This video was sent to a listserv that I'm on. It's a fantastic spoof of the Back Street Boys by two Chinese students in Guangzhou Arts Institute. "Their spoof music videos have been selected by Motorola China to promote mobile phones".
What amazes me about all this is the amount of participation from the masses to create and broadcast to a wide audience. This not a new concept, but for me I'm wondering if this is a step towards also breaking down stereotypes. Let me explain....
In the past, when I have seen Asian Males portrayed in American Media, they are mostly seen as effeminate and awkward. When people laughed at stereotypes (e.g. Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles), I was always hard-pressed to laugh with them because I knew people were laughing at them.
When William Hung came along with his rendition of Ricky Martin's "She Bang's", it was the laughing stock of America because people were laughing more *at* him. And of course this has happened whenever Chinese/Asians have tried to take American pop culture and seriously imitate or make it their own. Most people have just laughed at their efforts. But, here is the first time that I have seen Chinese folk deliberately making fun of American Culture and turning it on it's head.
This citizen journalism stuff ain't so bad ... Especially when underrepresented minorities (in the media) can take back their image/identity and make fun of the perpetrators of those stereotypes.
More info on the Asian Backstreet Boys can be found here:
Asian Backstreet Boys
Monday, November 07, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
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