.what's in a name.

no matter what, there doesn't seem to be a way around labels...we seemed destined to continually categorize and name things. from the time we are born, we are taught...dare i say, urged...to call things by their names. *digression: a favorite family story my mom and her sisters like to tell to one another is about all the tricks my mom taught me when i was just a toddler. there were quite a few, but apparently the most impressive was when my mom would ask me something like, "pauline, where's your hand?" and i would open and close my hand in the air...and we would continue in that fashion until i had correctly identified my eyes, nose, ears, mouth, head, etc. ...and the point of this anecdote being a demonstration of how we're constantly taught to name things x)

juliet's famous line about names might have been really dreamy and romantic, but let's face it...everything is in a name, especially those attached to people. your name becomes a symbol of who you are...upon hearing it, those who know you--intimately or not--can't help but conjure some image of you. .accurate or not. and it's not just your personal name, the name your parents gave you....other labels serve as names too--filipino, liberal, poor, professional, jewish, gay, immigrant................gangsta xP


so it doesn't surprise me that gogol chooses to change his name after high school...to detach himself from a name that he feels is unrepresentative of his own self-image. but i think the frustration that motivates gogol's name change stems from his intentional refusal to embrace certain facets of his own identity. gogol self-righteously rejects his parents' immigrant heritage. he doesn't seem to take any interest in his own roots--where his parents came from, their native tradition....i think that if he had taken the time to really engage himself with these things, and with his parents especially, he wouldn't have felt such resentment.

i feel for gogol...it's hard being first generation...*a note: the debate wears on over whether (a) the immigrant generation is considered first and their american-born children considered second....or if (b) the immigrant generation goes by that moniker, thusly making their children first generation *sigh* i suppose another problem with names is their not-so-occasional ambiguity...but i personally see the latter method as making more sense since children of immigrants are really the first generation to be born into american nationality. i myself am a child of immigrants....and the first child as well. it made me smile to see a pattern in gogol's life that was familiar...gogol's childhood and mine ran parallel, the space separating our life lines only being that he was smothered under bengali tradition, while i suffered repression under filipino tradition...my household was straight outta the Pilipinas circa 1970s. it took many years and some good ol' teenage rebellion on my part to catalyze the evolution of my parents' outlook. .paving the way for my li'l bro to have a relatively free high school experience...tsk tsk...the young ones get all the spoils of the eldest child's parental war. but while i resented their radical conservatism when it came to regulating my social interactions, .meaning, i wasn't allowed to sleep over at friends' houses, be upstairs with a boy....be out after dark. i didn't resent the fact that my parents held on tightly to filipino cultural traditions of respecting elders, family dinners, extended family gatherings, speaking tagalog. i was glad about it because i had something that simultaneously set me apart from the predominantly white crowd at school AND linked me to people who shared the same motherland values.

my best friends in the whole world are the children of my dad's fraternity brothers from medical school....i have never lived in the same city as any of them, we're scattered throughout cali, tejas, oHIo, and NY....but we've always been uber-close, since our childhoods are built on the same foundations and have similar frameworks. only the details differ...but the themes are all there....and it always amazes me how despite our different environments and influences, our parents' origins are rooted deeply enough in us to produce a group that shares a similar vision of how those traditions will be carried on, but at the same time adapted....so that our children .second generation x) . can feel the pride, without the oppression of being called filipino.

.on the hillside.

gonna start off with the shameless 'weeds' plug.....get your hands on seasons 1&2 .even if it means using certain frowned upon methods. and watch it xD the writing is VERY clever and all the actors are grrrrrrrrreat .esp mary-louise parker and elizabeth perkins...the former beat out all the desperate housewives for the emmy or globe or some such award. now having said that...

it only takes the first scene (PTA meeting) to see the "conformist-oriented society" that spigel talks about in the 'dreamhouse' essay. it only takes two scenes to see "social sanitation" in every sense that spigel meant it..."safe, familiar, and predictable contexts" for social interaction with non-WASPs = nancy is buying drugs from a black family .who show a natural fluency in ebonics that nancy lacks. ..."undesirables" marginalized into the city = heylia and her family are living in downtown L.A. .prolly a couple blocks away from good ol' sc. ... 'weeds' basically does what any good t.v. show is supposed to do: shrink huge social concepts down into understandable, digestable and *gasp* entertaining bits for the masses to consume.

it surprised me that the historical context of spigel's article was still applicable to modern television, especially a show as forward as 'weeds'. 'dreamhouse' didn't seem static the way avila's disneyland article did...it bordered on being prophetic, even...

modern television programming still fits into the 1950s box that spigel built: one that houses a socially sterile environment. there are shows that are ethnically diverse...but only superficially. the 'ethnic' shows fit a certain 'ethnic' mold .upn's primetime lineup included. because the ones that don't get cancelled...it's all racialized stereotypes of some kind or another...it does what 19th century intellectuals hoped electricity would do--limits experiences of cultural differences.

BUT... television's also evolved into exactly what every square feared: a medium for mass contamination. and it's done a heckuva job too.....just look at what britney spears did to the innocence of every little girl .completely obliterated it, thats what. no WAY my parents thought watching t.v. would keep me out of trouble. television informs almost every aspect of modern life...it tells us what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what to think even...

*sigh* those amazing little boxes. according to the spigel article, 9% of americans had a t.v. in 1950...and by the end of the decade, that stat rocketed around 90%!!! and now, fifty years later, it's not how many families have a t.v., but how many t.v.'s does each family have. .gotta love exponential growth. i know we've got 5 in our house...for the life of me, i couldn't tell you why.

like, my family is huge on eating meals together. when both me and my li'l bro lived at home, we ate dinner together .at the very least. 5 times out of 7. .btw, it shocks and saddens me how rare it is for families to eat together nowadays. normally, we'd have awesome table talk during dinner, but whenever the t.v. was on, we'd watch w/o speaking for long periods...only breaking the silence for humorous/sarcastic commentary...hahaha...now that me and my bro aren't home as often, mommy makes us leave the t.v. off on those rarer occasions when we're all seated around the table. .something i greatly appreciate. that hdtv plasma can really tip the balance more towards seclusion from the real world rather than inclusion in it...

.the 101.

.hustlers grab your guns.
.your shadow weighs a ton.
.driving down the 101.
.california here we come.

the scene opens...two shadowy figures creep through the night. they come upon a car, parked on the street. In 60 seconds .a much better movie about stealing cars. glass breaks, tires screech, sirens blare, and the car finds its way into an electrical box...all this excitement topped with a smattering of 'bitch' here and there...welcome to the OC...........bitch. xP

c'mon now...we all know that's not the REAL o.c. .as that excruciating 1/2 hour of laguna beach proved. the party ryan and seth step into isn't even close to the real o.c. .once again, thank you l.c. and stephen for the insight into real o.c. parties--boring unless kristin is there to dog on everyone. but the show does expose a facet of suburban life that appeals to audiences precisely because it is a facet that isn't common, that isn't seen, only heard of.

it's all the urban legends that 'teen movies' are made of.....i'm from here, you're from there......my asshole/bitch other is in the way......massive parties riddled with drugs, sex, rock&roll...and of course .my favorite part because i've known my fair share of em. gangstuh white boys and the token black guy...

from the writing standpoint, it's all the same old stories...the only difference is that now they've been repackaged into tanned beach bodies and given loads of money. .sounds to me like a studio formula for success! $cha-ching!$. i don't see anything remotely creative about the o.c. even the show makes fun of its own 'trend' status and the fact that it could be about kids anywhere...summer religiously watches 'the valley'. .yeah, why couldn't it have been 'the valley'? we're WAY more trouble that those o.c. kids! oh, the stories i could tell.

but i will give the fox people some credit...maybe they hired disney's thinktank to develop a show that taps into a dormant, diabolical addiction that makes you fiend for mindless chatter and ugly clothes whenever you hear that song....

i also think it's funny how these kids are in high school, but they dress like those swanky young professionals on other shows like desperate housewives. .this is the only o.c. fact proved correct by l.c. and the gang on l.b...ooh, so many initials. maybe i'll start calling myself p.i. 3-to-the-point-1-4!!. time always seems to work funny on t.v. ...

*insert witty segue into blog part 2 here*

tropic of orange sorta reads like a t.v. show in that 'time' aspect of things. the days and chapter divisions are really episodic, like scenes. and i think yamashita does a beautiful job with different concepts of time...each character seems to have a completely different experience of time that is heightened by their spatial arrangements. where 'space' overlaps, these different tracks of time come into conflict, and it's really cool to see how yamashita does this in writing, showing the contrast without the aide of picture/film. .but then again, i've always liked reading cause it's like a movie in your head. it's a characteristic of l.a. that i really see everyday--everyone living at a different pace, boundaries spilling into one another.....damn, i love my city.

.curiouser and curiouser.

*POP*

there goes that bubble...you know, the one where disneyland is simply an innocent merchandising ploy to drain the masses of their (mostly) hard-earned money. who knew that it was specifically designed to champion a social order which marginalized minorities into one-dimensional, side-show stereotypes? .thanks mr. avila...now it's a small world means so much more to me. and this while simultaneously dangling the dream of American middle-classness right in front of said minorities' noses? an evil i never thought possible of ANYTHiNG disney!

if you'll forgive me my own stereotype .and i know you will...because it's just for the sake of blargument. i might have expected this of those snobby, boujis .a great word a la will smith, the fresh prince of bel-air (my apologies if that's not the episode where he says it...it's still a great one though) xD. east coast suburbs. aloft put a very subtle emphasis on "whiteness" that was almost imperceptible...the same kind of subtlety displayed by avila's disneyland...this idea of the "carefully managed image" that disney wanted to create, and that jerry and his neighbors struggled to maintain. both pieces repeatedly talk about having a certain level of "predictability" in the suburbs...one, which i find scarily real in the sense of a complacent, consumer lifestyle (such as the one glamorized by disneyland)...but which i find lacking in "the Real" (as jerry called it).

the biggest difference i noticed between avila's historic disneyland/o.c. suburbia and lee's literary NYC suburbia is a sense of time. the literature of aloft captures the suburbs in timeless instances of experience and emotion...things we can all relate to, suburbians or not. but being a historical article, avila's anaheim suburb and especially disneyland seems static and unchanging in comparison, not so much capturing the ideals that pushed suburbia into cookie-cutter contentment, but how disneyland helped to pour into the porch of socal's ear that lecherous distillment of suburban ideals...

it's mind-boggling and a little heartbreaking to me that disney could be considered sort of subversive in this light, especially in our current social climate of political correctness/equality. this is not the paragon of warm-and-fuzzyness that i love...that i clamor to visit every few months...

then again...ask me if i care xP i'm still going to disneyland...if not to be brainwashed by fuehrer disney's unique brand of entertainment, then definitely for the churros xD

.a basement.

my wonderfully long MLK weekend was spent back home at my parents' house in "the valley"...*aside: well, my house too, i guess...esp since traditions of filipino family rearing (to which my parents hold steadfastly) dictate that i shall be living with them until such a time as i am wed* x) hahaha
...this is pretty much the valley as i know it, as i have known it for the past 23 years...and i like to think that in that time, i've gotten to know it pretty well, having loped around most of the area, from granada hills all the way to universal city and even out to glendale .the north-eastern part of the valley being the only region completely foreign to me....


but no matter familiar a place, or a person, is...no matter how well you think you know something...there's always more underneath. it's like that episode of desperate housewives, where lynette goes into her neighbor's basement and finds that wall...moral of the story: everyone has something in their basement.

jurca's "white diaspora" and davis' "patrolling the third border" kind of cracked open those basement doors. i had never thought about the suburbs in that context before.

something jurca wrote early on in the reading hit home: "the suburb is the exemplary location, not only of middle-class advantages, but of middle-class abasement; moreover, its abasement is a function of its advantages. the material benefits, however 'great,' are...handicaps" (4). i wouldn't call my family privileged, but i would definitely say we are blessed. my parents worked for the "stuff" they didn't have growing up so that they could give it to my brother and me. .and i saw the same pattern in a lot of other families too, especially in high school. don't call me ungrateful, but there's always been this nagging feeling in the back of my head that being handed all of it might have diluted in me some of that gumption my parents had. .my brother is another story. maybe the lack of struggle left a gap in spiritual/emotional development...a gap that we valley kids, in our boredom, filled with all sorts of wayward activities, creating that seedy underbelly of suburbia that shows like the OC and Laguna Beach like to splash on screen these days. .i actually had that idea back when i was in high school: to do a real world-type show about the valley.

so...does that make my generation an abasement of the last? would you even be able to tell if you came to the west side of the valley, where i live? probably not. because we're all at the newly expanded westfield topanga mall buying "stuff" .with daddy's credit card, thank you...yes, guilty as charged *wry smile*. to distract people from what's in the basement...

...growing up, i never really felt that there was any dearth of diversity. .although, in retrospect, there was. nor did i ever observe bureaucratic motions to exclude. .again, hindsight is 20/20, especially now that i think about all those times the valley tried to secede. my own naivety and egocentrism held me in the belief that it was the white kids at school who constituted the different, because they were different from me and my family. .yes...hahaha...i thought filipinos were the majority population and everyone ate lechon, carecare and lumpia at home...silly me...didn't realize the truth until middle school. xP

as for the inner-workings of politics and their effects on social climate, etc....just as far over my head now as it was when i was barely 4 ft. tall. *shrug* .honestly, i'm not the person to ask about social issues...i try to learn and understand much more now, but i'm still at a loss as to why we can't all just get along. but if you spend time in the different corners of the valley, you'll see that we're a very diverse community. granted, everyone sorta sticks to their own...but the way i see it, ethnic clustering is only natural when a country is populated by waves of immigration. to the best of my knowledge, it didn't result in the valley from "the man" turning his bureaucratic wheels to keep property value up. .but then again, i try not to spend a lot of time in calabasas, or thinking about it, if i can help it. all the recreation spaces i frequent are free and available to whomever wants to make the drive. .and i've seen the parks used in all manner of recreation, too...hahaha.

i often wonder if being filipino has sheltered me from experiencing the kind of exclusionary treatment davis talks about. for me, it had the ring of espionage and spygames...secret town meetings to discuss the best way to legally and quietly keep them out, so that no one was the wiser...definitely the kind of stuff you plan in a basement...and ironically, all for the abasement of certain groups. but i never felt it was an issue in the valley i lived in. .and i definitely call myself lucky for it, because i don't know how i would've handled anything like that, especially if directed specifically at me or my people.

in aloft, i think chang-rae lee definitely has the bird's eye view on jurca and davis and their issues...all that...that's what jerry battle is constantly going on about...the question of whether or not suburban life, as it is stereotyped and characterized, is to the benefit or detriment of the people who choose it. he seems to vacillate between the two...and i agree, it's a tough call. *disclaimer: in the interest of getting the whole story first, i'd like to reserve most commentary i have about aloft for after i've read the entire book...i am currently battling through chapter 9.

previous to this class, i had my thoughts about living "in the middle of white suburbia" as i used to say in high school. i mostly thought it was a whole lot of boring: the same people, the same places, the same routine...all the same. yes, we valley people are superficial and materialistic, but some of us know it, have a good sense of humor about the whole thing, and try to be better. i can pick out the trends that jurca and davis discuss, if i have to...but while the sense of we have 'houses', but no 'homes' seems almost right .i've seen it with almost all my friends, but haven't experienced it first hand., the rest just doesn't seem to apply to the valley as i know it, on the surface...but perhaps it's all a matter of interpretation, maybe i need to fling the doors to the basement wide open and actually go inside. i'm faced with a certain context and maybe i'm just trying unsuccessfully to make things fit.......that neighbor whose house lynette let herself into was a swim coach. maybe she got the message wrong.

someone tell me if i got the message wrong............someone (*cough* prof tongson *cough*) tell me if i've babbled on and on about nothing and need to have more focus next week...

*aside: how is it that blogs lend themselves so easily to rambling?

.getting to know you.

hi all. welcome to my blog. it was very cool getting to know a little more about everyone in the class. just from that, it's apparent that the suburbs are not all "mc-mansion wishes and cookie cutter dreams".

this being for an actual class, i feel like i need to apologize in advance if my complete disregard for the rules of grammar, capitalization, and punctuation bothers anyone. also, although it might not be so prevalent now (because i'm trying really hard to contain myself) my blogs tend to have a lot of elipses (...), a lot of "hahaha", and a lot of smiley faces x) i blame it on being an asian girl from the valley...haha...actually, i think it's more of the fact that a blog makes me wanna type the way i talk...in any event, there we are. you have been forewarned.

it's kinda interesting to me that the blog has found it's way into a curriculum here at SC...although with the advent of sites like myspace and youtube, it could only be a matter of time, right? but even more interesting is that the first time i encounter a required blog would be for a class about diversity in the suburbs!