealthy, people with lower incomes still have a relationship with the shopping mall. A woman I babysat for once asked where I lived, and when she didn't quite know where in the metro I was talking about she asked me which mall it was near. "Oh, Ridgedale," she said, "I know where that is." The mall had become sort of a geographical marker for her. It's possible to map out the Twin Cities metro by the "Dales" (Brookdale, Ridgedale, Southdale, etc.), and apparently some people do. The top movie of the last month or so, "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" takes place in a mall, which suggests to me that the mall has become practically a mythical setting.
As in the quote above, I think malls serve a problem solving purpose in our world today. I live near the pretentiously named "Shoppes of Arbor Lakes" in Maple Grove, which is a fairly new mall-like development that's rapidly growing. There are so many different stores (mostly chain stores, but not all) that if you live nearby, there's no reason to venture anywhere else if you need to buy something. It becomes an all-purpose destination, one that is likely to solve any "consumer problem" you might have. It doesn't take much of a stretch in thinking to come to the conclusion that shopping centers might solve your other problems as well.
I'm not much of a shopper, so the mall isn't my favorite place to be, but I've been spending more time in malls lately in my quest to build up my "teacher wardrobe." After awhile, you start to tune in to the things marketing teams must study to know end: what about the mall environment makes people buy stuff? The most obvious example is the "shopping music" that plays loudly in most clothing stores. Besides building the "identity" of the store (and therefore the consumer that should shop there), it seems to be meant to raise the heart rate, keep energies up and inspire purchases. The perfumes that are sprayed regularly in stores like Abercrombie (yes, there are store policies on perfume spraying, and yes, it does smell HORRIBLE) are most likely meant to do the same thing. A discussion of the research that goes into environmental "shopping cues" would be an interesting one to have with young people.
The Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301977.html) was, to me, the most interesting of the readings this week. I had never strongly considered the role the government's role in encouraging consumerism as a way to gain popular favor, but it makes perfect sense to me that preoccupation with stuff is the perfect weapon against the critical thinking of the masses. If the average American is more concerned with the latest whatever than they are with the decisions being made by our country's leaders, then it's easier for those leaders to make decisions that do not represent the values of the average citizen. It is that very issue that I would make a point to discuss with my students. Teaching a critical literacy curriculum is nothing without considering what things get in the way of our critical thinking, and I think a study of shopping malls is just the thing to illuminate that point.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Week Three: Video Games
Although I have two brothers, my gaming experience up until this point has been pretty limited. My favorite game to this day is Tetris, but I remember playing Crash Bandicoot with my brothers on Playstation and taking it very seriously. However, my boyfriend is an avid gamer, committed not only to playing video games, but to analyzing and evaluating them. I must admit, dating him has been a little like going to nerd camp. This assignment to reflect on gender, gaming and education could not have come at a better time.
As a girl who admittedly does not have the patience or determination to get into a game with an extended storyline, I am drawn to games that offer more short-term entertainment--Tetris, Guitar Hero or racing games like Mario Kart. My boyfriend has put some serious thought into finding games that will appeal to me, especially after I expressed my dislike for fighting and shooting games in general. One game he had me try was Pokemon Snap, which is a variation on a shooting game that makes it non-violent. The premise is you are going on a "safari" of sorts, looking for Pokemon creatures to take pictures of. There are several criteria for good pictures, and points awarded for the best pictures. In fact, my boyfriend argues that the regular Pokemon games are a great example of games that appeal to both gender--for boys, it's a fighting/strategy game, for girls, it's a game about collecting cute creatures.
Of course, a game whose sole premise is "collecting cute things" doesn't entirely appeal to me either. Through my experiences babysitting, I've been exposed to several games that are marketed directly to girls. I have to tell you that in general, they totally suck. One is a DS game called Nintendogs whose entire premise is petting and bathing animated puppies. Another is a game that mostly involves choosing a preteen girl character and "buying" clothes for her to wear. Most of the "girl" games I've experienced tends to involve the collection and maintenance of "cute" things, with no real goal or challenge.
The articles for this week seemed to explore two possibilities for incorporating gaming into an educational setting. The first is to use games as a text to look at through a feminist lens. Because both most game developers and most game players are male, how does this affect the construction of video games? In the articles I read for this week (both of which feature the voices of female gamers), many video games alienate female players, either through their stereotyping of female characters, hypersexuality or because the type of game doesn't appeal to female players. Asking students to critically look at the construction of these games, then using the feminist lens to brainstorm ideas for improved games, seems to be a worthy assignment for adolescents. Below are two possible responses, the first from the "game girl advance" site and the second from my boyfriend's blog at Gametrailers.com:
Set up some rules and let the players play with both the gamespace and the genderspace, however they wish. Don't push girls away from games like Tomb Raider just because you're afraid boys won't like to identify with Lara. Don't insert gratuitous sex - or for that matter, violence. Make it *mean* something. Don't bind gender with too many built-in characteristics, but let girls be girls in your game. Allow a lot of different types of female characters, not just thin, pretty, busty ones.
As girls make a more and more powerful influence on the gaming market, will we see fewer damsels in distress and more female protagonists - with autonomy? I sure hope so. I think it's fruitless to try and convince people to boycott games that uphold gender norms, but I think it may be more reasonable to think that gamers as a culture may identify increasingly with flawed protagonists, skinny men, plain women, androgynous people, LGBT characters, and people on general transgressing from the norm instead of supporting it.
The second possiblility for incorporating video games in the classroom came from the second two articles, which suggested playing video games as part of classroom activities as a learning tool. The Labyrinth game described uses an internet-based puzzle game as homework to reinforce math and literacy skills taught at the middle school level. I won't address the issue of technology access here (though it is a concern) but I thought about motivation and engagement as the primary goal of using video games in the classroom. My question would be, aside from the "fun" factor, do video games increase learning and understanding of skills and concepts in ways that traditional pedagogy (worksheets, etc.) do not? To me, both of these possiblilities for using video games in the classroom should only be considered if they can offer a learning experience currently lacking in schools.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Week Two: Fandom
Resistant as I am to write ANOTHER blog entry related to "Lost," this week's topic (fandom) made it impossible for me to resist. I just finished reading the book Lost Ate My Life: The Inside Story of a Fandom Like No Other by Jon "DocArzt" Lachonis and Amy "hijinx" Johnston, which means I am now not only posess a large amount of knowledge of the television show, but I'm well versed on the topic of this particular fandom as well.
I became a fan of "Lost" in the summer of 2006, after the first two seasons had aired on ABC. My mother, who is strangely more tuned into the "hip new things" than her children sometimes, rented the DVDs and my family watched the first season on a family vacation. As far as I know, "Lost" still has the honor of the most expensive pilot episode ever produced for television, and it's the cinematic quality that money allowed, as well as the characters and mystery, that hooked my family immediately. We continue to get together every Wednesday night to watch new episodes, I bake a "Lost" related cake for season premieres, and we have plans to visit Hawaii someday to scope out filming locations.
Watching and discussing the show is one of the most fun things we do as a family, and it's pretty miraculous that all five of us enjoy the same show. Librarian Nancy Pearl describes four "doorways" people use to relate to a book: story, character, setting and language. People who value different doorways have different experiences with the same book. I believe people have the same experience with television as a text, and "Lost" is accessible to those who value story (often males, who look for action-packed programing) and to those who value character (often females, who value relationship-driven shows). So gender and individual tastes do play out in "Lost"'s fandom.
The interesting thing about "Lost," though, is that casual viewership is not allowed. The show is so complex and mysterious that it is just not accessible to those who haven't watched it from the beginning. Nikki Stafford, who writes the Finding Lost episode guide series and the blog "Nik at Nite," describes the look on people's faces "as I rave about Lost to people who’ve never seen it - “What is she TALKING about? Time traveling bunnies? Polar bears on the island? People coming back to life? I’ll stick to CSI…”" In fact, in a blog entry I myself posted in February 2005 (almost two years before watching the show myself) I mention "We talked about the show "Lost" and I reconfirmed my decision that that show is ridiculous and I'm glad I don't watch it." For that reason, when I meet another "Lost" fan, an instant connection is born. Recognizing that another person is "in it" as much as I am is a way to forge a social relationship where one doesn't exist.
One of the most interesting things I read about in Lost Ate My Life was that "Lost"'s fandom is pretty unique. Like many current shows, the internet explosion has nurtured connections between fans and encouraged the amount of internet material there is out there. But it's the connection between the fans and the writers, producers and actors who work on the show that has made "Lost" fandom most unique. "Lost"'s official fan website (www.thefuselage.com) allows fans to communicate with and question showrunners directly, and the writers make themselves available to fans at conferences as well (such as Destination L.A. and ComicCon). In fact, some aspects of how the show is run (no sweeps schedule, no repeats, an agreed-upon end date) are due mostly to fans asking for those things. No other television show has created such changes in broacasting just to appease the fans.
Another phenomenon that evidences the close relationship between showrunners and the fan community is the appearance of "Easter Eggs" in any given "Lost" episode. Easter Eggs are "anything that is more than what it seems to be within a frame of film, an episode of the show as a whole, and is intentionally put there by the creators" (Lachonis, p. 191). For example "Hurley's Numbers" (4, 8 ,15, 16, 23, 42) are a series of numbers with mysterious significance that show up in some capacity in almost every single episode. The show creators know that hardcore fans are up to the challenge of finding every single reference to any of those numbers, so they find ways to bury them within the narrative. It's a way of recognizing that "Lost" fans are some of the most intelligent and obsessed people around, and giving them a wink.
"Lost" fans are thinkers. They analyze each episode, dig out Easter Eggs, decode characters, and unravel complex narrative structures. They do outside research: if a character is seen reading Stephen Hawking, "Lost" fans are likely to pick up the book as well. Real science is often sought out to explain the science fiction. I've found myself digging out my psych textbooks to brush up on the Skinner Box and philosophy books to figure out the Locke's concept of Tabula Rasa. "Lost" fandom invites not just viewing, but reading, writing, discussion, comparison between texts, and (in my case) baking theme cakes.
I think the notion of fandom is incredibly important to the field of education, because each of our students are fans of something. The feeling of alliegance our students will feel toward baseball or Chris Brown or Heroes motivates them to do things most teachers have trouble eliciting enthusiasm for: research, discuss, ask questions, argue, write, become an expert. Our students are researching Carrie Underwood's favorite color, and alien conspiracy theories, and it's that enthusiasm for becoming an expert that would be absolutely welcome in my classroom. It's my goal to find ways to bring that inquiry not only into the teaching of skills (research and writing, for example), but also to critically look at popular culture.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Week One: Popular Culture in Schools?
Television, movies, and music provide fodder for connections among our disconnected citizenry. Why not use this, rather than belittle it?
Cameron White & Trenia Walker, Tooning In
Cameron White & Trenia Walker, Tooning In
The first three chapters in White and Walker's book Tooning In: Essays on Popular Culture and Education seem to offer several arguments in favor of incorporating texts from popular culture into the classroom. The first is that popular culture is what connects the world at the present moment in history. If you don't believe me, consider that there are people all over the country who know exactly what Rickrolling is just because they've seen the same viral videos. They're intimately aware of the characters on Gossip Girl because they watch the same episodes each week. Although their daily lives might look starkly different, students from two different parts of the country (or different socioeconomic backgrounds or different family structures) could come together to discuss the latest Coldplay album. In an increasingly isolated consumer society, it is important to recognize the things that bring people together.
The second argument in favor of using popular culture in educational settings recognizes that young people are intimately familiar with popular culture, more familiar than they are with current events or great literature. Because they are comfortable with the themes in music, movies and television, they can bring that prior knowledge to forge connections between pop culture and traditional coursework (literature, history, etc.). Students who are fans of "desert island" shows like Lost and Survivor might be able to come to a greater understanding of Lord of the Flies, for example. Prior knowledge, research shows, pushes learners to new levels of understanding, and the connections between pop culture and curriculum and plentiful. "These connections allow kids to develop the scaffolding needed to construct knowledge" (p. 5).
The third argument is that curriculum designed with popular culture topics in mind are more engaging for the students. Because watching television and movies and listening to music are activities that young people enjoy doing in their free time, why not use that enthusiasm to keep students' attention?
The fourth and most compelling argument in favor of using texts from popular culture in the classroom is to give students' hands-on instruction in "reading the world." Educational goals are changing, the book argues, and should include instruction on critical thinking skills and
"Students who are asked to read popular texts from these broader and multiple perspectives have the potential to develop a more powerful literacy to engage and explore popular culture texts" (p. 23). Young people must find ways to become critical viewers and consumers, to look at pop culture representations as both mirrors and changers of our society and to resist letting pop culture wash over them passively as entertainment
My reaction to these arguments was a resounding "duh." Perhaps it's because I not only love popular culture texts for their entertainment value but I love forging connections between those texts and traditional texts (such as history and literature). My analytical skills allow me to read the world as well as books. I grew up with the internet, which has allowed people to share in their experiences and interpretations of pop culture texts in a way generations before us have not been able to do. Viewers of television shows have the opportunity to use internet forums to discuss and analyze, and music listeners can post their own interpretations of songs on YouTube. This world is familiar to me to such an extent that I can't imagine not using TV parodies to teach Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and it would disappoint me not to teach students how to evaluate films and television.
My hope is that this course will help me to brainstorm new ways to encourage critical thinking skills through a study of pop culture texts. I did not need to be convinced by these first chapters in Tooning In (although I'm sure many outside of my generation did), and I look forward to discussing the implications of these arguments during this semester.
The second argument in favor of using popular culture in educational settings recognizes that young people are intimately familiar with popular culture, more familiar than they are with current events or great literature. Because they are comfortable with the themes in music, movies and television, they can bring that prior knowledge to forge connections between pop culture and traditional coursework (literature, history, etc.). Students who are fans of "desert island" shows like Lost and Survivor might be able to come to a greater understanding of Lord of the Flies, for example. Prior knowledge, research shows, pushes learners to new levels of understanding, and the connections between pop culture and curriculum and plentiful. "These connections allow kids to develop the scaffolding needed to construct knowledge" (p. 5).
The third argument is that curriculum designed with popular culture topics in mind are more engaging for the students. Because watching television and movies and listening to music are activities that young people enjoy doing in their free time, why not use that enthusiasm to keep students' attention?
The fourth and most compelling argument in favor of using texts from popular culture in the classroom is to give students' hands-on instruction in "reading the world." Educational goals are changing, the book argues, and should include instruction on critical thinking skills and
"Students who are asked to read popular texts from these broader and multiple perspectives have the potential to develop a more powerful literacy to engage and explore popular culture texts" (p. 23). Young people must find ways to become critical viewers and consumers, to look at pop culture representations as both mirrors and changers of our society and to resist letting pop culture wash over them passively as entertainment
My reaction to these arguments was a resounding "duh." Perhaps it's because I not only love popular culture texts for their entertainment value but I love forging connections between those texts and traditional texts (such as history and literature). My analytical skills allow me to read the world as well as books. I grew up with the internet, which has allowed people to share in their experiences and interpretations of pop culture texts in a way generations before us have not been able to do. Viewers of television shows have the opportunity to use internet forums to discuss and analyze, and music listeners can post their own interpretations of songs on YouTube. This world is familiar to me to such an extent that I can't imagine not using TV parodies to teach Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and it would disappoint me not to teach students how to evaluate films and television.
My hope is that this course will help me to brainstorm new ways to encourage critical thinking skills through a study of pop culture texts. I did not need to be convinced by these first chapters in Tooning In (although I'm sure many outside of my generation did), and I look forward to discussing the implications of these arguments during this semester.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Final Project: Media Representations of Koreans
In this blog, I will explore the portrayal of Koreans in four television shows that have come out in the last eight years. The shows I discuss offer four very different representations of Koreans: a fictional Korean couple on “Lost,” a fictional first generation Korean-American family on “Gilmore Girls,” a fictional Korean adoptee on “Arrested Development” and a Korean-American family on the reality show “Jon & Kate + 8.”
LOST
"Lost" is a science fiction drama currently in its fifth season on ABC. It tells the story of the survivors of a plane crash in the South Pacific. The show makes use of an ensemble cast, and tells the story of their survival on the mysterious island as well as makes use of flashbacks and flash forwards to develop character and plot.
Two of the survivors are Sun and Jin, a married couple from Korea. In the first episodes of Season 1, Sun and Jin are portrayed as the stereotypical Korean couple. Jin is possessive, domineering, unwilling to associate with the other passengers and Sun is his submissive wife. Despite the language barrier they face, Jin and Sun find that they have survival skills that make them indispensable during their time on the island. Jin, the son of a fisherman, provides fish for the other survivors to eat and Sun plants a garden and demonstrates her knowledge of medicinal plants. In a way, this is another stereotypical portrayal of Koreans; it suggests that they are somehow "closer to the land." In fact, it is never explained how Sun could have obtained her botanical knowledge because she is revealed through flashbacks to have grown up in a wealthy family in urban Seoul.
But as with all characters on "Lost," people are never who we think they are at first. Flashbacks complicate each character, including Jin and Sun, by showing their lives off the island. Over the course of several seasons, it is revealed that Sun's domineering corporate father disapproved of her marriage, and that the couple was on the plane in the first place to escape from Jin's crushing life as a hit man for Mr. Paik's company. Sun is shown to have been secretly learning English from a man she was having an affair with, and planned to leave Jin for. The reason for Jin’s possessiveness is explored, Sun is shown to have more agency that was originally thought, and the couple's rocky marriage is brought to the forefront on the island.
One of the primary themes of "Lost" is that on the island, outside of their usual contexts, people tend to express their true nature. The show's use of flashbacks highlights characters' previous lives off the island and contrasts their behavior to life after the crash. On "Lost" there are no "good guys" or "bad guys"--each character shows evidence of being both incredibly exemplary and incredibly flawed. The writers consistently point out that human beings are complicated, dynamic, multidimensional and that human behavior is mostly rooted in context.
I believe that Jin and Sun's portrayal of the stereotypical Korean couple is a good example of presenting characters as flat, predictable people at first and then complicating them considerably through flashbacks and the events on the island. The island itself, a new context for life outside of Korea, offers Jin and Sun a chance to break from stereotypes and build new identities. In the process, Jin and Sun come to know each other's true selves and begin a process of reconciliation.
The clip below (from Season 4, Episode 7) shows one of the final conversations between Jin and Sun in which they negotiate life after Sun's affair, Sun's pregnancy and a chance to leave the island forever:
GILMORE GIRLS
“Gilmore Girls” is a dramatic comedy show that aired on the WB from 2000 to 2007. The show is focused on mother Lorelai and daughter Rory Gilmore, but Rory’s best friend Lane Kim and her mother are also considered main characters throughout the run of the series. Lane’s family is Korean as well as Seventh Day Adventist, and enforces their traditional values in their household. Because her parents would not approve, Lane is forced to hide her obsession with rock music under the floorboards of her bedroom and seems to lead a double life. Lane loves her parents and wants to please them, but she is constantly dealing with the fact that her mother believes junk food, dating, and non-Christian music are the work of the devil.
Lane: Well, I wore a bracelet to school today. My parents were called. There was a special service in chapel, and I've been ordered to a soul-searching seminar next week. I'll be sitting between the nail-polish-wearing girl and the spicy condiment user.
Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of “Gilmore Girls,” based Lane’s character on the stories her friend Helen Pai (a producer on the show) told her about her family and childhood. “Initially, it was very weird,” says Pai about the experience. “I’m not a limelight kind of person. During the first season of Gilmore Girls, we had a panel, and there were a lot of questions about Mrs. Kim and Lane and the stereotypes. And, Amy would then explain, ‘Listen, these are real stories. They’re based on a real person.’”
While some might argue that the portrayal of the Kim family on the show reinforce stereotypes of Koreans as strict, oppressive households, many Asian viewers have identified with the personalities on the show.
“Gilmore Girls” takes place in the fictional small Connecticut town of Stars Hollow, and the people who live there are a collection of quirky, memorable characters. While the show’s protagonists are Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, the strange behavior of minor characters in Stars Hollow are just as important to the development of the story. In this way, the Kim family is just one odd family in a town full of odd families. While their Korean-ness and religious faith make them stand out, they don’t stand out any more than Taylor does for his love of the rules or Jackson does for sleeping in the vegetable patch. In many ways, the show’s setting actually normalizes the Kim family.
Many of Lane’s storylines on “Gilmore Girls” highlight the conflicts between the traditional values of Lane’s parents and the largely white, secular values of Stars Hollow and the world at large. These conflicts are done with equal amounts of humor and emotion, and they almost always show Lane mediating the two cultures. This conversation about gifts shows the regular miscommunication that goes on between Lane and her family:
Lane: You have to look at what a gift says to the other person, not to you. Remember two years ago, I got my mom that perfume?
Rory: Yeah.
Lane: Okay, to me that said, "Hey Mom, you work hard, you deserve something fancy". Now to my mother, it said, "Hey Mom, here's some smelly sex juice, the kind I use to lure boys with", and resulted in me being sent to Korean Bible camp all summer.
While Lane does eventually find a way to tell her family about her true passions, drumming in a rock band and her relationship with the band’s white guitarist, Lane does continue to find herself at the center of both conflicts with her mother and internal conflicts. Without knowing it, Lane finds that she has internalized her parents’ values about premarital sex and must admit that her family and culture has influenced her after all. Mrs. Kim actually helps organize a tour for Lane’s band and consults with her boyfriend on his songwriting. These conflicts bring Lane and Mrs. Kim closer together throughout the series, and portray them as complex and authentic characters rather than caricatures of a Korean-American family.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
“Arrested Development” is a mockumentary-style situation comedy that aired on the FOX network from 2003 to 2006. The show is about a wealthy, corporate family in Newport Beach, CA. George Bluth Sr, the patriarch and president of the Bluth Company is arrested and his wife (Lucille Bluth) and children (Michael, Gob, Lindsay and Buster) are left to clean up the mess.
In Season 1, Episode 14, a fourteen-year-old Korean child shows up on Lucille Bluth’s doorstep. A year earlier, Lucille filed papers to adopt a child from Korea because she was frustrated with Buster for not finishing his cottage cheese. At first, Lucille tries to get rid of the child, but after seeing Buster’s jealousy, she decides to keep him. The family assumes his name is Annyong (hello in Korean) because that is all the he says.
Annyong is consistently underestimated throughout the series. To Lucille, he is at best a pawn to make Buster jealous, and at worse she uses him as a human purse. In the adoption letter Lucille receives, the “Korean Consulate of Child Services” treats him as an object to deliver, asking that someone “Please be home between 9:00 and 5:00.”
In his school’s play, he is “typecast” in an Asian role. He volunteers to play Uncle Sam because it’s “better than the part I have now—guy who orders attack on Pearl Harbor.”
In fact, the family’s underestimation of Annyong turns out to be their downfall. He learns English quickly, plays on a soccer team (which shows he is blending in with other American children), works at the banana stand, falls in love with his cousin (just as his other cousin George Michael does) and begins to surprise the Bluths with his insights on their family dynamics:
Michael: What? What's going on?
Annyong: Okay. Mother want someone to go to my soccer game with. She don't want other soccer moms think that she is single mother. She old school.
Michael: I liked it better when he just said "Annyong."
It is revealed in Season 1, Episode 16 that he is actually eighteen-years-old, foreshadowing that there is more to Annyong than meets the eye. In the series finale, it is revealed that Annyong (whose real name is “He-loh”) has been collecting incriminating data on the Bluth family and orchestrating an SEC raid in order to avenge George, Sr. for stealing his grandfather’s idea for a frozen banana stand. The picture shown of Annyong’s grandfather, a grainy shot of his grandfather in front of his banana stand in Korea, portrays Korea as a bleak landscape.
Ultimately, “Arrested Development” portrays Korea as a desolate place with so many children up for adoption that one could be “accidentally” adopted by a family as self-centered as the Bluths. In addition, it portrays Korean people (Annyong and his grandfather) as smart individuals with good ideas who are underestimated and have their ideas stolen by rich and powerful white people.
JON & KATE + 8
“Jon & Kate + 8” is a reality documentary show currently airing on the TLC network. It’s a “day in the life” style program that follows Jon and Kate Gosselin, a Pennsylvania couple who have 7-year-old twin girls and 4-year-old sextuplets. Jon’s mother was Korean and grew up in Honolulu and his father is “a total white dude”, and Kate is white, so the Gosselin children are “a quarter Korean.”
While Jon and Kate’s parents haven’t been involved in the day-to-day lives of their grandchildren, Jon’s Korean grandmother does spend time with the children and cooks for the family. In Season 4, Episode 5, Jon decides to use his grandmother’s recipes to cook a Korean-style dinner (Bulkogi, Chinese fried rice, kimchi and mochi for dessert) including for the family. His goal, he explains to the camera, is to teach his children about their Korean heritage in an age-appropriate way.
In this episode, Jon and Kate explain their kids’ habit of getting into arguments about who in the family is the “Asian-est.” During dinner, Mady (one of the 7-year-old twins) says “I’m the most Asian-est person in the whole family, except for Daddy!” She often talks about her Asian heritage on the show. In Season 1, Episode 3, Mady is wearing Jon’s jacket and she says “I look just like Daddy! I’m wearing his jacket and I have an Asian face!” Kate and Alexis, one of the sextuplets, are determined by the family to be the only “non-Asians in the family,” to which Kate replies “Of course, that isn’t true.”
“Jon & Kate + 8” is the only non-fiction program I’m exploring in this study of media representations of Koreans, so my interest lies in how a real family with Korean heritage might choose to represent themselves on television. While the episodes are unscripted and designed to capture the Gosselin family’s daily life, Jon, Kate and the producers often choose a theme or event for the episode, such as a trip the family is taking. Jon must not only have chosen to prepare Korean food for his family, but to show an aspect of his family life on television as well.
“Jon & Kate + 8” portrays the Gosselin family as proud of their heritage. Both Jon and Kate have spoken to the importance of creating family traditions, many of which have been chronicled on the show. The family has also chosen to capture moments on film where they celebrate their heritage, not only in the Korean dinner episode but in the episode where Jon and Kate renew their marriage vows in a Hawaiian-style ceremony. Kate, who is white, related a story in one episode about her pregnancy with the twins. A relative of Jon’s asked her if she was disappointed that her children would not look like her, because they would likely look Korean like Jon. Kate’s reply was that she thinks her children are beautiful, and she’s just as proud of their Korean ancestry as Jon is. Ultimately, Jon and Kate seem to have made a conscious decision (one they choose to share with their viewing audience) that their Korean heritage is something to celebrate with their children.
LOST
"Lost" is a science fiction drama currently in its fifth season on ABC. It tells the story of the survivors of a plane crash in the South Pacific. The show makes use of an ensemble cast, and tells the story of their survival on the mysterious island as well as makes use of flashbacks and flash forwards to develop character and plot.
Two of the survivors are Sun and Jin, a married couple from Korea. In the first episodes of Season 1, Sun and Jin are portrayed as the stereotypical Korean couple. Jin is possessive, domineering, unwilling to associate with the other passengers and Sun is his submissive wife. Despite the language barrier they face, Jin and Sun find that they have survival skills that make them indispensable during their time on the island. Jin, the son of a fisherman, provides fish for the other survivors to eat and Sun plants a garden and demonstrates her knowledge of medicinal plants. In a way, this is another stereotypical portrayal of Koreans; it suggests that they are somehow "closer to the land." In fact, it is never explained how Sun could have obtained her botanical knowledge because she is revealed through flashbacks to have grown up in a wealthy family in urban Seoul.
But as with all characters on "Lost," people are never who we think they are at first. Flashbacks complicate each character, including Jin and Sun, by showing their lives off the island. Over the course of several seasons, it is revealed that Sun's domineering corporate father disapproved of her marriage, and that the couple was on the plane in the first place to escape from Jin's crushing life as a hit man for Mr. Paik's company. Sun is shown to have been secretly learning English from a man she was having an affair with, and planned to leave Jin for. The reason for Jin’s possessiveness is explored, Sun is shown to have more agency that was originally thought, and the couple's rocky marriage is brought to the forefront on the island.
One of the primary themes of "Lost" is that on the island, outside of their usual contexts, people tend to express their true nature. The show's use of flashbacks highlights characters' previous lives off the island and contrasts their behavior to life after the crash. On "Lost" there are no "good guys" or "bad guys"--each character shows evidence of being both incredibly exemplary and incredibly flawed. The writers consistently point out that human beings are complicated, dynamic, multidimensional and that human behavior is mostly rooted in context.
I believe that Jin and Sun's portrayal of the stereotypical Korean couple is a good example of presenting characters as flat, predictable people at first and then complicating them considerably through flashbacks and the events on the island. The island itself, a new context for life outside of Korea, offers Jin and Sun a chance to break from stereotypes and build new identities. In the process, Jin and Sun come to know each other's true selves and begin a process of reconciliation.
The clip below (from Season 4, Episode 7) shows one of the final conversations between Jin and Sun in which they negotiate life after Sun's affair, Sun's pregnancy and a chance to leave the island forever:
GILMORE GIRLS
“Gilmore Girls” is a dramatic comedy show that aired on the WB from 2000 to 2007. The show is focused on mother Lorelai and daughter Rory Gilmore, but Rory’s best friend Lane Kim and her mother are also considered main characters throughout the run of the series. Lane’s family is Korean as well as Seventh Day Adventist, and enforces their traditional values in their household. Because her parents would not approve, Lane is forced to hide her obsession with rock music under the floorboards of her bedroom and seems to lead a double life. Lane loves her parents and wants to please them, but she is constantly dealing with the fact that her mother believes junk food, dating, and non-Christian music are the work of the devil.
Lane: Well, I wore a bracelet to school today. My parents were called. There was a special service in chapel, and I've been ordered to a soul-searching seminar next week. I'll be sitting between the nail-polish-wearing girl and the spicy condiment user.
Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of “Gilmore Girls,” based Lane’s character on the stories her friend Helen Pai (a producer on the show) told her about her family and childhood. “Initially, it was very weird,” says Pai about the experience. “I’m not a limelight kind of person. During the first season of Gilmore Girls, we had a panel, and there were a lot of questions about Mrs. Kim and Lane and the stereotypes. And, Amy would then explain, ‘Listen, these are real stories. They’re based on a real person.’”
While some might argue that the portrayal of the Kim family on the show reinforce stereotypes of Koreans as strict, oppressive households, many Asian viewers have identified with the personalities on the show.
“Gilmore Girls” takes place in the fictional small Connecticut town of Stars Hollow, and the people who live there are a collection of quirky, memorable characters. While the show’s protagonists are Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, the strange behavior of minor characters in Stars Hollow are just as important to the development of the story. In this way, the Kim family is just one odd family in a town full of odd families. While their Korean-ness and religious faith make them stand out, they don’t stand out any more than Taylor does for his love of the rules or Jackson does for sleeping in the vegetable patch. In many ways, the show’s setting actually normalizes the Kim family.
Many of Lane’s storylines on “Gilmore Girls” highlight the conflicts between the traditional values of Lane’s parents and the largely white, secular values of Stars Hollow and the world at large. These conflicts are done with equal amounts of humor and emotion, and they almost always show Lane mediating the two cultures. This conversation about gifts shows the regular miscommunication that goes on between Lane and her family:
Lane: You have to look at what a gift says to the other person, not to you. Remember two years ago, I got my mom that perfume?
Rory: Yeah.
Lane: Okay, to me that said, "Hey Mom, you work hard, you deserve something fancy". Now to my mother, it said, "Hey Mom, here's some smelly sex juice, the kind I use to lure boys with", and resulted in me being sent to Korean Bible camp all summer.
While Lane does eventually find a way to tell her family about her true passions, drumming in a rock band and her relationship with the band’s white guitarist, Lane does continue to find herself at the center of both conflicts with her mother and internal conflicts. Without knowing it, Lane finds that she has internalized her parents’ values about premarital sex and must admit that her family and culture has influenced her after all. Mrs. Kim actually helps organize a tour for Lane’s band and consults with her boyfriend on his songwriting. These conflicts bring Lane and Mrs. Kim closer together throughout the series, and portray them as complex and authentic characters rather than caricatures of a Korean-American family.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
“Arrested Development” is a mockumentary-style situation comedy that aired on the FOX network from 2003 to 2006. The show is about a wealthy, corporate family in Newport Beach, CA. George Bluth Sr, the patriarch and president of the Bluth Company is arrested and his wife (Lucille Bluth) and children (Michael, Gob, Lindsay and Buster) are left to clean up the mess.
In Season 1, Episode 14, a fourteen-year-old Korean child shows up on Lucille Bluth’s doorstep. A year earlier, Lucille filed papers to adopt a child from Korea because she was frustrated with Buster for not finishing his cottage cheese. At first, Lucille tries to get rid of the child, but after seeing Buster’s jealousy, she decides to keep him. The family assumes his name is Annyong (hello in Korean) because that is all the he says.
Annyong is consistently underestimated throughout the series. To Lucille, he is at best a pawn to make Buster jealous, and at worse she uses him as a human purse. In the adoption letter Lucille receives, the “Korean Consulate of Child Services” treats him as an object to deliver, asking that someone “Please be home between 9:00 and 5:00.”
In his school’s play, he is “typecast” in an Asian role. He volunteers to play Uncle Sam because it’s “better than the part I have now—guy who orders attack on Pearl Harbor.”
In fact, the family’s underestimation of Annyong turns out to be their downfall. He learns English quickly, plays on a soccer team (which shows he is blending in with other American children), works at the banana stand, falls in love with his cousin (just as his other cousin George Michael does) and begins to surprise the Bluths with his insights on their family dynamics:
Michael: What? What's going on?
Annyong: Okay. Mother want someone to go to my soccer game with. She don't want other soccer moms think that she is single mother. She old school.
Michael: I liked it better when he just said "Annyong."
It is revealed in Season 1, Episode 16 that he is actually eighteen-years-old, foreshadowing that there is more to Annyong than meets the eye. In the series finale, it is revealed that Annyong (whose real name is “He-loh”) has been collecting incriminating data on the Bluth family and orchestrating an SEC raid in order to avenge George, Sr. for stealing his grandfather’s idea for a frozen banana stand. The picture shown of Annyong’s grandfather, a grainy shot of his grandfather in front of his banana stand in Korea, portrays Korea as a bleak landscape.
Ultimately, “Arrested Development” portrays Korea as a desolate place with so many children up for adoption that one could be “accidentally” adopted by a family as self-centered as the Bluths. In addition, it portrays Korean people (Annyong and his grandfather) as smart individuals with good ideas who are underestimated and have their ideas stolen by rich and powerful white people.
JON & KATE + 8
“Jon & Kate + 8” is a reality documentary show currently airing on the TLC network. It’s a “day in the life” style program that follows Jon and Kate Gosselin, a Pennsylvania couple who have 7-year-old twin girls and 4-year-old sextuplets. Jon’s mother was Korean and grew up in Honolulu and his father is “a total white dude”, and Kate is white, so the Gosselin children are “a quarter Korean.”
While Jon and Kate’s parents haven’t been involved in the day-to-day lives of their grandchildren, Jon’s Korean grandmother does spend time with the children and cooks for the family. In Season 4, Episode 5, Jon decides to use his grandmother’s recipes to cook a Korean-style dinner (Bulkogi, Chinese fried rice, kimchi and mochi for dessert) including for the family. His goal, he explains to the camera, is to teach his children about their Korean heritage in an age-appropriate way.
In this episode, Jon and Kate explain their kids’ habit of getting into arguments about who in the family is the “Asian-est.” During dinner, Mady (one of the 7-year-old twins) says “I’m the most Asian-est person in the whole family, except for Daddy!” She often talks about her Asian heritage on the show. In Season 1, Episode 3, Mady is wearing Jon’s jacket and she says “I look just like Daddy! I’m wearing his jacket and I have an Asian face!” Kate and Alexis, one of the sextuplets, are determined by the family to be the only “non-Asians in the family,” to which Kate replies “Of course, that isn’t true.”
“Jon & Kate + 8” is the only non-fiction program I’m exploring in this study of media representations of Koreans, so my interest lies in how a real family with Korean heritage might choose to represent themselves on television. While the episodes are unscripted and designed to capture the Gosselin family’s daily life, Jon, Kate and the producers often choose a theme or event for the episode, such as a trip the family is taking. Jon must not only have chosen to prepare Korean food for his family, but to show an aspect of his family life on television as well.
“Jon & Kate + 8” portrays the Gosselin family as proud of their heritage. Both Jon and Kate have spoken to the importance of creating family traditions, many of which have been chronicled on the show. The family has also chosen to capture moments on film where they celebrate their heritage, not only in the Korean dinner episode but in the episode where Jon and Kate renew their marriage vows in a Hawaiian-style ceremony. Kate, who is white, related a story in one episode about her pregnancy with the twins. A relative of Jon’s asked her if she was disappointed that her children would not look like her, because they would likely look Korean like Jon. Kate’s reply was that she thinks her children are beautiful, and she’s just as proud of their Korean ancestry as Jon is. Ultimately, Jon and Kate seem to have made a conscious decision (one they choose to share with their viewing audience) that their Korean heritage is something to celebrate with their children.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Week Ten: Advertising
I realized this kind of parody advertisement has been done to death on the internet, but I've been seeing so many Christmas related diamond ads that I decided to choose inspiration over originality. Sorry.The ad I put together is a parody (obviously) of the ads by jewelry retailers to sell diamonds. The message of those ads, often, is that the only way to show you love a woman is with diamond jewelry. In the end, these advertisements put pressure men to only use their finances to show how they feel (thereby reinforcing their societal roles as unemotional males) and portrays women as only interested in money and frankly, as I show in my spoof, stupid for not "understanding" different ways people show each other love.
Most diamond advertisements are aimed at heterosexual men who are in pretty new relationships (less than 2 years, probably). The advertisements often draw on the heavy symbolism of diamonds as a physical object; they are the hardest mineral and likely to survive anything. I saw one ad on television recently that used the slogan "There are only two things that last longer than time..." implying that one is love, and one is a diamond. That television commercial, oddly enough, seemed to be aimed at women rather than men. It is just as important for diamond retailers to convince women of the importance of diamond jewelry as a physical sign of love so the men in their lives feel pressured to buy them.
The audience of my spoof is the group of men described above, but I wrote the copy as if it were coming from the perspective of not just the jewelry retailer but also the stereotypical greedy women. It drives home the point that the symbolism and cash value of diamonds are the only way to express feelings of love, that relationships without this particular physical symbol are meaningless, and that both these facts seem to work out for jewelry retailers just fine, thank you very much.
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