ENG298.1002
James L’Angelle
University of Nevada, Reno
Dr. A. Keniston
10 Sept 2019
RQ1, Depicting Others: “An Argument: On 1942,” David Mura
Considering the recent criticism of Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of Asian-Americans in his film “Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood” (2019) as racial stereotypes, is Mura correct in depicting his mother’s Japanese internment in World War Two as an exercise in futility that needs to be forgotten?
Note the very opening lines;
“--No, no, no, she tells me. Why bring it back?
The camps are over.”
And again at the end;
“David, it was so long ago--how useless it seems. . .”
Bringing imagery to life throughout the verses, there are references to Japanese terms with code mixing, such as “shoyu- stained furoshiki, mochi on a stick,” “a benjo,” and “tins of tsukemono and eel.” In a sociolinguistic sense, Mura inserted this particular pattern in order to further establish close identity with the character of his mother, creating a sense of authenticity. The references give the reader an inside look of daily life in the Japanese internment camp from a fundamental viewpoint.
According to Maschler in Grin, seminar paper (2006, 21 pages), defines code mixing or a mix code as “Using two languages such a third, new code emerges, in which elements from the two languages are incorporated into a structural definable pattern”. (Progressive, Vol. XII, 2017)
Because of this repetitive pattern, Mura creates a kinship not just with his family, but with the reader as well, giving a strong sense of “being there,” in the camp.
Further establishing the claim that the parent was in denial over the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during the war, Mura suggests those in the camp were “bored,” occupied themselves with daily routine chores and ignored the imagery of “barbed wire, guards in the towers.” Mura chooses to bring out the callous description of the camp in contrast to the mother’s over-simplistic life view of activity, as;
“We were children, hunting stones, birds, wild flowers.”
In 1990, David Mura was featured in the Minneapolis Star Tribune where he wrote an article titled, “ ‘Miss Saigon’ casting rings familiar, racist bell”
“First of all, those who criticize the Actors' Equity ruling never examine the hundreds of times in the past that Caucasian actors have played the roles of an Asian or a Native American. As an Asian-American who grew up watching Warner Oland as Charlie Chan, Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto, or David Carradine in ‘Kung Fu,’ I can tell you that such ‘color-blind’ casting did not make me feel that actors are judged solely by their talents.” (Star Tribune)
This criticism of whites playing Asians came out about the same time he wrote “An Argument.”
The poem depicts his mother’s experience in the internment camp but the underlying theme is racial in nature. His mother wants David to forget it, like in Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to be Colored Me” (1928);
“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it.” (Casa Arts)
Returning to the analytical question, Tarantino’s film portrays the Asian-American martial arts legend, Bruce Lee, as arrogant and that he could beat up Muhammed Ali. Lee’s daughter, Shannon, rejected the portrayal, as found in the Variety article by Audrey Cleo Yap;
“ ‘He could shut up about it,’ she told Variety when asked how Tarantino could rectify the controversy. ‘That would be really nice. Or he could apologize or he could say, ‘I don’t really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn’t be taken as how he really was.' ” (Variety)
The kerfuffle again brought up Mura’s 1990 criticism of Asian-American portrayals in film, and generally, overall stereotyping of the Japanese. In 2018, the South China Morning Post echoed Mura in the denial of access to Hollywood by Asian-American actors, in the words of Bruce Lee himself;
“ In a Canadian television interview, which took place just after Lee had lost the starring role in the US television series Kung Fu to the Caucasian actor David Carradine, and after his projected US series The Warrior had been written off by the studio, Lee said he had been denied opportunities because he was Chinese.” (SCMP)
David Mura achieved his objective in “An Argument” where it could be argued that he used an historical backdrop with explicit imagery to bring to life one of America’s more shameful chapters in racial inequality. Written in the latter part of the last century, “An Argument” still reflects values in certain aspects of today’s society that just will not go away. Written in the form of another person, his own mother, it brings us even closer to that difficult time we all, like his mother wants us to do, choose to forget.
Works Cited
Wibowo,AI, Yuniasih,I., Nelfianti,F, https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/227310-analysis-of-types-code-switching-and-cod-1287515d.pdf
Mura, D., Minneapolis Star Tribune, 25 Aug 1990, Page 15)
Hurston, ZN, https://www.casa-arts.org/cms/lib/PA01925203/Centricity/Domain/50/Hurston%20How%20it%20Feels%20to%20Be%20Colored%20Me.pdf
Yap, AC, https://variety.com/2019/film/news/bruce-lee-quentin-tarantino-shannon-lee-interview-1203302850/
Stereotyped, https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2157471/did-bruce-lee-suffer-racism-hollywood-studio-executives-were