The third episode shows several advantages of the new media that Asian Pacific Americans have been using. However, Asian Pacific Americans understand clearly how powerful the old media are. Therefore, they do not only take advantages of the new media but they also want to combine the advantages of both new and old media to maximize the opportunities to speak their voice in the continual process of the general media discourses.
Harlem Lee shares a perfect example of the "bamboo ceiling" that APAs have to make a lot of effort to breakthrough. Harlem Lee is a talent Filipino American singer who won Star Search television show in 1987 and had a peak sales record for his R&B album Listen to My Heart Beat, but has to follow another passion. Then he won another singing competition of NBC Fame in 2003. However, he still cannot break down the stereotype of the Asian face in the mainstream of media.
The lack of successful APAs singers in music, especially the R&B rock, and pop music makes it more difficult for APAs to get out the ceiling. As Lee said: "every little bit things can help" to overcome these barriers. Harlem Lee believes the power of the internet in recent years makes a big change in the mainstream of media. Now, singers can create their own audiences through more forms and distribution channels than before. They can spread their voice and representation by not only TV shows, books, magazines, and newspapers but also web-based, app-based series through a publisher, recorder, television, movie theatre, and mobile devices.
Luckier than Harlem Lee, Maya Lin's talent and hard work have been recognized and accepted. However, it was not easy for a young Asian architecture woman.
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| Maya Lin with her design for the Vietnam Memorial, May 6, 1981. Photo Credit: Academy of Achievement |
Lin shared if the Vietnam Veteran Memorial design competition was not a blind national competition, she was not chosen just because of her Asian name. Indeed, she was faced with a lot of controversy and disagreement because of her race. The film Maya Lin shows how her strong characteristic and talent let her overcome the controversy and succeed in her career. In addition, Maya Lin knows how to use many forms and channels to speak and distribute her voice by her architect works (Vietnam Veteran Memorial, Civil Rights Memorial, etc), books, film document, press, and web-based project (What Is Missing).
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| Vietnam-Veterans-Memorial. Source:https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vietnam-Veterans-Memorial |
The development of the internet and mobile devices provide more opportunities for APAs to break the bamboo ceiling. APAs can use "blogs as a mechanism for a multiplicity of voices and for the discussion of a wide variety of audiences. Youtube is also a good media form that is easy to access to worldwide Internet audiences and provide the ability of audience and poster to communicate with each other" (Ono and Pham, 149).
In the book Global Asian American Popular Cultures, Dave mentions how Michelle Phan combines all media to become a "beauty guru". She uses laptop and internet to create online makeup tutorial videos. By using a music star, Lady Gaga as an inspiration for Phan makeup tutorial, she makes her online video become a hot trend in the cosmetic industry. She also uses traditional media like TV shows, commercial shows, and press to spread her beauty trend to the world.
The website https://dorothywang.com, that my classmate Amy Ricalde introduces to my class, is an awesome example of the combination between both new media and old media of another APAs. Dorothy skillfully combines many forms such as:
- TV shows: Steve TV shows, NBC's shows
Dress like a celeb for less! || STEVE HARVEY
- Web and app-based mini-series to distribute her works through the internet, television, mobile devices, magazines, and etc.
The other links that my classmates introduce to class also demonstrate how APAs are utilizing all media to create or sustain general media discourse.
https://www.8asians.com/ is an Asian American collaborative blog that uses the new media platform, the blog, to introduce representations of APAs. This website uses traditional media like books review, commercials and TV shows (Audi, NBC-The Good Place), movie, sports, foods, etc. Similar to Dorothy's websites, this website also tactfully immerge the traditional media into new media (Youtube, blog, internet, and web-based platform) to redefine who APAs.
https://hyphenmagazine.com/ is simple than dorothywang.com and 8asians.com website. Hyphenmagazine is just a traditional media form, a magazine, that publishes APAs arts, foods, books, agricultures, and cultures in a new media distribution channel, web-based site. This website also includes new media forms like blog and twitter on their websites. Both traditional and new media help the website to spread their voice easier to a larger amount of audiences.
Summary to this episode, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans now have more opportunities to grab their success. Although the barriers from the model minority of APAs are not easy to break through, APAs can create their own platform and distributions channels to speak their voices and represent their true identities.
References:
Davé, Shilpa, Leilani Nishime, and Tasha Oren, eds. Global Asian American Popular Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
Ono, Kent A. and Vincent Pham. Asian Americans and the Media. Cambridge: Polity, 2009
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