positive = negative = something at least?

While looking through some books about this topic, I came across some interesting thoughts in Asian America: Through the Lens by Jun Xing.

"Together with other forms of Asian American art, these films have become a source of empowerment for the communities...Much of the work on cinematic representation has stressed the issue of the "positive" imagery as opposed to stereotypes... but often what is thought to be good is merely a reaction against representations created by white people that were blatantly stereotypical...The exact nature of positive, first of all, is somewhat relative... even worse, 'positive image' productions often run the risk of reifying rather than ameliorating the same stereotypes that they had initially intended to challenge..."

In summary what I got from that positive and negative are indeed relative and what may be a positive role model to me may easily be a negative role model to someone else - therefore please take my blog with a grain of salt. Also maybe..... it does not matter at this moment whether or not the ANA in the media are positive or negative as long as they are present and that a whole spectrum of ANA are represented. As long as a whole spectrum is represented, there should be no problem - the PROBLEM arises when only certain ANA are represented such as the nerdy geek or the exotic girl or the kung fu master.... but once again - just food for thought!

On a slightly related note- Other books that were of interest for this project were:

Screening Asian Americans by Peter X. Feng

Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video by Peter X. Feng

Asian American Actors: Oral Histories from Stage Screen and Television by Joann Lee

New Face of Asian Pacific America by Eric Lai and Dennis Arguelles