Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | stereotype
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December 21, 2006

When “Survivor” announced its just-ended season, I was one of the many critics who thought splitting up the tribes along racial factors was a stupid and potentially harmful idea. After just two episodes, the series mixed the groups. On the season finale that just aired, an Asian American man, Yul Kwon, won. He is the Survivor. How cool is that? In the end, it wasn’t race at all, but his smarts and his determination that helped him outlast the others. It probably didn’t hurt that he’s remarkably hunky, but isn’t everyone on the show? He was quoted eloquently in the Contra Costa Times (and cited by Hyphen Blog): "’I wanted America to see Asian-American men as they truly are,’ he said while speaking about the under-representation of minorities on television. ...’I want to be a very visible spokesman for talking about how we can get more minorities on TV.’"
December 19, 2006

Erin and I attended a networking event tonight of a new organization forming in Denver, the Colorado Chapter of the National Association of Asian American Professionals, and had a great time with a spirited group of Asian Americans. We saw some familiar faces, but Erin and I were delighted to find that we didn't know most of the attendees -- it's nice to see new (and young) Asians adding their voices to the APA community. During the meeting, which was held in a hip and popular Cherry Creek sushi bar named Hapa, one of the women asked Erin if she was Chinese, and didn't believe it when Erin replied she was Japanese American. Then the woman looked at me and asked if I was mixed, or hapa (a Hawaiian word for half-white which started out as a derogatory, but is now widely used and accepted). I explained I'm full Japanese -- my dad was born in Hawai'i but he was full Japanese, and my mom is from Japan.
October 5, 2006

muckeyrooney-mryunioshiAudrey Hepburn, one of the great, classic actresses of Hollywood of the '50s and '60s, may have died in 1993, but she's alive and well in American pop culture. Her name, and the 1961 film with which her face is most associated, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," came up in conversation a couple of weeks ago, and coincidentally, a TV series' plot later that week involved three women dressed as Hepburn's character from "Tiffany's," Holly Golightly, robbing a bank with her trademark sunglasses hiding their identity. This week, The Gap began airing a pretty cool TV commercial that takes a Hepburn dance sequence from her 1957 musical co-starring Fred Astaire, "Funny Face," and sets her moves to AC-DC's "Back in Black." The commercial is pushing the retailer's new line of skinny black pants. Hepburn's character, a Greenwich Village beatnik who becomes a Paris model, is wearing hip skinny black pants in the dance scene.