passive suffering, phantasmatic heroes, and revolution

i am currently reading a book called the empire of light by a korean novelist named kim young-ha. as far as i know, his work has not been translated into english, but he is one of the few fiction writers besides murakami haruki whose collection of work i have read almost in their entirety. many of kim's novels and stories make surreal and fantastical departures while also grounding them in recognizable realities of fairly everyday people. 

one backdrop to which the author likes to return is the politically tumultuous south korea of the 1980s. some plots they take place immediately in the 80s--following student activists during the democracy movements--, others take place in contemporary times--following the lives of formerly passionate and young activists who now lead ordinary lives as obedient citizens. 

the empire of light weaves the stories of several characters in present-day seoul: a north korean spy, who snuck into the south in the 80s and joined a secret communist club while attending a prestigious s. korean university; his wife, a former student activist whom he met at the same club (but doesn't know he is a spy); their teenage daughter, a s. korean detective, who attempts to catch the protagonist.

for over a decade, the n. korean protagonist lives a typically normal s. korean life. he runs a small movie-import business, marries an unsuspecting s. korean woman, starts a family. he has friends from college whom he still sees. one friend also used to be an activist during her college days, but is now a teacher at the protagonist's daughter's school. one day they discuss writing fiction and the friend brings up a film starring dustin hoffman about a man who vengefully seeks out the criminals that raped his wife. the friend asks, "i wonder why we [koreans] don't have a culture of revenge?"

i thought of very uniquely "korean" untranslatable words and part of a graduate peer's thesis about "han." 

the most untranslatable words in korean are all similar in nature: 

억울하다 (uh-gool-ha-da)

분하다 (boon-ha-da)

원통하다 (wun-tong-ha-da)

한 (han)

the top three are adjectives and the last, a noun. they all basically describe the helplessly painful sense of having been wronged. it's an internal suffering caused by an external source but about which the sufferer can do absolutely nothing. it's bearing of a burden that eats away at him/her for a long time, sometimes for the rest of his/her life. japanese have a similar concept too, as seen by their female spirit stories. the movie may be called the grudge, but the feeling is less vengeful than that. it's a more resigned, victim mentality. in korean horror myths, many bearers of han are women too--forced to conform to passive and subordinate positions, they (especially the young who did not even get to live till their peak) must hold everything inside. the only way their han--and their spirits--can be released is through speech and a listener, which is not possible during their lifetime. that is why the concept of han manifests itself through horror stories about spirits in limbo. the sufferer may speak only after death--while alive, one must "bear it." this kind of mentality is very characteristically korean.

standing up for one's rights and taking action against injustice, i feel, is a very american concept. active and aggressive heroes leading the people are familiar images in historical texts and art. on the other hand, i think of yoo gwan-soon, a popularly evoked figure of the independence movement in korea. the images of a strong woman surround her myth, but i would argue that her image as a revolutionary martyr plays a significant role in the making of her legend. she suffered and died too young, and for a greater cause--the independence of her nation from the japanese empire. this combination--active leadership and heroically obstinate suffering--elevates her to a fantastical realm. especially in such a culture bound to a history of confucianism and buddhism (note things and release them, no attachments or dwelling), the revolutionary myth of yoo occupies a position so far removed from reality that the practicality of such a hero to our lived circumstances becomes unimaginable.

this, of course, applies elsewhere too. it is easier to accept our circumstances and bear/endure them, rather than take action. especially now, when the system of injustice and oppression are so complex, intricate, and elaborate and pervades every nook of our lives, where does one even begin? it is easier to surrender to a world which renders it increasingly difficult to live outside of its rules. even the internet--often perceived as a free, alternate realm of possibilities--has become systematized according to structures similar to the "tangible" world. in fact, it is no longer separable from the "real world." big corporations and other forms of power dominate the way in which we navigate space, find information, and tell us what we should like, know, do--they impose (and many of us accept) their standards of normativity and definitions of a "good citizen." 

the glorious legend of che guevara becomes reduced and flattened to mass manufactured t-shirts.

i feel as though even the heroes who emerge in our present times become legends and myths so quickly that we have no time to incorporate them into the reality of our lives; they almost immediately become divine symbols (steve jobs?).

can we have real heroes today without the fantastical glory, the otherworldly aura that remove them from practice? maybe, like walter benjamin's loss of the aura, we need superficial glorification of personalities and figures to make up for a loss of "old times." we reminisce and mourn. is there hope for action?

everyone's favorite: identity politics

view of question bridge: black males, a work in progress by hank willis thomas, chris johnson, bayeté ross smith, and kamal sinclair at jack shainman gallery.

i saw an exhibition yesterday at jack shainman gallery, of work by hank willis thomas and question bridge: black males, a collaboration with thomas, chris johnson, bayeté ross smith, and kamal sinclair. the show displayed one of the most explicit engagements with racial and "identity politics" i have seen as of late. this is probably because, well, after the multiculturalist fad of the 90s passed over, the topic is no longer "trendy." still following a 2000-year-plus tradition, the art world still believes in "universality." "good" art will appeal to "all" on a "fundamental" level. since the internet, digital realm, and ecological concerns dominate our current era (i'm thinking of the u.s. and other globally "first world" countries), those topics have become "our shared" experience. addressing the problems of a black and white dichotomy, the experience of "being a black man" (and gay), evoking w.e.b. dubois and ralph ellison's invisible man are so passé in this post-racial world. just like artists avoid the label "feminist" like the plague.

addressing racism is difficult today because it operates under the table: official laws and politically correct american culture forbids discrimination according to race, gender, sexuality, but it still happens, masked by a myriad of seemingly rational and racially (sexually, etc) irrelevant excuses. 

here is an excerpt from my thesis on the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and imagery in comedy:

This act of self-affirmation through negation has been a necessary tactic for the Eurocentric paradigm in American mass culture, a legacy that has been thoroughly demonstrated by the history of 19th Century minstrels shows, performed in both black- and yellowface. The demand for racially reductive and sub-human images of the non-normative (non-white) population displays itself more subtly in contemporary times. Acceptable instances of such demeaning laughter are now restricted, as when comedians give overtly exaggerated indications of their intention to make politically incorrect jokes. 

Margaret Cho and Bobby Lee—both popular entertainers among Asians and non-Asians alike—exaggerate “Asianness” in their acts to draw the audience’s attention to the absurdity of American racist assumptions. Cho is famous for the mimicry of her mother’s broken English; Lee plays an array of stereotypical Asian characters—whether they be Korean, Japanese, Chinese, or their confused hybrid. These grotesquely exaggerated performances give direct signals to the audience that racial stereotypes are precisely the point of their acts. The performers’ Asianness grants especially the non-Asian audiences further permission to laugh. 

Yet the source of laughter is at times ambiguous. Should non-Asian viewers doubt the appropriateness of their laughter, they need only seek laughing Asian audience members. The legitimatizing function of the Asian audience’s laughter is especially apparent in recordings of the comics’ live performances; the edited footage intersperses images of Asian audience members laughing at the racially offensive jokes. But do we not laugh at that in which we perceive a degree of truth? Does the non-Asian audience laugh at what it believes to be a truthfulness of the enacted stereotypes themselves or at false societal beliefs of perceiving them as truthful? As scholar Howard Winant has written, “Today racism must be identified by its consequences." Cho and Lee, at times, reproduce the very stereotypes they attempt to skewer.

for the purposes of my thesis on psy's "gangnam style," i focused on asian (american) entertainers, but of course, comedians like chris rock have made their careers out of racist and homosexual jokes, many of which are self-deprecatory.

and as stated above, the very existence of even the most overtly and consciously absurd racist jokes indicate the fact that these sentiments exist. our laughter is twofold. we laugh because 1. we recognize the absurdity of those jokes (ex. "hey, jackie chan!") but also because 2. we recognize a "truth" in them, whether we actually believe them ourselves or know of others who do.

cedrick smith at dillon gallery

i have a guest over from korea, hk. he is 17 years old and is exploring nyc mostly on his own while crashing at my place. he arrived last sunday. i was free and i decided to take him to central park to begin an introductory tour of the city.

the weather was unbelievably beautiful--it was the warmest welcome for someone who had just come from a country going through the most humid and sticky season of the year. but halfway through our getting lost in the park (after living in nyc for 15 years i still get lost consistently there), we encountered something i did not want to be part of hk's intro to nyc: racism.

to conceal racism from a tour of nyc is, of course, to deceive. but perhaps i was trying to do unto him what i wished others had done for me when i first arrived from korea. no one had warned me that i could be the target of hatred and mockery just because i looked a certain way to some people. although i'm not sure any warning would have helped at all, maybe it would have better prepared me for the actual experience. but i maybe i hoped, stupidly and naively, that someone had protected me from unexpected blows.

i did not want hk to have this unpleasant experience, not while i was with him. but we ended up running into a street acrobatics show--the kind that goes through a dance and tumbling routine. i had seen the same group perform in union square once. they follow a fairly lengthy script which relies heavily on racist jokes: black men freezing and ducking at the sound of police sirens, pretending to run away with the volunteers' bags, etc. besides self-deprecatory "black jokes," they also like unsophisticated asian jokes (i have also seen them crack a mexican joke, something about being poor).

the time i saw them in union square, they picked me as a volunteer, one of maybe five people over whom one performer jumps. he cracked a horrible joke at me, the kind i imagine only a 10 year old living in a suburban white town (connecticut? midwest? south?) saying to the only asian kid in school. or pre-pubescent white boys in a riverdale prep school saying to me, the only asian person "from" asia.

the joke? emitting a series of incomprehensible sounds that the speaker believes is some faithful mimicry of chinese or a generic "asian" language. when one of the performers did this to me in union square, i called him out on it and gave him a fuck you, interrupting their carefully planned routine. (i was then kicked out and replaced by a quieter asian woman). when i was with my guest at central park, i remembered this about the troupe too late. after a few minutes of watching, hk got dragged in as a volunteer because they "have to have at least one asian guy" in a mix of female volunteers. i saw links to the feminization of asian men by this gesture. maybe i was reading more into it than the guy meant, so i let this pass.

but the jokes got worse and worse. hk got called "jackie chan" and "jet li" at different times. when the main performer stacked his volunteers close together to prepare for the jump, he told hk (who was standing behind a young italian woman), "get closer, get closer. you can thank me. when else would you have a chance like this?!"

fortunately, i don't think my guest got the joke--that asian men can only "dream" of getting with a white woman because 1. asian men are undesirable 2. white women are the pinnacle of attractiveness and 3. since undesirable asian men cannot get with the extremely desirable white women, they must resort to dating the less desirable women "of their own kind."

leaving aside the fact that the "joke" is not funny at all.. i find it notable that these kinds of jokes are very american. the "joke" is only understood by americans--when tourists like hk come across racist jokes, often it takes a bit of time for them to register as "racist." the notion of race is an invention, and although racial discrimination does exist in fairly homogenous countries such as korea, american construction of race is very elaborate. the racial stereotypes, myths, "characters" are much more detailed so that they pose as widely understood "truths." 

i have also noticed that foreigners "from" abroad don't care so much about racism but the hyphenated americans (asian american, african american, latin american..) do. this is probably because foreigners find this an inevitable part of living/staying in the u.s. and well, if it becomes unbearable, they can go back to their own "homes" where they will be the racial majority. for second, third, fourth generations, the u.s. is their home. they have more at stake, and constantly being differentiated from the "norm" based on a ridiculous fiction called "race" (ambiguously tied to appearance and "origin") on one's own turf will trigger stronger reactions.

as outmoded as the shainman show seems, identity politics are still very much relevant. in fact, it may be even more now, because stereotypes are so deeply seated in our conscious/unconscious that they come off as invisible and non-existent.

i will leave you with a link to a slightly controversial and interesting blog: http://blackgirldangerous.org/new-blog/2012/11/27/how-to-know-if-you-are-white

only in nyc

august slumber

every "field" operates according to a certain kind of calendar or sense of time. in fashion, for example, they work in "seasons," related to the weather and lifestyles of consumers. the "new" is always being planned a year in advance and "fall lines" arrive in stores in the early summer, when summer clothes are already sold out or on sale. different concepts of time can be seen in products like the old-school "planner" (who uses those things nowadays anyway?). there is the regular calendar which begins with the december of the previous year then ends with the january of the following year (or december of that year, depending on the company). then there is the "academic" calendar for students that begins in august and ends in july or august of the following year. 

no longer part of an academic institution, i have been hovering in the strange limbo typical of a recent graduate grappling with the anxiety of an uncertain future and worries about "the next move." these anxieties have to do with practical matters (get a job? where? how?) and often they are fueled by the lack of a "given" time structure. i have to find my own temporal structure, which will reflect what i "want to do" with myself/my life. the difficulty lies in picking and choosing whose calendars fit what i want to do (a ginormous issue in itself) and creating a new one tailored to my own identity, vision, etc.

that was a round about way of saying that it didn't really occur to me that august in the art world is very slow--and, well, dead. i knew, of course. but having this knowledge in one's own head differs from how that knowledge is experienced on a practical and visceral level. my current sense of time is rather monotonous--no high/low seasons, but only the same kind of day after another, after another. the only factors that cause fluctuations--and require some planning--are the opening hours of galleries and museums, certain short-lived events such as performance nights and special openings.

in a way it is nice--it's like receiving a blank sheet everyday for me to mark up anew. but the real new york art world schedule, which i have tried to incorporate into my own sense of time, doesn't quite work the way i pass my days. it is not monotonous like mine, but has its seasons like any other calendar. certain months are "vacation" time (end of july to august, and december), then some months are the "big" moments when art people return to the city and there are a million openings every week (september is a major openings month). some months host a multitude of art fairs, others (in alternating years) have biennials, triennials, or annual exhibitions organized by major institutions.

it's not all that different from an academic or other work calendars, actually. but there are small elements (knowledge?) that one will only come to embody if one lives immersed in that life and realm for a prolonged period of time--constant training until that knowledge is no longer considered separate information but becomes instinct. 

and i could feel myself floating in this no-person's-land when i asked a gallerist friend why everything was closed one saturday and she told me about summer hours. annoyed, frustrated, i felt like a hungry ghost that can only stare at what it can't have. but trying to "gain entry"--what does that even mean? i must have some sort of fundamentally unattainable, absurdly impossible, and completely fictional notion of "belonging" to the art world. and that is probably right. i set my own definition of legitimacy (the creation of which i angrily attribute to "the art world") and thereby deprive myself of it. it's like complaining about others' racist behaviors when i am only reaffirming their racist beliefs precisely by taking them for granted. 

and this is also just a very roundabout way of excusing myself for being slack. i haven't been out as often lately to see shows and another excuse: much of what i have seen haven't strongly inspired my writing about them. but maybe that's just what august does to people and that's why many people abandon the city to lounge around some place with more green or water. i should stop feeling guilty and let myself sit in my air conditioned room all day with a good novel. i am a master fabricator of excuses.