Stanford University Press Blog

Two Filipina feminista sisters in academia (who write about sex)

What are the chances?

Two Filipina sisters grow up in Boston, head off to UC Berkeley for college, end up staying in academia, and now write about sex. They’re also both Stanford Univ. Press authors: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ most recent book investigates trafficked Filipina hostesses (Illicit Flirtations, 2011), and Celine Parreñas Shimizu has just authored the first full-length study of the racialization of Asian American men in movies (Straitjacket Sexualities, 2012).

And we're not the only ones who thought this was neat: this fall, the two professors are going to be featured in a segment on LA18, a SoCal TV station. (Edited to add: check out the television interview on Youtube here and here.) 

In the meantime, here are two thoughts to mull over from Professor Shimizu about filmmaking and being Asian American, taken from a Hyphen Magazine interview about her new book Straitjacket Sexualities:

 -       It’s not breaking news that Asian American men in movies have often been marginalized as practically asexual. But after taking a closer look at Hollywood films, Shimizu has another way of looking at it: rather than being macho-bravo, Asian American men are shown as being ethical, caring, and selfless. It’s a different kind of manhood--one that goes against all the stereotypes.

-       Minority art has a reputation for portraying warm and glossy versions of minority life--stories that usually don’t get told anywhere else. But according to Shimizu, the urge to only tell the positive “story of your people” doesn't always do justice to the people it's supposed to represent, for it's still just another fabric of incomplete truths. 

 

If you’re in Los Angeles later this summer, check out this upcoming book talk with Shimizu and Parreñas entitled “Filipinas, Feminism and Sex.”  Details: Echo Park Branch Library; Saturday, August 4, 2012; more information here.

 

Check out Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies here.

Check out Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo here. 

 

Are you getting Caught in Play?

Why is that we get caught up with stories about celebrities even when they have nothing to do with our lives? Why do we spend hours on video games or reading pulp fiction? The activity temporarily assumed a profound significance and the outside world began to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely think about what effect they might be having on us. Precisely because it is so pervasive, entertainment is difficult to understand and even to talk about. 

Peter Stromberg's Caught In Play: How Entertainment Works on You addresses these issues. A recent review of the book in Publishers Weekly describes it as a meta-narrative about being "caught up" in the entertainment world and finds that "Reading this smart commentary on the grand spectrum of entertainment is an addictive experience, a sharp example of the very phenomenon it illuminates."

Caught in Play looks closely at how we engage entertainment and at the ideas and practices it creates and sustains. Even Recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology is beginning to clarify some of this. Our brains, we are discovering, are hard wired to automatically imitate what we observe because of a system of specialized neurons called mirror neurons. When we watch a movie or a T.V. show, we become caught up in it and sometimes mimic what we see. As Stromberg's work reveals, entertainment tells us more about ourselves than we are willing to acknowledge: values of
pleasure, self-indulgence, and consumption.

So the next time you're being entertained, think about it: Are you getting caught up?