|
|
Liberating the Asian American Libido
|
Liberating the Asian American 
ome parents worry that their kids smoke pot and have sex in college. Parents of UC Davis students worry that their kids are being pushed into becoming pornographers by their Asian Studies prof.
A case in point is James C. Hou, a former student of UC Davis Asian Studies Professor Darrell Hamamoto. Hou isn't a pornographer, exactly, but he's the next best thing: a filmmaker who has made a documentary about the making of an Asian American porn video. Who's the pornographer being documented? Professor Hamamoto himself. The good professor became a pornographer not for the usual reasons — though he isn't above endorsing them — but for a noble one: to liberate the Asian American sexual imagination from its state of colonial enslavement. The abundance of Asian female porn stars and dearth of Asian male porn stars, argues Hamamoto, is both a symptom and a cause of this sexual colonization. Hamamoto writes in his essay entitled “Joy F*ck Club, Prolegomenon to an Asian American Porno Practice (1998)”): [CONTINUED BELOW]
|
|
|
As long as Asian Americans are marginalized within, or excluded outright from, the dominant system of film representation, they will continue to embody an alienated sexuality conditioned by an oppressive system of White racial supremacy...[T]he most efficacious and crudely direct strategy to assert an immediate visual presence is to take up the camera and turn it inward to capture the pleasures of the flesh as enjoyed by Yellow people: A "Joy F*ck Club [asterisk added]."Hamamoto decided to lead by example. Any way you look at it, you have to hand it to Hamamoto: it takes fancy academic footwork to get the salute of legitimacy all around for what is, after all, an amateur porn production. Hou and his camera follow the middle-aged but youthful professor and his twenty-something Chinese American girlfriend — another former student — through a day that begins at San Francisco International where the couple pick up a young Corean American identified as Chun Lee. He's tall, not bad looking and wouldn't mind becoming a porn star. They are joined later at a Davis apartment by Layla Lei, a young Cambodian American porn actress. Before long health forms are checked and establishing shots obtained. With Hamamoto as director and his girlfriend as cameraman, shooting commences. Hou, of course, has been shooting all along. With Layla positioned beside him on the sofa, Chun is called on to perform that old standby of all porn films — a cheesy pretext for making physical contact. There is no script, no dialogue. Within seconds the two are making out and the porn career of Professor Darrell Hamamoto is rolling. Hou's documentary (Masters of the Pillow) captures the action from an angle wide enough to include the behind-the-camera activity: Hamamoto's girlfriend crouching and scooting around for intimate angles on the action, Hamamoto darting about with a second camcorder and offering occasional direction. It's a less than ideal vantage point from which to view the sexual action, but of course Hou's main objective isn't to arouse but to provoke thought about what porn can and can't do to free the Asian American sexual imagination from a white-centered perspective. The footage of a novice pornographer's earnest first project is liberally intercut with monologues on Hamamoto's premise from Hamamoto himself, his girlfriend, internet pornographer Rick Lee (asian-man.com), Cal Asian Studies Professor Elaine Kim, indie filmmakers Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow) and Eric Byler (Charlotte Sometimes), and gender-bending playwright David Henry Hwang (M Butterfly). Chun's arousal and Leyla's accommodating mouth and loins are passably documented from number of vantage points, but the documentary is missing a key element of any decent porno. “You missed the pop shot,” Hamamoto fairly taunts Hou's camera, showing off his newfound fluency in porn lingo. “It was a good one too.” Darrell Hamamoto, cunning academic and budding pornographer, has shrewdly withheld the money shot from the documentary camera. It is reserved for those who shell out the sweaty bucks for Skin on Skin, the porn video Hamamoto produced from the day's shoot. James C. Hou's interest in making films had its origins in an entirely different genre. “I was a huge fan of Hong Kong films growing up and even spent a college year abroad over there to learn about the HK film business,” Hou recalls. “Fortunately I found a job with a production company and became hooked ever since.” Hou was born to Chinese-Taiwanese parents and grew up in San Francisco. After graduating from college he moved to New York and began working in the independent film community as a camera assistant and editor. Hou made such rapid progress that he decided there was no need to go to film school. “You learn everything you need to know working on film sets with other professionals — camera, lighting, sound, etc.” Hou's first short, The Pickup, was accepted by several Asian American film festivals, showing him that an audience was ready to embracehis perspective and encouraging him to continue making films under his own production company, Avenue Films. His first documentary film, Masters of the Pillow has made the rounds of the college and festival circuits, provoking lively discussions about the role of porn among college students, academics, journalists and even The Daily Show and The Tonight Show. Masters of the Pillow is available in DVD form from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Masters-of-the-Pillow/dp/B001C1CSRY. Hou is currently developing several feature narrative projects he hopes to direct. GS: What's your relationship to Dr. Hamamoto? JCH: I met Dr. Hamamoto while I was an undergrad at UC Davis and enrolled in one of his classes. As a student I was struck by his passionate diatribes against the Man and thought he was onto something. We kept in touch on and off over the years and by coincidence ran into each other in New York where he gave me a copy of his essay, “The Joy F*ck Club”. PAGE 2 |
CONTACT US
|
ADVERTISING INFO
|
