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Sample Student final exam answers 2016 (2016 final exam assignment) Part 3: Model Research Reports |
LITR 4340
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Jennifer Robles
Rocking the Boat with
Fresh Off the Boat: An Examination
into Asian Immigrancy
America is
said to be the land of immigrants and a place for opportunities for all people.
Ironically, immigrants and minorities are often underrepresented in popular
culture and media. No group knows this better than Asian American immigrants.
Until recently, there has only been one, short-lived television series featuring
an Asian family in 1995.Twenty years later, a second television show has finally
emerged, Fresh Off the Boat. This
sitcom is only “inspired” by Eddie Huang’s autobiography of the same title:
Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir and
allows the audience a peek into what is to be an Asian immigrant family trying
to follow the American dream while navigating through the dominant culture. The
show so closely parallels the immigrant narrative that people who have never
even attempted to understand immigrants can get a sense of what that entails.
Asians now makes up approximately 5.6% of the
U.S. population. According to Census Bureau data, Asians are now the fastest
growing of the three major ethnic groups in America, with a 56 percent growth
from 2000 to 2013. So what has kept this major group out of the media spotlight?
In order to understand, one must take a look at what constitutes a “model
minority.” Model minorities systematically assimilate into white protestant or
dominant culture values like individualism, modernity and invisibility in order
to make the transition to America easier.
True to model minority fashion,
Asian immigrants may take on the more “don’t-rock-the-boat” archetype, choosing
to subtly blend into the dominant culture rather than take the minority trait of
demanding representation. This is what makes
Fresh Off the Boat so unique: it
breaks away from the “don’t-rock-the-boat” motif and demands that the dominant
culture take notice of the Asian immigrant plight, while maintaining enough
Asian stereotypes in order to appeal to the dominant culture’s need to keep
barriers up between those who are different from their own color code. The
dominant culture barriers exist so much so that even President Barack Obama once
made the mistake of confusing two different sets of immigrants, those from
Taiwan with Thailand.
Fresh Off the Boat-the
primetime television series is very different from Eddie Haung’s memoir of the
same title. Firstly, the television show
is an “American family sitcom,” set up very much as the dominant culture’s
idea of the typical American family-- a mother, father and three children who
live in a plain, common home in the suburbs. It is meant to appeal to the
dominant culture in America, thereby downplaying “Huang’s rather explicit,
forthright, and sometimes confessionary narrative,” as Brian Hioe expresses in
his article, “Fresh Off the Boat and the Limits of Cultural Representation.”
Hioe goes on to explain that the show’s “overriding
master narrative is that of the sanitized family sitcom” and that
“what this points to in regards to
the Fresh Off the Boat phenomenon is
the need to read between the lines and parse out the means by which
Fresh Off the Boat was able to be
sold to mainstream, white America in spite of also having sought to push against
the boundaries of possible representation in popular media.”
While
the show does seem to cater to the dominant culture, it has also been a positive
push in what has otherwise been an extremely bleak representation of
Asian-Americans in popular culture. Since 1999, the Asian Pacific American Media
Coalition has met at least yearly with the big four networks – Fox, NBC, CBS and
ABC in order to discuss Asian-American representation. But according to founding
member Guy Aoki, the progress has been “really slow” and that “they have been
good in including us in ensemble shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Lost.’ But at
some point we started feeling it was a problem if they think it’s a risk to have
an Asian-American as the face of their shows.” Mainstream media has tended to
take a comfortable seat in poking fun at Asian stereotypes but, recently, the
internet has provided the “demographic a means to create content and become
famous online.” Asian-American YouTube creators like, Comedian Ryan Higa,
make-up guru Michelle Phan and singer David Choi have huge, lucrative
followings, which has created pressure on mainstream media producers to produce
programming that features Asian-Americans.
Ky-Phong Tran explains in “Why Fresh Off the Boat
Matters,” that he was shocked to see a show about an Asian-American family with
Fresh Off the Boat and how monumental
it was “For Asian America, it was the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and
Neil Armstrong all rolled into one. Except rather than a white man walking on
the moon, it was real live Asian Americans walking on Earth!” Tran also
expresses that “we were the proverbial wallflower who was finally asked to
dance,” cementing the fact that Asian-Americans have always assimilated into the
invisibility of the dominant culture. Tran also explains that
Fresh Off the Boat is “not just about
Asian America seeing itself for the first time in mainstream media. It’s that we
see ourselves while other non-Asian Americans can see us
simultaneously. That’s what sets this
experience apart. That’s the power of mass media, collective audiences, and
scheduled show times.”
Although many Asian-Americans are hailing the fact
that they can see themselves on television, it has not been without controversy.
Eddie Huang, himself, has become a huge critic of the show because of the way it
still submits to the dominant culture. He published an essay in New York
Magazine and complained that his story had become “an entertaining but
domesticated vehicle to sell dominant culture with Kidz Bop, pot shots and the
emasculated Asian male.” Huang says that the show might as well be called: “A
Chink’s Life … With Free Wonton Soup or Soda: A reverse-yellowface show with
universal white stories played out by Chinamen” and that mass media makes Asian
sitcoms for white people. In his essay he writes about a conversation between
the executive producer of the show, also an Asian-American, and himself, which
shows just how much the show has deviated from his own memoirs and catered to
the dominant culture:
“Eddie, we need it for the episode. It’s a big moment! You have a black kid and
a Chinese kid breaking bread over a Jewish hip-hop concert. Where else could
this happen? America IS great!”
“Of course you picked a Beastie Boys concert. That’s
what you people do — you make Asian sitcoms for white people praising
Ill Communication because we’re both
acceptable, unthreatening gateways to black culture. These kids couldn’t break
bread at a Gravediggaz show?”
“It’s not your story anymore. Get over it. The kids
ARE NOT going to a Gravediggaz show! This is a HISTORIC network-television show
inspired by your life, and it’s going to get Americans excited about
us. It’s never going to be the book;
it’s never going to be Baohaus.It’s Panda Express, and you know what? Orange
chicken gets America really excited about Chinese people in airports.”
Huang explains that Asian-Americans are the “‘man’s’
preferred lapdog of color, everything Asian-American immigrants have was fought
for. We still wake up spotting the man 10 points, walking with our heads down,
apologizing for our FOB-y aunts and uncles as if aspiring to wash your shirt or
do your taxes were really such an insidiously foreign idea.” He is angry that
Fresh Off the Boat still caters to
what the dominant culture needs their Asians to be.
It is still up in the air whether
Fresh Off the Boat will survive and
just how much progress will be made for the fastest-rising minority population,
but one thing is for sure-- Asian-Americans are being seen. Tran explains that
no matter what, “It’s not about us. It’s not about the “quality” of the show.
It’s about the rest of the nation... Ultimately, FOTB is deeper than image. It’s
about acceptance.”
Huang,
Eddie.Bamboo-Ceiling TV. Wed.
http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/eddie-huang-fresh-off-the-boat-abc.html
Hioe, Brian. FRESH OFF THE BOAT
AND THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL REPRESENTATION.Web.
https://newbloommag.net/2015/02/24/fresh-off-the-boat-and-the-limits-of-cultural-representation/
Tran, Ky-Phong. Why Fresh Off the
Boat Matters.Web.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-tran/why-fresh-off-the-boat-matters_b_6638836.html
