Racial background vs. foreground: Seven Pounds

This weekend I saw the film Seven Pounds. It came out this past December starring Will Smith and with the same production company that produced Smith's Pursuit of Happyness.


And I was struck by the way that the film featured, in the background and the foreground, so many people of color.

[SPOILER ALERT: Although I will try NOT to give away too much of the film's plot/ending, there may be inadvertent spoilers that come up, so if you want to see the film without knowing any specific details, STOP READING NOW]

The star of the film, Smith, is African American. As is his past love interest (which we see in flashbacks). His current love interest in the film is played by Rosario Dawson (which means that her character can be interpreted as either Latino or mixed-race African American or just simply African American). Woody Harrelson (white American) plays the role of a blind man, Barry Pepper (white American) is Smith's best friend in the film--and his partner/wife is African American. And other characters whom Smith encounters in this film (which I should note here takes place in Los Angeles) include Spanish speaking/Latino (probably Chicano) characters, African Americans, and white Americans.

[Aside: Curiously enough, not a whole lot of Asians featured in this film--which always puzzles me, like in two other LA setting films, Hancock and Crash--this is a city chock full o'Asian Americans so how come they don't feature as prominently or when they do, they almost always appear as stock caricatures--and here I'm thinking of the Vietnmaese accented criminals who open Hancock and the Chinese immigrant couple (speaking Chinese and Chinese accented English) in Crash.]

In one scene in particular, Smith's character speaks in Spanish to a Latino woman, not because the woman can't speak English but seemingly to demonstrate that she can trust him -- that he quite literally speaks her language. And Smith, who it turns out speaks a smattering of Spanish, has a very good accent.

Unlike Crash, race, or perhaps its corollary, racism, isn't central to the film in the sense that this is a film ABOUT race. What I mean is, the characters don't talk about their racial identities. They don't talk about discrimination--and, in fact, quite pointedly I think, the one stark inter-racial couple, the white best friend of Smith's character and his black wife, are introduced to the audience while playing golf. I mean lets face it, if you were going to find a scene where you'd have a racial clash or comment, doing it on a golf course where you have an inter-racial black-white couple with a black man showing up in the middle of the fairway seems as good a place as any.

[Aside: I should also add that it struck me as odd--the golf scene. Not from a racial pov, but because when you play golf, you usually don't have random people in suits walking up to you on the fairway to have a conversation--and they were standing on the middle of the fairway, and I must admit that the golfer in me wondered what the other players were thinking about Pepper and Smith's character just chatting away on the course, and why the marshall didn't come out and tell them to keep play moving or ask Smith to leave, but then again there are A LOT of things about this film that causes you to pause and question the logic, which is another thing I suppose I should mention for anyone wanting to see it.]

One of the interesting things that I realized, as I saw these various characters unfold and get introduced and fleshed out through the course of the film is the use of race as a tonal element. Similar to Hancock, there are various characters of various races introduced. But what seems distinct from Hancock is the prominence of minor characters who are major to the film being people of color. In other words, the people of color in Seven Pounds are in some ways peripheral but also very important to the film to show that Smith's character lives in a world populated with people of different ethnic backgrounds who are part of his intimate inner circle as well as random strangers and acquaintances he encounters in his day to day life. Race, as a tonal element in this film, suggests what a mixed-race American looks like where people are just people and are defined by their function within the film (doctor, lawyer, best friend, golfer, aeronautic engineer, printer) but not by their racial or ethnic attributes/identity.

As I noted above, there are some logistical anomalies or problems at the heart of this film, so to speak. But it's also an incredibly philosophical film about the nature of life and death. And perhaps, given my recent melancholy mood, it was what I needed or wanted. The unexpectedly interesting introduction of so many different characters of color just living their lives in this film made it a bonus for me -- and made me realize that Hollywood really IS capable of doing this--of incorporating more characters of color in both the background and foreground--not to introduce the issue of race but to more accurately reflect the fact that for many of us, we live in mixed race worlds where people of different races just are.

Sorrow and Sadness

I know that I've been in blog silence for a few days--and the last two posts were really a series of YouTube clips that I found, for your edification and enjoyment. It's a combination of things, really, keeping me from blogging about things I think are relevant to the theme of "Mixed Race America"--the end of the semester, final exams, a visit from a family member--but right now, what I want to share is that I'm incredibly sad because...

*A close family member has passed away recently from a long illness.

*A huge swatch of Santa Barbara is burning--and the fire started in the foothills, very near to where I used to live (on Cieneguitas, which is Spanish for "little swamp"). The devastation is incredible--hundred of homes burned and thousands of people evacuated, and the fire still isn't contained (click here for updates on KEYT.com).

*A young woman about to graduate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT was recently gunned down by her ex-boyfriend in a campus bookstore. Johanna Justin-Jinich would have graduated this year from Wesleyan. She had a summer internship lined up in Washington DC. She was passionate about women's issues and had volunteered at Planned Parenthood offices in both Colorado (where she was from) and Connecticut. When I read Tenured Radical's blog posts about her murder, especially this one, I literally had to hold back my tears (I am currently, as in right at this very moment, proctoring a final exam for my 20th C. American literature course. If students had looked up from their blue books about 15 minutes ago, they would have seen me with my hand over my mouth and tears in my eyes as I read about Johanna's murder).

All of which is to say, I feel very emotionally raw right now, and as much as I would like to comment on interesting topics, like whether Cinco de Mayo is a "real" holiday or simply a gringo's excuse to drink under the guise of a Mexican holiday, how I feel about that new Tiger Woods Gatorade commercial, where he is a cartoon boy version of himself, and Extreme Makeover Home Edition (so MUCH to say about that!). But for now, I think I'm just going to try to keep it together so I can collect the last of my student final exams, grade their papers, and hope that nothing tragic happens to them (or to me/my family/my loved ones) in the next few days.

Friday Fun

For something on the lighter side, a collection of clips, movie trailers, parodies, and commercials from around the blogosphere. They are a motley, weird, and random assortment--some you've already seen, I'm sure--particularly the last one (I can't WAIT for them to actually air this segment of Sesame Street in the fall!).

Both black and white people are welcome to shop at "The Red House" [and apparently "Hispanics" too, but what about us Asians???]




Trailer for the film Paper Heart




A "Gaythering" Storm [take THAT you NOM/man-lady group! The only thing I wish is that they had played "They're raining men" at the end of the clip]

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Elmo & Ricky Gervais

A spoken word trio of STRONG WOMEN

To close out National Poetry Month, I thought that I'd highlight three female slam/spoken word poets, StaceyAnn Chin, Alix, Olson, and Suheir Hammad. All three have been featured on Russell Simmon's HBO Def Poetry Jam and are notable for speaking truth to power and their extraordinary rhetorical and lyrical power.

For me, I think they remind me that poetry began as a spoken art form--it began in the tradition of Homer--the oral repetition of stories, recording the lives of heroic men and their exploits in love and war. These three women are the inheritors of Homer, taking the form to a new level, telling their own particular truths and stories, recording the heroic aspects of their own lives.

StaceyAnn Chin:




Alix Olson:




Suheri Hammad:

Why aren't there more black golfers? (Don't) Blame it on Tiger

ESPN has an article that came out on April 5 (so before the Masters and Tiger's impressive rally/duel with Phil Mickelson--really, it speaks volumes about the skill of both players that they should come from behind and make a real push at the end--and both came close to being in that 3-way final sudden-death round with Cabrera (the winner), Perry, and Campbell) about Tiger Woods, his racial identity, and the dearth of black golfers on the PGA. In other words, it's an article about why Tiger hasn't heralded a new wave of young black golfers into the professional ranks, which is what everyone was talking about/predicting back when Tiger turned pro and won the first of his Master's green jackets by an impressive margin (12--the largest in Master's history).

Here is ESPN's "video" article and the actual "article" (click here) about Tiger and race and the lack of black golfers on the PGA:



Of course, regular readers can imagine that I have an opinion about all of this because (1) I am a golfer (2) I am a Tiger Woods fan (3) I work/teach/write on issues of race (4) I've written about the specific issue of Tiger and race before (actually many times, but the post that is most pertinent is "Let Tiger Be Tiger" as is this one "Gee You Don't Look 'Asian'").

So here it is in a nutshell: Tiger is not the sole person responsible for the PGA identifying, supporting, and promoting young African American golfers into its ranks. He's not even the main person responsible. The main body responsible for identifying, recruiting, and ensuring that there is a cadre of black, as well as other non-white American golfers is the PGA (which at last glance was comprised of mostly white American middle-aged men). And guess what? There are others, aside from Tiger or other professional golfers, who should be working on this issue--golf instructors/pros, golf writers, golf club members of all races could all be putting their individual and collective weight behind this issue.

Because here's the thing: this is not just a "black" issue. Wanting the Professional Golf Association of AMERICA to look more like the actual demographics and composition of AMERICA seems to be an issue that all AMERICANS can get behind. And whether or not Tiger identifies as African American or mixed-race American or Afro-Asian or Cablinasian, the issue of diversifying the PGA is a responsibility of everyone associated with golf in the U.S.

I also think that it's silly for Eddie Payton to say that Tiger doesn't identify as African American. That statement implies that somehow Tiger is ashamed of his African American heritage or his relationship with his father or his friends (among whom are some of the most prominent African American professional sports figures, like Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan). Just because Tiger chooses to identify as mixed-race (which he has says he does so as not to deny/ignore the existence and influence of his Thai mother) doesn't mean he doesn't affiliate with his African American heritage or doesn't appreciate the black community.

Should Tiger be doing more politically active and social justice oriented work, given his power and influence? That would be my own personal wish. However, I don't think it's his especial responsibility to take on "racial" issues because he is the most powerful and visible non-white person in the PGA. I understand the logic of believing that he should--because the assumption is that no white person is going to care about identifying, recruiting, and promoting African American golfers, nor will they care about changing the culture of golf so that it is much less privileged/racist/classist/sexist and more inclusive of diversity in all its permutations.

I should also note that while there have been, recently, some prominent Asian American golfers (a shout out to Anthony Kim, "AK"), the PGA is pretty white. I mean, one could ask, where is the next Lee Trevino? I recognize that an Argentinian recently won the Master's championship, but what about an Argentinian AMERICAN? Where are all the Latino golfers? And American Indian? And mixed race golfers? If you dig into the history of golf, it's not a surprise to understand why golf has been such a traditionally white, male sport. There are still many country clubs that admit men only -- and their membership of non-white members is pretty scant.

But we CAN do something about it. Or we should try. And by we, I mean all who love golf--all who play--all who watch and, especially, all who are involved in positions of power and decision making and who have access to MONEY and INFLUENCE to change, literally CHANGE the face of golf.

And to close, let me leave you with this latest ad from NIKE that shows the impact of Tiger's absence from the world of golf last season and the impact of his return on his fellow golfers:

This week's poet: Vikram Seth & The Golden Gate

You may accuse me of cheating a bit in my recommendation of this week's poet--or at least this week's poetic text. Because for those of you who haven't picked up Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, let me just say: what are you waiting for? Go out to your local bookshop and pick up a copy NOW!



Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta, India. He is truly a Renaissance man, for he began his writing career at Stanford, not out of the English Department but in-between writing a PhD in Economics (I think he's still ABD). While working on his dissertation, he decided to apply for the very prestigious Wallace Stegner writing fellowship, got it, and then took some time out from his PhD work in Economics to write poetry -- and he published a book of verse out of that endeavor, Mappings. Then he became fluent in Chinese, lived a few years in China, and published a travel memoir, From Heaven's Lake, followed by another book of poetry, The Humble Adminstrator's Garden, and then The Golden Gate. He has gone on to publish half-a-dozen other books of fiction and poetry and memoir/biography, and he currently lives in San Francisco (although I think he splits his time between CA and India).

Published in 1986, The Golden Gate is a novel in verse, modeled on Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, Eugene Onegin.

[NOTE: Pushkin, who is REVERED in Russia (something crazy like 90% of Russians have read Eugene Onegin), is also 1/8 African, which makes him one of the world's great mixed-race writers.]

The novel is set in the early 1980s and follows a cast of young, urban professionals (remember Yuppies?) in the SF Bay area, falling in and out of love, protesting nuclear war, trying to reconcile their queer sexual desire with their Catholicism, and, in general, being 20-something post-graduates.



But what makes this novel truly unique is that it is composed entirely in Onegin stanzas. Let me show you through the opening stanza of the novel:

To make a start more swift than weighty A
Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once upon b
A time, say, circa 1980, A
There lived a man. His name was John. b
Successful in his field though only C
Twenty-six, respected, lonely, C
One evening as he walked across d
Golden Gate Park, the ill-judged toss d
Of a red frisbee almost brained him. E
He thought, “If I died, who’d be sad? f
Who’d weep? Who’d gloat? Who would be glad? f
Would anybody?” As it pained him, E
He turned from this dispiriting theme g
To ruminations less extreme. g

I know that a few of you may think, "UGH! A novel composed entirely of sonnets!" But really, after you start to get into the rhythm of the work, you become used to the formality of the verse, and there is something about the juxtaposition of such contemporary themes with such a traditional verse form that is simply wonderful.

Plus, there's the whimsy! Seth has a fondness for animals, especially cats. There is one named Charlemagne who develops a deep animosity for his owner's boyfriend. And there is an iguana named Arnold Schwarzenegger (and all this before he became the "Governator"). He actually rhymes "piranha" with "iguana," when describing how one of the characters, Ed, goes into a petshop originally intending to buy the flesh-eating fish only to walk out with the green reptile.

But this novel isn't just whimsical--it ruminates on the nature of love, on issues of social justice, on queer love, the duty to family, to God, to ourselves. Anyway, if you want to read something truly original, let me recommend that you try Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate. There is just something truly pleasurable about this book, and I believe it is due, in large part, to the brilliance and skill of his verse.

I am Elizabeth Bennett

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if you are a Jane Austen fan (or Austen-ite), then of all the female characters in Pride & Prejudice you will most identify with Elizabeth Bennett. Or at least you will WANT to be Elizabeth Bennett. The other female options are just not real options for those of us who live and breathe the Austen aura. Mary? Too pedantic. Kitty? A follower. Lydia? A thoughtless, narcissistic flirt. Mrs. Bennett? A grown-up, hypochondriac Lydia. Caroline Bingley? Stuck up bitch. Jane Bennett? Too sweet/good/anemic.

That really leaves Elizabeth. She's willing to walk three miles with mud up to her ankles to tend to her sick sister at another person's house. The fault laid against her by her friends and family is that she is not quite as pretty as Jane and (more telling) that she is too apt to speak her mind. She reads (but doesn't consider reading more important than other livelier pursuits). She plays the piano (although not quite well). And she values people not for their rank, position, or wealth but the quality of their character (and their kindness).

Now, none of us can truly be Elizabeth. She's a fictional character of another era (Regency Britain of the late 18th C). Sure she's rendered into celluloid life by both Jennifer Ehle (6-hour BBC version) and Kiera Knightley (major motion picture release). And actually it's these cinematic renditions that I want to talk about. Because of course, on film, you want to render things realistically--which means you pick people who are white and British (or who can do a passable British accent--and I'm thinking of you Gwyneth Paltrow) and you put them in period costume and throw in some ducks and geese and pigs to show how "real" life was back then.

But in the theater? Well, theater is a different venue altogether.

Now for those of you wondering (where the heck is she GOING with this in a blog called "Mixed Race America") this is what I mean.

Yesterday I saw a theater production of Pride & Prejudice. And like with many Shakespeare plays, this one engaged in color-blind casting. Which means, they weren't trying to cast everyone "authentically" as British or white. No one even tried to do a British accent (well, actually, one actor did). But it also means that there were four roles who went to visible people of color: Kitty was played by an Afro-Latina actress (I say Afro-Latina because her appearance suggested African American but her name suggested Latino influence). Mr. Binghley was played by a South Asian American actor and his sister, Caroline Binghley, was played by an African American actress. And most astounding enough, the lead--THE LEAD--was played by an Asian American (Filipina if I had to guess by both name and appearance) woman.

That's right. Elizabeth Bennett was Asian.

And while I can't vouch for the actual production (lets face it--it would have had to have been SPECTACULAR for any Austen-fan to think it was better than either of the films I mentioned above, let alone the novel itself), as I was watching Elizabeth deliver her lines (she wasn't bad, by the way--the actress that is), I imagined the following imaginary scenario:

You are an Asian American girl in High School and your English teacher assigns Pride & Prejudice. You and your girlfriends love the book and talk about wanting to be like Elizabeth. Your class takes a field trip to see a theater production. Lo and behold, you see the actress and realize that you actually CAN be Elizabeth Bennett!

This is why I went to see this play. Not because I love Pride & Prejudice, but because when I saw the stills from the production, I saw that Elizabeth was played by an Asian American woman. And I wanted to have that experience--of seeing someone who could be me, portray one of the most beloved of Austen's heroines on stage. I wanted, briefly, the idea that I, or someone like me, could be the protagonist--the hero--the one who everyone cheers for (and claps for) at the end of the performance. For the first time in my experience, Asian Americans, along with African American and Latinos, were put into the British literary canon in a really tangible, visible way.

And I though: well it's about time!

Oriental describes rugs not people

Growing up, I often heard the word "Oriental" used interchangeably with Asian or even Asian American. It wasn't until I went to college and took my first Asian American studies course during my freshman year that I learned about the history of this word--that it was used as a sign of Imperialism against people from Asian (and Middle-Eastern) countries in order to objectify them and render them as objects of study, colonization, and/or plunder.

If you look at a dictionary definition, like the Oxford English Dictionary (and what better place to start than the OED), the first two definitions of Oriental are:

1) Belonging to, or situated in, that part or region of the heavens in which the sun rises

2) Belonging to or situated in the east of a country or place, or of the earth; eastern.

But here's the thing: it matters where you are situated to figure out what is "east." If I'm standing on the Great Wall of China, then what is technically "east" is the continent of North America (if we're talking in terms of continents")--so isn't "Oriental" all a matter of perspective?

At any rate, I begin here with Oriental because I have been thinking about the question of appropriation--which I brought up when talking about the film Rachel Getting Married. And one astute commenter asked whether or not the use of an Indian motif in this film was a matter of irony versus cultural appropriation, which is what I had written very directly in my initial post in response to the image below:

"A scene right before Rachel and her new husband are about to cut a cake that is in the form of a stylized Indian elephant--by the way, this was one element I definitely thought was odd because neither Rachel nor Sidney nor their families appear to be Hindi/Indian and this "theme" for their wedding is never explained--which raises another question about cultural appropriation, especially for weddings, but I'll save that for another post."

So why is this cultural appropriation? Or rather, why am I using the word "appropriation" versus noting that they had an Indian themed wedding?

Because in this case, I feel that appropriation--the act of taking something that doesn't quite belong to you--is the more accurate sense of what is happening, aesthetically, in this film for this fictitious wedding. Yes, it is perhaps part of the multicultural/bohemian/anything-goes-lets-throw-in-the-kitchen-sink-if-its-a-different-ethnicity "tone" of the film. But it also feels stylized in such a way that it made me feel like it wasn't simply another "additive" to their hodge-podge racial/ethnic/national mix of friends and family; the details of the saris and the elephant cake and the rehearsal dinner at an Indian restaurant was the dominant motif of the wedding. And yet, neither family revealed themselves to have any connection to India or Indian culture.

Indian isn't just what you have for dinner. And it's not a decorating choice for your living room. And unless you grew up with Indian culture or in an Indian home or in India, it seems like having an "Indian" wedding would mean you are taking part of someone else's culture for your own purposes--you are appropriating their culture--you are Orientalizing someone else's culture for the sake of being hip, cool, ironic.

But Indian culture isn't ironic--at least not for people who are in India or among the millions in the Indian diaspora. Indian culture is complex, multifaceted, segmented by region, religion, history, politics, sexuality, and a host of other things that can't be whittled down to a single cuisine or decorative choice. In terms of the overall feel of the film, the Indian-themed wedding seemed to be another "quirky" element, one signaling openness to multiculturalism, but only in a surface way--it's not as if they had a Hindi ceremony or chose any of the spiritual practices associated with various Indian sects (like Sikh, Buddhism, Jain, Islam or in Southern India, Catholicism).

Anyway, in my book, all this means is that it feels like cultural appropriation for the sake of achieving a certain tonal element in the film. And while I did like the movie, I found the "Indian" details to be unnecessary and a bit too precious and pretentious, especially due to the absence of actual Indian people/bodies in this film.