Hollywood and Asianisation

Hollywood has always been predominately controlled by the ‘white man’, but over time there has been an influx of foreign stars which America has decided to adopt. While already a star in China, Jackie Chan didn’t rise to fame until his appearance in Rush Hour in 1998. Before then, Hollywood had adopted Asian ideas into their films, such as the Karate Kid, but the movie still revolved around a white male lead.

In the case of Jackie Chan, the idea of Hollywood being “Asianised” is not entirely true as Jackie Chan himself didn’t particularly like the movies he made. When asked about the film, Jackie Chan said that he was ‘very disappointed because it was a movie I didn’t appreciate”, he also said “I felt the action was too Americanised and I didn’t understand the American humour”. While Jackie was pleased with the results from the box office, it is obvious that the Hollywood style of filming was not Jackie’s style and that “he has been squeezed, patted, nipped and tucked in order to fit into a different culture industry” (Klein, 2004). Jackie Chan only agreed to film the sequels because the money offered was irresistible.

Hollywood is currently embracing more talents from Asia today but it is evident that while they are happy to adopt certain cultures and styles, the final product will always be Americanised instead of Asianised.

Klein. C, 2004, 'Martial arts and the globalization of US and Asia film industries', An International Journal, SAGE Publications, New Delhi. pp. 360-383

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/30/jackie-chan-admits-is-not-fan-rush-hour-films/

Fishing on Facebook

Sometimes being on Facebook is just like being back at high school. My news feed feels like a school ground. Through everyone’s posts and photos, you could see everyone’s cliques, groups and connections. And just like high school, everyone is self-conscious of their appearance. Marshall (2010) “would call the ‘specular economy’ where collectively we are becoming more conscious of how we present ourselves and how others perceive us and this change is migrating to the epicentre of our knowledge economy.” People need their walls to represent how they want to be viewed by their peers, an image which is popular among their online ‘friends’. Such popularity is like specular economy, in that social media gives users a sense of celebrity, with your persona being broadcast to all of your friends.

My social media life revolves around a chain of jokes among me and my friends. Like most normal people, we try to paint ourselves in the best light for those who ‘stalk’ our pages. We try to get the coolest display pictures, the funniest statuses and to get as many ‘likes’ for both as possible. Initially my friends and I made jokes about who got the most likes for their statuses or display pictures, but our competitiveness took over. These days it’s all about the likes. The display picture doesn’t have to make us look cool, our statuses don’t have to make sense and we even created a fake persona online, to collectively collect likes. We call the attempt for obtaining more likes ‘fishing’. Basically one would put out some bait, such as a status about how ‘gangsta’ we are or a cover photo about some classic 90’s movie or celebrity in order to catch as many ‘fish’ or ‘likes’ as possible. Facebook has now become the most serious joke my friends and I have ever had.

Marshal, P.C 2010, ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no.6, pp. 498-502

League of Legends

Choosing a game for this topic was so difficult, it wasn’t til now I realised how much of a massive gamer nerd I am. But alas, I was able to figure out which game I would most like to discuss on my blog, the most popular eSport game in history, League of Legends.

Source - Google Images

League of Legends is a massive online battle arena (MOBA), where teams of up to 5 players, select characters or “champions” and fight on the fields of justice to destroy the opposing enemy nexus. I highlighted League of Legends as an eSport since, unlike most other games, there is a lack of narrative in the game and the pure point of playing is competition. There are no quests to take, no story to progress through, simply fighting for the sake of competition. Competitions in LoL have gone to a point where professional players are rewarded with enormous sums of cash for victory, the last world championship saw the winning team, Taipei Assassins, awarded $1 million US dollars. But the game does have a small form of narrative, the champions they choose come with their own backgrounds and stories, creating lore within the League of Legends universe.

The League of Legends universe revolves around the magical world of Runeterra. Once a land ravaged and torn apart by war, powerful summoners created a competition for rivalling parties to settle disputes and end the pointless bloodshed between countries. In the lore, this competition was known as the League of Legends. The conflict between cities was very much political with countries fighting due to a clash of beliefs.

A dominant reading one could take from the game is that, disputes can be solved without violence, or war. Countries can differ and disputes could be settled in more “peaceful” terms (the League had become more of a spectacle and entertainment in the LoL world). A negotiated meaning could come from players believing that violence is never the answer but the League, which can be interpreted as their form of sports, is not a real indicator of a country’s power (just look at the results from the last Olympics :P). The oppositional reading could see players disagree with the League’s idea of peace, and that the game still shows that violence is the only way to resolute conflict.

Hall, S 1980, ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, England, pp. 55-58, accessed 12 Sept 2013

Hating your job, in real life and online

After a hard day at work I just wanna sit down, put my feet up and relax. After a hard day I wanna do that all the lot more. I don't really get those who have the energy to rant on and on about how terrible their job is such as those mentioned in the study by Richards and Kosmala. However, while I am an employee I am also a manager and with it comes a responsibility and sense of pride in what I do.

“Richards’ (2008) study suggests work blogging should be viewed as an expanding forum for self-organised employee resistance and misbehaviour, rejecting a reductive view of blogging platforms as forums for ‘Cyber-waffle’”

I disagree with Richards’ idea. Blogging is not simply a forum for “cyber-waffle”, people with complex and relevant ideas are able to express themselves and share what they believe or think with the world. Those who find solace in discussing their troubles and hardships in their workplace are more than welcome to do so, with care. But those who are simply online to “slag” off their employers, co-workers and workplaces are doing no justice to themselves or their workplace, an act I consider complete cowardice.
Taken as a serious matter, blogging about workplace issues could help those in serious need of guidance, from peers and others browsing similar blogs to seek help, but if work if such a hardship for those who blog for such reasons then professional help within the professional world may be a more practical way to go.