I feel like my research question is focused in that I’m going to use a specific film adaptation as a context for how Asians/Asian Americans are represented in US films. However, I realized that I’m not sure what the thread of my project is. The movie adaption of Avatar: The Last Airbender (A:TLA) stripped away the Asian/Inuit elements of the show; the main cast is mostly Caucasian, and the one character who’s non-white is the villain; etc. Is my argument that the casting perpetuates racism in Hollywood? Is my argument that the movie was an opportunity to “re-image” Asians (from traditional/negative stereotypes) but the opportunity was wasted? Am I talking about the representation of Asians or Asian Americans? Am I talking about Asian actors or Asian American actors (e.g., I feel like Asian actors get some exposure in Hollywood but not so much Asian American actors)? Am I going to talk about how the casting of the movie reflects (subtle but still insidious) racism in America (e.g., one source I read talked about how some people argue that racism has almost disappeared)? So really, I feel I like I need to know what position/direction I’m going to take/go.

1. Thompson, Audrey. “For: Anti-Racist Education.” Curriculum Inquiry 27.1 (1997): 7-44. JSTOR. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.

2. Bond, Cynthia D. “Laws of Race/Laws of Representation: The Construction of Race and Law in Contemporary American Film.” Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law 11.2 (2010): 219-265. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.

3. Park, Ji Hoon. “Representation of Asians in Hollywood Films: Sociocultural and Industrial Perspectives.” Conference Papers — International Communication Association (2005): 1-22. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.

4. Williams, Patricia J. “Talking About Not Talking About Race.” New York Magazine 41.29 (2008): 26-27. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.

5. “The Last Airbender Primer.” Racebending. N.p., 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.

Of these five sources, I think that the last one would be the most useful because it most directly relates to my paper’s topic. However, I think that the second one is the most promising in terms of being a scholarly source. Although it focuses on the the lawyer-hero/law in film, I think that it has interesting discussions regarding how film and race are related. I feel like a lot of what I know about film and race is “stuff I’ve learned along the way” (i.e., from secondary sources and also it might be kind of superficial), so it’ll be interesting to examine how race and film are discussed in a scholarly paper. Most of the papers that I’ve found (when I’ve looked up race and film) talk about a specific film and what the film says, which is what I want to do for my topic, but I feel like they explore the film’s themes (more of a narrative analysis) whereas I want to focus on what are the unconscious messages the film gives (e.g., based upon how a film portrays Asians, what does that say about how… Asian-Americans are seen in America, or something like that?). Actually, the main reason that I see this paper as a “promising source” is because it gives definitions of film, law and race. I know how the words are used in everyday life, but I’m kind of confused about how they’re used in academic settings (if their meanings are even different at all…).

You are not, nor should you be, the origin of your own thoughts (any more than you are the origin of your own voice).

I think Stallybrass is saying two things with this statement:
1) No work is “original,” i.e., it exists by itself;
2) Work produced in a field is affected by the work that came before it.

I know that one of the problems I have when doing research is making sure that I have a “new idea.” You don’t want to repeat an already known/common idea; you want to “add something new.” Sometimes this is hard to do because there are only so many things you can say about one piece of work. E.g., in Hamlet, you can argue in so many ways whether or not Hamlet is crazy or sane. The arguments for either side can become “boring” because they’ve been said so many times (in the same ways).

Combining this with point 2 – I think what Stallybrass is saying is that you can’t just come up with a new argument. Your argument is based upon reading what others have said and maybe improving it or building upon it or maybe saying it a new way. I think what makes an argument innovative is how it’s put together (i.e., how it “restates” what others say). E.g., a love story can be “boring”/”unoriginal” because it’s about two people who meet and then fall in love. The end. But why are we interested in revisiting love stories? Why are there so many of them? It’s because of the details of the how and the why and the when and the where get to us. The stories can be generally the same, but the people are different and the details are different and so the experience is different.

I think Stallybrass uses Shakespeare as an example of point 2. Shakespeare is considered to be one of the best writers in literature, but a lot of his works are adapted (or just straight out copied) from other sources – others’ stories, history, etc. So when people do research, they don’t just do it in a vacuum. I think this applies to our research because we have to balance “saying something new” with the fact that the “new” is rooted from the old.

I am interested in researching minority representation in the US media/film industry because I want to find out why there seems to be a lack of representative stories. This is important because if you only see a few dominant groups on screen, what happens to the other groups? This can lead to the marginalization and erasure of voices, which is harmful.

1. Is there a specific film or example of media you’d like to use?
2. Can you claim/support that there’s a lack of representative stories? Representatives stories about whom? Also, what do you mean about “representative stories”?
3. Is there a specific minority you’d like to/can focus on? Can you more be specific about groups (e.g., dominant groups, other groups)?

I was struck by the conclusion of the Enola Gay and the Smithsonian chronology written by the Air Force Association (AFA) – it states, at the end: “Air & Space Museum puts the forward fuselage of the Enola Gay and other items on display as part of a straightforward historical exhibition. Within a year, it draws more than a million visitors–making it, by far, the most popular special exhibition in the history of the Air & Space Museum. (When the exhibition finally closed in May 1998, it had drawn almost four million visitors.)” I feel like it implies that the exhibit was so successful because the original idea was dropped. I’m not sure that’s a correct statement/assumption. On one hand, it seems like some of the content of the exhibit was skewed towards the Japanese; for example, there were 49 photos of Japanese casualties vs. 3 photos of American casualties, 5 photos of Japanese military members in military role vs. 65 photos of American military members in military role, etc. That does paint Americans as aggressive, and also, to imply that Americans soldiers attacked for “vengeance” dishonors those who faithfully served for their country. However, is it “wrong” to show that the US harmed Japan? It may be an “ugly” depiction, but it happened. You can justify why the atomic bomb was dropped, but you can’t deny the results of what happened. Later, when the exhibit re-opened in 2003, the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy pointed out that the exhibit was “devoid not only of historical context and discussion of the ongoing controversy surrounding the bombings, but even of basic information regarding the number of casualties.”

The controversy of the Enola Gay exhibit is a clash of official stories – the museum wanted to tell one story and the AFA disagreed with that story and wanted another one to be told. I’ve always thought that museums present facts, that they aim to be objective. The Enola Gay exhibit controversy brought home that while museums/museum exhibits are factual/informative, how they present the facts affect the story they tell.

This article reports on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech defending the construction of a “mosque near Ground Zero.” The article’s title and Bloomberg’s emphasis on freedom of religion focus the reader’s attention on Islam, which has a negative connotation with respect to Ground Zero and September 11. However, the article only briefly mentions that the mosque is more of a community center. It also doesn’t mention the exact location of the building; Bloomberg mentions a mosque that’s four blocks away and questions the notion of a “no-mosque zone,” but there is no mention of the exact location of the center. (This can contribute to the misconception the the community center will built at Ground Zero or within view of it, which people find offensive.)

The item that I noted was an undated document, which I found in General Correspondence, Undated: A. I can’t make out what the document says in its entirety, but I think the purpose of the letter was to send a poem for the Lincoln Monument inauguration. The letter is undated, but because Douglass wrote it as an “offering for the Lincoln Monument inauguration,” I’m guessing that it could have been written around that time.

I think the document shows the ‘poetic’ side of Frederick Douglass. Of course, we already know that he’s an eloquent man. His Narrative—in fact his whole career as an orator and writer—is testament to that, but I think it’s interesting to see another facet of his writing; in some places, it’s straightforward like his prose (“In vain blood was made to flow”), and in some places, it’s a bit more lofty (“Adorn thy golden hair“). The poem shows he thought of Lincoln positively.

One of the first questions I had after reading this was: Did he deliver the poem at the inauguration, or was it a silent offering that was meant to be read by others? Also, I’d like to know more about his relationship with Abraham Lincoln, but I’m mostly curious about if he wrote any other poems. If so, did they deal with slavery and freedom, or did he ever write about more ‘fanciful’ matters such as nature or romance? Whenever I think of Douglass’s writing, I think of very sharp, crisp language; he’s poetic, but I don’t necessarily see him as a poet, so I’d be interested in seeing how his writing style differed, if at all, between prose and poetry.