Recently by Lily Tung

Here's an interesting, yet flawed connection between art and politics:

Roger Waters performed at the Coachella Music Festival over the weekend.  Against the wishes of local officials and without the consent of the presidential candidate himself, Waters commissioned a plane to drop tiny fliers on the crowd in support of Barack Obama.  Unfortunately, most of the confetti ended up on neighboring lawns in Indio and La Quinta, which drew the ire of residents who were forced to clean it up. 

"They're all over the place. It's littering. I've got all my homeowners calling me and complaining," said Bill Hays of the Desert Shores RV Resort to the Desert Sun.  "If I was going to vote for Obama, I wouldn't this morning if this is how he runs his campaign."

Well, that doesn't help anyone...except for maybe John McCain.

Dance criticism has taken a big hit recently.  Hard on the heels of Deborah Jowitt's sudden departure from The Village Voice, The Orange County Register has lost dance critic and former NAJP fellow Laura Bleiberg.  Apparently, Bleiberg was the last full-time newspaper dance critic in all of California.  

On The OC Register's Arts Blog, Bleiberg admits that she is not sure if the Register will replace her with another staff dance critic.  She is leaving the Register to join South Coast Repertory as Associate Director of Development.

Another former NAJP fellow Valerie Takahama also left The Register in August, after working there 19 years.  She says part of the reason she was let go was that "they felt they didn't need an architecture writer anymore."

The film 21 opens today.  If you've missed the barrage of advertising Sony Pictures has assailed upon us, here's a description from Fandango:

Director Robert Luketic adapts Ben Mezrich's best-seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions to tell the true-life tale of six genius students who used their brains to beat considerable odds.

True to life?  True that the main character goes to Vegas to count cards with his classmates so that he can make tuition money.  Not true that the protagonist is Caucasian.

The real people profiled in Bringing Down the House are actually Asian American, and when Asian-American actors learned that the story was being made into a movie, they rejoiced.  Finally, they would have the opportunity to play three-dimensional characters and branch out from their fine portrayals of nerds, waiters, kung fu artists, and refugees.  

Studio executives dashed those hopes.  They felt that Caucasian actors would make the film more marketable, despite the fact that the characters' ethnicity was essential to the story.  The book states that the card-counting scheme was successful partly because the students used their ethnicity to their advantage; in the casinos, a young Asian man betting large amounts of money is less conspicuous than a young white man.

And come on, we all know that gambling and M.I.T. have become indispensable parts of Asian-American culture.  Every Asian parent dreams of his or her children going to M.I.T. and takes the $25 bus from Chinatown to Reno to win enough money to send them there.

If you don't believe me, just ask writer/performer Prince Gomolvilas who confesses in the  touring theatre production Jukebox Stories that his college education was financed when his "mother hit the jackpot on a nickel slot machine at the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Vegas."  The quip is part of his biting and hilarious monologue "21 Reasons Why This Movie Already Sucks," in which he lists 21 reasons one should NOT see the film 21.   

Here are a few:

#7: This is not the kind of movie [Jim Sturgess, who is white] should be in. He actually should've been cast as Ray Charles in Ray or as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland or as Frank Lucas, you know, the Denzel Washington character in American Gangster.

#14: People say that I should be happy because the producers, out of an apparent act of charity, did cast two Asian Americans in smaller roles: the Korean dude from Disturbia and some random token hot Asian chick.  But I ask you: Why the hell should I be happy? That's like somebody jerking you off halfway and then leaving.

We shouldn't be surprised by a film studio's lack of cultural sensitivity.  It's not the first time that Hollywood has changed a character's race to make a film more "marketable."  In 1999, George Clooney played the African-American protagonist in Three Kings, and Gomolvilas has plenty of his own experiences:

Remember the time when a certain talent agent wanted to take a look at my script about a little Asian-American boy only if I would consider rewriting the part so that Dakota Fanning could star in it?  

How about that time I was developing a script called Chocolate Buddha at a film studio? The story was about a black guy who hides out in a Buddhist monastery.  And I was shocked that... executives could still look me in the eye and tell me it would be much better if the star of the movie were Caucasian, essentially changing my film into White Chocolate Buddha.

The moral of this story is that if you're lucky enough to be in Los Angeles this weekend, take that $10 you would have spent seeing 21 to catch Gomolvilas with singer/songwriter Brandon Patton in Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam at Genghis Cohen.  (They're also in Boston June 15.)  A mixture of contemporary storytelling, original songs, audience prizes and a different setlist each night, Gomolvilas and Patton present a clever, decidedly non-theatrical theatre piece that combines personal anecdotes with brilliant observations of life's randomness.  

This second installment of Jukebox Stories lets the audience virtually pick out of a hat the pieces the duo will present, like Gomolvilas' true yet bizarre story about how his satirical review of High School Musical garnered thousands of angry letters and death threats from tween girls.  And if you solve the show's murder mystery or demonstrate your prowess at movie score trivia, you win cheesy prizes.  It's a load of fun that will leave you thinking about life and humming Patton's songs on your way home, "We're alive and we chuckle when we fart/Try to be inspired but this is life, not art."

UNITY, the alliance of four national journalism associations promoting diversity (Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association) recently released its list of workshops for its 2008 quadrennial convention.  Of its more than 100 workshops, not one covered arts journalism.

There's a workshop about business journalism, one on health coverage, and even one on - get this - gossip reporting!  Remember, like the Olympics, this convention only occurs once every four years.

The NAJP submitted a proposal for a workshop called "Promoting Diversity Through Arts Reporting."  And despite having a fabulous panel that included a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most respected magazine editors in the country, the selection committee passed over our idea.  We wondered what we could have done better, what we could change if we were to apply in 2012.  Maybe we just shouldn't submit a proposal about... arts coverage!  

What does it say about our field when a group preaching diversity leaves arts journalism out of its own diverse agenda?

I was in conversation with a group of fellow actors over the weekend at the Hotel Rex bar in San Francisco.  They comprised the cast of the long-running musical Shopping, which is about to celebrate its second anniversary.  The milestone got us talking about the press the show has received and theatre criticism in general - a somewhat awkward conversation for me since I am both an actor and an arts journalist.

The actors were commenting on the seeming randomness of the theatre productions reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle.  For example, the excellent new musical Insignificant Others by hot emerging artist Jay Kuo has yet to receive a write-up, even though it has begun an indefinite run at San Francisco's Pier 39, while an inconsistent little play called Eavesdropper received both a preview and a review during its summer residency at Off-Market Theatres.  

In acknowledging the haphazard nature of what actually gets in the papers, I surmised that Eavesdropper received so much attention partly because the play's press release claimed that the show had been the "longest running play in Los Angeles."  While it is true that Eavesdropper had been running in LA for months, many of its later shows had audiences of fewer than 10 people - a fact not mentioned (and probably not even researched) by the Chronicle.  In the play's defense, it did have a novel idea -- a bevy of actors from LA and San Francisco rotated through the cast so that audiences never saw the same performance twice.  But many people who saw the show thought the surprise casts spawned work of questionable quality.

My friends reacted by saying that newspapers like the Chronicle should cover all the city's theatre productions so that audiences can be fully informed about the general scene.  I argued that with the present crisis in arts journalism, newspapers no longer have the staff nor space to cover every production.  

One actor then exclaimed "And if I see another Yelp review, I'm going to vomit."  While he admitted that nearly every theatre production could count on user reviews on websites like Yelp and Goldstar Events, he found the writing mostly inane.  He wanted to see reviews produced by experienced writers with theatrical knowledge.

Thus, the Catch-22.  Newspapers don't have enough resources to review most productions.  And if a production doesn't get reviewed, it and its potential audience must rely on mass consensus reviews by amateur theatergoers.  

Many European papers cover nearly every art event that occurs in their city and enjoy an interested audience.  How do they do it, and can we even hope for their success?  Or will we be stuck in Yelp purgatory forever?

For the last week, I've been thinking a lot about the racist panda commercial that Salesgenie.com aired during the Super Bowl.  In the ad, a panda couple who speak with  ridiculous Asian accents save their bamboo business with the help of Salesgenie sales leads.

On Tuesday, Salesgenie executive Vin Gupta apologized for the commercial, telling The New York Times that he "never thought anyone would be offended."  He never thought anyone would be offended?!  Gupta is either horrifyingly disingenuous or horrifyingly ignorant.

So what does this have to do with arts journalism?

Television advertising has long reflected accepted racial portrayals in film and television.  And the Salesgenie commercial is just another reminder that the media hasn't progressed much since Mickey Rooney portrayed Holly Golightly's ridiculous, clownish Japanese landlord in the otherwise fine film Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Can we compare Rooney with an animated panda?  Well, they're both short, round non-Asians donning bad Asian accents.  And they've both helped media executives try to get a laugh by portraying Asians as buck-teethed buffoons who cannot speak English properly.

Asianweek's recent list of the 25 most infamous "yellow face" film performances only proves how shockingly reactionary Hollywood is when it comes to race.  While most of the list's entries come from Hollywood's past, three are from 2007 films.

When noting Christopher Walken's turn as a villainous ping-pong master in Balls of Fury (2007), Asianweek comments, "Would anyone in their right mind cast Walken as, say, an African American character and not expect to get their asses reamed?"

The same thinking applies to the Salesgenie commercial.  Would Gupta even think of casting a family of gorillas speaking ebonics as his laughable protagonists?   Somehow, the Asian-American population is considered easier prey. 

To add insult to injury, The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Gupta "boasted that his commercials were intentionally bad."  As they say, bad publicity is better than no publicity.  And to attract business to his website, Gupta actively sought the title of "worst Super Bowl commercial."  Unfortunately, it seems like the racist plan worked.  The ad has apparently brought in millions of dollars in revenue for Salesgenie. 

Even though Gupta has pulled the ad, he says he will continue to run another animated commercial featuring a salesman with several children who speaks with an Indian accent.  Gupta, who himself is half-Indian, explained to The New York Times that "people have been making fun of my accent for years, and I love it."  According to USA Today, Gupta also claimed that only white people criticized the ads and that his Asian friends had no problem with them.

Well, Mr. Gupta, this Asian-American writer congratulates you on your thick skin... and poor taste.

I am presently on the board of the National Arts Journalism Program and was a NAJP fellow in 2003-2004.

I began my career in 1994 in Shanghai, China as a foreign journalist covering contemporary Chinese culture.  I served as the launching editor of Shanghai Talk, the city's first English-language monthly.  I also covered stories for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, NBC News, Associated Press Television, WGBH Boston, Asiaweek, The South China Morning Post and National Geographic Magazine.

After returning to the US, I worked as a writer and segment producer at KRON 4 Television in San Francisco from 1999 to 2004, covering arts and culture, news and current affairs.

Currently, I am researching a book about Chinese immigration to the United States since 1949.  I am also a freelance writer/producer and a media and communications trainer.  In addition to covering the arts, I work in the arts as an actor and singer.