Gwenihana

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 20:06:00 +0000

Back when I worked for a political magazine, a big cowboy-hat-wearing Texan who was some sort of DNC muck-a-muck would occasionally come by the office. While most good liberals take pains to say my name correctly, sometimes overly exoticizing the pronunciation with bizarre emphasis and guttural stops that my own mother couldn't replicate, this particular fellow would just fill in the blank with any name that sounded vaguely Asian-y. Never tentative, he would bellow across the room, "Hey there, Michiko" or "How you doing, Ming Na?" I braced for the day I would hear "How's it hanging, Mulan?" or "What's going down, Madame Butterfly?" "Can I get a whoop-whoop, Kikkoman?" Or maybe simply: "Hello, Kitty."

These days, names like Hayao Miyazaki, animation grand-daddy, or Takashi Murakami, the man whose colorful rendition of the Louis Vuitton print sold purses like crazy and who just appeared on a recent cover of New York Times Magazine, roll off the tongues of urban hipsters and the fashion forward. The Cartoon Network's programming is anime heavy, movies like "The Ring" and "The Grudge" demonstrate that Hollywood increasingly looks East for inspiration, and along the way, the public is becoming enlightened. Even Norelle, last season's resident bird brain on "America's Next Top Model," seemed appropriately embarrassed that Panda Express is, like, Chinese and not Japanese.

Salon.com > MiHi Ahn

Gwenihana