Or at least that’s what the Chicago Sun-Times is suggesting.

For those of you too lazy to click, the article focuses on what I think of as ‘marriage tourism’ – in this case, men who go to the Philippines to find wives, because (many) Filipino women are supposedly ‘not looking for sexual pleasure’ and ‘would like very much to meet a nice American man and take care of him’.

I have to say, glaring geisha-syndrome and Orientalism aside, this sounds just plain wrong. As in inaccurate.

The portrayal of Filipino women as shrinking violets is completely laughable. I’ll grant you that Filipino culture can be rather macho, but in different ways – for instance, men are expected to be good cooks, because being hospitable and providing for guests and the family is very important in Filipino culture.

Being able to dance and sing – two performance-based, public activities – are highly valued in Filipino men and women. All of my Filipino female cousins can/could dance, and participated in community or professional performances. Some of them even did Tahitian dance, which uses a LOT of hip-shaking and coconut-shell bras. The ability to dance requires being in touch with, and not self-conscious about or ashamed of, one’s body and one’s physical needs.

None of the Filipino women I know are or were anything like the (perhaps imaginary) women in the article. They are/were boisterous, risque, and anything but submissive.

Maybe women born and raised in the Philippines are different – then again, my grandmother was born, if not raised, in the Philippines, and brought up by parents who did grow up in the rural Philippines. She was hospitable and good at taking care of her family, but there was no way she just wanted to take care of a nice man. And although it sounds weird to say this about family, I don’t think sex was never on her mind, either; when she was in her fifties or sixties, and had already outlasted three husbands, she had an affair with a (married) hotel chef who wanted her to run away to Florida with him.

Other examples include:

*the old Filipino lady who worked near my dance school and who once told me, ‘My husband could get mean, you know! We used to argue all the time, but I told him, “If you ever hit me, you better sleep with a knife under your pillow, because I’m Filipino – I going to come after you, and you better watch out!” ‘
*Duanna, my father’s loud-and-in-charge co-worker, who is a lovely person and can’t utter a sentence that doesn’t contain a sexual reference.
*me, although I’m not sure if this is quite the same thing, as I’m only half Filipino. But on the off chance that I do count, I am in a so-far-successful relationship that has nothing to do with ‘taking care’ of my man.

It could be that the man quoted in the article misinterpreted general hospitality as man-specific hospitality, or that Filipino social interactions can appear ‘reserved’ to Americans from the Midwest/South/Upper East Coast.

It also could be that he and other men like him are sad and pathetic, and find it so much easier to blame women for their glaring social problems.

*********
I should point out that I’m not against two people from different countries or cultures entering into a relationship together. I’d be a massive hypocrite if I were – after all, M is British and I’m American from Hawaii. But a cross-cultural relationship should be based on PERSONAL connection, and not on some sort of cultural fetishisation. You’re dating a person, not their culture.

If you’ve never heard of it, Skins is a British show chronicling the adventures and mishaps of a group of teenagers – basically, it’s a high school drama. The trailers on Channel 4 made it look like Myspace: The Movie, and it’s true that there are some of the hallmarks of Every Indie Teen Drama Ever, such as:

*The obligatory ‘crazy girl’ with lots of eyeliner, attractively disordered hair, waiflike attitude and/or look, and some sort of mental instability that nevertheless fails to keep men away.
*Teenagers doing things which are meant to be Life-Affirming in order to Seize the Moment, such as skinny-dipping, jumping into pools with all their clothes on, or trampolining outside a house party.

Skins also has loads of gropey teenage sex, recreational drug use (pills, pot, and for some reason EVERYONE seems to smoke), clever backtalk to parents and authority figures, and mood-setting indie music. And raves.

If you already hate Skins based on this description, I don’t blame you. I mean, everything I mentioned would normally into the category of TV Things That Are Really, Really Annoying.

However, Skins pushes past the restrictions of its genre and manages not only to succeed, but to draw you in as well.

Skins is written through the filter of how you feel when you’re a teenager, rather than being an objective portrayal of what teenagers are like. For starters, Skins has just a touch of irony about it – not enough to stop you from caring about the characters, but enough to make you realise that sometimes the characters take themselves and their problems a little too seriously. It’s a bit like Grease in that respect, where the characters do things that they think are cool or life-changing or what have you, but the audience is meant to see these actions and motivations in the context of adolescence, when everything seems incredibly, excessively significant. Same goes for Skins’ authority figure characters (teachers, parents, etc), who are usually portrayed as detached, neglectful, out of touch, or trying too hard to be cool. That isn’t what all teachers and parents are really like, but that is how a lot of teenagers view them.

Skins also manages to take a fairly cliched character – the cool, charming leader of the pack – and turn him into someone interesting we can all hate. Tony Stonem has all the girls he could want, a painfully loyal best friend, and a loving (and hot) girlfriend; oh, and he’s a good singer, too. Instead of turning him into the protagonist, the show gradually reveals him to be a superficial, manipulative bastard who’s completely aware of his power over others and who revels in abusing it. When he gets his comeuppance (the nature of which I won’t spoil for you), it’s satisfying rather than sad.

The teenagers in Skins largely live in their own world. There’s no worrying about who’s popular or unpopular, who’s been asked to this or that party, or anything along those lines. Maybe this is more of a personal thing, as popularity was never a huge concern for me or my friends, but I suspect that a lot of people can identify with that.

Most importantly, despite all the wild sex and continuous pill-popping and music by Someone You’ve Never Heard Of, Skins is a reflection of how foolish and oblivious teenagers can be: the many, many bad relationship decisions, publicly making out with your boyfriend like it’s your last day on earth, lashing out at troubled or struggling parents just for fun or just to prove a point, and so on.

Added bonuses come in the form of watching comedic actors play troubled, depressed, or otherwise down-on-their-luck parents; you get to see Bill Bailey AND Josie Lawrence say ‘fuck’ on television. You also get to see Peter Capaldi being well Scottish and touchingly vulnerable, which is actually what got me watching Skins in the first place.

In summary, if you want an emotionally accurate representation of adolescence, watch Skins. I’m 6 episodes into the second series, and can’t wait to see more.

*******
P.S. I couldn’t finish Torchwood: Children of Earth. All of the actors were great except for John Barrowman, which was kind of problematic as he plays the main character and I had trouble watching any scene with him in it. In fact, he bothered me so much that I couldn’t even enjoy the scenes without him, because I knew he’d be coming back.

This is the first time I’ve ever watched Torchwood, Doctor Who’s semi-spinoff, more adult serial sci-fi thing; I have to admit that my avoidance was partially based on Charlie Brooker describing it as “tuning in to watch Deadwood, only to discover they’ve replaced Al Swearengen with the Honey Monster” and comparing its overall premise to Scooby-Doo with “a bizarre emphasis on bisexual tension” with “countless overhead helicopter shots of Cardiff”.

John Barrowman’s cartoon hero shtick aside (for real – his jarringly American accent in a show full of Welsh/standard British accents and entire look just screams Disney, but with aliens and man-on-man makeouts), Children of Earth is pretty good. This is, of course, partially due to Peter Capaldi, who I mentioned in a previous post. As in The Thick of It, he plays a high-level, Alistair Campbell-esque government employee engaged in unscrupulous activity; unlike The Thick of It, he hasn’t sworn at all (so far), he’s a lot more openly vulnerable, and he wears glasses. Although not important to the plot as far as I can tell, the glasses are a very nice touch, to the point where I think the BBC should make him wear them every time he appears on TV. Phwoar, as British men over a certain age sometimes say.

It’s also kind of fun on a personal level, since I used to live in Cardiff and a lot of scenes are shot in locations I used to visit a lot, or areas close to our old flat.

However, there are a LOT of unnecessary aerial shots of Cardiff, which is especially weird when you consider that most of the action seems to take place in or around Cardiff. I understand the shot-of-the-Eiffel-tower-means-we’re-in-France-now cliche when the action moves from one location to another, but why use it when the setting remains pretty much the same? Maybe the director just wants to remind us that we are, in fact, in Cardiff. Cardiff Cardiff Cardiff. And look! Cardiff Bay! Cardiff Bay again, but from a different angle!

Anyway, on to the plot. The miniseries – for Children of Earth is a miniseries – is broken up into five episodes, each covering the events of one day. Some sort of alien invasion is imminent, although as of the beginning of Day Two, it’s not entirely clear what sort of invasion is coming or why. We do know that children all over the world have been targeted and used as a vessel for the aliens to speak through: at exactly the same time, every child on Earth – and one man – stops all motion and speech and instead begins to chant “We are coming” in English. The man, now confined to a mental institution, witnessed a prior alien visitation when he was a child.

Torchwood, a secret government-funded organisation devoted to fighting “extraterrestrial threat”, is on the case, but there’s a problem. The upcoming alien invasion seems linked to a cover-up of the previous visitation, which certain government agents (including Peter Capaldi) don’t want disclosed.

Meanwhile, Torchwood – made up of Captain Jack (John Barrowman), his boyfriend Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd), and super-Welsh Gwen (Eve Myles) – is having personal issues. Jack and Ianto are dealing with their new status as a couple, and in Day One it seems Ianto hasn’t even come out to his sister yet. Gwen turns out to be pregnant, so she has an unborn baby as well as her man to protect when the secret government agents come knocking.

Overall, it’s pretty good. Despite the unnecessary aerial shots of CARDIFF CARDIFF CARDIFF and John Barrowman’s distracting American-Disneyness, the plot is easy to follow but not insultingly so, and events appear to be building up quite well, with bonus action violence thrown in. I still like Merlin better, though this may be because I prefer my action to either come without personal crises or for a show to incorporate personal crises into the action – the drama is a bit too foregrounded here for my taste. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t watched much of Torchwood and therefore am not as emotionally invested in the characters.

On the other hand, Peter Capaldi is in it, wearing glasses, so I’ll press on.

*Merlin (BBC 1): a fairly family-friendly revamp of the legend of King Arthur, wherein Uther’s still alive, Arthur grows from a bratty prince to the mature future king, Merlin is his servant, Morgana is Uther’s ward, and Guinevere is her lady-in-waiting. Magic is officially outlawed, so Merlin and Morgana (who have magical powers) have to hide their abilities, but it’s getting more and more difficult.

The strength of Merlin lies in its hidden maturity. Like T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, the series grows up with its characters. I admit that I tried watching Season 1 of Merlin from the beginning and was highly uninterested – the costumes made it obvious that Camelot = Medieval B.S. Land, and the dialogue sounded like preteen banter.

OK, Camelot still is Medieval B.S. Land (e.g., despite the fact that Guinevere is probably part black, the only other black people are magical assassins or druids or whatever), but the show turned out to be great. I think the problem was that the characters were younger and were therefore dealing with lighter matters. Now they’ve moved on to identity crises, doomed love, religious-ish persecution (in one episode, a witch hunter comes to ferret out magic users) and civil war in Camelot.

For instance, as Morgana’s powers become stronger and more difficult to hide, she finds herself increasingly torn between loyalty to the family that raised her and loyalty to other people like her (but who unfortunately want to destroy Camelot). Arthur faces the uncomfortable truth that his father, whom he’s always looked up to as a paragon of honesty and integrity, has old fears, hatreds and lies hidden so deep within himself that even he doesn’t know their full power.

This sounds like an episode summary, and I suppose in some ways it is. The trouble with describing Merlin is that it’s somehow much greater than the sum of its parts: the Medieval B.S. Land costumes, the characterisation, the Arthur-Merlin banter, Arthur growing up into someone who’s not a jerk, and so on. All I can say is, watch it. Start from Season 2 if you’re not sure, and be prepared to think “Oh come ON” several times within the first 5-10 minutes. But stay with it. You won’t regret it, I promise.

*The Thick of It (BBC 2): political satire/comedy set in the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship at Westminster, with LOTS of swearing. Although no political parties are named and all characters are fictional, there are obvious parallels – for instance, the main characters are clearly Labour and the supporting cast, who works for the opposition party, are obviously Tory.

The current season revolves around the sudden introduction of Nicola Murray, the new Secretary of State, and the unstoppable downward spiral of the main characters’ party (a parallel for Labour’s real-life decline).

On top of the screw-ups and embarrassments, you’ll find Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications – modelled on Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s notorious spin doctor during the days of New Labour – an angry, aggressive, wonderfully foul-mouthed, amoral, full-speed-ahead bastard, who’s become the show’s most beloved character.

The Thick of It’s power lies in its unwillingness to take the fast satirical route. It would be easy to suggest that everyone in government is fundamentally dishonest and power-hungry, but the show’s characters are, for the most part, good people who are simply overwhelmed by a fickle public/mysterious party demands/sensationalist press/etc. Even Malcolm does what he does (threats, allegations bordering on smear campaigns) for the good of the party, not for his own personal ends.

The show is shot with handheld cameras, with no laugh track or soundtrack, and a fair portion (20% or so) of the final dialogue is improvised. If that doesn’t convince you, think about this: the script is edited by a “swearing consultant”, who adds the colorful profanity for which the show has become famous.

And because I have a horribly massive crush on Malcolm Tucker, here are some quotes (all his) to show how awesome this show is:

“‘Climbing the mountain of conflict’? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!”

“Please could you take this note, ram it up his hairy inbox and pin it to his fucking prostate.”

“He’s about as much use as a marzipan dildo.”

“I’ve never seen anybody look so fucking ugly with just one head! …And who was it that did your media training? Myra Hindley? I mean, it’s terrible… All this, hands are all over the place… You were like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra!”

“I went golfing with Stephen Hawking. The little shit didn’t tell me about his handicap.”

“I’m really sorry, you won’t hear any more swearing from us, YOU MASSIVE GAY SHITE!”

*******

Individual episodes:

*Never Mind the Buzzcocks, hosted this past Wednesday by Frankie Boyle. NMTB is often a mixed bag, and depends greatly on the strength of its host. Frankie Boyle is both disdainful enough of the celebrity clique culture to avoid sucking up and sociable enough that he can get along with the guests. I’m not doing it justice here, but that was the best episode of NMTB I’ve seen in a long time.

*Tonight or tomorrow: Have I Got News For You – Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty) is hosting and using his real voice!

What I do object to is Chen Kaige’s involvement in the film. It’s possible that he was made some kind of offer he couldn’t refuse, or maybe he even plays an anti-Communist insurgent or something – I don’t know. But the reason I (and probably a lot of Western film audiences) know his name is that he made a wonderful, emotional and perhaps deeply personal movie that spoke out against the idea that the authority of Communism, or any government, should supersede or try to control the creation of art. The movie in question, Farewell My Concubine, revolves around the lives of two Beijing opera stars and follows them from the end of the Warlord era to the emergence of Communism. One of the supporting characters, Xiao Si, is a young man who’s semi-adopted by the opera stars and later becomes a fervent Communist. His conflicts with the main characters and their artistic ideologies could be read as a reflection of Chen’s personal experience – as a teenager, Chen Kaige was also an ardent Communist, to the point of turning in his own father. This relationship is echoed in the film to devastating effect, and drives home the portrayal of Communism as the enemy of art, aesthetics, understanding of tradition and the factors that create modern art and culture, and of course basic human freedoms and dignity.

All this is to say that I don’t really understand what Chen Kaige is doing in a pro-Communist, government-sponsored propaganda movie. If he’s there because the government says he has to be (or else), that’s one thing. If he’s there of his own free will, that’s troubling and sad.

Also I wanted to remind myself to head down to Wales at the end of March to catch The Singing Bones, a new show by The Devil’s Violin, a storytelling/music ensemble consisting of Oliver Wilson-Dickson on the fiddle, Luke Carver Goss on accordion, Sarah Moody on the cello, and Daniel Morden as the storyteller. I think this is the show that features The Juniper Tree – apparently there’s an age limit on it now – so I definitely have to go, especially as M has never seen The Juniper Tree (or Daniel Morden) live.

Finally, you should all see Up. You’ll probably cry, but in a good way, and it is a genuinely, thoughtfully sweet movie.

Am I glad that someone is acknowledging, and trying to educate others about, the dark undertones (or sometimes outright shocking overtones), source material, and original context of fairy tales? Of course. I absolutely adore fairy tales, mythology and folklore, and have done since I was old enough to read them, so the greater appreciation for them the better.

On the other hand, the insistence that fairy tales Aren’t For Kids because of the potentially disturbing material smacks of a vestigial Victorian sensibility, or at least a continued desire to limit children’s fairy tale knowledge to the sanitised versions: now that we know about the foot mutilation in Cinderella, let’s write essays and books and articles and let’s teach classes and let’s hold seminars, but for God’s sake don’t tell the kids. They can’t know about this.

I realise that the social division between children and adults that started in the Romantic period still holds today when it comes to literature (among other things). There are certainly things that some children won’t be able to handle reading; The Robber Bridegroom, for instance, comes to mind. This is a variant on the Bluebeard/Mr. Fox theme, except that in addition to murder, mutilation, and rapey overtones, there’s also some cannibalism for that extra flair. That’s probably not a story you want to read to your children before they fall asleep.

But the reason I know what happens in that fairy tale is that I read it, over and over, when I was very young. Maybe I was 8 years old. I had a Collected Brothers Grimm with silver covers, and I loved that book. Read it every day. Some fairy tales I read once and never again, and some I kept returning to. That was one of them.

I’ve heard the argument that fairy tales aren’t any darker or more disturbing than what kids might see on the news. This is kind of true, but children CAN tell the difference between what can and can’t happen in real life. When I was eleven, I managed to get hold of Kiss The Girls, a crime fiction novel by James Patterson which basically centers on two serial killers/rapists who target women; one of the killers leaves a body part from each of his victims at the crime scene, or something. I read the book on a sunny afternoon, downstairs in the living room, while my parents were both home. After that, for a good portion of the day I was afraid to be alone anywhere in the house. I read The Robber Bridegroom repeatedly when I was eight, but reading a novel that could have taken place in real life scared the heck out of me when I was three years older. The Robber Bridegroom, due to being a fairy tale, was automatically removed (for me) from the realm of Things That Can Actually Happen, and so it wasn’t scary.

Children can mentally handle a lot more than adults seem to think they can. Either they process it and live with it, or it goes over their heads. I’m thinking of the time I saw Sweeney Todd on stage with my parents when I was seven. The plot, for those who haven’t seen it, includes rape, quasi-incest (the villain falls in “love” with his ward, who he’s raised since she was a baby and who thinks he’s her real father), lots and lots of murder, and cannibalism. I remember the bare bones of the plot, but came out with not much more than an impression of the title song. My mother, since she was old enough to understand the plot and the true horror of it, was traumatised – but I was fine.

When they do process it, there’s often a much-needed lesson in there. I don’t necessarily mean a straightforward moral, though those can appear too. The Juniper Tree (child murder, cannibalism) comes to mind, which I heard rather than read from a storyteller, Daniel Morden*, who was visiting Hawaii. I couldn’t have been older than seven when I heard it, but I remembered it for the rest of my life. I was enthralled, enchanted, fascinated, thrilled, amazed – but not afraid. Did he sanitise the story at all? Did he hell. I can still recall the stepmother slamming the lid of a heavy chest onto her stepson’s neck.

What I loved most about it – and I did love it – was that I felt privy to some sort of necessary truth, even if I couldn’t name it at the time. It was the feeling that someone was refusing to lie to me, even though (or perhaps because) I was a child. I carried that story with me for sixteen, seventeen years because of it.

Because here’s the thing. Children know that the world can be a dark, frightening, hurtful place. They don’t know the extent of it, they may not even know exactly how, but they know. Why do you think Roald Dahl sells? Fairy tales help children to understand by giving a shape to that darkness; once you know your enemy, it’s not so scary anymore. Fairy tales also let children know that while the darkness and fear and hurt don’t end forever – since the ending of one story doesn’t stop the generation of another, with its own dangers and pain – someone with intelligence, or a good heart, or conviction, or usually all three, can make them stop for a time, and maybe even end one kind of darkness forever.

So while I realise that there are some concepts children shouldn’t be exposed to, the murder and violence in fairy tales aren’t among them. I might not be telling the uncut version of Cinderella (in addition to the foot self-mutilation, the stepsisters get their eyes pecked out by crows) to my children before bed, but I do know which fairy tales I’ll give them to read – the Complete Brothers Grimm. Unedited.

*Incidentally, Daniel Morden is still telling stories and has a couple of books out, so if you have kids or were ever a kid yourself, check him out.

A quick synopsis for those who haven’t watched any of it before:
The Boondocks is an animated TV show based on the comic strip of the same name. The show centers on the Freemans, a black family from Chicago living in the fictional American suburb of Woodcrest. Said family is made up of Huey, a 10-year-old boy with revolutionary sensibilities and an adult intellect; Riley, his 8-year-old brother with gangsta aspirations; and their grandfather, Granddad (real name Robert).

The storylines mostly deal with social issues in or relating to the black community in America, with an occasional jab at post-9/11 paranoia (this can make the first season seem a bit dated if you watch it now). Black celebrities, both real and fictional, often make cameo appearances.

I’d already watched a little over half of Season 1, but hadn’t previously watched any of Season 2. So a Season-2-only review is below.

Season 2 Pros:
*As always, the fake media (TV/movies/music made for the show) – a trailer for Soul Plane 2: The Blackjacking featuring 50 Cent as Air Marshal 50 Cent; music videos for “Eff Granddad” by Thugnificent and “Homies Over Hoes” by Gangstalicious; and so on.
*More Granddad! He was possibly my favorite character in the comic strip, and he was great in Season 1 as well.
*New social issues, or at least issues that hadn’t really been touched on before in the show. I can’t say what they are without spoiling things too much, though.
*Sarah Dubois in action.

Season 2 Cons:
*Too abrupt. For instance, in the episode where Rollo Goodlove shows up for the first time, we have no idea who this man is or why he’s important. Also, multiple intercutting storylines in the same episode, which is fine if you follow all of them to some sort of satisfying conclusion, but often one would just end.
*We could have done without the hunger strike/BET episode, to be honest. Maybe this is because I didn’t grow up with BET (I don’t think we get it in Hawaii) and there isn’t any equivalent widely available channel for Asian-Americans, but I somehow doubt it. I did like the Uncle Ruckus Show/BET episode, however, and think they could have stuck with that instead, as it got the “BET Is Evil” point across just fine.
*They changed the opening sequence. I quite liked the old one, as it matched more with the lyrics (the different characters using their various weapons – Huey with his speech, Riley with guns, and Granddad with his belt).
*What was with all the kung-fu references? I know Aaron McGruder is into it, but sometimes it felt as though the show was getting away from what made it so good (hilarious social commentary) and edging towards Wacky and Random Action. It might work out in the long run as more episodes and seasons are produced, making the kung-fu episodes (“Attack of the Killer Kung-fu Wolf Bitch”, for example) feel more like a special one-off instead of a trend.
*There seemed to be an unusual amount of modern jive talking on Granddad’s part in the first couple of episodes. Weird.

All that said, however, Season 2 is still definitely worth watching.

*****

Now that we’ve settled the question of what was good and not so good about Season 2, a bigger question remains: why do I love The Boondocks (both the TV show and the earlier comic strips) so much, anyway? I’m not black, and I grew up and went to school around a lot of people of my own race. Plus the suburbs is my natural habitat rather than a strange new world; granted, these are suburbs in Hawaii, which are different from mainland suburbs, but nevertheless.

I didn’t get into The Boondocks until my first year of college, when I was living on the mainland for the first time. This was also the first time that most of my close friends weren’t Asian, as a lot of mainland-born Asians I met tended to prefer socialising with other first- or second-generation Asians with the same linguistic and behavioural background. Additionally, I was starting to become aware that Asians were still being discriminated against in America – growing up in Hawaii, where the majority of the population is Asian, meant that Asians held a lot of social, commercial and governmental power – and that racism was a lot more prevalent than I thought.

The Boondocks was one of the few comic strips that actually tried to illuminate the obstacles that racial minorities can encounter in America. By focusing on different generations of a black family in a predominantly white neighborhood – and, by extension, different generations of a black population in a predominantly white country, The Boondocks managed to highlight both inter- and intra-racial problems that needed to be addressed. Additionally, Huey and Riley had grown up in a predominantly black area of Chicago, and were unused to living in a predominantly white area and to interacting with white people. (At one point early on, Huey has to explain to Riley that not all white people are funny like the ones on Seinfeld.)

Obviously, some of the issues discussed were more specific to the black community, but the basic theme of minorities trying to figure out how to live among the majority really struck a chord with me. It helped that the racial obstacles that the Freemans encountered were often the result of misunderstanding or ignorance rather than hatred – for instance, one of Huey’s classmates, a white girl named Cindy, tries to speak to Huey in rap lyrics or urban slang, and assumes that she knows a lot about black culture from listening to Puff Daddy, and when Huey and Riley enroll in school, the principal asks them (more or less politely) to leave any guns or explicit rap music that they “may have” at home.

And it isn’t a case of black people vs. white people – one of the characters, a black lawyer named Tom Dubois, is married to a white woman, Sarah, who is portrayed as mature and intelligent (often more so than Tom). The racial conflict there stems much more from public perception of their relationship than from the relationship itself. In one storyline, Sarah and Tom are trying to pick new costumes for Halloween when their usual Othello and Desdemona costume plan falls through. When Tom’s list of choices includes O.J and Nicole Simpson, Sarah points out, “I’m starting to see a disturbing trend here.”

Perhaps most importantly, The Boondocks stresses that ignorance is an enemy, not a privilege. Riley strives to emulate various rap artists not by writing or performing his own lyrics, but rather by shunning all forms of learning or knowledge, and by glorifying violence and extreme materialism – and is mocked rather than praised for it. Although the strip does criticise political figures such as Bush and the members of his administration, many of the public figures mocked in the comic were black entertainers (certain rap stars, singers and actors). The Boondocks takes shots at them not for being or “acting” black, but for being poor role models, promoting a culture of ignorance and violence, and being a figure of shame rather than pride for their racial community.

This last point is particularly salient for Asian-Americans, as there seems to be a growing trend for our youth to shun the work- and obligation-laden values of their parents/grandparents/etc in order to make more “American” lives for themselves. Sometimes this works, and a healthy balance is established. Sometimes this doesn’t, and Asian-American youth fling themselves into laziness, a lack of self-respect, and willful ignorance. If you want an example, ask yourself how Bai Ling and Tila Tequila got famous.

Now that I’m living in the UK, thousands of miles from anywhere I ever called home, The Boondocks has taken on a new importance for me. The racial issues in the comic and TV show are so specifically American that it reminds me of home. While the UK definitely has its fair share of racism and race-related conflict – the BNP is an actual political party, and that kind of says it all to me – the willingness to foreground racial issues such as the problems facing the black community in America is something I haven’t seen here. And even though America sweeps a good deal of unpleasantness under the rug too, The Boondocks reminds me that someone’s willing not only to say that something is wrong, not only to ask why, but to point out that it’s a lot more complex – and sometimes a lot funnier – than people think it is.

I’ve found some salsa classes, and have an audition lined up with a bluegrass band who needs a singer, so all is mostly well.

******

As promised: reaction to The Monkey King, by Timothy Mo. It was pretty good – out of all of his books that I’ve read (this one, Renegade, or Halo^2, Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard, and The Redundancy of Courage) I still think that Renegade, or Halo^2 is the strongest. However, The Monkey King gets extra points for being a first novel.

The novel itself, which takes place in post-war pre-Mao Hong Kong, is about Wallace Nolasco, a Hong Kong resident of Portuguese-mixed descent (there’s some Chinese and whatnot in there) who marries into a Chinese businessman’s family. As I’ve read and watched a fair amount of novels and movies/TV about Asian family politics, it was refreshing to see the subject discussed from an outsider’s point of view, so that was good.

Also good is Mo’s ability, which he wastes no time in establishing here, to capture the idiosyncrasies of how Hong Kong residents (and in later books, Southeast/East Asians in general) use English. As the only Western English speaker, the British Mr Allardyce, is viewed by Wallace and most of the cast as something of an oddity, Hong Kong English is depicted as the norm for verbal communication rather than being presented as “broken” English, which is key to allowing us to enter the characters’ world.

The ending wrapped up pretty nicely, too, and I can’t say much more than that.

My main objection was that Wallace didn’t seem that strong as a character. He wasn’t implausible or anything; it was only that several of the other characters were intriguing, distinctive and dominant on the page, and Wallace, perhaps given that his main goal was to get by in difficult situations, didn’t have that kind of presence. The protagonists in The Redundancy of Courage and Renegade, or Halo^2 are similarly surrounded by vivid characters without apparently being equally vivid (Adolph in Redundancy is gay, but his sexual orientation seems more like a footnote than anything else), but both books are told through first-person narration, so it’s all right; the way that these books unfold, it’s as though the characters have cameras strapped to their heads and are recording the events around them, a bit like Peep Show, and in such a situation, the cameraman doesn’t need to be as obviously interesting as the occurrences and people that he happens to record.

Still, there are glimmers of attention-grabbing characteristics – Wallace’s relationship with his wife, for instance – which do help, and which look forward to Mo’s later creations.

In conclusion, read this book, but do read one of Mo’s other books first; I recommend the Filipino ones (Renegade, or Halo^2 FIRST and then Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard), though that might be personal bias. However, the letters from the protagonist’s best friend, Danton, in Renegade are amazingly funny no matter where you and your ancestors are from.

I never understand what people are thinking when they do this.  Do they think I’ll appreciate their candour?  Are they winding me up?  Or have they simply forgotten that I am one of the species myself?

He doesn’t say whether this is a uniquely British phenomenon or whether he’s encountered this in other countries as well.  Personally, though, I’ve never experienced this anywhere but in Britain.  To be fair, I’ve travelled to countries where I didn’t speak the language, so maybe the residents would have delivered the same “well-worn rant” if they thought I’d have understood them, but still.

My questions are slightly different from Bill Bryson’s:

*Do they want me to explain the basis of whatever perceived shortcoming is in question?  E.g. do they want me to give a sociological rundown of the reasons why Americans eat so much?
*Do they think I’m somehow responsible for said shortcoming?  E.g. are they holding me in some way accountable for the war in Iraq?
*Do they think I’m one of the “good” Americans since I live in the UK now?
*Or are they just trying to justify some sort of outmoded superiority complex (personal or national)?
*How would they feel if they visited America and I talked at them about the British being somehow inferior?  It wouldn’t be so witty then, would it?
*Seriously, how is this still socially acceptable?

I don’t have the answers to any of these, and I should be thankful it’s only really happened once.

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Tell you what is really, really annoying, though.  Men – it’s always men – who shout, or practically leer, “NIHAO!” at me when I’m walking down the street, or try to start conversations by guessing my race, or say “Nihao” to me (and don’t say hello to ANYONE ELSE) when I’m just passing or standing in line at the fishmonger’s or whatever.  The last isn’t horrible, but still irksome because, as just mentioned, it’s only men that do it, never women, and so I do wonder if there’s some sort of Orientalist sexual fantasy dynamic going on there.  (For readers who don’t know me, I’m Japanese/Filipino, not Chinese.)

Listen, you racist *$&%@$%face, I have always wanted to say at these moments but never have, I just need to buy toilet paper, for God’s sake.  You thought we were all scared little Lotus Blossoms or massage parlour girls, didn’t you?  Well, you thought fucking wrong, buddy. [There's more, but it sounds ridiculous when written down.]

This never happened in St. Louis.  This never even happened in Norwich.  I have therefore assumed that it’s a Cardiff thing, partially because Cardiff, as much as I like it, isn’t exactly Britain’s classiest city.

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Speaking of jerks, let us not forget the Creepy Salsa Men.  I don’t just mean the ones at lessons who happen to give off a weird vibe, but also the guys who just hang around free dance or party nights to hit on women and don’t even know how to dance.  Don’t ask me to dance if you have never ever learned even the first thing about salsa, because there’s no point and it’s just difficult for both of us (because believe me, I will make things difficult for you if you do that to me).  Even more importantly, don’t make sketchy comments while we’re dancing.  One particular Creepy Salsa Man, who I started dancing with in a fit of misjudged good faith, said what he promise was “I can match with you” or “I can dance with you very well”.  Now, it was loud in that bar, and there is technically the chance that he was telling the truth, but I swear it sounded like “I can fuck you” [italics mine].  Luckily I managed to dance with some nice people after that and it didn’t ruin my night, but damn.

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On a brighter note, I’m quite enjoying “Come Into My Sleep” from Nick Cave’s B-Sides and Rarities.  I’m also in the middle of Timothy Mo’s The Monkey King, so expect some sort of review soonish.