Asian Americans & MediaAsian American Studies 55Professor Christine Balance || em: cbalance@uci.edu

1Friday, October 21, 16

BRUCE LEE1940: Born in San Francisco, CA. Raised in Hong Kong. At age 13, began training Wing Chun with Yip Man (in Hong Kong).

1960s: He returned to U.S. to attend University of Washington in Seattle, WA. He ran his own martial arts studio in Seattle. In 1965, he moved back to the San Francisco/Bay Area & opened a studio in Oakland. Lee began developing Jeet Kune Do (“style of no style”) and its philosophy.

1966-1967: he co-starred as Kato on the Green Hornet TV series.

1971: Lee approached Warner Bros. studios regarding a new show The Warrior. In 1972, he returned to Hong Kong to make martial arts films.

Died on July 20, 1973.

2Friday, October 21, 16

Yellowface Redux:David Carradine as “Kwai Chang Caine” in Kung Fu (1970s)

3Friday, October 21, 16

Diaspora (or diasporic cultures): "....a transnational ethnoscape created when a people disperses, willingly or unwillingly, from an original homeland and resettles in other locations…James Clifford describes diasporas, and by implication diasporic cultures, as being oriented along ‘an axis of origin and return.’ The existence of a homeland, perhaps more than any other characteristic, shapes diasporic cultures.” (Klein, 22) “Unlike exile or immigration, (diaspora) is a collective experience, a dispersal of a people rather than simply of individuals. The collectivity maintains its sense of peoplehood through networks of travel, communication, economic exchange, and cultural interaction that crisscross national borders.” (Klein, 26)

4Friday, October 21, 16

Diaspora draws our attention to:1. multiple migrations2. romantic nostalgia for the “homeland”3. diversity within (not just racial but also) ethnic groups (i.e. different forms of ‘Chinese-ness’)4. “selective accommodation”

5Friday, October 21, 16

“I, Bruce Lee, am a man who never follows those fearful formulas...So, no matter if your color is black or white, red or blue, I can still make friends with you without any barrier.” (Prashad, 55)

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“Before a group can enter an open society, it must first close ranks.” - (Stokely Carmichael)

“Faced with a hostile school curriculum, minority groups struggled to incorporate themes from the margin, from those histories of nonwhite people hithertho excluded from the story of the United States. Early Asian American filmmaking turned to the documentary form with a critical eye...” (Prashad, 57)

7Friday, October 21, 16

scenes from 1955 Bandung conference

“Conflict comes from not from variety of skins, nor from variety of religion, but from variety of desires.” (President Sukarno of Indonesia, 1955 Bandung conference)

8Friday, October 21, 16

Bruce Lee - corporeal warfare, anti-capitalist, pro-guerilla

James Bond - gadgets, main adversaries: Asians & Eastern Europeans

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Polyculturalism, unlike multiculturalism, assumes that people live coherent lives that are made up of a host of lineages—the task of the historian is not to carve out the lineages but to make sense of how people live culturally dynamic lives. Polyculturalism is a ferocious engagement with the political world of culture, a painful embrace of the skin and all its contradictions. (Prashad, xi-xii)

10Friday, October 21, 16