5 posts tagged “stereotype”

For those of you outside New Zealand, Radio New Zealand National has put up the episode of The Golden Tide that features yours truly. Sonia Yee, who produced the series, introduces it, and I have had a lot of good comments already about it. (It seems a lot of people, even in New Zealand, prefer to listen to the MP3 online than wait for the programme to air.) My comments seem to have struck a chord with other Chinese men about the media’s perception and treatment of our race. Here’s the MP3.

[Cross-posted] Vogue’s April 2008 cover with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James and Gisèle Bündchen has been branded by some as being racist. As noted by the Plain Dealer over in Cleveland, Ohio:

LeBron shares the April cover of Vogue magazine with supermodel Gisele Bundchen. It’s been noted by some that his open-mouthed screaming face and the way he is cradling a blond woman in his left hand has racial overtones in its resemblance to an old movie poster of King Kong and captive Fay Wray. Vogue says it chose the photo because it’s “expressive, fun and upbeat.”

   Once I got over the bad typography, I had to wonder if this cover furthers stereotypes. Being a minority, I personally didn’t make the connection that Margaret Bernstein and Sarah Crump reported on above. If I imagined the races switched, I also didn’t get much of a reaction—except to note that it would have been unusual for Vogue to feature a woman of colour on its cover, let alone a man of any colour.
   However, I wondered: would a black man who isn’t a basketball player have made it? Or one who isn’t dressed as such?
   I don’t think it’s necessarily the pose, but whether there is a stereotype at play here. While Mr James has his own line of clothes—which he is modelling in the cover photograph—would a cover showing him in more conservative attire have been chosen?
   One blogger gave other examples, and reacted to the photograph:

A tuxedoed LeBron James out on the town with a stylish Gisele photo shoot would do. A Lebron on a couch with a magazine full of him and Gisele on the same couch with a magazine full of her; signifiers that they are man and woman at the top of their professions photo shoot would do. Or, the two in full nightclub gear with him watching her trying to dribble in the low light of an empty Quicken Arena. The possibilities are endless.
   And yet LeBron James allowed himself to be captured interminably not as the King James of his profession and rising player in the business world, but as a human King Kong, The Great Nigger whose fame is inextricably tied to how proficiently he puts a leather ball through an iron hoop.

   Others rebutted:

Calling it a modern-day interpretation of King Kong and Fay Wray, Feministe website writer Ali Eteraz referred to the image by Annie Leibovitz as “King James Turned Into King Kong.” She also said the cover “fulfills every racist stereotype in the world: primal screaming, white-girl carrying, black beast.”
   Are they seeing something that has escaped the rest of us? It’s the “Shape Issue,” remember? The contrast of the 6-foot-9 James and 5-foot-11 Bundchen seems like nothing more than an innocent pop culture poke at celebrity. Do we really need to read more into it?
   As for the comparison to poor Fay Wray, does anyone see Bundchen looking remotely stressed in this shot?

   James is the third man to appear on a cover of Vogue (after Richard Gere and George Clooney), and the publisher has defended its choice because it is an issue devoted to size and shape. From the Associated Press:

“Nobody says more about fashion size and shape than Gisele and LeBron,” Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said. “LeBron is an amazing star and athlete that has crossed over into a cultural phenomena.”

   To me (being neither black nor white), the King Kong connection, isn’t obvious—but the idea of “the black American good only on the basketball court” seems to be cemented here. Sad, in a year where Americans could be voting in their first black president.
   Whatever the case, Vogue seems to have benefited hugely from the publicity, from the blogosphere and sports’ fans who might never have commented on the magazine.

Many years ago, I saw a Steve Guttenberg movie called Don’t Tell Her It’s Me (or The Boyfriend School). It was made in the days when Americans knew very little about New Zealand. Guttenberg plays Gus Kubicek, a Hodgkin’s Disease survivor, and in order to win the affections of Emily (Jami Gertz), he agrees to be transformed into a New Zealand biker called Lobo Marunga.
   Even without the Stonecutters’ help, I think Steve Guttenberg is a good actor, and his accent in playing a long-haired biker from Aotearoa was not too bad, given that no one else on the set seemed to know what a New Zealander sounded like. Add the name, which novelist (and screenwriter) Sarah Bird thinks is down-home Kiwi, and as a local, you feel a sense of, ‘What were they thinking?’
   Similarly, when my home town (Hong Kong) is portrayed with junks in the harbour and Chinamen in pigtails, you think, ‘What the heck?’
   It’s a pity the only YouTube clip that features Guttenberg playing a Kiwi only has a line or two. See what you think. The bits where he sounds like Carey Mahoney is when he’s trying to tell Emily his real identity, so you have to ignore them.

   Still better than Patrick Duffy playing a sheep farmer from Taranaki in The Love Boat.

PS.: As of June 13, this is number 11 in Google for the headline phrase. Scary.—JY

Just because I’ve been defending my friend Jen on the SFist blog, I have been accused of working for her boyfriend’s office and now, someone tells me on my main blog that I have spelt defence wrong (the writer thinks it is defense) and, therefore, I must have gone to Stanford University. Can’t quite see the logic there.
   Lesson: when you don’t have a decent argument in return, since mine has still not been countered much in substance, then attack the person on something else that’s personal and off-topic. Clever. Not.
   It’s just too easy to strike back, but it would be like Einstein battling the third-grade science prize winner. Cripes, I wish dumbasses would just keep their mouths shut, go back to picking their noses, watch Survivor and wish that they could be Richard Hatch. Or whatever idiots do.
   And haven’t some folks in California, supposedly a cosmopolitan, progressive state, ever heard of English English—you know, the type used by a billion people in India, 60 million in the UK, and God knows how many in Her Majesty’s former colonies? This is not the first time I have had these so-called “educated” Americans have a go at us. No one in the movie theatre during Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery stood up and accused the American studio of spelling Ministry of Defence with an s. We simply know that there are 300 million people who do, and accept that as a minority usage. America is about celebrating those differences, not slamming someone who uses English in a different way. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of Americans get it (percentage evidently lower on the coasts).
   I’d hate to think how the anti-Jen camp deals with English speakers who have a different accent. God help the ignoramuses.

I got this video from some American friends in the military, who had written that it was very true of their culture. Certainly it is true of an American stereotype, but the joke is not new. New Zealand comedian Billy T. James did a variant of this in 1984. See what you think.