Key Cool Qualities
Recently a harvard student has gotten some press about Asian American pressures in school, where she mentioned sometimes it’s ‘cooler’ to ‘act white.’ The Washington Post reporter writes:
As Tsai put it, among the Asian American students she interviewed, “acting white” was a good thing.
I was surprised to read that Tsai’s subjects at Harvard often embraced that term. They thought of it more as a lifestyle than an academic strategy. To them, Tsai found, it translated loosely as being cool.
…Because ‘acting Asian’ is equated with acting foreign or like a nerd, ‘acting white’ among Asian people becomes a source of pride, and is valued as the ability to assimilate into American society.
I’m always slightly alarmed when one paper explains some aspect of Asian folks, as mysterious as we are, partly b/c it forces me to compare myself to its explanations. Do I “act white?” As opposed to acting Asian? What do I make of this seeming contradiction?
Sarah’s post touched on the duality of Asian folk, too: you either go ‘fobulous,’ or go ‘twinkie’. I suppose you could go ‘hip hop,’ or go ‘Jewish,’ too. All of this seems to imply a lack of authenticity.
I’m more interested in this question of cool. The Chinese, as unofficial representatives of Asia, have a bad rap with ‘cool’. What’s up with that? I started to think about all the people I’d grown up thinking were cool here in the U.S.—Is there some singular quality that joined them all? And is this missing in, er, China? Lets take a look.
1. Loner Rebellious Guy on Motor Bike
This guy is an amalgamation of the Hollywood men from the 40s and 50s I know so little about, which probably is a large part of their appeal. They’ve included men like Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Carey Grant, and other men who drank and smoked a lot and were ‘too cool for school.’ My dad loved these guys, and your dad probably did, too.
As far as I could tell, these were single men without equal, but begrudingly continued on, riding their motorcycles, making Great Escapes. Just look at Brando on the left. There has been no surer time-tested staple for coolness than a bike and a leather jacket.
Key Cool Qualities: Self-Absorption. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I’M cool, fuck you I’m out.
China?: I was at a family party once for one of my ubiquitous uncles when i thought it would be cool not to address my elders and just ‘do my own thing.’ My father found my Jimmy Dean impression extremely ‘uncool,’ and instructively whooped. my. ass. Hypocrite.
If I remember my anthro texts from college properly, this deference to the community has been noted in much of Asia. If much of what you do is for your family and ‘keeping face’ your community, there’s little room for the young man or woman trying to go it alone. Could this community-over-the-individual mindset be a crucial cork in China’s vintage bottle of cool?
2. Likable Guy Who Can Sing and Dance
Elvis Presley - What can I say about the King that hasn’t been said by Eminem? Wait, what? Marshall Mathers rapped: “I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley to use black music so selfishly and use it to get myself wealthy.” Elvis could sing and dance with enough chutzpah to force cameras to film him strictly from the waist up, and inspired such legendary musicians as the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Since then, countless performers have taken their performance to the television, capturing fans in mass numbers. And with the internets, I can catch those celebrity performances 24/7. Did you know that Britney Spears’s sister is pregnant? Now you do. You’re welcome.
Key Cool Qualities: Appropriate and mass produce culture for profit All-around performance abilities, non-threatening charm. And fame.
China?: In 1956, while Elvis was performing his famous “waist up” gig on Ed Sullivan, China was several years into its new gig as the Peoples’ Republic and was undergoing a significant infrastructural snow-globe shaking. In 1978, the PRC had less than one television receiver per 100 people, and fewer than ten million Chinese had access to a television set. Rock music was banned (and jazz too). The Chinese Elvis would have to wait.
3. Hip Hop All Star
All that swagger. What greater achievement to cool is there than hip hop? A completely organic culture that originated in dance halls and block parties of the wasted Bronx of the 70s, the Four Pillars have spread to every kid who’s ever felt a love for the break beat and/or the sting of social unrest.
Hip hop fought a long road of mockery, protest, and censorship before record companies started realizing they could generate a lot of dollars from rap cds. With its roots in activism and anti-racism, it’s still frightening to some, illegitimate as an art to many, and conflated with all the bullsh*t of commercialism, a sure sign of success.
Key Cool Qualities: We made this. We rock and create despite injustice and oppression.
China?: Hip hop’s ascendancy relied a good deal on private record companies and mass distribution. While hip hop was still a sperm in the 1970s, China’s Cultural Revolution was in full swing, complete w/children of the corn-like Red youth singing patriotic anthems and telling the government on you. From the folks I’ve chatted with who lived through it, it was a pretty scary time. Watch out now.
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These American icons have gotten where they are on two things: their talent, and their ability to generate $$. What happens when you take the profit out of the equation? How much of ‘cool’ is dollar based?
My short list leaves much to be desired. There are no women, and the few I’ve chosen are film stars and musicians. Still, I wonder how much China’s political shake ups and tight media control play into how ‘cool’ one’s cultural product can be. Hmm.
Last 5 posts by ash
- Ed Lin's Super Awesome Reading - July 25th, 2008
- Continuing to deconstruct the Model Minority myth - June 16th, 2008
- Competitive video fun - May 24th, 2008
- Happy Birthday, Yuri and Malcolm - May 19th, 2008
- The Dorchester Vietnam Veterans Memorial - May 16th, 2008
Your thesis is that China’s political upheaval in the past century or so and the cultural pressures that are “taught” to Asian peoples produces uncool Asian American people.
I think the “cool persona” is a construction of the media and powerful corporations used to get you the consumer to buy stuff and make them richer. They tell me what’s cool and what’s not, what’s beautiful and what’s not.
Who said it isn’t cool to respect your elders and love your parents? Who said it was okay to have a f* you attitude. Who said that the “It’s me, the rebel, against the world” attitude is the cool one? I’ll tell you. It’s the media. And maybe because it just seems so rebellious, we latch onto it as something awesome, inspiring, cool.
Maybe part of it is just insecurity. Is that feeling self-manufactured or media-manufactured? I’m not sure. I do know that it is hard for everybody to comfortable in their own skin all the time and maybe seeing someone who seems to be so self-confident… well that *is* cool and inspiring.
Anyway, a friend told me that I was a “cool nerd.” Is that like an oxymoron? Or is that just a veiled insult?
I think ‘cool’ is tied to a consumer culture and media access; I’m making a case that China’s cultural products seem less ‘cool’ b/c their government actively fought against these elements for some time. But this has and continues to change.
I disagree that the media creates ‘cool.’ I think often the market starts the trend and the businesses commercialize it (often taking away a lot of what was really cool about it in the process).
If this is true, with China’s billion plus people and the internets opening up access from person to person, I would think ‘acting asian’ would take on a new meaning.
I haven’t been to China recently, but maybe what’s cool here is not cool there. And what the hell does acting Asian mean? What does acting white mean?
I’ll have to think about what cool really means?