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Start Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Making space for queer Asian women’s rage in cathartic art was much needed in the 1990s. This presentation offers a close look at an all queer, all Asian Pacific Islander, 16 mm, black and white, collaborative, experimental film directed by filmmaker Vũ T. Thu Hà, Shut Up White Boy (2002). A classic punk film shot in San Francisco in 2000, it tells the story of a group of queer punks’ creative violent revenge on a “fucking yellow fever jerk.” The production crew gathered some of the most active Asian American queer artists in the Bay Area. A couple of them formed an unapologetically Asian and unapologetically queer punk band, DragOn Ladies, and created an original soundtrack. Shooting Shut Up White Boy and making music as DragOn Ladies responded to the under-representation of “angry Asian women” in the popular discourse of “angry women in rock” in the late 1990s. Validating rage and anger in the fantasy space of the 1990s art was also of particular value to queer Asian women who had to deal with sexual harassment and the erasure of their sexual desire and subjectivity on a daily basis. Based on personal narrative, oral history, and in-depth interviews with Thu Hà and members of DragOn Ladies, in addition to a close reading of the short film’s narrative construct and use of music, this study brings attention to this iconic experimental punk film and the political significance of queer Asian cathartic art-making.
Making Space in the Age of Cathartic Art: Shut Up White Boy and the DragOn Ladies
Making space for queer Asian women’s rage in cathartic art was much needed in the 1990s. This presentation offers a close look at an all queer, all Asian Pacific Islander, 16 mm, black and white, collaborative, experimental film directed by filmmaker Vũ T. Thu Hà, Shut Up White Boy (2002). A classic punk film shot in San Francisco in 2000, it tells the story of a group of queer punks’ creative violent revenge on a “fucking yellow fever jerk.” The production crew gathered some of the most active Asian American queer artists in the Bay Area. A couple of them formed an unapologetically Asian and unapologetically queer punk band, DragOn Ladies, and created an original soundtrack. Shooting Shut Up White Boy and making music as DragOn Ladies responded to the under-representation of “angry Asian women” in the popular discourse of “angry women in rock” in the late 1990s. Validating rage and anger in the fantasy space of the 1990s art was also of particular value to queer Asian women who had to deal with sexual harassment and the erasure of their sexual desire and subjectivity on a daily basis. Based on personal narrative, oral history, and in-depth interviews with Thu Hà and members of DragOn Ladies, in addition to a close reading of the short film’s narrative construct and use of music, this study brings attention to this iconic experimental punk film and the political significance of queer Asian cathartic art-making.
Bio
Runchao Liu is a critical media/cultural studies scholar whose primary research focuses on Asian/Asian American sound, media, and cultural activism. Liu is joining the University of Denver as an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies in fall 2022. You may find her/their academic writing in Cinéma & Cie: International Film Studies Journal, Critical Asian Studies, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture and edited collections such as Critical Race Media Literacy (Routledge), The Cultural Politics of Femvertising (Palgrave Macmillan), and Sound Affects (Bloomsbury).