After the 1st Session

[Mario Galindo]

 

After the first session there were so many ideas banging around my head I couldn't figure-out where to begin, so I let a good night sleep do it for me. Magically, first thing in the morning I had it--Ultraman!

I mentioned in our "Ask a Question" intros that I have been fascinated by East Asian culture since a kid. I hadn't thought about one of my earliest memories in years. One of my classmates in elementary school brought a book/poster collection to school of a silver and red robot creature. I had never seen anything like it. It was a series of neatly folded and categorized posters in a hard case book. As soon as I opened one of the posters I needed to have it. I didn't know who or what it was. I couldn't read the language or cared. I needed to have this.

Within a few days I had taken saved birthday money, $20, and had bought it from my classmate. $20 in the early seventies for a book with weird creatues and robots? My mom thought I had been taken advantage of (I probably was, I didn't care--it was Ultraman [I later found out])!

Somehow my mom found out my classmate lived a couple blocks from us and a few days after my first East Asian fanboy experience we were standing at the front door of my classmates apartment. The moms talked and it turned out that my classmate's mother also thought I had been taken advantage of and so refunded the overage. I remeber the woman asking why I wanted this if I couldn't even read it? This is how I could use this with students. What is this magical attraction to East Asian culture? How much do you even know of where this was created? Do you understand that many of the story ideas, themes, conflicts raised in many of your favorite storylines are directly connected to the history beween The United States and East Asia?

I teach in the School of the Arts on my campus, so I could do something with the evolution of Manga and Anime from a histoical POV, or tie-in history to themes of war, discrimination, the Military Industrial Complex, or technology in films. I could compare scenes from classic shows like Ultraman or Godzilla to their 21st Century progeny highlighting possible real life commentary or an analysis of how the numbing power of escaperism has overtaken so many of us? 

In short, I think I can use what we discussed in class in my classes.

 

[Ingrid Herskind]

I love this idea from an artistic and film history perspective. It might be fun to even add Pacific Rim to the agenda to show how these modern stories perpetuate and deviate from the original Ultraman and Godzilla storylines. I don't know too much about this area of study, but think you could maybe look at some Japanese manga like Ashita no Joe etc. Would it also be interesting to look at the questions of gender roles in these films and manga?  This is a fun idea!

[Mario Galindo]

Your response also made me think of "Ghost in a Shell" and the controversial casting by Holllywood. From the readings of both the 1st and 2nd sessions, the role of women in Japanese, South Korean and Chinese cultures could also fuel topics of gender roles, historical patterns and/or similarities to contempoirary Asian, American, Native, Latino, and Black cultures.

The whole "modern woman" aspect from Session 2's historical context: how women seem to need to re-create themselves and in the process distance themselves from "tradition" or expected cultural norms in order to experience better lives. Questions like: What is culture?, Who makes cultural norms?, How is positive change accomplished?, Does society, power, and individual activism shape our world equally?

This got deep quickly. But I hope I make sense? 

[Author]

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