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Monday, March 11, 2013

Enter the Dragon Lady ! Comic Series ?!


A lot of us know that the Dragon Lady first came through the media but what most of us don't know is that someone made a comic series about the Dragon Lady as well! The comic, Terry and the Pirates, created by author Milton Caniff, creates a character much like the Dragon Lady in the media that we know of today. The comic series came out in 1934, a few years after the Dragon Lady was introduced in films. The comic is an influence of the other comic series like Johnny Quest and Venture Brothers. This comic is about two Americans kids, Tommy Lee and Pat Ryan who seek on a quest to find treasure in China but get hampered by local pirates during the process. One of those pirates include female pirate, Madam Deal, aka the Dragon Lady. Like what we see in today's media, the way he describes the character in the comic is how the stereotype of the Dragon Lady is known in reality. What surprises me about this is that I wouldn't think they would actually make a comic series about the Dragon Lady, let alone make a character that's specifically conveys the image. It's just shows that the Dragon LAdy is not only popular in the media, but also in cartoons and is finding other ways to make the character even well known in even later years. Who knows what will come out next with the Dragon Lady?! Music? Tv Shows? We'll just have to wait and see !

Work Cited:
Santo, El. Know Thy History: The Dragon Lady (from Terry And The Pirates) May 3, 2011.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

A word can kill people!


      This picture is from Angry Asian Man. Danny Chen was born in New York, he was an American soldier since 2011 and he was his parents only child. His parent were all Chinese American and also he was Chinese American, too. Because of he was a Chinese American soldier, he suffered a lot of unfair and cruel treatment. Adam Holcomb was a sergeant who repeated physical attacks, racial taunts and mental abuse and then drove Danny Chen to take his own life. According to the Colorlines: A New York Magazine profile detailed the hazing and racial taunts Chen was subjected to in the weeks before he killed himself.
Since Danny Chen’s death, details of his story have slowly emerged, relayed by Army officials to his family. A group of his superiors allegedly tormented Chen on an almost daily basis over the course of about six weeks in Afghanistan last fall. They singled him out, their only Chinese-American soldier, and spit racial slurs at him: “gook,” “chink,” “dragon lady.” They forced him to do sprints while carrying a sandbag. They ordered him to crawl along gravel-covered ground while they flung rocks at him. And one day, when his unit was assembling a tent, he was forced to wear a green hard-hat and shout out instructions to his fellow soldiers in Chinese.
      Adam Holcomb was sentenced to just 30 days in the military jail, allowed him to stay in the service and his rank had reduced one ring. When Danny Chen heard this result, they could not accept it because they thought Adam Holcomb killed their only son, he was just sentenced 30 in the military jail and still in the service. Many people also felt it was unfair because these sentences could not be equal with Danny Chen's life. Holcomb also used terrible words to call Danny Chen such as dragon lady. It was important to see dragon lady not only could describe female and also male. He called Danny Chen dragon lady, his meaning was Danny Chen was just like a girl and used sexual way. After Danny Chen was dead, he left a message to his parents, he said, "Tell me parents, I am sorry". A word could also kill people, it was a big issue to make people to think and also avoiding this kind of tragedy to happen again. The court also needed to give Danny Chen's parents a great result because they lost their only son. Dead people could not be alive again and this would make them heart-broken.



Word Cited:
Hing, Jullanne. "30 Days in Jail for Soldier Charged With Driving Danny Chen to Suicide - COLORLINES." RSS. N.p., 31 July 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2013.    http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/07/thirty_days_in_jail_for_soldier_charged_with_driving_pvt_danny_chen_to_suicide.html
         "Soldier Sentenced to Just 30 Days in Danny Chen Case." Soldier Sentenced to
         Just 30 Days in Danny Chen Case. N.p., 31 July 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2013.
          http://blog.angryasianman.com/2012/07/soldier-sentenced-to-just-30-days-
          in.html

Monday, March 4, 2013

Tiger Mom and Dragon Lady: Are They the Same?

In most cases, you may think "Tiger Mom and Dragon Lady, aren't those the same things?" Since both are similar by having strong Asian women roles, many seem to confuse the two. Although both have various similarities, they differ in many ways. A Tiger Mom is a very mean and uptight mother who demands excellency from their kids academically and physically. They expect perfection from their kids. A Dragon Lady is an Asian women who uses her sexuality, looks and manipulation to get what they want. A lot of people tend to mistaken one for the other because since they both involve Asian women, they think it's the same thing. The word "Tiger Mom" became well known when author Amy Chua came out with the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, was released and used it as a reference of an Asian mother that was very strict and hard on her daughter. Dragon Lady came out way before in the 1919s, when Anna May Wong became one of the first Asian women to play a leading role as a manipulating seducer which later on took toll for many other Asian women in the media later in the years. So to get everyone not confused, Tiger Mom and Dragon Lady are not the same thing !

Work Cited:

Masenthin, Tricia. What is a Tiger Mother? Amy Chua, a writer and Yale law professor, has catapulted strict parenting methods into the spotlight with her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. 2011 January 26 .

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Misconceiving Illusion


            Asian American women are viewed as geisha girls, lotus blossom, and dragon ladies. People have developed an image that does not represent every single Asian American women; in fact it might not even represent any Asian American women. These types of stereotypes hurt Asian Americans and people that actually think that a particular image fits every Asian American.
            In a book by Sheridan Prasso, The Asian Mystic, he explains that backpackers travel to Asia to meet new exciting people, like the people they see in their favorite “Asian-based” movies, but once they get to their destination they find out that they are not any different from the people in America, “Asians they’d met were just as practical, materialistic and interested in making a buck as people back home” (Prasso 16).The media creates stereotypes that foster the illusion of the typical Asian American woman; they use the same stereotypes in almost every movie, as if they didn’t know that the misconception was hurting anyone. “Traise Ya-mamoto, an associate professor at the University of California-Irvine has noted, adding that such misperceptions can ‘cripple careers’ when bosses or colleagues expect an Asian woman to act demure, docile, or ‘nice’ because of her ethnicity,” (Prasso 15).
            Stereotypes also hurt people that have made an impact in the world with their academic knowledge. Dr. Pasuk Phaogpaichit, a Cambridge-trained economist and author of one of the most influential books ever published in Thailand says that she is first looked as a women, second as a Thai, and third as an economist (Prasso 15) . She has worked so hard for her Dr. title and people show her disrespect by seeing her as a sexual Thai woman. She states that when speaking abroad to economic experts accompanied by her English writer husband, economic experts usually tend to shake her husbands hand first as if though he was Dr. Pasuk. When corrected, they are surprised that a 52 Thai women, not the tall British man, is the economist. “ Even after delivering an important economic paper, she gets the impression, based on questions posed afterward, that they’re hearing her words through a filter: as a woman first, as a Thai second, and only third as an economist and academic. Not even knowledgeable professionals can escape the misconceptions set by the media. 
             Many Asian American people have to go through racial comments set by stereotypes almost every single day, because the media has portrait them as model minorities, dragon ladies, non-English speaking foreigners, or smart Asian old men. It is as though white Americans stay in control by promoting stereotypical images of successful people, from different ethnicity's other than white, in order to prevent particular groups of people from being looked as dominant. People that are not being targeted by these stereotypes, might not know that these stereotypes set by Americans hurt those who have to deal with these stereotypes in a daily basis. An Asian American girl that created a YouTube account, to let people know that these stereotypes do not portray who she is, states that its angers her when people see her stereotypical and she wants to advice people that stereotypes do not represent who she is. She never describes who she is, but by the sound of it, stereotypes do not represent her.
   





Works Cited 

"The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient". PublicAffairs. April 5, 2005.