Carl Kruse Miami

Fishing, Fetishization, and Whitewashing: A Discourse on Anti-Asian Racism

by Hazel Anna Rogers for this Carl Kruse Blog

I enjoy many aspects of East Asian culture. Broadly, ‘East Asian’ refers to the cultural sphere of Japan, Greater China, Korea, and Vietnam.

I am not entirely comfortable verbalising my appreciation of these cultures with the vagueness of the term ‘East Asian’. Though they might have some inherent similarities due to their proximity to one another and their historic interactions, just as countries in the west have certain similarities with one another, the cultural evolution and histories of east Asian countries are, in many ways, completely separate. It is a fault of Western media and its generalisation of these cultures that East Asian countries are commonly lumped together under such a nebulous title. 

That is not to say that the term is itself problematic, however, as a white European heteronormative woman, I feel somewhat uncomfortable being so general about my appreciation for the very different cultures of Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam.

I grew up watching studio Ghibli films and anime, reading Manga, and had Japanese babysitters who came to stay with my family while they studied at my father’s English language school. My cousins are half-Japanese, and my uncle’s recently wed wife is Chinese (Hong Kong). I studied the Korean blockbuster while pursuing my studies in French and Japanese at the University of Leeds. I have loved the works of Murakami since I was sixteen and I am fascinated by the poetry of Li Po and Hanshan. I am working towards a greater understanding of Japanese Zen Buddhism and have recently been enjoying learning about Japanese Noh Theatre and Tadashi Suzuki’s method. I practice Qigong daily. As a child, I was heavily influenced by Kawaii culture. As an adult, I am oftentimes inspired by traditional Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese cuisine in my own cooking, and, with regard to my approach to the care of my home, I am inspired by the concept of ‘Ma’, an aspect of Japanese minimalism which can be described as: “a holder within which things can exist, stand out and have meaning. MA is the emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled.” (Wawaza.com)

These practices and interests enrich my life. They enable me to gain a more rounded perspective on life. There is a great disparity between the traditional western outlook on the human’s relationship with his surroundings and his own lived experience, and a more eastern outlook, which might consider the animus to be present in the world and the human (I speak of the animus with regard to its Latin origins as referring to the rational soul, mind, desire, and life as opposed to its nineteenth century incarnation as a term denoting hostility and anger). In an aesthetic sense, I am drawn to the work of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. In the foreword to Tanizaki’s 1933 text ‘In Praise of Shadows’, famed American architect Charles Moore details the significance of the material world in giving our embodied human experience meaning and comfort:

‘One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. This is not, especially in the tumultuous present, an easy act (as is attested by the uninhabited and uninhabitable no-places in cities everywhere), and it requires help: we need allies in inhabitation. Fortunately, we have at hand many allies, if only we call on them; other upright objects, from towers to chimneys to columns, stand in for us in sympathetic imitation of our own upright stance. Flowers and gardens serve as testimonials to our own care, and breezes loosely captured can connect us with the very edge of the infinite. But in the West our most powerful ally is light. “The sun never knew how wonderful it was,” the architect Louis Kahn said, “until it fell on the wall of a building,” And for us the act of inhabitation is mostly performed in cahoots with the sun, our staunchest ally, bathing our world or flickering through it, helping give it

light.’

Moore suggests that Tanizaki’s exposure of the beauty of darkness and shadows ‘illuminates for us a culture very different from our own; but at the same time it helps us to look deep into ourselves to our own inhabitation of our world’. I wholeheartedly agree. This perspective enables me to go beyond the simplistic discussion of capitalist and consumerist versus communist and ethical or anti-consumerist. Having the ability to notice and appreciate the beauty that can be found in the inevitable proliferation of the material subverts the ugliness or mundanity that we have been taught in the west to see in the non-human.

By reading and appreciating and even implementing the ideas that Tanazaki details in his book in my own life, I am committing no crime. I am not appropriating a culture by doing these things. What might reverse this innocent interest is if I were to take Tanizaki’s discussion and monetise it, or claim that I indeed was the first to promulgate such ideas. In doing this, I would be dismissing the history behind Tanizaki’s work, in essence erasing the Japanese-ness of this aesthetic. I would be using my born privilege to my advantage, negating the centuries-long suffering of the Japanese people at the hand of Westerners.

I do not have TikTok, nor do I plan on ever having an account on the site. Perhaps this will change. Part of the reason why I have not downloaded the app, apart from the obvious – more social media is never going to be a positive thing for me – is the discussion surrounding its ability to accelerate trends at a more rapid pace than has ever been seen before. These trends are not limited to the material – clothing, aesthetics, and general material goods – but also encompass physical appearance with regard to facial features and body types. One of the most recent ‘trends’ on TikTok has been the fetishizing of Asian physical features and styles. A note on this: enjoying doing makeup to change the way you look, or being inspired by different cultures in your own style, is not what has been deemed problematic. The issue is when one makes oneself appear racially ambiguous in order to profit off of the aesthetic of one culture without the consequences of actually being a part of said culture. Asian women have been fetishized, racially stereotyped and abused, and even killed for their facial and verbal characteristics. Take, for example, Papillon Soo’s infamous line from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’, where she played a Vietnamese prostitute: ‘Me love you long time.’ Papillon, to clarify, is not Vietnamese. She is of French-Chinese heritage, and was born in England. Her stereotyping as a passive, sexualised Vietnamese woman is racist. Soo’s words in Kubrick’s award-winning film have been used in further films, tv, and other cultural mediums. As a note to you, the reader: using this line is not funny. It never has been, and it never will be. It is the result of the demonisation and reduction by the west of Asian culture, and that will never, ever be ‘funny’.

‘Asian-fishing’ is defined by theboar.org as ‘a term used to describe people who try to pass as east-Asian. This is seen mostly through makeup or photo editing, where the eyes in particular are intentionally made to look slanted or as having monolids. This is not a question of whether winged eyeliner is now off-limits or of gate-keeping Asian fashion styles, but of non-east Asians intentionally altering the way they look for their own aesthetic purposes.’ The problem comes when a white woman uses east Asian feature and harmful stereotypes to further their own careers, such as Ariana Grande, who was accused of Asian-fishing after posting photos from a fashion shoot depicting her characteristically tanned skin (which she has also come under fire for) as snow-white, and her eyes artificially altered (either cosmetically or with the use of makeup) to create a characteristically east-Asian eye shape. Globaltime.cn details that ‘In the photo, [Ariana] can be seen wearing an oversized men's jacket, which is an emerging trend in South Korean streetwear, and the white bow in her hair is similar to Japanese 'servant girl' cosplay costumes.’ While there is nothing wrong with a pop star following popular aesthetic and musical trends, there is something wrong with an artist choosing not to acknowledge the painful history behind the trends that they choose to put on and take off as easily as lipstick. I cannot imagine how it must feel for a person of colour to see their features suddenly become ‘fashionable’, the same features which they might have been discriminated against for their entire lives.

I have used the examples of fashion to iterate the racism and whitewashing which prevails in western society (though it is certainly not limited to it). Whitewashing is described by health.com in film, television, and other media as ‘the elimination or replacement of people of color with white characters…(also) when people of color are displaced in a story to put the focus on white characters…(and it) may also involve a white person pretending to be a person of color […] creating entire worlds where people of color simply don't exist […] erasing people of color from times and places where they would be […] or giving all the major/most complex roles of a film to white actors’. I was to be clear that this is not a small issue. Even in my own life, I have witnessed people using racist slurs against and about Asian people. I have heard a friend discuss his discovery that his own girlfriend had a seeming ‘fetish’ for Asian men. I heard a (now no longer) friend describe an Asian-owned shop using disgustingly racist language. How are these occurrences a daily reality for people of colour? How can we ignore how short-lived a ‘trend’ the Black Lives Matter movement really was? #StopAAPIHate (AAPI = Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) didn’t seem to catch on in the social media sphere, did it? We all enjoyed Squid Game, didn’t we? How many of you voted Republican in 2016? How many of you actually condemned Trump, whether in personal circles, in public, or on social media, for referring to Covid-19 as “China virus,” "Wuhan virus" and “kung flu” (PRWeek)? How many of you know that, in 2021, there was an increase of 339 percent in reported Asian hate crimes in the US (nbcnews.com)?

I am a white, heteronormative British-French person with no real expertise on the issue of race, so…why should my opinion within this discourse be important? I am not perfect – far from it. But the fact is, the voice of a white, heteronormative person on certain topics (such as, but not limited to, racism) is far more ‘palatable’ to the public at large. These same words spoken from the mouth of a person who has experienced injustices due to their race, skin colour, or otherwise would potentially not ‘land’ on the ears of those who themselves hold racist and/or xenophobic views. It might even be dangerous for some people of colour to express themselves in particular situations. This is not to say that people of colour should not be involved in the discussion – ABSOLUTELY not. But, as someone trying to be an ally to people of colour, I feel that I should use my privilege to elevate and promote the voices of those who weren’t born with the same privileges that I was. I am happy to be called out for my mistakes. I am happy to read a comment under this article telling me that I should not have addressed this topic at all, that it was not my place. This is not about me, and I sincerely hope that that comes across in my words.

As I rescue the blog I have invited Hazel Anna Rogers to contribute to it. 

by Hazel Anna Rodgers for the Carl Kruse Blog

I would like to state prior to beginning this article that my perspectives are not intended to disregard the struggles of those dealing with medical issues, poor income, difficult living situations, and inequalities due to race, gender, sexuality, or disability. I am aiming this article at those who have the means and ability to consider their ‘wealth’ as an object that is not purely defined by money or material.

Do you consider yourself wealthy? How do you define wealth, or affluence? Is it a sentiment, a material value, or an experience? Do you desire wealth, and, if so, is the wealth you desire monetary or psychological? Are these two ‘types’ of wealth compatible? Are they mutually exclusive?

We might begin by considering the ‘types’ of wealth one might encounter throughout one’s life, and what wealth might have looked like in bygone times.

Let us examine affluence as a lifestyle, beginning with the subject of food. If we journey back to pre-history, or pre-agricultural revolution (and post-cognitive revolution), we can consider the lives of humans who lived between 70,000 to 30,000 years ago. Though we cannot know anything about this time period for certain, we are able to make some educated assertions about how humans lived prior to the beginning of more organised farming methods. It seems likely that humans during this time would have worked for a short amount of time upon waking, work that might have consisted of foraging or hunting in groups. They might have then returned back to cook their findings on a fire and proceed to lounge about, gossip, and look after their children. As Yuval Noah Harris discusses in his book Sapiens, the variety of foodstuffs available to humans of this era would have been diverse and ever-changing – perhaps on one particular day, they would have eaten more fruits and nuts, on another they might have had more root-based foods that had been dug up, on another perhaps they would have eaten termites and small animals they had caught, and on another they might have cooked a large game animal as a worthy prize after a strenuous hunting expedition.

The poor diets that many subsist on in the twenty-first century is characterised by a reliance on delivered processed foods with little to no nutritional value. Doctor Eva Selhub comments in her article on nutritional psychiatry that highly processed foods lead to greater inflammation of the gut and a reduction of ‘good’ bacteria in the gut microbiome, which in turn leads to a reduction in the amount of serotonin (the neurotransmitter that regulates sleep, appetite, pain, and mood). Furthermore, heavily processed foods such as processed meats, sugary drinks, and sweets (cakes, pastries, and candy) often lack the fibre, vitamins, and minerals that their non (or lesser) processed counterparts (such as fruit, fresh meat/fish, and grains) inherently have. We can therefore, albeit tentatively, conclude that the quality of life of humans today is diminished in comparison to their ancestors thanks to the deficiencies and health implications of surviving on such a limited array of foods. This way of eating is highly normalised; website Upserve suggests that 60% of US consumers order at least one takeout meal a week. Having grown up in a household that prioritised home-cooked meals and ordered takeaways around 2 to 3 times a year, I have been shocked to discover in my adult life how few people know how to cook, or how to eat in a way that promotes health. Even those I know who have a high enough income to enable them to purchase the highest quality ingredients to cook with would rather dispense their income on branded clothing and technology than fork out on their own health.

By contrast, the varied diet of prehistoric humans would have enabled them to keep healthy and strong, and their active lifestyle would have allowed them to live well into old age without the aid of drugs, supplements, or doctors (many skeletons have been reliably dated to suggest that it was not uncommon for prehistoric humans to live up to 70 years old, and even potentially older). The soil would have been far richer with nutrients and minerals back then also, as after centuries of poor biodiversity in crops and intensive over-farming our soils do not offer us the same bounty of nutrients (hence the oftentimes necessity of vitamin and mineral supplementation). In accordance with this discussion of food, I would like to return to the idea of affluence as bodily. Can we call ourselves wealthy if our health continues to be irrevocably damaged by our food choices? Surely wealth cannot merely be defined by owning a large house and numerous useless goods; to me, wealth must be defined as a bodily sensation, the feeling of being joyful and healthy and able-bodied. With obesity ever on the increase, both in first and third-world countries, we must begin to question our priorities around our lifestyles, and whether money should be the only factor we consider when we talk about wealth.

To continue on the subject of affluence as a lifestyle, we shall now discuss movement as integral to living a wealthy and fulfilled life. From studying numerous bodies from around the time of the cognitive revolution, archaeologists have found that the bones of prehistoric humans were far denser than our own, suggestive that they were far fitter and stronger athletes than us, especially with regard to running. Evolutionarily, the capability for a prehistoric human to run long distances was necessary in order to persistently chase prey on hunting expeditions. Additionally, in a study conducted by the University of Cambridge (2017) it was discovered that prehistoric women had far more muscular upper bodies than biological females of today, likely due to the need for them to engage in constant wearing chores such as digging and carrying large amounts of water. These humans were fitter, taller, and stronger than most humans today. Though, as stated earlier, we have no way of knowing what life was really like back then, and what grievances and difficulties early humans would encounter daily, we do know the positive effects of exercise both on the body and the mind due to extensive modern scientific work on the subject. Countless studies have detailed that low to strenuous forms of exercise can help to increase serotonin and cortisol levels in the body, the latter of which is the body’s main stress hormone and increases levels of glucose in the bloodstream. Cortisol also heightens the use of glucose in the brain and improves tissue repair, as well as mitigating bodily functions that might be disadvantageous in a situation that require an acute stress response (fight-or-flight) (Mayo Clinic, 2019). Furthermore, exercise has been proven to help improve circulation and heart strength, potentially lower blood pressure, improve sleep and sex, help the body to manage insulin levels, and improve bone density.  

Yet even with this indisputable data to hand, the facts of our modern day exercise habits still ring clear; Vice UK states that around 80% of Americans meet the meagre governmental recommendations for weekly physical exercise (2.5 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise/1.25 hours of vigorous-intensity activity, plus some exercises to improve strength). Furthermore, Vice suggests that only around 20.6% of Americans actually successfully met these recommendations. Why? With the emergence in the past few decades of endless technologies that make it unnecessary for us to move, such as delivery apps, escalators, lifts, taxi apps, computers and smartphones that allow us to order everything without shifting out of our seats, and countless other innovations, we have become ever lazier. Why walk to a restaurant when you could get a taxi there, or, better still, order the food to eat in front of the television? Why bother gardening when someone else can do it for you? Why go out to get groceries when you can order them in? Why go out to post a letter when you can send an email ten times as easily? The Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these issues, and despite all of the anecdotal accounts of people taking up running and cold-water swimming during the numerous lockdowns, the spike in numbers of people working from home means that the precious exercise many found when taking the tube or walking to the bus stop to get to work was lost.

Can we call ourselves wealthy if our wealth consists of having an enormous house, expensive car, and the newest technology fads if we find ourselves overweight as a result of negating physical exercise? How wonderful it is to have an able body that can complete all tasks required without fatiguing, a body that can walk through forests and hills and feel the fresh breeze on its skin. For many, this is a question of priority; we would rather binge on a new series and order food in to eat alongside than take a night walk, picking up some supplies on the way, and return to cook a nourishing and satisfying meal. We are partly faultless in this inclination, with garish adverts for ‘Deliveroo’, ‘JustEat’, and ‘Netflix’ plastered mercilessly both on our screens and on our highstreets. How could we not fall prey to things that promise us sedentary enjoyment when we have evolved to favour the conservation of energy? Time has not enabled us to evolve quickly enough to counter the tendency for our bodies to seek the ‘easy way’; when food was scarce in prehistoric times, this tendency was vital to ensure that we could stay alive as long as possible. However, we can counter this evolutionary argument with the fact that we DO know better, and even if we don’t, the knowledge required to live a healthful life is easily accessible. This brings us onto our next point: knowledge as affluence.

Almost every single question you can think of can be answered on Google, or another such search engine. We can choose to learn about any topic and have the possibility to become experts on it in the space of an afternoon thanks to the plethora of information we have at our fingertips. But the ease of acquiring information has perhaps made us complacent; we need not really know anything at all, because if we don’t know something, we can simply look it up. The prehistoric human is believed to have had a significantly larger brain than us due to the fact that he would need to store extensive mental data on crop cycles, plants safe for consumption, indicators of weather change, and how to successfully execute physical crafts such as making fires or spearheads. I may be making assumptions here, but if you look out of your window now, I can bet that most of you will not have the slightest idea what plants are growing in your garden, or what the name is of the tree across the street. We have no need of this knowledge; our food is readily prepared for us hence we need not personally rely on the natural world for our nutrition (although, of course, we rely on it daily, but in the form of pre-picked and packaged foodstuffs).

This lack of knowledge about the world around us may seem trivial, but it is but one of the indicators of a rapid decrease in mental capability in the twenty-first century. NBC News suggests that the decline in IQ in this century has been primarily attributable to the wealthiest countries, including the US, UK, and other developed countries. Evolution has, in a sense, derailed, in that it is no longer necessary to be intelligent, fit, or innovative to live and be (arbitrarily) successful in life. Consider social media: how many people do you know on Instagram who seem unintelligent yet have mass following and millions of pounds simply because they’re attractive and willing to market useless products to their gullible followers? My question is this: can we consider ourselves wealthy if our minds are numbed by social media, if we don’t know anything about our own history or the wonderful world that we have found ourselves on? Is our only pursuit in life a material wealth that we will do ANYTHING to acquire? The damage we are doing to the natural world is mainly the result of the impacts of large corporations, but perhaps if we were more knowledgeable as a collective about the importance of nature and its intrinsic link to our own lives we might be able to diminish our own negative impact upon it. Fewer people are attending university in favour of being ‘entrepreneurs’ or social media stars, and consequently our own history and whatever we may learn from it is being lost over generations.

Again, you may consider this section about knowledge trivial, but think on the calibre of the majority of music being created today. I enjoy much contemporary music, and I am exhilarated by the progressions that electronic music is making especially in the realm of AI, but there is no arguing that musical skill and diversity is being lost due to us no longer having the need to train classically in order to be a popular and accomplished performer. It takes time to become good at creating beautiful music, time that many of us claim we do not have.

This brings us onto our final point in the tree of affluence I have created: time as wealth. Consider this parable that personal trainer James Smith brought to my attention in his book Not A Life Coach. In it, a businessman is on holiday at a small coastal fishing village, and he comes across a fisherman with a few large yellowfin tuna inside his boat. He compliments the fisherman and asks how long it took him to catch them, to which the fisherman answers ’30 minutes’ then goes on to proudly exclaim that he is the best fisherman in the village. The businessman asks him why he doesn’t fish for longer to catch more, and what he does with the rest of his day. To this question the fisherman replies that he wakes up late, fishes a little, then plays with his children and spends quality time with his wife, then in the evening strolls into the village to drink wine and play guitar with friends. He says he lives a very full and happy life. The businessman laughs at him and lists all the ways he could monetise his fishing skill, like fishing for longer thus making more money to buy a bigger boat, and eventually buy a fleet of ships upon which he could employ many other fishermen. The businessman says he could then move to a large city to oversee his fishing company, then sell his company, and finally retire with millions of dollars in order to move to a small fishing village and fish for fun, enjoy time with his family, and drink wine and play guitar in the evenings with his friends in the village. It takes no genius to work out the flaws in the businessman’s plans for the fisherman, who was already as wealthy as a man could be thanks to the time he had to enjoy his life alongside work.

Why are we willing to work for such long hours merely for a few pence extra on a salary when these miniature increments in pay lead to us to a worsened quality of life due to us having less time to spend with those we love, being forced to eat quick convenience foods, and having nothing to look forward to except what we’ll buy with the money we’ve earned? Are we wealthy if our wealth impedes our health and makes weekends the only good time in our week? As mentioned earlier, hunter-gatherer prehistoric humans likely had much time on their hands to spend enjoying each other’s company, playing with their children, and finding new ways to enjoy themselves. Of course, hardships such as potential ‘wars’ brought on by conflicting tribes, or familiar disputes, or lack of food or water would likely have plagued these humans, but we can deduce from our limited knowledge of their lives that they would have had much time on their hands to enjoy the most delicious fruits of life: friends, family, and food.

What should you take away from this article? Consider your own life, regardless of who you are; are you prioritising the things that make you happy and healthy, or are you defining the success in your life by material wealth and how easily and quickly you can get there? Are you choosing to eat foods that damage your body and mind rather than making the time to cook healthful dishes for you and your family and friends? Are you sitting and scrolling on Instagram as opposed to walking around and taking in sights, or reading and learning about things that interest or intrigue you? Are you choosing to spend your time fixed to a computer screen instead of talking with loved ones? If you have the means to, think about shifting the priorities of your life, and consider really figuring out what you mean what you talk about wealth.

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This Carl Kruse blog homepage is found at https://carlkruse.blogspot.com
Contact:  carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The blog's last post was Rescuing The Blog.
More about Carl Kruse here Bio.

by Carl Kruse

Well-meaning (though wayward) digital assistants filled this blog with assorted posts over the years.  These posts had nothing to do with me and I am reclaiming the blog.

Not that anything of interest might follow, but at least none of the former stuff will continue.

Hoping you are well wherever you are.

Hello from Berlin.