Language

Hands down... Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Hong is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. I feel somewhat in the dark trying to decipher what the poems in the book say. They're not even in completely in English, or another one language, like what? Why make it harder for the reader to understand what's going on? Is there a specific purpose behind this than having it be a futuristic multi-lingual language? The fact that the book is written in the view of the historian's, it is somewhat confusing. The historian knows English, but he/she (Mr. Khactu says its a he but we don't know for sure yet) decides to keep certain things in the contemporary language. So there definitely is something important about the language here, but what? This language barrier that Hong creates with the reader, I feel helps make the story more for the reader to interpret in their own way. The weirdness of the language makes the story feel foreign. It gives off a feeling that something, either the characters or the plot, is very different and non-typical than what we normally understand in everyday life. This may connect to a lot of the themes we have covered in our English class, especially the meaning of what it's like to be Asian-American. There are many American aspects in the story, but yet something is still "different". As we continue reading the book, we hope to clarify these topics and understand the story better.

                                        

Seen as Something Different

After watching the movies Robot Stories and Everything Before Us, I was struck to see how both directors chose to portray Asian characters. In both movies, we see that the characters are seen as foreign and treated differently. In Robot Stories, we were asked: why the use of robots? What was their significance? I feel that by using robots in place of actual characters, it is seen that the Asians were meant to be associated with something emotionless and robotic. However, the director goes against this as seen especially in My Robot Baby and Machine Love where the robots are capable of love and emotion. Asians may be seen as foreign and treated differently but they are the same as everyone else. In Everything Before Us, it was weird that everything in life was pretty much based on an Emotional Intelligence (EI) Score, a score that measured love. Like wow this is such a stupid thing to do. Love should be more than just a score, right? Asian characters in this movie were portrayed in having a more difficult time because of this. Between Ben and Sarah, and Seth and Haley, their love and relationships put them at a disadvantage in society. On the other hand, Ben's friends who happened to be a white couple were very successful. In the end, Ben and Seth purposefully lowered their EI Scores because they knew that was what true love was. Does this make them heroes of the movie? Or just plain stupid of them to ruin their own lives even though their relationships ended? Either way, they set the path to make the world a better place.