Asian or Oriental? Jade Empire

That dude in Jade Empire is white. I'm sorry. He's white. It's like Camel advertising with camels whose snouts look like a bunch of phalluses. Here, you have an Asian theme but end up using a hero character that can appeal to the masses -- if your idea of the masses is uniformly European.

But why is it so problematic?

Well, it ties into a history of imperialist depictions of Asian people in western culture. The Deathly Embrace by Sheng-mei Ma is a great source to brush up on some of the theories about this.

But I'll explain it differently. A psychological analysis of the relationship between a medium and its consumer produces two kinds of pleasure -- scopophilic and voyeurisitc. In the former, the consumer identifies with the characters. In the latter, the consumer merely watches, reveling in the sensory.

Let's ignore the voyeuristic for now. Scopophilia is the main point here as I can't come up with a reason to do an Asian-themed game with a decidedly Caucasian-looking hero other then appealing to the consumer's ability to identify with a character. The best pop culture example is casting David Carradine instead of Bruce Lee in Kung Fu.

Jade Empire isn't the first video game to be scopophilic -- Dynamix hit the jackpot with both Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China (both feature Caucasian heroes, Yellow Peril-stylized bad guys and, in the latter, a Chinese ninja who dies with the great "AIEEEEEE!") -- and certainly won't be the last with a sequel in the works.

The game itself is enjoyable, if imperialist according to Frank Chin's rubric. Much like their classic game, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire tracks the good and bad deeds of the player, which determines how other characters perceive you and what kind of skills you can learn.

As RPGs go, there aren't a lot of options with equipment. No armor, no weapons and certainly no medical kits or antidotes. There are power-ups instead -- glowing spheres that appear from the fallen bodies of enemies foolish enough to battle your character, a special breed of being called a "spirit monk."

And the epilogue was anticlimatic, similar to the ending of Quest for Glory 4 in being purely text with negligible emotional investment and character development.

In many ways, the game reminded me of an old matinee or an old Flash Gordon strip. An enjoyable, if incredibly imperialist, trifle to experience with popcorn.

Peter Gabriel-era Genesis

Everyone loves the English -- they of the balmy handshakes and dulcet tones. But the island nation really outdid itself when they produced Genesis, one of the most bizarre prog-rock bands in existence.

Unlike the terrifyingly pretentious Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Genesis never left the rock and pop element out of their songwriting. Instead of the ridiculous practice of rewriting classical themes (Mussorgsky never had it so bad), Genesis slipped sly hints of the Bee Gees and the Beatles into their Walton-influenced chord progressions.

But the best part about the early version of this band is the loopy performances of Peter Gabriel. Get more information at Night after Night. Or just watch the clip above. Here's the conversation I had with my brother, Chris, as I introduced him to the joy of prog-rock theatrics:

Me: Wait, wait for it. He's going to start dancing.

Chris: This is so weird, but it's so funky.

Wait, there he goes. That's so creepy. That creeps me out. That would creep me out if I saw that live.

This is Genesis? This isn't the Genesis I know.

Now he's doing his tamborine dance. This is awesome!

What the fuck!

T-Post Magazine

I read about this at the Magazineer, a blog devoted to magazine design and print culture by Derek Powazek in San Francisco. This is the first time I've heard of him, so I'm slowly going over the different things he's done.

But onto T-Post. What a great idea! Playing with the inside and outside of a t-shirt has such a wonderful structure in both literal and abstract levels. The design is also pretty top-notch. They seem to bring in a different illustrator every issue.

The one difficulty I have is with what appears to be the brevity of the pieces (I say "appears" because I don't have own a copy yet though I intend to order one soon). T-post reads less like a magazine and more like the introduction to an art exhibit. At 26 Euros -- $37 approximately -- it just doesn't seem like a good deal -- unless you're an elitist hipster with money to burn.

Graphic novels; Asian-American lit

Two initiatives employing comics to better literacy have appeared. Read the particulars in the New York Times.

I'm surprised by the debate over the legitimacy of comics in the classroom. Some wonderfully nuanced writing has come out of the medium. Art Spiegelman and his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus" is an obvious and perhaps too-oft-cited example.

I would have loved to be introduced to the work of Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Yang during my young pup/high school days studying ethnic literature. Our curriculum had the problematic Amy Tan's "Joy Luck Club" as the sole entry in the Asian-American section (at least at that time -- no idea what it is now). I say problematic because the text is a reductive take on Chinese culture, turning the traditions of a large and varied nation into a homogeneous Orientalism, while portraying the Chinese male as abusive, absent or cheap.

Maybe Kim's Raymond Carver-meets-Judd Apatow mentality is too puerile for the American education system, but at least his stories retain nuance in its depiction of race and gender dynamics. No such reservations can be held about Yang's American Born Chinese, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His story folds in some outstanding thematic threads including Chinese minstrelsy, in the form of the omnipresent Charlie Chan character; the story of the Monkey King and his journey to the west for Buddhist Scriptures; and subtle explorations of Christianity. It's an outstanding work that'll be a part of a true Asian-American canon.

Or if we really want to keep comics out of the curriculum, why don't we just add Frank Chin's Gunga Din Highway to the required reading list. He's our Amiri Baraka, without question.

Mission statement

At first, I conceived this blog as an online journal of sorts. But faced with the prospect of airing my daily trivialities so nakedly, I reconsidered -- and unfortunately left this space neglected.

With the new year coming, I decided to begin anew.

The revised idea began inauspiciously. It coalesced in my head during a conversation with a colleague over beers and cigarettes at no more (or no less) than Al's Garage in Las Vegas, Nev.

This blog will, however, be about subjects I do enjoy writing about: music, books and journalism. So get ready for posts ranging from my current fascination with Peter Gabriel-era Genesis to my battles with reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House (a grueling three months as of this post, with no foreseeable end in sight).