5/22/17 Reading

In “Asian America Auto/ Biographies: The Gendered Limits of Consumer Citizenship in Import Subcultures”, Rodriguez and Gonzalez brings into perspective signifiers of identity and cultures, relating it to import scenes and its effect on Asian American cultures. In the article the author first introduces to the audiences a well known film “The Fast and the Furious” which depicts of import car racers with their revved up engines, glistening decals, and vibrating with heavy bass lines. This serves as a transition for the topic of car imagery and identity.  On a physical aspect seemingly attractive cars provides masculinity to Asian American men through the car’s designs and technology. I think this is because stereotypically Asian American men are always seen to have more shy and nerdy characteristics so they become demasculinized in the media. As spoken in the article “stock car culture continued the enactment of American narratives of manliness, speed and technological innovation that had played a crucial part in the allied victories against the Germans and Japanese” (pg. 252). On a more objective aspect the identities of individuals are based around the cars they have in order to gain prestige.  As spoken in the article “the car is a sign of mobility and enfranchisement, a marker of the American dream achieved” (pg. 250). I feel that this is very true and is easily spotted in our society today just like how people choose cars that stand out either for their own personal reasons or even for the sake of wanting a nice car, sports cars are one example of rising domination in the ways of identifying American identity because it’s increase popularity and constant hype of a nice engine. Relating this to Stuart Halls article on popular culture it shows that culture is a sight of a constant moving battle and this is true because with the car industry constantly having production of new cars that are advertised to be even better than the previous it is hard to pinpoint just when there is a pause to the constant pursuing of something better to in a sense upgrade our status in society. Lastly relating this to personal experiences, I thought that reading this article also made me reflect how when I was younger I had asked my parents if I could own a sports car one day and how they told me it’s not practical for everyday use. I used to not understand why, but looking back it’s also probably because I caught up on the hype of having a nice looking car to validate that I'm actually successful.

In the film "Kelly loves Tony" showed Kelly’s stress to her situation of trying to manage going to school and take care of the baby. Tony does not seem to understand that Kelly in fact wants to pursue a better degree not for herself but for her family because she only graduated from high school and was on a set path to a great college. Kelly then also gets pregnant again and this time it seems as if even the mother in law says that it is better that kelly stayed home and forget about her career and just to take care of the baby instead.