Again with this "Asians in pop" thing
This stuff keeps rearing its head. America just does not know how to handle Asian Americans in popular music.
Anne Ishii in the Village Voice:
On The Harajuku Girls
"The Harajuku Girls are a quartet of dancers (at least one of whom is from California) on Gwen Stefani's solo music tour. They pose as avatars of the Tokyo neighborhood famous for being a spectacle of fashion and consumerism. Rumor has it that they were contractually obliged by Gwen Stefani (or her PR gurus) not to speak English while on tour, despite being fluent in the language..."
On Beck's "Hell Yes" (this surprised me!)
"In a New York Times Magazine cover-feature interview with Beck in March, the Los Angeles darling of white funk recounted how difficult it was to find a Japanese woman to speak fucked-up English on "Hell Yes," a track off his album Guero. Apparently everybody his producers' assistants solicited in the local L.A. sushi bar scene spoke pitch-perfect English, so Christina Ricci ended up standing in to do a rendition of Engrish. (According to producer John King, "She was sounding so good and it was so funny to all of us that we just kept feeding her lines.") I don't see the point of either the story itself or its recounting in one of the world's highest circulating newspapers. Have we come so far from the days of Long Duk Dong that now only Engrish can represent serious Asian roles?"
1 comment:
dude, for real. i can't believe beck and his people. the l.a. sushi bar scene? why not go to chinatown? but that's beside the point. i agree, it's shameful. every time i want to watch breakfast at tiffany's or thoroughly modern millie with my asian boyfriend, i think better of it. sad to see it's in the fabric of up-to-the-minute culture as well.
and about SW-yes! neal just left but i'll report from the front!
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