Where slapstick comedy has practically died for mainstream audiences (I’m not… talking about… Paul Blart, Mall Cop… the general consensus seemed to be oh my god, that guy from King of Queens must hate himself) in America, we have some good oldies here in Asia.

As kung-fu practically is a continuing thread in daily culture (pass a park, you will see a mob of old people slowly moving in group tai chi; the park down the street also hosts a gathering of a kung-fu with a stick-prop, where they practice this passion against each other or in movement together), movies featuring the necessity of photogenic fighting (rarely is it graphic. once a man is hit, he stays down but in one piece) to continue the excitement of a plot also feature exaggerated, slap-stick physical comedy of magical kung fu powers (Buddha’s laugh, the Tien Chi– sky in chinese– footstomp, etc.) These are run during the middle to evening of the day, with hilarities abound– pervy quotes and quips, lust abound, greed for money and addiction to gambling is not a rare characteristic in a stooge or two– and the tangent of plots range from romance to ridiculous, all in one movie. They often throw in one or two fat jokes, if not three, and there is always ramen involved in at least one scene.

These are in direct contrast with the serious cinematic ventures of master filmmakers like Ang Lee or Wong Kar Wai– the emotional intensities of these milestone movies (think Kurosawa, as well) are, I feel, unmatched by other international films. There is a weight of each glance that may not necessarily be revealed to an audience in their first experience of the movie, complications of saving face, honor, and unspeakable customs for respect or disrespect that run under the surface of parted lips or a blank tension in the creases of his eyes.

Much of Asian cultural communication lies in these expectations, the unspoken meanings that are clearer than the words that are declared– from a Western perspective, this is called passive aggressiveness. But to assume that the passivity is to avoid confrontation at the cost of the would-be-confronted is an incorrect assumption: the passivity is perhaps more aggressive in that they have already assumed that you would agree of your fault– so there is no need to bring it up in person for fear of further embarrassing the person of their faults, but to ask them to correct it in a way to save your face. There is no need for a public solicitation for an apology; only a silent nod of assent and the asked change in behavior.

In Rashomon, the false claims of the wife, husband, and thief reveal more about their insecurities and shed a clearer light on the complications of their personal circumstances than plain words could ever work to portray. It illustrates the stakes of honor they have in the outcome of the sentence. In the end, it is the entire film’s storytelling that precisely conveys the texture and crisis of each person as they would rather publicly condemn themselves of a lesser shame in order to hide their greater fault.

In Lust, Caution, the realistic crisis of lust versus caution becomes a pain we ourselves feel and experience along with the anti/heroine. We feel her humanity, despite her excellent facade– and to the actress: to act an actor/actress is not an easy task. There is a play within a play– but when she finds that the seduction of Mr. Yee has become the only real aspect of her life, the separation of each stage vanishes and leaves her as a woman who has come to love a man. Ang Lee frames these intangible thoughts, these indescribable feelings with carefully placed reflections, and Wei Tang’s most impressive acting skills– she even overshadows Tony Leung’s experience and star fame– we are transported and convinced of a world where politics of identity are submerged in sexual politics, a surprising power struggle between ideals and morals, and a revelation that vulnerability becomes luxurious strength.

At the end, we are left with an eerie feeling that the girl has always been Mrs. Mak; that she has poured so much of her soul into creating this character that there is nothing left of the girl who only once acted in a patriotic play, and that her love for the man she tried to help kill was heavier than the desire for him to die. So much so, that we see that she is at peace even at the mercy of her fate.

This was obviously an expensive film: the quality of each frame was careful composed; nothing left to chance. It is unfortunate that it is only in these pricey productions can we find a quality of a genuine human glance, where veiled eyes and folds of significance need not be captioned by empty words and loud, meaningless phrases.

see: owen wilson, jennifer aniston, ben stiller, blake lively, and all american romance movies, also, director gary marshall

***edit*

Also, forgot to mention Chunking Express, which was also fabuloso– what also impresses me is the persuasively unique characters that *could* be human, that *could* exist, that deviate from the typical archetypes found in American films (girl next door, diva, shy but strong, indie alternat–er, zooey deschanel. etc.)

Just saw a movie poster off a blog for Wang Kar Wai’s collaboration with most successful martial arts choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (Kill Bill, the Matrix, and any other blockbuster kung-fu flick you can recall):

…it’s too bad the title really sucks.

If you haven’t seen Wong Kar Wai’s other movies, I would highly suggest it. A friend referred “In the Mood for Love”, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was visually and emotionally stimulating– Maggie Cheung looking amazing in her gorgeous textiles of mandarin dresses, and Tony Leung sort of just is himself: the quiet, unassuming, but mysteriously seductive man. If you’ve seen Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution”– well, the sexual brutality might be the opposite of subtle nuances of emotional conflict in “In the Mood”, but the nature of its emotional complexity and the depth of how it portrays human nature and love is equally impressive. A characteristic of this portrayal tends to show how the power of love may end up betraying oneself; and this is tortuously, deliciously agonizing.

Graceee

]]> http://www.hearandsay.com/angstlifeangst/asians-azns/feed/ 0 http://www.hearandsay.com/angstlifeangst/taipei-i/ http://www.hearandsay.com/angstlifeangst/taipei-i/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:04:15 +0000 admin http://www.hearandsay.com/?p=873 Taipei: A General Introduction to General Aspects of General Visiting Experiences, with Several Unecessary Tangents

As far as stereotypes go, I’d say I’m some averagely petite Asian chick, college-educated, college-indebted, and vulnerable to certain (at times silly) aesthetic trends (as girls my age usually are)– participatory fashion being defined by me as wearing something other than Uggs, sweats, or pajamas (a middle-school phase that certainly cramped anyone’s style-history). I’m on the bookish side, though– being terribly cursed in the social department, as I am plagued with alcohol allergy that I bravely, foolishly ignore if the occasion calls– it usually doesn’t end well, and results in a vomit-slick leather-top table (the haunting episode at My House, a bar somewhere in the LA Silverlake area).

I can have vomit-free fun, though: I like Eating (note the capital E, and I assure you my eating habits have nothing to do with regurgitation), reading, writing, drawing; obvious facets of Alone Time, which is why I end up writing overly exaggerated and relatively ignored paragraphs about Who I Am. So maybe not so fun.

But this is just an introduction to locate Where I Am (physically, existentially): physically, I am in Taipei, but existentially, I am in a black hole — no– I am the instantaneously impossible hypocritical and vast un-knowing of the Improbability Factor. Having just graduated from a four-year institution, I now know that five credits times three is fifteen, teachers generally like students sitting close but not too close, and that GPAs are bullshit. But I know nothing more about myself– I know more about other people, and what their limitations are, and what prejudices people might have against them, or how, on a sliding 1-6 Kinsey scale, homosexual or heterosexual they might be.

This is supposed to be about Taipei. Very well, I admit: I digress.

Taipei is the capital of the little island of Taiwan, off the coast of East China. In the early centuries of some important number I should have remembered, the Dutch East Indian Trading Company took the island of Formosa for their own purposes; teaching the aboriginals to burn sea water to create salt, they also traded a variety of other things, like– er– edible plant matter, I guess. Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important is that the Dutch were here way-back-when, beautiful, tall white people who had too much decency to dress down their many layers of petticoats in order to survive these sweltering hot summers (I can imagine their charming reactions to our beloved tropical insects). Then came the Japanese. And the moral of my story is, Taiwan has always been a very important port in the economic history of the world, even if we’re mostly pronounced as a mere (but vital!)  “stepping stone” into Pacific waters.

Taipei itself is quite the international darling; the shopping vacation spot for Japanese and Chinese tourists alike, taxis run amok doing as they wish, traffic laws aren’t as unenforced as Rome, but lanes are more like guidelines, and the hoards of zippy motorcyclists do as they damn well please. Ah, of course, the sign that a city is truly a city: there are coffeeshops everywhere. More specifically, Starbucks has marked its territory on select street corners (more often competitively across the street from Dante’s, a rival coffee chain) and amazingly enough, the Taiwanese people are just as in love with the white-marked-green cups of coffee-experience as America. Maybe more: every Starbucks I’ve passed in Taipei is alway crowded with the hip and young, or those wishing they were hip and young, or those who want to be seen “doing work”.

There is also the curious popularity of “afternoon tea”– amidst the wealth and luxury  of department stores, the experience of being wealthy and luxurious is frosting on a hard day’s work of designer-brand shopping. The prices aren’t bad on the standards of the U.S. dollar; they’re pretty much the usual, where a nicely glazed croissant (just the right size for two girls with low-self esteem to share and not feel guilty) sits with a stale gleam of European appeal in the overly decorated display case. Risotto and small petite plates of pasta and a collection of cute cakes may also be whimsically ordered and gracefully consumed with your very authentically European-traditional coffee or tea.

Maybe I’m being too snide: let me supplicate this seething attitude with another cultural tid-bit: Asians are obsessed with being white.

Cue surprise. Who hasn’t seen the crews of Asian boys and girls, overtaking study halls with their tinkling cell-phone ornaments, outbursts of undecipherable conversation peppered with strange intonations? People dub them “FOBS”– fresh off the boats– and while that is quite offensive, I’m going to assume that dear and few readers endure stereotypes of their own, and that none if it should really matter to you. If it does, than you’re probably one of those people pushing a small delicate croissant away with a pained and horrified face or petitioning for Harry Potter to be placed on a blacklist for references to the Divvil.

So what’s the deal? Asians in America are *so Asian* while Asians in Asia would die to be white. Maybe not die, but they pour an ample amount of time into skin whiteners (lotions and pills), lasering freckles out from their epidermis (my dear, fashionable cuz), and glorifying Abercrombie and Fitch. Pasty is the new black. It means you’re wealthy enough not to work in the sun (and sunlight is a mighty tricky thing to evade on this island) because there are the poor and desolate who cannot avoid but to slave away in the hot exhausting hours of the day. Air-conditioning still exists as a luxury to them.

If I haven’t bored you enough with this subjective and possibly irrelevant analysis of Who I Am and Where, let me marry my previous two subjects in a matrimony of conflict that may as well end in a messy divorce. I obviously place my own values and culture as perpendicular to the people I am currently surrounded with, but then again, my culture and values has a history on a different plane than those who have been raised and live in Taipei, Taiwan. In the compulsive and unending mission to find Who I Am throughout this snap of a lifetime, I cannot help but compare and point out the obvious differences (i.e. I like the tan look). I also have a lot in common, even if these commonalities are more difficult to distinguish– after all, I am a first-generation to grow up and be schooled in America, so my parents were first-rate Asians to the max  (my dad opened a Mr. Eggroll in Springfield, Illinois. He had built the place to be shaped like a take-out box, and it stands there to this day as a historical spectacle), so  some customs are hard to shake (eating EVERYTHING on your plate, you ungrateful bastard).

On a contradictory note, who cares, right? Because everything in life seems so fluid and hypocritical; the only dependent, reliable, and the fact becomes “it is what it is” or “it isn’t what it is not”, rather than “this is what it’s supposed to be”. The Internet has shrunk the world and made scramble out of our black-and-white morals, as we are more likely to see the radically different lives of others, and the comparison of information becomes way too overwhelming. In Taipei, I can walk down the commercially rich street, encrusted with SoGo department stores boasting dolled up woman batting their 100% fake eyelashes (making sure the white foundation doesn’t glaze their inch-long feathers of pornish sex appeal) while a man with three limbs bellies up and bangs his head against the sidewalk outside to beg for money. The four square feet his weathered body grinds against is of more value in this society than the entirety of his being.

I don’t think I can ever survive a suburb. It’s too safe, too unreal for me; a white picket fence would only serve to keep me in and keep the world out. I feel like I need these worldly contradictions in order to feel alive; I need these challenges of moral conflicts to keep my blood pumping; and that’s something the Taipei I know has discovered within me. Call me out in ten years.

Graceee

The grit and wear of the entire day builds up a palpable residue, and at the end of the day there’s nothing more refreshing than taking a nice shower. The smooth rub of cleanliness and bedsheets. Aaaaah, it’s like what Coke is supposed to taste like according to the commercials.

Adventures today? Yes. Lately, though, it’s been surprisingly relaxing to chill with le fam… I’ve made them take up sketching as a past-time, so funnily enough, we’ve done several hours of artwork together. FAM TIME.

Make no mistake: construction workers here are Asian. Although, no one wears that stupid straw hat in the city while they’re drilling holes in the ground.

Dancers in the street… in THE Mask…. creepz. Some old senile man thought it would be funny to imitate him, but I thought the old man’s moves were pretty sweet considering… his age.

Fermented duck egg and soft tofu. Ohmigadz tasty… like most special Asian dishes, you can’t think too much about it.

YUMRZ

Arcade games. Tom’s World features endless games of fun, including arcade-style Mario Kart, old-school air-hockey, Guitar Hero, DDR, tonz and tonz more… fake Pirates of the Caribbean… the popular attraction is usually the drum video games; today we watched a person get a full combo on an entire DDR song. 300 +, baby.

The Taipei metro, the Taipei City Station. An intersection of endlessly interesting people; school girls, bad ass school girls with perfectly pasted fake eyelashes, nerdy children behind glasses and a bad haircut, old people young people, foreigners, homeless…

Ultimate Asian businessman. Found this on my dad’s desk. Apparently he’s an air condition salesman. Brings you back to retro-soliciting of the 60′s, eh?

Maybe I’ll post some sketches tomorrow. Spent way too much time today at the hospital; my mom was getting stuff checked. There are so many old people.

Cool.

Graceee

My mom reheats this chicken soup for me; but I look in the pot, and it looks like two mangled parts of a fish are floating on the oily golden broth. Exclamation (me): WHAT IS THAT; followed by her “Oh, that’s just black chicken.”

I start freaking out about why the hell it’s black, and she soaks in my distress and calmly says

“It doesn’t matter. It’s like how people are black; it doesn’t matter.”

Astounded. Trying to decide if it’s offensive.

Graceee

OMG THE TERROR

It is the month to eat.

I haven’t stopped since Thanksgiving.

It’s becoming a problem. I wake up with thoughts of gravy soaked biscuits; I am numbed against the world as I dream of mashed potatoes and fries, and I fall asleep with mouthfuls of ice cream in my mind. Oooohh, I drool as I type.

Others say that this is a problem; that I shouldn’t be eating this much, and it’s not fair that I stay so thin. Well to them, I say: HA! I stay so thin as a cost to my energy’s endurance; anyway, it’s most likely one day I will wake up as plump as a pampered pigeon.

YUMMMERS

Raw product garnishes are the best. It's like: Before :: After

Cinnamon bun delights

Lately, I’ve been appreciating grapefruit, mini-organic-apples, chocolate covered gummy bears, popcorn, korean rice-cake soup, and today I convinced my co-workers to order thai food for lunch with me.

In Asian culture, food is the ultimate medium for community and hospitality. It is the epicenter of life. If you have enough to eat, you’re doing okay. If you have great tasting food to eat, you’re basically rich. Your life is good enough. That’s why when you visit an Asian house, it probably smells like Asian food.

On the flip side, refusing to eat what’s placed in front of you is the ultimate no-no. Refusing a plate of food (or picking at it) equates to selfishness, un-appreciation, and obviously spoiled upbringing. It means you haven’t suffered enough to realize how valuable that plate of food is, and you haven’t connected that the person who offered it had to work/sweat/cry to even serve it. Or at least, that’s how it’s definitely interpreted. In American culture, they’re pretty kind about not finishing what’s in front of you. I’ve been conditioned though, and now I can’t say I’m done until every scrap on my plate is gone…

Fatty McFatterson even eats his boogers

Sidenote: in history class, we learned about how the 1-child policy to control China’s population growth had Asians spoiling the single sons; the actual term for this demographic is “butterball”.

Off to dream of tasties and discover taffy in the wind!

<3

G