From Colorlines:
by Channing Kennedy Thursday, November 10 2011
If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in the history of racebending and POC representation in cinema — and that means you need to get familiar with Anna May Wong, the black-and-white-era film star who made a career out of smashing barriers in Hollywood. A new documentary by filmmaker Yunah Hong, Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words, can bring her story to PBS, but not without your help.
Wong’s Hollywood career is fascinating and instructive. Despite being a California-born native English speaker who didn’t visit China until adulthood, Wong was only given roles that reinforced stereotypes about hypersexualized, deceitful Asian women. Time’s film critic Richard Corliss identifies three rules that hemmed in Wong’s career, even at the peak of her success: she couldn’t kiss (unless she was being savaged by an Asian man), she had to die, and off-screen, she always got paid a fraction of what her co-stars earned. And for her trouble, she was cast by Chinese newspapers as a traitor and an embarrasment.
So why, as someone subject to her own misrepresentations of Asian women, did Wong take these roles? One answer is illustrated in a role she didn’t get, a cowering Chinese peasant in 1937’s The Good Earth — played in yellowface by German actress Luise Rainer. Landing the roles was Wong’s only chance to humanize the stereotypes.
Want to know how Anna May Wong felt about her career? Yunah Hong’s new documentary, made over the last eight years, tells Wong’s story through new interviews and archival footage. The film is completed, but in order for PBS to air it, Hong has to raise $12,000 in the next 19 days to pay for the archival footage’s licensing fees.
As Hong says on her Kickstarter page:
Many older Asian Americans look down on Anna for playing stock Asian characters. But a younger generation sees her as a pioneering artist who beat the odds in a tough industry. Besides her strength as a woman, I admire her for pushing herself as an actress. When her film roles were limited, she traveled around Europe performing in cabarets, polishing her talents as a singer, dancer and monologuist. When MGM didn’t cast her in The Good Earth, a film set in China, she went to China anyway and filmed her trip. Long before anyone was called a “community activist,” she devoted herself to the Chinese American community’s war effort during World War II. She was way ahead of her time. Her courage to be herself against all odds is truly inspiring, the kind of story I want my ten-year-old daughter to know.
In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they aren’t saying ‘Oh I think they are inferior, I want to humiliate them, abuse them, enslave them and wipe out their people!’, they’re saying ‘Damn, after a couple hundred years of white people thinking I’m inferior, humiliating me, abusing me, enslaving me, and trying to wipe out my people, I don’t wanna deal with them.’ The context is completely different.
“but u guise reverse racism is real!!!1!!one!! im realy prejusidse against bcus im white every1 hatez me”
(via grrrlfoxxx)
THANK YOU.
(via theoceanandthesky)
I am not a woman of feminine frivolity or fear, but I direct these letters to you for the advantage of my whole kingdom; when you receive them accept me and the whole kingdom of Lombardy. I shall give you so many cities, castles, renowned palaces, and infinite gold and silver; over all these you will have an illustrious name if you make yourself dear to me. Do not consider me bold that I approach you first. It is permitted as much to the virile as to the feminine sex to desire a legitimate spouse. Nor does it matter if a man or a woman make the first move in love as long it involves an indissoluble marriage. Which can not be except by the consent of both. Fare well.
~ Matilda of Canossa’s marriage proposal for purely political reasons to Guelph V of Bavaria, her second husband.
1089 A.D.
[ Description: A brief video of a petite light-to-olive skinned woman with dark hair in a pony tail, wearing dark practical clothes. She’s walking a street at night, and delivers a beat-down to 5 guys wearing ski-masks. ]
This Woman Does a Pretty Convincing Batman-Style Beatdown
When it comes to bringing action found in popular comics, anime and video games to life, the Thousand Pounds Action Company sets a pretty high standard. They’ve done videos based off of DC Comics, Naruto Shippuden and Street Fighter and now they’re adding the Dark Knight’s latest video game to their portfolio.
The young lady in the clip is Mickey Facchinello and she really makes me want to see a Batgirl kicking ass in the Batman video game universe. Folks familiar with Arkham City’s combat moveset will see a bunch of familiar moves and camera tricks. Sure, there are no costumes but, with fight choreography this good, who needs ‘em?Holy badass, Batman! Batwoman in Arkham City anyone?
It's always darkest before the dawn.: As soon as this week, Congress will start debating whether to give the government the power to turn off parts of the...
If that sounds like a terrible recipe for abuse of power, that’s because it is.
If enacted, a new law would make it so a simple allegation of copyright infringement—with no review process—could lead to the shutdown of sites from YouTube to Wikipedia to MoveOn.org. Any…
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.
To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.
I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy
Here’s some more from later in the article
The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
sigh
not only do i have this queued to reblog every day but i am going to reblog every variation of it that comes up on my dash
because this is fucking HEINOUS and people need to know this.
what is being done to oppose the OWS movement is so, so blatantly illegal on every level. There is a reason there are laws against this kind of thing. The fact that those laws are being broken to try to suppress the protest against those laws being broken is the reason why the protests are happening! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK PEOPLE.
Salar de Uyuni - Potosi/Bolivia
The largest salt flat is in Bolivia, during the rainy season the ground turns into a huge mirror. Its called the border between Heaven & Earth.
Source: drillkitty :: odiodiodio
