what a brave corporate logo!

[bossymarmalade]

This article in Feministe about the Telephone video is really pissing me off. In general because of the smug, insistent pedantry of it (look, just because the song's called "Telephone" it doesn't mean EVERY SINGLE EVENT must then revolve around the telephone; also, that is a honey bun and not a sandwich, idiot; also you are a fucking feminist writer and should know why it's not on to refer to the vulva as a "vagina"; also if you did the minimum of goddamn research you could refer to Gaga's partner in the prison yard as trainer Heather Cassils instead of "Very Friendly Smoking-Hot Butch Lady"), but in particular because of this:

And was it really necessary to subtitle the Asian woman's thoughts in a different language than everybody else's? No. No, it was not! I am not so cool with the ways that this video deals with race, I think. I mean, Beyonce's there, and presented as an equal and partner. Sure. But I am thinking like, this Asian girl and her special "hey, have you noticed this chick's Asian? Just thought I'd point that one out to you" subtitle ....

Hey there, did it ever occur to you that Asian women sometimes think and speak IN ASIAN LANGUAGES?!? Maybe she's thinking "a different language than everybody else's" (nice) because, hmmm, she has access to a "different language than everybody else". What's so wrong with her using it, or -- horror of horrors! -- reflexively reacting with it in her own mind? Is this a fucking performance sport?

This is a discourse that especially pisses me off as a diasporado, because as you all well know there are a TON of issues about many of us being systematically denied access to our source-tongues. I would *love* to be able to bust out cusswords or whatever in Hindi, even for my private unspoken reactions. Sometimes I feel like among Western white society, being an Anglophone when your source-language is a non-Romance one is taken as a sign of "goodness", like you're safer, more model of a minority, more assimilated; the reaction from Canadian white folks when I tell them, "no, I only speak English", is always one of surprise and approval. (It's a different story with Canadian brown people, but I'm not getting into that right now.)

So yes, maybe it *was* necessary to subtitle the Japanese woman's thoughts in Japanese in this context. Or did you assume that nobody watching the video would be able to understand those characters, so it was purely an exercise in exotification? Was her sudden Japanese subtitle making her Asianness a little too visible? Don't translate your own discomfort over the inscrutability (yes, I went there) of those characters into some generalizing "NO FOREIGN LANGUAGES PLZ" declaration for all of Western media, thank you.

Comments

[thoracopagus]

I read the article before watching the video, and for me it was like, she's on the screen for like TWO SECONDS, if she didn't have Japanese subtitles, she probably wouldn't have registered as Japanese for a lot of viewers, or stood out to anyone at all. So...yes OP, we do need the HEY DID YOU NOTICE I'M ASIAN subtitles, because they give dimension to a character who would otherwise fade into the background as a random diner patron.

[bossymarmalade]

Seriously, right? I felt like having her subtitled in what could be her mother tongue -- in her two seconds of screentime -- went more along the lines of normalizing non-Anglo USians rather than exotifying them. I mean, okay, let's break it down: young woman in US diner, wearing Western clothes, getting hit on by jerk. Nothing "exotic" there, nothing that a Taylor Swift lookalike couldn't have done. So then this archetypal USian character happens to be Japanese, and happens to think in Japanese. Where's the problem?!?

[thoracopagus]

The problem is that HER TEXT IS PINK, clearly she's a fetishized, Hello Kitty worshiping otaku wet dream stereotype instead of a REAL Japanese woman.

I mean, if we're going to go crazy and harp on EVERY LITTLE THING, well Sady, why did you lump her in with all Asians everywhere when she's speaking OMG PINK JAPANESE LOOK JAPANESE SHE THINKS IN JAPANESE? Are you just incapable of telling Asian peoples and their crazy languages apart?

And, on other topics of fail, I don't even want to touch the "butch female bodybuilders = trans" bit with a ten foot pole. You would think not being defined by ones genitals would extend to not having or needing a dick to validate one's masculinity (or masculine behavior to prove one has a dick) but, whatever.

[bossymarmalade]

O SHIT I FORGOT THE HELLO KITTY PINK TEXT

And yes to the pan-"Asian" thing! And the "butch = trans" thing! There's so much that FAILS in that article I don't even *know*.

[thoracopagus]

Someone in the comments was like THOSE GIRLS AREN'T REALLY BUTCH LOOK AT THOSE HEELS ONE IS WEARING, and I wanted to start tearing out my hair and screaming, because sure guys, heels COMPLETELY invalidate your masculinity, make sure you yell at the next man you see who wears them! Policing gender expression makes the world go round, after all!